334. 11pm: US Election Countdown Begins

Head to The Rest is Politics Youtube channel now for live coverage of the final twists and turns of the US presidential election, between 8pm-midnight GMT on Tue 5th Nov, again from 5am-9am GMT on Wed 6th Nov, and finally at 7-8.30pm GMT on Wed 6th Nov. In the first of these special US election livestreams, Rory and Alastair are joined by Anthony Scaramucci from The Rest Is Politics US to digest the campaign and break down what’s at stake in coming hours. Dominic Sandbrook from The Rest Is History also provides a deep dive into past elections and how they’ve shaped today’s race, while Marina Hyde from The Rest Is Entertainment explores the cultural impact and high-stakes drama surrounding this year’s election. We also hear from a special guest, former Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Search for ‘The Rest Is Politics’ on YouTube or go to: www.youtube.com/@restispolitics The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across the UK. Use referral code POLITICS after sign up for a chance to win a signed copy of Rory and Alastair's books with personalised messages. Learn more at getfuse.com/politics ⚡ Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ 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. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producers: Evan Green, Becki Hills Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producers: Nicole Maslen, Fiona Douglas, Callum Hill 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?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:06Speaker 02

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• 2:13Alastair Campbell?

  Hello and welcome to a very special Rest is Politics livestream on perhaps the most consequential of the many elections of this year. The election to choose the next president of the US, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. When the UK went to the polls, we had a very good idea, who was going to win? Labour. When Russia went to the polls, we were even more certain Putin was nailed on. But this one really is so hard to call and it is so important, well beyond America's borders. The global economy and trade, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the future of NATO, the climate crisis, the future, some have argued, of democracy itself. I'm Alastair Campbell, here in New York, with my regular Rest is Politics partner Rory

• 2:54Alastair Campbell?

  Stewart, just flown in from Australia, former Donald Trump comms man and fundraiser Anthony Scaramucci from the Rest is Politics US, Guardian journalist Marina Hyde from the Rest is Entertainment, and for all things historical Dominic Sandbrook from the Rest is History. This really is a very special Rest is election event. We'll be with you every step of the way to try to inform, entertain, hopefully explain what it all means, why it all matters. This is the first of three livestreams we are planning in the next 24 hours. This will run from 8pm UK time, it's just gone 3pm here in New York right now, to midnight in the UK. Five hours later, we'll be back for another four hour stint, that's 5am to 9am UK time,

• 3:38Alastair Campbell?

  midnight to 4am here. As Tim Walsh keeps reminding us, there's plenty of time for sleep when we're all dead. So, before we get ready to head home, there'll be a third livestream at 7pm UK time, by which time, hopefully, things will be a little clearer. There is so much to talk about, even before the votes are counted, there'll be so much more to talk about as and when they are, and through it all, we'll be joined by an exciting array of guests, politicians, policy experts, strategists, pollsters. First up will be former Foreign Secretary David Miliband in about an hour. This is not the Rest is Football, predictions will be kept to a minimum, but, before we get going... I'm going to go round the panel. I'm going to ask them all for a one word answer to the big question.

• 4:22Alastair Campbell?

  Who is going to win Harris or Trump? And I asked a question even while knowing none of us know the answer. And that is the wonder of democracy. Because all across this vast country, millions have voted, millions more are voting now. And by the time we head for home, hopefully, we will know the answer to the big question. Will it be President Harris in the White House or for a second time President Donald Trump? So panel, one word, I'm starting with you Rory, Harris or Trump? Harris. Okay, Anthony Scaramucci, Harris or Trump?

• 4:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  Harris.

• 4:59Alastair Campbell?

  Marina Hyde?

• 5:00Marina Hyde?

  Harris?

• 5:01Alastair Campbell?

  Harris, but not sure. Dominic Sandbrook?

• 5:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  Someone's got to say it, Trump.

• 5:05Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, you're saying it because you believe it or you're saying it because you think that we're a bunch of wet liberals down?

• 5:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Obviously a bit of both.

• 5:12Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, okay.

• 5:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  But I think it is fifty fifty. I think it's too close to call. And Trump has a history in twenty sixteen and again in twenty twenty of doing a little bit better in places where people don't expect. And I think, given that, you'd be mad not to better name a third time.

• 5:27Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Anthony, when you say, we often in politics, we let our our heart rule our heads sometimes. Is your heart slightly ruling your head? Because this is a guy you don't like very much.

• 5:35Anthony Scaramucci?

  You know, I'm probably trying to wish this and manifest this so they don't end up at Guantanamo Bay after he wins. So I'm certainly on that adversary list. But I think Dominic maybe would have been right in twenty sixteen and possibly even in twenty twenty in terms of the under polling. But these pollsters have overcorrected, so I'm going with my spirit brother Rory, who I think is right about this. I think the pollsters right now don't know where to go. The traditional way to gather this information is no longer working. And I think that they, I think they may be off.

• 6:10Alastair Campbell?

  I thought I was your spirit. I'm the guy that got you in here and got the public to like you and see you as a nice guy.

• 6:16Anthony Scaramucci?

  You're more of my spirit communicator.

• 6:17Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, okay.

• 6:18Anthony Scaramucci?

  He's more of my spirit, he's my spirit optimist. He's my spirit optimist. When I'm worried that I'm going to Guantanamo Bay, I see Rory. And I feel very good about myself.

• 6:28Alastair Campbell?

  You feel the special forces coming in to get you. Marina, you looked a bit nervous.

• 6:32Anthony Scaramucci?

  When I see Dominic, I now I get very worried because Dominic's got that vest on.

• 6:35Alastair Campbell?

  We call it a waistcoat.

• 6:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, it's a waistcoat, not a vest. Waistcoat inspires confidence.

• 6:40Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 6:41Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay, so Rory, you got to help me with this over here.

• 6:43Rory Stewart?

  I'll come street peace next time.

• 6:44Alastair Campbell?

  Marina, you looked a little bit nervous when you said.

• 6:47Marina Hyde?

  Well, you heard it in my voice, Alistair. It's like that line from that John Cleese movie. It's not the despair, it's the hope. I hope I'm going to see the first female president of the United States, but I have been hurt before by the same guy. And I'm not entirely sure, but I very much hope that to be the way.

• 7:04Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, you've been, as our listeners know, you've been absolutely certain for quite some time. You've never wavered in that. So what's that about?

• 7:13Rory Stewart?

  So I think first thing, growing with Anthony, the polling companies are much more broken than people understand. They've miscalled elections catastrophically for a very long time now. They were doing it actually even with Reagan, but recently, since people stopped answering their landlines, it's become more and more dodgy. And you can see evidence of this, they're all hovering around 50 50. They shouldn't be. If this is 3% margin of error, there should be much more divergence in their polls. That's a sign they've lost their nerve. So ignore the polls, look at the fundamentals.

• 7:44Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, I'm glad you said ignore the polls, Rory, because I think we should ignore the polls now. I think we should stop talking. I cannot.

• 7:49Anthony Scaramucci?

  I don't think you gave your prediction though, did you?

• 7:51Alastair Campbell?

  I didn't know.

• 7:52Anthony Scaramucci?

  No, what's your prediction?

• 7:53Alastair Campbell?

  My prediction is, I'm a bit like Marina, it's Harris. But tell me the fundamentals, so I'm persuaded.

• 8:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  I don't like Alistair's like facial expressions when he says Harris, Rory.

• 8:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, but I'm a professional pessimist.

• 8:05Rory Stewart?

  So the popular vote will be driven by whether the economy is in recession. It's not. It'll be driven by whether there's been some catastrophic foreign war that hasn't been. It's going to be driven by the fact that Trump has been performing worse and worse since 2016, 18, 20, 22. I also believe the Democrats learnt some lessons from not targeting properly in 2016. And finally, I think the most important thing, young women vote more than young men, and this is quite a gendered election.

• 8:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  Rory, on your fundamentals, though, a lot of those fundamentals would have favoured Hillary Clinton in 2016, when she could have, did of course, win the popular vote.

