Are Democrats sabotaging their own socialists?

0:02This is a global production. I suppose this is not that surprising that Bernie Sanders is imagining a world in which, yeah, for the most part, Democrats want to see Saeed elected in Michigan. They want to see the Senate return to Democrats hands. They want to see more power for the Democratic Party and potentially have a whole new raft of candidates, even if they're socialists, to maybe lead the way in the presidential candidacy for 2028. Nobody at the Democratic National Committee is actually actively rooting for Republican Mike Rogers. But as Bernie was hinting, there's a pretty big difference between wanting El-Sayed to lose and quietly deciding not to lift a finger for him.

0:52If El-Sayed wins, then the progressive wing of the party says, you see, this is our test. This is proof of concept. We have put up someone of this nature in a key swing state and he has won. This whole question that we often talk about, which is electability, and the other is kind of more fundamental, which is like, I don't want the Democrats to become a party that makes me feel uncomfortable. And, you know, I was trying to understand what would motivate a person to say these things, what would motivate a person to do these things. And I realize that there's something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil and on the rise in the United States of America today.

1:35And it's people who see themselves not as citizens of a common nation fighting for every single person, whether they're Jewish or Christian, whether they're white or black or brown, but see themselves as fighting for one group at the expense of others. That is J.D. Vance describing the Michigan candidate for the Senate, a Democrat, as very, very evil. Is it possible that there are some Democrats who view this progressive candidate in just the same way and want him to actually lose in November? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Maitlis.

2:27And this is Miles. And Miles, lovely to have you with us and lovely to have Emily Maitlis back in the studio after a very long sojourn away. So long. She's got to come back. I don't know. How long does it have to be to be a sojourn? Makes me feel there should be a horse and cart involved, really. I like I like the three of us. This is quite a new thing. Well, it's great. It's great to have the three of us together. And let's start with Michigan, because in a sense, I mean, Michigan, you know, go back to the 2016 election. It's one of those must win states for Democrats. And what the Democratic Party have done in the primary in Michigan is choose a candidate who is very much of the progressive left, who is anti-Israel, very critical of Israel, which has roiled some of the kind of mainstream Democrats.

3:17And before we go any further, I just want to play you this clip of Bernie Sanders himself representing that movement, kind of indicating that he thinks there are those high up in the Democratic Party who would rather that the Democratic candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, lose in November rather than win. Do these Democrats want to see El-Sayed lose? Do you think there's Democrats that want to see that happen? Well, you know, it's a funny thing. The answer is there are some who may. I think most do not. Most understand is we may not like El-Sayed. We may not like Angie Nixon. But you know what?

4:01If we win Michigan and if by some miracle we win Florida, you know what? We're going to control the U.S. Senate. And we would like very much to control the U.S. Senate. On the other hand, are there some, I think a few, who would say, you know what, it's not worth it. These people are a threat to oligarchy. They are a threat to American foreign policy and our continued support for the extremist Netanyahu government in Israel. They're a threat to the never-ending wars that have gone on for decades. So no, maybe we should let them lose. But I think that is a small minority because most Democrats say, you know what, really would be nice to control the House and the Senate.

4:45Look, so I think Bernie Sanders there is pretty nuanced with what he's describing as the state of the Democratic Party. Don't forget, Bernie has always been on the progressive left. I mean, he's an independent, but he caucuses with the Democrats. But he has always seen himself as the outsider, somebody who could take on what he calls the donor class or the people fighting the endless wars. He was the man who stood up and said Clinton is not the right person. Hillary Clinton is not the right person to represent the Democrats in 2016, just before the party lost. So I suppose this is not that surprising that Bernie Sanders is imagining a world in which, yeah, for the most part, Democrats want to see Saeed elected in Michigan.

5:27They want to see the Senate return to Democrats hands. They want to see more power for the Democratic Party and potentially have a whole new raft of candidates, even if they're socialists, to maybe lead the way in the presidential candidacy for 2028. But I think what he's talking about there is a small number of Democrats who are deeply unsettled by what they see going on in the party now. And I think there are two points. And Miles, I'd be interested to know your thoughts about this. Is it that they think broadly that Saeed can't win and can't actually sustain the socialist wing of the party?

