309. Trump's Secret Weapon

Who has returned as Donald Trump's secret weapon? What's happening in Georgia? Is Kamala Harris making a mistake over the upcoming presidential debate? Join Anthony & Katty as they answer all these questions and more on today's episode of The Rest Is Politics US. Instagram: @RestPoliticsUS Twitter: @RestPoliticsUS Email: [email protected] Editor: Nicole Maslen Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen 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

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  When you think about Crocs, you think the classic clog. But did you know there's also a canvas clog? A vegan suede clog, a coastal-inspired style. A style with studs, straps, and lots of sass. Honestly, I could keep going with the surprises. You've got to see them for yourself because there is literally a style for every kind of girl. So do your thing and head to crocs.com or a store near you now.

• 2:07Speaker 04

  Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kay.

• 2:11Speaker 05

  And me, Anthony Scaramucci. How are you, Katty?

• 2:14Speaker 04

  I am good. I'm, you know, back from the DNC, which was great. I was listening to Rory and Alistair's coverage of it on The Rest Is Politics UK feed. And, you know, it was great to hear how excited they were about what they saw and how impressed they were with the speakers. Because I think it was Alistair made this great comparison about how you couldn't sit through four hours of the Labour Party Conference and keep your eyes open. But the quality of the speaking in America is so good. I always go back to this thing that kids in school, my kids and your kids, all learnt show and tell from the age of first grade. And it just gives them this confidence speaking in public. Anyway, it was as a non-American but who lives in America and loves this country, it was very nice to hear them so excited about what is, after all, the greatest political show on earth.

• 2:58Speaker 05

  I'm gonna message Alastair Campbell and let him know that you brought up The Rest Is Politics UK.

• 3:03Speaker 04

  Within a minute, within a minute.

• 3:05Speaker 05

  Within a minute, yes. Okay, so you're getting very high marks.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  But it was genuinely very nice to hear them so excited.

• 3:11Speaker 05

  I feel like he's our headmaster. Don't you feel like that?

• 3:13Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:13Speaker 05

  I feel like I'm under, I feel like I'm under a lot of pressure there for some reason. I'm doing the best I can, Alistair. I know you're listening, Alistair. I'm doing the best I can.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  And that makes me today the prefect or the class president. Because, look, I bailed us out.

• 3:27Speaker 05

  Amen. And I appreciate the good teamwork. Now, what are we talking about today?

• 3:30Speaker 04

  So today, before we get going, there are some very exciting dates for your diary and some exciting news. We are going to be doing the first ever The Rest Is Politics US live shows at the end of October. So if you happen to be in New York, we're going to be there on October the 28th. Put it in your diary or in your phone. And if you're a DC resident like me, we're going to be here in DC on October the 30th. So October the 28th in New York City, October the 30th in Washington DC. We're going to have more details about how to buy tickets in the coming weeks. Keep your eyes peeled for those. Anthony, if we do not look like we're going to fill the venues, I am expecting 333 Scaramucci's in Manhattan, okay?

• 4:12Speaker 05

  You're low, you're low on the Scaramucci count. You can ask the first Trump campaign. We can deliver Scaramucci's at a moment's notice, okay?

• 4:20Speaker 04

  Excellent. Very good.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  All you gotta do is tell my family free food. Okay, this may not have free food, but I'll I'll promise to serve them popcorn if we're undersold.

• 4:29Speaker 04

  We'll talk to the goal hanger folks and see if we can rustle up some sandwiches in order to get the scaramouches out. Anyway, we're excited about that. So we look forward to seeing you in New York and DC. Today, though, we're gonna check, but we did a lot last week on the Democrats. So we're gonna check back into Trump land and look at this question of whether he is possible to control. Because there's a lot of talk about how his campaign wants him to stay on message. There have been some great ads that are very message focused, but of course he goes off message. So is there a method to how they do it? In the second half, we're going to look at the swing states, why they swing and zoom in on Georgia, which is where the Vice President and Tim Walz have been this week. It's a very important swing state. It's kind of neck and neck at the moment.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  So we're gonna sort of take a little bit of a deep dive into Georgia. And there's also a new Fox News poll out, which has some interesting data in it that I want to talk about too. But let's start, Anthony, by looking quickly about whether you think that in the wrap up to the convention, since we are just a week after the convention, and maybe it's a little too early to tell this. Do you feel like the convention cut through to voters and made a kind of material difference for Democrats?

• 5:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, she didn't get the biggest bump in the polls that I thought she would get. I thought I thought it was well produced. I thought her speech was great. But it's telling you something that I think her strategists know. Minds are made up and it's now about how are we going to get the vote out? Because if we can get the vote out on our side relative to the other side, we're going to win. But I think it was very well produced. I think she did a very good job. I think she's running an incredibly disciplined campaign. And on July 3rd, when you and I were talking, or the 4th of July, actually, I said she was gonna replace Joe Biden and that people were going to underestimate her. And it's now August 29th or August 30th, and we're sitting here with a candidate that is very disciplined.

• 6:24Speaker 05

  She's very much so on message and she is doing things that people don't necessarily like, which I like. She hasn't had an interview and people say, well, that's terrible, blah, blah, blah. They don't really understand the voter. The voter doesn't care that she hasn't had an interview.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  She is going to have one. We should remind you, tonight, right on CNN.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  Yes, she is. Yep, tonight. Yep, she's gonna have an interview tonight. Dana Bash, a mutual friend of ours is gonna be interviewing her with Tim Walz. The Wall Street Journal's picking on her this morning, saying she's got a crutch in the interview, Governor Walz being there. I don't believe that. Every presidential candidate has been interviewed with their vice president over the last 30 years. So I think that's a bunch of bunk there. But, but I, I, I like what she's doing. What I fear for her is the substance. I fear for her, what are the policies? If she's gonna tell people, we're taxing unrealized gains, she's gonna lose the rich and poor people. It's not just gonna be, well, ladies and gentlemen, we're only gonna tax people worth $100 million.

