Kamala's Choice and Trump World in Turmoil with CNN's Kasie Hunt
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. I want to start this episode with the state of the race. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are basically at parity in the polls. But for the first time, we're starting to see palace intrigue and infighting inside of the Trump campaign. And I'm going to start with the state of the race.

It has been a pretty cohesive, well-run professional operation. I know that's really hard to imagine, but there's been a lot of anger and finger pointing over the campaign's flat-footed response to the new candidate, Kamala Harris. The attacks, they're just not sticking. It seems like they weren't prepared for what many saw as the inevitable.

There's also a lot of anger over the perceived mistakes, like letting him speak at the National Association of Black Journalists, where he called Kamala Harris essentially a DEI candidate and questioned her ethnicity. I wrote a whole story about the newly formed factions, the divisions, the finger pointing, the kind of stuff that you would hear about from the Trump campaigns in 2016 and 2020. And of course, during the administration, the piece is called Turmoil in Trump World, and you can read all the juicy details at

puck.news slash Tara dash Palmieri. You can use my discount code Tara20 for 20% off a subscription at Puck. Now, the Trump campaign claims that they're not on their heels, but obviously the results don't really show it. Regardless, we are in a mad dash November. It is less than 100 days until election day, and I'm sure Kamala Harris will also face her struggles with leading a campaign. They are like

small corporations. They have a lot of very type A people working together in a pressure cooker environment, trying to work day and night to win an election. And she has just brought on some very high powered, successful Obama alumni like David Plouffe and Jim Markolis from Obama World, who are essentially layering over the existing Biden campaign. All of these new people have to work together. Of course, there will be factions, but

This is inevitable. It is a campaign. I've got CNN's Casey Hunt on the line. She is certainly someone who has covered many elections and knows a lot about these campaign dynamics. She's the anchor of their morning show, CNN This Morning, with Casey Hunt, which airs from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. Eastern Time. Casey.

What are you hearing about the Trump campaign? Yeah, it's been a real whirlwind couple weeks for them in kind of all the wrong ways. As you point out, I mean, this was an operation that was kind of uniquely built to take on Joe Biden. And I think that the big question that a lot of people, including me, are asking is, you

how did they get caught so flat footed understanding that there was a risk that he was not going to be at the top of the ticket for many obvious reasons. And, you know, I, the, the sense that, you know, I'm getting from talking to people around him and, you know, you're sort of seeing this kind of old guard around Trump, right. People that have been with him, seeing kind of everything, uh,

that can happen under some of these circumstances, many of whom are now on the outside of Trump world because they've been cast out or they've taken themselves up for whatever reason. I think a lot of them are looking around and saying, we could have told you this could happen and are surprised that some of the advisors that are currently around him weren't better prepared. Yeah. I'm even hearing there were some interventions, people coming to Trump and saying that maybe it's a good time to shake up the team. But for the most part, it's been a pretty tight ship.

And that's what's been so surprising for the past year or so with Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles at the top, like really hasn't been a ton of infighting or leaking. It's been a smaller operation, but now that they see, you know, trouble, you're starting to hear a bit more griping and anger. I mean, campaigns are a lot easier when you're winning, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Trump's been winning. He's just he's been winning. He's been ahead in this race until the last couple of weeks. And that has only just started to change. And that's when you start to see recriminations. I think it's a little bit natural. I think it's also, you know, one of the things that and I'm sure that they've told you this a thousand times in your private conversations, Tara, that they were prepared for Trump to be himself, that they weren't in there to try to control him, that they were going to kind of figure out, you know, they were going to roll with that.

that's a lot harder in these circumstances. His opponent is one that people that are very close to Trump, who've known him for many years, say can bring out the worst in him in terms of winning a campaign. This campaign was designed to kind of get rid of Trump's worst tendencies by allowing him to appeal more broadly to general election swing voters, right? And the new circumstances give them the worst version of the candidate that they have to deal with.

Yeah, exactly. Trump does not want to be on his heels. And yeah, there's something about Harris, women, minorities that just bring out like the worst in him. And I don't, I think...

that we can be certain that this is going to be a really, really nasty campaign. As we saw last week at the National Association of Black Journalists, where Trump suggested that Kamala Harris was a DEI candidate, said that she wasn't really African-American. Question her identity. What do you expect? Do you think this is going to continue to be a campaign that lives in the third rail of like nasty racial politics?

