24. The Kamala Harris movement: Is it game over for Donald Trump?
46:29 Share

Four years. That's how long it took Democrats to ruin our economy and plunge our southern border into anarchy. Who helped them hurt us? Ruben Gallego. Washington could have cut taxes for Arizona families, but Ruben blocked the bill. And his fellow Democrats gave a bigger break to the millionaire class in California and New York. They played favorites and cost us billions. And Ruben wasn't done yet.

Democrats could have secured the border. Instead, they invited an invasion and used our tax dollars to pay for it. Ruben Gallego even backed the law to let them vote in our elections. Don't give Gallego and the Democrats another four years to hurt us. Give your support to a real Arizona leader, Carrie Lake.

Carrie and the Republicans will secure the border, support our families, and never turn their backs on us. Carrie Lake for Senate. I'm Carrie Lake, candidate for U.S. Senate, and I approve this message. Paid for by Carrie Lake for Senate and the NRSC. Church's original recipe is back. You can never go wrong with original.

Still tastes the same like back in the day. Right now, get two pieces of chicken starting at only $2.99 or 10 pieces starting at only $10.99. Church's. Offer valid at participating locations. We all have plans in life. Maybe to take a cross-country road trip or simply get through this workout without any back pain. Whether our plans are big, small, spontaneous, or years in the making, good health helps us accomplish them.

At Banner Health, we're here to provide more than health care. Whatever you're planning, wherever you're going, we're here to help you get there. Banner Health. Exhale.

Welcome to the Rest is Politics US with me, Cathy Kaye, and Anthony Scaramucci is here too. And we are live on YouTube. And also, this will be a podcast that will run on the Rest is Politics US feed on Friday morning. I have to say, Anthony, I'm kind of confused about which day it is because I've been stuck in that convention hall for the last four days, and it's pretty hard to remember. But

I have just rushed back from the Democratic National Convention. I started watching Kamala Harris's speech live there in the hall. They were in raptures, the Democratic audience there watching her. I'm interested to hear. I was in the hall, so I want to talk about what that felt like. But what did it feel like to you watching it on television? Why don't we start in the hall? Because most of the people listening, including myself, were not in the hall.

So, Katty, what was it like in the hall? So when she said there was a it had been, you know, it was quite a long build up towards her. We had to wait a good couple of hours, maybe even three of other people giving speeches. There were some sweet moments where her little two nieces came out there kind of

you know, elementary school age girls. These two girls came out and with Kerry Washington, the actress taught us all how to say her name. There were some families who came out. He talked about how they had been impacted. There was a very moving story of a young woman who had been sex trafficked

And Kamala Harris, when she was a prosecutor in California, had shut down the website and prosecuted the people who had sex trafficked this young, brave young woman who got up and told her story. But there had been some nice personal stories that also, to be honest, quite a lot of kind of

politicians speaking, giving their little stump speeches. So everyone had had to get in there early because it was all shut down and absolutely packed. You weren't allowed in for a good two or three hours beforehand unless you'd already got in and got a seat. By the time then Kamala Harris comes on stage and it's bang on time at 9.30 Chicago time and she takes the stage and the whole stadium just erupts in cheers.

They're waving banners, they've got these big tall kind of posters that they're waving with her name. And they are cheering and cheering and cheering so much so that Kamala Harris kind of has to say to them, "Okay, let's get down to business. We've got to talk now, let's get down to business." And she comes out on stage in this kind of Navy suit with a Navy shirt.

And she smiles. I mean, my sort of initial takeaway was that this woman did not stop smiling. She looked genuinely happy to be there. This is now my ninth convention, the ninth time I've been in that position of being in a convention hall and watching a nominee from the Republican Party or from the Democratic Party take the stage.

And I don't think I've ever seen a candidate who looked so genuinely happy to be there. Um, I think I texted you, Anthony saying, my God, does this woman ever stop smiling? I mean, she really looked like she was thrilled to be there. And then she gave about a 40 minute speech and we can go through that. But the, the atmosphere, as you'd expect, they were delighted to have her up on stage. Um, she was, she was super energetic. The energy in the room was very high level. Uh,

men and women all dancing in their seats in the stadium to the music that accompanied her.

