34. Why Republicans Are Coming Home to Trump
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Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. And both of us, Anthony, first time ever, history is being made right now in the same room. Look at this. And it was going so well until this moment. Yes, exactly. So this could be either great that we're in the same room or who the hell knows. We should tell everybody who's watching we're actually in a dungeon in London.

London, England, that is, because we've been on this tour around the country. And should Trump win the election, this is where I could be sleeping and hiding. It's an undisclosed location in London, by the way, so good luck finding it. Before we get to the politics of the week, of which there has been a lot, and we get to your dance moves, which will make sense to everybody in a few minutes' time. Oh, my God. How have you enjoyed the tour? By the way, for those of you who don't know, I've been under a rock recently. Anthony and I have been touring London.

the United Kingdom. We've been to Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff, London. Last night, 13,000 people turned out to the O2 Stadium. You, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Led Zeppelin, all in the same location. Here's what I would say. This has been the most flattering and inspiring thing that I think I've ever done in my professional career. I love this country. I love visiting those cities. I

But to have 13,000 people in the O2 arena to listen to political nerds, I was saying bravo. Okay. And well done. And the consensus was that Katty Kay stole the show last night in both appearance and presentation. Yeah. I was going to mention the suit. But then if I tell you that I went to Zadig and Voltaire and bought a new suit, you'd tell everybody. Yeah. It's already such a poshness of you relative to the proletarian nature of me and Alistair.

but not of Rory Stewart, who is clearly the poshest of the lot of us. His accent definitely gives him away. Anyway, we've had a lot of fun and the audiences have had a lot of fun and we've been so touched by everybody's enthusiasm. And the thing I notice is coming to the United Kingdom and how interested everybody here is in the American election. And I think that is something that our American listeners ought to know about, that there is just so much global fascination and interest

a certain amount of trepidation about what is going to happen in the United States on November 5th because whatever happens at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has an outsized impact compared to any other capital in the world on everybody who's listening to us around the world and to countries around the world. And I think the size of the audience, the kind of in-depth nature of the questions we were getting, and people were really asking us very granular questions about the state of this race.

They are following it very, very closely. And I think that that's kind of gives you an indication of how important this is to other countries. I'd love to have you react to this because I've been thinking about this the last couple of days. When I travel outside the United States, I'm always amazed at the knowledge that people have about American politics and the centrism about American politics. And I think Rory did an amazing job last night. Rory Stewart, for our American friends, is a member of parliament. He was up for the prime ministership.

He now does this amazing podcast with Alistair Campbell, The Rest is Politics, that paved the way for you and me. But he said something to me last night that I want to share with everybody that, you know, America, people are paying attention to it because it's for so many years, eight decades, it's been vital to helping to keep the peace and helping to promote prosperity. What is your reaction to that? Are we still vital to helping to keep the peace and promote prosperity? I have always believed that America that is strong, prosperous,

healthy and engaged with the world is better for the United States, but it's also better for the rest of the world. And of course there have been hiccups along the way. I mean, you can, you know, you can point to Vietnam and you can point to the Iraq examples and it would be naive not to bring those up, but you can also point to World War I and you can point to World War II and you can point to American leadership in the Cold War. More recently, you can point to American leadership in reviving the NATO effort for Ukraine and

And I think a world in which America retreats into isolationism, which is what Donald Trump wants. And actually, if you look at the polling for the first time in those 70 years, a majority of Republicans want an America who is not leading in the world.

I think the world would very quickly, particularly the West and America's allies, would very quickly come to realize what a colossal problem that is for them. We live in a world in which there are still superpowers with superpower leadership. If America seeds that leadership and a vacuum is created, others will fill it.