I mean, I think that if you look at Trump's track record on, you know, I mean, I first covered him, you know, day in and day out in 2016, but I had started covering him well before that because he was toying around with running for president back in 2012. And I first interviewed him in Iowa. I think I sat down with him in 2013. And that was the height of,

the birtherism issue with Barack Obama and, you know, then President Obama. And this is the kind of stuff that Trump has kind of trafficked in his whole career. And one of the things I think we've seen from him is,

And it's a blessing and a curse if you're thinking about it strictly from a campaign perspective, right? Like, I want to be clear here. Like, when we're talking about this stuff, digging around in these kind of racial hot button issues is not something to be lauded, right? But...

for obvious reasons, but his political instincts, right. And his kind of way of finding these, these divisions and, um, really lighting people up. That is a talent of his that he has used to his advantage, right? So when he is figuring out how to win a campaign, he is relying on those instincts that have been really kind of honed and developed over decades in the public eye and especially in the kind of the tabloid, uh,

culture of New York City in particular that's so core to him that really developed in like the 1980s and early 90s. And the reality is that those instincts in certain ways serve him very well and have created someone who is very able to appeal to kind of the raw emotion that often drives our politics even more so today, the way that we consume our news in kind of little bites.

But because he does it that way, when he is faced with something where the most emotional currents and the ways in which he generates these responses are in these incredibly incendiary racial and gender-based ways, that is not something that...

is that appeals to the people that certainly his campaign think that he needs to win over in order to win this race. And I think you're seeing it move in the numbers and the, you know, the idea that he's going to be somebody that he's not in the face of a candidate like Kamala Harris, I think is, um,

naive. And every piece of evidence that we have shows that this is how he behaves in these kinds of situations. Um, now there are plenty of Republicans. I mean, Lindsey Graham was on this weekend saying, look, every day we're talking about Kamala Harris's heritage is a day that we're losing, right? We should be talking about, there's plenty of policy differences to be talking about, but Trump himself has just never demonstrated, um, an ability or an interest in letting that kind of stuff go. Um,

Um, when he has, he has won when he hasn't, he doesn't. Um, and I think that the track record is pretty clear about which way he goes on this stuff.

No, I think you're right. And I think they've been in a race together for two weeks and nine days in, it already comes out. You know, it's pretty obvious. You know, the other thing about the Harris campaign is like it's putting Georgia in play, right? Like that's the big flip right now. And again, Trump seems to be like shooting himself in the foot, attacking the very popular governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, and his wife on Truth Social this weekend.

Kamala Harris is in Georgia last week. She's met with a huge applause, 10,000 people in the stadium, clearly energizing the voters out there. Trump hasn't won a statewide race in Georgia that he's endorsed since 2020. I just had Mark Caputo on my show a few weeks ago, and he was mentioning that.

He lost 19% of male voters in Georgia from 2020 to 2016. So, I mean, I think like Trump has a Georgia problem and this is an opportunity for Kamala Harris. And I feel like a lot of the people around him whom I've spoken to just feel like they

he's they're just befuddled. Like, why would he do this? Why would he attack Kemp? Why is he shooting himself in the foot? He he needs to win Georgia. What are you thinking? Yeah. Look, I think Georgia withdrew Biden at the top of the ticket was basically off the map entirely for Democrats. Right. And there were some reasons for that. Mostly it had to do with dampened Democratic enthusiasm, as well as a general kind of unwillingness for, you know,

Lululemon wearing moms in the Atlanta suburbs who don't like Donald Trump. Right. But also aren't in the habit of voting for Democrats either. Right. These are people that voted for for Brian Kemp, the sort of, you know, clean cut button down old school country club style of Republican who has been very popular in Georgia relative, you know, especially when compared to Donald Trump.

