25. Trump's Secret Weapon
52:48 Share

This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Cybersecurity Awareness Month is still going strong, and LifeLock is here with a message about phishing, the scam cybercriminals use to trick victims into allowing access to their devices so they can steal their personal info. Being aware of phishing scams is one way to help protect yourself. For comprehensive identity theft protection, there's LifeLock. Start protecting your identity today with a 30-day free trial at LifeLock.com slash podcast.

Ryan Reynolds here from Intmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.

down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile, unlimited premium wireless. How did they get 30, 30, how did they get 30, how did they get 20, 20, 20, how did they get 20, 20, how did they get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month? Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail.

Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And me, Anthony Scaramucci. How are you, Katty? I am good. I'm back from the DNC, which was great. I was listening to Rory and Alistair's coverage of it on The Rest Is Politics UK feed. And it was great to hear how excited they were about what they saw and how impressed they were with the speakers. Because I think it was Alistair made this great comparison about how you couldn't sit through four hours of the Labour Party conference

keep your eyes open. But the quality of the speaking in America is so good. I always go back to this thing that kids in school, my kids and your kids, all learned show and tell from the age of first grade. And it just gives them this confidence speaking in public. Anyway, as a non-American, but who lives in America and loves this country, it was very nice to hear them so excited about what is, after all, the greatest political show on earth. I'm going to message Alistair Campbell and let him know that you brought up

The rest is Politics UK. Within a minute. Within a minute. Within a minute. Yes. Okay. So you're getting very high marks. But it was genuinely very nice to hear them so excited. I feel like he's our headmaster. Don't you feel like that? I feel like I'm under a lot of pressure there for some reason. I'm doing the best I can, Alistair. I know you're listening, Alistair. I'm doing the best I can.

And that makes me today the prefect or the class president, because look, I've bailed us out. Amen. And I appreciate the good teamwork. Now, what are we talking about today? So today, before we get going, there are some very exciting dates for your diary and some exciting news. We are going to be doing the first ever The Rest Is Politics US live shows at the end of October. So if you happen to be in New York, we're going to be there on October the 28th. Put it in your diary.

or in your phone. And if you're a DC resident like me, we're going to be here in DC on October the 30th. So October the 28th in New York City, October the 30th in Washington, DC. We're going to have more details about how to buy tickets in the coming weeks. Keep your eyes peeled for those. Anthony, if we do not look like we're going to fill the venues, I am expecting 333 Scaramucci's in Manhattan. You're low on the Scaramucci count. You can ask the first...

Trump campaign. We can deliver Scaramucci's at a moment's notice. Okay. Excellent. Very good. All you got to do is tell my family free food. Okay. This may not have free food, but I'll promise to serve them popcorn if we're undersold. We'll talk to the gold hanger folks and see if we can rustle up some sandwiches in order to get the Scaramucci's out. Anyway, we're excited about that. So we look forward to seeing you in New York and DC.

Today, though, we're going to check. We did a lot last week on the Democrats. So we're going to check back into Trump land and look at this question of whether he is possible to control, because there's a lot of talk about how his campaign wants him to stay on message. There have been some great ads that are very message focused. But of course, he goes off message. So is there a method to how they do it? In the second half, we're going to look at the swing states, why they swing and zoom in on Georgia, which is where

The vice president and Tim Walz have been this week. It's a very important swing state. It's kind of neck and neck at the moment. So we're going to sort of take a little bit of a deep dive into Georgia. And there's also a new Fox News poll out, which has some interesting data in it that I want to talk about, too. But let's start, Anthony, by looking quickly about whether you think that in the wrap up to the convention, since we are just a week after the convention, and maybe it's a little too early to tell this story.

Do you feel like the convention cut through to voters and made a kind of material difference for Democrats? Yeah, she didn't get the biggest bump in the polls that I thought she would get. I thought it was well produced. I thought her speech was great. But it's telling you something that I think her strategists know. Minds are made up. And it's now about how are we going to get the vote out? Because if we can get the vote out on our side relative to the other side, we're going to win.

But I think it was very well produced. I think she did a very good job. I think she's running an incredibly disciplined campaign. And on July 3rd, when you and I were talking, or the 4th of July, actually, I said she was going to replace Joe Biden and that people were going to underestimate her. And it's now August 29th or August 30th. And we're sitting here with a candidate that is very disciplined. She's very much so un-messaged.

And she is doing things that people don't necessarily like, which I like.

she hasn't had an interview. And people say, well, that's terrible, blah, blah, blah. They don't really understand the voter. The voter doesn't care that she hasn't had an interview. She is going to have one. We should remind you tonight, right, on CNN. Yes, she is. Yep, tonight. Yep, she's going to have an interview tonight. Dana Bash, a mutual friend of ours, is going to be interviewing her with Tim Waltz. The Wall Street Journal's picking on her this morning saying she's got a crutch in the interview, Governor Waltz being there. I don't believe that. Every president

presidential candidate has been interviewed with their vice president over the last 30 years. So I think that's a bunch of bunk there. But I like what she's doing. What I fear for her is the substance. I fear for her, what are the policies? If she's going to tell people we're taxing unrealized gains, she's going to lose the rich and poor people. It's not just going to be, well, ladies and gentlemen, we're only going to tax people worth $100 million. There's something about America that you know and I know

This is an aspirational country. You're not rich right now, but you think you're going to get rich in America or you think your kids are going to get rich in America. And I just want to explain to people, if you make money in America and I make money here in New York, 52% of that money goes to the government.

