293. Trump’s Next Move

How will Donald Trump frame Kamala Harris as ‘dangerously liberal’? What has changed since the last time a woman ran for president? How will America look back on Joe Biden? Join Katty and Anthony as they answer all this and more in a special episode of The Rest Is Politics US. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Producer: Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

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• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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• 1:42Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  And me, Katty Kay.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  How are you, Katty? It's an uneventful week here in politics in the United States.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, do you remember when I called you up to say, do you want to do this show, Anthony? And don't worry, it's going to take like an hour of your time every week. You'll be able to fit it in with all the other gazillion things you do. And what are we doing? We're doing like a show every day and it's consuming your life. So I feel like I owe you an apology straight up.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  You don't know me in apology. It's been great fun. And I want to tell viewers and listeners that you called me and said, they do a show called The Rest Is Politics UK. Do you want to try to do this with me? Let's go to the Goalhanger guys and ask them. And so I have to confess, I had no idea who the Goalhanger guys were, but I love these guys.

• 2:27Speaker 03

  At least you answered my text. So, you know, I got the

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. I love these guys. So I just wanted to say that.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Right then, enough self-promotion here for us and the team. Let's get on with the show. On today's podcast, we are going to be looking at how the Trump campaign is shifting gear to deal with their new opponent. The ranks are closing very fast around Kamala Harris as the next Democratic nominee for the presidency. And after the break, we're going to get into an issue that I think is going to be central to this race. And that's the role that gender, sexism, we've spoken about it before in American politics, but it's now so critical. And I want to look at how much things have changed or haven't changed since Hillary Clinton ran against Donald Trump back in 2016. We're eight years on, and does the landscape look differently? But before we get into the Trump campaign's plans for running against Kamala Harris,

• 3:17Speaker 03

  we should talk about Joe Biden's big speech that he made on Wednesday night from the Oval Office, telling the American people that he was doing this for democracy, for the American people, for the Democratic Party. He noticeably didn't really talk about why he was stepping aside. He defended his legacy and felt said he felt that he could have served for another four years. He didn't get into his health. He didn't get into the debate. He didn't get into the concerns about whether he was the right person to run against Donald Trump. But it'll certainly be a historic speech, because this happens almost never in American politics, that somebody in power hands over. I don't think, Antony, that any Democrats would have, listening to that speech, would have come away and thought, oh, my God, we made the

• 4:01Speaker 03

  wrong decision. He should still be our candidate. Poignant, though, the speech was.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Well, a couple of reactions. So the first one, if he's 51, with his record, he's not making that speech. He's running. He had a bad debate. Let's take on Donald Trump in the second debate, but he's not 51. He's 81. This is an appearance business. You and I both know that. It's a content business, but it's also a sizzle and impurience business. And he looked terrible. If you just want me to be brutally honest, he had, he almost had Donald Trump-like orange makeup on his face and his hands and his face looked very different from a makeup perspective. You're a television person. I only play a television person on TV. You could see those differences. And the public picks that up. And so there was something off about him last night. He looked

• 4:47Speaker 02

  more relaxed, though, Katty. I felt that he was, if he was that relaxed going into the debate, you know, when they had no more stakes, political stakes on the table. I did see that about his personality. And he did say one thing, and I'd love to have you react to it. He more or less said, because I read through the transcript, "I'm stepping back to protect democracy." So it was almost like it was an admission, "Hey, man," because that's, that's Joe Biden. He says, "Hey, man, I looked at the poll numbers and I'm not going to be able to win. I'm not going to be able to beat Donald Trump, so I'm going to take myself out of the race." What do you think of that?

• 5:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, interestingly, it was the same message he gave in 2020, right? That this is a fight for democracy against the forces of autocracy. And here he is four years later, as he's leaving the White House, saying he feels he still needs to do what he can to defend American democracy. And, and the implicit message, of course, of that 11-minute address was, "The stakes are very high, and I'm not the person to give us the best shot." I thought it was touching to see the scenes of his family. It was nice that the White House cameras let us see that afterwards. And there was clearly a lot of emotion in the room. He had his kids, he had his grandkids there, his wife was there, of course. There were tears in the room. This is a guy who has wanted his whole life

• 6:01Speaker 03

  to be the president, and this is the speech he never hoped to be giving. And on a personal level, it is very sad for him. But I think, you know, his legacy, to some extent, won't be written until after the November election, because if Kamala Harris doesn't win in November, and we're going to talk about how the Trump campaign is going to try and make sure that she doesn't, then there will be questions about whether he held on too long, or whether he should have stepped down earlier. Not just, you know, straight after the debate, but back in March, or even possibly last summer, and being that transitional president he told the country he was going to be now on Wednesday night.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  So I get, you know, I'm sure you get these comments, too. I get viewers and listeners that send me notes and One of the notes that I got this week that I'd like to address on the air is why is the Black Caucus so welded to Joe Biden? I mean, they didn't move. It didn't matter what was happening. I just want to point out to people three quick things. Number one, Joe Biden accepted the vice presidential nomination from the first black American, African American presidential candidate. That's number one. Number two, he put the first African American black woman on the US Supreme Court. Number three, he put Kamala Harris on the ticket. Okay. And the fourth one now is he steps out of the race and he

• 7:21Speaker 02

  endorses an African American, Indian American woman to be the American president. So when people say, well, why is the Black Caucus so welded to him? The Black Caucus sees him as an icebreaker. They see him as somebody that is helping them get to where everyone else wants to be in America, which is without racial identity. Just judge me, as Dr. King said, on the content of my character. And Biden has done that. And that's going to be a very, very big part of his legacy, Katty. I just want to flip over to, we used to call him the orange maniac. Now we'll refer to him as the presidential candidate, the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump. Did you see any of his rally last night?