• 7:22Speaker 05

  There's something about America that you know and I know, this is an aspirational country. You're not rich right now, but you think you're gonna get rich in America, or you think your kids are gonna get rich in America. And I just wanna explain to people, if you make money in America, and I make money here in New York, 52% of that money goes to the government. Okay, so that's Joe Biden, Eric Adams, and Kathy Hochul are the majority partners in my life. I'm a minority partner. They get 52 cents, I get 48. If you're then going to tax my investments, let's say I take all 48, don't spend any money on myself, Kathy, but I invest it in the stock market, and I hold it for 10 years.

• 8:02Speaker 05

  They're now saying that they're gonna tax that, which is basically a disincentive for investment and a disincentive for saving. So it's a ridiculously stupid idea. I hope they don't go in that direction. They had one of their economic advisors out on CNBC trying to justify it the other day. And I'm telling you, if they go in that direction, it'll be very, very tough for her. And we'll have to see. So if she says, hey, I'm a moderate now, I'm trying to reflect what's going on in the country. I wanna be president for all people. My ideas have evolved because of who I am today, right? There's a great expression in football, you have to, you have to remember where you came from, but you also have to remember where you are now, okay?

• 8:45Speaker 05

  And she has that ability, and I, and I, I think she comes into the zip code of moderation on policy, she's gonna win the election.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  So I had a very, I, exactly on what you're talking about, I had, I was up in New York dropping my daughter in college. Last weekend and I had dinner with a very good friend of mine, Chris McGreal, who writes for The Guardian. And he had just come back from spending 10 days in Western Pennsylvania, going around Trump rallies and going to events with Trump. And he says that she doesn't really have a chance on the economy. And she's kind of lost the economic message and there's just not much she can do to recover ground on that. And that Fox poll that we're going to talk a bit more about later, I think the real red flashing warning light for Kamala Harris is the economy.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  It says that in that poll, the economy is the number one issue for 41% of voters. That is way ahead of all the other issues. The next issue is immigration and that is only 14%. Abortion is only 13%. And he still wins on the economy. So if everybody's going to be focused on the economy going into the polls in November, and let's see how the economy is doing and how people are feeling, I think that is why all of this excitement coming out of the DNC and this sense of unity and joy and all of the things you say about what a good candidate she's turned out to be, I think that is the big mitigating factor. And that's why I'm still a lot more cautious than some of the kind of excited Democrats were up in Chicago last week. Okay, but let's talk about-

• 10:17Speaker 05

  But let me interrupt if you don't mind. Let's play strategist for a second, okay? You're on the campaign team for the Harris people. You just came back from that dinner. You believe that the analysis there that she's having a hard time. What adjustments, if any, would you make? Or would you cede the economic issues to President Trump?

• 10:37Speaker 04

  She can't afford to cede the economic issues totally. I mean, she's got to have a message on the economy because otherwise every time she goes out in public, she's not talking about the things that people are thinking about. So she has to have something on inflation, distancing herself from the previous administration. She has given an economic policy speech, but a lot of people were quite critical of that. But I think she's got, she's got to have some economic message that is around, I hear you, I know that it's hard. These are the things I'm going to try and do to make your life better. And if she can refine that, at least, at least, you know, there's, she may be able to reassure some people who are on the fence. Okay, let's talk about

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Trump and whether it's possible, there's a lot of talk about how his campaign strategist, Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles, now Corey Lewandowski, who was his spokesperson in the 2016 campaign, has been brought back into the team. But particularly Chris and Susie want him to stay on message. And they feel that if he's going to, if he'll talk about the economy, if he'll talk about the border, then they have a winning shot. But every time they push that message forward, and there have been some excellent Trump ads. I think there's a very good Trump ad out at the moment, trying Kamala Harris to Bidenomics, the failed economic policy, as they see it of the Biden administration. And it's very crisp, it's very sharp. That is the message they would like Trump to be

• 12:00Speaker 04

  talking about. But then he kind of undermines himself. So do you think it's, do you think it's possible for Trump to stay on message? And actually, as a kind of former strategist of his, do you think that's what he needs to be doing?

• 12:12Speaker 05

  Well, I think he needs to be doing that, but he's never going to do that. And I think Corey wrote a book, Corey Lewandowski, Let Trump Be Trump. And I think the reason why he's back on the campaign is that he recognizes no matter what you do, Trump is going to be Trump. And so, and there's a reason for that. He's a pure narcissist. And he has to prove to everybody that he can be contrary to them. H R McMaster is out with a new book right now. He's saying that Trump was just reflexively contrarian. If you said, hey, don't mention that we're going to bring the military into Venezuela, we certainly don't want to do that. They walk out of the room, Trump gets in front of a microphone and says, you know, we could probably bring the military into Venezuela. He just likes doing that. Okay?

• 12:56Speaker 04

  He's done that this week, by the way, on things like mail-in voting. Or he said, the campaign is saying, yes, please encourage people to do mail-in voting. And then Trump turns up in an interview and says, mail-in voting, I don't like it. It is always a fraud.