Okay, so that's Joe Biden, Eric Adams, and Kathy Hochul are the majority partners in my life. I'm a minority partner. They get 52 cents, I get 48. If you're then going to tax my investments, let's say I take all 48, don't spend any money on myself, Katty, but I invested in the stock market and I hold it for 10 years. They're now saying that they're going to tax that with

which is basically a disincentive for investment and a disincentive for saving. So it's a ridiculously stupid idea. I hope they don't go in that direction. They had one of their economic advisors out on CNBC trying to justify it the other day. And I'm telling you, if they go in that direction, it'd be very, very tough for her.

And we'll have to see. So if she says, hey, I'm a moderate now, I'm trying to reflect what's going on in the country. I want to be president for all people. My ideas have evolved because of who I am today.

Right. There's a great expression in football. You have to have to remember where you came from, but you also have to remember where you are now. OK. And she has that ability. And I think she comes into the zip code of moderation on policy. She's going to win the election. So I had a very I exactly on what you're talking about. I had I was up in New York dropping my daughter in college.

last weekend and I had dinner with a very good friend of mine, Chris McGreal, who writes for The Guardian. And he had just come back from spending 10 days in Western Pennsylvania, going around Trump rallies and going to events with Trump. And he says that she doesn't really have a chance on the economy. And she's kind of lost the economic message and there's just not much she can do to recover ground on that. And that Fox poll that we're going to talk a bit more about later is

I think the real red flashing warning light for Kamala Harris is the economy. It says that in that poll, the economy is the number one issue for 41% of voters. That is way ahead of all the other issues. The next issue is immigration, and that is only 14%. Abortion is only 13%.

And he still wins on the economy. So if everybody's going to be focused on the economy going into the polls in November, and let's see how the economy is doing and how people are feeling. I think that is why all of this excitement coming out of the DNC and this sense of unity and joy and

and all of the things you say about what a good candidate she's turned out to be. I think that is the big mitigating factor. And that's why I'm still a lot more cautious than some of the kind of excited Democrats were up in Chicago last week. Okay. But let's talk about, but let me interrupt if you don't mind, let's play strategist for a second. Okay. You're on the campaign team for the Harris people. Um,

You just came back from that dinner. You believe that the analysis there that she's having a hard time. What adjustments, if any, would you make or would you cede the economic issues to President Trump? She can't afford to cede the economic issues totally. I mean, she's got to have a message on the economy because otherwise every time she goes out in public, she's not talking about the things that people are thinking about. So she has to have something on inflation, right?

distancing herself from the previous administration. She has given an economic policy speech, but a lot of people were quite critical of that. But I think she's got to have some economic message that is around, I hear you, I know that it's hard. These are the things I'm going to try and do to make your life better. And if she can refine that at least a

At least she may be able to reassure some people who are on the fence. Okay, let's talk about Trump and whether it's possible. There's a lot of talk about how his campaign strategists, Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles, now Corey Lewandowski, who was his spokesperson in the 2016 campaign, has been brought back into the team.

But particularly Chris and Susie want him to stay on message. And they feel that if he'll talk about the economy, if he'll talk about the border, then they have a winning shot. But every time they push that message forward, and there have been some excellent Trump ads. I think there's a very good Trump ad out at the moment, trying Kamala Harris to Bidenomics, the failed economic policy, as they see it of the Biden administration. And it's very crisp. It's very sharp. That is the message they would like Trump to be talking about.

But then he kind of undermines himself. So do you think it's possible for Trump to stay on message? And actually, as a kind of former strategist of his, do you think that's what he needs to be doing? Well, I think he needs to be doing that, but he's never going to do that. And I think Corey wrote a book, Corey Lewandowski, Let Trump Be Trump. And I think the reason why he's back on the campaign is that he recognizes no matter what you do, Trump is going to be Trump. And there's a reason for that. He's a pure narcissist. And

And he has to prove to everybody that he can be contrary to them. H.R. McMaster is out with a new book right now. He's saying that Trump was just reflexively contrarian. If you said, hey, don't mention that we're going to bring the military into Venezuela, we certainly don't want to do that. They walk out of the room. Trump gets in front of a microphone and says, you know, we could probably bring the military into Venezuela. He just likes doing that.

He's done that this week, by the way, on things like mail-in voting. He said, the campaign is saying, yes, please encourage people to do mail-in voting. And then Trump turns up in an interview and says, mail-in voting, I don't like it. It is always a fraud. Right. Okay. So let's talk about Corey for a second. So Corey Lewandowski was a political operative for the Koch family. He's a New Hampshire resident. He knows New Hampshire about as well as anybody.