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it was interesting, wasn't it? The stark contrast on that day between, there was Joe Biden talking about democracy, talking in these kind of lofty, soaring tones with the language of the kind of Oval Office, the historic nature.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Invoking the Declaration of Independence.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Talking about, you know, the portraits and the statues of American presidents arrayed in his office, invoking previous occupants of that office, and the role of America in the world, the role of the people in American democracy. A line, by the way, that Kamala Harris also used in Indianapolis, saying, this is, you know, the people's election. This is power from the people, not from an autocrat. And on that same day, you had Donald Trump telling rallygoers in Charlotte, North Carolina, "Look, they told me to be good. I'm going to drop that. That's done now. I'm back. Donald Trump is back. And by the way, this is a stupid country." I mean, I don't know if the word Reaganian exists, but it certainly should do. That was not Reaganian.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  That's very American of you, making up words. Could get the George W. Bush award.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  One of the things we all loved about George W. Bush is that he shouldn't be misunderestimated. Anyway, so it was not the soaring rhetoric that we heard in the Oval Office. It was, listen, Joe Biden was, seemed old. He was old. He stumbled a bit. His voice was mild. And I think a lot of Democrats will have listened to that and think, you know what? We made exactly the right decision. He had to go. He cannot be the standard bearer for the speech. But if you just read that speech compared to, this is a stupid country run by stupid people, and I'm not going to be nice anymore. There's a difference.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's, that's the real question for the people of the United States. Because if you want to go with hard divisiveness and bitterness and shit talking America, then you want Donald Trump. If you want to try something more aspirational or loftier, you probably don't want him. I want you to react to something, though, because you know these people better than me. Donald Trump said about Nancy Pelosi, that she turned, she turned on Joe Biden. She turned on like a dog, and she's crazy as a bedbug. And so, what's your reaction? Now, the very famous quote from Harry Truman, if you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog. When I was in Washington, getting my ass kicked, I'm like, even the dogs are biting here in Washington. So, what do you think of that?

• 10:25Speaker 03

  I never thought the day would come when Donald Trump sort of seemed to be putting himself on the same side as Nancy Pelosi. That was kind of weird. You didn't see that coming. I thought bedbugs were a thing in Paris in hotels, not something in Washington. That was kind of weird. But look, clearly what he is trying to do is stoke divisions in the Democratic Party, and play on the fact that this is a party that is not united, coming out of the RNC, where the Republican Party was very united, and, you know, getting into the, as we head into the Democratic National Convention, trying to say, there are people in the Democratic Party that would rather have had Joe Biden, perhaps, or they're, they're playing unfair. They've been raising these questions, and we, let's get into this

• 11:07Speaker 03

  about how they're going to counter Kamala Harris. They've been raising these questions about whether she can legitimately get the money from the campaign so far, whether somehow the whole process is legitimate. Donald Trump has also said, hold on a second on Truth Social. It was Joe Biden that got all of those primary votes. Ironically, it's the same language that Joe Biden has been using. It was Joe Biden that got those primary votes. They can't just switch in the middle of the race like this. So I think he's trying to undermine the legitimacy of her candidacy and and press the divisions in the Democratic Party.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Will that work?

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Not at the moment, no. I mean, I think you've got this extraordinary unity in the Democratic Party. I think, look, it's interesting, reading the Wall Street Journal op ed pages this week because that bastion of kind of, you know, super liberal Marxist thinking is clearly sending a message to Republicans, you know, get your shit together because the way you're attacking Kamala Harris at the moment isn't working. They're very critical of how the Republicans are trying to prosecute the case up until now against Kamala Harris, saying, look, don't play the D E I card. Don't play the childless cat lady card, which is something that J D Vance had said about Kamala Harris, that she's a childless cat lady and therefore has no stake in the American society. Don't talk about her laughter. Don't talk about her gender.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  I mean, it's actually echoing what Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, has been saying. Don't talk about her gender. Don't talk about her race. Talk about the policies. But sometimes Donald Trump can't help himself.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, that's the big issue. And so he keeps doing that. You're going to have lines of people. They're not going to care about water. They'll wait eight hours online. They don't care. They will vote for her. So call her dumb. Call her dumb as a rock. Say she's a D E I candidate. Try to get those sexist comments in there like you did with Hillary Clinton. And you watch how the electorate responds to that. In in preparation for this podcast this morning, I read a July 2013 article in Vanity Fair, which was written about Kamala Harris, and it was written by J J Abrams. And so if you've got young listeners on this podcast, they know who J J Abrams is. He's Star Wars. He was Star Trek. He was all of the sci fi stuff.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  But he writes in this article. Quote unquote, she has movie star looks. If you don't believe me, ask President Obama. She just secured a $20 billion settlement for the state's mortgage fraud victims. And Kamala Harris, if she emerges as the Kamala Harris that was written about in July of 2013, 11 years ago, Kamala Harris is about to shock the world in terms of what her skillset is and capability. Moreover, one last point, on the 4th of July, when your wonderful country was having an election and we were blowing fireworks off here in my country, we both talked about her rise. We both suggested to people that she's coming and she'll likely be arriving before the end of July.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  And so the question now, and I want to pose it to you if you don't mind, which Kamala Harris are we getting? Are we getting the J.J. Abrams version? Movie star looks, star quality, great prosecutor, on her way to the Senate? Or are we getting the Vice President, who was a little sheltered, somewhat awkward, loves Venn diagrams, that sort of thing? Which one are we getting, Katty Kay?

