Kamala Harris: America Is At Breaking Point & I'm Deeply Concerned About The State Of The Country!

Vice-President Kamala Harris breaks silence on the real cost of Trump winning, Biden’s shocking debate day call, why skipping Joe Rogan was a big mistake, election loss lessons, and…will she run again in 2028? Kamala Harris made history as the first female Vice President of the United States and first Black woman and South Asian American in the role. Before becoming VP, Kamala led the largest state Justice Department in the U. S and became only the second Black woman ever elected to the U. S. Senate. In September 2025, she released her bestselling book '107 Days: A Memoir of a Campaign That Made History'. She explains: ◼️The moment she lost the 2024 election and went into shock ◼️Why Biden's team sabotaged her behind the scenes ◼️The real reason Biden didn't want to debate Trump ◼️The 200K votes they desperately needed but couldn't find ◼️How America is at breaking point and the destruction Trump is causing [00:00] Intro [02:22] How Are You Feeling? [03:36] Will It Get Worse Before It Gets Better? [06:44] We Spoke to Your Husband [07:42] Why Do You Want to Protect People? [08:43] Kamala’s Law Career [09:19] The Worst Thing You Faced in Your Career [11:06] Managing Stress and Responsibility [12:45] Kamala at 25 vs. Kamala Today [15:10] When Did You Decide to Run for President? [16:35] Does Impostor Syndrome Ever Go Away? [21:11] Experiencing Prejudice [25:37] How Do You Earn Respect as a Leader? [27:57] Why Kamala Dropped Out of the 2019 Race [30:47] The VP and Presidential Interview Process [33:53] Staff Suppressed My Accomplishments [37:36] Frustration Over Lack of Recognition [38:24] Kamala’s Relationship With Biden [45:13] Biden Was Talked Into the Debate [49:14] What It Was Like Debating Trump [54:26] Trump Targets the Weak [01:00:37] Ads [01:01:39] Podcasting Power & Not Going on Joe Rogan [01:07:09] What Would Make You Run for President Again? [01:09:41] Why It's Difficult to Run for President [01:12:03] Kamala Was in a State of Shock [01:17:18] What Democrats Must Do to Win Back the People [01:19:36] Is the Left Against Entrepreneurship? [01:24:04] Have You Changed Since the Election? [01:25:20] Ads [01:27:25] Kamala on Being More Unfiltered [01:29:39] No Regrets About Running [01:31:56] Support From My Partner [01:39:20] Did You Experience Depression? [01:40:42] The Passing of Kamala’s Mother [01:42:40] Would Your Mom Be Proud? Follow Kamala: Instagram - https://bit.ly/4of8PVL Facebook - https://bit.ly/43zlMBg X - https://bit.ly/47M5qaS Threads - https://bit.ly/4qzUjJI YouTube - https://bit.ly/3X6gR76 TikTok - https://bit.ly/4hufIja You can purchase Kamala Harris’s new book, ‘107 Days’, here: https://bit.ly/436Bnbj The Diary Of A CEO: ◼️Join DOAC circle here - https://doaccircle.com/ ◼️Buy The Diary Of A CEO book here - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook ◼️The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt ◼️The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb ◼️Get email updates - https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt ◼️Follow Steven - https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: Fiverr - https://fiverr.com/diary and get 10% off your first order when you use code DIARY Justworks - http://Justworks.com Bon Charge - http://boncharge.com/diary?rfsn=8189247.228c0cb with code DIARY for 25% off

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm gonna just be honest. There were times where Joe Biden greatly disappointed me. And frankly, you know, angered me. Like, on the day of my debate with Trump. The stakes were so high. And the president calls. And he said to me, it just was so unnecessary.

• 0:19Steven Bartlett?

  And you took something from that?

• 0:20Speaker 00

  That his motivation was all about himself.

• 0:23Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think he wanted you to win the election?

• 0:27Steven Bartlett?

  Madam Vice President, if there's nothing you said I couldn't ask you?

• 0:29Speaker 00

  Because I have a lot to say. And so, [BLEEP] it.

• 0:34Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so do you wish you hadn't ran?

• 0:36Speaker 00

  No, but I do regret that we did not have more time.

• 0:38Steven Bartlett?

  And then the debate that came before with Biden and Trump? It was a car crash. I mean, this was clearly an individual that was very much struggling.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  He didn't want that debate. I could tell something was a little off.

• 0:48Steven Bartlett?

  How'd you know?

• 0:49Speaker 00

  Well, I could start with this.

• 0:50Steven Bartlett?

  And what about not going on Joe Rogan's show?

• 0:52Speaker 00

  I definitely regret that we didn't do it. But there was a lot of games being played.

• 0:56Steven Bartlett?

  And then on that night when the election hasn't gone your way, what would I have seen if I was a fly on the wall in the room?

• 1:01Speaker 00

  I was in a state of shock. Like, I haven't felt anything similar to the emotion I felt that day, other than the grief I felt when my mother died. And I knew what was gonna happen to our country. So I had a hard time reconciling that we can't still do something about it. Because I grew up in an environment where everyone was fighting for justice and for equality. So I do think about how different it could have been. But sometimes the fight takes a while.

• 1:26Steven Bartlett?

  Does that mean that you're gonna run again? I...

• 1:33Steven Bartlett?

  Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us. And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm gonna make to you. I'm gonna do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're gonna deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're gonna continue to keep doing all of the things you love about the show. Thank you.

• 2:17Steven Bartlett?

  Madam Vice President, how are you doing?

• 2:22Speaker 00

  I am well, I am well. I mean, all things considered, I am well. My family is good health, so I start there. But otherwise, you know, it's a troubling time.

• 2:37Steven Bartlett?

  What are the full range of emotions? When you said all things considered, what's the full picture there?

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Everything from grateful and feeling very blessed to extremely troubled, disappointed, concerned of the state of our country and by extension, the world. Like a lot of people who are watching the news and reading the news, there's a state of anxiety, what will happen next? I often have found myself saying to people, it may get worse before it gets better. And so the knowledge of that, perhaps the anticipation of that, I think, keeps me and many others on edge.

• 3:28Steven Bartlett?

  Do you believe that? Do you believe it could get worse before it gets better?

• 3:31Speaker 00

  I think it's very possible. Every day, because actually during the book tour, I've said it to audiences. And in one city and then the next day, something happens.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  There's a lot that's very unpredictable about this administration, although there is almost all of it that I did predict.

• 3:50Steven Bartlett?

  No, I know you only had 107 days to potentially intervene in the course of history. But when you see these things playing out that you're referring to that incite those feelings you have of frustration, a little bit of anxiety, et cetera, do you feel a sense of responsibility in a weird way? Because there was a percentage chance of intervening in these things. This is a complex question to ask, but it's...

• 4:17Speaker 00

  I do think about how different it could have been.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  I do think about it in the context of the number of people who are being impacted in such a horrible way. I think of it in terms of the number of people who are existing and living in utter fear right now. Afraid of being attacked or afraid of being targeted with hate.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  Much less misinformation. Yeah, I do. And I know that the race that I ran for President of the United States, the outcome of that election is what has happened.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  And it would have been different. It would have been very different. I try not to allow myself to think too much this way, I will tell you that. Because I, for better and worse, really do like to be centered on the present.

• 5:11Steven Bartlett?

  So let's go. I want to understand the set of circumstances that created someone like you, because you're an anomaly. There's a lot of firsts that appear in your career. But if we start at the beginning, what is the context that shapes someone to become such an anomaly in their professional career?

• 5:29Speaker 00

  My parents and the community that raised me. My mother arrived from India in the United States at the age of nineteen by herself. My mother naturally, at that young age, became aligned with the Civil Rights Movement in Berkeley in Oakland, California. Met my father, who had been a national scholar in Jamaica. They fell in love. And here I am. My sister and I were born, and we were born in an environment where everyone was fighting for justice and for freedom and for equality. Every message we got was you are important and you have a duty to figure out how you're going to participate.

• 6:14Steven Bartlett?

  I noticed this as I was reading through your story, how service and helping others seems to be so interwoven into your DNA. And even, we spoke to Doug, your husband, and he was telling me a story about your first date with him.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  What did he tell you?

• 6:34Steven Bartlett?

  Well, apparently you made a remark on that first date that you're here to help people and to serve people. He told me many things. We have many pages of what Doug said. Very fascinating. He's very in love with you, by the way.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  I'm very in love with my husband, and he's very funny. I hope you got a sense of me.

• 6:49Steven Bartlett?

  He was an hilarious guy.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, he and I had such different careers, both of us being lawyers, right? He went immediately into private practice. I never wanted to be in private practice. It was never about money for me. It was always about people and how. Could I do the work that was about protecting people and giving people dignity?

• 7:11Steven Bartlett?

  Why protecting people?

• 7:13Speaker 00

  I, I think there's a lot that has to do also maybe with birth order. I'm the eldest and from the age of two years old, my mother told me, take care of your sister. Look out for your sister. You've got all kinds of stuff there.

• 7:31Steven Bartlett?

  I've been through everything.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is my sister Maya.

• 7:34Steven Bartlett?

  That's you protecting her.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  And that's me protecting her. I grew up also, you know, seeing my mother, who was a five foot tall brown woman with an accent, would be treated. And she taught me this, my extended family taught me, but then I also witnessed the importance of making sure that all people, that their dignity is respected and protected. And I, because I, you know, I, I have lived a life to see where that doesn't always happen.

• 8:06Steven Bartlett?

  So you decide to focus on law in public practice. And you have a phenomenal career from that point onwards. It's really remarkable what you're able to accomplish. And this is, I guess, where a lot of the firsts come in because from the age of 24 to 51, you rise from deputy district attorney to California's attorney general, becoming the first woman and first black person to hold both roles. And you led major reforms in that time, including securing $25 billion in homeowner relief after the 2008 crisis, launching the back on track LA rehabilitation program and making California the state, the first state to mandate body cameras for justice, justice agents, and much more.

• 8:47Steven Bartlett?

  An incredible career up until that point. That could have been it. You could have bowed out at that point and celebrated it.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  But there's so much more to be done. There's so much more to be done. I think one of my strengths and weaknesses is I like to solve problems, but that means that I tend to. Once a problem has been addressed, move on to the next one without maybe taking the time to pat myself on the back.

• 9:16Steven Bartlett?

  Uh huh.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Because now it's time to move on to the next issue.

• 9:19Steven Bartlett?

  During your career, you you saw some horrific things. That's the nature of your job. You deal with the darkest parts of reality.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  The worst parts of human behavior and nature I've seen. Yeah, you're right.

• 9:30Steven Bartlett?

  Give me, give me some context there. What does that mean in reality?