He met with Mr. Trump in 2015 and Mr. Trump hired him as campaign manager. And so my first meeting to discuss the presidency of Mr. Trump was the day after the Apprentice finale. I was sitting in his office and he said, did you see me on TV last night?

I said, no, I didn't see you on TV. Oh, you were the only one. He said the ratings were spectacular and he went into his whole gibberish. But that's the last time I'm going to be on TV. See, I hired this guy, Corey Lewandowski. He's downstairs on Five and you're going to go downstairs and meet him and I want you to come work on my campaign.

And I said, listen, I'm with Jeb. And, you know, I was actually with Scott Walker at that time and he was coming out of the race. I said, and I'm going to be with Jeb. He said, well, when Jeb leaves the race, doesn't he have low energy? Don't you think Jeb Bush, you'll come work for me. And I foolishly said, yes, I'll come work for you. And then I went downstairs to meet Corey. This is the beauty of Trump Tower. You ready? Corey was on the fifth floor.

If you walked up the steps from the fifth floor, you were on 14, Katty K. Okay, let me just say that again, okay? You went from five to 14 with one flight of steps. Where did the nine floors go? Well, the nine floors went into the Muta Triangle, but in the brochure, you're on the 68th floor instead of the 59th floor of Trump Tower. See what I mean? And that's Donald Trump, okay? So I go down there to talk to the guy, and I like Corey. Corey's down to earth. Corey's a...

New Hampshire, right? You know, these guys are live free or die. Uh, and I got all, I got along very well with Corey and I helped him with the campaign and organize the fundraising when he got fired. Uh,

which was right after the convention or maybe just before the convention. It was probably June of 2016. I went to see Corey and said, how can I help you? And Corey said something to me that I will never forget. Just remember Mooch, you're never out of Trump's orbit. Okay. I'm going to stay close to these people. Never out of Trump's orbit. Helped Trump when he was president, helped Trump in the post-presidency, wrote a book, let Trump be Trump. Okay. So he's back. Uh,

La Civita, by the way, I'm Italian, so it's La Civita. I love the way you pronounce the name, by the way. I think you said La Civita. La Civita. Sounds like, I think it sounds like lascivious.

This is the reason why you're doing so well in the United States, okay? That accent is worth like 25 IQ points in the United States. Hey, I'm going to keep them. I will take any IQ points I'm given for any reason. My accent is like minus 10 IQ points in the United States and around the world. But you're doing beautifully with the accent. But La Sevilla is going to be at odds with Corey.

They see the world differently. They're going to try very hard to stay composed because they got to sprint here for the next 68 days. But that's Corey Lewandowski. Why do you think he was brought back into the campaign at this particular moment? Because the campaign was faltering and Trump is a, he's a football owner. He's a baseball team owner. And when the thing is not working well, he wants to make change. He wants to fire the coach or he wants to replace the coach with somebody.

And so he's a conflict of order. So he didn't fire Susie or La Cevita. They frankly have done a very good job. So he added somebody.

So, so, Katty, please forgive me because some of this is graphic. And of course, if you're listening in the car with your children, you probably want to turn the volume down on some of this because it's graphic and ridiculous. But let me just ask you rhetorically, is this Trump on message? He posts a photo of VP Harris and Secretary Clinton. And he says, funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently. Is that on message?

He posts a message of VP Harris in an orange prison jumpsuit. Is that on message? He's posting QAnon tropes, which is this ridiculous conspiracy on the web that none of us can understand. And he says, nothing can stop what's coming. Is that on message? He's

He's got a photo of Obama and he texts asking followers to repost if they want Obama tried by a public military tribunal. Is that on message, Katty Kay? So, I mean, I could keep going, but he's not on message. He sounds like a raving lunatic.

And yet I can talk to billionaire friends of mine, and because of the tax issue and other issues, they're like, yeah, no problem. I'm going with Donald Trump, even though he's a misogynist and a raging lunatic. So explain that because you are a Brit transplanted to America. Explain America to me. And again, for our British and

internationalists, there's America, and then there's something called Merica. And you know exactly what I'm talking about, which is NASCAR, tattoos, country music, Bud Light. Explain to me how we can get away with that and still have this level of support. So all of those things you mentioned, and the one particularly about the blowjobs is disturbing, and it is Trump playing to

the kind of lowest of his instincts and the lowest of his base's instincts. He actually did something similar back in 2016 when he suggested that a female senator would go down on her knees in front of him to get his endorsement and his money. And that was pretty gross too, and certainly disrespectful. And there's a section of the country that is appalled by all the things that Trump has been posting. And it was interesting that he did all of this in the space of a few hours this week.

whether that was a reflection of him feeling kind of embattled, but it was deliberately playing to his base. And the thing about Barack Obama with that caption, all roads lead to Obama, re-truth if you want public military tribunals, that's almost back to the birtherism stuff of the early 2010s when he was questioning Barack Obama's birth certificate. And there's a kind of dog whistle in all of this.

So I think none of that is the kind of on message that the campaign would like him to have.