• 14:25Speaker 03

  The Venn diagrams attack is one of the more curious, where the Republicans put out talking points suggesting that the two ways that Republicans should go after Kamala Harris were because of her laugh and because of her love of Venn diagrams. I'm not, I'm not sure how many Venn diagram primary issue voters there are in the country. Maybe there are some, but anyway.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  No, no, but I can explain that because I'm inside Trump's brain. It's very rough in there. Okay, I'm moving around. You need like three miners caps and shit. I mean, it's bad. But I know why he's doing that because she repeats it, okay? And when someone's repeating something, in Trump's mind, they're unsure of it.

• 15:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Okay, so he's like, she's saying she likes Venn diagrams. Trump's implying she doesn't know what a Venn diagram is. You see what I mean? He's trying to imply that she's stupid because of the way she talks about it.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  Wow, that is.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  If you, if you ever need a Trump.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  That is meta-psychology.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Listen, if you ever need a Trump decoder ring, Katty, I don't know if that's something that would interest you and your family, you just, you just call me. I have them here in the drawer of my desk. I can, I can tell you exactly how this political beast thinks about everything. But go, go ahead. What, which version? Version of Katty Kay, are we getting?

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Which version of Kamala Harris are we getting?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Kamala Harris, I'm sorry. Which version of Kamala Harris are we getting?

• 15:35Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, I was not born in the United States, so I can't run for president quite yet.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  No, I like this. I'd like to sort of be on record. I like this version of Katty Kay, but we're talking about Kamala Harris. Go ahead.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  So I, I think the honest answer is we don't know yet, but the early indications are that she's, has got a lot better, certainly since her 2019, 2020 run. She performed well in Delaware. She gave a very good speech in Indianapolis. She has made good executive decisions by conducting hundreds of phone calls, including with literally tens of thousands of black voters, black men and black women. So, and she is developing a good message about her campaign being about the future. And she is prosecuting the case against Donald Trump more effectively than Joe Biden is. She has a very good hire, by the way, Brian Fallon, as her communications director,

• 16:28Speaker 03

  who wrote that speech that she gave in Delaware. And I know that Brian, for example, and the team have been working absolutely nonstop since the debate. They all realized this was a possibility straight after that debate. And they have been working to make sure this rollout of her taking over the nomination was as successful and as speedy as possible. So I would say she's a huge improvement on the candidate that we saw in 2019, 2020. We probably have to give her a little bit longer out on the stump to say, is she going to be a political star? And how worried should the Republicans be?

• 17:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it's well said. I guess the secondary question, though, for me is, what, what country are we in right now? Are we in a centrist country, a center-right country, or a center-left country? And I actually think we're in sort of a jigsaw puzzle, meaning there's pockets of our ideology that is center-left. I think women want reproductive choices. They want reproductive freedom. I think the average man, frankly, wants that for women. And so that's one pocket. The other pocket, though, is America is a capitalist country. The business of America is business. I do still believe that Calvin Coolidge said that 100 plus years ago, but I do believe it's still true today. And so are they going to land any punches

• 17:48Speaker 02

  on her by describing her as uber liberal and out of touch with this jigsaw puzzle that I'm describing?

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's exactly where they're heading, and that's probably their strongest suit. I think you're right. I mean, there's been interesting, fascinating research recently showing the divergence in political leanings between young men and young women, not just in the United States, but in Europe as well, with young women being much more liberal than young men on a whole host of issues. But in my contacts with people around Trump and who are advising the campaign and working for the campaign over the last few days, it's pretty clear that what they're going to do is, as I said on Sunday night with Rory and Alastair, they're really going to push on this idea that she's dangerously liberal. The Trump campaign believes that the country is still actually a center-right country. And so they're going to go after her record as a prosecutor where she didn't apply, for example, for the death penalty for certain

• 18:41Speaker 03

  criminals. They are digging into all of those stories around her prosecutorial legacy in California. Where did she, from their point of view, mess up? Where was she too soft on criminals? Expect to hear all of those stories out on the campaign, in ads again. And I think Mike Johnson, when he made those comments about don't go after her personality, is speaking directly to Donald Trump. Go after the issues. They'll paint her as too liberal on the economy. They'll paint her as too liberal on the border, obviously. That's another big vulnerability for her. And on her, and on her record in California, and they'll paint her as the person that came out of San Francisco rather than coming out of middle America. What, what do you think of kind of all of that stew of things is going to be their most effective attack against her?