There's a brand new book out on Joseph Stalin. It's called The Stalin Affair by Giles Milton. And there's a scene in the book, they're at the Yalta Conference and Stalin picks up the vodka and he's toasting the ailing president of the United States. And he says that your country wasn't invaded and you had no...

real need to be here in Europe to help us with the scourge of Nazism. And I just want to toast you to your humanity for helping to save the Russian people. And he held up the glass and everyone, of course, cheers. And then Churchill kicks in with an equally eloquent toast. But I just want you to think about that for a moment. Stalin admitted to Khrushchev and others that

without the help of the Americans, the supply of goods through the Lend-Lease, it would have been impossible for them to beat the Germans. And think of the world that we've had. Now, whatever the failures of the world are, there have been 80 years of relative peace and prosperity, lots of growth in these economies. But there is a sense that there's a group of people that want to tear that down. It's not working for them, Katty. And Donald Trump represents those people

And so the question is, is Vice President Harris, is she framing the narrative to keep the status quo or to improve the status quo? Or is Trump going to come in and try to wreck that system? Okay. So we've been doing these great shows. And before I get to today's running order and what's in the program today, I should make a quick plug. We are going to be doing a show in New York on 28th of October. That is now sold out. Thank you to everyone that's coming in New York.

But Team DC, we do still have tickets for Washington, D.C. on October the 30th. We would love to see you all there. Super interesting time. This is going to be just days before the election. So do come. Tickets are selling fast. Make sure you head to therestispoliticsus.com to buy your tickets now. That is therestispoliticsus.com to buy your tickets now.

I think it's going to be a great night, Katty. I mean, we're obviously looking forward to the face-to-face with these wonderful listeners of ours. There'll be great stories to tell. There'll be Ask Me Anythings. It's six days before the election. So it's therestispoliticsus.com. The link is in the podcast episode description box. We'd love to see you guys. I tell you, I've been gratified by this. I think I'll even be more gratified by doing this in the States. So thank you guys. Please come. Okay. On with today's show. Today, we're going to do

a look at the state of the race as it stands less than three weeks out until the election. There have been a couple of weird and bizarre things, troubling things perhaps that we want to talk about. I've been having conversations with people on the Harris team with other Democrats around the country. Let me give you a kind of, I want to give you a kind of sense of what they're feeling right now. And then we're going to talk about the kind of media strategy, get to your question, Anthony, about what the strategy is for the last three weeks. So the state of the race, this has been such a,

An interesting week, I think, because I think it's now there's some clarity coming in. And I'm just going to say a couple of things. I have been reaching out to people on the Democratic side, and there has definitely been what's been described to me as a vibe shift. I think that's a technical term for everyone's panicking. And they can see that there is a tightening of the polls that they see.

Republicans, and I want to get your take on this, Antony, there's two things they're worried about that are surprising. We've spoken a lot about Hispanic voters. We've spoken about black voters. We can do that a bit more, but there's two new elements which kind of surprised me and that I think are surprising them a little bit.

The number of what are called country club Republicans. I never really loved that phrase country club Republican because I think it kind of embraces a whole load of people. But let's say they are sort of more moderate Republicans who don't like very much about Trump's language. They probably don't like the way he's talking about immigration and we can get on to that in a moment. They don't really like much about him.

But they are seduced by the prospect of tax cuts. So the campaign, the Harris campaign is seeing quite a lot of those moderate Republicans. I'm sure you know many of them from Wall Street. They're the kind of Wall Street types who are coming home to Donald Trump.

And then the second thing that they're worried about, and this is a little bit more shocking I think for the campaign, is the problem they have with young people. That young voters are not coming out for the Democrats or trending for the Democrats in the way that you might expect them to be. And certainly in the way that the campaign hopes that they should be and hopes that they will be. And there are a couple of factors behind that. I understand one of course is Gaza. We know that. There's a lot of dissatisfaction. I have spoken to young voters.

who have told me that they are absolute Democrats, but they really don't like America's policy on Gaza. They don't like the fact that their own tax dollars are being used to fund Israel's effort against Palestinians in Gaza. So that is still a problem for the Democrats and still a problem for Kamala Harris. And then the other reason I think for young voters is that Harris has not managed to distinguish herself sufficiently from Joe Biden. And

and comes across as just for some of these young voters it's kind of same old same old right she's just part of that two party structure that is never really going to change very much that has not delivered very much for young voters and