Now you have this kind of twofold thing going on where Trump is and is has been incentivized, I guess, but he is showing he's doing all the things that upset those kinds of women voters. Right. Like those kinds of especially women voters, but conservative voters say.

said time and time again, they didn't like Donald Trump's character, right? They were turned off by him and they handed these statewide races to Senate races, obviously the state itself in the presidential race in 2020, pretty unexpectedly, quite frankly, to Joe Biden and to then to Democrats because of kind of the character of Trump himself. Now, the second piece of it is, so on the one hand, right,

Now, Trump is risking those people that just couldn't stomach Biden. Right. But maybe we're going to come back to him. On the other hand, Biden's probably bigger problem in Georgia was the lack of enthusiasm among black voters for getting out for him. And there's some complicated reasons there. I mean, age was certainly a part of it. There were there were also some kind of disappointments kind of early on in the Biden administration that.

had people not as excited about getting out there for him. You also had the absence of like a Stacey Abrams on the ticket or, you know, a Raphael Warnock, someone that was really exciting that community, uh, by themselves. And now Kamala Harris has shown, I mean, just look at the pictures from the rally and you can see, um, you know, she, uh,

brings an entirely new energy, a new appeal to these communities. Um, and it's, it's part of why also that what Trump said at NABJ is so incendiary and problematic, especially when they were actually, I mean, the numbers were showing they were making interesting gains among, especially black men, but the black community generally, um, you know, he, he just, he's, he,

blows himself up on that front too. So I'm still skeptical that Georgia is going to end up blue this time around, but certainly Harris has a shot at it in a way that Biden didn't. And it's everything to do with her advantages, but also Trump's weaknesses. It's like a one-two punch.

Totally agree with you on that. And it's interesting because like I had heard that, you know, obviously he and his advisors discussed going to this Association of Black Journalists event. But like he really is proud of the gains and he feels like he's taking it away from Biden, from the Democrats, with black male voters. But you're right. How long can you really sustain that? We'll see, I guess, in the polling soon enough.

Well, the CBS poll over the weekend actually showed a six point swing from among black voters, a six point swing away from Trump.

and two Harris compared to Trump versus Biden. So you're already starting to see it show up in the numbers. And it was below, I think the over under really is 20%, right? You're looking at, there's about 20% of the electorate that the polling had started to show, the black electorate that the polling had started to show might be willing to go for Trump. And if he was going to be over 20, there was almost no way a Democrat was going to be able to win the election. But that seems to be changing. Wow. Okay. Good to know.

All right. So Harris, she is announcing her vice presidential pick tomorrow. Right. In Philadelphia. And there's some new reporting from Reuters that it's down to Governor Walz of Minnesota and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Obviously, they're announcing in Philadelphia. I mean, I say don't read too much into it. Walz.

Walls is, I guess, more progressive, definitely, than Shapiro. Shapiro, you know, has a high approval rating, like 61% in Pennsylvania, a battleground state. It's kind of a state you pretty much have to win 19 electoral college votes. Last election came down to a point in Pennsylvania. The election before that in 2016, Trump won by half a percentage point. So, you know, there are a lot of signs pointing to Shapiro, I would say, but you could correct me if I'm wrong. What are you hearing?

Yeah, I think that there had been a sense over the course of the last 72 hours or so that Shapiro had the thing locked up. And that does seem to have come into some question in the last 24 hours as there have been kind of these increasing signals being sent from people who don't want to see Shapiro get it. And there are a variety of reasons that people have for that.

This is pretty classic, I would say, in politics that whenever anybody rises, right, all of a sudden you're going to see all of their lives laid bare and any enemy they may happen to have is suddenly popping up. The things that are negatives for Shapiro are kind of well known. There's a sexual harassment scandal in his office. There is this sense around this very, very

you know, loaded way that especially the progressive left and people who are opposed to Israel's war in Gaza talk about him, even though his policies, you know, around Israel aren't

you know, if you look at what Tim Walls of Minnesota has said about the war and Israelis posted a photo of himself with Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, right? It really does seem to come down to this reality that Josh Shapiro simply is Jewish, right? As opposed to being, hey, he treats this issue differently. So there are...

are kind of all of these forces. John Fetterman has a longstanding kind of issue with Josh Shapiro because they, you know, were basically in the same political playground and on opposite sides of different issues. You saw him kind of reporting pop up from Politico that Fetterman has been warning Harris's team about Shapiro, etc.,

So I think my big question is whether they're going to kind of hold firm in the face of that or if they're going to turn and look for someone. You know, I mean, Walls is kind of beloved among progressives. Minnesota has this sort of like peculiar history as a Democratic progressive kind of history.

breeding ground, I guess. It's a place where many well-known progressives have come from. The party there has that as part of its name and mantle. He also has this inoffensive, I guess I would say, dad-like charm that people gravitate to. He's folksy. Exactly.

