Why Isn’t Biden Doing Better Than a Convicted Felon?
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You'd think after four years of a bloody war between the press and Donald Trump that this time it would be different with Joe Biden, that it would be kumbaya that Joe Biden and his White House press team and the press beleaguered by many, many years of battles with Donald Trump would be holding hands right now in lockstep.

But no, the relationship is very tense behind the scenes. In fact, there have been some stories that have chronicled it, like a story in Politico about how Joe Biden still hasn't given the New York Times a sit-down interview. The paper record, as it's called, has pretty much gotten a sit-down interview with every modern president. And so to not get an interview with Joe Biden has been troubling to them. They want access. Everyone wants access.

Biden has made some decisions to avoid traditional press. He did just give an interview to David Muir at ABC News, but he declined an interview with Norah O'Donnell during the Super Bowl when there would have been millions of viewers. This is really annoying the press because their relationship is really quite tense with the press shop. On my show, I have Michael LaRosa. He's a former White House communications director for Jill Biden. He also worked on the Biden campaign and for Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her communication shop.

He thinks that the White House is handling this all wrong, that they should be using the press as an opportunity, not a hazard, and that the only way for the Biden team to take back the narrative that they've been doing great things for the country is that they need to embrace the press, not have a chip on their shoulder about everything they don't like reading.

He thinks that they're operating out of fear, that they should be using the White House as a bully pulpit. They should be holding press conferences and that Biden should be looking engaged and getting his messaging out as much as he can. I have a story in Puck this week about how Democrats are struggling with how far to lean into Trump's new title of convicted felon.

And they're actually looking to the White House and the Biden campaign to give them some indicators as to how hard to push. And this is all happening while Republicans are standing very firmly behind Trump. It's very strange. Believe me, I covered Donald Trump for four years. And from those moments like Charlottesville, the Muslim ban,

the insurrection. These were the moments when Republicans broke ranks with Trump and they put out separate statements. They ducked from reporters. They didn't want him to answer for his latest behavior. But this time in this controversy, they're standing behind him, united. Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, the establishment, MAGA, everyone is saying that this is a political trial. And Democrats are just not sure how far to lean in. And they're worrying that it's a missed opportunity. They can't really look to the polls,

because the polls are just showing that everything is within a margin of error. It's a really interesting story. And it's one of those campaign questions that we may only know the answer to in hindsight.

Michael, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me back. It's great to be back. You made a little bit of a splash today. You are featured in the Daily Beast talking about how the Biden White House and the Biden campaign should deal with difficult stories like the one in the Wall Street Journal this week. Wall Street Journal had another story.

piece out, much like ones that have printed before that by multiple publications questioning Joe Biden's cognitive abilities. It didn't seem that new, right? Well, no, there's nothing new to the question. And I don't think it's a bad question to ask, frankly, as the president of the United States. It's a question that seems to be on the minds of voters. But I just didn't think there was much new in the story. And like, I should be clear, I tried to be clear when I tweeted that I really disagree with the

premise of the story, that he's not

um, capable or, or doesn't have his, his full faculties or whatever they are trying to, to say that he's not like attentive or, you know, with it in meetings. I totally disagree with that. I, it just wasn't my experience in the three years that I was there, but I also don't think that it's helpful to him that the people either around him or democratic surrogates are sort of waging this, this war with the legacy media, uh,

It would be different if he was 10 points ahead, but my view is that media has changed so much and evolved. These outlets don't need...

people in power as much as people in power need them. Well, it's so diversified now. There's just so many outlets as well. Yeah. Even the Wall Street Journal is their first place for information. But what do you mean this war with the mainstream media? Well, we spent a lot of

weeks, probably over a month, attacking the New York Times because of that big Politico piece that came out a couple months ago. That was basically the New York Times saying that they were annoyed that it was the first president ever to not give a sit-down interview to the New York Times. Yeah, but I read their larger point being that, and your colleague, Dylan Byers, did a lot of great, just had a really great analysis about this whole proxy fight, but it was more that

The Times would love him to do an interview anywhere so they could report on what's new. Oh, he doesn't do press conferences ever. Yeah. And I think the Times would have a lot to say regardless of who he interviewed with. They would certainly love the opportunity to interview him, I'm sure, as as most people would. But I don't think their point of view is that because he won't do one with us, we're going to be tough on him. And I don't think that's really the case. Yeah.