• 13:09Speaker 05

  Okay, so let's talk about Corey for a second. So Corey Lewandowski was a political operative for the Koch family. He's a New Hampshire resident. He knows New Hampshire about as well as anybody. He met with Mr. Trump in 2015 and Mr. Trump hired him as campaign manager. And so my first meeting to discuss the presidency of Mr. Trump was the day after the Apprentice finale. I was sitting in his office and he said, "Did you see me on TV last night?" And I said, "No, I didn't see you on TV." "Oh, you were the only one," he said. "The ratings were spectacular." And he went into his whole gibberish. And then, "But that's the last time I'm gonna be on TV." See, I hired this guy Corey Lewandowski. He's downstairs on Five, and you're gonna go downstairs and meet him, and I want you to come work on

• 13:53Speaker 05

  my campaign. And I said, "Listen, I'm with Jeb," and I was actually with Scott Walker at that time, and he was coming out of the race. I said, "And I'm gonna be with Jeb." He said, "Well, when Jeb leaves the race, doesn't he have low energy?"

• 14:03Speaker 04

  Jeb Bush.

• 14:03Speaker 05

  Don't you think Jeb Bush, "You'll come work for me?" And I foolishly said, "Yes, I'll come work for you." Then I went downstairs to meet Corey. This is the beauty of Trump Tower. You ready? Corey was on the fifth floor. If you walked up the steps from the fifth floor, you were on 14, Katty Kay. Okay, let me just say that again, okay? You went from Five to 14 with one flight of steps.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  Where did the nine floors go?

• 14:26Speaker 05

  Well, the nine floors went into the Bermuda Triangle, but in the brochure, you're on the 68th floor instead of the 59th floor of Trump Tower. See what I mean? And that's Donald Trump, okay? So I go down there to talk to the guy, and I like Corey. Corey's down-to-earth. Corey's a New Hampshireite. These guys are live free or die. And I got along very well with Corey, and I helped him with the campaign and organized the fundraising. When he got fired, which was right after the convention, or maybe just before the convention, it was probably June of 2016, I went to see Corey and said, "How can I help you?" And Corey said something to me that I will never forget. "Just remember, Mooch, you're never

• 15:07Speaker 05

  out of Trump's orbit, okay? I'm gonna stay close to these people, never out of Trump's orbit, helped Trump when he was president, helped Trump in the post-presidency, wrote a book, Let Trump Be Trump." Okay, so he's back. La Savita, by the way, I'm Italian, so it's La Savita. I love the way you pronounce the name, by the way. I think you said La Sidia.

• 15:27Speaker 04

  La Savita. Sounds like, I think it sounds like La Civius.

• 15:32Speaker 05

  This is the reason why you're doing, this is the reason why you're doing so well in the United States, okay? That accent is worth like 25 IQ points in the United States.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Hey, I'm gonna keep them. I will take any, any IQ points I'm given for any reason.

• 15:44Speaker 05

  My accent's like minus 10 IQ points in the United States and around the world. But you're doing beautifully with the accent. But La Cevita is gonna be at odds with Corey. They see the world differently. They're gonna try very hard to stay composed because they gotta sprint here for the next 68 days. But that's Corey Lewandowski.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Why do you think he was brought back into the campaign at this particular moment?

• 16:06Speaker 05

  Because the campaign was faltering and Trump is a, uh, he's a football owner. He's a baseball team owner. And when the thing is not working well, he wants to make change. He wants to fire the coach or he wants to replace the coach with somebody. And so he's a conflict avoider, so he didn't fire Susie or La Cevita. They frankly have done a very good job. And so he added somebody. So, so Katty, please forgive me because some of this is graphic. And of course, if you're listening in the car with your children, you probably want to turn the volume down on some of this because it's graphic and ridiculous. But let me just ask you rhetorically, is this Trump on message? He posts a photo of VP Harris and Secretary Clinton and he says, funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently. Is that on message?

• 16:51Speaker 05

  He posts a message of VP Harris in an orange prison jumpsuit. Is that on message? He's posting QAnon tropes, which is this ridiculous conspiracy on the web that none of us can understand. And he says, nothing can stop what's coming. Is that on message? He's got a photo of Obama and he texts asking followers to repost if they want Obama tried by a public military tribunal. Is that on message, Katty K? So, I mean, I could keep going, but, but he's not on message. He sounds like a raving lunatic. And yet I can talk to billionaire friends of mine and because of the tax issue and other issues, they're like, yeah, no problem.

• 17:33Speaker 05

  I'm going with Donald Trump, even though he's a misogynist and a raising raging lunatic. So, explain that because you are a Brit transplanted to America. Explain Merica to me. And again, for our British and international listeners, there's America and then there's something called Merica. And you know exactly what I'm talking about, which is NASCAR, tattoos, country music, Bud Light. Explain to me how he can get away with that and still have this level of support.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  So, all of those things you mentioned, and the one particularly about the blowjobs, is disturbing, and it is Trump playing to the lowest of his instincts and the lowest of his base's instincts. He actually did something similar back in 2016, when he suggested that a female senator would go down on her knees in front of him to get, you know, his endorsement and his money. And that was pretty gross, too, and certainly disrespectful. And there's a section of the country that is appalled by all the things that Trump has been posting. And it was interesting that he did all of this in the space of a few hours this week, whether that was a reflection of him feeling kind of embattled, but it was deliberately playing to his base. And the thing about Barack Obama