Exactly. Right. She's coastal. Josh is coastal. He's the folksy guy, you know?

Right. And so if your top line is do no harm, there's a big argument for somebody like a Tim Walz. If you want to be out there and try to make a play that might actually make a difference in terms of winning the election, I think Josh Shapiro is a very interesting. I mean, Josh Shapiro is one of the most purely talented politicians I have covered. And he I'm from Pennsylvania. I'm from the Philadelphia area originally.

Most of the time, I have a lot of doubts about whether a particular politician is going to move a state

because of where they're from. I actually think in the case of Shapiro, it is much different. I think that he is actually somebody who I've heard certainly anecdotally from people in my life that they're aware of him, they know him, they like him. Most people, many of these people would normally have no idea who the governor of Pennsylvania is even, despite the many of them are smart and educated and engaged. They know him, they've seen him, they like him. And I think that it really could actually...

One also really interesting thing, Chris Christie was talking about Josh Shapiro and basically saying that Trump may have in many ways created him because there was a governor's race when Shapiro ran for governor. He was able to kind of create this more centrist, broadly appealing persona because he was running against a guy that Trump endorsed who was so extreme about it.

That Shapiro simply did not need to run a campaign that was appealing to progressives. He was able to run right to the broad middle and just pull down a number that is basically unheard of in a divided state in the governor's race. Right. And that was partly because Trump endorsed this guy, Doug Mastriano, whose views were so out of step with Pennsylvania that you ended up with this blowout.

which I also thought was kind of an interesting set of points. So, I mean, look, I think it's going to come down to, you know, who does Kamala Harris trust? You know, she's known to be somebody that wants to take a minute to make these decisions. She puts a lot of stock in personal relationships. She doesn't really, you know, she's known she and Shapiro, you know, Shapiro was attorney general of Pennsylvania. Harris was attorney general of California. Those prosecutors kind of run in the similar circles. They've been aware of each other for many years, but they're not close.

She doesn't know, you know, Tim Walls terribly well. So she's going to have to make this decision from her gut. And it's I think it's going to be I actually I usually can't stand veep stakes. I usually think it's kind of a story where we get spun up over something that doesn't actually really matter that much at the end of the day. This time, I think there's something about it that's a little different. And we're going to learn something about Harris as we watch her make this decision. I.

I don't know. I feel like both of the veep stakes have been very consequential with J.D. Vance and like the rollout being such a disaster. And I think this one too. And like you said. It can be. But like you have to go back to Sarah Palin, right? Like Sarah Palin's kind of impact on the ticket was so intense. Right.

Right. Anyway, I do take your point. Yes. Yeah. Well, I, and with Shapiro, I agree. I mean, if Pennsylvania really comes down to half a percentage point or a percentage point, that's like a hundred thousand voters, a hundred thousand voters know that Josh Shapiro is not anti-fracking unlike Kamala. Right. And they feel more comfortable having him on the ballot. Like, I think that could be a game changer for her. Right. I mean, like you said, it's a rare state where it really comes down to such a few, such a small percentage point that,

having someone from that state on the ticket is, is probably going to have, make it. I mean, it's a game of inches, right? It is a game of inches. And if, if he can, you know, take it that, that one extra inch, uh, it's going to go away more than a mile. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. You know, for me, fitness has always been about finding that groove, whether it's hitting the pavement outside, which I've been allowed over dialing up a sweat session indoors.