• 19:26Speaker 02

  So, I mean, I think, I think you're, you're on to it. I mean, you've got the searchlight in the right places, but I mean, it's to tell you. About Donald Trump for a moment, okay? He does not have the narrative in his head yet. He's still free-forming that narrative. He doesn't know where to go. His nickname sucks. He always goes with the lying nickname. Okay? If he can't find another nickname, he knows he can't use cackling. He tried cackling, so well, that's way too sexist. That's gonna blow me up. We're gonna have thousands and tens of thousands of women waiting in line to shoot me down. So he doesn't know where to go. He called her the most liberal vice president in US history, the worst vice president in US history. These are pablum, Scotty. These are not direct blows to Kamala Harris.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  So he's right now in the verbal sparring gym and he's trying to figure out what punches are actually gonna land on her. He doesn't know what punches are gonna land on her yet. Neither does his team. You know, Dave Urban, a friend of mine, obviously, I campaigned with David in Pennsylvania on behalf of Donald Trump in 2016. I know David well. He's often on CNBC. He's one of their contributors. He says she's complicit in every bad decision that Joe Biden made. Okay? David probably doesn't listen to our podcast, but I would tell David that that's not gonna land.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  Why, why doesn't that land? I think that's one of their stronger lines.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think it lands because she wasn't president.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Right, but she's part of the administration.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  I get it, but you know, she has this opportunity, tabula rasa, right now to say, you know, that was his presidency. I fell in line with him on lots of these decisions. This is my identity. This is my political footprint and fingerprint. This is where I live. I don't, I don't, I don't think it's gonna land. And now, maybe it will, but listen, my thing with her is she's gotta define herself differently than the vice presidential tenure defined her. And that, that's gonna be difficult for her, but I think it's doable and just we'll have to see how she sculpts that. But again, my message would be, hey, I was vice president for Joe Biden. I was following his lead. I had views when I was a senator. I had views when I was an attorney general.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  I'm now running for president. This is president for all people. Okay? And so here is the slack in my views. Here's the things that I've moved on and here are the reasons why. And if she does that, it'll be very, very compelling. If she stays anchored to things, he's gonna blast her because he's very, very good at it, Katty.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  So what, if you're looking at, you know, say you were still advising the Trump campaign, Antony, which I know you are not, but say you put that hat on for a second as a strategist. What would your advice to them be on the most fruitful line of attack against Kamala Harris to try and make sure they win in November? Where would you tell them to go?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  You're gonna get me in trouble with a lot of our listeners. They're gonna comment and say, "Mooch, knock it off, okay? Don't be telling them this shit." Here's two things. Number one, you never give Donald Trump advice in front of other people. That's number one. So if you're on Trump's campaign, listening to this, you have a good idea for Donald Trump, you gotta wait to get him alone. Because the minute you give him advice in front of other people, he won't like the fact that you're giving him that advice. It means that he's not doing something right, and it makes him very insecure, and he'll start bullying you. That's number one. Number two, if I was advising President Trump, which I'm not, but if I was advising President Trump, I would say, "Wait, wait." I would not even talk about her. I would talk about you.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  I would talk about the economy that you "built." I would talk about the muscularity of what you're representing to the United States. I would wait. Because once she starts landing her punches, and once she starts framing her platform, it's going to be easier for you to figure out where the weakness is. And I think he's making a mistake right now. He's flailing a little bit with the way he's talking about her, and they're shooting at her, but she hasn't really concretized, if that's even a word. She hasn't even concretized the foundational platform that she's gonna run on and what she represents, if that makes sense.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  Okay, so that's the strategist, and that's the tactics you would use. But where do you, as an observer of the field, think she's most vulnerable?

• 23:40Speaker 02

  She's most vulnerable on business issues. She's most vulnerable on fracking. She's most vulnerable-

• 23:47Speaker 03

  She called for a ban on fracking?

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, she did. She wanted a national ban on fracking, to have her on tape saying it during the primaries. If you still feel that way, bye-bye Pennsylvania. If you look at the maps-

• 23:58Speaker 03

  A big fracking state.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and if you look at the maps, and maybe at some point, we should look at the maps, and we should explain to viewers and listeners the way these guys get to the presidency. Donald Trump has more roots to the presidency than Kamala Harris. He just does. Because he's got Florida locked up. That used to be a swing state. And so he can lose certain states, win others, he's fine. She has to win. Certain states, you know, she's got to get back to the blue wall of Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. So if you're a anti-fracker, you're not going to win Pennsylvania. Just to give you the heads up on that, she's got to modify that view. But in addition to that, she had the opportunity to speak at the Bitcoin conference. I know this isn't a Bitcoin podcast,

• 24:41Speaker 02

  but I'm a big Bitcoiner. There are 40 or 50 million wallets. Trump understood that immediately. He's speaking on Saturday. She had the opportunity to do it. David Bailey, who runs the conference, a personal friend of mine, he gave her the opportunity to speak. She wanted to do it by Zoom. He said, I can't do that. RFK Junior is coming in person. Donald J. Trump is coming in person. You have to come in person. She bailed. It was a bad move by her. It was a bad move by her campaign. I don't think she understands how many young people own digital assets. And I would have said to her, what the hell are you doing? Take the three hours, fly to Nashville, make the speech, tell people you're pivoting. Even if you get booed on that stage, it's good for you. You're telling people.

• 25:24Speaker 03

  You're showing up.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Yep, I'm showing up. I'm pro-business. I'm listening to you people. I've represented the most innovative state and arguably one of the most innovative economies that ever existed in the world. That would be the state of California. And I'm here for you. She didn't do that. And by the way, she's over-scheduled. And so I'm sure the pushback would be, Anthony, I'm sorry, I got too much to do. I wanted to be there. I couldn't. But then put out a statement.