• 8:39Rory Stewart?

  That's, I knew you were gonna say that. I put in that little bit about the fact that I think they've learnt the lesson.

• 8:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right.

• 8:44Rory Stewart?

  I mean, she ignored some of the key swing states, and you can understand why, because the states will be talking about a great deal over the next 12 hours. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, were seen as pretty safe democratic states. They were astonished to see them go to the Republicans.

• 9:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Blue wall, they called them.

• 9:02Alastair Campbell?

  Now, we're gonna be giving you, as well as the insights and perceptions of this splendid array of talent on the panel, we're also gonna be lots of graphics through the night, but most importantly, we want your questions. And you can send us your questions and observations, go in the YouTube chat, and you can just fire them away. We might do the odd poll along the way, even though, as I've said, we're not gonna talk about the other polls. Our polls are fine. And the other thing you can do is just go on Twitter and other social media channels, just put hashtag trip live, and send your questions in, and we'll get through as many as we can. Now, a lot of our, we've got, hopefully, a pretty global audience, and not as global as The Rest Is History.

• 9:40Rory Stewart?

  Oh, that's kind.

• 9:41Alastair Campbell?

  Which is, by the way, I must get this out of the way.

• 9:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  That is kind.

• 9:43Alastair Campbell?

  While you've been away, Rory, while you've been away, I, as you know, boast regularly about how we regularly top the charts.

• 9:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 9:50Alastair Campbell?

  In the UK.

• 9:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Only in the UK.

• 9:51Alastair Campbell?

  In the UK. Dominic's podcast is currently number two in the whole of the US, behind Mr. John.

• 9:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, thank you.

• 9:59Alastair Campbell?

  That's enough, right? We've done, that's it, that's it.

• 10:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  And I just think the one thing people should take from today is you really should listen to The Rest Is History. And you can join The Rest Is History Club at thereistishistory.com.

• 10:09Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, that's so bad. Oh my god, that is so bad. Listen, you should have just taken the comment and then shut up. Now, what I do want to talk about is, a lot of our listeners and viewers are Brits.

• 10:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Alastair Campbell?

  And we're probably thinking, why have it just turned on, or we're gonna turn on when the polls close? Why don't we just get told, like we did in Britain, you know, it's a Labour landslide? What's the difference that goes on between Britain and American elections? And why actually, it could be days before we know who's the president?

• 10:40Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think that the first really big difference with Britain that everybody's gotta take on board is this electoral college thing. I think many people who really love politics in Britain have still not fully taken on board the fact that it's winner takes all.

• 10:54Alastair Campbell?

  In Britain?

• 10:55Rory Stewart?

  If, in Britain, when you look at America, they're not taking on board the fact that if... If Harris manages to take Pennsylvania by a couple hundred votes, all the electoral college votes from Pennsylvania go to Harris. And that means that there can be this huge discrepancy between the popular vote and the electoral college vote, which in a very, very surprising way. Second thing that's changed, 2016, if we'd been doing this, all the results were coming through very, very quickly, by midnight, one, two in the morning, eastern time, people knew what was happening. Last time round, 2020, it dragged on into the weekend, Covid mail. It's probably, if it's close, and I'm hoping it's not going to be close,

• 11:39Rory Stewart?

  I hope actually Kamala Harris is going to win, and she's going to win by a decent, decent margin. But if it's close, it could drag on quite a long time as Pennsylvania faffs around with its mail.

• 11:47Alastair Campbell?

  We should say to people, because there will be lots of stuff circulating on social media, people probably, I suspect Donald Trump will go out fairly early and say, I have won this. There will be a lot of disinformation.

• 11:58Rory Stewart?

  Which he did last time.

• 11:59Alastair Campbell?

  Which is what he did last time. But this time, he's got a lot, he's got Mr. Musk backing him. So I think people should be very, very wary when they see stuff on social media, even on the TV that says this race is over, even in this state or that state, we should wait. But Anthony, you were kind of nodding but looking a bit grim faced.

• 12:14Anthony Scaramucci?

  I want to ask you, the question I have for you is, what would surprise you? Because like, obviously, none of us know, I do think you're correct, by the way, but what would have to happen for your assumptions to change?

• 12:28Rory Stewart?

  I think one thing is that the way that we talk about the swing states is very much based on just taking the seven states where it was closest last time and saying they're going to be the swing states this time. But if you look at the data going back over the last five elections, the top seven swing states changes every time. You know, states were in play, Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, within relatively recent memory.

• 12:54Rory Stewart?

  So one of the big things that could change this whole thing is that states that we assume that we're calling either Republicans or Democrats and aren't on that list of the top seven that everyone's obsessed with may suddenly move and that could change things a great deal.

• 13:09Marina Hyde?

  The shy swing state, the ones that are hiding back.

• 13:12Rory Stewart?

  And the other thing that would make someone like me very, very worried is if a really big state like Pennsylvania gets called for Donald Trump because that's a lot of electoral college votes going.

• 13:22Alastair Campbell?

  Look at the screen now, so there's Pennsylvania, 19 electoral college votes. That's why people go on about Pennsylvania being, as you would, the most important. North Carolina, 16, Georgia, 16, Michigan, 15, Arizona, 11, Wisconsin, 10, Nevada, 6. Anthony, you've actually been campaigning in Pennsylvania for Kamala Harris. 15 years ago, did you ever imagine that was the turn your life would take?

• 13:48Anthony Scaramucci?

  Not in my wildest dreams, but I did do that and I actually knocked on some Trump doors and I sent those pictures out to everybody just to fire everybody up and...

• 13:58Alastair Campbell?

  It seemed to work.

• 13:59Anthony Scaramucci?

  It did seem to work and that's probably why I'm going to Guantanamo, Alistair, if Rory's wrong, but I was impressed with her ground game. And just quickly, 807,000 doors knocked on in the last 24 hours, 940,000 calls made from their phone bank into Pennsylvania in the last 24 hours. Donald Trump is not doing that and this is a get out the vote election and those things have proven to be very effective in years past. There's one thing I don't like, I'd like to get other panelists to respond on. She's plus 500, sorry, 406,000 votes on the early voting on a net basis. They said that she needed to be closer to 600, 700,000.

• 14:42Anthony Scaramucci?

  Obviously, Joe Biden was a million. I don't know, are you guys worried about that? The campaign says they're not worried about that, but I'm wondering if they're just saying that.

• 14:52Alastair Campbell?

  So this comes down to, I think, to turnout, which is going to be really important. Can Kamala Harris turn out particularly good? Does she, are all the women that she needs going to turn out to vote? Is she going to suffer among Latinos, black men and so on? And you can have a great machine. I mean, I think the Democrats definitely have a better machine than the Republicans.

• 15:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  But can you actually get those people to give up their time to go to the polls? That's the key question.

• 15:14Alastair Campbell?

  I want to come back to the women of you in a moment, but Dominic, just give. Where did the Electoral College come from? Why do we have this Electoral College? And do we actually think it's a remotely sensible system?

• 15:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  So the reason the system was set up is that Rory mentioned 2016. 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but she didn't win the election. Because in 1787, the Constitutional Convention, when they devised the system, they wanted the different states, that's the former British colonies. They wanted them to have.

• 15:43Anthony Scaramucci?

  You didn't have to mention that.

• 15:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, she did, she did. You're outnumbered, keep quiet. They hadn't met their legal obligations to pay their taxes. And this is where you end up, Anthony.

• 15:53Anthony Scaramucci?

  Oh, my God.

• 15:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  So here's how it works.

• 15:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  Just pray that we stay in the alliance. If you need saving again, we'll be over there for you.

• 16:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  Okay, so the different states wanted to preserve a sense of having an independent voice. And not being sort of overwhelmed by the mass of votes from the big states. So the small states were still going to say. So effectively, what they constructed was, I mean, the way that listeners could think of it is like a board game. There are 538 Electoral College votes that points at stake. And you get to 270. And if you get to 270, you are the winner. And the argument for it is that if you can imagine if the EU had a presidential system, you would want the different member states of the EU to have a sense of having an independent unified voice. That it's not that, you know, the voters in Greece or Norway, or not Norway, the voters in Greece or Sweden or Denmark or whatever, are not going to be overwhelmed.