And I have to say, I think I texted you this, for people who watched Kamala Harris go through her 2020 kind of very low key, low performance, really, election campaign, I don't think I have seen a politician come this far this fast and perform this well in that bigger setting with the stakes that high. I can't remember one who's done it on this quicker turnaround and

This was the most important

speech of her political career, the most important moment of her political career, her chance to introduce herself to the American people. And she handled it like a pro. She handled it like somebody who's been given this kind of speech in this kind of huge audience. And she hit all the right notes. She pointed out her family. She wished her husband a happy anniversary. He was sitting there right in front of her. And they'd been like the family were right, you know, yards from her. And I think that, you know, that was

It was really nice the way she pointed them out. So I think she nailed it. Before this speech, I said this has to be a really good speech and she has to deliver it really well. And I think she hit all the notes she needed to hit. Play Republican strategist for a second.

And you've now come out of there, you've watched the speech and now you're going to hit that speech and you're going to attack that speech. How would you attack that speech? You're going to go after her for what she kept saying several times over on banks and what she did. There was a kind of slightly anti-corporate note to the speech. It was a very, it was a progressive democratic speech in standing up for the little guy and

There was not much outreach to Trump voters. There was, I think, Tim Walz did some of that just by nature of his persona. Outreach to Republicans

less educated white men, which is her vulnerability, living in rural areas. There was not much outreach to them. It was very much a kind of statist view of what the state can do for people in a progressive context of protecting people and fighting for people.

I think it was delivered really well. I've always been, I've never been a big fan of Kamala Harris's speech delivery. And I think that's where I'm saying she's got a lot better as a politician.

But I think there are things in the speech that absolutely the Republicans will go after. I think she answered the immigration question. I think their argument about immigration is not a bad one. And she hit that one, that we proposed this immigration bill and we had it there and it was proposed by a conservative Republican and it was Donald Trump who asked them not to sign it. So I think that she did pretty well. It was a 40-minute speech and eight minutes of it, by my judgment, was onerous.

on her childhood biography. We were still in high school, eight minutes into a 40-minute speech, which made me think that they are looking at poll numbers saying Americans don't really know who she is and maybe don't feel that comfortable with her because they don't know her biography. So she was very much trying to paint herself in the context, although she comes from this

kind of exotic American background. I mean, like many Americans are, right? She has an Indian mother who was going to go back. I didn't know that. Her mother was due to go back to India for an arranged marriage. That's not the experience of most Americans, but she was trying to put herself in the context of middle-class America. Okay. So I got a couple of things I want to get your reaction to. So you're a television person. I'm not a television person. I just play a television person on TV, but I want to step back for a second and go over programming.

Because I thought the programming tonight was pitch perfect. When I read the itinerary and I read the message that they were trying to deliver, I thought it was pitch perfect, right? They were trying to present somebody that could unify the country, right?

Kissinger, I thought his speech was gold. I thought Leon Panetta's speech was gold. The governor from North Carolina, Roy Cooper. Short and sweet. And that was good. He wants her to win, Kat. He wants her to win. You could feel it coming through the television. And so if you're a television producer, you're like, what am I going to do tonight? I want to introduce this woman that many Americans don't know. Many people around the world don't know. Political aficionados like you and me know, but let's introduce her.

And it was family. It was unity. It was, you know, and I just said this on X, Trump is so divisive. Is he actually uniting us against him?

Is he the American Putin? Just give me one second on this. Putin saw NATO so divided. Putin saw NATO crumbling and his move into the Ukraine had the opposite effect. Is it a cracking NATO? Everybody got united. I'm just wondering if the great divider Donald Trump ends up being

The force that puts enough of us together that begins the healing process for the country. So just two more quick things. She was fantastic tonight. I mean, not...

Saying that with any hyperbole, I went to law school. First thing you learn in trial advocacy, you have to make the case for yourself and you have to make the case against the other side. And that was a trial advocacy A+. It was a dream. If that woman was in court presenting that case to the judge, it was, I'm a good person. I got raised right.

I love, I love my country. And oh, by the way, I love you. Okay. Now Americans have a tendency. Okay. They have a tendency. They can vote for somebody that they dislike. They gave Richard Nixon a landslide at 72. They voted him in in 68. They didn't like him. But what they don't like, they don't like voting for people that dislike them.