6:12or is it that they think he can win and are really nervous about what that then does to the whole party? Because I think there's sort of slightly, there are two different issues here, right? One is this whole question that we often talk about, which is electability. And the other is kind of more fundamental, which is like, I don't want the Democrats to become a party that makes me feel uncomfortable. Well, let's be clear, I mean, about a couple of things. First, you know, with regard to Bernie's comments, nobody at the Democratic National Committee is actually actively rooting for Republican Mike Rogers.

6:52But as Bernie was hinting, there's a pretty big difference between wanting El Sayed to lose and quietly deciding not to lift a finger for him. And the donor class in the United States and its ambivalence that Bernie describes is very real. I mean, you know, in a four point race, that kind of passive that that sort of passive neglect of El Saeed could be viewed as sabotage in that race. And, you know, the issue of electability is actually kind of the giveaway here, because the premise for some of these folks that Bernie talks about is that El Saeed is not electable and therefore they shouldn't spend their time on him.

7:38But go back to that number that I pointed out right now. He's not unelectable. He is winning. If the election was held today, the epic poll that shows him four points up in a state that Trump carried means he probably carries away that election. So the electability thing, at least right now, at least based on the numbers, is a ruse. So you've got to think, Emily, it's the second thing you mentioned, which is what Bernie also hinted at. They don't want that type of person in an official government capacity. They don't want him to win the Senate seat because of his policies. They would have an easier time making that case if he was down in the polls and dragging the party down.

8:19But it's not. He's winning in a state, again, that Trump carried in 2024. And by the way, El-Sayed is running against a very well-funded, very experienced opponent who I've worked with in American politics. Mike Rogers is not to be dismissed, but he is keeping pace with him and at this moment running ahead of him in that race. I suppose the argument goes something like this, doesn't it? That you've got mainstream Democrats who think that everything is being challenged by the insurgents on the left of the party. and it would be really handy if El Saeed lost in November because then they would be able to say in 2028 when they're running for the presidency, if I could say presidency, which is a difficult word because we don't use that word very often on this podcast.

9:12No idea what it means. That it would be very much better for him to lose and then you could say, look, we've tried putting these left-wing candidates up. It just doesn't work. Nobody wants to vote for people like that. We need someone of the mainstream. Conversely, of course, if El Saited wins, then the progressive wing of the party says, you see, this is this is our test. We've this is proof of concept. We have put up someone of this nature in a key swing state and he has won. So what is to stop us having a more progressive candidate in the 2028 presidential election? OK, so I think we have to go back a stage and just explain some of J.D.

9:51Vance's comments at the beginning, because when he called Syed evil and Al-Sayed's response has been actually evil is taking away people's health care. Evil is kind of destroy people's livelihoods. Evil is starting foreign wars and pushing everyone's gas price up and bombing children, blah, blah, blah. But where this came from is essentially not anything that Al-Sayed himself has said, but in the company that he has kept. And I think, frankly, there are more than just a few Democrats who have a real issue with the people that have been endorsing him. OK, let's put it that way. One of them is Hassan Paikah, who is this Twitcher streamer who is really pretty far out, actually when it comes to views on October the 7th, views on 9-11, views on where he would put, I guess, the, you know, the sort of the left wing vote.

10:46He's made people really uncomfortable with some of his, I think we're going to say anti-Semitic views, aren't we? I mean, I think at this point, you know, pretty, pretty clear. And just before the Michigan primary, El Saeed was out with Pica and he was kind of on the campaign with him. And it's always this curious thing, isn't it? You know, when Donald Trump had the Ku Klux Klan kind of former, you know, chief campaigning for him and Trump had to go, oh, he's nothing to do with me. He's nothing to do with me. He just likes what I do. That is in a sense where Saeed has been with Pica, right? He endorses me.

11:21It doesn't mean that I endorse him. But subsequent interviews have kept on asking Saeed if he will distance himself from Pica. And I don't know what you think, but I've watched some of those responses and I think Saeed has got pretty ratty with that question. He's tried to push it away. He's tried to say, oh, come on. You know, Hassan Paikovic has taken back his own words on 9-11, taken back his own words on October 7th. I don't want to talk about some California streamer. It's all in the past, but it's kind of it's pursued him to a point where it clearly rattles him. Enough for him to say he's not going to go campaigning with Piker anymore.