• 16:51Alastair Campbell?

  But the Germans would have the most power?

• 16:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  The Germans would have the most power. But that's exactly how it works here. California, Texas, Florida, New York have the biggest sway. But you can overwhelm that by. Amassing a lot of the smaller states. So we know that both of these candidates are going to get 200 plus. I think that's pretty certain. But it's going to come down to the seven key battlegrounds, of which Pennsylvania with 19 electoral college votes.

• 17:16Rory Stewart?

  Or not, that's where I'm prepared to sort of challenge you. I think Iowa's going to swing. I think what we'll find by the end of the night is that those are not the seven key. And we're going to find some surprises.

• 17:25Marina Hyde?

  Which one do you think, who's in the candidate?

• 17:27Rory Stewart?

  Iowa, for example, yeah, we're not talking about Iowa. There was that big poll at the weekend.

• 17:30Marina Hyde?

  Yeah, no one talked about Iowa the whole election. Suddenly everyone was talking about Iowa.

• 17:34Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah. If things start going bad, I want to switch seats with Alistair so I can be comforted by my spirit brother.

• 17:40Alastair Campbell?

  Marina, can I ask you this? There's been a lot of talk in this election campaign about the gender gap. Do you think that's been accelerated by the fact that Kamala Harris became the candidate replacing Joe Biden? Do you think it's real? Or my sense, just having been here, what do I know, I've been here a few days, but my sense is actually it's lesser a gender gap, but there's maybe a gap between younger women and older women. But the younger women really, Kamala Harris really is looking to younger women to drive this home.

• 18:12Marina Hyde?

  She is, I mean, and if you look at what is the biggest, biggest issue, whereas for other, among other demographics, it's the inflation, the economy. Among women under 45, it is abortion and it is reproductive rights. And also, a lot of women who can remember being under 45 really, really mind about this. I have to say that one of the things I find most depressing about this election, wherever we end up, is that the Republican candidate, at least 26 women have accused him of sexual assault. I mean, that is extraordinary. If you think about any of the other people who've ever run for this office, at least 26 women have accused him of sexual assault.

• 18:48Alastair Campbell?

  And plenty more who have said that they don't want to take it into the publicity, yeah.

• 18:52Marina Hyde?

  And we have not had one day, let alone one week, where that has been the blown up issue and everyone has talked of nothing else. Despite the fact that more women have come forward. Where I take sort of heart, what I think is interesting, is when you see these people who, these young women who were 10. Okay, so you're voting in this election. You were 10 when the Access Hollywood tape came out, when Trump said, oh, you can just grab women by the pussy, you can do all this. And they've discovered that via TikTok. They haven't seen, you know, they weren't, they were 10 at the time.

• 19:20Alastair Campbell?

  No, this is amazing, this thing that's taken on on TikTok of young girls. Just being filmed, listening to Trump saying what he's saying, and it's funny.

• 19:29Marina Hyde?

  It's a whole new way of discovering it and thinking, sorry, what? And so I take a lot of heart from that, but there's a huge amount, you know, you see all the stuff and today when networks are showing everyone who's voting, there are so many mothers and daughters and grandmothers and mothers and daughters making a point of going together and saying, this is why I'm doing it, and wanting to speak to TV cameras to say, this is why I'm doing it.

• 19:54Alastair Campbell?

  I want that woman who went to the polling booth dressed as a character from The Handmaid's Tale. I don't imagine she's watching, but if she is, can she please phone in? I would love to talk to her.

• 20:05Anthony Scaramucci?

  You know, we're sitting in a beautiful office building and Donald Trump has disappointed tens of thousands of subcontractors that have made buildings like this, electricians, sheet rock people, plumbing people. You know, I was very surprised that the Harris team didn't elaborate more on what you're saying, Marina, but also how about getting all the people together that their bills were never paid. They put value into his buildings and he didn't pay them. And then he's out on the campaign, says, my microphone's not working, I'm gonna fire the person or not pay them. And yet he has this very strong support. So what is that about, Alistair?

• 20:44Anthony Scaramucci?

  Why are these people glued to him in a way that is, would be impossible for any other regard of variety politics?

• 20:52Alastair Campbell?

  Roy and I have done lots of interviews on the podcast in recent weeks, asking this very, very, very question. It had to be Michael Lewis last week, Luntz, when we were over at the DNC in Chicago. Their line to us is that we so load the guy that we can't even begin to understand why people like him. And I still find that very, very difficult, but it made, Frank Luntz really made an impact on me because I've tried to see it now. One of the guests we're gonna be talking to later is Peter Hyman, is a former colleague of mine in Downing Street. He's actually been going around the country. He's going to all the rallies and he he'll be fascinated because he has, I think, got a better sense now of why people like him. But I'll be honest, Anthony, I just don't understand how he's even on the ballot, let alone.

• 21:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  I got it in 16, but I do not understand it after eight plus years of additional data. I'm sorry, Maria.

• 21:43Marina Hyde?

  No, no, I was gonna say, doesn't he represent a kind of unboundaried fantasy of how you could be if you didn't have no rules applied to you? You were as rich as you like and you could just say anything you thought at any time. It's such a contrast with her, you know, she has to be perfect and he has license to say anything he wants.

• 21:59Alastair Campbell?

  There's plenty of double standards going. Now, listen, this wonderful setting and we're right over where the nine 11 attacks happened. It's incredibly beautiful down there how they've they've reshaped that space. Beautiful view, will get dark in an hour or so, but this did not come cheap. We have to have sponsors and we're going to be telling you who the sponsors are. So Rory, you are going to tell people about one of our favorite sponsors, that is NordVPN.

• 22:27Rory Stewart?

  Well, huge thank you to NordVPN, who has been sponsoring this livestream with us tonight. Very, very useful when you're traveling. Switch on NordVPN, we've all got it going on our different laptops and phones to protect you from malicious websites, stop people tracking you illegally. You can try it out yourself, nordvpn.com slash rest is politics for the best discount available. Give it a go. Got it going on my phone, you should have it going on yours.

• 22:54Alastair Campbell?

  By the way, I must say to people, if at any point.

• 22:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  Unbelievably enthusiastic.

• 22:58Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, no, it's great. If people if people think that either of us look tired at any point. I had about three hours sleep last night, but Rory has literally just got off a plane from Australia. So you okay?

• 23:10Rory Stewart?

  I'm thank you, I'm doing well, I'm doing well.

• 23:12Anthony Scaramucci?

  So okay, your friend, your friend, the mooch hired you a great makeup artist and I think the two of you look splendid.

• 23:18Marina Hyde?

  He used to be Trump's makeup artist.

• 23:19Anthony Scaramucci?

  Dominic, don't laugh that hard because you got a lot of.

• 23:22Alastair Campbell?

  Are we allowed to say that she used to be Trump's makeup artist?

• 23:25Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, she was Trump's makeup artist, exactly.

• 23:28Rory Stewart?

  Can I make this a little bit more serious?

• 23:29Anthony Scaramucci?

  She doesn't like him like everybody else.

• 23:30Alastair Campbell?

  Rory was very serious. Rory's serious a lot.

• 23:32Rory Stewart?

  One second. So you're saying that you understood it in 16, but Access Hollywood, which are these tapes where he talks about grabbing pussy is 2016?

• 23:39Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 23:40Rory Stewart?

  And when that happened, a lot of very senior Republicans thought he was finished. Paul Ryan came out, a lot of them came out.

• 23:46Anthony Scaramucci?

  They won on the drop out of the, I was in the meeting.

• 23:48Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 23:48Anthony Scaramucci?

  They won on the drop out of the campaign.

• 23:50Rory Stewart?