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Well, for a while I specialized in child sexual assault, which is about the most horrendous of abuse and crime, which is an adult abusing a child. And those cases were so difficult, for so many reasons. I mean, there's a couple that I remember in particular where I just, where the children were so young that they were, they wouldn't be able to testify. One was an elementary school little girl.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  And, I mean, I, I remember going into the bathroom of the courthouse and crying because I knew a jury would not have enough to convict. And, you know, it broke my heart. I mean, and I have thought about that little girl, you know, years and years and years later. But those cases, you know, it's the worst of human behavior, which is, we as a society should be in the business of protecting children and protecting their vulnerability so that they can thrive.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  But I've, you know, I've prosecuted homicide cases. I've, you know, prosecuted fraud cases.

• 11:06Steven Bartlett?

  How does, how does one deal with all of this stress and responsibility? And I'm not just referring to your time as Attorney General, but even thereafter with Yeah. running for president and the ups and downs of that, the public feedback, the pressure, the responsibility of potentially running the, you know, the free world, basically, and becoming the most powerful person on earth, and the ups, the downs, the attacks, the, the child abuses. How does one? Is there a framework you've built? Is there other ideas or principles that you've developed to deal with such pressure?

• 11:44Speaker 00

  Well, this may sound trite, but I work out every day.

• 11:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  I work out every morning, no matter how little sleep I've had.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  I just find it to be just mind, body and soul.

• 11:59Steven Bartlett?

  Have you changed over time?

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure, I've changed over time. The pressure has changed in magnitude.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  But the pressure that I feel in terms of my sense of personal responsibility has not changed. I put a lot of, I hold myself to a very high standard. And I tend to be a perfectionist, even though I am far from perfect. You know, I mean, even during the 107 days, every night I would stay awake thinking, what more could I have done with that one day?

• 12:39Steven Bartlett?

  Twenty-four-year-old Kamala Harris, who starts as that sort of, eventually becomes a deputy district attorney, if I sat her there, and you're sat there now as Madam Vice President, what would be the notable differences in personality, mentality, in perspective?

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I don't know if it's changed, but she was fearless.

• 13:10Steven Bartlett?

  She was fearless?

• 13:11Speaker 00

  She was fearless. She didn't hear, no, it can't be done.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  And whether it was the first case that I had, and I was a young prosecutor, and I was going through the files, and it was a Friday evening, and I realized that the person who had been arrested had young children at home, a woman, and all the courts were shutting down. And I went to the courtroom and I asked the judge, please take the bench again, she has young children, she can't stay in over the weekend. And the clerk was like, nope, he's gone for the day, he's leaving for the day. And I would not leave.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  And they called the case, you know, but not hearing no, I just, I, um, that has been probably a through line of my, my life. I don't rest easy with the idea that something is not possible. At least I don't rest easy with it without trying to show that it is possible. And that's probably not changed. I also have started to sit better with the idea that, but you can't change everyone.

• 14:27Steven Bartlett?

  Uh huh. How does that change your approach, knowing that you can't change everybody?

• 14:32Speaker 00

  I'm better able to assess a situation to figure out what is the potential there.

• 14:42Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  And be perhaps a bit more realistic without being, I think, jaded about it.

• 14:48Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:51Steven Bartlett?

  And I guess that's wisdom and experiences.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, it comes with, it comes with, I think, a bit of experience.

• 14:56Steven Bartlett?

  Which allows you to be more efficient and effective.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  And that's right.

• 14:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  That's exactly right. That's exactly right, because that is how I reconcile it, which is the effort is better placed somewhere else.

• 15:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:10Steven Bartlett?

  And at what point in this, in this journey, did you realize that you wanted to be president of the United States? Like, was, was there a lunch or a dinner you had with Doug? When does that decision get made in your career?

• 15:25Speaker 00

  It was when I was in the Senate.

• 15:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  I ran into a friend who came up, Doug and I were at a, basically a, a family table in a local restaurant, eating, and he said to me, you should run for president. And it had not occurred to me until then. It had not occurred to me to run for president. There are people who are born thinking they're going to be president. There are people who look, who look in the mirror every day and see a president. I was not one of those people. But then the thought. It kind of germinated. And then, of course, being Vice President and doing the work of Vice President of the United States, I met with over 150 world leaders, presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, and kings.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  I've negotiated very important deals and issues on behalf of the American people. I've spent countless hours, not only in the Oval Office, but the Situation Room and traveling around the world. And so, in those 107 days, I was fully aware of not only the importance of the job, but fully aware that I had the experience and knowledge to be able to do it effectively.

• 16:35Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, this is one of the things. I was actually talking to a friend of mine downstairs, Lucy Mangini, who's sat out there. And we were talking about this idea of like, does imposter syndrome ever leave you? And imposter syndrome is a bit of a loaded term, but you kind of assume that people in higher places than you are have some like genetic or mentor or some gift. They have all the answers. But the higher you climb, with your own continued naivety, you start to suspect that no one really is genetically gifted or like has some superpower that you don't have.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 17:06Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm wondering if you've experienced that in your career, where the higher you've climbed, you've realized that actually, everybody up here is like, I'm like that, like, oh, I'm at least on their level. Have you had that experience in your career?

• 17:15Speaker 00

  Yes, I have. But I've also had the imposter syndrome experience, and that was when I was first elected DA. And I challenged then the incumbent. I started out at six points in the polls, which is six out of 100. You know, people recently asked me, oh, about polls? Well, you know, if I listened to polls, I would have never run for my first office, and therefore, we wouldn't be having this interview, probably. And I won. And it was, you know, it was not expected that I would, at least when I jumped in the race. And there I was, sitting in the office, and I thought, oh, my God, I'm now the elected DA of a major city in the United States. In hindsight, it was, maybe it's, we call it imposter syndrome.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  To your point, maybe it is a very loaded term, because I think there's nothing wrong with having, and I think that there's a lot that is good with having a certain level of humility.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  And in particular, when the people have vested you with great power. Right, to understand it's not about you. Right, I think that that is, that is part and parcel of what we call imposter syndrome or who has it. I think often it is because they understand how serious the job is on behalf of others.

• 18:31Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 00

  And I applaud a bit of humility, honest humility, not feigned humility.

• 18:38Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  Right, because there are plenty of people that are, you know, self-deprecating for the sake of the shtick of it all.

• 18:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  But yes, to your point.

• 18:46Steven Bartlett?

  There's Africa.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  The higher you go, it does, it does, because the more you're exposed to being, the more you're in the rooms with the people who are, who otherwise feel untouchable. The more you understand that they are not untouchable.

• 19:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. It's a polite way of putting it.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  The more you understand, everyone's got a little dust on them. And they're not, not everyone's shiny.

• 19:13Steven Bartlett?

  But it's liberating to know that, that that's the case, because, you know, there's, we all put the ceiling above us.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:19Steven Bartlett?

  And we think, no, that's my level and everyone above that has some gift that I will never be able to attain. So I won't even strive to break that ceiling because, you know, I'm, I don't deserve to be up there.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  But, and also don't discount the signals that, that many people are sent that you don't belong there.

• 19:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  And, and, you know, I, I, especially when I'm mentoring people, will often say to them, don't ever limit yourself based on other people's limited ability to see who you are.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  That's their limitations, to see who you are in your capacity. Don't impose those limitations on yourself.

• 20:04Steven Bartlett?

  Well, I mean, this, that photo I showed you before we started recording, that LeBron poster is a pretty iconic example, I'll put it on the screen, but it just goes to show, I think, all the vice presidents that came before you. And frankly, they all look the same. So.

• 20:20Steven Bartlett?

  One might fall into the trap of thinking that if I don't look like this, then I can't do this job. You know, that's what I think the human mind logically might arrive at that conclusion. It looks for pattern recognition. It might think if I'm not one of these here, one of these men here with this suit on and this kind of hair and this age, then that's not a position I can thrive in.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  I'll see you and add one.

• 20:46Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  And everyone else thinks that this is the image of who can do the job.

• 20:52Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  So the added challenge is not only the limitations one puts on themselves, but the limitations one might be met with around other people's perceptions about who can do what.

• 21:09Steven Bartlett?

  And have you had that through your career?

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:11Steven Bartlett?

  Is there any particular examples that always sit at the front of your mind where you really, really felt that the room you were in, people were discounting you purely based on appearance or gender or race or anything like that?

• 21:26Speaker 00

  I mean, there are times in my career when I walked in the room and someone said, you know, something along, if they didn't know me, if they didn't know what they were walking into, you know, they were waiting for my boss.

• 21:40Steven Bartlett?

  And how did you deal with that? How do you stop that suppressing you? Because it's very easy to feel that and go and to shrink.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  You will often be, you may often be the only one who walks into a boardroom, a courtroom, a meeting room, who looks like yourself or has had your life experiences. But when you walk in that room, walk in that room, chin up, shoulders back, knowing there are so many people who are not in that room, who are so proud of you, walking in that room and expect that you will use the voice that you carry. You know, and, and there are, there are tools that one has to employ when you otherwise are aware that you might be presenting the unfamiliar.

• 22:32Steven Bartlett?

  What's that?

• 22:33Speaker 00

  But, but, but I also would caution is, is don't walk in that room with the assumption that your value will not be recognized, right? And so again, this gets back to my point about, we all have to moderate what limitations are we putting on ourselves with what limitations are being sent our way.

• 22:55Steven Bartlett?

  And when you say tools?

• 22:57Speaker 00

  Well, just like that, don't, when you walk into that room, see all the people. I think sometimes of Mrs. Frances Wilson, who was my first grade teacher who attended my law school graduation. I think of my mother who would say to me, Kamala, don't you ever let anyone tell you who you are, you tell them who you are, right?

• 23:19Steven Bartlett?

  And you think of these people when you walk into these important rooms to remind you?

• 23:24Speaker 00

  I, I, it's a tool I have used over a period of time and, and it has served me well. Yes, there's Mrs. Wilson, that's at my law school graduation, and that's my mother. That's exactly right. How about that? Yeah. Where'd you get all these pictures?

• 23:41Steven Bartlett?

  Well, stopping.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's Mrs. Wilson.

• 23:45Steven Bartlett?

  And so why is thinking of Mrs. Wilson helping you when you walk into those rooms?

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Because there is, I think, a key to success that each of us who has achieved success probably shares, which is there has been someone at least, and it could be a parent, it could be a teacher, it could be a neighbor, it could be a pastor, someone who convinced you you were special. You may not have been particularly special, but they told you you were and you believed them. I know that's true for me. I may not have been particularly special, but I had a few people who told me I was and I believed them. And, and, but with that came, therefore, don't do this thing, because you're, you

• 24:35Speaker 00

  know, shouldn't be doing that thing, but go in that room. I think, you know, when we talk about...