I've spoken to young voters who have said, listen, you know, I am a Democrat. I'm never going to vote for Donald Trump, but I'll just vote third party because I'm kind of throwing up my hands in despair at the prospect of anything ever changing in this country. So to me, that's the central question. The narrative that I'm not Donald Trump, I get that. Lots of people will vote not Donald Trump. But what am I? What's my vision for the future? What's my vision for America's role today?

in the national security of the world, okay, the international security, I should say. And I'm just wondering out loud about those things. The other issue, which we both know, is that the number of African-American men that are voting for Donald Trump, that seems to be on the rise. Now, she put out a tweet this week about offering certain ideas to African-American men. And I'm just wondering, Kat, if you saw that. And then my question to you, is it a little patronizing? Because

Some people are suggesting that if she's going to give $20,000 no payback loans to black men and then quote unquote others, is that even constitutional? Can you set up something and offer, hey, if you're black and a male, I'm going to give you $20,000. And is that a little bit too specious and a little bit too transactional? I don't know. I want to get your opinion on that. And-

Her going on Charlemagne. Yeah. Okay. Was that a good performance for her? I listened to it, but I'd like to hear your opinion before I give mine. So when we were out at the DNC, Charlemagne was there. And of course, he's like a huge, we should say who he is. He's a radio host.

very, very popular. He has a morning show called The Breakfast Club and it's him and a couple of other hosts. And he is a huge, my son, for example, 30 year old son listens to Charlemagne every morning. And when we were in Chicago at the DNC, he was there and he was like the rock star of the show. So she goes on, he has a big black audience as well, black men. He is an African-American man. And my understanding is that her performance on The Breakfast Club had quite a few holes in it and that

people were not thrilled by it, but also partly by his performance too and his questioning. So what did you think? Yeah, because while he was light on her, you know, here's the thing. Trump goes on stage. He's at the economic club. He says vacuous, crazy things. He tells Maria Bartiromo the tariffs could be 100, 200, 500, 500.

Okay, that's Donald Trump. We're going to give him a pass. Charlamagne's asking about specific policy proposals, specific things. She's being very cursory about it. And he's known to be more of a stickler. He didn't hammer her.

And say, okay, hold on, Madam Vice President, give me the details. I want to hear them. He didn't do that to her. He was very light on her. People listen to Charlemagne, in my opinion, for one reason. He's extraordinarily competent. Yeah. And he understands the zeitgeist. And he's unpredictable, which I really like about him.

It's fortified with a ton of research and it's fortified with a ton of knowledge. And so he has a brilliant podcast. I don't think that necessarily helped her. And I don't think these policies that she's pushing are necessarily helping her, but I do think there is something helping her. And that is the dematerialization of Donald Trump. And so we're watching Trump dance for 39 minutes all

I mean, you can't unsee that, Katty. So, you know, I don't know what that was all about. We'll describe it to the viewers and listeners in a second. But we're watching Trump become meaner and crueler. We're watching him become more misogynistic and more racist and more anti-immigrant, if you will, and more dehumanizing. And I said last night to 13,000 people at the O2 arena that Donald Trump talks about nothing.

non-white immigrants to the United States the way the National Socialists talked about the Jews in the 1930s. Okay. So this is very frightening stuff. And I think it's raising alarm bells with students of history. So you know, college women, we were going over this before the show started, college women in the cross stabs, they're plus 38 for Harris. So smart people that have looked at history and see the warning signs of the nonsense that Trump is espousing are with her.

You have been saying, and I've agreed for the last couple of weeks, that she just needs to do a lot more media interviews and get a lot more performances out there. The campaign, I was texting with a senior campaign official yesterday who said the strategy now is to flood the zone. She's going to do an interview with Joe Rogan. She's going to go on Fox News. She did Charlemagne. Maybe there were policy positions people didn't agree with. Her position on

wanting to decriminalize marijuana. Perhaps that goes down well with Charlemagne's audience. But I think to then say, oh, well, it wasn't helpful to her. I'm not sure how can she flood the zone and really step up the media appearances and then every single media appearance we turn around and say, well, actually that one wasn't helpful to her. I mean, either she has to do a lot more media appearances and some of them are going to have weak moments and strong moments or she doesn't do them. And I think we do have to say at this stage, we have to compare.