But now we're, you know, fast forward and, you know, now Democrats are attacking the Wall Street Journal. And at some point, you really have to take stock and think, OK, why are we constantly feeling like we are like living in a bunker and the legacy media is just targeting us because they're not, first of all, but otherwise.

How are you going to respond to that? It's not by making things and your relationship with the press worse, in my opinion. I don't think that's the way to get him better press coverage because it certainly didn't help

attacking the media and the New York Times and all that didn't lead him to better coverage anywhere. It hasn't helped his poll numbers. And I think you can be pretty cocky and dismissive of the press if you're flying high 10 points ahead of your opponent or something. But I think we have to keep things in perspective here. We should just be realists about

where we are in this contest. Where does it come from though? Because like, I mean, obviously, you know that I was on the wrong side of the Biden White House from the get-go, right? I had a story about an Axios reporter that was dating the White House. Was he deputy press secretary at the time, T.J. Ducklow? I don't even remember. The whole wild part of it was I never met T.J. Ducklow before or Alexi McCammon, who was the reporter at the time. I was told the story from my colleagues at

playbook. And I was just reporting it, doing part of the work for them. And in fact, like they should have called the White House correspondent back about the story who had called them about it and said they called me back, TJ did, and was like basically threatening. And it was really intense. Like, dude, I covered the Trump White House and no one's ever threatened me like this. I worked at Page Six, the New York Post when I was 22. I have done

all sorts of reporting throughout my life. I've been in the trenches of some hard shit before, right? I've done investigative series on Jeffrey Epstein, having billionaires literally trying to get me to kill stories. And I've had someone being like, I will ruin your life. And you're like the deputy press secretary for a guy who just had a talk with his staff hours earlier on inauguration day saying, I don't want bullying.

It was really crazy. Now, TJ and I have like made up, it's all good, but it did sort of set the tone because for weeks, the White House press shop was like, you guys are wrong. And like, that was it. They were not really remorseful about this whole situation. I mean, TJ sent me like a short note saying he was sorry, which I actually got lost in my mail. I didn't even see it, to be honest. The whole point is that it was kind of nuts. Like the reaction was nuts. And it made me think that there is this sort of posture that like we can control the press, right?

But it might even go back to the whole idea that you mentioned earlier before we started rolling the cameras and the recorder that Biden has long had this like chip on his shoulder. He's the little engine that could in his mind, even though he's been running for president since 1987. And, you know, this feeling that like the world is out to get him and he's proving them wrong. And I wonder if this also kind of bleeds into the mentality of the staff and that they've got this chip on their shoulder that like the

presses out to get us. They're underestimating us again. They're just doing this because it's us. But have you read any of the coverage of Donald Trump? And they certainly don't have that mentality. They're just like, whatever. Let's be clear. There's a world of difference between the person that you mentioned and some of the what I call the kids in the press shop or the comms shop. And then like the adults in the room, like Mike Donnell and a Jenna Malley, Dylan and Anita Don, right?

Bruce Reed, Steve Ruschetti, like those guys, those are the people he like interfaces with and seeks counsel from day to day. But like on that other layer, that universe of younger staffers, you know, there was a culture fostered there that because he wasn't being given the benefit of the doubt, I guess, or because they were they felt under siege all the time because he was

the former vice president and a front runner and you know this this mayor from a town in the midwest that nobody's heard of is like kicking our butt and fundraising and beating us in debates and then the socialists from uh vermont you know like we couldn't really catch a break so they felt like under siege all the time and distrustful of the media because they didn't give us the benefit of the doubt and

Blah, blah, blah. So there's a huge chip on their shoulder about that. I mean, like the important thing to remember is it wasn't really anything they did to turn the ship around. Who knows what would have happened, right, without Jim Clyburn. That's all I'll say. Jim Clyburn's endorsement in South Carolina, which helped him win South Carolina and the rest of the party was like fall in line.

Everybody get behind Joe Biden. He's the only guy who can beat Donald Trump, which is hilarious now that in like 2024, he's probably the only one who could lose to Donald Trump. And Trump is probably the only person who could lose to Joe Biden. Probably. And then, you know, look, hey, I come in in like the fall of 2019 to go travel with the candidate's spouse.