12:01Right. And I think that is where that is that is what has left a bit of a taste in the mouth for some Democrats who kind of go, yeah, we love the progressive stuff. That's fine. We love the health care stuff. That's fine. We don't even mind the socialist label. That's all fine. We don't really want you hanging out with people who who feel like anti-American in in the in the language that they're using and and definitely anti-Semitic. Well, it's clear he views this as one of his biggest weaknesses in the race. And I absolutely think it is. I mean, this is the thing that Democrats are worried about.

12:34This is the attack line Republicans are using is that his anti-Israel positions are something far worse. Right. They're they're calling his positions anti-Semitic. And El-Sayed has tried very, very hard. And typically when he's responding to his critics, he's quite effective. He's very articulate. He brings in a joke. I mean, he's much better than these other candidates at rebuffing those critics. And, you know, I say that as someone as a lifelong conservative who would have seen El Sayed as the type of person I would have loved to have run against. But he's very good at defending himself. But you're right, Emily, on this issue, you can see him get a little bit rattled.

13:12Now, I will say I've seen this movie on the other side of the aisle. I mean, in 2015 and 2016, inside the Republican Party, we were doing everything we could when I was working under Paul Ryan, when he was Speaker of the House, to try to contain and outlast or to discreetly starve our own insurgent within the party, Donald Trump, who we thought had no chance of winning the presidency but would ruin the GOP in the meantime. Think about that comparison to El Sayed. I mean, apparently there's a number of people in the Democratic Party who don't think he can win. They think he's unelectable, but they're worried it's going to do such damage to their brand that they are withholding support or, as we talked about earlier, sort of engaging in passive neglect.

13:56neglect. Now, the Democratic risk here, John, as you were doting, is that by strangling their insurgents in the Democratic Party, if they do that effectively, if he loses this seat, they are alienating the young and restless anti-establishment voters in critical states like Michigan, where they need them fired up, especially if they want to flip states on the map in 2028 and win the presidency. I suppose what's so interesting about that comparison, Miles, to when you were working for Paul Ryan and, you know, you had Donald Trump, it goes again to this point that we've talked about before about the kind of asymmetry of the rules of politics, which rules that apply to most politicians just don't apply to, you know, Donald Trump was getting endorsed by QAnon and Donald Trump was turning around when that was blowing up and saying, oh, yeah, but they care about the children.

14:49Stand back and stand by with stand back and stand by with the proud boys you know so so you have donald trump getting endorsements from all sorts of whack jobs and nutcases and somehow it doing him no harm at all whereas for el saeed i think hassan paika is more of a problem than he is willing to accept at the moment and probably i i was reading that he spent a good part of the weekend talking to the jewish community in Michigan and meeting up at kind of very talking about the bar mitzvahs that he used to go to when he was at school and how he's always been a friend of the Jewish community and the Jewish community should not be fearful of him.

15:27I think it's hard to marry while he won't put that distance between himself and Hassan Paikah. If it was Donald Trump, he would get away with it. I don't know. So I would say that actually, if you step back, the worse you see the Israeli government behaving at the moment, the more sense his candidacy makes. And right now, the pictures that are coming out of, we're not even talking about Gaza anymore. We're talking about the settlers. We're talking about the West Bank. We're talking about the horrendous scenes of intimidation and attack that are going on there. I think they are kind of making El-Sayed's case for him that actually it doesn't make you anti-Semitic to be anti what is going on in Israel and to not want American tax money to fund the Israeli government right now.

16:12I think I think that is totally understandable. There's a lot of Democratic, you know, Democrats who support the... There are a lot of Jews who support the Democratic Party who are absolutely aligned with that view. I mean, you know, there's... But that's why I think Pica. Pica is a step too far. Hassan Pica is a step too far. I think saying that you don't agree with money going to fund Israel's government right now is not that big a deal, right? I mean, I think that's probably... certainly where most young voters in the Democrat Party are today. I mean, by and large, right? Not where AIPAC is, which is the prominent...