Compare it to what Donald Trump is doing. I mean, he gets a pass. She is at least answering policy questions. And he's sitting there for an hour being interviewed by John Micklethwaite at the Chicago Economic Council. And the answers are kind of all over the place. So Donald Trump, whether we like it or not, he gets a pass. OK, Mark Esper. But that doesn't mean we should give him a pass.

We're not giving him a pass on this podcast, but there's a large group of the electorate that's giving him a pass and her team needs to analyze that and understand why. Mark Esper comes out this week and says, take Donald Trump's comments seriously about using the military. He says, I'm going to use the military on my political adversaries. I'm going to use the National Guard.

And Esper told him, I am not going to deploy National Guardsmen or the military into Lafayette Square. If you want my resignation, you can have my resignation. Trump blinked in 2020. Is he going to blink in 2025 or 2026 when he has a patsy for a secretary of defense, when he wants to do that very same thing?

But for some reason, it doesn't work. Okay. Or said differently, everyone that's worried about what I just said is already voting for Harris. Yeah. Other people have decided, you know, that's Trump just being Trump. What's the big deal? Doesn't convince me not to vote for him. Yeah.

And what I would say to the vice president, you got to come up with a compelling, positive reason for people to vote for you. Whilst presumably also attacking Trump. I mean, she's got to go after Trump too. She did a brilliant thing this week. She went to a rally. She said, let's roll the tape. And she showed Trump saying inane things that were fascist. Okay. To reinforce for her people, you better get out and vote because he's coming for your family's freedoms and your personal freedoms. But she doesn't have a soaring speech.

Obama said, this is my vision of America. This is a post-racial America. JFK said, this is my new frontier. We're going to have innovation and space. And Reagan said, this is what we're going to do to preserve democracies and eventually bring down communism. Where is the soaring head?

Harris vision speech, where she made it and when did she make it? Because I didn't hear it if she made it. If she hasn't made it, what are you guys waiting for? Why don't you get her to make it and tell us what it is? I actually thought that her speech, her speeches at the moment at rallies like the one in North Carolina where

she did that and she went after Donald Trump in that way is better than when she's doing these longer form interviews for her. And I think some of the longer form interviews, that's where she made that slip up on The View where she wasn't necessarily strong. She might have been on Charlemagne. Whereas the rallies, I think, are getting better

I think that's more powerful. Perhaps the reason I like you so much is that you're cheaper than my therapist. Okay. Make me feel better, Kathy. Okay. Tell me something to make me feel better. Tell me the narrative. You told me the narrative two episodes ago. That's impressive. But I need the vision speech. What is her vision now?

It's 2026 in America. It's about to be 2028 in America. Where is the vice president who's now President Harris, the 47th president of the United States? Where is she taking this country in the world? Yeah. And if people feel they don't know that, will they trust Trump?

voting for her when that appeal of tax cuts and people are prepared to overlook a whole load of other things, or they just simply don't believe that Donald Trump will do the things he says. I mean, I think that's another big pass that Donald Trump is getting is that people who are

have heard Mark Esper, his former defense secretary, say, Donald Trump said to me about the Black Lives Matter protesters, can't we just shoot them in the knees or something? I mean, people are hearing this stuff about Donald Trump. They know that two of his former secretaries of defense

his former national security advisor, his former chief of staff, his former top general, General Milley, have all said that Donald Trump is unfit for office. I've covered six American elections. I have never seen so many people from a former administration come out and say that president is unfit to serve again. And yet people, I think what's happening, the reason that you're seeing Republicans come home to Donald Trump is they just don't believe it.

They don't believe he's going to do this. So they don't believe the tariffs on a more kind of serious economic policy point. They don't believe that he's going to bring out the National Guard. They don't believe that he's really going to deport millions of illegal immigrants. And so they...

If you don't believe that stuff, then you tell yourself, oh, well, the economy was better and America didn't have wars. So all of that stuff. Yeah, the media is talking about it. Okay, even Donald Trump is talking about it. Yes, his former chiefs of staff and senior officials are talking about it, but...