  And that was the point at which he seemed to sort of jump the shark. That was the moment at which suddenly it was revealed that all the rules that we thought normally applied to politics didn't apply anymore.

• 23:58Alastair Campbell?

  I see, I see you, by the way, they, they haven't included my prediction on, they don't, they're not even taking me down as a Harris man. I'm, I'm not, I'm not a predictor on this.

• 24:07Anthony Scaramucci?

  Where's my question mark after Harris?

• 24:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and Marina wants a question mark. Can't believe I've got Trump next to my name.

• 24:12Anthony Scaramucci?

  Marina, Marina, come on, she's self-confident. I know, but I've been up before, like I said. Woman power, I mean, come on.

• 24:19Alastair Campbell?

  Can we just?

• 24:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  Don't question Mark, don't be ambivalent.

• 24:21Alastair Campbell?

  Can we, can we just talk a little bit about what people keep talking, the, the paths to victory? Who wants to tell me the paths to victory for, let's take Harris first?

• 24:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  So if Harris wins Pennsylvania, then what, she needs, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, I think she's pretty much there.

• 24:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  She's done.

• 24:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  If she wins what, the Great Lakes kind of Rust Belt. If she loses Pennsylvania, then she needs to pick up, and that means it's a little bit dicey. Then she's looking at Sun Belt, Georgia, North Carolina.

• 24:49Alastair Campbell?

  And how many of those would she need?

• 24:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  She would need, she could win.

• 24:52Anthony Scaramucci?

  At least two.

• 24:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. At least two, okay.

• 24:53Anthony Scaramucci?

  To make up for the 19, so you got Pennsylvania, you got 14 and a 6, you're okay. Nevada would do it with North Carolina.

• 25:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  The trouble is if you're down in one, that probably means that you're gonna be down in the others by a couple of points as well.

• 25:06Alastair Campbell?

  Do they, do the, do the belts, the Sun Belt, the Rust Belt, do they always go together? No?

• 25:11Anthony Scaramucci?

  No, but there's something that is happening, and I think Rory will like this, because the campaign, the Harris campaign has actually studied this, the demography of Virginia and North Carolina are starting to look very, very similar. And so the campaign said last night, if we're plus 10 in Virginia, we're gonna win in North Carolina, they really do believe that. If she wins North Carolina, and of course those polls close at 7, we'll know that by 9 to 10 o'clock tonight, she wins, you know, and because it, other things will fall into place for her.

• 25:42Rory Stewart?

  One, one of the things that's making this so terrifying for people is that the last two elections were far closer than the 2008, 2012 elections. So 2008, 2012 were like three or four states which were decided by tiny margins. But in the last two elections, it's like seven or eight states decided by tiny margins. So Michigan 2016 was taken by 0.2, 2020 Georgia taken by 0.2%, Arizona by 0.3%.

• 26:15Rory Stewart?

  Pennsylvania in 2016 by 0.7 percent. So these are, you know, these are a few thousand votes going in each direction.

• 26:22Marina Hyde?

  I watched a movie, actually, just to raise the tone here, called Swing Vote, which is, the entire US election is entirely tied and it comes down to the vote of one person, Kevin Costner, but not actual Kevin Costner, he is playing a kind of.

• 26:38Alastair Campbell?

  I'll make up.

• 26:39Marina Hyde?

  Also Kevin Costner, yeah.

• 26:41Anthony Scaramucci?

  He likes Kevin Costner more than Trump, just so you know. And even that news flash.

• 26:46Marina Hyde?

  But this is telescoped on not a whole lot more people than that. There are these tiny, tiny plate margins, these tiny numbers of people.

• 26:53Anthony Scaramucci?

  And I was, I was looking. How did Kevin, how did he vote?

• 26:55Marina Hyde?

  Well, this is the thing, okay, he, bear in mind, I saw this on a plane a long time ago and it's only a five out of 10. I would, he, the candidates have to like have 10 days to like go at him and try and to change his mind and they flip flop and they do all this stuff. And at the end, we just see him casting his vote, but we don't know what it is. But he has repaired his relationship with his daughter, which is the B plot.

• 27:18Alastair Campbell?

  Oh.

• 27:18Marina Hyde?

  And so, yeah, so they keep it open. No, we don't know who wins.

• 27:21Alastair Campbell?

  That's hopeless.

• 27:22Marina Hyde?

  Well, you know, tell it to the director.

• 27:25Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, but there's a great meme out there that is on TikTok. Dad, how are you voting? I'm voting for you.

• 27:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, that's nice, that's nice, that's nice. Just, Dominic, just go, I just want to pin down this, on the path to victory. Let's go to Trump.

• 27:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Alastair Campbell?

  How does he, how does he get there?

• 27:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  So Trump wins Pennsylvania.

• 27:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think he's, he hasn't won the whole ballgame, as they say, but he's half the way there. He then needs just a couple of others, I think, if he gets Pennsylvania.

• 27:56Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, so.

• 27:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's going, I think he's going to win Arizona personally. I don't know whether Anthony agrees with that.

• 28:01Anthony Scaramucci?

  So I, I think he's going to win Arizona. I don't think, they think they're going to win Nevada, but there's something called.

• 28:08Alastair Campbell?

  They Trump.

• 28:08Anthony Scaramucci?

  They Trump, but there's something called the Reed machine. Now, when you bring that up to Trumpers, they say, "Well, Harry Reid has died." And what's the Reid machine? Harry Reid set up a system there of tremendous amounts of Democratic patronage. And union officials, caterers, people that work in those casinos, they show up and they vote across the board Democrats. And so, they are always under polled. This is why that gentleman who does that big report in Nevada, even though it was 0.3+ for Harris, he called the state for Harris because of the Reid machine.

• 28:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  Can I ask you a question, Anthony? So, Nevada, Arizona, states like that, a lot of Latino voters. And the Puerto Rico garbage thing hasn't hurt Trump with them as much as... And in fact, he's doing pretty well among Latinos, right? Compared with previous... Forty-two percent of men.

• 28:56Marina Hyde?

  This is the thing we should say, this is the thing at the Madison Square Gardens rally that he had, and a comedian, a guy called Tony Hinchcliffe, came up and he said that there's a, you know, there's a great big island of garbage, it's called Puerto Rico.

• 29:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  Which wasn't even very funny, was it?

• 29:09Marina Hyde?

  And it's been, I mean, they, talk about, he'll be in Guantanamo Bay too, with you. I think they will, they never want to see that guy again. That is really, I think that's...

• 29:17Anthony Scaramucci?

  I think he's gonna be on the wall, like in The Handmaid's Tale. I actually think there's some Trumpers that actually genuinely like the fight in me, is I'll end up in Guantanamo being tortured. But I just tell you the different things that they'll do to people. But the thing about the Latino vote, I think he got really hurt at Madison Square Garden. And so, that, you heard it, wherever you guys say it in the UK. Forty-two percent, I'd be very surprised if he's still there. Because a lot of people looked around and said, "Wait, wait, wow, what is he saying?" See, and what happens with Trump, because he is running on misogyny, he's running on racism, he's running on cruelty, he's running on anti-immigration, they're looking around saying, "Oh, he means them, he doesn't mean me."

• 30:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  And now they're looking around saying, "Oh, wait a minute, he actually means me." You see, and that's what's happening right now in the last 10 days of this election.

• 30:09Rory Stewart?

  Very worth looking at states like Arizona because they're a sign of how quickly America's changing. So I was in Phoenix, Arizona a few weeks ago. It's a state where every decade a huge number of new people are coming in. Some decades, there's nearly 50, 60% of the population turning over. And there are in places like Phoenix, a lot of young, educated people who are moving there. There's a massively difficult immigration story, but also I was seeing a lot of people in Arizona who voted Trump last time, who are now going to vote Democrat. So I'm actually, obviously I'm endlessly over optimistic, but I'm going to challenge both Dominic and Anthony on that. I think Arizona also could go.

• 30:50Marina Hyde?

  Can I tell you a funny story about Arizona?

• 30:52Alastair Campbell?