16:49Well, AIPAC lost the seat for his rival, right? So I just want to talk to you about one other thing, which is I was listening to David Plouffe over the weekend, the Obama campaign strategist many years ago, and he went back to your word, Miles, electability. And it's so interesting because we talk about electability And generally what we mean by electability is like, well, the Democrats can do whatever they want in the primaries, but they have to go sort of centre right to win the country. And he just said, and it sort of blew my mind a bit. He just said, electability is what gets you elected.

17:22Right. And we actually don't know what that is right now. And it feels to me so interesting that the old Democratic Party don't really know what electability is anymore. And maybe the new socialists don't know either, but we certainly don't. We don't actually know what that looks like yet. Well, and Donald Trump brought that conversation into the fore 10 years ago because it was the unanimous opinion of the political establishment in the United States of America that that man could not win the GOP nomination and he could not win the presidency. And he proved very electable. In fact, I remember my first meeting with Donald Trump in Trump Tower in 2015 during the transition where we went to go sit with him and talk about national security issues to prepare him to take on the presidency.

18:10And he pulls out this giant map with every county across the country he won shaded in red. He was still in awe weeks after the election that all of these people who told him he couldn't win were wrong. And so much of the country was shaded red and he had won them over. Now, part of that, Emily, was because of Donald Trump's appeal to blue collar workers in the United States. And that's where I think it's interesting. I think the establishment underestimates El Saeed at their peril. I wouldn't be surprised if we're talking after this election about El Saeed Trump voters, about this strange category of voters that we can't understand that voted for Donald Trump and then voted for El Saeed.

18:56And that's because there's something happening here, some sort of populist sentiment that's swinging from the far right over and under to the far left. And we're seeing those. And those were, you know, for a period of time, people were calling them Sanders Trump voters, people who voted for Bernie and then voted for Donald Trump. I think those voters are going to be key in this election. But but the Israel issue, the Jewish issue is still going to be something that hangs over his head. There is something, though, that I think differentiates El-Sayed, and that is we are in a political culture right now where no one ever apologizes for anything.

19:34And that's something I think you're going to talk about in the next segment later on today is a figure in American politics who sort of created the possibility of never having to apologize. and that is Roy Cohen. I'll put a pin in that, but just say voters have gotten frustrated with candidates who refuse to admit error. And there is something refreshing to them about someone like an El-Sayed who says he was wrong, who confronts it head on and doesn't try to bury it and get one by the voters. Is that right? I mean, is that right that voters have got tired of that? Because I was reading the Roy Cohen book last night And I know we're going to talk about that later.

20:15But I'd almost assumed now that it was a political given that nobody apologizes, that you double down, that you attack, attack, attack. And that actually we don't we don't expect anyone to apologize. And we call it weakness if they do. It's interesting that you think that voters are sick of that. Well, I think it's how you do it, honestly. And, you know, when I go back and watch El-Sayed, and it's funny, I'll just say, it's funny for me to defend El-Sayed just because I would have spent so long in the Republican Party working against him. But I think he's done this very well. He's done a great job of getting out there and not waiting for an interviewer to go after him about something he's done before.

20:55He confronts it head on. He points to, you know, the past apology and he takes it and he turns the weakness into a strength. And I think that's the only way to do it. I mean, absolutely in American politics, if you're apologizing and you're just going out there to apologize, it immediately codes as weakness. But if you're taking that and you're getting ahead of an interviewer or a critic and saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know where you're going to go, you're starting to make the critic look like the lame one in the argument. And that's a style of argumentation he seems to be quite adept at. And I think it's something that voters are seeing as a breath of fresh air.

21:30Yeah. And I think it's so interesting, the focus not on policy. You've got you've got to you know, you've got to tack to the centre when you're fighting a presidential election. It is about electability. I mean, we're seeing it. You know, they come in different shapes and sizes. Not everyone has to be out of the Donald Trump box to be electable or charismatic to voters. But you've got El Saeed, you know, you've got Mamdani in New York. There are these politicians, you know, Tallarico in Texas. There are these politicians that are emerging of different shapes. But what they have is they have that kind of core.