But at another level, it gets him a huge amount of attention. I mean, I think one of the things that we in the press had to come out of 2016 asking ourselves was, did Donald Trump get too much free media? I mean, I think there's a policy group that has estimated that the amount of free media he got in 2016 was worth $4 billion that he didn't even have to pay for. And I look at this week and when Trump is off message, the amount of coverage he gets spikes.

on CNN, MSNBC, all of the cable networks. And so, for example, this week there was this altercation between a Trump staff member and

and somebody who works at the Arlington National Cemetery where Trump had gone to memorialize the third anniversary of the bomb attack at the airport in Kabul that killed 13 American soldiers. And the story then that comes out of that is the altercation between his staff member and somebody who works for the Arlington National Cemetery because the campaign was trying to film and you're not allowed to film for campaign purposes. But

That incident, again, he doubles down. He doesn't fire the staff member. He has J.D. Vance out there saying this is nothing and everybody's making a fuss about it. But it's getting him a lot of free media.

And I wonder whether at some point, I think Donald Trump genuinely wants to win this time round. I'm not sure that was the case in 2016, but he really wants to win. He isn't stupid. He knows that if he wants to reach voters in the middle, talking about the economy is the way to do it. But at some level, I wonder if he's also thinking, you know what, if I go off message, that's when I get attention. Is that sort of...

Do you think that analysis is right? And do you think it works for him? Yes, I think that's right. I do think it works. He's talked about it ad nauseum.

I think it's a combination of calculation. I think it's a combination of real rage. And then Trump has something that I would call faux rage. Okay. He acts like he's raging when he's actually not. And so what I, what I find amusing about the journal is, is that they don't give him credit for how smart he actually is. Yeah, I agree with that. And, uh, and you know, Richard Branson, uh, once said to me something about Donald Trump, and this is years ago and I'll share it with you. Uh,

Richard Branson had a reality show in the United States on Fox. I think it lasted one or two seasons. I was down on Necker Island with him talking about it. And I said, well, you know, you were up against Donald Trump in that time slot. You're smiling right now because I'm an unbelievable name dropper. You're so good. It gives me such pleasure. I love it. I just want you to know I own my name drop. Not only Richard Branson, but with Richard Branson on Necker Island.

Right. You like that? A double name drop. That was good. It was good. Slipped it in. Of course, I've got the photos as receipts in my office. Okay. But anyway, and I love Richard. Okay. And Richard's a great guy, but he said something to me in 2013. So remember, this is three years now prior to Trump running. He said, you know,

I was up against Trump and we're similar in some ways. We're very different than others. How are we similar? I have ADHD, adult attention deficit disorder, and I have a little bit of dyslexia. I have a hard time reading.

a result of which, Anthony, I've had to develop other skills. I have a high IQ, but maybe can't assimilate the information through reading. And so I have to do it through observation and intuition. I have to pick an accountant who's a very good accountant that I trust because I can't really necessarily do the numbers myself. That's Donald Trump. He definitely has issues reading. You can tell just by the way he reads the prompter. And he has some of the same issues. And what Richard said to me, Sir Richard said to me,

There's a lot of differences. He's morally bereft. I feel that I'm not, but he's a great risk taker. His show, The Apprentice, went 15 years because he's an incredible risk taker. Okay. And so this off message stuff fits right into the wheelhouse of his personality. Because he thinks it's a risk that's worth taking. He thinks, okay-

This is not what my campaign wants me to do. They want me to be the good guy, but actually, you know, screw them. I know how to do this. Let Trump be Trump. It's the Corey Lloyd. Yeah, exactly right. My risk taking has been the key to my success for 50 years.

Nobody else can get away with it, but me, let me show you what I'm going to do. I'm going to do the opposite of my advisors and still win the presidency. So two little quick bits of news from this week on Donald Trump, uh, before we go to the break. One is that there's reporting that Trump is spending $48,000 on ads specifically to run in the West Palm beach area in that media market, which is guess where it's where Mar-a-Lago is. And it's not because, um,

They particularly feel they have to defend Florida at the moment. There isn't polling that suggests that Florida is in play. But what I've heard is that it's because Trump is not happy that he and his visitors to Mar-a-Lago are not seeing campaign ads. So a quick $48,000 being spent down there, which I think gets to some of Trump's personality. But I have to ask you about these digital collector's cards that...

With about 68 days to go before the election, Donald Trump is hawking digital collector's cards of himself, Antony, for $99. So you too for $99 could have a little collector's card of Donald Trump. What

What's going on there? Okay. Well, first of all, he loves these cards. Okay. If you want to take a look at these cards, I'm going to recommend you get a vomit bag, like the thing that they have on the planes. They're actually kind of cool. They're quite funny. Okay. Okay. But have the vomit bag by your chin because he's muscular. He looks like Johnny Rambo. He's dressed as Superman. Yeah, it's crazy. He's got laser eyes. He's like, I mean, he's the main... Okay. And he loves this because...

because you know he's fat and he wears a girdle. He once said that he had a – he said he's better looking than Kamala Harris, but he once said he had a better body than Joe Biden. I mean, this guy – I mean, there's an Italian with guguts. I mean, this guy is absolutely crazy, okay? Tony Soprano would say guguts, okay? But these playing cards are from his family. So his family, his young son who's a brilliant kid, Barron, and these guys are all into crypto.