• 24:44Speaker 00

  Mentorship, when we think about the signals that we as a society send to children, and I mean all of our children, our own children, the children of a community which we should think of as our children, to send them signals that tell them they are special and then back that up with giving them the resources would make us a much stronger society.

• 25:10Steven Bartlett?

  As you said that, I was reflecting on little passing comments people in my life made at certain points that at the time I was suspicious about, like them telling you that you're going to be special or do something great one day, that I might have not fully believed myself, but I believe they believed it.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:27Steven Bartlett?

  And that was enough.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  But that's what I'm saying.

• 25:29Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  They told me and I believed them.

• 25:32Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  I didn't think of it, and maybe that's why I don't look in the mirror and see all these things.

• 25:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  But, yes.

• 25:38Steven Bartlett?

  Have you got any tools around how you've learnt to hold yourself? Thinking back to 24-year-old Kamala versus this Kamala, is there a certain way you hold yourself in those rooms that also garners that respect? I notice when you speak, you don't rush. And I think people that are younger in their career, they tend to.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 25:57Steven Bartlett?

  Because they're kind of almost trying to excuse the amount of time they're taking and they kind of are a bit more. I was wondering if there's anything, any tools in that regard that have helped?

• 26:08Speaker 00

  It's important to have some sense of, conceptually, what you mean to say. And not that you have to rehearse what you're going to speak before you speak it, but do have a sense of what you intend to communicate. And I think it's also important to, especially with complex issues in the context of a discussion.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  Deconstruct in your mind what the issue is.

• 26:40Steven Bartlett?

  Uh huh.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  So you can speak logically.

• 26:44Steven Bartlett?

  And what about appearance generally? Do you think much about that? So do you think much about, because you're, I mean, you look very, your outfit's stunning today.

• 26:51Speaker 00

  You're very.

• 26:51Steven Bartlett?

  Does it matter?

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Sadly, it does.

• 26:54Steven Bartlett?

  It does.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  I mean, depending on context.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Sadly, it does. I, we are still, I think, in a world where the way you appear when you walk in the room impacts first impressions. Um, including just, for example, again, even in mentoring people. People will look at their watch or their phone to see if you've walked in the room on time.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  And will judge something about your character. That the piece of how you look that is going to suggest the pride that one has in themselves. As a matter of self-respect. I mean, I've always, this is, you know, I grew up in the black church. You dress up. And it's a, it's a reflection of your dignity. And the respect you have for the place that you may be.

• 27:54Steven Bartlett?

  And in January 2019, you launched your presidential campaign for the first time, which was up until you dropped out later that year in December.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 28:04Steven Bartlett?

  Why did you drop out of that presidential race? What's the, what's the full context behind the scenes?

• 28:09Speaker 00

  There was a lot there. Um, mostly, we ran out of money.

• 28:15Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  But I learned a lot of lessons, obviously, about running. Um, but that was, that was the main reason.

• 28:23Steven Bartlett?

  And at some point, you get a call from Mr. President.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Uh huh. I got a call from then nominee, Democratic nominee, Joe Biden. He, um, we FaceTimed, it was during the height of COVID.

• 28:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  And he asked me to be his running mate. And it was a great honor and I was honored to do it.

• 28:43Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have any inclination before that moment that he was going to ask you? Had there been like a side conversation?

• 28:48Speaker 00

  So, no, I had an interview. I had an interview and it was like something out of a spy movie where I had my assistant drove me to one location. This was in DC and then it was a mall. And then I got out of that car to get in another car that was, because the press were watching everything to see who, there was a short list that was out, who was gonna be. So we had to do this whole clandestine thing. And then I got into another car being driven by one of his assistants. And then we went to this, you know, this very circuitous route to a house and then through the back door, the windows were closed, the shades were closed and I had my interview.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  Went back to, because Doug and I were in our apartment in DC, because I was senator at the time. And again, height of COVID, then the vans, the press vans were parked out front and we would just want to go for a walk. Remember during COVID, everyone just wanted to get some fresh air. They must have thought we couldn't see them. They were like an unmarked vans. So from time to time, I just walked up to them and say, we're going to get some coffee. Can I bring you anything back? We'll be right back, right? The day I actually got the call from, from Joe Biden asking me to run with him was the same day earlier where one of my girlfriends has a house in Virginia and it was the end of summer and she had all these beautiful end of summer tomatoes. I like to cook.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  She brought me this big box of tomatoes and I was gonna make a bunch of marinara and freeze it. Then I get the call from him. I said, yes, of course. And I don't know, it felt like within seconds, a parade of people walk into our apartment with a parade of binders, sit down, everyone's in masks, to tell us, okay, this is what the campaign's gonna be. And because I hate to waste food, every one of them walked out with me handing them tomatoes as they left.

• 30:47Steven Bartlett?

  I'm so intrigued to know, I've done many interviews in my life, I've been in a couple of interviews myself, how does someone get interviewed to be the vice president? Like, what are the questions one is asked?

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Well, having been in the position of both being the interviewer and the interviewee, it really, as much as anything, comes down to chemistry.

• 31:10Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, okay.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Because by the time that that interview is happening, it's usually narrowed down to about three people. So all the vetting has been done. I mean, the vetting, I had such a truncated experience when I was running for president of just a couple of weeks, but I think Joe Biden took like nine weeks to make a decision. And so there's vetting. When I was being vetted for vice president, I had a, I don't know, nine-hour interview with a lawyer, going through everything, everything. My taxes, my professional record, everything that was, everything, everything, everything. I mean, talk about a colonoscopy.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  Just virtually, that's kind of what it was. And so when all of that has been done, and it's kind of green light, green light through that, then it's about sitting down and just deciding, because it is going to be a partnership, right? And it has to be. It has to be where you feel that you can trust someone, you could work with them, you are, you're doing it for the same reasons.

• 32:18Steven Bartlett?

  Was it what you thought it was going to be?

• 32:20Speaker 00

  Being vice president?

• 32:22Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  I didn't know exactly what it would be, because there's nothing that can compare to it. I mean, I was the 49th vice president of the United States, there have only been 48 before me, right? And I don't think anything can truly prepare you for what it is, because it is a very unique position, where you are...

• 32:46Speaker 00

  Again, you are number two in command. You so the the seriousness of the responsibility is is that.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  I I give all credit to now the late President Jimmy Carter, who decided when he was president, having come off of Kennedy and Nixon and everything, he decided that the vice president should be given greater responsibilities than had been the case, because God forbid something happens to the president, there should be a smooth succession. And so Walter Mondale was his vice president and was the first to have an office in the West Wing. The responsibilities were, again, to meet with world leaders. The responsibilities were to travel the country on behalf of our administration and our policies.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  It's it's an incredible responsibility. And, you know, meeting with the variety of people who, for the most part, just want us to achieve good things.

• 33:53Steven Bartlett?

  When I was reading your book, Hundred and Seven Days, one of the one of the really surprising things was, but also makes sense when I understand human nature, was that you talk about how some of the president's staff were basically suppressing you a little bit, suppressing your accomplishments, because you're a threat to them. And I think you were told pretty early on, or you'd heard pretty early on from a chief of staff, that the the vice president is kind of seen as a threat to the president.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  So the lore has it that the outgoing chief of staff to the president will tell the incoming chief of staff to the incoming president, regardless of political party, rule number one, watch the vice president. Lore has it that that's the case. And and then I had, of course, run against Joe Biden. I was very acutely aware that I would have to, over and over again, prove my loyalty, that it wouldn't be assumed.

• 34:54Steven Bartlett?

  You say in the book, "The president's staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprung up about me."

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:58Steven Bartlett?

  "The president's inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more."

• 35:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:05Steven Bartlett?

  I was shocked when I read that, but at the same time, understood it.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:10Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's human nature, but also shocked. Because one wouldn't expect that.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  And it was counterproductive. It was absolutely counterproductive.

• 35:20Steven Bartlett?

  Was there a particular moment where you realized that this was happening? For the first time?

• 35:25Speaker 00

  To be candid with you, I had a sense of it for quite some time, but it was after the election that I really started to hear the stories about it. I mean, I had a sense of it. It was clear to me in terms of just the challenges with getting them to uplift, getting them to defend, especially when there were inaccurate, unfair attacks. And then I started to hear more stories after.

• 35:51Steven Bartlett?

  And what you mean by that is when there were unfair media attacks on you, that could quite easily have been rattled or debunked?

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Debunked, yes, yes.

• 35:58Steven Bartlett?

  There was no desire to debunk them?

• 36:01Speaker 00

  There was, there, the staff and the resources under the president as compared to the vice president are enormous. And to the extent that the vice president is being attacked, resources were available, but not used to defend the vice president in the way that they could have, that would have inord to the benefit of everyone involved.

• 36:28Steven Bartlett?

  Because that's what I think. There is an argument to say it was in their interests, because if the, if you and Joe Biden are strong, you're more, Joe Biden's more likely to then win the next election.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  Exactly. That's my point. We rose and fell together.

• 36:43Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 36:45Steven Bartlett?

  And did he, did Joe Biden know that that was happening?

• 36:49Speaker 00

  I don't know if he did.

• 36:51Steven Bartlett?

  But it's the staff underneath him that are in charge of that?

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:54Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so they, so you're saying that you think that they wanted you to be weaker in public perception because that kind of keeps you in your place?

• 37:03Speaker 00

  I think that that was part of it. I do. I think that they decided that, you know, there are far too many people in this world and in professional life who approach things with a zero-sum game.

• 37:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 00

  If I have more, you have less. And it is incredibly short-sighted. And I think it's actually quite provincial thinking when you're talking about the stakes that were at play in our administration and of course in the election.

• 37:37Steven Bartlett?

  And they, you talk about in the book as well on page forty-seven of a hundred and seven days, that they also didn't promote your accomplishments. Because when I read through all the research of the things that you'd accomplished, I wasn't aware.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  I know.

• 37:53Steven Bartlett?

  There doesn't seem to be a megaphone shouting about the things you accomplished. So.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  It was very frustrating. I can't even tell you. Frustrating and painful.

• 38:03Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 38:03Speaker 00

  And well, and also not just for me, but for the people who knew my career and knew what was not being said and what was being said.

• 38:12Steven Bartlett?

  What wasn't being said?

• 38:14Speaker 00

  The accomplishments, the, the credibility of, of my leadership.

• 38:24Steven Bartlett?

  They thought that, and you say this on page fifty-one, if you were shining, then Joe Biden was dimmed. So it was very much in their interests to make sure you were dimmed. One could argue then so that Joe Biden was shining.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that was, again, it was very short-sighted.

• 38:46Steven Bartlett?

  Are you friends with Joe Biden?

• 38:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:49Steven Bartlett?

  Is the relationship good?