  Was Kevin Costner in it?

• 30:53Marina Hyde?

  No, it's not. But Aviv guy, this was from Aviv guy. One of the guys in.

• 30:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  I sense a little jealousy from Alston.

• 30:59Marina Hyde?

  One of the guys who was in beef was saying that he'd been speaking to people who were down in Arizona, and the Trump campaign discovered that there are all these guys which have, you know, the yard signs and the bumper stickers and they're for Trump, but they weren't registered to vote. So they were saying, and when they kind of, you know, approached them about it, they said, "Yeah, but it's like you guys say, you know, the elections, they're all rigged, there's no point." And they're like, "Well, yeah, but no, that's definitely true, but you, you know, you need, you need to vote in this one." And they're like, "Yeah, but what's the point? Because they're all rigged." And like, "Yeah, no, no, they are." But they got themselves into this ridiculous kind of paradox where they, this kind of philosophical paradox where they have to say, "Yeah, all elections are rigged and really bad, but you definitely need to vote in this one for our candidate."

• 31:40Alastair Campbell?

  I think it was interesting about Arizona, and this thing about the swing states don't always stay the same. So 1980s, 1992, it voted Republican. 1996, Democrat. Then it went back to Republican, 2216, and last time, Democrats. So if it flips again, Rory, you...

• 31:56Anthony Scaramucci?

  You're in trouble.

• 31:57Rory Stewart?

  I am in trouble. Nevada, Arizona also examples these states where it votes one way with the president and can have a governor from the other party as well. So these are always states to look at. They may not, not all of them are on the swing state list, but any state where you have a governor from a different party to the presidential voter, one's worth looking at.

• 32:15Anthony Scaramucci?

  So North Carolina is the most fascinating, if you don't mind me just bringing it up, because, you know, the Republican is an African American that calls himself a black Nazi. He's up against a guy named Stein, who's up 13 right now. The campaign, again, the Harris campaign, saying if he stays up 13, she's got an unbelievable chance to win the state of North Carolina. That's 14 electoral votes, and then she doesn't need to win Pennsylvania. She could just win Nevada, and she's the American president. So, so he, when Biden left the race, there was one path for Harris on the 22nd of July. It was the blue wall, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And now she's got seven or eight different paths to get to the presidency.

• 32:58Anthony Scaramucci?

  And so that's why I like her odds, and I also like her machinery, because we know the machinery works. Hillary did not work the machinery the way the vice president is in her team.

• 33:11Alastair Campbell?

  What was your sense in Pennsylvania, talking to people? I mean, I know it's, presumably you get picked up, they take you to the right places, you're seeing the people they want you to see, but what was your sense of what's actually going to happen, what people were saying to you?

• 33:23Anthony Scaramucci?

  So my sense in Pennsylvania is that she's gonna get the vote from the African Americans that she needs. And this poo-pooing that the African American men are not gonna vote for. I did three town hall meetings over a weekend, 10 days ago, with African American males discussing this topic. You guys may know who Charlemagne the God is. He's been out there doing calls for her, he's been out there promoting this stuff. And so my sense is gonna turn out, but, you know, one of Shapiro's family members mentioned to one of my friends that-

• 33:58Alastair Campbell?

  Who's the governor?

• 33:59Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, this is Governor Josh Shapiro. One of his family members mentioned one of my friends today, that the turnout in Philadelphia from the African American community is way higher. They've actually been under polled by the pollsters. Remember, she's African American. She's an Indian Asian woman and they want her to win. And you can pretend otherwise, but they want her to win.

• 34:20Rory Stewart?

  And we've also got to remember that these governors, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, really key popular surrogates in key states. And they're on Kamala Harris's side, they're from her party.

• 34:31Anthony Scaramucci?

  But it's the machinery too. Remember, the governor controls the state. He's putting the flex on everybody. You got to show up and vote for my candidate.

• 34:38Marina Hyde?

  What has happened to the Trump campaign's machinery, which is absent in many, many places?

• 34:44Anthony Scaramucci?

  Maybe at the commercial break, I'll have you call Lara Trump. Okay, and just say, hey Lara, excuse me. Where did the money go? Because we're all trying to figure it out. Okay, the Republican candidates didn't get the money. Did you give the legal fees? Should we give her a call?

• 34:56Alastair Campbell?

  We can call.

• 34:58Anthony Scaramucci?

  Lara, where'd the money go? Because I'm actually dying to know the answer.

• 35:00Alastair Campbell?

  We're going to talk about both the campaigns after a break in a minute. But just going back to the Electoral College final nominee. Has there ever been any attempt to change it? Or is it impossible?

• 35:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, there's been lots of attempts.

• 35:14Alastair Campbell?

  And why does it? I mean, it feels like a crazy system to me. I mean, there's good and bad in all systems. So who tried to change it and why did they fail?

• 35:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  But before you answer that, I'm talking about the tyranny of the minority, why that was so important to the founders.

• 35:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  So what people were always frightened about was that, so in the late 18th century, they don't want the, they want a balance. They want the majority and the minority to kind of be in a constant equilibrium. What they don't want is a particular group to have a 51% plurality and to dominate everybody else. And the voices of small states in particular to be silenced. That's the great obstacle to changing the system. That if you're in a small state, you're in Rhode Island or you're in, you know, Nebraska.

• 35:58Marina Hyde?

  What is the funny arrangement with Nebraska? That they've, they've got a funny arrangement with.

• 36:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  So Nebraska changed their system in a really interesting way in 1992 because they said, we're completely taken for granted. Nobody ever visits Nebraska. And effectively, because they've hired Lincoln Nebraska off from the rest of the state and that has its own Electoral College vote. Because you don't have to do it in the way they do it. All you need to do is to send electors to the Electoral College.

• 36:24Alastair Campbell?

  It doesn't have to be winner take all because it's not winner take all in Nebraska, not winner take all in Maine.

• 36:28Marina Hyde?

  In Maine.

• 36:29Alastair Campbell?

  And Nebraska changed relatively recently because they wanted attention. They wanted to be visited by President.

• 36:34Marina Hyde?

  Oh my God, I mean, imagine how people in Pennsylvania do not want to be visited anymore. They've had quite enough. I feel my sympathies.

• 36:40Alastair Campbell?

  They wanted to see me. Yeah, of course they want to see you.

• 36:42Marina Hyde?

  You're definitely.

• 36:43Alastair Campbell?

  I was out there banging on doors. Since the rest of this family made you popular as opposed to this hate figure you used to be, they definitely wanted to see you, Anthony. You were never a hate figure, Alex. No, never, never, never. Just me. That was the only one that was hated. Now, I see that Donald Trump has just put out, was it on Twitter, on social, on his Truth Social, that it's too, stay in line, it's too big to rig. They're already talking about this idea that things have been rigged, but we'll come, we'll talk about that in a minute. Listen, I first of all want to thank Spotify. This building that we're in is Spotify's building and it's nice, isn't it?

• 37:13Rory Stewart?

  It's beautiful.

• 37:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it's very, very nice.

• 37:14Rory Stewart?

  Beautiful, beautiful. And we, actually we can see the Statue of Liberty just around the corner.

• 37:17Alastair Campbell?

  I posted a beautiful picture of the Statue of Liberty.

• 37:19Marina Hyde?

  Ellis Island, it is stunning. It's the best view. It's unbelievable.

• 37:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna go fairly, fairly soon. We're going to take a, a quick break. Don't forget, questions, hashtag trip live, go into the chat in, in YouTube, but we're going to come back after the election, after the break, we're going to talk about the campaigns, Harris and Trump. See you soon.

• 37:41Rory Stewart?

  See you soon.

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• 39:45Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to this livestream from The Rest is Politics here in New York. We're going to be with you till midnight. We're then going to have a little break while we sort of go and find out what the hell is happening out there. And then we're going to be coming back for another four-hour stint shortly, five hours after that. I want to talk about the campaigns. And by the way, do send in your questions on the, in the chat on YouTube, hashtag trip live if you're on social media. But I want to, I want to start off with the, the two campaigns. First of all, I want to go around the table again, one-word answers. Who has had the better campaign in the round? Harris or Trump?