And he's a moneymaker, Trump. He will sell steaks. He'll sell bottled water. He'll sell sneakers. He doesn't care what it is. And he also knows that if he's out there flouting this stuff,

It's irritating his haters. Okay. So there's a couple of things going on. I'm going to make a little bit of money. I'm going to piss off some left-wing media journalists and some Democrats. And it's a lot of fun for me. And that's what he's doing. And he loves the pictures. He loves the pictures. And by the way, just so you know, when we used to present stuff to him,

Corey once said to me, you got to put a lot of pictures of him in the PowerPoint. I said, why is that, Corey? Because he loves pictures of himself. Oh, by the way, don't take pictures of him from the side because he looks too fat from the side. You got to take pictures of him from the front because he likes the way he looks from the front. I mean, this guy is about as goo-goots as anybody I've ever met in my life. Okay, but that's it. And that's the play. It's entertaining and it stings the haters.

And by the way, guess what? It was played all over the liberal press, all over cable television because the visual is so great. And public service announcement, if you buy 15 of these digital cards, you get a physical one sent to you in your home with...

a little bit of the suit that he wore at the debate against Joe Biden attached to the card. But there's a Surgeon General's warning label, this suit may or may not have BO. We'll leave it there. Okay. We'll be right back to talk about debate prep and Georgia and the swing states.

This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Cybersecurity Awareness Month is still going strong, and LifeLock is here with a message about phishing, the scam cybercriminals use to trick victims into allowing access to their devices so they can steal their personal info. Being aware of phishing scams is one way to help protect yourself. For comprehensive identity theft protection, there's LifeLock. Start protecting your identity today with a 30-day free trial at LifeLock.com slash podcast.

This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. ShopPay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha-ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit Shopify.com to upgrade your selling today.

This episode is brought to you by Financial Times. When it comes to voicing or acting on our opinions, why are some people more confident than others? With the Financial Times, you form your own opinions with conviction based on unbiased and trusted reporting. FT journalists tackle global issues with an impartial and rigorous mindset, providing the facts and analysis that you need to make up your own mind. Make up your own mind with Financial Times. Visit ft.com slash the journal to read free articles and subscribe.

Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Okay, let's look at debate prep, Anthony, because the debate is now a couple of weeks away. I think...

Two things are happening in the next two weeks, and I'm afraid we're recording this before we get to that CNN interview. I do think her doing a one-on-one sit-down interview is important because it gets to some of the policy issues that you were talking about in the first half. But I think the next big moment for her is the debate, and there is this debate about the debate, which is whether they are going to stick to the same rules as

as Donald Trump had with the Joe Biden debate on June the 27th, which is something the Biden campaign asked for, which is to have the microphones muted. We talked about this at the time when the person who is not talking is not talking. And Kamala Harris's campaign would like to have the microphones on because they feel that is when Donald Trump interjects, gets angry, says stuff that is rude, goes off message.

and they want that captured for the American public. Donald Trump has put out that they've agreed to this. He posted a Truth Social post saying, we've agreed to the terms of the debate. They're going to be the same as the ones in June. But now the Harris campaign is pushing back and saying, well, hold on a second. Actually, we haven't agreed to the terms of the debate. What's your understanding of the debate prep and whether they've got these rules sorted out? The first thing I'll say is that it's a mistake for the Harris campaign.

Think about it from a baseball analogy. In America, the starting pitcher is out of the game. The relief pitcher comes in. We don't change the game. There's a runner on second base. It is what it is. The rules are the rules. If I'm Donald Trump, I don't go back on that. They're trying to push him and they're trying to say, hey, let's get the mics open. You're the big bully. You want to be over talking and you want to talk over Vice President Harris, but he's not stupid.

He knows that the way those rules were set up were to his advantage. I don't think he's going to break on that, and I think they have to fold on that. I think they have to say, okay, we're done here. We'll take the same rules. My only thing on her debate prep is what I worry about for her

is he's been on the campaign now for three years. And she is really good and she's very disciplined. And I watched her Vice President Pence, Senator Harris debate from four years ago. She did a great job. She also got a little help from the fly that landed on Pence's head, but she did a great job.

But here's what I'm worried about. When you're verbally sparring all day, and now you've got to go into a live verbal sparring match, you are adept, you're skillful, you're ready to go. President Biden, frankly, suffered from that. He wasn't ready for that debate. He probably wasn't feeling well. He looked under hydrated to me, which is the worst thing you can do as stage performers, be under hydrated. They're probably also worried that he was

They've had to go to the bathroom. They probably under hydrated him 90 minutes standing there as an 81-year-old person. So I'm just giving the underlying texture here. But here's three things I would say if I was debate prepping her. Number one, you've got to be on offense. When he starts on you, you got to go on offense. Let me give a vivid example. San Francisco and California sucks. Excuse me? San Francisco and California sucks?

