Election Night Blame Game With Alex Thompson
48:37 Share

Hey, it's Brian Curtis from The Ringer, and I want to tell you about the Press Box podcast. The Press Box is a podcast for anybody who likes news, whether it's about sports or politics or pop culture and wants to understand how that news really gets made. We have new shows every Monday and Thursday. We have long interviews with everyone from John Krakauer to Joe Buck. Your social media feeds are bursting with information every day. Let us help you sort it out.

Join us on the Press Box. This episode is brought to you by Vitamin Water. Food, entertainment, sports.

sports teams. New York City is one of those places that oozes choice. It's got something for every taste. So it's fitting that vitamin water was born there. It's a product of its environment. Colorful, flavorful, anything but boring. Vitamin water injects a daily dose of vibrancy into a watered-down life. So grab some vitamin water today, NYC style. Vitamin water is a registered trademark of Glasso.

This episode is brought to you by Vitamin Water. So much of what the world is obsessed with starts out in New York City. It's a place full of style and character that has something for everyone. With a range of flavors to meet any kind of taste, it's no wonder Vitamin Water was born there. Colorful, flavorful, anything but boring, Vitamin Water injects a daily dose of vibrancy into a watered-down life. Grab a Vitamin Water today. Vitamin Water is a registered trademark of Glasso.

♪ ♪

Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. Guys, it is the day before the election. I am broadcasting live from Los Angeles, not Palm Beach like I said I would be. I know I told you that I would be covering the Trump election night party from Palm Beach, but turns out...

I have pissed off Trump's campaign manager with my reporting and they decided to deny my credentials. They didn't just do it quietly. They actually tweeted it out publicly. Chris LaCivita did that. As you know, last week I reported that they were buoyant, excited about the early returns coming out of Georgia and Nevada and Arizona and even North Carolina. But this past week, the early returns out of Pennsylvania and Michigan haven't been as great. A lot of women are coming out en masse.

and it's freaked them out. And I wrote about that anxiety. After I tweeted that out, I was...

publicly denied after I was privately denied. So it was hard to get back into the party. Regardless, Brian Williams and the crew with him, they are sticking with me. And I have been honest and fair this entire time covering this election. And I will be now broadcasting in studio with Brian Williams from LA. Please tune in to Amazon. You can watch it anywhere. You can watch it on Prime. You don't even have to be a Prime member. Just turn it on, amazon.com. Look on your app.

Anywhere you want. It's going to be a great lineup. People like James Carville are going to be on. Mike Murphy's going to be on. Abby Huntsman. There's a whole crew. Jessica Yellen. It'll be great. And it'll be a fun night. So...

A little bit of drama. I got to tell you, it wasn't the easiest weekend of my life figuring out if I was going to take a flight to Palm Beach on Saturday or Los Angeles, but it all worked out. I am super plugged into the Trump campaign, so I will still get all of the goods and interesting nuggets on the show.

But for today, I've got Alex Thompson on the show. He is a reporter at Axios. You know him. I love having him on the pod. He's super plugged into the Harris campaign. So this is a great opportunity for us to trade notes about what we're hearing from both sides on this final day before the election. We are down to the wire. Alex, you're up.

Talk to me. So good to be on. And what petty bullshit, honestly. They've been doing that all campaign, not with me, but because I don't cover him as much. But, you know, to other reporters, I know they sometimes don't credential them for rallies. And, you know, they they just take out they get mad about certain stories and take it out on reporters. I don't know if it's like just a form of retaliation or supposed to be intimidation to not write stories.

stories they don't like, but it's silly and dumb. You know what? It's funny. I was thinking about it and I was worried that this was going to happen because the week before for the Madison Square Garden event, I got denied to that one as well. And I thought, oh, they're probably going to deny me to the election night party. But Jason Miller, who is his senior advisor, kind of on comms, he was like, no, you're fine. You're good.

I think it was the campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, who personally went out and denied me. And I just think he was unhappy with a lot of my coverage too throughout the election cycle about Corey Lewandowski coming in and the audit that he conducted on Chris LaCivita. I was one of the first people to report on that, that there was concerns that Chris was billing the campaign too much, that he had this LLC, that he was charged $3 million for a lot of different work. He was obviously unhappy with...

a lot of the coverage about some of the dysfunction within the campaign and that power struggle. And then Tim Alberta had this piece that just came out this weekend about that dysfunction. He sourced a lot of my reporting and he must have known that night on Thursday when he tweeted that my credentials had been denied that a bad story was coming out that essentially said that Trump had decided he was done with him and sourced some of my reporting from earlier in the campaign cycle. That's interesting. I mean, that Atlantic story, as you know, I think he cites

at least one, if not two of your stories. And clearly Lewandowski's presence was a huge disruptive force at a very critical time in the campaign in September. I mean, I can tell you like talking to some people on the Trump side that, you know, morale internally was, you know, berries, but there was a, there was some low morale in September. You know, the Harris honeymoon was continuing. I think they think things have gotten better the last few weeks. Um,