• 25:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Say, hey, listen, I don't have the Biden.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  I've suddenly been thrown into an election campaign with not very long and I've got to be.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I don't have the Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Gary Gensler view of crypto.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  I think what you're saying is the same thing that I was raising, which is that they're going to paint her as too liberal. I'm too liberal for America, whether it's on business, whether it's on fracking, whether it's on her prosecutorial record, whether it's on the death penalty or on the border, that she's out of step with America. And I think if they're smart, they'll go for those issues and drop this stuff about she's a DEI vice president or her law. Because I think, like you said, that that just alienates people.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  It's not going to work. I mean.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  On the waiting stuff, though, by the way, they're clearly not listening to you. Because AP had this great breakdown of the numbers. Since Monday, when it was pretty clear she is going to be the nominee, I'm reading this so I don't get it wrong. Trump and his allies are outspending Harris's team twenty five to one on television and radio advertising. And there is an argument that actually they need to get out and start spending fast because they don't have long. They need to define her and they need to define her before the Trump team defines her. I'm not sure how effective all of that sixty eight million dollars that they've spent since Monday on ads has been. If it's been the kind of stuff that is defining her personality. But I know that some of it has been defining her as too liberal on the issues.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  And there's been one out of Pennsylvania using a quote from the guy running for the Senate there saying, listen, you can't. Exactly what you said, that she was opposed to fracking and that's not going to fly in Pennsylvania. But nobody is waiting when it comes to spending money.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Can you just take a couple of reactions? So I would tell her dust off the two thousand eight Barack Obama playbook. You've got to get out there, you've got to talk a little bit about your heritage like Barack Obama did. You've got to talk about your family. I think people will be very interested in that. And you've got to speak pro-business because you already have liberal chops. You have liberal bona fides. You've got to talk pro-business and you will be able to get independents on board. They'll be like, okay, she's for reproductive freedom. She's not going to hurt my business. And by the way, did Joe Biden hurt my business? The answer is no. Economy is at an all time high. Economy is improving, doing better. Did Barack Obama hurt my business? Well, you know, he came in during the financial crisis. Things got a lot better over the eight years of Barack Obama was running the economy.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  I am a descendant of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. I am not as liberal as Donald Trump wants you to believe. I grew up and represented the state of California and I'm here to make sure you're doing well in business. But you have your personal reproductive freedom.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  And by the way, there are fewer people crossing the American border in the South today than there were on the last day of Donald Trump's presidency. I think you're right. She has to keep saying inflation is down, unemployment is low.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  They're going to step away from that borders are stuff. They will step away from that because of what you just said.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  They don't, they don't want to, they don't want to put fire on what you just said.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  And by the way, I, yeah, and I heard from somebody in Mexico City after our last podcast where we were talking about Claudia Sheinbaum, the new president of Mexico, who is saying exactly what we were saying, which is watch that relationship. If I was Kamala Harris, I would have President Sheinbaum's number on speed dial. And just make sure the Mexicans keep those people away from the border until November, until the election. The producer is asking us how much attention do voters actually pay to all of these $68 million worth of ads that Republicans have spent till Monday? Look, the ads get seen by people. They're still, you'd think perhaps that traditional TV ads have less weight, but a lot of this money is now going into digital ads. They're popping up on TikTok. They're popping up on Instagram. People are seeing them. Particularly older voters are seeing the ones that still run on television. They still help to define

• 29:30Speaker 03

  a candidate.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Spoken like a true TV journalist. Look at that. Okay. You know, oh my God, I'm very proud of you. See, if I was your agent, I'd be like, oh, that was a brilliant analytical statement.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  And with that, I think we'll wrap up this half.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Nobody gives a shit about these TV ads. Nobody. They like glaze over.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  They look, the clips come up on, you think you spend $68 million for nothing. You spend it because it has some kind of an impact. It pops up on people's, I know TikTok is probably more important. And by the way, she is killing it on TikTok.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  My next life, I'm going to be Katty Kay's agent, signing her media contract. She's such a, such a good advocate for TV.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's my job. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more.

• 30:11Speaker 04

  Mr. President, my company for me of the explosion on our rear on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 30:21Speaker 05

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 30:27Speaker 06

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 30:32Speaker 05

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 30:35Speaker 06

  I'm not the first then.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kay.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  And I'm Anthony Scaramucci.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  And we are going to talk in this half, Anthony, about what's changed from the last time a woman ran for president in 2016 and what it was like in that campaign that you were part of, kind of the framing of how to deal with her as a woman candidate. Because there was kind of a lot of talk about sexism in that campaign, and I'm just wondering how much the landscape has changed. And look, taking a leaf out of your playbook from the last episode we did, I went and looked at some numbers too, because there can't just be one professor on this show. So I thought, listen, Anthony can come up with numbers, I better go and dig out the data. You've raised my game, Anthony. So

• 31:29Speaker 03

  in 2016, 5% of CEOs were women. In 2024, 10% of CEOs were women, so the numbers doubled. In 2016, 87 women served in the House of Representatives. In 2024, it's 122. So we've gone from 87 Congresswomen to 122 Congresswomen. We've gone from 20 female senators to 25 female senators, and there are now a record 12 female governors. Look, those numbers are nowhere near where I would like them to be, obviously, but on every one of those metrics, we've seen more women in positions of power in the United States. And I think

• 32:11Speaker 03

  that every time a woman gets elected into the House of Representatives, or gets elected into the Senate, or gets elected as a governor, it kind of chips away at the barrier to entry for other women. So I do think that the landscape is different. I also think, you know, since 2016, when you were helping on Donald Trump's campaign, we've had the Me Too movement, which has kind of changed the way that the media talks about sexism generally. I think it's changed public awareness of sexism generally. And of course, we've had the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs decision, which has put women's rights, reproductive rights, at the heart and centre of American politics. So I think you've had kind of three big shifts. You've had more women coming into power, you've had the

• 32:54Speaker 03

  Me Too movement, which has changed public perception about the kinds of barriers that women face. And then you've had Dobbs, which has made this, you know, an election that perhaps isn't going to be about the economy, but is about going to be about women. So I think in that way, the landscape for Kamala Harris is is very different from the landscape for Hillary Clinton. Am I being too Pollyannaish about this?