You know, they hated the fact that they thought of me as somebody from the media or used to be with MSNBC or a producer. You used to book me on Chris Matthews show. That's how we first met. And then you were in Nancy Pelosi's office in the communication shop. It was a really big deal to be in the speaker's office. And, you know, had to learn like strategic communication from a very young,

complex, nuanced, very nuanced, like policy perspective and, you know, really tap into the brain of like policy wonks and experts all the time to communicate to a different crowd, not the hardball crowd, but to like policy reporters and trade policy. Yeah. Reporters who are much smarter than I was at this stuff and got,

into the weeds and the nuts and bolts. So it was a good experience for me to then go and work with the, with the conference and the new members of the 118th Congress helped produce messaging events for them, help produce like a lot of the caucus talking points on un-messaging from prescription drugs to renewing violence against women act that, you know, Trump didn't want to renew. And,

all these other things that were on our agenda. And then and then started we started the impeachment process and started driving a lot of the impeachment messaging there. And then I went over to join Jill Biden on on the campaign as our press secretary. And look, they made very clear to the powers that be, including Jill, that they didn't want me to join. Well, you got there anyway, and now you're out and you have some things to say about how they're dealing with the press. I find

I find them to be fascinating because like being on the other side, it's the nitpicking, which actually they're not so terrible to me, but they were in the beginning is kind of incredible. Whereas like when I'm working on a story with Trump's team, I never hear a peep out of them afterwards. And that includes when I was covering them in the White House. But the Biden team will like fight tooth and nail for every detail.

you know, the background quotes that they push as if everybody is reading every detail of the New York Times and basing their opinions of Joe Biden around that. There is a lot of like sense. Are they doing it for Joe Biden because he reads the New York Times? That's the question. Well, Joe Biden and Jill Biden do read the New York Times. So maybe they're doing it for their boss.

And that's why. I think, and this isn't all their fault. I think some of it is they want to try to control and try to anticipate as much of the details that are in a story as possible. Nobody wants to give their boss bad news. But in particular at this White House, they're very, you know, there is sort of this culture of fear. So everybody's operating out of just fear, right? Like just nobody wants to give the boss bad news. Nobody wants to be responsible. Because he's cunning.

angry behind the scenes, right? I've never seen him angry, but like I've never had to, I was never accountable to him. I was accountable to his wife and our culture was very different. So you were sort of shielded from what the eruption could look like. I had the best of both worlds. I got to, you know, travel around the world with them in the country, but I was never really accountable to him. What made my job stressful was making sure that the supporting actor, his wife,

was never embarrassed and was never, and never made a mistake that would distract from, from their important work on the, on the boy's side. Um, and that was my role. That was my job. So there, I don't know why they thought of me as such a threat that they had to go to Jill and say, don't hire this guy. That's politics though. Politics is all about building your allies, obviously inside of organizations. But I want to go back to this idea that

The Biden White House is not giving press or at least traditional press access. From time to time, they'll give like one reporter, like a New Yorker reporter, you know, access to Biden. Or like Franklin Foy got some access to him for his Atlantic piece in his book. And I think they just gave a Time magazine reporter, you know, some access. But they don't do the traditional press.

sit down, interview with the New York Times. I mean, if anything, like Trump was way more available than Biden has ever been. They're not doing press conferences at all. So you're like, okay, so who are you talking to? So they are trying through TikTok, non-traditional media outlets. They're going to Howard Stern, Conan O'Brien. But then I look at their TikTok and I'm like, there's 338,000 people following the Biden TikTok page. And that's since the Super Bowl when they launched that page. And

Trump just joined in like the dead of night on Saturday. And I think he's up to 6 million followers right now with only one post. Why? What is going on there? And like, should they be worried about the fact that, okay, you're not really hitting the traditional press, giving them what they want. So you, where are you going? You're also fighting with the traditional press all the time too. And, and insulting, you know, like, uh,

I don't think that's helpful to a man who didn't get this far in politics by not being accessible and being, you know, obnoxious to the media. Yeah. My friends who are White House correspondents are just like annoyed with it. They're just over it at this point. And the weird thing about it, Tara, is like they had all the good coming after Trump. You know, they had all the goodwill in the world. Yeah. People were exhausted by Trump. You know, some of these staffers are brought up to be just like,

hunker down and in a bunker because they treat the press as... They're taught to treat the press as a hazard instead of an opportunity. So they are kind of dog-trained from the very beginning to be mistrustful of the press, to come at them no matter what the ask is, no matter how good of a light the press wants to paint you in. It's just...