It's like the poll that shows that 60% of Hispanic voters do not believe Donald Trump is talking about them when he's talking about migrants. Yeah, every outsider in America wants to feel like an insider. So even though he's talking about you, you don't think he is. But here's something I would say to the Harris people.

You can easily get under her skin. You know exactly how to do it. She releases her medical information. He doesn't. He goes berserk. That was the bit you liked, right? Yeah. He goes berserk. 1 a.m. He's writing all cap nonsense about his medical condition. She's going on Fox. He's nervous about it.

Because he's got good political instincts. If she Buttigieg's Brett Mayer and she outperforms on Fox and she pushes back on the Fox narrative about her. By the way, the Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg would love the fact that he has now become a verb. Yeah, but he's very effective on Fox. He goes on Fox and he destroys that right-wing narrative. And if she does that, Trump is going to go berserk because Trump knows that

That Democrats watch Fox, Republicans watch Fox. And if the bubble gets popped and she's out there saying stuff that's moderate and pro-business, she's out there saying stuff that's tough on the border and accusing him of not helping to get that border deal signed, all the things that she's capable of doing, okay, she can move voters. Okay. So she's got to be ready for that. She should treat that interview like it's debate prep. Okay. Okay.

Anthony, I've got two bits of news for you. Good news and bad news. As your therapist, which do you want first? Well, just don't send me a bill. As long as you don't send me a bill, I can take both things very greatly. Absolutely sending the bill. Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Give me the bad news first. Okay, the bad news is... I'm a catastrophizer like you. Go ahead, give me the bad news. Democratic Congressman Brendan Ball and I were texting just yesterday. I know Brendan, yep. Very good guy from the suburbs of Philadelphia. I asked him how Pennsylvania is looking. Of course, we're all focused on Pennsylvania, the key battleground state.

And he says, Pennsylvania is 50-50, which means the Electoral College is 50-50. Okay, one other quick piece of bad news. Jim Messina, I got a text from him yesterday, who was the architect of Barack Obama's successful 2020.

re-election campaign. You also helped David Cameron in the UK. Which Alistair Campbell does not like him for. Oh, I know, he gets really upset. He switched sides, turncoat. Anyway, Jim Messina texted me to say, Kamala Harris cannot lose white men as she is doing and win this election. Okay, so that's the bad news. The good news. Pass the vodka. Go ahead, let me hear the good news. It's midday, it's time for vodka. Okay, so a Democratic strategist who spoke to a very good pollster told me, Kamala Harris is up 20 points

in New York and California, strong Democratic states. Now, generally, Democratic candidates, presidential candidates are winning California and New York by 40 points. So if she's only up 20 points in those two states...

But she is up three points in the national poll. That means she is winning votes somewhere else. And we don't know exactly where those votes are, but there is a chance that she is picking up more votes in the battleground states, in the states that matter than she is picking up at the moment in California. There's also, but I just want to point out to viewers and listeners, there's been since 2017 and the tax code changes that.

with the limitation now on state and local income tax deductions, there's been a half a million people leave California, a half a million people leave New York. And I think Cady's making the point they may have been spread into other states. And some of these lower tax states are actually swing states. There's a Marist poll out this week, plus five for her nationally. So again, you know, and I know, and you said this before we got started, that

there's a poll for everything. We could say that Trump's up five, she's up five, Rasmussen will have him up five before the election's over. But where I am optimistic and where I am positive is the early polling in Pennsylvania, she has wide margins, Katty. Take a look at those numbers. Democrats always have wide margins in early polling. He could come in, but it's wider than it was in 2020. And it certainly is a lot wider than it was in 2016. So

So, you know, let me just throw these two narratives at you. She wins, shocks everybody, lots of women vote, lots of registrations. She wins overwhelmingly. And takes all the battleground states. Yeah. He wins and he takes the House and Senate with him because he's got coattails and he drives David McCormick over the fence in Pennsylvania. I would say that scenario one and scenario two and scenario three is Anthony Scaramucci finds an estate agent in London. Yeah.