• 40:27Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think Harris brought a lot of energy in.

• 40:30Alastair Campbell?

  I love the way he does one word.

• 40:33Alastair Campbell?

  You're tired, you're relaxed, you're relaxed. No, no, go on, go on.

• 40:35Rory Stewart?

  Harris, Harris, my one word is Harris. Go on, we'll get.

• 40:38Alastair Campbell?

  Much.

• 40:39Anthony Scaramucci?

  Harris.

• 40:40Marina Hyde?

  Harris.

• 40:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  Harris.

• 40:41Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, so we all think Kamala Harris has had a better campaign. I mean, I judge campaigns by how they whoever wins has the best campaign.

• 40:48Anthony Scaramucci?

  Can I put two more sentences in though? He was killing it until Biden dropped out of the race. Killing it. I said, this guy, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita have got him organized. He's actually listening to them. He stopped listening to them long ago. And Susie is leaking to Tim Alberta. If you read that article, it was laugh out loud funny because I know the person.

• 41:09Alastair Campbell?

  Is that the Atlantic piece?

• 41:10Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah.

• 41:11Alastair Campbell?

  Are they his main people?

• 41:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  They're his main people. He brought Corey in, but they tried to.

• 41:16Alastair Campbell?

  Corey Lewandowski.

• 41:17Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, they tried to rip Corey to shreds. But Susie basically told Tim Alberta that the morale is at an abject low and that they're trying to kill each other. And many people are.

• 41:27Alastair Campbell?

  Trying to kill each other.

• 41:28Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, you know, metaphorically, Alistair, but many people, if he wins, are like, there's no way they could work in the administration because there's just too much bad blood between them.

• 41:37Rory Stewart?

  I'm slightly with you, Alistair, because in your half joke, whoever wins has the best campaign. And I'd love to come to Dominic on this. There are definitely historians and political scientists out there who basically say campaigns don't really matter.

• 41:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  And often they don't matter.

• 41:51Rory Stewart?

  And it's after the results, everyone's like, oh, Truman had a brilliant campaign, or Kennedy had a brilliant campaign. Kennedy actually beats Nixon by this kind of sliver of a margin.

• 42:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right, exactly.

• 42:01Rory Stewart?

  And everyone then decides it's all down to an amazing TV debate where one of them sweats and the other one doesn't. And in fact, it was almost certainly.

• 42:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  You're dead right. The debates don't matter by and large. And I think campaigns matter.

• 42:12Alastair Campbell?

  But this debate mattered because Biden.

• 42:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, Biden destroyed himself in the debate.

• 42:16Marina Hyde?

  Mistakes matter, but if she had made mistakes at all, like I said, you know, in the Labour Party for the last election in the UK, they talked about the Ming vase strategy. She's got like three Ming vases balanced on top of each other. She could not afford to make any kind of big mistakes at all. And I think she would have been really punished for them. But I agree that she just has to sort of get through it and not drop it.

• 42:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  If you think about where she was in the summer, in the early summer, when Biden was still the nominee and people are like, oh, the Democrats could never choose Kamala Harris because everybody hates her. You think how far she's. Come since then, even if she loses, she will have fought, I think, a pretty good.

• 42:53Alastair Campbell?

  You were listening to the rest.

• 42:55Anthony Scaramucci?

  You were listening to the rest of politics, you asked.

• 42:57Alastair Campbell?

  We all do.

• 42:58Anthony Scaramucci?

  We all are, always. We said in July, she's being underestimated, but I want to leave you with this thought. I'd love to get your reactions to this. There is 90 minutes that took place on the 27th of June that could potentially end Joe Biden's career, but also Donald Trump's career.

• 43:16Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 43:17Anthony Scaramucci?

  And Trump is kicking himself. God almighty, why did I let myself have a debate in June? Why did I wait for the more traditional times of September and October? Because they would have never been able to have recovered with a secondary candidate.

• 43:30Alastair Campbell?

  Tell me this, I've been involved in TV debates with different political leaders and particularly with Tony Blair. It was always easy to have a very frank discussion with him if something wasn't great. Something like Trump, who Kamala Harris absolutely destroyed, in my view.

• 43:45Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Alastair Campbell?

  What do his people say to him after that?

• 43:47Anthony Scaramucci?

  Won the debate.

• 43:48Alastair Campbell?

  Really?

• 43:48Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah. You know, Mr. President, you won the debate, you were fabulous. But I knew Trump didn't win the debate because.

• 43:54Alastair Campbell?

  But what deep down does he know?

• 43:55Anthony Scaramucci?

  Oh, he knows, he knows. No, no, no. He knows he lost. He knows he's lying about certain things. He used to walk up onto the campaign plane. We said, what the hell did you say that for? He said, oh, no, no, that's okay. If I say it 25 times, they'll start to believe it. And we would just shake our heads and bemoan him. But, but he knows he lost. I'm going to tell you the tell because the, the vice president invited me. I, I helped her on debate prep and she invited me into the spin room and I was there in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia after the debate.

• 44:24Alastair Campbell?

  When Trump came in.

• 44:25Anthony Scaramucci?

  And at 11 o'clock at night, he came in to see his buddy Sean Hannity. And I gotta ask you rhetorically, did he do that on the 27th of June? He did not. But he did that night to tell Sean that he won the debate. He got smoked in that debate. And she pressed three or four buttons on him. He went up like a bottle rocket.

• 44:44Alastair Campbell?

  There's a fascinating film emerged today of Trump watching Kamala Harris's speech. And I think at the time of the convention, they actually said he didn't watch it. Clearly another lie. But it was fascinating to watch you because he was just, he was basically with the people telling them what to tweet. And it was all angry and it was rageful and it was, but it was fascinating insight to him. And it gave me the feeling that he, she was inside his head, much more than I think he's managed to get inside.

• 45:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  She's goaded him, the thing about his rallies. That's what really offended him. That's what really gets to him.

• 45:16Alastair Campbell?

  People are leaving his rallies.

• 45:17Marina Hyde?

  And that's what he's been doing. He's been going to these places like New Mexico and Virginia where he can, he can fill a, he can fill an arena. But he wants to go there in the last days of these campa, this campaign. Because everywhere else is half full and it's clearing while he's speaking.

• 45:33Rory Stewart?

  But if, if we just step back for one stage though. All, six out of the seven swing states we're talking about, swing states which were taken by Biden, held by Biden, what does that tell us? That tells us that commentators are viewing this as a very defensive campaign. They're basically think that a swing state means holding on to what Biden had. And, and that tells you that if this goes wrong for Harris, the first thing that will happen is people say they didn't choose the right candidate for the Rust Belt. They should have gone for Josh Shapiro. Why on earth did we get a Californian candidate? And why on earth did we get Tim Walz as the vice presidential candidate? He's not delivering a key, key swing state here.

• 46:15Rory Stewart?

  So when we have Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer as our vice president candidate. So someone like me who's optimistic about Harris, that I'm very, very struck by the fact that they assume that all the swing states are holding on to things that Biden took rather than what I'm assuming, which is swinging into states that Trump held.

• 46:35Alastair Campbell?

  I want to ask Marina about this whole thing about celebrities and endorsements. And so last night, the Kamala Harris event, Lady Gaga was there, some of the huge, Will.i.am was there.

• 46:48Marina Hyde?

  Yeah, it was.

• 46:50Alastair Campbell?

  And meanwhile Elon Musk did an interview with Joe Rogan during which Joe Rogan who's the second best podcaster in the United States behind Tom Holland. Ah, that is poor. No, I know. But do you think they matter? Do they have effect? Have there been too many of them?

• 47:10Marina Hyde?