make your life difficult and stonewall. It creates such a toxic environment and mistrust between the two. And it ultimately does not help the boss. And look, all you have to do is look at the guy's...

approval ratings and and his not just his approval ratings, but his percept like his reputational ratings, how people view him. And, you know, like the press shapes public opinion. And if you're fighting a war with the people who are shaping the public perception, your principle is going to suffer the consequences. You made a good point the other day to me, actually, about the idea that the press is so obsessed with

especially like some of the cable news are so obsessed with Trump that they're not covering Biden and what he's doing enough, which I think is kind of interesting as well. So maybe they're not feeding enough Biden content, right? Or they don't have a good enough relationship with the press to have the ability to create content for cable news shows or to give them the guests that they would need. But then at the same time, these shows are addicted to covering Trump. Let me list as a

producer for a cable news network in the heyday of Trump and sort of

Being on ground zero when I saw kind of this dependent relationship between Trump and the media that I felt, which is part of the reasons why I left. And the problem with the breathless coverage of this trial, I couldn't even tell you. I assume I think he was guilty, found guilty of a record keeping law in court.

New York? Business record law, yeah. Okay, great. Nobody could tell you what that means, first of all, but the breathless coverage...

this, even when the trial is not televised. You know, what I'm about to say applies to the last year prior to that trial. The saturation of Trump and the addiction to covering Trump, it immunizes everybody, the viewers, to the truly egregious things that he does.

He will do and has done. And so it kind of it really lowers the temperature or it kind of makes these things frivolous when we're talking about Trump because we're talking about him all the time.

Everything is unprecedented. Everything is monumental. Everything is historic. Well, it's not historic. I mean, a convicted felony of a presidential candidate and former president. That's historic. Even Nixon wasn't, you know, convicted or let's do a little flashback. My hero growing up was Bill Clinton. I was a Democrat or I was a young Democrat, aspiring Democrat. And he broke two laws. I think he committed perjury and he committed obstruction of justice as

as president. And think about that. And by the way, Democrats rallied around him. They all came to the White House after that. And most people would have voted for him a third time. Independents, Democrats, certainly. Loyalty never flipped, right? I think one or two people in Congress may have said he should resign. Democrats didn't flee Bill Clinton. You know, it was the opposite effect.

And what was Bill Clinton doing? Oh, he was covering up an affair he had while he was in office. Sounds very similar, right? Except this guy, eight years ago, tried to cover up an affair he had 10 years before the election he was running in. When you think about it like that, side by side, it's like we are convicting somebody for something that actually took place 18 years ago. Who cares?

That's not going to change minds of people in Allentown or Oshkosh, Wisconsin or Traverse City, Michigan. It has no effect on their lives. They might not even know or care or be surprised. Well, yeah, if the person already had 88 indictments. OK, so 34 of them, he's now convicted felon. I think the feelings about Trump are baked in. This is why I go back to this idea again that I talked about on the show on Monday. Last Monday was that the sentencing will like really play a big role in the way people feel about Trump.

the crime, whether they think it was a sham and politically motivated or whether they think that the sentencing will impact his ability to do his job. This episode is brought to you by Jersey Mike's Subs. Jersey Mike's uses only the highest quality meat sliced right in front of you, piled high with the freshest toppings. It is a Jersey Mike thing. My favorite is number 13, the Italian. Love the Italian. I'm half Italian. I like Italian subs. I especially like Italian subs made in good places.

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I want to go back to one more thing to just keep going on the messaging point of view, since you were the communications director and this is your specialty. I write about this in my latest column at Puck.News, this idea that Republicans are unified. I've never seen them in more solid support of Donald Trump since I've been covering him as a White House correspondent. I remember after Charlottesville, people were like, this is the last straw. I remember when he fired Comey after he tried to fire his special counsel, his attorney general.

insurrections, the impeachment, you know, everything was like the last straw, but it never really was. Right. So when May 30th came around, he was a convicted felon. I, you know, it barely even felt like anything to me because I was like, it's never really the last straw. But in prior moments, there were Republicans that spoke out against it. Usually you're reliable Republicans like Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, et cetera. Some of them like Liz Cheney,

Adam Kinzinger, they're no longer in Congress because they spoke out against Trump. But there was always division around those moments. Either people were ducking from the press, they were trying not to answer to Trump's latest scandal, or they were kind of, you know, making their apologies or at least privately saying that this was done. After the verdict fell?