• 33:13Speaker 02

  No, I think it's a brilliant assessment of everything. I just think the, because I love asking you questions. So if you don't mind, I want to fire this question out at you. Hillary Clinton, to us, when we worked on the Trump campaign in 2016, we thought she was going to win. And we looked at everything, Bannon thought she was going to win.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  And by the way, she did win the popular vote by 3 million votes.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Popular vote, but she did things that we could never understand. Okay, so she left the July Democratic Convention in 2016, did not travel to the state of Wisconsin, not once. She went to Pennsylvania once. I think she went to Michigan twice. Donald Trump was in that state, you know, double digits on every one of those. In fact, I remember the night, 48 hours before the campaign ended, I think he was in New Hampshire and he flew himself to Michigan for one more 1 a.m. rally before he came back to the New York headquarters. So, so he was leaving everything on the field. She wasn't. And so we're with Donald Trump because of that candidacy. Moreover, I would like to have you react to this.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Joe Biden wanted to run against her, wanted to primary her. He was stopped by Barack Obama. Now, I'm going to really give people some trivia here. What happened? Obama was a little shaky in 2011 into 2012. He went to the Clintons. He said, I need your full-throated endorsement. And they said, no problem, but you've got to endorse Hillary in 2016. He said, no problem. If you go back 12 years to the Democratic Convention, the speech that Bill Clinton gave was a phenomenal, full-throated endorsement of Barack Obama. And that's, that pushed Obama to stop Biden. So we're sitting here talking about all the demography and the uber, hyperextended masculinity, overcompensating masculinity of Donald Trump.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  But all of this stuff is reaction and then formation to reaction, Katty. Meaning, if the Democrats had handled this differently, Donald Trump would have never been on that stage. They would be going against more garden variety Republicans. And I want your reaction to that. Am I, am I wrong on that? Because that's something all of us thought eight years ago in that campaign.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, look, I think you're clearly right on the Obama-Biden stuff and, and that kind of complicated relationship and Obama endorsing Hillary Clinton and framing it as kind of the time had come for a woman. To be president of the United States, which, you know, a lot of women believed back in 2016, they they kind of a lot of women voters hoped that was going to be the case. I don't know that what you're saying, though, gets to her gender. I mean, she ran a bad campaign by not going to Wisconsin and not focusing.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  No, I'm saying that her gender actually didn't matter.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what I mean. Are you suggesting that her gender didn't matter? Because I think she has said, and she wrote an op ed in the in the New York Times this week, saying this, that there was definitely sexism. There was a lot of focus. She was called, you know, as she said in the New York Times, all the kinds of things that she was called, you know, during the course of that campaign and the kind of ugly prejudice that she faced. Are you suggesting that that didn't play into the 2016 results?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting that if she did the work in the campaign, despite the sexism, despite the attacks, despite the glass ceiling that she perhaps felt and women of her generation felt in the United States her whole life, she would have won. And she was that close to winning. You know, he had to create an inside straight is what we were calling it. He had to win Pennsylvania, Michigan. He had to win Wisconsin. He had to break the blue wall. He did that. He won. He lost the popular vote by, I don't know, seven to eight million votes, but he still won. He's never won the popular vote. What's interesting now, he may win the popular vote this time. It could be the first time that he could win it. But I'm just, I'm saying something different.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  I'm saying if she had won, the sexism would have not have been a big issue in 2024. I'm just giving some alternative history because this stuff goes. I think I want viewers and listeners to know you're on a knife's edge in a campaign. You're on a knife's edge in terms of your decision making. And certain things that you're doing going left or right are going to affect people's analysis later on. But perhaps it's more broad than that. It's less deeply analytical. It's very superficial. Go to Wisconsin, do the work. If I'm Kamala Harris, do the work. You're an energetic person. Fly yourself everywhere to the point of exhaustion.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  But I think that's true. And and look, Donald Trump, you know, repeatedly in 2016 questioned Hillary Clinton's strength.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  Her stamina, he mocked her voice. I think those were things that were seen as kind of dog whistles about her gender, you know, that she wasn't up to being president, she couldn't because a woman wasn't strong enough or had the stamina enough. They made a bad call on going to Wisconsin. Clearly, that was a campaign decision and maybe they were feeling cocky because they felt they had so many paths to 270 electoral college votes. But I think that's a criticism that could be made of any male candidate. I think the interesting question this time around, and I do think there's been a huge sea change in how Kamala Harris is going to be treated as a woman and as a woman of colour. I mean, I think, sure, there's going to be sexist, and we're already seeing it. The stuff about her laugh is sexist, you know, that the implication is somehow that she's too emotional.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  And women get told that all the time. Women in positions of power are always getting told that they're too emotional to run things. But I think there is a real change in the sense that there's a public awareness of that kind of stuff and a willingness to call that out, which is why you've got Republicans falling over themselves to distance themselves from the kind of stuff that J D Vance has been found to have said about Kamala Harris, about that stuff of being a, you know, child.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Let's have a little bit of fun.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  I like my cats.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  You know, there's, so there's a, there's an American thing that we do called rotisserie baseball. I don't know if they do rotisserie football in the UK, but we.