• 38:50Speaker 00

  It's a good relationship. I just talked to him two days ago. He called me for my birthday.

• 38:57Steven Bartlett?

  Is it, is it complicated?

• 39:00Speaker 00

  Yes, it's very complicated. It is, and as I write in the book, I, um, it is very complicated. I have a great deal of affection for him. And there were times that I've been quite candid about where he greatly disappointed me. And frankly, you know, angered me.

• 39:27Steven Bartlett?

  Can you give me context on that, where he disappointed and angered you?

• 39:33Speaker 00

  So I write, um, and I, you know, I, I, I thought about this, was I gonna write about it or not? And I, I decided in writing this book, I was gonna just be honest. And these are the facts, and the reader can take what they want from it. On the day of the debate, my debate with Trump.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  And, you know, so going into a presidential debate is an incredibly intense and intensive project, including what is historically happened, that we even called debate camp. Can you imagine? And it's no camp at all. It's going into, um, where you basically are sequestered for a period of time immediately before the debate.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  Where did you get all of these? This is Philippe, who played Donald Trump.

• 40:25Steven Bartlett?

  In your debate camp.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  In my debate camp, and he never broke character, ever.

• 40:30Steven Bartlett?

  So this is a fake Trump that was brought in?

• 40:31Speaker 00

  This is the fake Trump. He would do the makeup, the orange makeup, the long red tie. He was just awful, awful, awful, in the best way, trying to get me prepared. And, um, and there were a lot of people like Philippe, there were a lot of people who are, you know, I, I'm very fortunate. I have people who have been with me for years and years and years through these various offices. And, you know, even if they go on to different positions, they always come back when needed. And so debate camp was this intense, basically, a preparation process where you...

• 41:12Speaker 00

  You know, your team will basically try to, they'll break you and then build you back up. So the day of the debate was after that intense period of preparation. And then that morning, I had a meeting with my team. I thought it was going to be more prep, but they actually were wonderful and just basically said to me, you're ready. So, okay, then being a woman running for president and many women in various high level positions get their hair and makeup done. Back to your point about presentation. And it can take hours. Hair and makeup got done. I'm in the hotel room with Doug, with my husband.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  And the president calls and I, I was told that he wanted to call me so that I'd be ready. And I was so sure it was to buck me up and go, go get him. And he did say that for the first beat. And then he went on to talk about a group of people in Pennsylvania who were saying bad things about me because they heard I was saying bad things about him. And when I hung up the phone, I was just, I was, it was unbelievable. And I was, yes, I was angry and deeply disappointed. It just was so unnecessary.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  There are only two people in the world other than me that has debated this guy, Hillary Clinton and him. And you know what it's like. It's going into a debate with the stakes being that high and, and Trump hadn't agreed to another debate. The stakes were so high. So that's an example of what I mean.

• 43:02Steven Bartlett?

  You took something from that. You took a, an underlying message about one's intentions from that. Because I would, if someone called me in the lead up to debate prep and said something like that to me, I would assume that they don't want the best for me.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  My takeaway is his motivation was all about himself.

• 43:25Steven Bartlett?

  That's what I would assume from that.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, right. Obviously, right. Yeah. It wasn't about my performance at the debate.

• 43:35Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think he wanted you to win the election?

• 43:39Speaker 00

  I do because I was the only one who would be able to preserve his legacy.

• 43:47Steven Bartlett?

  But even that's about him.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Well, if I had to assume one of the reasons why he'd want me to win.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  If, yeah. And of course, you know, that this all wouldn't be happening. I don't think anybody who cares about the future of the country, the democracy, or even just protecting the Constitution of the United States would have wanted this.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:22Steven Bartlett?

  Just a bit of a reminder to me that a lot of people in the highest places in in power are maybe a little bit self-focused.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, that is the case. I think it, um, I think that is the case. I've seen it.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  I've seen it.

• 44:40Steven Bartlett?

  Maybe, dare I say, that it, that's how they get there?

• 44:47Speaker 00

  I think that may be a big part of it if they don't have something else that is the pull or the push.

• 44:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, because I look at your life and your career and I see a dedication to the same thing, which is like serving people. And it's at the expense of financial opportunities and other opportunities you could have pursued. And it seems to be really, really authentic to me that your, your agenda was to serve people. I can't say that about everybody else that I've studied or interviewed in the political environment. And the other thing, the other thing that, so I watch all these debates. I've been, I'm such a big fan of American politics. So I was, I was up at 12 years old watching Obama get inaugurated or whenever it was. I was roughly, I was a young kid at the time. I stay up and watch all the debates. I always have since I was a kid. I watched that debate. But the debate that came before with Biden and Trump, it was so apparently clear that this was not okay.

• 45:35Steven Bartlett?

  And it felt like, it felt like the whole of the Democratic side of politics was pretending everything was okay. That's kind of my observation from the UK. I was like, why are they all pretending everything's fine? But this was clearly an individual that was very much struggling with articulation, with ideas. And in the face of someone like Trump who, to his credit,

• 45:57Steven Bartlett?

  Is able to pounce on that, to be very quick.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  And he, interestingly enough, because of course I watched that debate very closely for many, many reasons, including I had four interviews right after his debate.

• 46:12Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  To speak on behalf of the president during the debate. And what was interesting in that debate was also to watch how it's a very rare circumstance that you see Donald Trump actually moderate. It was fascinating.

• 46:30Steven Bartlett?

  You must have known, you must have, you sat there, you were in LA at the time, right?

• 46:36Speaker 00

  I was in LA at the Fairmont Hotel.

• 46:40Steven Bartlett?

  Watching.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Watching.

• 46:42Steven Bartlett?

  And what was going on?

• 46:43Speaker 00

  Taking vigorous notes. I had ordered, you know, like they had a little crudités plate and I was like, no, this is a pizza night. I ordered pizza for everyone. I had my, a number of people with me, but I had a tight group of people with me in the room. He called me from debate camp.

• 47:01Steven Bartlett?

  Uh huh.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  The president did, Biden did, and I could tell something was a little off. And I was concerned about, I just, I don't think he wanted to debate, is my point. He didn't want that debate. And, you know, it's like any competition you go in, whether it's you're bidding for something, you're, if it's sports, you gotta want it, right? If you don't want to be in the competition, it will absolutely have an impact on your performance. And I don't think he, I'm pretty sure he did not want to debate.

• 47:40Steven Bartlett?

  How'd you know? What were the signs?

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Well, we had conversations about it. I think he got talked into it. And in any event, so I'm watching the debate with my tight team. I wanted it to be a small team so I could just be candid as it's happening, because I know I have four interviews right after. And, you know, in every debate, I don't care who you are, there will be statistic wrong, or, you know, you named this country, but it was that country. That always happens. There is no such thing as a perfect debate. So there will be something to clean up.

• 48:14Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  And I expected that. And then, you know, we saw what we all saw.

• 48:20Steven Bartlett?

  It was a car crash. It was a historic car crash. I actually can't think of a I'm a little bit of a historian of these debates because I I think they're fascinating sort of experiments and demonstrations of human psychology and how the zingers emerge and the binders full of women thing and

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:35Steven Bartlett?

  Obama's whole thing about the Romney and Obama in that debate where they talked about the the F, the the military was no longer horses and bayonets. I just think it's so interesting because it's funny how a sentence or a phrase can sway the general public in such a profound way.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  And stick.

• 48:53Steven Bartlett?

  And stick.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:54Steven Bartlett?

  And then as a marketer, I spent 10 years in marketing, I think about this a lot, how like that that horses and bayonets, the fact that I can remember that, but I can't really remember anything else.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Right. That's interesting.

• 49:03Steven Bartlett?

  You know, the power of the word. So that in my view.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  And the delivery, right? So it's the words combined with the delivery and the timing.

• 49:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. And this is what you learn, right?

• 49:11Speaker 00

  That all has to coincide.

• 49:14Steven Bartlett?

  So what was your strategy going into that debate with Trump? Because you had those same moments where the cats and the dogs and all those all that unbelievable stuff. And and also you at home, I was thinking, oh, she's she's trying to trigger him and it's working.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, because he's so predictable that way.

• 49:29Steven Bartlett?

  What were those things for you?

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Well, the first thing is that we had empty pads on our podium. And in in the debate camp and then therefore when I walked on stage after I shook his hand and went back to my podium, I wrote a smiley face. And because I just decided I was gonna have fun. Because one of the things about these kinds of debates in particular is the person who's having fun wins.

• 50:00Steven Bartlett?

  That's so true. We watched it back the other day.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  You did?

• 50:04Steven Bartlett?

  And you're smiling.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 50:05Steven Bartlett?

  And you you look like you're enjoying it.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 50:07Steven Bartlett?

  And he looks frustrated.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:09Steven Bartlett?

  So that was intentional, was if you look like you're having fun.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  Well, have fun, but though not just look, because I think it's very difficult to look like you're having fun if you're not, right?

• 50:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  So you've got to find, you you have to find, you have to, this is a true for life. You got to see the humor in it. Otherwise, it's just gonna undo you, especially if you're dealing with heavy stuff. You've got to see the humor in it. And, you know, like when he pulled out the cats and dogs thing.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  I couldn't even believe it. I couldn't because here's what happened. So I didn't know that he, that this was being said, right?

• 50:47Steven Bartlett?

  Let's give context for anyone that doesn't know.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Okay, yes, right. You, well.

• 50:50Steven Bartlett?

  Well, so from what I understand, it's faint in my memory, but um, there was this like crazy rumor that I think it was illegal immigrants were eating cats and dogs.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  That Haitian immigrants, regardless of their legal status, in Ohio, were eating their pets, cats and dogs.

• 51:08Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  So I hadn't even heard about it because I'm in debate camp, right? And then two members of my team see him get off his Trump plane with the main purveyor of this nonsense. And then they realize if she's on the plane with him, it is very possible last thing he heard was this thing. So they last minute tell me, by the way, a lot of them call me boss because it's like this is what you do in law enforcement. And it just stuck, right? Hey, boss, we got to tell you something. We didn't mention it to you. There's this whole thing that they're saying on that side about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  And I was like, are you kidding me? That's ridiculous. No, but it's what they're saying. So just it may come up in the debate. Sure enough, it did. But see, here's the thing that I would say to you, Stephen, that, again, one of the reasons I wrote the book is also there are lessons to be learned from those 107 days to be applied today. I believe that part of what is the method is say the outrageous thing. Then everyone is going to focus on that outrageous thing.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  And meanwhile, this is happening. Right? And so meanwhile.

• 52:36Steven Bartlett?

  Misdirection.

• 52:38Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:38Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  And misdirection includes, by the way, talking about immigrants eating cats and dogs and not talking about what's your plan for working Americans to bring down the prices? So then the press covers that whole thing and not, oh, where was his plan for bringing down prices?