• 18:47Speaker 04

  with that caption, "All roads lead to Obama. Retruth if you want public military tribunals." That's almost back to the birtherism stuff of the early 2010s, when he was questioning Barack Obama's birth certificate. And there's a kind of dog whistle in all of this. So, I think none of that is the kind of on-message that the campaign would like him to have. But at another level, it gets him a huge amount of attention. I mean, I think one of the things that we in the press had to come out of 2016, asking ourselves, was, "Did Donald Trump get too much free media?" I mean, I think there's a policy group that has estimated that the amount of free media he got in 2016 was worth $4 billion, that

• 19:30Speaker 04

  he didn't even have to pay for. And I look at this week, and when Trump is off-message, the amount of coverage he gets spikes on CNN, MSNBC, all of the cable networks. And so, for example, this week, there was this altercation between a Trump staff member and somebody who works at the Arlington National Cemetery, where Trump had gone to memorialize the third anniversary of the bomb attack at the airport in Kabul that killed 13 American soldiers. And the story then that comes out of that is the altercation between his staff member and somebody who works for the Arlington National Cemetery, because the campaign was trying to film, and you're not allowed to film for campaign purposes. But that incident,

• 20:15Speaker 04

  again, he doubles down, he doesn't fire the staff member, he has J.D. Vance out there saying, "This is nothing," and everybody's making a fuss about it. But it's getting him a lot of free media. And I wonder whether at some point, I think Donald Trump genuinely wants to win this time round. I'm not sure that was the case in 2016, but he really wants to win. He isn't stupid. He knows that if he wants to reach voters in the middle, talking about the economy is the way to do it. But at some level, I wonder if he's also thinking, you know what? If I go off message, that's when I get attention. Is that, is that sort of, do you think that's a, that analysis is right? And do you think it works for him?

• 20:54Speaker 05

  Yes, I think, I think that's right. I do think it works. He's talked about it ad nauseam. I think it's a combination of calculation. I think it's a combination of real rage. And then Trump has something that I would call faux rage. Okay, he acts like he's raging when he's actually not. And so what I, what I find amusing about the journalists is that they don't give him credit for how smart he actually is.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 21:21Speaker 05

  And, uh, and you know, Richard Branson, uh, once said to me something about Donald Trump, and this is years ago, and I'll share it with you. Uh, Richard Branson had a reality show in the United States on Fox. I think it lasted one or two seasons. I was down on Necker Island with him talking about it. And I said, well, you know, you were up against Donald Trump in that time slot. You're smiling right now because I'm an unbelievable name dropper.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  You're so good. It's, it gives me such pleasure. I, I love it.

• 21:47Speaker 05

  I just, I just want, you know, I own my name drop.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  Not only, not only Richard Branson, but with Richard Branson on Necker Island.

• 21:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  A double name drop. I was good.

• 21:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course. Of course I've got.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  Slipped it in.

• 21:58Speaker 05

  Of course, of course I've got the photos as receipts in my office. Okay. But anyway, and I love Richard. Okay. And Richard's a great guy. But he said something to me in 2013. So remember, this is three years now prior to Trump running. He said, you know, I was up against Trump and we're similar in some ways. We're very different in others. How are we similar? I have ADHD, Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, and I have a little bit of dyslexia. I have a hard time reading, a result of which, Anthony, I've had to develop other skills. I have a high IQ, but maybe can't assimilate the information through reading. And so I have to do it through observation and intuition. I have to pick an accountant who's a very good accountant that I trust because I can't really necessarily

• 22:42Speaker 05

  do the numbers myself. That's Donald Trump. He definitely has issues reading. You can tell just by the way he reads the prompter. And he has some of the same issues. And what Richard said to me, Sir Richard said to me, is that there's a lot of differences. He's morally bereft. I feel that I'm not. But he's a great risk taker. His show, The Apprentice, went 15 years because he's an incredible risk taker. Okay. And so this off message stuff fits right into the wheelhouse of his personality.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Because he thinks it's a risk that's worth taking. He thinks, okay, this is not what my campaign wants me to do. They want me to be the good guy. But actually, you know, screw them. I know how to do this. Let Trump be Trump. It's the Cory Lloyd.

• 23:26Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly right. My risk taking has been the key to my success for 50 years. Nobody else can get away with it but me. Let me show you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do the opposite of my advisors and still win the presidency.

• 23:40Speaker 04

  So two little quick bits of news from this week on Donald Trump before we go to the break. One is that there's reporting that Trump is spending $48,000 on ads specifically to run in the West Palm Beach area in that media market, which is, guess where? It's where Mar-a-Lago is. And it's not because they particularly feel they have to defend Florida at the moment. There isn't polling that suggests that Florida is in play. But what I've heard is that it's because Trump is not happy that he and his visitors to Mar-a-Lago are not seeing campaign ads. So a quick $48,000 being spent down there, which I think gets to some of Trump's personality. But I have to ask you about these digital collector's cards

• 24:21Speaker 04

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

• 24:42Speaker 05

  Okay, well, first of all, he loves these cards. Okay. If you want to, if you want to take a look at these cards, I'm going to recommend you get a vomit bag, you know, like the thing they have on the planes.

• 24:51Speaker 04

  They're actually kind of cool. They're quite funny.

• 24:53Speaker 05

  Okay, okay, but have the vomit bag by your chin because he's muscular. He looks like Johnny Rambo.

• 24:59Speaker 04

  Superman. He's dressed as Superman in one. Yeah, it's crazy.