And that's where Trump is going to find trouble here because Vice President Harris came out tonight and said, by the way, I get our alliances. I know who we are in the world. It's an amazing country. Whatever racism anybody has faced in this country, my African-American father, my Indian-American mother, it doesn't matter. I have this undying love affair for the country. So anyway, that's what I saw. And I was I was blown away by it.

And she met not only she meet the moment, but her whole life culminated in that speech. And now we just have to see if she can win, if she can stay on message. She's got to answer questions now. She's gone 32. It'll be 33 days shortly without a press conference. We have to see if she can stay on message through this.

So I want to turn it back to you and see what you as the question you asked me, which is such a smart question about how as a strategist, if you were a Republican strategist, if you were on the Trump campaign, how would you attack that speech? But one other quick thing on the speech and the delivery of it. I think what she did really well. And I mentioned her biography, which actually I thought was very compelling. The story of how she grew up and she

And she was very warm about her mother and very warm about her family upbringing. But she did what they always tell you to do. Hollywood writers are always saying this, that you must show, not tell.

And in a way, by showing her biography, by talking about who she was and who she was raised to be, she was almost saying, this is me and this is my values. This is where I come from. I don't need to lay them out for you. I don't need to be heavy handed about it. I am somebody that grew up.

you know, making gumbo on Sunday evenings with my mom who kept pushing me to do better. There was never very much money, but we didn't, you know, we didn't, we wanted for little. And I think she was almost saying that's who I am. I am, I am you and I have always represented you. And I think that was that show not tell element of the speech.

was very effective. There were some good lines in the speech, that line she had about my entire career, I've only had one client, the people.

I thought that was a very good line. There was a sweet line about family where she was talking about, this is such an American experience. I had this with my kids, you know, the woman downstairs who looked after me after school because my mother was working, who was a second mother to me. You know, the people who helped, she name checked all of the people who were close to her who had helped raise her. And she had this lovely line about they weren't family by blood. They were family by love.

And so there were these, you know, it was a warm human speech as well as taking the case to Donald Trump and then making the case for herself on foreign policy issues. And I know that they've looked at some of the polling that suggests that Donald Trump scores better on strength than

and effectiveness, and she scores better on energy and focus. And I think that there was quite a lot during the course of this whole convention and quite a lot in this speech in particular about I'm a fighter, and I have the toughness on national security. I have those chops that can make you see me as somebody who is strong. But how would you go about it if you were

advising the Trump campaign, what are the things you would go after in this speech? So he's in the...

He's got the Trump heat shield down right now. He's not taking any advice from anybody. He had to be told sometime this evening that you're getting creamed in Georgia. Had to be told that because he saw that at 8.48 p.m. He's launching into Brian Kemp. Thank you so much. We never apologized to Brian Kemp. The governor of Georgia who he had laid into just a week ago, which is the most stupid thing to do because the governor of Georgia is incredibly popular in Georgia and is a Republican who Donald Trump is.

feels has gone and betrayed him. It's unbelievable. He never apologizes like that. He never sends out a tweet saying, you know. One of the most popular governors in the United States and certainly a very popular Republican governor with a great future. He eviscerates this man's

two weeks ago and I have good sources that tell me him and his wife have smoke coming out of their ears now he did put up on Twitter I'm supporting you and so forth but I don't think you can do that to somebody and their wife and their family and them really support you maybe they could support you through political expediency but he is dropping like a fly also Jeff Duncan

Do not underestimate the speech that he gave. He was a lieutenant governor of Georgia. He worked with Brian Kemp. He went after Trump last night for a solid seven minutes. It was a brilliant speech. Fellow Republican, you're terrible. Here are the reasons why I'm doing the right thing for my country to tell people the danger of you.

And so his numbers are falling like a stone in Georgia. And so he's not, he would never listen. Okay. I would tell you what I would do. Okay. There are people in the chat. They're going to be mad at me, but I think we have to be very balanced. This is how it works. Okay. People need to know what he would need to do is he would need to go to the left of

on a few big issues. What he would need to do is what he's really good at because he's so transactional. Remember, he was against Bitcoin. Now he's for it. All the Bitcoiners are with him. He needs to do a Nixonian moment on something like parenting and something like IVF and abortion.