  There has been an unbelievable amount. And by the way, I think some of them are like freelancing by the end. So I saw a video of like Richard Gere and I was thinking, nobody asked Richard Gere to do this. He's just come out and done this, okay? I, some, the only data we really have on this is that they, and people are saying, oh, we Taylor Swift, she's going to swing. That's not the case. But what they do do celebrity endorsements is that they remind people to register to vote and they encourage their fans to, you know, sign up and volunteer.

• 47:38Alastair Campbell?

  Right, that's why there's no point doing it on the last day of the election campaign.

• 47:40Marina Hyde?

  For me, there's, it's, I actually think that, you know, one of the things that we know hurts the Democrats is people thinking they're the party of kind of coastal elites, blah, blah, blah. So I wouldn't, I think there's been a little too much, maybe a lot too much celebrity in the last few days, but it's not a major coincidence and I don't think it's a...

• 47:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  There were a hell of a lot of celebs who turned out for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

• 47:59Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, loads and loads of pop stars, Hollywood stars and whatnot, but of course they're part of the problem in a sense. If they give you the impression of, oh, this is a liberal metropolitan elite. I mean, it's got a long history. So, you know, the first big star to endorse a presidential candidate was Al Jolson in 1924. He endorsed Warren Harding. But it doesn't always work. So Ronald Reagan...

• 48:20Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that didn't.

• 48:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  He had Jimmy Stewart recorded a campaign commercial for Ronald Reagan in 1976 when Reagan didn't even get the nomination.

• 48:29Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 48:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  So they don't have this kind of mystical...

• 48:31Alastair Campbell?

  We had Ginger Spice in 1997, she was correct.

• 48:34Rory Stewart?

  What I actually asked Marine about this, and my sense is that although people admire celebrities enormously, so Stormzy endorsed Jeremy Corbyn.

• 48:45Rory Stewart?

  But my sense is that people are quite smart and they think, okay, I'm really, I admire Stormzy, but I don't necessarily follow his views on politics.

• 48:52Marina Hyde?

  I wouldn't agree more.

• 48:54Rory Stewart?

  A friend of mine got Victoria Beckham to tweet out that she was reading his book, and he was really excited.

• 49:00Marina Hyde?

  She used to say she'd never read a book.

• 49:02Rory Stewart?

  And he was really excited, and he thought, you know, she's got gazillion Twitter followers. And his Amazon sales went up by like 10 books, because presumably people aren't very interested.

• 49:11Alastair Campbell?

  It's more than Boris Johnson's.

• 49:13Marina Hyde?

  Definitely. And actually, there was, there used to be a thing where people thought, oh, someone has got so many Twitter followers that if they say anything, then, oh my goodness, look at how many extra votes that will mean. This is absolute nonsense, and it doesn't mean anything. The only data we have, as I say, is that it does actually make people volunteer, and it makes them register to vote.

• 49:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I suspect we will be talking more about Twitter and Mr. Musk at some time.

• 49:36Anthony Scaramucci?

  We'll have to have that whole oligarchic talk, but we hated the celebrity endorsements in 2016. And I think I told Alistair this, she, and I didn't like the concert that the Vice President did last night, because, again, that comes across as elitist in Pennsylvania. He was in a farm field in 2016, and Hillary Clinton was with Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce and Jay-Z in the Wells Fargo Arena. And I would have said to them, get those 20,000 people who are your volunteers out making phone calls on the last night of the event.

• 50:11Marina Hyde?

  It was the most 2016 she's done.

• 50:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  We were very amazed that she was willing to do that.

• 50:16Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 50:17Alastair Campbell?

  Now, another of the very, very kind sponsors who are making sure that we can be fed and watered as we go through the night, and possibly even have a bed to sleep in at the end of it all, are Saly, and you know all about them.

• 50:30Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, Alistair actually introduced me to Saly, and I love Saly. And so what Saly is, it's a fantastic software that you can download onto your phone, and it acts like an eSIM anywhere you are in the world. And so you can avoid roaming charges if you use Saly. And of course, if you're with us, you can get a 15% discount, but you have to go to saly.com/tripus. And so, Alistair, I want to thank you for putting me in the Saly clientele.

• 50:59Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent, okay. Now, you've been sending lots of questions, which we're very, very, very grateful. And let's have the first one.

• 51:09Alastair Campbell?

  Here we go, WS. Given polling errors in 16 and 20, are pollsters deliberately predicting a tighter race to avoid the embarrassment? Are they playing it safe to protect their credibility? Marina, what do you think?

• 51:22Marina Hyde?

  Well, I really agree with Rory on this, and I do think that I've never seen... Alistair, you know it's really bad when the Spin Doctor becomes the story, but when the pollsters have been this much of the story, it's a form of... This is like a sort of necroly system.

• 51:36Alastair Campbell?

  This has become an industry.

• 51:37Marina Hyde?

  They feud like rappers, okay? These guys, it's like they're laying down diss tracks.

• 51:41Alastair Campbell?

  Nate Silver was even on our podcast, I mean, for heaven's sake.

• 51:44Rory Stewart?

  Well, I said something to Dominic, but I was just having a look at the polls over history. They got it wrong in 48 on Truman, they got it wrong 52, they said it was too close to call when Eisenhower won a storming victory. In 76, they had Carter leading by 33 points when he actually won by 2.

• 52:00Alastair Campbell?

  33.

• 52:01Rory Stewart?

  They called it a dead heat on Reagan in 80, which he then won. 88, they had Ducakis leading Bush by 17 points in the summer.

• 52:11Alastair Campbell?

  I just want to point out...

• 52:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  But these are not election day polls, right? These are polls that often...

• 52:16Rory Stewart?

  Even on the election day, Harris was at a margin of error in 88.

• 52:19Alastair Campbell?

  Just a minute, as a historian, I love this research, because you've done that on your own, haven't you?

• 52:24Rory Stewart?

  I've done that on my own, yes.

• 52:25Alastair Campbell?

  And where did you get all that?

• 52:26Rory Stewart?

  I got that from a historian. In fact, Mr. Alan Lickman.

• 52:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, the 13 keys.

• 52:31Marina Hyde?

  He's got 13 keys.

• 52:32Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent, well done.

• 52:33Rory Stewart?

  But tell everybody who Alan Lickman is, I think it's important. Okay, so he has brought together... It's a wonderful thing, particularly for someone like me. He basically says, campaigns don't matter, policies don't really matter, ideology doesn't really matter, loyalty to the party doesn't really matter. No, what really matters is, do you have an incumbent mandate? How's the economy performing? Have there been any major scandals? Have you got yourself in a military screw-up? The problem is that he is very, very good at predicting the popular vote, but he can get it wrong if the electoral college flips in the wrong direction.

• 53:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  So just on it, first of all, on the polls, some of those polls were taken months before an election.

• 53:11Rory Stewart?

  Some of them were, yep.

• 53:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  So your Ducakis poll, it's like asking who's going to win the World Cup in three years' time.

• 53:15Rory Stewart?

  Scotland.

• 53:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  Although Harris had you carcass to the margin of error at the moment of the election. Secondly, I think the 13 keys thing is absolute and utter gibberish and tosh.

• 53:25Alastair Campbell?

  I'm with.

• 53:26Marina Hyde?

  So does Nate Silver.

• 53:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, so does anybody with any common sense. The idea that there's 13 boxes that you tick and bang, you can predict the result.

• 53:34Alastair Campbell?

  It's a very good PR stunt.

• 53:36Marina Hyde?

  What about this nice woman, Ans Alza, who's now, she said, she does not, there's not this kind of dick waving thing when she talks about her thing. She said this, this week, when she did this Iowa poll that everyone was completely shocked because no one's really talked about Iowa the whole campaign. She said, yeah, my methodology, my methodology seems way too simple, but it's worked so far. One day it might not work and then I'll be blown into little pieces and scattered across the city of Des Moines. None of the men talk like this, okay? I'm a big fan of Ans Alza.

• 54:04Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, next question.

• 54:07Alastair Campbell?

  Jeditor96, oh, I think this was definitely for you, Dominate. Which pre-internet US presidents would have done the best with social media? Abraham Lincoln, he did the best.