But in September, I think there was a real concern internally. Yeah, well, Corey was trying to come in. He told people he was going to be campaign manager and he wanted to do an audit on Chris LaCivita for what he was charging the campaign. He wanted to take over the campaign from the co-campaign manager. Well, Lundiasky is smart enough to know that the one way you can really set off Trump is to make it seem or make Trump believe that he's being ripped off. A hundred percent. And

When you're documenting it and you're one of the first people to do it. And I feel like he thought, you know what? I'm just going to pick on this person. So alas, it doesn't stop me. I'll keep going. I report on both sides fairly. So that's what I keep doing. But I'm so happy to have you on. So how is the Harris team feeling right now? Say the word is the term would be cautiously optimistic.

I think they feel like they've done the best they could under extraordinary circumstances, which is, you know, having the incumbent president drop out 100 days before the election. And then you have to not only pick a pick a new VP, you have to set up a convention with your people and also please the old Biden people. Plus, you have to set up a camp. You're basically inheriting a campaign and you

want to put your own people in charge of the campaign, but also not make the Biden people feel too slighted, except for the ones you really don't like. You know, these are very precarious circumstances that had some advantages. Obviously, I think some of the media coverage, especially that first month was very, very positive. They also raised a billion dollars in record time. They've outspent outspent. I looked just this morning. They've outspent the Trump team since July by, you

I think $400 million. Um, and you know, I think even, even the, you know, the most pro Trump people would say that they have an advantage with the ground game, given that a lot of the Trump team, uh, you know, outsource their ground game to outside players, which is always a bit of, uh,

it's just not as eloquent. It's not as organized. Yeah, you want to keep everything in-house, right? And they're sourcing it out to Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk. We've talked about this a ton, but they're not exactly political scientists or political strategists. And Musk is just throwing money at it, but it seems to be very disorganized for a ground game, get out the vote. Yes, 100%. I'd also say with the Harris team,

Uh, you know, I think they feel like she closed strong with the exception of Joe Biden, inserting himself into this by calling Trump supporters garbage, which he says is not what he meant. Uh, I think they feel like she finally settled on sort of an Obama ask message. Uh,

it's sort of like hope and change and different wrapping, right? Like you think about what Obama was running on 2008, it was very much, we have to move on beyond these politics of division. We don't necessarily have to be this way. Like it's very much like, let's come together. Uh,

And that has been her concluding message. She has been very disciplined. She is a far superior candidate than she was five years ago and a much better candidate even then she was 100 days ago. That being said, given the extraordinary circumstances,

you know, there's a lot of people that don't know her. Still, you hear that anecdotally, you see in the polling. And I think that's what, that's what gives them concern. And, you know, some of these early number voting numbers are, are good, but some of them are not. And, and,

You know, you can you can really it's like a it's like a choose your own polling adventure here. You can you can look at data and you're like, oh, my goodness, like white women, which the largest voting bloc, they're shifting to her. And if you even get a small shift among them, she could run the table. But then there's lots of other polling that shows Trump has never pulled as strongly as he has before, as he is right now. He's never been as popular as he is right now. His presidency has never been looked at as favorably right now.

And maybe that's what does it. You know, there's there's little bits of data that you could look at to say either candidate is going to not just win, but actually win with over 300 electoral votes. So I agree with you. She's been strong in the past few weeks. They've had like a very disciplined final argument. Obama asked inclusivity. I want to bring everyone together. I'm the president for all Americans. But she was really kind of set up for it. And if she didn't spike it, that'd be like.

political malpractice because Trump in the past week has been the most divisive I think I've ever seen him since maybe like January six times. He has...

who managed to basically alienate and insult all of those groups, minority groups, and like women that they've needed. If not him personally, his surrogates, right? Like that guy, Tony Hinchcliffe, the comedian who insulted Puerto Ricans, all of the language lately, like I'll protect women whether they want it or not. There hasn't been any appeal in my opinion to women. I just don't think there has been a message anywhere.

that appeals to them at all. So that's why I'm not really surprised to hear this Ann Salzer poll. I know it's shocking. So Ann Salzer is the gold standard of polling out of Iowa. She's known, especially during the primaries, she predicts who's gonna win the primaries. And she was very on the money for the GOP primary.