OK, he may lose some of the conservatives on that, which is why he's fearful because of that whole low ceiling sort of thing. But he has to do something. He's in a panic. You and I are speaking right now at eleven thirty four p.m. Eastern time. He's on the phone calling into Fox News. He's probably in his underwear. I don't want to make you throw up, but he's probably sitting there in these very big boxers.

you know, looking like an open spam can, okay, talking to the Fox News person with high levels of... Late, Anthony. I'm hoping to sleep tonight. I've had a long week. No, I'm just telling you. I just tell you what he's doing, right? And he's doing it because he is flipped out by that speech. He's got great political instincts. And now he's telling all of his staff, go blank yourself. It's my campaign. I'm going to do everything exactly the way I want.

You asked me something. You said, is Trump watching the convention? And I said, no, immediately. My knee jerk reaction was no. And then I called a few people.

And they said, what are you crazy? Of course, he's he's hate watching the convention tonight. He was hate tweeting and you could feel the sweat on his fingers. He was tweeting every four minutes of her speech, all caps, all crazy, like totally insanity. I would I would ask independents who listen to us.

Go to Truth Social or go to Twitter where they post up his tweets. Read them and ask yourself if you want somebody that should be in an insane asylum running the United States of America. So he's flipped out right now.

And but again, you can't underrate underestimate. We've said this both of us in the last couple of weeks, the nature of the Electoral College and that it's a tight race. And the polymarket has them up seven. They were tied coming into the convention. You know, but but I'm going to tell you something. There's still a debate to get through. And who knows? You know, things can happen. Right. Things can happen. And she needs to keep one of the things I was wondering about.

this week and tonight in particular is whether she has laid the groundwork for being a kind of movement candidate.

And I know that's something that the Trump campaign is concerned about. And they're worried that if she is that kind of transformational figure, as Barack Obama was in 2008, then there's almost nothing that they can do to kind of stop the train. Do you think what you heard tonight? You just you just crystallized that you in my mind, you just crystallized what I actually think is now going to happen. She is the candidate for the moment.

Okay, are we going to 1947 before professional black athletes were allowed to play in professional sports? Or were we in 2024 where we've broken all color barriers in the United States and we're now colorless athletes?

and we're desperate to unify. What direction are we going to go in as a country? And I think more people in this country are about love and unity than they are about hate or division. And he's got holes in his story.

He may or may not have a hole on the ceasefire with Netanyahu, but he's got a big hole in his story when it relates to the border. You can't tell me that we're trying to fix the border and Joe Biden cedes to every single conservative totem in the legislation and you're calling your buddy saying, don't do it. I need to make the border a case for the election. And with Joe Biden out of it now,

this prosecutor, if she holds herself the way she held herself tonight with that calm, okay, she'll destroy him. Okay. He won't be, he won't be able to handle her. He was, he was set up for I'm 78. I'm going to go after the 81 year old guy. That's having a hard time stuttering. He can't put his sentences together, but he was not, he's not set up to go for what the country has become.

And she represents what the country has become and what the country is becoming. And so she is the person of the moment. And I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to make this prediction on our podcast. She is listening. She is very well coached.

That speech was fabricated by a lot of different people, not just her. And they said, get off that stage. And half of the time that Donald Trump was on the stage for, he spoke for 93 minutes. You get yourself off the stage earlier than that.

So anyway, I was impressed. If you remember the night that Joe Biden was in the debate, I had put my suit on because I was going to awake. I thought we had a funeral going on. Okay, I'm like, I'm ready for the high noon right now on that one. I was expecting for people who don't know what was happening there in the audience and might have been watching all the women who were in the white. And actually I was in the crowd. There were quite a lot of men wearing white too, which has now become a thing that you wear white for women's suffrage in

in commemoration of women getting the right to vote in the United States. And there were a lot of women wearing white. We were all wondering beforehand whether Kamala Harris would come out and wear white. I thought it was kind of cool that she didn't because she sort of, you know, she was the presidential candidate up on the stage.

I thought her lines, just to go back to a couple of moments in the speech that I think were very effective for her, the segment on Israel and Gaza, I thought she handled very well. So I've been cycling through getting backwards and forwards. I've discovered the best way to get in and out of the convention site is by e-bike. Thank you very much to the city of Chicago for providing all of these e-bikes. They've been great. And you avoid the queues and you avoid the traffic.

But every time I go, there's been, I would say, a few hundred protesters, pro-Palestinian protesters in a park near United Center. But she, with equal measure, managed to talk with compassion and

and humanity and strength about both sides. And I thought this is a hornet's nest in American politics at the moment. But the way she addressed that by very firmly saying, "I am strong on Israel, I am committed to Israel's right to defend itself and to protect itself, and I will always help them do that."