• 53:00Steven Bartlett?

  Here's what I've come to learn in the last sort of ten years working in marketing is I have this particular chapter in my last book where I say useless absurdity defines, will define you more as a brand than useful practicality. And what I mean by this.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Right, that's beautifully said.

• 53:17Steven Bartlett?

  Is when I, this is the analogy I give, I went to this gym in Canary Wharf and I walk in and it's got this hundred foot climbing wall. It's a massive gym, incredible. I come home, I tell my girlfriend, I go, babe, this is incredible gym. And then the next sentence out of my mouth is the most absurd thing, because I know that will be the most impactful. So I say, they've even got a 100 foot climbing wall. Because if I say that, it implicitly tells them, you know, tells my girlfriend, this gym is big. And even in my last company, the thing that the press focused on in my office wasn't our work, our case studies, the clients we had, it was that we had this massive blue slide that went into a ball pool. So whenever the press came, they said, can you go stand by the blue slide? It was all about this blue slide.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  Right.

• 53:55Steven Bartlett?

  The most absurd thing garners all the attention. And I actually think to.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  That's really good.

• 53:59Steven Bartlett?

  Trump's strategy is he leads with.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  That's exactly right.

• 54:03Steven Bartlett?

  He's a master labeler, sleepy Joe. You know, you can't.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  Is very gifted. Don't discount the guy in terms of that.

• 54:11Steven Bartlett?

  How do you beat someone playing that game?

• 54:13Speaker 00

  You have to be relentless on focusing on what's actually happening.

• 54:18Steven Bartlett?

  Does that work?

• 54:19Speaker 00

  And it means, it means also deconstructing so that, I mean, one of the things, for example, that I've been talking about recently is there's a word that applies so well to him in this era, which is a phrase, gaslighting. Right, so there's a whole lot of gaslighting happening, which is basically misrepresenting, lying, scapegoating, distracting, right? From what's really occurring. Including like this whole thing where he's coming down so hard with these mass deportations, which is picking a lot of American citizens, by the way, in the process. Hardworking people in the process. And what he would have people believe is that

• 54:59Speaker 00

  your predicament is because, this is what he actually is trying to sell. Your predicament is because of relatively powerless people. So you don't focus on the powerful people.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  He's basically saying to the American people, you have less because of people who have even less than you.

• 55:24Steven Bartlett?

  Here's the counterpoint, it works.

• 55:26Speaker 00

  Yes, evidently. But there is, you know, but at some point, the veneer and the, the, the deflection has to wear off. I don't know when exactly that is going to happen. I think that, you know, listen, um, the tariffs taking hold and when we get around to the holiday season and people realize how many toys are made in China. What strengthens that approach is the rapid amount of distant disinformation that is spreading. It's so much and it just spreads like wildfire and trying to stay in front of that with fact, much less to your point, practical messaging and logic. It is a real challenge.

• 56:07Steven Bartlett?

  It's funny because I, I sit here a lot with neuroscientists and psychologists who tell me about how the brain works and they, at, at a simple level, they talk about these two parts of the brain, which is like the rational prefrontal cortex and then the emotional center, like the limbic system, the amygdala. And they always tell me that the most memorable, um, the part of the brain that holds memories the easiest and the best and that garners the most attention is the emotional center of the brain, the amygdala. So if I say that these people, these brown people are coming over and they're rapists and murderers. It's much, it's much more emotionally captivating than you telling me about like.

• 56:43Speaker 00

  Statistics on how America recovered faster than any so-called wealthy country economically from the pandemic.

• 56:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I'll forget that within 10 seconds of you just saying it.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  I know.

• 56:54Steven Bartlett?

  But the rapists and murderers thing.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  I know.

• 56:56Steven Bartlett?

  Like, my objective sense goes that, well, no, come on, this is not the problem. But there's part of me that remembers that, and that's even as someone who I think is relatively informed on the reality of the situation. I still, I remember Dr., I think it was Dr. Tali Sharot, she's a neuroscientist. So she understands that vaccines don't give kids autism.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:16Steven Bartlett?

  But she recalls this time in the election many years ago.

• 57:19Speaker 00

  Circumcision doesn't either.

• 57:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 57:22Steven Bartlett?

  She recalls, I think it was Ben Carlson or someone's talking about the science. And then she, the camera pans to Trump and Trump is saying, recounting a story where a child who was this big, three-year-old, beautiful child, and they came up to her with a needle this big. And they gave her the vaccine and she got autism. Now, science on one hand, an emotional story on the other.

• 57:45Speaker 00

  I know.

• 57:45Steven Bartlett?

  Tali, I think, said to me at the time, she goes, even though I know it's not true, there was part of me that was a little bit scared.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  I know.

• 57:52Steven Bartlett?

  So my question here is, how does, how does the Democratic Party win in such a war? When you're being fought with emotion and fear, how do you win with logic and rationality? Like, how?

• 58:06Speaker 00

  I'll, I'll answer your question directly, but I want to just add to the question that I think part of the question has to be, what is the responsible of media? What is the role of corporate-owned media, God bless independent media? Because a lot of it is also about what set of information are people working with? You know, for example, I've talked to a number of people who voted for me, saying to them, who are having debates, disagreements, you know, ending relationships with people who voted for him. And part of what I'm asking people to do

• 58:51Speaker 00

  is not to assume that the people with whom they disagree are working with the same set of information. Now, I didn't say facts, because two plus two is four.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  But I think it's a big mistake for us to assume we're all working with the same information. And then when you compound that with, you know, intentional efforts to misinform and disinform and target it. I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee when we investigated Russia's interference in the 2016 election. We declassified our findings, we made them public. It included the fact that this adversarial nation included in what they targeted, they targeted black voters. With the assumption that there are certain people and demographically certain groups who are more susceptible to an argument about why they should distrust their government

• 59:46Speaker 00

  because they have a lived experience that tells them that. And so I would say flippantly, oh, so now all of a sudden the issue of race in America is a national security issue, so everybody needs to deal with it. We know that certain demographics are targeted with misinformation, be they what we've seen around targeting young voters or other groups based on race or gender. So when we talk about the role of the Democratic Party, there is a very big role to play. And there is a role for us to require social media companies to play, media companies to play, and so on. Because information is coming from all of these places.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  And the challenge is as big as, are we all working with facts?

• 1:00:35Steven Bartlett?

  We have a team at my company, Flight Story, called Flight X. And their primary responsibility is innovating across our business so that we can save time, money, be better at what we do. And one of the recent challenges I've set to the team Flight X is to find ways to save our company more time. And in that conversation, Fiverr Pro, who are a sponsor of this podcast, came up. Fiverr Pro, if you don't know, is like a strategic lever we pull. It's a marketplace of experts across 750 different categories. Every single one of them hand-vetted for quality, and they have enterprise-grade reliability. And because I'm quite curious about About what's possible with something like Fiverr Pro. We're going to go one step further. And over the next few weeks, we're running an experiment with Fiverr Pro

• 1:01:18Steven Bartlett?

  to see just how much time we can save and how much we can unlock using their talent to accelerate our business. So let's see how it goes. And in the meantime, if you're looking for a player talent to give your team time back, head to fiverr.com/dairy and get 10% off your first order when you use my code diary. A word you said that piqued my interest, which is the word independent media.

• 1:01:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:01:44Steven Bartlett?

  I am independent media.

• 1:01:46Speaker 00

  Bless you.

• 1:01:47Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm in a group of my peers, like the big podcasters in the world, like Joe Rogan, et cetera, and Alex Cooper, I know who's show you went on as part of your campaign. The media landscape is changing before our eyes.

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  Rapidly.

• 1:02:00Steven Bartlett?

  You're sat in a set now, you're the Madam Vice President. You're sat in effectively my kitchen. My old kitchen where this started, you know? And that's crazy. Like 20 years ago, the thought that you'd come to my kitchen is such a crazy thing. But it's in part now because of the democratization of these platforms and creating the content is much cheaper and we have distribution now across these big platforms. Many would say that it changed the course of the election, podcasting. Not just the podcasts you did or didn't go on, but just the conversations that take place on these podcasts. And as I have to say, you know, as podcasters, we don't have the same rigor as traditional journalists, who I respect a lot. We don't have the same teams and real time, all those kinds of things. Podcasting, there was lots of conversation around you going on Joe Rogan's show or not going.

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  Which I write about.

• 1:02:46Steven Bartlett?

  What is the, what is the truth there for anyone that hasn't yet read the book? Because Trump did like 100 million views on Joe Rogan's show. And in three hours sat there getting to know Trump. And for better or for worse, you probably walked away from that conversation feeling like you knew who he was.

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  I wanted to do Joe Rogan's show. And there was a lot of games being played, but I wanted to do Joe Rogan's show. I think podcasting is a very powerful medium for people to get information. And, and to your point, a lot of people, that is a main source of information. And it's important for us to support that.

• 1:03:28Steven Bartlett?

  Joe says you wanted, he wanted him to come to you, which is very un-Joe like in terms of he doesn't really travel. In hindsight.

• 1:03:38Steven Bartlett?

  Do you wish you'd gone and done the show for three hours at his studio in hindsight?

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  It, I'd, I mean, really, it just would be, what, what were we giving up? I wanted to do his show and a lot of people advised me not to do a show because they assumed, as it turned out to be correct, that he was supporting Trump and that it would not be a productive piece for me. But just like when I went on Fox News with Bret Baer, my perspective was they may have their bias, but there are people that listen who are open minded and I'm gonna go there and give them a chance to get to know me and give me a chance to make my case to them. So that was my perspective on Joe Rogan, just like it was my perspective on Fox. There was a lot of games being played around the scheduling and it didn't happen.

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  And, you know, I, I don't have anything against, certainly not against the people who turn on to Joe Rogan and would love to be able to talk with them in a direct manner, as I wanted to during the campaign.

• 1:04:39Steven Bartlett?

  Do you, in hindsight, wish you'd just put your foot down and said, I'm gonna go do it?

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  I don't know if it would have made a difference.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  But yeah, no, I wanted to do it, so let me just say that, right? So I wanted to do it and it would have been great to do and I think it would have been helpful to do.

• 1:04:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  So it's just, I mean, the, the issue was really about what's the trade off in terms of votes and where I spend my time? Do I spend my time traveling for five hours and back versus being for that period of time in a swing state?

• 1:05:07Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  And that was the trade off.

• 1:05:09Steven Bartlett?

  I guess it goes to the point-

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  So it wasn't about, I don't wanna do Joe Rogan or, it, it, it, believe me, at that point in a campaign, it's not about, oh, is somebody coming to me or me going to them? I could care less about that. Pride is not associated with it.