Republicans were all in alignment. Same thing I was saying about Bill Clinton. Go back and look at history. It was the same thing. Totally. But here's the thing. Democrats, though, in this situation with Trump as a convicted felon, they don't know how to message around it. Even the campaign, it's clear the Biden campaign isn't sure how to incorporate convicted felony or convicted felon into their messaging. There is a story in the AP about that. They're still trying to work it out. How far do you lean into this? Because if you lean in too far...

are you actually bolstering Trump's claims that Joe Biden was behind this and this was all political? And if you let it slip away, did you miss an opportunity to make Trump look bad? And I think...

what I gathered was that like from people I spoke to was that like this might be one of those moments where we look back like when Hillary saying oh Hillary should have spent more time in Michigan or Al Gore probably should have campaigned with Bill Clinton he was more popular than we thought post Monica Lewinsky like this might be one of those moments when people are like you know what we probably

either should have leaned into that convicted felony or we should have backed off on it and let it speak for itself. I don't know. What do you think history will tell us about this time and how Democrats should play it? I have to be honest here. I don't know. I mean, in one hand, they're going to have to like they have to acknowledge it. They have to leverage it somehow. I don't know how you do that without offending some people or or angering others. Like, I don't know how they leverage it, but I mean, they'll have to use it and they will lean into it in some way.

However, like at some point, like somebody who wants to like look at these things objectively to understand like where things actually are, you kind of have to take the jersey off or the red or blue off and and look at things objectively. And it's like, OK, well, if he is a convicted felon and we're going to lean into this.

shouldn't we be like five points, 10 points ahead of this guy? Instead, the race is statistically tied wherever you go. The polls are kind of the same, actually, at least flash polls. There's not been much movement post verdict. The perception of Donald Trump, like,

It's pretty much baked in. Americans made their deal with Donald Trump knowing exactly who he was in 2016. Just like Americans made their deal with Bill Clinton in 92. We knew that he wasn't the most faithful husband. Everybody knew that. Americans kind of make their deal and take a chance on people.

They took a chance on Trump in 2016. I would argue they really haven't given him much of a chance since then because he hasn't been that effective as wasn't effective as a president. But sticking with your theme, if you overdo it on the felon thing, it begs the question, why are you not light years ahead of a convicted felon?

So I think there's like good and bad that could come with it. You have to remind people that he is he was convicted of something. And what the conviction says most that's more politically powerful is how it contrasts the character of the two men. And I think that's how they can use it is drawing a really clear vision.

values and character distinction. I sound like a Republican from the 1990s. This is how they used to talk about Bill Clinton, right? But this is how Democrats now talk about Trump. We have to draw a contrast about family values. The values between the two couldn't be more different. They couldn't be sharper. Right. Well, the Republicans feel like everything around Hunter Biden helps them in terms of lowering the values contrast. Well,

For low information voters who really don't understand the difference between the two, one thing you can understand is that one is the guy running for the job. The other is the guy's son. Right. There's a difference. They're trying to tie the two. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They will. But like Hunter Biden isn't accountable to the taxpayer, to the American people. His father is, you know, Biden is. And and so is Donald Trump.

And the differences in character and integrity between the two is just a gulf so wide that they should exploit that in the way that Republicans tried to with Bill Clinton in the 90s. But it didn't work. But Tara, that's the thing with Trump, right? It didn't work with Bill Clinton. It doesn't seem to be working with Trump because...

His character has always been baked in. I really don't think it's going to change that much between now. Maybe some abortion ads are going to move some people. This is where the Biden campaign was very smart. They agreed to his terms, having an early debate, which is really good for democracy because people start voting in basically four months. You know, early votes start in like mid-September.

So not only is like 85% of the electorate usually have their minds made up by Labor Day, probably closer to 90%, but now early voting starts so much earlier. So there isn't much time to change perception of these two men. But I will say a debate can. I mean, our first debate got 80 million viewers in March.

at 2020. That was horrific, by the way. I couldn't watch it. It was like pretty tough. I was there, I remember. I was like, shut it off, shut it off, please God. As a former TV producer, I was also kind of just shocked that it was kind of this runaway train. By the way, here are a lot of opportunities for Biden to get in front of the American people. A press conference. Will that ever happen?