And then pivoted and said, but what's happening in Gaza is devastating and it's heartbreaking. And the repeated bombings are heartbreaking over and over again. The Palestinian people have to be able to realize their right to dignity and self-determination and security. And she said both of those with equal amounts of conviction and passion. And I think that goes a long way to addressing something that could be a liability for her.

And I thought it was bold the way she did it. It was a well-written segment, but more than being a well-written segment of the speech, she delivered it with strength. And I think actually that whole national security segment where she then pivoted to Iran and said, I'm never going to cozy up to dictators like Kim Jong-un. I think that she needed to do some of that because there's been very little foreign policy during the course of this convention.

But I think it helps project this image of somebody who has experience, has governing experience as vice president, has been to these places and spoken at the Munich Security Conference, for example. So I think that kind of helped her, that helped burnish her foreign policy credentials as well, to the extent that foreign policy is going to be an issue in this campaign. But it gave her that strength, right? Again, it kind of projected strength the way that she said it.

Well, listen, I agree with all those points. I want you to think about something and I'm going to ask you to react to it if you don't mind, because I didn't go to these conventions this year, but I was at the 2016 conventions. I was at the Trump convention in Cleveland and I was at the... We were probably on other sides of the... Yeah, you may have been there as well. And I was there in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. And what I saw...

was a new candidate. This was a man that was a business leader. He won the nomination. He slayed a lot of very successful politicians. There was a grudge match with him and Ted Cruz at the convention, but he was their nominee and he was a newbie on the block. And what I also saw was that a very large group of Republican politicians underestimated him and were not prepared for him.

And then I went over to see the Hillary Clinton convention and it was well orchestrated. They always get better stories. The Democrats, ladies and gentlemen, they have way better parties than the Republicans. All the stars show up and they can use any music they want. They never get in a lawsuit with anybody. Beyonce's there saying, yes, go ahead. No problem. Neil Young, you want to play my song? No problem. Born in the USA. Love you. Go for it. Dixie Chicks, Chicks, Chicks, whatever it is, doesn't matter. Not a ton of alcohol flowing, but a lot of music.

Right. The Republicans get kid rocked, the poor guy. Right. But but but what I saw in in 2016 was Democrats, strategists and candidates and Secretary Clinton not taking Trump seriously enough. They were wholly underestimating him and all the Republican nominees wholly underestimated him.

What I'm seeing tonight and what I've seen over the last four days is we accept Donald Trump as a political force. We accept Donald Trump, and some people are going to throw up in this chat, as a political giant. Now, he may be a malevolent giant and he may want to steer our country towards a dictatorship, but that's what he is and a result of which we are now taking him seriously and

And that speech reflected that. And I'm going to tell you what, when I get a hold of her campaign schedule, I'm going to compare it to Secretary Clinton's campaign schedule. And I will imagine that it's going to be 4x robust in terms of the volume and where her and Governor Walz are going to be traveling in the country. So eight years later,

He's a tough SOB as a politician, and we are here to take him very seriously. Yeah, they've certainly learned. I mean, she's learned a lot, I think, from the experience of 2016. They've learned to take Trump seriously. I think it was very interesting. She didn't really talk about being a first tonight in that speech. She didn't talk about being a woman. She didn't talk about being black and white.

Indian American, South Asian American. She didn't, again, it was the show not tell, right? She knows that that is already out there. And I think because Hillary Clinton went through that experience, and it was a pretty bruising experience being the first woman to run for president,

I do think this time around, just by nature of the fact that it's been done before, some people will find it a little easier, the idea of voting for a woman president. I listened today, I went back and I listened to JFK's 1960 convention speech, which actually was short. It was only 20 minutes. But out of that 20 minutes, he spent the first seven minutes talking about being Catholic.

and trying to reassure the American public that he would not be compromised and that he could be president for all. He wasn't going to be affected by special interests. I mean, it was remarkable the degree to which he felt he had to talk about his faith and defend his faith and justify his faith. And then I thought how interesting that we've come now, what is it,

64 years later, there is Kamala Harris standing up there as a woman, as a woman of color, and she doesn't mention it. She doesn't mention the fact that as a woman, she's still going to, in a way that, you know, Barack Obama made a point in 2008 of always saying he was going to be president for all Americans. I mean, he almost said,

overcompensated for his race or felt he had to overcompensate for his race, that when he did talk about it was to talk about I'm going to be president for all America. She didn't even really need to address it. I thought it was interesting. There she is, this historic figure. I mean, if she is elected, it will be extraordinary for America. And yet it was almost like, oh, yeah,

It was almost a non-issue in the context of this convention. Yes, women in the crowd, incredibly excited. Black people...