And she's usually on the money for the general election as well. And she is saying that Harris is up three points in Iowa. And it's because of the surge with senior women, which is something that I was told from my sources in the Trump campaign that they were worried about the gender gap

in the blue wall, like Michigan specifically, where there are more registered female voters, Pennsylvania, tons of students coming out in Michigan as well. This is the area where they think Harris could possibly hold the blue wall and win because that's all she has to do. She has to win Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and win this. And she could maybe win it based on

female voters and turnout. Obviously, she'll need minorities as well. But yeah, there was just like a lot of concern in the past week in early voting numbers and the surge and the momentum and enthusiasm. What's the Harris team making of this Iowa poll? I think they see it as an outlier, but they also...

see movement in the direction that is closer to the Iowa poll than maybe is in the national poll. Basically they had seen some of this movement among women. So again, it sort of adds to the cautious optimism. I don't, I've not talked to anyone on the Harris campaign that thinks that they're going to win Iowa, which is what the poll shows her close to doing right now. But they have, they are hopeful and they have seen a shift in,

even just anecdotally on doors, they've seen a shift among, you know, some of, some of these, some of these white women. And in terms of what you were saying about Trump, not making any efforts, just a few data points of the 31 speakers at Madison square garden, 31, only, only six were women. Um,

You also, beyond what you mentioned about calling Kamala Harris the antichrist and that she had pimps, you also had Hulk Hogan go up there and make a Hak Tua joke. If you don't know what that means, Google it. And it was so bro-y and sort of testosterone-fueled that even Megyn Kelly called it bro-tastic. Nikki Haley went on Fox News and criticized it. And then you obviously see that

You know, in the past, I think Donald Trump actually closed really strong in 2016 and in 2020. You look at the number of rallies he did, the schedule and also how he kept things tight in terms of messaging. He has been he had been loose. He still has had a pretty robust schedule, in some ways more robust than Kamala Harris's schedule. I think of just yesterday on Sunday, she didn't she only had one rally and she didn't have really anything before noon yesterday.

And that was on Sunday. Now, she had done SNL the night before, but still with three days to go. Some Democrats were surprised by that. But, you know, if you're also trying to make this a referendum on Trump, he's taking up all the oxygen and not necessarily helping himself with that constituency. I'd say the best day he had the last two weeks was sort of the garbage truck stunt. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was certainly a gift from the political gods that

Biden called Trump supporters garbage and then Trump was able to lean into it and drive around in a garbage truck. But a lot of people apparently I read this morning were confused and thought that that was a reference to Puerto Rico being a floating island of garbage. Oh, that's interesting. Could have kept that story going even longer. Exactly. OK, so what should we make of the final stops? Harris is in Pennsylvania. Three stops today, right? Yep. Only in

Pennsylvania too. And Trump's in North Carolina. And I've heard from my Trump supporters that North Carolina is an insurance in case he only wins one blue wall state. North Carolina has been fasting. It's the biggest change from when Joe Biden was the nominee to Kamala Harris being the nominee. The,

The Biden campaign was consistently spending in North Carolina and the Trump campaign essentially shrugged and wasn't spending almost any money on. And they didn't make many trips to North Carolina with Kamala Harris. The top ticket, the Trump campaign has been much more worried. They've invested millions and millions of dollars. They are. They've been barnstorming lots of parts of the state. You've seen Trump and Vance go there repeatedly. And they know that, yes, to your point, it's a defensive play because if they lose North Carolina, they're

then even if they win Pennsylvania, which is this key state, it's not enough to win because Pennsylvania is double checking is 18 electoral votes. North Carolina, I believe, is 16. Then you would need another state. You need probably Nevada or some other state in order to to knock her off. So, you know, North Carolina should be a state that they're ahead on. I think Republicans I've talked to also feel pretty good now. They feel like they have

They have sort of, you know, done the proper defense. But the Democrats have successfully made them spend a lot of time and money that they didn't expect to be spending in that state. Right. And let's just remind our listeners that a Democrat has not won North Carolina since, I believe, 2008. Right. And that was Obama. And he lost in 2012.

Yes. And it was very close in 2012. It was also very close in 2020. It was the state with the lowest, you know, the lowest margin for Joe Biden. It was the state he got closest to. But still, they have not won it since 2008.

Do the Democrats feel like that floating island of garbage comment has helped them? I know there are 450,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania. The Trump team has been very sophisticated in their outreach to minority groups, specifically minority men, Hispanics who have been Trump curious to African-American men for a long time, not just publicly, but through social media, through influencers. Does the Harris campaign feel like they have a shot at winning over these Hispanic voters now with Trump?

this comment? Yes. And they've spent a bunch of money on also Spanish language television as well, highlighting Isla de Basura and talking about talking about that. And they've spent a decent amount of money. They've also done outreach in terms of Spanish language media. There is real hope among Democratic judges. I've heard that it will break through now.

I also am reminded of this old Kellyanne Conway line, which is not about what offends you, it's what affects you. And that's what basically the Trump campaign is is is holding on, but is is rooting for. But undeniably, it was an unforced error at a very critical time. And the thing about it was that the insult comics spoke about.