• 25:02Speaker 05

  Superman. He's got laser eyes. He's like, I mean, he's the man. Okay, and he loves this because, because you know, he's fat and he wears a girdle. He once said that he had a, he said he's better looking than Kamala Harris, but he once said he had a better body than Joe Biden. I mean, this guy, I mean, there's an Italian word, guguts. I mean, this guy is absolutely crazy. Okay. Tony Soprano would say guguts. Okay. But these playing cards are from his family, you know, so his family, his young son, who's a brilliant kid, Baron, and these guys are all into crypto. And he's a moneymaker, Trump. He will sell steaks. He'll sell bottled water. He'll, he'll sell sneakers. He doesn't care what it is. And he also knows that if he's out there flouting this stuff,

• 25:47Speaker 05

  it's irritating his haters. Okay, so there's a couple of things going on. I'm gonna make a little bit of money. I'm gonna piss off some left wing media journalists and some Democrats. And it's a lot of fun for me. And that's what he's doing. And he loves the pictures. He loves the pictures. And by the way, just so you know, when we used to present stuff to him, Corey once said to me, you gotta put a lot of pictures of him in the PowerPoint. I said, why is that, Corey? Because he loves pictures of himself. Oh, by the way, don't take pictures of him from the side because he looks too fat from the side. You gotta take pictures of him from the front because he likes the way he looks from the front. I mean, this guy is about as guguts as anybody I've ever met in my life.

• 26:28Speaker 05

  Okay, but that's it. And that's the play. It's entertaining and it stings the haters.

• 26:33Speaker 04

  And by the way, guess what? It was played all over the liberal press, all over cable television because the visual is so great. And public service announcement, if you buy 15 of these digital cards, you get a physical one sent to you in your home with a little bit of the suit that he wore at the debate against Joe Biden attached to the card.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  But there's a Surgeon General's warning label, this suit may or may not have B O. We'll leave it there.

• 27:00Speaker 04

  Okay, we'll be right back to talk about debate prep and Georgia and the swing states.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks. Made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks. Now made with no artificial dyes.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  When you think about Crocs, you think the classic clog. But did you know there's also a canvas clog? A vegan suede clog. A coastal-inspired style. A style with studs, straps, and lots of sass. Honestly, I could keep going with the surprises. You've got to see them for yourself because there is literally a style for every kind of girl. So do your thing and head to crocs.com or a store near you now.

• 28:02Speaker 06

  Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life.

• 28:09Speaker 07

  Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment.

• 28:20Speaker 08

  Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease, Myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 28:57Speaker 06

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 29:09Speaker 04

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

• 29:12Speaker 05

  And I'm Anthony Scaramucci.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  Okay, let's, let's, let's look at debate prep, Anthony, because the debate is now a couple of weeks away. I think two things are happening in the next two weeks, and I'm afraid we're recording this before we get to that CNN interview. I do think her doing a one-on-one sit-down interview is important because it gets to some of the policy issues that you were talking about in the first half. But I think the next big moment for her is the debate. And there is this debate about the debate, which is whether they are going to stick to the same rules as Donald Trump had with the Joe Biden debate on June 27, which is something the Biden campaign asked for, which is to have the microphones muted. We talked about this at the time, when the person who is not talking is not talking. And Kamala

• 29:58Speaker 04

  Harris's campaign would like to have the microphones on because they feel that is when Donald Trump, you know, interjects, gets angry, says stuff that is rude, goes off message. And they want that captured for the American public. Donald Trump has put out that they've agreed to this. He posted a Truth Social post saying, we've agreed to the terms of the debate. They're going to be the same as the ones in June. But now the Harris campaign is pushing back and saying, well, hold on a second. Actually, we haven't agreed to the terms of the debate. What's your understanding of the debate prep and whether they've got these rules sorted out?

• 30:31Speaker 05

  The first thing I'll say is that it's a mistake for the Harris campaign. She repla- you know, think about it from a baseball analogy. In America, the starting pitcher's out of the game, the relief pitcher comes in, we don't change the game. There's a runner on second base. It is what it is. The rules are the rules. If I'm Donald Trump, I don't go back on that. They're, they're trying to push him. And they're trying to say, hey, let's get the mics open. You know, you're the big bully. You want to be over talking and you want to talk over Vice President Harris. But he's not stupid. He knows that the way that rules, the way those rules were set up were to his advantage. And so I don't think he's going to break on that. And I think they have to fold on that.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  I think they have to say, okay, we're done here. We'll, we'll take the same rules. My, my, my only thing on her debate prep is what I worry about for her is he's been on the campaign now for three years and she is really good and she's very disciplined. And I watched her Vice President Pence, Senator Harris debate from four years ago. She did a great job. She also got a little help on the fly that landed on Ben's head, but she did a great job. But here's what I'm worried about. When you're verbally sparring all day and now you've got to go into a live verbal sparring match, you are adept, you're skillful, you're ready to go. President Biden frankly suffered from that. He wasn't ready

• 31:54Speaker 05

  for that debate. He probably wasn't feeling well. He looked under hydrated to me, which is the worst thing you can do as stage performers, be under hydrated. They were probably also worried that he was, may have had to go to the bathroom. You know, they probably under hydrated him 90 minutes standing there as an 81 year old person. So I'm just giving the underlying texture here, but here's three things I would say if I was debate prepping her. Number one, you've got to be on offense. When he starts on you, you got to go on offense. Let me give a vivid example. San Francisco and California sucks. Excuse me? San Francisco and California sucks? It's, it's an amazing place. We are the fifth largest economy in the world, if you separated it from the United States. Moreover, California is a dream factory,

• 32:39Speaker 05

  not only for the United States, but the rest of the world. In addition, we export culture from California, whether it's McDonald's, Jamba Juice, you pick it, Hollywood. Apple. Apple. California is the font of innovation. People come poor to California, they end up rich. You don't believe me? Ask Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know what your problem is with California. Certainly California has some problems. We're working on it, but it's one of the most wonderful economic miracles in the world. You see what I'm doing here? Yeah. Push back on him. Push back with strength. She's got to push back with strength. So you pick the category. And I would go off. Crime. What are you talking about? I was a prosecutor for X number of years. I put bad guys away.