South Asian Americans incredibly excited about the prospect of her getting elected, but it's not being talked about very much as an electoral issue. Now, maybe that's just the context of Chicago and the Democratic Convention. And we'll see. And I'm sure it's going to be raised online. I know there's always already a whole load of misinformation and there'll be a lot of attacks against Barack Obama, had more attacks against him online, you know, threats against him online.

as president than I think almost any other president in modern times. And I'm sure she's going to face the same thing, but it just wasn't an issue that she raised in the context of her speech and comparing that to JFK. JFK's speech also, by the way, it was pretty dour and it's going to be like, this is going to be a struggle. It's going to be really hard. It was very austere and quite a grave acceptance speech for that. It was a

tough time. It was the Cold War and it was a new and that idea as well of a new era. And she is also saying this is a tough time. Our democracy is on the line, but she's saying it with this big smile. Well, you know, listen, that that was a very tough race. And Obama had to defend being black, by the way. Remember, he had to give that speech after Reverend Wright. Kennedy went to Houston, had to defend himself and said he wasn't going to take orders from the pope.

Even though us Catholics are supposedly supposed to take orders from the Pope, he had to say he wasn't going to do that. I saw something that I would like you to react to. And this is sort of like a subtle thing. She, it was very important for her. And again, the way she dressed meant something. Okay. The way she was styled, the way she was made up, but it was very important for her to,

to look like a commander in chief. And, you know, we haven't seen a woman as a commander in chief in the United States. Now, the UK is obviously seeing two women be prime minister and there's been great women leaders around the world. But but what I saw was, OK, we're producing this and we're producing you to look like a commander in chief. And here are the three sentences that are commander in chief like.

He attacked our allies. The former commander in chief allowed him to or he insisted that he begged him to do whatever he wanted, attack our allies. Number two, I'm sticking with NATO. I'm sticking with our friends. Number three, I recognize both sides of the issue with Israel and Gaza, and we got to get a resolution that is peaceful. And I just say this

in a ethereal sort of way, if you were just watching it and you're not a pundit, you're not somebody overanalyzing it like you and me, you're like, yeah, that woman is a commander in chief. And I think they accomplished that tonight.

Yeah, no, I think she did. I think by having that strong section on foreign policy, and I was almost surprised that it was there because there's been so little mention of national security, but I think it was very helpful to her that she did it. And she does, it is an area where she's going to have to tackle that, the idea of a woman, we haven't had one. So the idea of a woman being commander in chief, she's going to have to-

I think Liz Trust lasted 4.1 Scaramucci's. And so I said two women, I forgot. I forgot my favorite prime minister, Liz Trust. And apparently, you know, Cameron told me. Is there a club now for people that don't last terribly long in office? Is there like, you know, do you call each other up? I mean, I think she beat the cabbage. I think she beat the cabbage. You share a therapist or something? Is that kind of, you know, something that you. I just have to correct myself. So at least, you know, I'm a self-correcting.

pundit, right? I got that wrong, but yes, Liz Trust lasted 4.1 Scaramucci's. Okay. So let's coming out of this convention, um,

Do you think, I never sort of really think that conventions move the needle very much. I bumped into Senator Michael Bennett in the street today, the Democratic senator from Colorado, and he kind of said the same thing, that conventions really don't change votes very much. They don't change people's minds all that much. Although he did say that he felt that

the amount of energy on this one, if they can kind of push it forwards, because it's such a short election campaign, basically, that maybe this time will be different and that they can use the energy from this to kind of catapult them into the next couple of months. He also said that he thinks that they're going to take back the House

and potentially even the Senate. And if they won the White House as well, of course, that would be a trifecta. But he was being cautious. I mean, he was saying that's the dream scenario. But do you think there will be voters out there who are either in kind of indifferent or wavering between the two parties who will come out of tonight's speech and this convention and say, okay, you know what? Actually, I think I'm going to go with Kamala Harris. And if they say that, Antony-

Why will it be? What will it be about what she said that has managed to persuade them? And who will those people be? What kinds of people might she have reached with this speech?