I have no idea. I can't pretend to know or understand why they make the decisions they make. But clearly they see something we don't, Tara. That just feeds into the whole age issue that he's not capable of doing the things that presidents have done before him. I don't disagree, but they don't want they would not take my advice and I don't I don't offer it to them. I say what I would do. I mean, one thing that I think he could do that that satisfies both the people squawking about him not doing enough interviews and

and helps them reach what they like to call or meet people where they are. I hate that term so much. Drives me fucking crazy. It's like this thing that Obama started, Obama staff started like years ago. Which is basically the same stuff as Biden stuff. Yeah.

I don't know. Grown up? I'm talking about more like the younger crowd, like the organizing crowd and how they kind of revolutionized organizing and online engagement. But now people use it in communications as just like this go-to thing to explain away every strategy they have while we're meeting people where they are. Well, you know,

You know, as I wrote about biodynamics last year, you know, people aren't sitting in a Stanford or MIT macroeconomic theory class, right? They don't understand what economics is. They understand what prices are. So if you're talking about prices, right?

That's great. But my other point about the doing the interviews, Tara, you can do an interview in the White House anytime you want. What I would do from now until the election, if I were them, take advantage of your bully pulpit. Take advantage of the advantages of being an incumbent. You have all this communication at your disposal. You have a press literally waiting outside of your house.

In your house. If they were to use the press as an opportunity instead of treating them like a hazard, you know, they'll get some probably more goodwill. But look at all of these battleground media markets, right? It's not the United States of America. It's really media markets of America when you're talking about a presidential campaign, right? Like, why?

wake up in the morning, get your, do your presidential daily brief, walk over to the studio, tape a 10 minute interview, um,

Three 10 minute interviews, the president of the United States and beam him into, let's see, Detroit, Atlanta, Tucson. That's one day. Next morning, let's do Allentown. Let's do Scranton. Let's do Pittsburgh next day. And every week you have an opportunity to change the affiliate in each each media market.

But this way, you know, you're still poking the eye of the New York Times and having your fights with the legacy media. If that's what if that's what you think is helpful, do that. But like, go ahead and meet people where they are because they trust local media. People still watch local media and you're satisfying all these different stakeholders. The press, you keep the press happy because he he'll say I'm sure he won't say anything new, but.

it will help him be a better candidate too, right? Because the age thing will matter less because he's doing so much more. He wants to do like fun press. He doesn't want to go on like

press where he's got to talk about policy. If he was doing Howard Stern once a week and developing a relationship with that audience, I could see how that strategically works. But they do it as one-offs, and that's just not... That's a check-the-box thing that doesn't really do anything. Well, he's welcome to come on the show. I've already put that out there. They will take my recommendation as they normally do. I'm happy to have you on the show, Michael. I hope you all learned a little bit more about the

Like dance between the White House and the press and the big hard questions that Democrats are having about how to message around a newly convicted felon candidate. And I hope to have you back on. One last point about that. And look, these are good people. They're smart people. I disagree in how they sort of approach politics.

The media, I don't think it's been helpful. I don't think there's any empirical qualitative evidence to show that their approach to the press has been helpful to the president. I think it's been really harmful, actually. They're good people and they're smart people. And I loved them all as teammates. I was devastated at

When you try to look at things objectively after you've been on the team, they were probably hurt by some candid analysis that I had, but I'm a political junkie, right? I think politics is interesting when you understand how both sides tick, and that's what I tried to do. You've always tried to access the other side. Because you're smarter for your side if you understand how...

how both sides operate, right? And I think that, you know, like they took it very personally if I was too analytical and not, you know, regurgitating those talking points and towing that line. But the point is, Tara, in order for them to break through this Trump obsession, this Trump circus, they have to be creative in producing a TV show every day. A TV show that isn't just, you know, going down a

South Manhattan and putting Robert De Niro on, but trying to be strategic and creative about making news that steals the attention away from Trump. Yeah, they need to get some TikTok followers, by the way. That alone to me is like, what the hell is going on here? Although, you know, who knows about the algorithms and this and that.

But you're right. They have to create content. People want content. Think about the rest of the campaign as a TV show where you're trying to make news with your lead actor every day. All right. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Michael. We'll have you back on. Talk to you soon.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and use my discount code Tara20 for 20% off. See you on Thursday.

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