• 33:23Speaker 05

  I'm all about enforcing the law and making sure criminals don't harm honest, law-abiding civilians. But I want to do it without the cruelty. Okay, the other thing she should do, she's got a feather in three words. Ready? She's got a feather in small. Got a feather in small. Has to. You know, that's a small idea. Because she know it'll flip him out, okay? The other word she's got a feather in is old. Boy, she's that's an old, small idea. And she does that to him, she's going to unravel him. Because they're they're playing her on defense. They're playing her to the caricature. You know, Tulsi Gabbard, who's playing her, is playing her to the caricature of what they think she is. Not what she actually is.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  And if she comes out on offense, I think she's gonna really have a great night.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  So I think the other thing that she can do is talk about change. And this kind of gets us into the Fox poll, which I thought one of the most interesting things about this Fox News poll is that it does show Kamala Harris doing better in those Sun Belt states, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, where Joe Biden had been slipping behind. But one of the interesting things is that she has managed to do something that a couple of months ago seemed absolutely impossible for the Democratic candidate, which is she's now presented herself as the change candidate. Forty-nine percent of people say that she is likely to bring change. That is one point more. Forty-eight percent say Trump is likely to bring change. But the idea that a sitting vice president, who's been part of the administration for the last three and a half years, has somehow managed to

• 34:55Speaker 04

  show the American people that she could bring about change for them. Now, maybe that's her age, maybe that's her gender, maybe that's just the, you know, enthusiasm that she has around her. But in a change election, when the electorate Is feeling dissatisfied, feeling anxious. They tend to want a candidate who represents change. And I thought it was very interesting that she has somehow managed to morph herself, despite the fact that she's been in the administration, into being the change candidate. The other thing I thought was interesting, and I wanted to get your take on this, about this Fox poll, and it gets us into Georgia, is how she has managed to go from Joe Biden, who really needed to win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and those were the kind of only

• 35:39Speaker 04

  three states he had left. I remember the Republican National Convention, which feels like it was a year ago, but it was only a month ago, the Trump campaign was saying, listen, we have those Rust Belt states locked up. We only really need to spend money in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And if you look at this Fox poll, she's opened up the map again. So she has kind of multiple roots. And that, that kind of forces him to spend money in states he was not expecting to spend money in, doesn't it?

• 36:07Speaker 05

  I think so. And I think also, it's glaring that he doesn't have the field operation that he needs. The 2016 field operation, I always, I thought I had a good relationship with this guy, Reince Priebus, but I actually didn't. He was like one of these like howdy duties from the Midwest. He would try to pretend he was nice to you, but then he would be shiving you. But he was really good at building a good field operation. So Trump inherited from Reince Priebus an operation that was quite fortified, had great data, lots of people out there to get out the vote in 2016. He's dismantled that over the last eight years. As an example, in the state of Georgia, the Harris team has 24 field offices. He

• 36:50Speaker 05

  has 12 field offices. And just for people's benefit, who is Reince Priebus? He was the head of the RNC, Republican National Committee. He replaced a friend of ours, Michael Steele. And then he went on to become Trump's first chief of staff. And he was fired very famously during day eight of my tenure. It happened on a Friday. You know how I know, Katty? I was only there for two Fridays. So I know it happened on a Friday.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  He didn't even last a scaramucci, he lasted a scara.

• 37:15Speaker 05

  No, no, no. He lasted longer than me. No, I calculated Priebus at about 15 scaramuccis.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 37:22Speaker 05

  But about 150, he lasted about 150 days, okay, which is more than Liz Truss, who's at 4.1 scaramuccis, and less than Kevin McCarthy, 24 and a half scaramuccis as speaker. But Priebus was a bad guy and Trump finally figured out that he was. He called me and told me to come down and help him get rid of him. Of course, I got got rid of him and and I got fired. But but why am I bringing this up? Notwithstanding the fact that he was a bad guy, he built a hell of a field operation for Trump. It's been totally dismantled. So if we're having an autopsy of this campaign on November the 6th, if Harris loses, what the hell was wrong with you with these leftist policies? Why were you so against crypto? Things like that. If if she wins, it'll be Trump's side saying, what the hell did you

• 38:07Speaker 05

  do by dismantling all those field offices? This was a get out the vote exercise. And what did you do with all the money that you were given? That's going to be the autopsies, depending on which side wins.