I think he was the first speaker after the national anthem. Trump didn't even speak until six hours later. It was completely unnecessary. Totally. I didn't even catch it, by the way. I was outside trying to get in because as we know, I didn't have my media badge, but I got in. Actually, the funny thing is like one of the staffers saw me outside that knows me and was like, what are you doing outside? Let me get you in. And it was like, OK, got it. So I want to go back to Harris and like how they see her winning. From my sources, I've heard that

they think that she wins the blue wall and that's the game for her. And they accept she might lose Georgia very narrowly, like by like little as like a thousand votes. Like she'll lose probably Arizona. She'll win Nevada probably by 6,000 votes. I mean, we talk a lot about Nevada, but it doesn't really quite matter. Right. And

They think that she may lose North Carolina, but at the end of the day, they think she can win the blue wall. This is sources that I've spoken to. Obviously, you know, it probably changes hour to hour, day to day. But that's really what they're banking on, the blue wall right now. And they feel encouraged by a lot of the early tabulations coming out of Michigan specifically. What are your sources telling you? Yeah, it's sort of ironic that after all of this, you know, huge changes, we are basically back to where Joe Biden was before the debate.

Tied and banking on the blue wall. Tied and focused on the blue wall. And that's where we are. I mean, Joe Biden's path was you win Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, then you win. And it's such a narrow win. It's 270 to 268. It's a narrow win.

is the win unless, you know, the Nebraska two, but Democrats feel very good about Nebraska two, which is for those that don't know Nebraska two essentially is the blue dot in Nebraska. It awards one electoral vote and is the one area of Nebraska that is blue. The, the, the Harris campaign has spent a lot of money there. So in that case, instead of a two 69, two 69 tie, you get two 72 68. Okay.

Some people do think there's an outside possibility of picking off one of the Sunbelt states. I'd say in terms of order, they think and likelihood it would be sort of what you said, Nevada, Georgia, then Arizona. I'd be

I have heard very few Democrats that feel very optimistic about Arizona at this point. It has slipped away. I've also heard in Georgia some anxiety among people on the ground there. The combination of the fact that you don't have Raphael Warnock running in the Senate campaign, which he was in 2020 and 2022, and it helped drop black turnout, plus the Republican Governor Kemp

has made nice with Donald Trump. And Governor Kemp is a very popular figure, and he has his own sort of political machine. And the combination of those two make some Democrats have anxiety, despite sort of these late efforts they've made in the state. Yeah, I've heard they're also concerned about the low turnout in metro Atlanta area as well. Yes. You had an interesting piece about Kamala Harris and how she's a, my values have not changed candidate, or no comment. And

And it's mainly because she has had such a turnaround. I don't know how you want to call it. Flip-flop turnaround from 2019 when she ran as a very progressive candidate, sounding almost like Bernie in some ways, and now has tried to play it to the middle

traveling around with Liz Cheney, trying to win those Nikki Haley voters, trying to make those squeamish center-right Republicans who just can't stand Trump anymore feel comfortable with her. And the whole time she has not commented. And you sent her a list of questions about her prior policies. Yeah.

And it was all no comment, right? Yeah. So Kamala Harris ran as a left-wing candidate in 2019. She called herself a radical candidate in 2019. Now she is running as a pragmatist working on common sense solutions. Honestly, I spent like a weekend having a lot of fun reading her old campaign website and web archive. You're such a nerd. Can I just say that the fact that you had fun reading it? Yeah.

It was really interesting. I had like all these flashback memories. And I say that with love, Alex, by the way. I take it with love. I'm well aware that I'm a nerd. So, you know, in some of these policies, they're not like small things like one would, for example, would be that she would unilaterally through executive actions, give a pathway to citizenship for dreamers, basically undocumented immigrants brought here as children. That's

2 million people. And then she would also expand deferred action of deportation, which basically means we're not prioritizing deporting you.

for up to 5 million people. You also had getting rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal and ending the death penalty, which is something that she supported since ending the death penalty since 2003. So basically, we went through all these issues sort of one by one. We asked, I think, over 16 issues.

And the response was no comment. Now this is very much a strategy because she doesn't want to be labeled as left wing, but she also doesn't want to be labeled as a flip flopper. So she is basically just saying, I'm not going to say what I, if I still believe that or not. And you know, it's not an ideal situation. It basically, she, they were picking the less of all evils in terms of the strategy there. And you know, the risk is,

while being left wing and being a flip-flopper is bad, is being unknown

even worse. And whether or not she wins, it will either be seen as very shrewd, threading the needle in a general election context, or it will be seen as being too vague. And then the next part of it, if she wins, there is a lot of blank canvas of what she would do as president that she'll have to fill in very, very quickly. And that's really been the thing, I think, that a lot of undecided or kind of...