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flying high, announce her VP pick. She'll probably get a bump from that. Then you have the convention in two weeks. She'll get another bump. You know, she's pretty much in the driver's seat right now. Like you said, there's been increased enthusiasm. I think she went up 20% in enthusiasm, closing the gap with Trump, even leading him by like five, six percentage points. The fundraising, a lot of people who have held back money because of the, you know, the race and the state that the

Biden campaign was in. They are now giving money. It looks like Robert Kennedy is an even bigger threat to Trump now, according to recent polls than Harris.

before his presence in the race helped Trump. And Nate Silver, if you follow his predictions, he gave Harris about a point lead. I mean, already, I'm sure you're seeing this. The rapid response is so much better from the Harris team, from Biden's team. You see that she's brought in some new people, Obama alumni like David Plouffe, Jim Margolis to do the ads.

What can you tell me about this Harris campaign? What's going on with the announcements? How are they layering these people in? I think you've hit on what is going to be the critical question for her. I mean, this is like a 90-day campaign. I mean, that is an insane reality for running a presidential race. These campaigns typically are built over years. By this point in any cycle, they are...

are they definitely know what they are. They may be falling apart. They may be riven, you know, with infighting. But what you have is what you've got at this point. And her big challenge is...

actually stepping up into this much bigger role. I mean, this is a crucible for her. She has gotten into this position in a way that is unprecedented in modern times. Normally, you would have had to have run a campaign to get this far. She came by it honestly, but differently.

And now they got to figure out if this campaign is going to stay focused and actually work together and get it done. Or if the various camps that are inside this new, you know, kind of exploding campaign are,

are going to start to fight with each other in a way that damages her chances. And I think the jury is very much still out because there are a couple different groups. There's these brand new, the brand new Obama people who are old,

old hands in democratic politics, but new to this Biden-Harris operation. And you saw those hires. David Plouffe is the kind of biggest name. You mentioned Jim Margolis, Mitch Stewart, others. They have come in. They are new. There is a group around Harris that are mostly, there's a couple of people from her days in California, but there's also friends and family. Tony West is her brother-in-law and has been dealing with the VP search. The

They are the people that are sort of most trusted by Harris herself. And then there's the Biden campaign, which is the apparatus that is ultimately going to have to get her elected. It's like, you know, knocking on the doors and doing all the running the convention and doing all the things that it was going to do to get Joe Biden election. It's the machine piece of it. Right. And these three camps have just met. Right. They're just sitting down to dinner together. And we

We have no idea if that is going to end, you know, at three in the morning with, you know, multiple bottles of wine consumed, you know, the grand plan, you know, laid out, the friendship solidified, the whole thing, you know, on the same page, or if it's going to devolve in some way that we can't predict. And I think this, again, it goes to this, we were talking about this at the top with Trump, if this campaign continues to go well and they continue to win, then

then it is much more likely they're going to be able to succeed. My question is there are going to be bumps. Are,

Are they going to be able to weather those problems in a way that is productive and helpful? Or are these like pre-existing fissures going to be something that Kamala Harris cracks that she can fall through? And honestly, at the end of the day, I think it's going to come down to Harris herself. As much as we talk about staff and as much as talented staffers are very important and no presidential campaign is one alone, presidential campaigns are also an utter reflection of the person at the top of them in a way that almost nobody

no other organization is. It is like impossible to overstate how they reflect the personalities, the strengths, the weaknesses, the insecurities of the person who is at the top of the ticket. And this is Harris's first time there. And this is going to be the big test for her as well. So those are the kinds of things that I'm looking for as this unfolds at just like rapid, rapid speed. Yeah, it's interesting. That leads me to my next question, which is,

Trump, 2024, is not the same candidate he was in 2016 or 2020. I see him as much stronger than he was then. What kind of differences do you see? Yeah, I mean, it's...

I don't think he's the same. I don't know if I agree with the assessment that he is stronger. I think his campaign is stronger for sure. Uh, and is that a reflection of him or is that just some luck? You know, I will say, I think the fact that he was willing to, um, let Susie Wiles in and let her build what she built is a reflection of him for sure. Um, the, but what I also think is, is a reflection of him is that, um,

the infighting is now starting and, you know, like he's his own best advocate and worst enemy. Right. And so the campaign is a little bit along for the ride. And I think that he, he, he does go through these periods where he's, he's able to be the guy that can win in 2016, et cetera. Um, I think the biggest difference for me in terms of how, like how he comes across and, um,

uh, why it works or it doesn't, doesn't work is just the level of, um, sort of levity that exists, right? Like Donald Trump's campaign in 2016 had an element of showmanship and like humor and, you know, can't look away. Like, what are we all seeing? Isn't this wild? That simply doesn't exist in 2024 after, uh,