• 1:05:22Steven Bartlett?

  It is more about?

• 1:05:23Speaker 00

  It's, it is literally about return on investment.

• 1:05:27Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, and this goes to one point about efficiency earlier.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's exactly, exactly right. The only, there's only one candidate. So where am I spending my time to get the greatest return on the investment?

• 1:05:38Steven Bartlett?

  If I was in charge of your campaign?

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:41Steven Bartlett?

  I would have a hundred percent- Put you in that environment, even when I look at the trade off, in part because someone like me, and I consider myself to be like genuinely really objective.

• 1:05:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Steven Bartlett?

  And my friends know me as being not just objective on camera, but objective in my personal life. I would have, when you see a certain environment present someone in a certain way.

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Steven Bartlett?

  You really like the, the thing that can burst that bubble is seeing that person go into that environment. And like when I saw you on Fox News, I watched that interview as well.

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Steven Bartlett?

  Um, I actually think it strengthens, strengthens your supporters and actually those independents who are in that space too can, can get a feel for you.

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:06:20Steven Bartlett?

  I would have loved to see, and I actually think, I hope in this next election cycle, when is it 2028?

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:24Steven Bartlett?

  I really would love to see both sides going to both sides. And I actually think that's happening now, going into those, going into those environments. I do also tend to think that Joe would have been fair.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Well, that's why I wanted to do it. I had to assume that that was possible.

• 1:06:40Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:06:41Speaker 00

  And either way, he's very popular.

• 1:06:43Steven Bartlett?

  I would have loved to watch that.

• 1:06:45Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I regret that we didn't do it. I definitely regret that we didn't do it. And, um, listen, I have been doing my work long enough that for me, it has, I've never had the luxury of saying, I don't want to go into uncomfortable situations.

• 1:07:05Steven Bartlett?

  Mm hmm, mm hmm.

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  You would need to have a different profession.

• 1:07:07Steven Bartlett?

  PR people some, some can sometimes fuck things up for, for other people, I think. I think in the new world, there's this new requirement to be more like a glass box and less like a black box. I think in 20 years ago, the whole strategy of businesses and brands and a CEOs, executives was to basically be black boxes where the PR team paints the perception on the outside. And in this digital world where it's like the media and platforms are distributed and all of my employees here have cameras on them at all times.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Steven Bartlett?

  The, the defense is like transparency because I'm not going to let you craft my narrative, you're going to see it.

• 1:07:43Speaker 00

  That's why I wrote the book.

• 1:07:44Steven Bartlett?

  Exactly.

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  History is going to write about those 107 days and I'm not going to let that piece of American history be written without my voice being present.

• 1:07:52Steven Bartlett?

  Are you going to run again?

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 1:07:54Steven Bartlett?

  Because I look at the polls, I looked at the polls and you're leading for the Democratic side. And there isn't really a clear Democratic candidate. I, I interviewed Gavin Newsom as well, but when I look at the polls, you're still leading.

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Steven Bartlett?

  You don't know.

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  I don't know, honestly.

• 1:08:08Steven Bartlett?

  I feel like you know in your heart.

• 1:08:10Speaker 00

  What do I know in my heart?

• 1:08:11Steven Bartlett?

  I feel like you know if you're you're gonna run in your heart. Or if you have a calling or feeling to. Is something germinating?

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  I you know, I'm focused on the book tour sincerely.

• 1:08:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  And part of how I'm feeling right now. Part of the reason I didn't run for governor of California. I really don't want to be transactional right now. You know, I don't. I don't want to be present. Because I'm asking for a vote.

• 1:08:38Steven Bartlett?

  OK, yeah. What's the case for running again and what's the case for not running again?

• 1:08:46Speaker 00

  I think the case for running again is if I can make a difference. Honestly, if I can make a difference. You know? If I feel that I can offer something as president of the United States. That would be. Not only. Uplifting to the American people, but would be. About, you know, getting us. On a correct trajectory.

• 1:09:18Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know what my next question is gonna be?

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:09:20Steven Bartlett?

  Do you believe that you can offer something to the United States that's gonna be uplifting and get us on a better trajectory?

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  I mean, that's why I ran the last time. So twenty eight is a far. It's I mean, it's practically tomorrow, but it's it's not. And we'll have to see what happens over the course of these next few months. Several months.

• 1:09:41Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a case against running again? What would that be?

• 1:09:45Speaker 00

  You know, it's difficult to run for president. Takes a toll on your family. Takes a real toll on your family. You know, anyone running for president. Should really take very seriously the decision. Because it is not for the faint of heart. You have to be able to take a punch and throw a punch. But you gotta be able to take a punch.

• 1:10:09Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of punches.

• 1:10:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's something that comes with success, whether you're running for president of the United States, build a successful business, have a public profile. Which is, among the difficult aspects of it, and there are so many positive aspects, but among the difficult aspects, is putting yourself out there in a way that you invariably will be in a position, hopefully not with a lot of people, but where you will be misunderstood. That's an awful feeling.

• 1:10:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it is, yeah.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  Oh, it's an awful feeling to be misunderstood. In this environment in particular, invariably you will put yourself in a position where some people will hate you. It's awful. They don't know you, but they'll hate you. And so to do anything that is about distinguishing yourself by virtue of the thing you can offer or a differentiation from yourself and others of, you know, in a similar category, it exposes you to a lot.

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  And so you have to know why you're doing it. And I believe that you have to do it for something that is bigger than yourself. Not about your own power, not about your ego, not about your entitlement. It has to be, because to endure the, not just the process of getting into the job, but the job itself. You gotta be clear about why you're there.

• 1:12:04Steven Bartlett?

  On that night when you, the results come in and you realize that the election hasn't gone your way and that Trump is going to be elected, what would I have seen if I was a fly on the wall in the room?

• 1:12:13Speaker 00

  I was in a state of shock.

• 1:12:15Steven Bartlett?

  Really? Did you think the day before that you were going to win?

• 1:12:20Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, I did.

• 1:12:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. And so when did the proverbial penny drop?

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  When I got a call from my campaign manager that it looks like we need 200,000 more votes that we can't find.

• 1:12:36Speaker 00

  Meaning it's just the map, the numbers. And the thing I kept saying over and over again, I was in a state of shock. I was, I was so inarticulate, but maybe very articulate. What I kept saying over and over again is, my god, my god, my god.

• 1:12:55Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:12:56Speaker 00

  Over and I couldn't stop. I, um, I haven't felt that emotion, anything similar to the emotion I felt that day and for quite some time. Um, other than

• 1:13:11Speaker 00

  the grief I felt when my mother died.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  I, I knew what was gonna happen to our country. I knew, I knew the harm that was gonna happen to people. And I, I knew it. I knew what was gonna happen. You know, it's, um,

• 1:13:34Speaker 00

  it's not, you're like, it's not about winning versus losing. It was never, it was, I knew the consequence of the outcome of that election, and that pained me so.

• 1:13:51Steven Bartlett?

  I can still see the pain in your face.

• 1:13:53Speaker 00

  Oh, it's awful.

• 1:13:56Speaker 00

  It's awful. You look at what's happening, it's, I mean,

• 1:14:02Speaker 00

  uh, it, it's awful. But right now, the man is building a ballroom for a bunch of his rich friends while millions and millions of people are about to lose their health coverage in terms of being able to afford premiums for their health care. You look at the weaponization of the Department of Justice against political enemies, how titans of industry are so afraid.

• 1:14:36Speaker 00

  That the capitulation that we're seeing across the board, whether it be universities, law firms, media companies, what's happening around gutting the Department of Education, lunch programs for low-income children, IEPs, Individual Education for Special Needs Kids. Recently, I'm hearing the stories from mothers in particular whose children have special needs and they can't get an IEP. These are babies, the children who are most in need. Their parents who are struggling. If you know a parent who has a special needs child, what that means to their life emotionally,

• 1:15:21Speaker 00

  physically, financially, and we're not even giving them assistance with their educational program for their children? Meanwhile, you're building a gilded ballroom? So the harm is extraordinary. All those working people, the tariffs, what this is meaning for people. He made a promise that on day one, he was going to bring down prices. And prices are higher for groceries. Inflation is higher. Unemployment is higher. And by the way, Stephen, it must be said, the failure of the Democratic Party will be, going forward,

• 1:16:03Speaker 00

  to overlook the fact that it is bigger than this one guy. It is not just about this one person who occupies the Oval Office. We are witnessing what is the swift implementation, a high-velocity event, that is the swift implementation of a plan that has been decades in the making. The strategy for dealing with this moment has to include having some historical perspective on how we got here. That Project 2025 didn't just fall out of the sky. The idea of going after public education, that's not new. The Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation. What's the gerrymandering of districts, the packing the court? This stuff, this is about an agenda?

• 1:16:52Speaker 00

  That is not going to begin and end with one person. And the destruction is profound. There are, however, a small group of people who have access to the power and are close to the power, who are doing quite well. The rest, you look what's going to happen in terms of working people.

• 1:17:18Steven Bartlett?

  Does the, again, as an objective observer, the Democratic Party needs to take responsibility for, you know, because the US operates as this sort of two-party system. Where it's kind of like this person versus this person, left versus right.

• 1:17:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:17:33Steven Bartlett?

  The left lost. They played it wrong. From the Democrats' perspective, they're paying the price of losing the game of chess. So I think about the Democratic Party and, you know, they can point at the consequences of losing that game, but I feel like the Democratic Party needs to get their shit together so that they don't lose the game again.

• 1:17:50Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 1:17:51Steven Bartlett?

  And that's the personal responsibility point, which is like, how do you stop yourself from finding yourself in a situation where at the last minute, Joe Biden is pulled out with 100 days to go and no one mentioned it? I mean, you say in the book that you, at the time, thought of it as grace. You talk about this on page 46. You say you thought it was grace to not basically mention that there was a problem and grace not to tell Joe Biden to pull out earlier. But actually, in hindsight, you now think it was probably reckless not to tell him to pull out.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  On my part, yeah.

• 1:18:19Steven Bartlett?

  So what is that to you? What does the Democratic Party need to do to?

• 1:18:24Speaker 00

  First of all, you know, if I had, if I had done it over, again, part of the reflection. You know, we had the infrastructure deal. We had the CHIPS Act. So we're building back up America's infrastructure. It's 150 years old. CHIPS is about. Manufacturing chips, US manufacturing, both incredibly important. If I had to do it over again, I would have first gone with our family policy. That was about extension of the child tax credit, affordable childcare, paid family leave. We needed to deal with the immediate issues affecting the American people.

• 1:19:09Speaker 00

  In fact, that's why I ran for the 107 days on those issues, including having Medicare cover, for example, for people in the sandwich generation who are taking care of young children and older parents. Medicare cover home health care, right? Why I offered for small businesses that they would get a $50,000 tax credit because nobody can, for startup small businesses, because nobody can start up a small business on a $5,000 tax credit, right?