It's an amazing place. We're the fifth largest economy in the world if you separated it from the United States. Moreover, California is a dream factory, not only for the United States, for the rest of the world. In addition, we export culture from California, whether it's McDonald's, Jamba Juice, you pick it, Hollywood. Apple. Apple.

Apple. California is the font of innovation. People come poor to California, they end up rich. You don't believe me? Ask Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know what your problem is with California. Certainly, California has some problems. We're working on it, but it's one of the most wonderful economic miracles in the world. You see what I'm doing here? Yeah. Push back on him. Push back with strength. She's got to push back with strength. So you pick the category-

and I would go off. Crime, what are you talking about? I was a prosecutor for X number of years. I put bad guys away. I'm all about enforcing the law and making sure criminals don't harm honest law-abiding civilians, but I want to do it without the cruelty. Okay, the other thing she should do, she's got to feather in three words. Ready?

She's got a feather in small. Got a feather in small. Has to. You know, that's a small idea because she knows it'll flip him out. Okay. The other word she's got a feather in is old. Boy, that's an old, small idea. And she does that to him. She's going to unravel him because they're playing her on defense. They're

They're playing her to the caricature. Tulsi Gabbard, who's playing her, is playing her to the caricature of what they think she is, not what she actually is. If she comes out on offense, I think she's going to really have a great night. I think the other thing that she can do is talk about change. This gets us into the Fox poll, which I thought one of the most interesting things about this

Fox News poll is that it does show Kamala Harris doing better in those Sunbelt states, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, where Joe Biden had been slipping behind. But one of the interesting things is that she has managed to do something that

a couple of months ago seemed absolutely impossible for the Democratic candidate, which is she's now presented herself as the change candidate. 49% of people say that she is likely to bring change. That is one point more. 48% say Trump is likely to bring change. But the idea that a sitting vice president who's been part of the administration for the last three and a half years has somehow managed to

show the American people that she could bring about change for them. Now, maybe that's her age, maybe that's her gender, maybe that's just the enthusiasm that she has around her. But in a change election, when the electorate

is feeling dissatisfied, feeling anxious. They tend to want a candidate who represents change. And I thought it was very interesting that she has somehow managed to morph herself, despite the fact that she's been in the administration, into being the change candidate. The other thing I thought was interesting, and I wanted to get your take on this, about this Fox poll, and it gets us into Georgia, is how she has managed to go from Joe Biden, who really needed to win

between Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And those were the kind of only three states he had left. I remember the Republican National Convention, which feels like it was a year ago, but it was only a month ago. The Trump campaign was saying, listen, we have those Rust Belt states locked up. We only really need to spend money in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And if you look at this Fox poll, she's opened up the map again. So she has kind of multiple routes. And that kind of

forces him to spend money in states he was not expecting to spend money in, doesn't it? I think so. And I think also it's glaring that he doesn't have the field operation that he needs. The 2016 field operation, I always...

I thought I had a good relationship with this guy, Reince Priebus, but I actually didn't. He was like one of these howdy duties from the Midwest. He would try to pretend he was nice to you, but then he would be shiving you. But he was really good at building a good field operation. So Trump inherited from Reince Priebus an operation system.

that was quite fortified, had great data, lots of people out there to get out the vote in 2016. He's dismantled that over the last eight years. As an example, in the state of Georgia, the Harris team has 24 field offices. He has 12 field offices. And just for people's benefit, who is Reince Priebus? He was the head of the RNC, Republican National Committee. He replaced a friend of ours, Michael Steele. And then he went on to become Trump's first chief of staff

And he was fired very famously during day eight of my tenure. It happened on a Friday. You know how I know, Katty? I was only there for two Fridays. So I know it happened on a Friday. He didn't even last a Scaramucci. He lasted a Scara. No, no, no. He lasted longer than me. I calculated previous at about 15 Scaramucci's. Oh, I see. But it lasted about 150 days, which is more than Liz Truss, who's at 4.1 Scaramucci's.

and less than Kevin McCarthy, 24 and a half Scaramucci's a speaker. But Priebus was a bad guy. And Trump finally figured out that he was. He called me and told me to come down and help him get rid of him. Of course, I got rid of him and then I got fired. But why am I bringing this up? Notwithstanding the fact that he was a bad guy, he built a hell of a field operation for Trump. It's been totally dismantled. So if we're having an autopsy of this campaign on November the 6th,

If Harris loses, what the hell was wrong with you with these leftist policies? Why were you so against crypto? Things like that. If she wins, it'll be Trump's side saying, what the hell did you do by dismantling all those field offices? This was a get out the vote exercise. And what did you do with all the money that you were given? That's going to be the autopsies, depending on which side wins. And the reason those field offices are so important is they're spread around the state.