January 6th, the attempts to steal the election, like his way of talking is much darker. It is much more kind of, you know, even though it was the slogan was make America great again in 2016, but now it's, it's, you know, it has these undertones of vengeance and he, he was using anti-immigrant language then in terms of calling, you know, Mexicans rapists and saying, build the wall. Um,

But it wasn't as far as, you know, poisoning the blood of the country, which is kind of the way it's coming out now. You know, it has a different feeling that I think if you're trying to

proactively, if you're somebody who's coming to the election, trying to make a proactive choice, as in, I want to vote for someone, what the Trump in 2024 is harder for people to say, I want to vote for him when he's running against Joe Biden. It was, it was harder to say they wanted to vote for Joe Biden than it was for them to say they wanted to vote for Trump. So it was like, it was like, it was a lesser of two evils question, right? They were just hoping everyone would stay home because that helps them essentially. And there are people come out and

Exactly. And they were also I mean, right. Like the Democrats were not excited about voting for Biden for. I mean, the voters were telling us all the way along. I mean, that they felt Biden was too old. They weren't excited about voting for him. They hated this rematch. Right. Trump was a huge like and they're not happy with the economy, which is a referendum on the incumbent. Right. So for Trump, like all you kind of got to do is like sit back.

watch, let that happen. Right now, there's a sort of positive, you know, a new person on the scene who is not the incumbent. Even though she has, she's closely associated with him. She has not been running the country. Joe Biden has been running the country. Right. And

And who presents kind of this new choice. And so in that instance where he now has to convince people, don't vote for her, you know, vote for me. Here's the positive case for me. I think that the Trump 2024 candidate does not stack up against the 2016 candidate in that regard. Even though, yes, his campaign is much more professional, etc. Because it's not really a referendum on her because she hasn't been the president.

They're going to try. I mean, look. They're trying. They're trying, right? Like, the official campaign messaging is tie Harris to Biden, make it a referendum, you know, make it so that it's still a referendum on Biden. I think they've been probably...

You know, circling back to what we're talking about at the top of the show, I think that's probably something that they've been taken aback by how that has not really like people don't seem willing to lump Kamala Harris in with Joe Biden in their heads in a way that they probably assumed voters would be willing to.

just because she does seem like such a different candidate. Like the contrast that people see on their TV screens or their phones is so intense between Biden and Harris, right? That went for them to kind of argue, oh, like she's just the same as him. Like, I think there's sort of this, this thing where voters are kind of like, well, that's a little implausible. Like they seem actually pretty different to me. And that makes the Trump campaign job a lot harder.

Totally. I mean, she does have a lot of baggage. 2019, she ran to the left. She ran a very progressive campaign. She said she was against fracking. And if you want to win Pennsylvania, that's going to be a problem. And there's just tons and tons of footage of her from the campaign trail that Republicans are trying to use against her already in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania McCormick campaign or supporting super PAC. They put up an ad, just basically laying out the footage and, you know, with social media right now, her past comments are,

It just goes straight to people's phones, right? I mean, it's a constant reminder of her previous positions. And of course, Trump was a Democrat, had different positions in the past. But for some reason, this kind of stuff doesn't stick to him. How do they pivot her to the center, especially when you have people like Bernie Sanders, who just commissioned a poll in the battleground states and is like pushing her to stick to like the progressive roots? Like how does she kind of thread that needle?

Yeah, I mean, look, I interviewed her back in 2018 and I asked her if she would abolish ICE. And she told me that, oh, yes, maybe we should consider starting from scratch, which is something that also is coming up already from Republicans in terms of framing her. And, you know, I think the bottom line is that, yeah.

And she she's just incredibly lucky to have found herself in this position as the nominee without having to have run in a primary where she was being squeezed by the progressive left. And we saw how that went in 2019. And she would have ended up in a different place. She doesn't have to be in that place now. And I think that's going to be the real test for her, as well as for the Trump campaign, is can they get this stuff to stick?