So I think that's a central question. And so I was in the great state of Wyoming this week. We had a conference there. Amazingly beautiful state. The most conservative state in the country got Donald Trump won that state by a bigger majority than any other. I have to protect the innocent, but you'd have to assume I talked to most of the elected leaders in that state and former elected leaders. I'll let you surmise who those people are.

And they really don't like Trump because what Adam Kissinger said tonight is how that state generally feels. He hijacked conservatism. He suffocated the Republican Party. He's got this wackadoodle thing called Trumpism, which no one really can fully understand. It is very, very dangerous. It has a nationalistic bent, which is why you're getting a lot of people that

that like it. Okay. There's, there's, there's nativists in the country and there's nationalists and isolationists, but, but, but what I believe, and I could be wrong about this because you're asking this amazing question. How does she get that undecided voter? The booth closes, you go to check the box. You're like, can the person handle the job? Yes. Do I want to return to the craziness of Donald Trump? I've got to see the craziness every day. No. Is the economy okay? Okay.

Is the world generally going in a better direction post COVID? Yes. Click. I'm for Kamala Harris. Let me open the curtain. And, and I, and I, but, but up against that is a Bradley effect with white males. And if I could be critical of the democratic convention for a moment, because you saw it on the floor and I watched all four days of it from the TV, it wasn't a white convention. Okay. So I don't know if I just canceled us as a group. I have no idea, but it wasn't, it was,

And that's fine. It looked like America, frankly. Democratic conventions always look more like America. They do. They do. It looked like America. But I just want to point out that there are 38 or 40 percent of the voting electorate are white males. And so you'd have to say to yourself, were they alienated? Were independent white males slightly alienated? You can't please everybody. But I'm just asking, do you think that? Because if you think that, that's the other side of it.

hey, who's up there representing me? Let me close the curtain and I'm going to go with the open spam can. You see what I'm saying? So what do you think of that? Could that be a problem for her? I said that, I think, at the beginning that when you asked me if I was going to critique this speech is that there was not much outreach to Donald Trump's voting base, which at the moment is...

less educated white men. White men generally, but in particular, white men without a college degree. And I don't think she made much effort to reach out to those voters. Now, Tim Walz, by nature of who he is,

the football coach, the fact that she calls him Coach Waltz is smart. I would keep with that. That's helpful. That reaches out in that direction. There was not a lot of talk about God and faith. She didn't mention God or faith, which is unusual in the context of

obviously of American presidential politics, but again, it's a way of, it's a signal to white male voters, to white rural voters to talk about faith in God. And that was something she chose not to talk about. I would get Governor Walz out there. I would put him in those positions. He relates to those people incredibly well. And I think he would also send a message to those people saying,

I'm just saying if I'm her, I'm bringing him out, Governor Walz, out there. He's very relatable. And I think the message is we're going to look like the country and you're going to get the best and brightest of everybody.

And for these people that keep saying DEI, DEI, it's a bunch of malarkey to use a Joe Biden term because diversity means that you're going to get the best and brightest irrespective of what they look like or what their sexual orientations are. You've widened the talent pool. And I think that's the message that these people have to hammer home.

in the next 74, 75 days. And every single stage that she's made it to, you know that making it to district, to attorney general or prosecutor or vice president, doing so as a woman and doing so as a woman of color was probably, she had to be 10 times better and 10 times smarter and 10 times harder working than most white men would have been. There's a good question here that's come in for us.