• 38:20Speaker 04

  And the reason those field offices are so important is they're spread around the state. They are filled with a combination of volunteers and paid staff members. They are out to organize all of the door knocking. So they organize the people that go and knock on people's doors. They organize, most importantly, getting people to the polls, making sure that those people who want to vote for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris actually do so. So the field offices are critical. And and the reason you want lots of them in a state is that they'll have people in them who your neighbors know, right? So this is your local field office. It's staffed, you know, by college kids who are volunteering. It's staffed by, you know, the football coach in the local school who's volunteering. But they're people

• 39:04Speaker 04

  you know, they're members of your community, so you can kind of relate to them. So the more of those field offices that you have. Donald Trump, by the way, has spent more money, my understanding is, on focusing on contesting the vote after it's happened than he has on actually getting people to the polls. Let's talk a little bit about this Georgia trip because one of the I think Georgia is going to be one of the most tight states. It was the tightest state in 2020. Famously, Joe Biden won it by eleven thousand nine hundred and seventy votes, which is less than one percent of the total turnout. It could be critical in this map of getting two hundred and seventy Electoral College votes. And what's interesting about what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz did this week when they took this kind of bus tour, by the way, not a regular campaign bus.

• 39:49Speaker 04

  This one is an armored Secret Service vehicle driven by Secret Service agents, lights, sirens, the whole kind of thing. So they've been driving around areas of Georgia that Democrats don't usually go to. They've been going into some of the red areas of Georgia. And I think that's fascinating because it's not like they think they are going to win some of those areas. But if you can shrink Donald Trump's margin in some of those redder areas of Georgia, it gives you a better chance of winning the state overall. Remember, this is a first past the post. It's a simple majority within the state. So you have to, you have to get to kind of fifty one percent of the vote. If you can make it harder for him to win votes in some of those areas, then you can

• 40:33Speaker 04

  rack up gains in Atlanta, which is, which is much more democratic, which is a blue city. One of the places they visited, and this is interesting, is Heinzville. It's one of the fastest growing cities in South Georgia. And they went to this sweep band practice in a high school. I watched it. It was, it was cute. He, Tim Walz, introduced her. Of course, he's the football coach, so people in high schools love him. She gave a nice little spiel to this class about how education is the path to the middle class. But here's what's interesting about Heinzville. It is in a county that Donald Trump won. So what is, what's she doing bothering to turn up in a county that Donald Trump won? She's doing exactly that. You just peel away a few of them. You don't expect to win it.

• 41:17Speaker 04

  You peel away a few of those voters and that's how you rack up your overall numbers. I think it's a good strategy.

• 41:22Speaker 05

  I think it's brilliant. I think, I think it's, it's, it's very smart that she's doing that. We know that Donald Trump is trying to make nice now after desecrating and denigrating Governor Kemp, who is incredibly popular conservative governor of the state of Georgia. Most recently, maybe two weeks ago, he was calling him a really bad guy. Those are Donald Trump's words, not mine. And I want to fully disclose, I am a donor to Brian Kemp's campaigns. I considered Brian Kemp a good acquaintance of mine, good, I have a decent friendship with him. I've met him and Marty before, Marty Kemp's wife.

• 41:57Speaker 04

  His wife?

• 41:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I can tell you that they're not happy. You know, Donald Trump has endangered their family. Donald Trump has put him in a really rough spot where he wants to be a good Republican, but he's made this thing very personal. And, you know, they'll be mad at me for saying this, but I don't care. If Donald Trump loses Georgia, they'll be popping champagne bottles in the mansion. Okay, they will have said, okay, I supported him because I'm a good Republican, but this guy's a complete asshole and look at what he did to my family. And by the way, he did the same thing to me, Katty. He went after my wife Deirdre on Twitter. Who does that? Okay, and I'm not, I'm not Ted Cruz. I'm not going to sit there and take it like a banged dog. Okay, and I don't think the Kemp's

• 42:42Speaker 05

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

• 43:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think in Georgia, it's worth reminding people that the kind of white suburban female voter who is kind of on the fence, who is exactly the kind of person that Donald Trump needs to win over, amongst that group, independent, white, female voters, Brian Kemp's very popular. And his wife is popular and they don't like it when they see Donald Trump laying into him. He did, of course, Donald Trump then came out, put out a Truth Social post this week, sort of rowing back on some of that, trying to say that Brian Kemp was a good guy and fully supported him. I think his campaign, talking about staying on message,

• 43:53Speaker 04

  somebody in his campaign, I don't know if it's Corey, or if it's Suzie or Chris, has got to him and said, you have to repair this relationship with Georgia. Georgia is slipping now. They had a firm grip on it. They don't anymore. You've got to do whatever you can to try and win that state and picking a fight with a popular Republican governor. But I have a question for you before we go, which is, why is Brian Kemp still supporting Donald Trump? After all of the things that Donald Trump said about him in 2020, after all of the things he said about him during this campaign, and all of the things that he said about his wife, and the fact that because of the things he said about Brian Kemp in

• 44:35Speaker 04

  2020, that he was a bad guy who didn't help Trump win Georgia, that family was put in danger, physical danger, from some of the MAGA supporters. Why does Brian Kemp still support Donald Trump?

• 44:48Speaker 05

  So this is the age old question. Why does Ted Cruz, he called his wife ugly, he said his father was involved with the Kennedy assassination. Why do these guys support him? They support him because they think they have a future in Republican Party politics. They support him because whoever the brain trust is, the consultancy brain trust of the party, the campaign advisors and strategists have said to these people, hey, listen, he's the party. They went to Kevin McCarthy on the 7th of January and said, hey, listen, he's the party. I know you want to put him through the ropes, but you better fly down to Mar-a-Lago and kiss his ring. And these guys are cowards. Okay, let's just face it, they're cowards. And so they, they'll go and do the cowardly thing, which is offer