• 1:19:36Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think the left is somewhat seen as the enemy of entrepreneurship?

• 1:19:39Speaker 00

  I think there is that perception. I don't know if that is the case in reality, but I think we need, we have some work to do.

• 1:19:47Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Speaker 00

  I mean, I talk about in the book, for example, I think it was a mistake to not invite Elon Musk when we had, and I'm no fan of his, but I admire his work as an innovator and as, you know, what he has done in terms of American manufacturing of electric vehicles. We should have had him at the White House when we had all the other electric vehicle, American electric vehicle manufacturers, right?

• 1:20:14Steven Bartlett?

  I think this is part of the problem. When I read that, I was really happy to read that because you can disagree with someone in part, but still have the nuance to be able to acknowledge this part's good. But if you just shut them out because of one thing, then you really drive division.

• 1:20:28Speaker 00

  I mean, this gets back to my earlier point about what's the motivation for the decisions that a leader makes. And the motivation has to be what is for the greater good and have the ability to put aside, you know, those things that may fall in the context of being more personal. But I think we have to do a better job of also focusing on being a bit more bold. For example, I think we should reduce voting age to 16.

• 1:21:04Speaker 00

  I'll tell you why.

• 1:21:07Speaker 00

  So, Gen Z.

• 1:21:11Speaker 00

  Their age about 13 through 27. They've only known the climate crisis. They missed substantial parts of their education because of the pandemic.

• 1:21:22Speaker 00

  If they're in high school or college, especially in college, it is very likely that whatever they've chosen as their major for study may not result in an affordable wage.

• 1:21:35Speaker 00

  They've coined the term "climate anxiety" to describe fear of not only being able to buy a home, but that fear it'll be wiped out by extreme weather, but fear of having children.

• 1:21:49Speaker 00

  It is expected that Gen Z will have 10 to 12 jobs in their lifetime. They are a larger number than Boomers. They're a specific generation of people who are going to impact our nation and the world. And I think we must invest in them, but I think that they are rightly impatient with a lot of what is the tradition of leadership right now. And if they were able to vote, because they know everything that's happening right now is going to impact them more than anybody older than them, for the most part, in terms of how these systems work.

• 1:22:25Speaker 00

  If they're voting right now at 16 and up, they're going to be talking about the importance of climate. They're going to be talking about the importance of figuring out how AI is going to affect the future of the workforce. They're going to be focused on what are we really doing about affordable housing? And basically, in politics, here's the hard truth about this. There are two centers of power that tend to influence how politicians think. Groups that vote the most and people who write the most checks.

• 1:22:59Speaker 00

  And I'm going to go every day with the people, the people, and thinking about how do we strengthen people actually going to the polls and voting? Back to my point, in 2024, one-third of the electorate didn't vote. Let's focus on why. And are we talking with them? Are we offering them bold solutions? Are we bringing ideas forward that are speaking to their immediate needs? Are we doing it in an effective way? Back to your point about podcasts and other mediums.

• 1:23:33Steven Bartlett?

  If you run again, do you think you'll go into those more right-leaning environments, media environments? Would you go on, you know, I'm not saying Joe's right wing, but would you go on Joe's show?

• 1:23:43Speaker 00

  Certainly. I would go on Joe's show if I'm not running. I have a lot to say.

• 1:23:47Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know when you'll make a decision? Like, what's the timeframe for someone?

• 1:23:50Speaker 00

  I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I obviously, at some point, will need to make the decision. I haven't thought about the timeline. Probably in the next year. I mean, it's, what is it, November of '28? Primaries would be in June.

• 1:24:04Steven Bartlett?

  And since that day when Trump won the election and you were sat there saying, "Oh, God, oh, God," under your breath, how has the balance of that decision shifted over time? Has the conviction grown from that moment? Like, if I had asked you in that moment when you were saying, "Oh, God, oh, God," under your breath, would you have said, "Never again"? And today, are you more on the side of potentially?

• 1:24:26Speaker 00

  That's a great question. I think, well, I could start with this. I think my family would have said, "Never again." I think that as time has gone by, and people have had a chance, including myself, to kind of sit with it, reflect on it. Writing the book was very cathartic, being away from it in terms of space and time. It has a way of mitigating the pain of what that process was.

• 1:24:55Steven Bartlett?

  Just like grief.

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:58Steven Bartlett?

  Use the word grief to describe that feeling. So you get to acceptance at some point and.

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, you're right. That's right. And you get to process it in a way that also is about what's my role to play? And what could I have done differently as a way to help guide future decisions, whatever that be?

• 1:25:20Steven Bartlett?

  I've built companies from scratch and backed many more. And there's a blind spot that I keep seeing in early stage founders. They spend very little time thinking about HR. And it's not because they're reckless or they don't care. It's because they're obsessed with building their companies and I can't fault them for that. At that stage, you're thinking about the product, how to attract new customers, how to grow your team, really how to survive. And HR slips down the list because it doesn't feel urgent, but sooner or later it is. And when things get messy, tools like our sponsor today, Justworks, go from being a nice to have to being a necessity. Something goes sideways and you find yourself having conversations you did not see coming. This is when you learn that HR really is the infrastructure of your company. And without it, things wobble. And Justworks stops you learning this the hard way.

• 1:26:03Steven Bartlett?

  It takes care of the stuff that would otherwise drain your energy and your time, automating payroll, health insurance benefits, and it gives your team human support at any hour. It grows with your small business from startup through to growth, even when you start hiring team members abroad. So if you want HR support, that's there through the exciting times and the challenging times, head to justworks.com now. That's justworks.com.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  Right, guys, I'm gonna go get Steve. The guest is here. Ready?

• 1:26:32Steven Bartlett?

  Come in.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, Steve! What are you doing?

• 1:26:36Steven Bartlett?

  This is a Bontage face mask. It's good for blemishes, wrinkles, clears up the skin. It's red light. Have you not used it before?

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:26:44Steven Bartlett?

  Have you tried this before? It's really, really good. It shines red light on your face, which helps increase and boost collagen production. I actually found it out because of the missus. Seeing her wearing it, she terrified me a couple of nights in a row. I thought it was to scare people with, but actually it's really, really good for your skin. So they are a sponsor of the podcast and I've been using it every day for about a year and a half now. Wow, Steve, you seem to look great. Yes, and Bon Charge ships worldwide with easy returns and a year-long warranty on all of their products. So, visit boncharge.com/diary for 25% off on any product site-wide. But you have to order through that link. That's boncharge.com/diary with code DIARY. You talked about being bold. Is that also in communication?

• 1:27:29Steven Bartlett?

  Because as I've seen you on this book tour, it seems your communication has become increasingly more bold. I've seen you get up a couple of times and start shouting a little bit at some things that pissed you off and being a bit more unfiltered. And I think, funnily, I think polish is actually detrimental. That's what I love about podcasting. It's so unpolished. Like, I sit here in my fucking socks and it just, there's no, your team doesn't...

• 1:27:53Speaker 00

  No pretense.

• 1:27:54Steven Bartlett?

  There's no pretense. There's nothing you said I couldn't ask you at all.

• 1:27:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:27:57Steven Bartlett?

  I was wondering if that's, you've noticed that in yourself and if that's, you think that's important.

• 1:28:04Speaker 00

  Right, like, am I just like, fuck it?

• 1:28:13Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:28:14Speaker 00

  Don't ask the question with pretense.

• 1:28:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I mean. You're just like, fuck it, now it doesn't matter. Because the book had fuck it energy.

• 1:28:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think there is that energy in the book. But just like, but here's part of it that I, in writing it and now, this is how I feel about it. In so many ways, I've been in the belly of the beast.

• 1:28:40Speaker 00

  And I, I feel that the consequence of an election for President of the United States impacts billions of people around the world.

• 1:28:55Speaker 00

  And yet, the process can be so opaque.

• 1:29:02Speaker 00

  And what I also hope to do with the book is just lift up the hood on it so people could see how it runs. And in a way that if it's for a journalist, if it's for a high school student, if it's for someone's grandmother, to confirm or enlighten around what people think it is in a way that they can see themselves in their own power, you know? And that does require demystifying it. And I guess part of demystifying is, yeah, like, I'm not going to hold on to, oh, this kind of thing should not be talked about.

• 1:29:40Steven Bartlett?

  Do you regret running with only 107 days' notice? Do you wish you hadn't run?

• 1:29:45Speaker 00

  No, I don't regret running. I wish we had more time. I truly wish we had more time. Truly wish we had more time. I don't regret running.

• 1:29:55Steven Bartlett?

  Had you known the outcome, would you have still run?

• 1:29:58Speaker 00

  Probably, because, you know, one of the things that happened, and to this day, men and women, girls and boys, come up to me and say there was something about that campaign that excited something in them. I can't tell you the number of people who have come up to me and said, I decided to run for office because you ran. The number of people who have come up to me and said, I decided to go to law school because you inspired me with what? The number of people who have told me about their young children who, you know, saw something and got excited about it and wanted to be a part of it. I don't regret any of that.

• 1:30:43Speaker 00

  I absolutely believe that we turned something on. In fact, I'm going to say this differently because it's not like people didn't have it in them. They had it in them. But there was something that those 107 days did to welcome, to invite, to grow the optimism and, dare I say, the joy that people do carry with them. And what I hope to do with my voice right now is to remind everyone Please don't let your spirit be defeated. We may not have won the election, but our spirit can't be defeated because then they really win. And sometimes the fight takes a while, right?

• 1:31:25Speaker 00

  So I don't regret having run in spite of the outcome. But I do regret that we did not have more time.

• 1:31:37Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, you've got more time now.

• 1:31:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, time to do a podcast.

• 1:31:41Steven Bartlett?

  Time to run for president as well, potentially. I am, I look at, I've got two pictures here, which I thought are beautifully sweet. I'll show you both of them, but I am, yeah, these, these two pictures here.

• 1:31:52Speaker 00

  Ah, my doggy, yeah.

• 1:31:56Steven Bartlett?

  How, you know, when, if I was in a situation where the election results had come in and I'd had that call from my, my team saying that there's 200,000 votes we can't find, I think I'd probably be turning to my, my partner in those moments.

• 1:32:11Speaker 00

  Oh, I definitely did.

• 1:32:13Steven Bartlett?

  Talk to me about that. What's, what role did he play?