I guess you could say persuadable voters have been trying to get through. It's like, who is this person? Is it the person that she was or is it the person that she claims to be right now? That's certainly what my mother told me who I see as my focus group of the persuadables, but she seems to have broken for Paris and she's broken for Harris essentially on an anti-Trump message.

And so that's probably her. Yeah, that's her strongest. You know, one of the strongest data points for Kamala Harris is running against Donald Trump for a lot of these women, I think. And also Dobbs. I would say I'd put my mom in like she's not necessarily a senior, but like in the senior women category that are like would have probably voted for Republican, you know, voted for Trump before, but are now changing over. One little thing on that is I was looking today at all the ads and what the campaigns have spent on.

And the campaigns have spent the ad with the most money behind it was a pro-Harris super PAC called Future Forward. And I think they had spent over $20 million in this one ad just in the last two weeks. And it is a Republican man

uh, straight to camera being like, I support Kamala, uh, and I'm a Republican. So to your point about just this anti-Trump message for Republican curious or former Republicans, that's, that's their, their closing message. And it's not fascism either, really. That's not what they're leaning into either. No, I think that fascism stuff actually, it very rarely appeared an actual, any of their paid media. Um,

I think some of that was just a way to get earned media because Donald Trump was really sucking all the oxygen out. And she wasn't able, you know, if people to our point feel like they don't know her, that she had to get in front of the cameras. That's why you saw her do a speech at the Ellipse. Part of that was because every network took that speech. You know, and she talks a little bit about January 6th, but a lot of that speech was not about January 6th. It was about her policy agenda.

But she, you know, the January 6th fascism stuff gets like, you know, gets a lot of media attention. And so but it never really was on their paid media. So I think they were trying to basically play two games here. One is to get press attention and one is in their paid media strategy. I was just thinking about like what ads I feel like broke through this cycle.

And I do know the future forward ad that you're talking about. I don't really get served up ads the same way other people do just because I don't live in a swing state. But I get a lot of text messages. But the one ad that just like keeps coming up for people is that transgender ad that Donald Trump ran in the swing state. Specifically, I'm thinking about North Carolina because my family's there and they've seen it. You know, she's for they, them, I'm for you. And they bring up the position from 2019 about...

using taxpayer-funded dollars for, I guess, sex change surgeries for illegal immigrants. Yeah, for both prisoners and undocumented immigrants in detention. Right. And apparently that's already in the books. Like, it's a law right now, but she supports it. And during the Trump administration, this was a legal process that happened. I mean, right? Isn't that what she said? It was the law on the books at the time, but the first actual reassignment surgery didn't happen until Biden was president.

But the processes were in place when Donald Trump was president and he didn't revoke them is my understanding. Yeah. So I just heard they're just playing this ad nonstop. Yeah.

Because it's very persuasive, frankly. And it's a lot of it's about like the taxpayer funded part plus the culture war. But for a lot of people, it's the taxpayer funded part, especially in this time where people are feeling it's like both economic concerns plus culture war. It's kind of the perfect, I guess you could say, intersection. Yeah. And my understanding of the strategy behind it. Plus migration and crime.

It's all of it, actually. It covers the entire, all four top concerns except for Dobbs, right? Yes. And democracy. Yes.

Exactly. Well, and because all the Trump ads, there's been a consistent theme throughout most of them, which is Kamala Harris is dangerously liberal and weak. Right. And I don't think that they the Trump campaign believes that trans issues are going to be what settles the election. But what that add to your point is it flicks at all of those other things to.

really hammer the broader point, which is she is too liberal to be president. That's exactly what I think my mom took away from it. Most voters take away from it is that she's a radical liberal from San Francisco, which is what they've essentially been trying to communicate this entire time. And on her end, she has been trying to communicate that I am not the most liberal person to ever run for president, right? Like that's pretty much been her message. But at the same time, she's had to also walk the tightrope of, you know,

having to separate herself from a very unpopular administration. And the view ad is also very persuasive. So she was asked on The View, we've talked about this a lot on the pod, would you have done anything different than Biden? Not a thing comes to mind.

It actually just undercuts the theory of her case that she's a change candidate, which they somehow are able to manufacture, which is pretty freaking brilliant, honestly, to make her into a change candidate when she really wasn't. And I think that's why the Trump team keeps hammering that ad. But I still think the transgender one is the one that they go for even more. I think they spent more money on the transgender ad than even the view ad. Yeah, I'd have to go and see what the final tallies are. But the

The view I can tell you also internally, that view interview is also one of the ways that sort of changed the morale and said Trump campaign because they felt that finally the honeymoon was over. You know, in some ways, you can sympathize with Kamala Harris because she had so little time to become a better candidate. At the same time, it's the one question, you know, you're going to get.