Okay, we're going to take a break. And after the break, we're going to talk about Donald Trump's strategy in the closing weeks.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics U.S. from the London studio in person with Anthony Scaramucci. Let's go down to the Trump strategy. What do you think? I have views on what the Trump strategy is, but I want to hear what you think they're doing. I think they're going to run them hot till the end. I think he's he's committed to lots of media exposure. He's committed to lots of younger people podcasts.

I think he wants to go into the vanity states. You know, George Bush did that. He's going to do a rally at Madison Square Garden. What do you mean by vanity states? Vanity states are, I know I can't win California, but I'm showing up at California like he did last week.

to give big speeches and to go after democratic politicians in California. He's going to do the same thing in New York, can't win these states, but he wants to give people this aura of excess confidence that I'm here in New York because I think I'm going to win New York, that sort of thing. And it plays well because people say, wow, the guy's so confident, he's going to win. I'm going to go out there and vote for him. It makes me feel better.

So I don't think it's a good use of their time and resources, but let me just say this. Donald Trump has very good political instincts, Caddy. So he thinks it's a good use of his time and resources. So let me channel him for a second.

He thinks this is a good use of his time and resources because it is a narrative statement about him. It is a manifest. Okay, I'm going to manifest this victory by showing up in these places and it will create this level of overconfidence, which is a tractor beam for my supporters to come out. That's what I think he's saying. Now his campaign and, you know, La Cevita got hit really hard this week in the Daily Beast campaign.

God only knows who his adversary is inside the campaign that was dropping those dimes. The viper's nest. Yeah, exactly. But that's what happens. They're killing each other. He's getting paid a lot of money. He's on a big monthly retainer. He's doing advertising for the campaign. He's taking swaths of commissions off of the advertising.

And so there's some internal fight inside the campaign and there's some rivalry, but underneath that is overwhelming confidence. These guys think they're winning. And somebody said to me in that campaign, Ant, do you remember 2016 where we all thought we were losing? I said, yes, I do remember that. And remember, we all thought that Trump had this 47% ceiling. Yes, I totally remember that. We don't think that anymore. We think he's going to break the ceiling because she, and again, this is them talking, not necessarily me. Yeah.

She hasn't defined herself. She is, I'm not Trump. And let me repeat that. I'm not Trump. And they don't think that that's enough. And so that's what they're saying. And are they seeing that, Anthony? That's super interesting. And I am hearing the kind of opposite side, which is the sort of slight panic on the Harris front. But that confidence that you're hearing from the Republicans.

Trump team, is it based on data or is it based on a hunch? Well, no, they claim it's based on data. They say their internal polling has them up and so on and so forth. What I said and I pushed back on, I said, no, I'd be super worried about your overconfidence because in 2016, when you were messaging Democratic officials at the Clinton campaign, they were overconfident. We were the team that was nervous. We were the team that was scurrying around.

And so when you tell me that the Harris team is nervous, I like that. Okay. And full disclosure, I will be campaigning for her in Pennsylvania on October 20th. I'm going to several different rallies, which also include a voter registration movement. Okay. I have a small bone to pick with you, but we're going to park it until the end of the episode.

So I just like that percolating in your brain until we get to the end of the show. Oh, my God. She's trying to create anxiety. She said small bone. Okay. So the strategy, I think when you say going hot, I think that's exactly what he's doing. He is going. I mean, I think there is a mixture of going hot on immigration, which we saw in Aurora, Colorado last weekend. I listened to.

to that full hour and a half long speech. Obviously, Colorado, not a swing state. All of our listeners smart enough to know that. But he shows up. It's a little bit of a vanity state. Aurora gave him an excuse because there is a story about Venezuelan migrants, which he has massively inflated. The Republican mayor of Aurora has come back and said this is not true. But anyway, he shows up and he gives this rally. Twelve minutes into the rally, he's talking about illegal migrants and he's describing them as people who have come from the dungeons of the third world.

as an army that has occupied America, as the enemy within.