• 1:32:15Speaker 00

  I mean, he is, it sounds so corny, but he truly is my rock. He is, um, my husband is just fully self-actualized. He's not pretending to be anything he's not. He is a strong man who cares about his family, cares about hard work. He is loyal. He has a sense of humor. He's very encouraging. He's very honest. And, you know, I want that for anyone and everyone. I know you talk with a lot of people and, you know, about advice, about career and all of that. For any of us, what I want for anyone who has ambition for success,

• 1:32:59Speaker 00

  have in your life, and it doesn't have to be a lot of people, but that circle of people who have some understanding of what you're going through and are there when you want to laugh at the thing you're not supposed to laugh about. You want to use the words you don't use wherever you pray.

• 1:33:22Speaker 00

  The people who, you know, I talk about, you know, if you if you slip and fall, they'll laugh at you and then pick you up and push you back out there. And none of us has achieved success without those people in our lives. And it might be your spouse, it might be your partner, it might be a family member. It could be anybody. But but be intentional about having those people in your life because, look, this is life. They're, you know, so cliche, they're going to be the ups, they're going to be the downs. It's it's the it's the beauty of living that, you know, it involves the whole spectrum. But when you have people that can be with you on your journey, it just makes it better.

• 1:34:08Steven Bartlett?

  Do you remember what he said to you that night?

• 1:34:13Speaker 00

  Well, he was in as much of a state of shock as I was. We didn't, I have to admit, we were not very articulate that night.

• 1:34:21Steven Bartlett?

  How long did that last?

• 1:34:23Speaker 00

  Well,

• 1:34:26Speaker 00

  not until I started writing the book and getting to the chapter on election night. Do you know that was the first time Doug and I talked about election night?

• 1:34:35Steven Bartlett?

  Really? How many weeks, months was that?

• 1:34:38Speaker 00

  Months. We had never talked about election night. Never, never talked about election night. It was when I was writing the book. That's when he told me something I had no idea, which is he and my brother-in-law had been campaigning on election day in Michigan. All felt good. I remember talking to him and he said, it feels good out here. Everybody's saying it feels good. Then on their way back to DC, they got a call from a friend of ours who was a Democrat, who was a pundit on Fox News. And he was in their boiler room, their war room. And he calls Doug and my brother-in-law, Tony, to say, what are you guys hearing? Because what I'm hearing concerns me.

• 1:35:24Speaker 00

  I didn't know that happened. All I knew was Doug went campaigning with Tony. I was campaigning. Everybody was campaigning. I had a house full of family. When he came back to the house, I knew something was like a little off in retrospect. What I didn't know is he had that information. And he had gone up the stairs to take a shower and pray. And I didn't know until we talked about that chapter, because we talked about that night. And then I was talking to him about, we always do friends and family dinner. And I said, Doug, remember the tables? And do you remember who was sitting at our table?

• 1:36:07Speaker 00

  And then they said, I said, remember when I gave the toast? He said, you didn't give the toast. You didn't give a toast. I said, I did. He said, no, you're thinking about one of the other events, because we used to do dinners in that room. No, it was our friends and family dinner. I gave a toast. So I looked for the photographs of that night, and I found one in there. I am standing, giving a toast. Doug was so, in his head at that point, worried about what he heard from our friend, about what Fox News was reporting in their boiler room. He didn't really experience any of that. You know, have you ever had those? But you've just like, something is so weighing on, that you're not experiencing anything that, because that's all you're thinking.

• 1:36:51Speaker 00

  But he didn't want to tell me that night.

• 1:36:53Steven Bartlett?

  Did you tell?

• 1:36:54Speaker 00

  Because he prayed it was going to be different.

• 1:36:55Steven Bartlett?

  In hindsight, could you tell that something was off with him?

• 1:36:57Speaker 00

  In hindsight, I could tell. And I, um, and, yeah. And we never, you know, because we, we had to function. We had a house full of people, family. The next day, because we were going to go to Howard University's campus, my alma mater, to give a victory speech the night of the election. Told everybody to come back the next day. And so then I had to get ready to go and give a speech, which was a concession speech. And actually, to the point of, you know,

• 1:37:39Speaker 00

  I had to reconcile, I would close every rally by saying, when we fight, we win. And it was not as simplistic as, well, you win some, you lose some. And I was trying to figure out, how do I, especially for all those young people, how do I help them reconcile that? And on the way to the, giving the speech, I wrote into the speech, well, sometimes the fight takes a while. But when I got, so when we got to the, when we got to Howard, we were in the, you know, green room and our family was there. So this is how awful I am. I'm looking, everybody's crying, and I just looked at them and said, "We are not having a pity party." "We are not having a pity party."

• 1:38:20Speaker 00

  And I was just on function, you know? And then it was, um, and then it was, you know, I had the, we, we ended up, we had a, a trip planned to Hawaii for vacation from many, many months ago, and there was an emergency happening in the world. And so I couldn't go, and we couldn't go. And we forgot that we actually, because we had paid to rent this house. And my team, being so great, they're like, "Why don't we see if we can get you to go to that house now?" And as I reflected on it, it was literally, it wasn't a vacation. It was like the oxygen mask just dropped and we put it on

• 1:39:06Speaker 00

  and went to Hawaii. And some friends of ours met us there. And we were like zombies, you know, for a while. It was just, it was, we, it was a very difficult thing to process.

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  Is that depression?

• 1:39:22Speaker 00

  Um, probably. I mean, it's, it's a, it's...

• 1:39:29Speaker 00

  There is the thing about one, about, you know, going, going, going, going, going. And then all of a sudden, so there is that, which is just, your body is physically used to this thing that all of a sudden stops. And I've had that happen every time I've run and win even, right?

• 1:39:50Steven Bartlett?

  They call it gold medal depression.

• 1:39:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, right, right, right.

• 1:39:53Steven Bartlett?

  Even when you win the gold medal, people get depressed because...

• 1:39:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, because you've been, you've been functioning the whole time in a very competitive nature and it's fight or flight and it's adrenaline, adrenaline, surging, surging, surging. And then there is the piece that is about, I mean, it lasted for days, which is almost that, you know, they talk about when people lose a limb, there's the, like the ghost or the phantom.

• 1:40:22Steven Bartlett?

  Phantom limb, yeah.

• 1:40:23Speaker 00

  Right, the phantom limb. And I had a hard time reconciling, we can't still do something about it. I had a, just, I knew, it's just like I knew I was going through the stages of grief. I knew, you know, so that's good to be able to put a label on something, but it doesn't mean that you don't otherwise experience it.

• 1:40:42Steven Bartlett?

  You weren't helpless at that point, yeah.

• 1:40:43Speaker 00

  I wasn't, I was just like, there's something, there must be something I can do.

• 1:40:47Steven Bartlett?

  Do you reflect on, I know your mother passed away when you, you're in your early 40s, I think she was 70 years old roughly, and she was colon cancer.

• 1:40:56Speaker 00

  She was just two, she was, her birthday was December 7th, she died February 11th. She was just two months into being 70.

• 1:41:04Steven Bartlett?

  Is her spirit and her presence still with you in these moments? Do you reflect on what she'd be thinking of all this?

• 1:41:11Speaker 00

  Very much, very much, all the time.

• 1:41:19Speaker 00

  She, I mean, I can't, if my, I, you know, it's funny, I've talked to a couple of people who have lost their parents, who were, who've lost them recently, but whose parents had a similar nature to my mother. And one of them said to me most recently, she said, "I'm so glad my father is not alive to see this because it would kill him." I was just talking to somebody recently who just said that. Oh, my mother would be, I'd probably, you know, it would be a great distraction for me if my mother were alive right now because I'd have to spend full time talking her down. Oh, you know when I talked about that safe space?

• 1:42:05Speaker 00

  So, early on when I was running for DA, this is when I realized I need to have like that core group of like that safe space. And I thought my mother would be a perfect person to be in it. And I realized that was a huge mistake on my part because my mother wanted to kill everybody. And then I'd have to spend full time talking her down instead of dealing with how I needed to address a situation. So, that's my mother's nature. We used to call her mommy. That's mommy's nature.

• 1:42:40Steven Bartlett?

  She'd be so proud.

• 1:42:41Speaker 00

  Oh, she would be proud. She'd be very proud. She, um, oh, my God, so she passed just before my election as Attorney General. And I was, I took care of her when she was sick. And we were, um, this is one of those days and there were weeks where she needed to be in the hospital. And so she was, I was with her in the hospital. She's in the bed and I was in the chair sitting next to her. And so like I'm here and she's here and she was just kind of resting. And she said to me, "How's the campaign going?" And she's, and I'm sitting here. I said, "Well, mommy," now this is truth.

• 1:43:26Speaker 00

  I said, "Well, mommy, they said they're gonna kick my ass." My mother turned over and looked at me and smiled.

• 1:43:38Speaker 00

  Swear to God.

• 1:43:41Steven Bartlett?

  She didn't say anything.

• 1:43:42Speaker 00

  She smiled, like, yeah, let them try.

• 1:43:47Speaker 00

  That was my mother.

• 1:43:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:52Steven Bartlett?

  You miss her?

• 1:43:53Speaker 00

  Oh, all the time, yeah.

• 1:43:56Speaker 00

  All the time. But, you know, it's, um...

• 1:44:00Speaker 00

  Here's the thing about life.

• 1:44:04Speaker 00

  One of the things that I've learned.

• 1:44:08Speaker 00

  You know, it's just like having...

• 1:44:12Speaker 00

  The things that can be... It's the duality.

• 1:44:16Speaker 00

  The things that can be a great blessing and have a huge impact. When it's not there, it feels like a huge loss. It's like you asked earlier, would you have done it differently then? Would we ever say, because we've experienced the loss of someone we love, that we would not have loved? Never. Right? Never.

• 1:44:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:43Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:44:45Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:44:47Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not gonna... We do have a closing tradition, but I think we're out of time. I'm gonna ask you anyway, fuck it.

• 1:44:51Speaker 00

  Okay, tell me.

• 1:44:52Steven Bartlett?

  The closing tradition is the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.

• 1:44:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:44:56Steven Bartlett?

  And the question left for you is, if there was a moment in the last 10 years you would do differently, what would it be and why?

• 1:45:05Speaker 00

  Oh...

• 1:45:06Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, this is quite...

• 1:45:07Speaker 00

  That's about the whole interview? Read my book!

• 1:45:11Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, we'll leave it at that. Read the book. Hundred and Seven Days, Kamala Harris. It's an incredible book because it's so unbelievably honest and it's so unbelievably human. And it lets you see behind a curtain one does not usually get to see behind, which is extremely, extremely rare, but extremely illuminating and valuable. And your career is one that has inspired me tremendously because you've broken down walls, broken through ceilings, and continue to do that. And if anyone takes the time to read your book or look through the story of your life, it is irrefutable that your agenda is to serve people. Thank you so much for giving me your time today.

• 1:45:42Speaker 00

  Thank you, I'm very, very touched by that. Thank you. Thank you.