And she didn't have a good answer the first time or the second time or the third. It took her several tries to finally figure out what it was. I think she had the view. Then she did Colbert. Then she did Brett Baer. And she had a better answer that she sort of settled on, which is.

my administration will not be a continuation. But then with NBC's Peter Alexander, she went back to being like, well, you know, it's not, it's sort of disloyal to talk about it. And like, I don't really want to. And, you know, she's just, it's the one question. It sort of reminded me a little bit of Jeb Bush, uh, uh,

in 2016 when you knew he was going to be asked about the Iraq war. So the one question you knew, and he just didn't have a good answer for like several days. And, you know, she ends up losing this race. I think that answer could end up being very consequential. And I just cannot believe that her team did not prepare her for that question.

I'm sure they did. My understanding from people that have prepped her before, and this goes back to even like the disastrous Lester Holt interview in 2021 about, well, why haven't you been to the border? Well, I haven't been to Europe. Like the team preps her, but sometimes she can get a little bit as well. This is what former Harris aides have told me. Sometimes she can get a little deer in headlights during the interview. It's not that she has incompetent people around her. She just gets a little shaky sometimes.

So I know from my sources in the Trump campaign, they were very happy to keep Trump kind of quiet during that week when she went out there, her big media blitz week, call her daddy, Charlemagne, the God, God, The View, Colbert. They were like, keep Trump quiet. Let her kind of like

choke on her own words, essentially, were the words that they would use. And she sort of did it. But then Trump just became so undisciplined in the past few weeks. And she's been very disciplined and kind of quiet. And ultimately, it reminds me the whole theory of the case of this election. If the election is a referendum on Trump, he loses. If the election is about Kamala Harris, she loses.

And so if in the final weeks he's made it about himself talking about shooting the press, right? I mean, I don't know how that translates, but it just seems like chaos and January 6th and anarchy and not the kind of language that would make people feel comfortable or trashing minority groups or making women feel uncomfortable or offending people. It's just more of the wild circus of the Trump show, which is what he's shown in the past weeks. And maybe that's him like pushing hard or

Maybe that's him showing his anxieties, you know, on center stage, which is how I interpret it, instead of being disciplined. I feel like in the past week, like for people who have just tuned in and that's what they're watching from Trump, that could be the tipping point. A lot of people are saying Madison Square Garden could have been like a suicide mission in some ways. There is a line between confidence and hubris.

And there are some people involved in the Trump campaign that I've talked to that feel they have veered into the latter, in part because of Trump's own impulses, in part because there are, yes, people around him, in part because also they do have internally, they do feel like they have legitimate reasons to be confident.

Right. My understanding is that internally they believe that Trump is up in every swing state, or at least that was true as of a week ago. But with confidence, you know, then you have Madison Square Garden where like speakers aren't vetted and then the headlines out out of it. Like now Trump has had bad headlines for eight, nine years and maybe it doesn't matter. But if you're running a tight ship like the there were a lot of people

own goals the last week and a half. This episode is brought to you by Etsy. Oh. Hear that? Okay. Thank you. Etsy knows these aren't the sounds of holiday gifting. Well, not the ones you're hoping for. You want squeals of delight, happy tears, how did you? And spontaneously written songs of joy. I am so happy.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Um, okay, the song needs a bit of work, but anyway, to get those reactions, make sure everyone on your list feels heard with handmade, handpicked, and designed gifts from small shops on Etsy. Gifts like personalized jewelry, custom artwork, cozy style items, vintage pieces, and home decor to celebrate all of your favorite people and their specific kind of special. For original gifts that say, I get you, Etsy has it.

This episode is brought to you by Viore. Give the active people in your life something they'll truly appreciate. Performance apparel from Viore. Whether they're into running, surfing, hiking, or even just casual walks around the block, there's something for everyone. And if you're not sure what to gift them, you can't go wrong with something from Viore's Dream Knit Collection. It's the perfect gift and so comfortable. Get 20% off your first purchase today at Viore. V-U-O-R-I dot com slash Spotify.

What's up, guys? It's the champ, Sean O'Malley, here to talk to you about PrizePix. PrizePix, the best place to win real money while watching football. Run your game on PrizePix. PrizePix will give you $50 instantly when you play your first $5 lineup. You don't even need to win to receive the $50 bonus. It's guaranteed. Just download the PrizePix app and use code SPOTIFY. That's code SPOTIFY on PrizePix to get $50 instantly when you play a $5 lineup. PrizePix. Run your game. Must be present in certain states. Visit prizepix.com for restrictions and details.

Let's talk about who will be blamed on both sides. Alex, I'm going to let you start off with the Democrats. It's already beginning. I can tell you the amount of finger pointing there is going to be at Joe Biden.

for the decision to run again at 80 years old as someone that had a brain aneurysm, you know, just 35 years ago. And to bet, you know, if you believe democracy is at stake to make that bet that you are going to be

Fully healthy and ready to go, not just for another year and a half of the campaign, but for another six years. Democrats increasingly realize or feel that he was reckless and that people around him were not candid enough.