• 45:32Speaker 05

  this maniac support. Okay, that's the reason. Okay, but I will say this, I'm not a family counselor, but this is just a learning lesson for people out there. If you're a dysfunctional, narcissistic maniac, and you set on fire a relationship the way Donald Trump has with Brian Kemp, you can't just put out a tweet. On Truth Social and say, oh, hey, everything's good now. You and I are pals. Okay, doesn't work that way.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:59Speaker 05

  Okay. And so I'm just telling you, there's bad blood there. Uh, my prediction is they'll, they'll tepidly support him. He's going to show up at some campaign rally for him, apparently, because he, he thinks that's his service that he needs to do as a Republican. But trust me, if this son of a bitch loses in Georgia, the Kemp's are going to be two happy people.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  So let's close with a question that came in on Georgia and Governor Kemp from Matt Mers. Antony has said he is a big fan of Governor Kemp. Given ongoing controversy over makeup and new rules from the state election board, how does he think Kemp will balance his GOP loyalty with ensuring the election is fair? Quick, uh, thing on the election rules. What's happened with the certification changes is that last week, Georgia's election board, which is controlled by Republican Party majority, voted three to two in favor of a new rule, which essentially makes election result certification not mandatory. So they can go on, the election board can say that it's investigating the result

• 47:03Speaker 04

  for an indefinite period of time for reasonable cause. There's no definition of reasonable. And in that time, of course, it's always in that vacuum that you get trouble after an election. And they can just string that out and there'll be legal challenges and protests. And people will start to say that the election was not fair. So do you, how do you think Brian Kemp is going to handle this certification change with his loyalty or disloyalty to Donald Trump?

• 47:31Speaker 05

  Okay, this is a phenomenal question. So thank you for asking the question. And so I want to provide some history here and I, I want, I want to just say that in the state of Georgia, Republicans certified that election. And so the exact number of votes, I never remember, but it's 11,000 plus votes in the state of Georgia. Very close election. Donald Trump calling, uh, the state of Georgia's Secretary of State, saying, hey, I just need XYZ number of votes plus one. Go find them for me. An enormous amount of pressure on very principled public servants that have sworn an oath to the Constitution. And so. Underneath that undercurrent was an enormous amount of MAGA pressure on these

• 48:16Speaker 05

  normal, law-abiding, principled Republicans. And so what I believe what happened with the certification laws is that they were put in place, the left goes crazy about it. But if you actually really read the law, this is the same thing with the immunity from the Supreme Court. The left goes crazy, catty. But when you actually read what they said, there's a lot of space in there to prosecute somebody that's a president. As an example, Jack Smith redid his indictment, okay, related to the January. He redid it pursuant to the immunity case. So there's, there's space there. And so what I would say to this gentleman

• 48:55Speaker 05

  and other people listening, Kemp put a law in place to satisfy the MAGA lunatics, but that he also knows won't stand up to a lack of a certification, meaning it'll go to the courts and boom, it'll get certified, but he threw some red meat to these MAGA people. Now, here's the bad news about politics. It's like a Rolling Stones song, right? You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. And in a democracy, you can't always get what you want. And I praised Brian Kemp for this stuff because he's a thoughtful guy. He's a principled guy. I don't like the fact that he's still supporting Trump. I understand why he's doing it because he's politically ambitious and

• 49:37Speaker 05

  he thinks he needs to do it. But I would maintain to all these guys, whether it was McCarthy or Kemp, going against Trump is a better sign of leadership for you. And just quickly, if McCarthy had put Trump through the ropes and gone to Schumer, and again, McCarthy was the upcoming Speaker of the House, they'd said, hey, we're done with this guy, and they convicted him in the Senate, we wouldn't be dealing with this guy right now. McCarthy would probably be one of the most popular Republicans in the country. He would have been the one that threw the water on the wicked witch. So anyway, that's my, that's my sentiment there. I don't think that that's a big deal ruling, by the way. I think the Dems are making a big deal of it, and I understand why.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  The Democrats, by the way, have launched a counter suit against this certification change. So we'll see where that heads. One rule of thumb in American politics, if you are a lawyer, you make money out of elections. It's a good time to be a lawyer in American politics. It's also a good time to have visited Wyoming, it looks like. Anthony Scaramucci.

• 50:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this is my new shirt. It's a little tight. Okay, when you're getting into middle age, you know, the shirt can also have a girdling effect on your, on your body. Let's just face it. Okay. So it's a little tight, but I want, I wanted to wear it today to remind me of that great trip to Jackson Hole last week.

• 50:51Speaker 04

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

• 51:12Speaker 05

  Okay, those dates are October 28th in New York, October 30th in DC. Please come, otherwise I have to fill the entire arena with scaramouchies. Not going to be fun for me. Anyway, thank you. Hopefully we'll see you next week.

• 51:33Speaker 09

  There we are, getting a statement from Number 10. On that flight, we have 350 passengers aboard.

• 51:42Speaker 10

  The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 51:49Speaker 11

  We assess, uh, Prime Minister, with high confidence, it was Russian.

• 51:55Speaker 12

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 51:57Speaker 13

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 52:00Speaker 10

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

• 52:14Speaker 12

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 52:16Speaker 10

  All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, disseminated into an operation order, or FROGO.

• 52:24Speaker 14

  A FROGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 52:29Speaker 10

  Yes.

• 52:31Speaker 12

  New from Gullhangar. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

• 52:36Speaker 13

  You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy!

• 52:40Speaker 12

  An audio drama journey like no other.

• 52:42Speaker 13

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 52:46Speaker 12

  Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller.

• 52:49Speaker 13

  We have two types friendly.

• 52:51Speaker 12

  Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe.

• 52:58Speaker 12

  Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.