They are filled with a combination of volunteers and paid staff members. They are out to organize all of the door knocking. So they organize the people that go and knock on people's doors. They organize, most importantly, getting people to the polls, making sure that those people who want to vote for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris actually do so. So the field officers are critical. And the reason you want lots of them in a state is that they'll have people in

them who your neighbors know, right? So this is your local field office. It's staffed by college kids who are volunteering. It's staffed by the football coach in the local school who's volunteering. But they're people you know. They're members of your community, so you can kind of relate to them. So the more of those field offices that you have. Donald Trump, by the way, has spent more money, my understanding is, on focusing on contesting the vote after it's happened

than he has on actually getting people to the polls. Let's talk a little bit about this Georgia trip because I think Georgia is going to be one of the most tight states. It was the tightest state in 2020. Famously, Joe Biden won it by 11,970 votes, which is less than 1% of the total turnout.

It could be critical in this map of getting 270 electoral college votes. And what's interesting about what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz did this week when they took this kind of bus tour, by the way, not a regular campaign bus. This one is an armored Secret Service vehicle driven by Secret Service agents, lights, sirens, the whole kind of thing. So they've been driving around areas of

of Georgia that Democrats don't usually go to. They've been going into some of the red areas of Georgia. And I think that's fascinating because it's not like they think they are going to win some of those areas. But if you can shrink Donald Trump's margin in some of those redder areas of Georgia, it gives you a better chance of winning the state overall. Remember, this is a first past the post. It's a simple majority within the state. So you have to

you have to get to kind of 51% of the vote. If you can make it harder for him to win votes in some of those areas, then you can rack up gains in Atlanta, which is much more democratic, which is a blue city. One of the places they visited, and this is

Interesting is Hinesville. It's one of the fastest growing cities in South Georgia. And they went to this sweet band practice in a high school. I watched it. It was cute. Tim Walls introduced her. Of course, he's the football coach. So people in high schools love him. She gave a nice little spiel to this class about how education is the path to the middle class. But here's what's interesting about Hinesville. It is in a county

that Donald Trump won. So what's she doing, bothering to turn up in a county that Donald Trump won? She's doing exactly that. You just peel away a few of them. You don't expect to win it. You peel away a few of those voters, and that's how you rack up your overall numbers. I think it's a good strategy. I think it's brilliant. I think it's very smart that she's doing that.

We know that Donald Trump is trying to make nice now after desecrating and denigrating Governor Kemp, who's an incredibly popular conservative governor of the state of Georgia. Most recently, maybe two weeks ago, he was calling him a really bad guy. Those are Donald Trump's words, not mine. And I want to fully disclose, I am a donor to Brian Kemp's campaigns.

I consider Brian Kemp a good acquaintance of mine. I have a decent friendship with him. I've met him and Marty before. Marty Kemp, his wife. Yeah. And I can tell you that they're not happy. Donald Trump has endangered their family. Donald Trump has put him in a really rough spot where he wants to be a good Republican, but he's made this thing very personal. And

you know, they'll be mad at me for saying this, but I don't care. If Donald Trump loses Georgia, they'll be popping champagne bottles in the mansion. Okay. They will have said, okay, I supported him because I'm a good Republican, but this guy's a complete asshole. And look at what he did to my family. And by the way,

He did the same thing to me, Kat. He went after my wife Deirdre on Twitter. Who does that? I'm not Ted Cruz. I'm not going to sit there and take it like a baying dog. I don't think the camps are like that. Trump has a way of...

Of alienating people that are natural allies of his. And so again, in an autopsy, how'd you lose Mr. Trump? Well, you didn't have enough field offices and you were calling the governor of Georgia, who's incredibly popular, a really bad guy. You got something wrong. You got to screw loose in your personality. And yes, you have ardent supporters that are not going to leave you no matter what. But there's a lot of people in the middle say, I don't want this nonsense returning.

just don't want it. Yeah. And I think in Georgia, it's worth reminding people that the kind of white suburban female voter who is kind of on the fence, who is exactly the kind of person that Donald Trump needs to win over, amongst that group, independent white female voters, Brian Kemp's very popular.

and his wife is popular, and they don't like it when they see Donald Trump laying into him. He did, of course, Donald Trump then came out, put out a truth social post this week, sort of rowing back on some of that, trying to say that Brian Kemp was a good guy and fully supported him. I think his campaign, talking about staying on message, somebody in his campaign, I don't know if it's Corey or if it's Susie or Chris, has got to him and said, you have to repair this relationship with Georgia. Georgia is

slipping now. They had a firm grip on it. They don't anymore. You've got to do whatever you can to try and win that state and picking a fight with a popular Republican governor. But I have a question for you before we go, which is why is Brian Kemp still supporting Donald Trump after all of the things that Donald Trump said about him in 2020? Yeah.

after all of the things he said about him during this campaign and all of the things that he said about his wife and the fact that because of the things he said about Brian Kemp in 2020, that he was a bad guy who didn't help Trump win Georgia, that family was put in danger, physical danger from some of the MAGA supporters. Why does Brian Kemp still support Donald Trump?

So this is the age old question. Why does Ted Cruz, he called his wife ugly. He said his father was involved with the Kennedy assassination.

Why do these guys support him? They support him because they think they have a future in Republican Party politics. They support him because whoever the brain trust is, the consultancy brain trust of the party, the campaign advisors and strategists have said to these people, hey, listen, he's the party. They went to Kevin McCarthy on the 7th of January and said, hey, listen, he's the party.