Beyond just like from the press podium, but also were not candid with other Democrats, with other donors, and they feel somewhat deceived. They were cavalier and they bullied the press too when they came to him about his age. I remember writing about his age years ago and people concerned about him running again, even before 2022. And they made you feel like you were an ageist. They attacked you. Yeah.

I remember them calling my newsletter an email or something just to like piss. They were just so nasty and aggressive. You know this. You covered his... You covered him switching his shoes, using the small stairs. I'm sure you dealt with a lot of aggression from them. I mean, you talked about at the beginning of this pod about not being invited to Palm Beach or your credentials canceled. Yeah.

I haven't been invited to the White House press Christmas party one time, which is fine. Me neither. It's sad. Yeah, it's fine. It's like my view, and I've never complained, and I've never asked to be invited because it's their party. They can do what they want. But I think they think that that should matter. Anyways, it just is, they definitely bullied both online, they made it painful, et cetera. Yeah.

I'd rather have Alex Thompson reporting than your coverage of the White House Christmas party. And I feel the same way. I haven't been invited to their White House Christmas party. I'm fine with that. Honestly, it was more just I was surprised they did that and thought it mattered, I guess. But I get it. Like your colleagues go, they talk about it. I've been there, you know. And then there's definitely another camp.

which is that, you know, Harris had a shot, right? Harris was given a billion, like the Biden loyalists, you'll sort of hear this is that, listen, you shouldn't have forced him out. And Kamala Harris raised a billion dollars and she had a chance and you guys forced him out and picked a quote unquote lesser candidate. That's like sort of the Biden loyalists view of things. And, and,

There's definitely going to be also on a micro level, on the staff level, you know, the people definitely closest to Joe Biden, people like Mike Donald and Steve Reschetti. There's definitely going to be like pointed fingers towards them on the Kamala side. You know, people like, you know, all the Obama folks that came in and said,

you know, they bought that, you know, a lot of the Biden people can consider sort of intellectually arrogant. I think they're better than everyone. People are going to point the finger towards them. Um, you know, there's just, there's going to be a lot of recriminations all the way

the way, you know, about how they let Donald Trump win again and get back to the White House. I really think those three weeks, too, when Biden would not make up his mind about staying in or staying out were so terrible for Democrats in the narrative. It also like put front and center this consensual lie that the party had for so long that he was able to run

You know what I'm saying? And if you're saying the Republican Party has a consensual lie that Trump won in 2020, they have a consensual lie, too. It's not the same. Like, I wouldn't weigh them in the same. But this person who is 80 something years old is able to run again. It just creates a feeling like, why should I trust you when you're telling me not to trust the Republicans either? I think it just kind of like hurt.

faith and trust in the institutions. And it made you realize for Biden, this is all about ego. And it slowed down the process. Like they may have been able to have a small primary and picked out their strongest candidate. You know what I mean? Yeah. And we don't know how much damage was done by that. And I also think, you know, those three weeks, he was really rallying a lot of the base toward him. And, you know, I think just anecdotally, I don't have any polling for this, but just anecdotally, there are some voters that are upset with the way that Joe Biden was treated. Yeah.

Really? Yeah. And actually, one of the I think the Univision town hall, one of the voters even asked Kamala Harris about this. And, you know, I think old like older black voters, older Latino voters and then even some unions. Right. I think it would have not been a doubt the firefighters would have endorsed Joe Biden. They did not. They chose not to endorse anybody this time. And that, you know, I think there are just some there are some constituencies that are

Joe Biden would have still. And so and I think that like drawing out that process made some of that more fractious. OK, here are a few other points that I'm just going to say and we can run through them because I'm going to move into Trump. But here are some other things people might say are the reasons that she lost her running mate. Maybe she should have chose Trump.

Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, although I've heard that they didn't get along, he didn't really want it, but he would have maybe been able to deliver Pennsylvania because he is such a popular governor and he won overwhelmingly in the state, winning Republican support as well. Tim Walz, some people say he's too liberal. Obviously, he's not the strongest debater. Maybe they think that she laid in too much into fascism, pro-democracy message rather than tackling the economy, migration the way that she could have all

all of the positions she's had in 2019, which we talked about earlier, and how she's had to completely reverse them to take a more center tack to try to win over Republicans. She's too liberal of a candidate. Her comments on The View wouldn't change a thing. Maybe it would have been better to run a candidate who wasn't a part of the Harris-Biden administration to have that primary and find someone who was separate, a true change candidate. Those are just a few ideas. I do want to go into Trump and why people will say he lost. Okay,

off the bat, lack of discipline, duh, right? And especially in the final week, a reminder to a lot of Americans who are tired of the Trump show, of the chaos, why they don't want to turn their TVs on and watch the Trump show. I've long believed that the presidency for a lot of people is just about the messenger and the idea of leadership. And who do they want to turn to in moments of despair, confusion, chaos? Who do they feel like has a strong hand at the desk? And if that's