And this goes on for another one hour and 20 minutes. At the end of the speech, he's not talking about inflation. He's not talking about cost of living. His pitch for the last three weeks of this campaign has been migration, migration, migration. And he feels that that is something that resonates in these battleground states and with enough swing voters. And it's dark. The language has got, as you said earlier, it's got very dark language.

So, I think that's kind of the strategy. The weird bit that we briefly mentioned earlier, on top of kind of throwing let Donald Trump run hot, is this sort of random 39-minute disco session.

at the end of a town hall that he had this week after two people fainted. And he says, you know, let's let the paramedic come in, get these people out, help them out. And then he says, okay, no more questions. Let's just listen to music. Can I interrupt you for one second? I apologize. But he was answering questions. Yeah. And then he sort of had a little bit of a mini McConnell freeze. And then he said...

Let's go to the music. And so that was the most fascinating part of it because I watched the thing happening and I also watched Governor Rome get very uncomfortable. Like she was very worried about him and then she was so awkward. So awkward. During the 39 minutes of music and of course people were leaving.

And that was manifestly a sign of deterioration. I'm sorry. It just was. Now, for some reason, if Joe Biden did that, 26 newspapers front page, you

Donald Trump does that. Okay, no big deal. That's Donald Trump. Kamala Harris put out a tweet or a statement saying, I hope he's okay. Yeah. Which is, I mean, it was this thing. Was that sarcastic or was that like, I really hope he's okay? I mean, I think it was a way of saying he's not okay. I mean, it is the most bizarre campaign performance two and a half weeks out from election to say, people don't want to ask the candidate questions. They just want to watch me bob and dance to the

You know, Hallelujah and Ave Maria. I mean, you can't even really dance to Ave Maria. It was a most weird selection anyway. It depends on how drunk you are, Kat. You can probably guess. Except that he doesn't drink. But I mean, what do you make of that? What do you make of him standing up 39 minutes? I mean, this is not five minutes, guys. This is 39 minutes.

He was having something go on. And I think he was trying to override. Now, maybe it wasn't, God forbid, something physiological. Maybe it was low blood sugar. You know, he...

He eats like absolute garbage. Okay. So maybe he was having a low blood sugar moment and he felt slightly faint and he didn't want to faint. And so he was just trying to modulate himself. I don't know what it was, but let me say this to you. If that happened in the 80s, that person would be out of the race. If that happened in the 90s, person would be out of the race. He has done something that nobody in American politics has been able to do.

I'm going to talk about stuff that's crazy. You're going to accept that and you're going to say, oh, that's just Trump being Trump. I'm going to act like I'm cognitively degenerating. You're going to be like, okay, no problem. That's Trump being Trump. I don't know. I don't know. I can't figure it out. So let's say you are a 70-year-old American voter and you are following this campaign, Anthony, and trying to make up your mind about who to vote for for the next president of the United States.

How exhausted are you at this point in the process? Well, you know, again, you're exhausted, but I do have 70 plus year old friends of mine. There's one gentleman, Italian American, lives in Arizona, loves Trump, thinks he's the man. He's anti-immigrant. He sends me one meme after another and

It doesn't matter. Trump's on the right side of these things. And here's the thing about what you just said where the bomb is. When you say the word 70, the next thing that comes out of my mouth is culture war. When you get to 70, you're a traditionalist and you don't like directionally where the left is taking the country. And so even Donald Trump is a bozo. He's my bozo. And I'm voting for him no matter what. And I think we should never...

Ignore the degree to which there, and this is now my sixth American election, and having traveled all over the country for elections here, I have heard for decades, this sense of frustration and anger from people that they have been

dismissed, looked down upon, ignored by the coastal elites. And they have a point. The editorial newsrooms of the major American news outlets, newspapers, television stations are based in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. They are thousands of miles away from Topeka, Kansas.

Just by virtue of the fact of distance, they don't know what's going on in the middle of the country and how people are suffering. You made an important point to me last night, which you should reemphasize.

in addition to not being thousands of miles away, they never visit those places. Am I right? They don't go. They don't go to those places. Now, I think 2016 changed some of that awareness because all of us news organizations suddenly woke up and a friend of mine actually, who is a Guardian correspondent, was suddenly posted to Kansas City, Missouri for two years to cover the campaign because I think there was a sudden realization. It was, my God, you know, all this was dismissed as flyover country. We don't know anything about it. We don't know what those people are going through.