• 39:09Speaker 03

  I have no idea what that means.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  All right. So we pick players and we analyse the players and they go play. What if Trump had picked Nikki Haley? Where would the Trump campaign be right now? Where would he be in the pollings vis a vis Kamala Harris?

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that would have been a much smarter play for him. I mean, it helps him, of course, with the centre of the country, especially with Kamala Harris running, right? They couldn't foresee that Kamala Harris was going to run.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Helps him with the sexism.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Helps him hugely with people of colour, with the centre of the country and with suburban women voters, those mythical suburban women voters.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  So why, why didn't he pick her? Because I know the answer, but I'm curious as to what you think the answer is. Go ahead. Why didn't he pick her?

• 39:48Speaker 03

  First of all, I don't think he could have picked her because he could never have got over the things she said about him. It just was too hard for him to have a woman attack him in public like that. And then forgive that woman in a way that somehow he has been able to do with JD Vance, the stuff about him being cultural heroin or cultural opium.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Maybe he liked being called Hitler by JD Vance. Listen, in 1980, George Herbert Walker Bush eviscerated Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail. He called him every name in the book, vacuous, dangerous, a conservative cowboy. He used the term voodoo economics when describing his economic plan. And the Reagan people were upset. Reagan himself was upset. When push came to shove, they picked George Herbert Walker Bush because they picked him for the win. And Reagan said, I'll, I'll, I'll deal with it personality wise. Donald Trump, two things, I don't want anybody getting credit for my win. I am such an uber narcissist. I am bringing everybody over the finish line by myself.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  So I don't want anybody on this campaign that could possibly say to a journalist, I helped Donald Trump win the election.

• 40:58Speaker 03

  Does it make any difference whether that person is a woman or a man or none in his mind?

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Well, we're going to get into the secondary thing. Okay. I am anti DEI. I am anti affirmative action.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  That's what it's about.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  I am white America. I want America to go back to 1947 where there were no blacks in baseball. That's me. I'm red meat, white America. You know what his favorite meal is? Okay, I want my steak well done. Okay. And I want a ton of Heinz ketchup. As my mother would say, Marona me is this guy, you know, go goots, right? I mean, which is you got a chicken running in your head. Okay. But this is what he is. And so he boxed himself here, Katty. He had so many opportunities to lock this up for him, but he didn't. And now he's up against the sexist charge. And it's a totally different America than the one he ran in. And it's a totally different America than the one that he wants to live in.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  And so it'll be very interesting to see if her team can calibrate itself to handle that. And I believe that they will, because I think they're learning from the Clinton campaign what she did. And I, and I give her credit, by the way. I give Secretary Clinton credit. She's open about it. She's writing op-eds about it. And I'm certain she wants Kamala Harris to win, and I'm sure she's advising.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there is this sort of the disconnect between the way the world has changed. And I think what J.D. Vance and that comment about childless cat ladies and how she is one of those, and therefore she doesn't have a stake in America. And it's not just him, by the way, there's been, you know, this guy, Will Chamberlain, I'm looking up if you feel like it on Twitter. He's a kind of conservative MAGA exponent with a kind of pretty big following. And he, he has said on Twitter, look, she shouldn't be president because she doesn't have kids. There is a kind of view out there of America should be a sort of 1950s America. And, you know, as Kamala Harris said in Indianapolis this week, they want to pull you back to that. I mean, it's not just on terms of reproductive

• 42:58Speaker 03

  rights, but there's this sort of sense of, well, these guys who are white guys who feel that power is slipping from their fingers, women are earning more money, they're better educated, there are more women for the first time, college educated women in the workforce than men. And my God, we're about to lose our power. So can we just get women back into the kitchen and out of the office? Right? I mean, I think there's this, there is that sort of sense out there. I just think that, yes, there's some of that, and there was some of that in 2016. But against that is a pretty strong realization that you can call that stuff out now in a way that perhaps you didn't before me too. And that a lot of women and a lot of men, as we saw in all of those referendums on abortion, don't particularly

• 43:39Speaker 03

  like to see their wives' rights being taken away on healthcare issues or, or on other issues. So I think that, I think the landscape has changed. And that's why you've got the Wall Street Journal this week saying, listen, Republicans, you've got to figure out how to attack Kamala Harris, because the way that you're doing it, and with Trump, for example, calling Harris dumb as a rock. No woman likes to see another woman being called dumb. No person of color likes to see a person of color being called dumb. It just great, right? It rubs them up the wrong way and drives them into the opposite camp. So I think that's what the Trump team is trying to figure out and it's probably down to Trump's psychology. Like you say.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  We're contemporaries, you and I, although you look 15 years younger than me.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  I like to say that I'm younger, but we don't need to remind people about those 10 months difference between us. That's okay. It's not that I'm counting or anything.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  But let me, let me ask you this question. Okay. It's not a statistical question. It's just your gut. Are men of your age afraid of women being in charge?

• 44:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think they are.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Okay, your dad, your mom and dad, my mom and dad, were they afraid of women being in charge?

• 44:45Speaker 03

  No, because it didn't really happen very much.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  Okay. Why are they afraid of women being in charge?