Shows you see erratic person on your TV. I mean, that's obviously not a selling point. The fact that he has done nothing to win over women, really. He's managed to offend a lot of women already running on a record of Roe versus Wade and overturning reproductive rights for women. Yeah.

after that has not really made any great appeals to them. So I think that would be one of them. I don't think he offered them anything really either. He hasn't put any sort of policy proposals. What, like IVF for all? I find that really hard to believe that they would be able to pull that off. I'm sorry. He's the father of IVF. I didn't know that. You know, I didn't know that he actually created the in vitro fertilization process. I didn't know he was a scientist. And

Last but not least, handing over the ground game because of a new FEC rule that allows coordination between or at least data sharing between PACs and the campaign to the great Elon Musk, who's doing a million dollar a day giveaway in Pennsylvania to get people out to vote, and Charlie Kirk, who's doing a million dollar a day giveaway in Pennsylvania to get people out to vote.

It has been described to me as a mess. You can Google, you can look it up for a while. I mean, just based on the fact that they brought in the DeSantis crew, a lot of people have criticized them for that because, as we know, DeSantis' ground game in Iowa, one state, was a mess, essentially. They're billed back better. They hemorrhaged about like $130 million on a ground game and still lost by 20 or 30 points.

So that's just my take on what people might say if Trump loses. What do you think people will say? I would just add one, which is picking J.D. Vance and also just the influence of Don Jr. in general, which I think that was his clearest influence. Now, J.D. Vance had a great debate. I think he's actually become a better campaigner. But in the same way with Kamala picking walls, Trump sort of went with his heart, not necessarily with the data set.

And I think if he had been able to get over his ego and try to pick someone like Nikki Haley or even someone like Marco Rubio, that's what a lot of people in Trump campaign thought was the better political pick. But he went sort of with his with his heart. And he thought and, you know, I think it's unclear so far if J.D. has really galvanized Trump.

you know, white men and the blue wall. They were hoping he would, but we'll see. And they were relying so much on these low propensity first-time voters, the bros that they thought J.D. Vance could bring out, right? They really targeted that group. It's a risky bet. They don't come out and vote much. Women come out and vote at higher levels than men. So that was definitely a risk that they took. And J.D. was the general leading that David Plouffe said in cell army. And we'll see if he can bring them out. Also, you know,

Obviously, Cat Ladies. Like, what we just say, Childless Cat Ladies, was one of the reasons that women came out and came out in masks as well, not just Dobbs. Also, why not just campaign with Nikki Haley? I know you're upset that she's stuck in the game for so long and that she had an actual following, but...

It just seems like such a no brainer to you, especially if you're trying to win over some women. If he loses, I think he'll look back and regret not just she clearly wanted to be courted and reached out to and made it clear she wasn't going to campaign unless he did. And he didn't. OK, on the next podcast with you, Alex, we're going to talk about the fallout from the we don't have enough time to talk about this, but we should talk at some point about the fallout within the Democratic Party. If they lose, it's going to be a disaster. I'm sure it's so circular fighting squad.

Totally. Same within the GOP. They're going to have to find someone who can bridge the establishment with MAGA. They can't move forward without it. I think they'll have to realize that at some point. Who will that person be? But since it is the day before Election Day, how long do you think it will take to find out the results? I think we'll know by Thursday. And because it is the ringer and we like to make predictions here, who do you think will win?

And how? I don't... I report. I don't predict. Boring! All right, fine, fine, fine. If you may, I bet... If I had to bet, I'd bet Trump wins, but I'd only bet a dollar. How about that? Which is... And I think, if I were to say, I think he basically wins all the Sunbelt states and then wins Pennsylvania. And I think he actually might pick off...

If I had to guess, Wisconsin. And what's the coalition there? I think the coalition is the people in the middle basically don't think he's a good person and think he's like a sort of like a semi-madman, but they think their lives were better when he was president. We know that Alex is severely underpaid, so a dollar is a lot of money for him. Yeah.

I could also see it going the other way. I mean, I can't see like, you know, just, you know, a little shift among white women. The thing goes to completely the other way. That's just why I only bet a dollar is because I don't feel confident in my prediction. But if you make me made me make one, it would be that. Got it. Well,

Hopefully we'll talk sooner enough. Thanks, Alex. I know you're super busy. He's off to another CNN hit. Again, tune in to Amazon. Just type in the word Amazon. You can watch me somewhere. Just kidding. But no, it'll be fun and happy to be looking at the beautiful hills in Culver City right now. Thanks, Alex. Talk to you soon. See ya.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, the best and the brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20 for 20% off the subscription at Puck. That's uppercase T-A-R-A 20. See you again this week.