Can she go out there and say, this is where I think Josh Shapiro becomes such an interesting potential vice presidential pick. She really was saved from that pincher of being crushed by the left inside the party. And so she doesn't want to go that way. She doesn't have to now. And I think that the...

the big, this is going to be the big question for her. And they may be able to make it stick, but they may not. Um, just because, you know, she does have a chance. Most people aren't familiar with that stuff, right? They, they just, they don't know about it. And so this is why, you know, money matters and campaigns and how many dollars are behind the Dave McCormick ad, how many voters are going to learn that, you know, she did these things. Um, but I also think that like,

And you know this, Tara, from your work covering this stuff.

That kind of forced messaging, it doesn't work as well as it used to, right? When people are interacting with this in their phones and in this personal way. I mean, just ask like President Jeb Bush, how much does $100 million in super money buy you? It sure as hell doesn't buy you the presidency. It buys you a couple of presents. Right, and then Ron DeSantis. $200 million just burned, literally. Right, it's just like lit on fire, right? Whereas Kamala is brat is free.

Right. Right. If people know anything now about Kamala Harris that they didn't know before, like, what do you think it is? Is it that she doesn't support fracking or that she's brat? Because let me tell you, the people in my life have no, you know, no idea. Now this, of course, it is different. You're right to point out like state to state fracking in particular in Pennsylvania, other places, it absolutely can make a difference. And there is definitely an opportunity there, you know, and a potential liability there for Harris. But I do think that the reset is,

You know, if we've learned anything from the last couple of weeks, it's that the opportunity she had to completely reset herself with voters is much that that opportunity was much, much bigger than I think a lot of people assumed. Interesting. And do you think she's done it?

I think the jury's still out. I think that she, she, uh, has been kind of riding this wave of excitement and relief. Let's be honest. There are a lot of Democrats out there that are relieved that Joe Biden did what he did and that now they feel like they have a shot, um, against Trump, uh, when they didn't before. But I think that she still has, like, I think she still has a lot of work to do to prove that she's going to be able to, um,

to sustain it. You know, this like she is inevitably, there is going to be some version of coming back to earth. The question is how bad is it going to be? When is it going to be? Um,

How does she conduct herself when it happens? You've seen, I mean, they've already had, you know, they had this test over the weekend with, you know, Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman who acknowledged they did a fair in his first marriage. You know, that's not going to be the first kind of thing that comes up. I actually think they seem to have passed that test relatively, relatively well. Does it matter anymore, though, with like Trump and his personal life? Like, I feel like all that stuff just doesn't stick. You have to do something really egregious.

Well, I mean, I just think you never know. Right. And how she reacted to it. Like, I mean, how you know how we don't know how upset was she by this? I mean, presumably she was prepared for it. You don't know these things. You can't forget that politicians are human beings. Right. So that particular those details matter to voters this time. But like, you know, it's it's upsetting and it's hard. Right. Even like to have this kind of stuff aired and how you deal with it.

you know, this is kind of the difference between people who become president and people who don't is, you know, are you, what, what ability do you have to sustain that kind of fire? Cause it comes, you know, and that, that's what I'm looking for from Harris, right? When this going gets tough, right? The cliche is the tough get going, but in a presidential campaign, the,

how you react in those moments often determines whether or not you actually win. And I don't think we've seen enough testing of Kamala Harris in that way for me to be able to answer that question yet. And maybe they're just crossing their fingers praying they can get through 90 days without that happening. I am skeptical.

We shall see. Um, I definitely want to check in with you again. Um, Casey, thanks so much for joining the show. Like I mentioned earlier, Casey has a morning show with CNN, CNN this morning with Casey Hunt. It airs from 5am to 7am Eastern time. Definitely need to check it out. Um,

I will be back again this week with a few more podcasts. I'm bringing them in more frequently because we are in these wild times and you know what? People just want more content. Let's be serious. So that was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my

producers Tony Farkas and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please subscribe, rate it, share with your friends. If you like my reporting, go to puck.news slash Tara-Palmeri and use my discount code Tara20 for 20% off a subscription at Puck Puck. See you again tomorrow.