Steve asked, if Kamala wins and with Starmer winning in the UK, are we seeing the end of populism? Yeah, I would actually add something to that. Look at what happened in France a few months back. And so I would like to think that. I would like to think that because I would tell you that the Brexit was a precursor for

the Trump election. When we saw that Brexit in June of 2016, we were like, okay, there's a shot here that he's going to win. And now that you see the Starmer election, you see that the upset, if you want to call it an upset in France with Macron, maybe that's it. I think something happened though. I think if we're writing about it 50 years from now, the air came out of the Trump

balloon. It's almost like this, okay? And it's a terrible metaphor, but just stay with me. Kamala Harris is Dorothy with the bucket, and she threw the bucket on the wicked witch of Donald Trump, and he is now melting. And as he's starting to melt, the soldiers behind the witch turn to Dorothy and say, geez, I'm sorry, Dorothy. I'm sorry that we got caught up with this. You

I think the air is coming out of him and I think he feels the air coming out of him because if he didn't, if he wasn't panicking right now, because I know the SOB, he wouldn't have been on Fox tonight, Newsmax. He wouldn't be going on those shows.

those places. And again, I have to mention this one thing. I don't know how well you know the Central Park Five. Is that something that you're familiar with? So maybe there's people out there that will talk. But spell it out for people. Central Park Five, there was a brutal raping that took place in Central Park in 1989. There was a jogger. She was hit, assaulted, and raped, God forbid. And they found five African-American men, New York City residents,

that they accused of this. They said that they didn't do it. They accused of it. Trump took out an $85,000 ad and it was an excoriation. We could probably put a link up to the ad. It was an excoriation of them. And it was the judge, jury, the trial, the conviction and sentencing. They should all go to jail. And they did.

They did go to jail, but they were exonerated. Somebody else actually did it. They felt very coerced in the police station to confess to the crimes.

And it was a lot of egg on Trump's face. And, you know, he he then, you know, so people know he went to Jesse Jesse Jackson and Reverend Sharpton, and he actually helped them get the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday, a federal holiday. They all went to the New York Stock Exchange and said, hey, you got you got the stock exchange open on a federal holiday. You got to close the exchange.

Why is all this important? They showed the Central Park Five tonight on two networks in the United States. Maybe the BBC held it. I don't know. But it was MSNBC and CNN. And they went up there and they explained what Donald Trump did to them and what Donald Trump did to their lives and all the racism embedded in it. And it was not shown on Fox News. And just for the rest of politics, U.S. people, Fox News has...

You could take MSNBC and CNN, and they don't quite even get to the ratings of Fox News. And it was a decision. It was an editorial decision not to show them give that speech. And so America gets its news, Katty, in micro bites from editorial decision makers that are feeding the confirmed biases of the people that are watching. I just wonder if they had showed that on Fox News. And I would tell the Harris team that.

Get an ad, put it up on Fox News because, you know, Fox is a whore, media whore like everybody else. Buy an ad of those men speaking on Fox so that people who watch Fox, okay, you know, I mean, a lot of people that watch Fox are like buying catheters and walkers from the commercial interruptions, but show that ad to them. Let them see what Donald Trump did to these people. Yeah. Yeah.

I think the video production, by the way, and we're going to wrap it up in a second, but the video production was pretty good. They hired the guy, James Goldstone, who used to be president of ABC News, who orchestrated all of the production for the January the 6th committee. And he put out a couple of very good videos for this convention. There was an incredibly powerful one yesterday on January the 6th. And I remember watching that yesterday and thinking, wow, they should take this video and just

play that around the country as much as they can. It was because people have forgotten. I was on air the whole time anchoring during January the 6th, but you kind of forget. And I think having it very well produced and reminding us of exactly what happened.

Well, that's my birthday, January 6th. How about the irony of that? How about the irony of that? That was not a happy day. It's not a happy day for America. Yeah, it's now Trump insurrection day, but for the first 57 years of my life, it was my birthday. But I mean, it is what it is. I mean, that's Donald Trump. He's been with us now for nine years. And the real question is, are we about to extinguish Trumpism? And the answer for the Democrats is yes, if you can get her to the middle and

If you can drop nonsensical taxation policy, if you can get her to the middle on energy, because we need energy in this country to grow the middle class, get her to the middle. Okay, if you can do that, you will extinguish Trumpism.

Okay. It's a late night here in Chicago. It's a later night on the East Coast. We're going to wrap this up. There is somebody very sweetly in the chat asking if I'm getting up for morning Joe at six o'clock in the morning. I'm not because I'm going to be jumping on a plane to take my youngest daughter off to college this weekend, which means I'll basically be crying all weekend. There you go. I'm sure that'll be, I'm going to embarrass her the whole weekend. So I'm going to go and do that. Thanks so much for tuning in for this. It's been great to be here in Chicago. Anthony and I will be back with you next,

next Friday for more politics. Thanks so much for watching. The rest is politics, US.