And you had these editorial newsrooms, media newsrooms, full of people with college degrees from elite universities who were just very far away from the impacts of globalization, the impacts of free trade agreements. And 2016 was a wake-up call. Now, maybe we've got a little bit smarter this time around, but I don't know. I don't know that we've managed to really capture how many people, as you say, there are out in the country, 70-year-olds,

who may not like everything about Donald Trump's personality, the way he talks about migrants, the way he talks about women, but they like the idea that he's projecting strength for the United States. And he's pushing back against this kind of lurch to wokeism that they would say has happened in America over the last 10 years. Before we switch topics, let me just test one other thing on you. So I agree with everything you just said, but let's just test this.

Some people in the African-American community don't like the Democrats coming to them, offering them favorable things and promises once every four years. Yet during the middle of the year, we're not doing anything. We've got

shootings going through the roof in the urban centers. We've got our education in decline in these public schools. But once every four years, you guys show up with a few promises for the African-American community. So is that a justifiable Liz Pendence or is that not? I think it's the same thing that I'm often hearing from Hispanic voters too, that Democrats just turn up when they want votes. I've heard this time and again from Hispanic grassroots organizations saying, I'm

our tendencies that we would like to vote democratic. But guys, these guys are taking us for granted. All they want is our votes when it comes around to election day. So despite the weaknesses of Donald Trump and some elements of the fascist statements and elements of the malevolence, up against that are some of these arguments. And this is the reason why the race is so close. Okay. So here's my bone to pick to you. You ready?

You said it was a little bone. Let's get the right wording. Okay, Anthony, here is my little bone to pick with you. We've been out on stage for the last week with big audiences, and I have been making the case that Donald Trump is going to

have a good shot at winning this election. And there are you and Rory making an amazingly confident case that Kamala Harris is going to sweep this thing. And Rory in particular, who thinks that he's going to double his already immense fortune, I am sure, by voting on the betting markets. Probably not the wisest thing to do, let's be honest, in a race this close. But anyway, Rory clearly looking into the betting markets and thinking that he can make a ton by voting on Kamala Harris. And then

Today, you're telling me that you're hearing from the Trump campaign that they're very confident and you're making the case that Donald Trump might win. No, I still think she's going to win. I'm not saying that. This is a...

I hope that people are tuning in because I want Harris to win, but I want to explain what I think is going on in the society so they get a good barometric pressure reading on the political zeitgeist. So I will make the case again, if she gets the turnout that I think she's capable of, if they stay organized and committed, she will beat him.

And then we'll have to deal with the reckoning. And hopefully you and I can do a mini series for our members and others about how the Republican Party can regain itself, regain its footing in America. If he wins, then we're going to have to do a series on what type of dystopian activity could potentially happen. But I'm still in the camp that she's going to win. But I'm also smart enough and I've been humbled by life and so many mistakes and so many misjudgments of things that have happened in my life that

to know that I could be wrong. But I am confident. Rory is way more confident than me, by the way. And when someone speaks that confidently, it does worry me because that could also potentially mean a buying spot. But I'm confident because I've looked at the numbers. But Caddy, I told Donald Trump, the Brits are not going to Brexit. I can tell you exact date. It was May of 2016. He looked at me and laughed and said, they're 100% going to vote for the Brexit. And

The question here, is this election going to be about the empirical data? Who's better for your life? Who's better for the economy? Or is this some kind of emotional nativism? What's it going to be? Okay.

Okay, we're going to leave it there. Good place to end, Antony. But for our founding members, you can listen to our special episode just for you guys this weekend on Saturday. And one of the questions we're going to answer in that episode is where is Joe Biden in all of this? And what's his role in trying to get Kamala Harris elected? Is he doing enough for her campaign? We'll leave it there and we'll see you all next week. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next Friday.