• 54:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, too long-winded, much too long-winded. He wouldn't fit within the character limit, I think.

• 54:23Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, he could have done his own Truth Social.

• 54:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt would be brilliant. Teddy Roosevelt, Jeff could be bland, he'd be a bit vanilla. I think I'd love, I mean, there is a Dick Nixon Twitter account, which is very good at capturing Nixon's voice. Teddy Roosevelt does the kind of stuff that Putin does on Twitter, like bear chest, go out there, hunting bears. He'd do stunts, wouldn't he? Absolutely, he would. He'd wrestle a bear in the Rockies or something.

• 54:45Anthony Scaramucci?

  You don't think if George Washington took wooden teeth out of his mouth, that would have been a viral thing?

• 54:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Isn't it weird that you give us so much grief about our teeth, but your founding father didn't even, he had a slave's teeth in his mouth?

• 54:58Anthony Scaramucci?

  We saw his teeth in the Smithsonian and we fixed ours. Look at these teeth.

• 55:02Alastair Campbell?

  And yours, mate, yours are amazing.

• 55:04Marina Hyde?

  Your teeth are wonderful.

• 55:05Alastair Campbell?

  They're almost, they're almost floppy and they are. Look it up. You were gonna say.

• 55:09Anthony Scaramucci?

  And is that like a.

• 55:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  So you're asking about who's.

• 55:12Rory Stewart?

  Be great on Twitter.

• 55:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  Is the best on Twitter. I think TR is a.

• 55:16Alastair Campbell?

  You're both, you're agreeing, you're agreeing on on on.

• 55:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Rory is wrong about the 13 keys, but he's absolutely right.

• 55:21Anthony Scaramucci?

  What about Calvin Coolidge? He was known for his bravery.

• 55:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Silent Cal. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't say anything.

• 55:27Rory Stewart?

  Should we be serious about, should we be serious about 13 keys for a moment? So what what's happening there is a huge debate where all political scientists and historians, particularly political scientists, less historians, are trying to come up with what's the key thing? Is it loyalty to party? Is it issues? So Lincoln is the historian at least saying it's 13 things, which in a different combination matter. I agree with you. You don't want to turn it into a a science, and I'm surprised he's trying to turn it into a science. But what he's basically pushing towards, and this is why I'm cheered up by it, is the idea the American public, in the end, have a certain degree of common sense and in the popular vote at least, reflect how they think things have been going. The performance over the previous four years and and they're less swayed than you would have thought.

• 56:11Anthony Scaramucci?

  But Lincoln said something that we should all remember about America, and I hope it's true tonight. He said that, you know, he was debating Douglas and we're talking about how smart the common American citizen is. And Lincoln said, you know, they may not be smart academically, but they have a good nose and they can sense a rotting cadaver in their basement. And it's one of the more famous obscure.

• 56:30Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 56:30Anthony Scaramucci?

  Things to say, but he, his point is that, you know, maybe, maybe there's more of us than them.

• 56:35Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 56:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  I guess what it comes down to, what makes all elections so complicated, is they are, first of all, there was a referendum on the last four years, and particularly on the economics of the last four years. Are you better off than you were four years ago? But also, and what make what makes them hard to predict is elections are a way for people to proclaim a sense of identity, that tribalism, a kind of cultural issues. And that's the kind of stuff that Donald Trump did well on in 2016. Because, of course, the economy in 2016, the fundamentals, as you put it, Rory, was pretty good.

• 57:04Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 57:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  But Trump won because he spoke to something atavistic, kind of primal among people who felt left behind.

• 57:11Alastair Campbell?

  Michael Lewis is very interesting on the podcast this week. He said that he genuinely thinks Trump is like the angriest man on the planet. He's angry about everything all the time. And he somehow connects with other people's anger. Do you think this will be

• 57:24Anthony Scaramucci?

  in there? I I do believe that. And I I think Van Jones got it better than anybody. He said that.

• 57:29Alastair Campbell?

  He's a CNN guy.

• 57:30Anthony Scaramucci?

  He's a CNN guy. He said it was a whitelash. He said at the end of the day, there's a very large group of people that they see the name White House. And they want a white person in that White House and they backlash on everybody.

• 57:44Alastair Campbell?

  Final question for now.

• 57:48Alastair Campbell?

  Eric Baty, I was wondering if you could talk about the recent phenomenon of candidates appearing on podcasts as opposed to traditional media, especially given the popularity of Joe Rogan, Marina.

• 57:57Marina Hyde?

  I think this has been 100% the podcast selection. It's really interesting. Yeah. Because things that they used to do, there used to be this kind of landmark campaign staging posts, like, you know, Kamala Harris would do a Vogue cover or whatever. That's nothing. That's like when she went on like Alex Cooper.

• 58:10Alastair Campbell?

  She looked great though.

• 58:12Marina Hyde?

  But it got no traction. People didn't talk about it. Things that media endorsements just seem like old hat. I think that I wish she had done Joe Rogan. Trump did Rogan and I think unraveled a little bit on it, but she should have done Joe Rogan and this whole market of people, you know, the manosphere is listening to podcasts. But it was interesting how Trump performed and why he, because he should be with his rambling style and whatever. He should be great on podcasts. But I tell you what, and I think politically, political podcasts particularly are like a personal growth medium. You know, it's all of you guys owning your mistakes and saying, you know, it's made me sad. It made me sad. I didn't like, you know, he can't do that. He would regard apologizing or saying he'd made a mistake as making him the smaller person.

• 58:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  So I'm going to take the other side of Marina on Rogan because I understand that network around Rogan. Rogan doesn't like Trump.

• 59:03Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 59:03Anthony Scaramucci?

  And he did not want Trump on his podcast and Trump was trying to get on his podcast for three years. And Rogan said no, because he really doesn't like Trump. It has to do with the whole WWE, the worldwide wrestling.

• 59:15Anthony Scaramucci?

  Musk convinced Rogan and Musk muscled Rogan and influenced him.

• 59:19Alastair Campbell?

  So when Rogan said yesterday he endorses Trump, he doesn't.

• 59:21Anthony Scaramucci?

  So let me explain why no, he does, because I listened to the whole podcast. If I was on the Harris team and I said, do not go on Rogan because he's tied to Elon Musk. And it'll be a fae complete. It'll make you look worse if you go on. And he interviewed both of you and after he did that.

• 59:36Alastair Campbell?

  What do you mean he's tied to Musk?

• 59:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  He's very tied to Musk. He's in Musk's network. Musk is on the show all the time. Lots of Musk's people are on the show. Joe and Elon Musk are very, very close. And it would have been a trap for her.

• 59:52Marina Hyde?

  But he's so enormous. He's so huge.

• 59:54Anthony Scaramucci?

  There were other podcasts she could have done.

• 59:56Marina Hyde?

  Yeah, well, in the manosphere, because otherwise the Democrats are just saying we're giving up on this manosphere.

• 1:00:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  She could have done the All In podcast. She could have done the Rest of Politics UK or US. But going on Rogan.

• 1:00:06Marina Hyde?

  But that's not manosphere. He's disaffected young man. If the Democrats don't try and reach them that way, they're gonna have to reach out to it or else they're saying that we've basically given up on these people.

• 1:00:17Rory Stewart?

  Conventional media, very quickly, would never have given Trump three hours to talk in that way. I mean, there is something very unusual about the way that podcasts work.

• 1:00:25Anthony Scaramucci?

  He sounded like an individual on that podcast.

• 1:00:28Marina Hyde?

  There was only one moment on a podcast this campaign which I thought was really interesting. And I can't remember the name of the podcaster, but he said to him, "Oh, actually, I'm sober. I'm in recovery now." And Trump said, "Oh, and how's that going?" And I realized that I'd only ever seen him ask another person about themselves.

• 1:00:45Rory Stewart?

  No, that's why, actually, if you listen to the whole Rogan thing, he does much more of that than you'd expect.

• 1:01:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  We would need to understand the policy context.

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