• 44:50Speaker 03

  Because as a white man in many societies, in fact, all Western societies, the fact that you had a Y chromosome and the color of your skin gave you an automatic entry to certain positions of power that you now don't have anymore.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Well said. So there's an institutionalization. You're getting the benefit of your anatomy and your skin color because it's more or less been institutionalized and that defines some levels of power.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  Right. And that's slipping away.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Okay, that, that, okay. So that's the next question. Your children, do they feel the same way?

• 45:26Speaker 03

  So I think that's the really interesting question. I think in many ways they don't because I think my kids, for example, have grown up seeing me always working and they've grown up seeing their dad working, but also organizing playdates like you do, Anthony, going to PTA meetings, going to school conferences. And I think that's the difference. They've seen the role of men change as much as the role of women change.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  So there is the dynamic. This is a major change going on in the demography.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  And the question is, if the younger voters turn out, she's going to win. And if they don't turn out, if they decided, you know what, doesn't matter. I'm Mr. And Mrs. Cynical, I'm not going to turn out. It's going to be easier for Trump to beat her. So it'll have to see if she can energize those people. The United States has yet to have a woman president, but there are great women leaders around the world. Of course, your great country had Margaret Thatcher 35, 40 years ago. What do you think's going on culturally?

• 46:25Speaker 03

  I mean, it is interesting when you look at countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Israel, all of those countries that have had female leaders. It tends to be in countries where there is a parliamentary system and that woman rises to the top of her party and then the voters vote for the party. They're not voting for that woman as a head of state. Now, many of those countries may feel now fine about voting for that woman as a president, but up until now, and particularly early on, I think it was, it was much easier for a woman to be elected in a parliamentary system as a prime minister because they weren't having to kind of raise the crazy sums of money that American presidential candidates have to raise.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  People weren't having to go into the ballot box and, you know, vote for Ann Smith. They could vote for the Labour Party or the Conservative Party. And I think that just made it that one step easier for women to rise to the top of politics. Once America has done it, I think they'll have broken that, you know, memory muscle, if you like, that people have of thinking, I always have to vote for a man as president. And, you know, that will, that record will have been broken and so it'll be easier a second time around and it may even be easier this time around because Hillary Clinton was on the ballot in 2016. But I think that's why, I think that was what, that's the main difference.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Before we go, if you don't mind, I know we're probably in a little bit of OT. I want to ask you about Barack Obama. No endorsement for Barack Obama, the right wing media says that's because they think that. Kamala Harris can't beat Donald Trump. Why no endorsement from Barack Obama? Go.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  So I read less into this than a lot of the media is reading into this. I know that Kamala Harris has long had a close relationship with Barack Obama. She admires him enormously. I think Barack Obama has a complicated relationship with Joe Biden. He was orchestrating a lot of this departure of Joe Biden behind the scenes. But when it came to the actual moment of the transition, I buy the argument that he didn't want to step on Joe Biden's moment. Now, maybe that's, maybe I'm being too naive here and too kind of trusting of the things that I'm hearing from other Democrats, but he's going to come out and endorse her. But I think he, he needed to put a bit of distance between Joe Biden,

• 48:42Speaker 03

  who is the sitting president after all, and himself. Am I being massively naive?

• 48:46Speaker 02

  No, I think, I think that's the right, I think that's the right read. You know, so I have an Obama whisperer who you, you and I both know personally, who, who more or less plays golf with the president fairly regularly on Martha's Vineyard, who said to me, he needed this, in his mind, this was a Joe Biden Kamala Harris situation. He needed to stay out of it. He'll be at the convention, he will be out on the campaign stump, and he will do everything he can to help her. But he just wanted it to happen without him. If it was going to be a Mark Kelly or a Josh Shapiro that was going to challenge her, he wanted to be in a position as an elder statesman, still, you know, one of the big leaders in the party, to have some chops with whoever rose to the occasion. If it's Kamala Harris, I know he's fine with her.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  And I think he is going to be a big part of helping. If she does win, and I'm going to predict here on our show that she will win, he will be a big part of her win.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Because he understands that electorate that's about 15 years younger than you or I, about as well as anybody. And he'll help her with that messaging and he's got his campaign team in there right now, working with her.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  There is no one in American politics who has ever excited black voters and young voters in the way that Barack Obama has.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  No question, no question.

• 50:03Speaker 03

  He was a complete rock star and that was why he turned them out in such huge numbers in 2008. And my prediction is that he will, he and Michelle Obama, who is equally popular, will be out on the campaign trail a lot, a lot more because it is Kamala Harris and a lot more enthusiastically than they would have been if it's Joe Biden and that that's going to be a massive asset for her, particularly watch Michelle Obama.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  If our podcast continues to do well, I promise an upgrade of my wardrobe. I notice that you're

• 50:31Speaker 03

  No, I like the T-shirts. It's good.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  I'm always, you're always well dressed. The T-shirt I'm wearing, if you're listening, I am old enough to remember when we had a functioning democracy, okay? Because that means I'm very old, okay? It's like I'm old as dirt, but I mean, maybe that was an attack by my wife to give me this shirt, but I'm wearing it proudly today, Katty.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe functioning democracy can come back again. God knows we need it. Thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back next week unless another crazy, crazy thing happens in US politics, in which case, of course, we'll be back with more episodes. That's it from The Rest Is Politics US. I'm Katty Kay. Thanks so much for listening.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. I hope to see you next week.