I know you want to put them through the ropes, but you better fly down to Mar-a-Lago and kiss his ring. And these guys are cowards. Okay, let's just face it, they're cowards. And so they'll go and do the cowardly thing, which is offer this maniac support. Okay, that's the reason. Okay, but I will say this, I'm not a family counselor, but this is just a learning lesson for people out there. If you're a dysfunctional, narcissistic maniac,

and you set on fire a relationship the way Donald Trump has with Brian Kemp, you can't just put out a tweet on Truth Social and say, oh, hey, everything's good now. You and I are pals. Okay. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. Okay. And so I'm just telling you there's bad blood there.

My prediction is they'll tepidly support him. He's going to show up at some campaign rally for him, apparently, because he thinks that's his service that he needs to do as a Republican. But trust me, if this son of a bitch loses in Georgia, the Kemps are going to be two happy people. So let's close with a question that came in on Georgia and Governor Kemp from Matt Merce. Antony has said he is a big fan of Governor Kemp.

Given ongoing controversy over makeup and new rules from the state election board, how does he think Kemp will balance his GOP loyalty with ensuring the election is fair? Quick thing on the election rules. What's happened with the certification changes is that last week, Georgia's election board, which is controlled by a Republican party majority, voted three to two in favor of a new rule that

which essentially makes election result certification not mandatory. So they can go on, the election board can say that it's investigating the result for an indefinite period of time, for reasonable cause, there's no definition of reasonable, and indefinite

in that time, of course, it's always in that vacuum that you get trouble after an election. And they can just string that out and there'll be legal challenges and protests and people will start to say that the election was not fair. So how do you think Brian Kemp is going to

handle this certification change with his loyalty or disloyalty to Donald Trump? Okay, this is a phenomenal question. So thank you for asking the question. And so I want to provide some history here. And I want to just say that in the state of Georgia, Republicans certified that election. And so

the exact number of votes I never remember, but it's 11,000 plus votes in the state of Georgia, very close election. Donald Trump calling the state of Georgia's Secretary of State saying, hey, I just need XYZ number of votes plus one, go find them for me. An enormous amount of pressure on very principled public servants that have sworn an oath to the Constitution. And so a

underneath that undercurrent was an enormous amount of MAGA pressure on these normal law abiding principled Republicans. And so what I believe what happened with the certification laws is that they were put in place. The left goes crazy about it, but if you actually really read the law, this is the same thing with the immunity from the Supreme Court. The left goes crazy, Katty. But when you actually read what they said,

There's a lot of space in there to prosecute somebody that's a president. As an example, Jack Smith redid his indictment, okay, related to the January 6th. He redid it pursuant to the immunity case. So there's space there. And so what I would say to this gentleman and other people listening, Kemp put a law in place to satisfy the MAGA lunatics, but that he also knows that

won't stand up to a lack of a certification, meaning it'll go to the courts and boom, it'll get certified. But he threw some red meat to these MAGA people. Now, here's the bad news about politics.

It's like a Rolling Stones song, right? You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. And in a democracy, you can't always get what you want. And I praised Brian Kemp for this stuff because he's a thoughtful guy. He's a principled guy. I don't like the fact that he's still supporting Trump.

I understand why he's doing it, because he's politically ambitious and he thinks he needs to do it. But I would maintain to all these guys, whether it was McCarthy or Kemp, going against Trump is a better sign of leadership for you. And just quickly, if McCarthy had put Trump through the ropes and gone to Schumer, and again, McCarthy was the upcoming Speaker of the House.

They said, hey, we're done with this guy. And they convicted him in the Senate. We wouldn't be dealing with this guy right now. McCarthy would probably be one of the most popular Republicans in the country. He would have been the one that threw the water on the wicked witch.

So anyway, that's my sentiment there. I don't think that that's a big deal ruling, by the way. I think the Dems are making a big deal of it and I understand why. The Democrats, by the way, have launched a counter suit against this certification change. So we'll see where that heads next.

One rule of thumb in American politics, if you are a lawyer, you make money out of elections. It's a good time to be a lawyer in American politics. It's also a good time to have visited Wyoming, it looks like. Anthony Scaramucci. Yeah. So this is my new shirt. It's a little tight. Okay. When you're getting into middle age, you know, the shirt can also have a girdling effect on your body. Let's just face it. Okay. So it's a little tight, but I wanted to wear it today to remind me of that great trip to Jackson Hole last week.

Always a great trip to Wyoming, one of the most beautiful states in the country. Okay, that's it. Thanks for listening this week. We will, of course, be back with more next week. And remember about those live shows that we're going to be doing at the end of October in New York and D.C. We would love to see some of our American listeners there. This is The Rest Is Politics U.S. I'm Cathy Kay. Thanks for listening. Okay, those dates are October 28th in New York, October 30th in D.C.,

Please come, otherwise I have to fill the entire arena with Scaramoochies. Not going to be fun for me. Anyway, thank you. Hopefully we'll see you next week.