22:02Sexiness is not the right word, but they have that an appeal. Sell. They can sell. They can sell themselves to voters. And my God, we should never forget that politics is a retail business and you need to be able to sell yourself to voters if they're going to put an X against your name come polling day. OK, to your point, did you just say sexy? so Elsa just dropped a new ad which she's calling the Love Island style let's just play you a little bit

22:32I'm Abdul El-Sayed, I'm 41 years old and I'm from Ann Arbor, Michigan oh my name? Yeah, I love my name my people don't know this, it means servant leader right here on my bracelet so what's my type? no corporate PAC money, ready to rock for Medicare for All I got one goal here on Senate Island and that's to pass Medicare for All and I'm not afraid to step on people's toes What's my red flag? I'm not here for love. I've been married for 20 years with two kids. What gives me the ick? Corporate money. People who think that we can't have guaranteed health care through Medicare for all. Senate Island.

23:03Senate Island. Brilliant. I hear that, Emily. And I go back, though, to think about it. He's doing what Barack Obama did, which is the classic problem in sales and marketing that if you can't fix it, you just feature it. And for Barack Obama, it was his name. Republicans thought when they heard the name Barack Hussein Obama, as Donald Trump said over and over again in the early days of Obama's career, that that would scare voters away. And instead, you saw Barack Obama go out there all the time and say, you know, I was a kid growing up with a with a funny name and he would point it out. And there you just hear in the ad El-Sayed say, you know what my name means?

23:44It means it means servant leadership, right? If you can't fix it, you feature it. And he's featuring it. And I'll tell you, love him or hate him politically, this guy has got some swag. Well, talk about swag. Syed is not the only Democrat who's got his comms right, certainly his sort of new brand of advertising right. In Iowa, we have got the Paralympian, Josh Turek, who managed to bring in Obama to his own ad campaign and makes Obama play basketball against him. He's a basketball player.

24:25Ball game. Who's got next? I got it. You ready for me, Josh? I'm ready. Let's go. We playing horse or what? We're playing Iowa. I know a little something about winning Iowa. All right, here we go. We ready? You know when it's in. Come on, I'm not going to just give it away. All right. So you see there the game being played between the Paralympian basketball and Obama. And I think Obama actually loses, right? So it's pretty punchy stuff just to suddenly understand how you have to win these Senate races. And it's mainly vertical content now, right? Well, Emily, I'll just say this goes back to something that our friend Chris Matthews has long said in American politics, that we can get all wrapped around the axle about policy and positions and where people stand, but it ultimately comes down to the man or the woman with the sun in their face.

25:25And I always cite back to that. What Chris meant was the person you can see outside looking vibrant and active and smiling. That's the person in a two-person race that typically wins the election. And Democrats, race after race, are trying to be that person. Well, in a moment, we'll be talking about a political fixer operative who was certainly a big help to Donald Trump, but has a dark side to him. We'll be talking about Roy Cohn.

26:05The News Agents USA. Well, we're joined now by Kai Bird, who is the author of a brilliant new book called American Scoundrel, which was published at the beginning of the month. And it is about Roy Cohen. And if you don't know Roy Cohen, he was an incredibly important figure to Donald Trump in the early years when Donald Trump was properly developing in New York. but also Roy Cohen led this extraordinary life. And Kai, you know, I don't even know where to begin with it because he was a figure of such influence, such a dealmaker, power broker. And an evil little fucker, right? And an evil little fucker, to use the technical description.

26:51Yeah, I mean, you've called the book American Scoundrel, which I think is probably quite kind in the round. We had some debate about the title. Scoundrel can mean many things. It can mean your sweet old uncle who is a bit of a scoundrel. But this is a book about an evil protagonist, a fixer in American political life, who just has transformed our American political landscape over the last few decades. And I guess what you say at the very end, Kai, is that it took you a while to realise that the legacy of Roy Cohn, and we should get you to tell us a little bit of his biographer, is a very young lawyer, very involved in the McCarthy witch hunts and the trials of the 1950s.

27:40I mean, he was doing that when he was 20. So he was sort of an extraordinarily powerful man very early. But the legacy that he left is really America today and Trump today, because for anyone who's seen The Apprentice, you know, the film, Trump is the apprentice to Roy Cohn's school of political thought. Right. Or maybe we should just say political bullying. Yes. Well, Roy Cohn was the mentor for Donald Trump. They met in October of 1973. But by then, you know, Roy was a man, a powerful lawyer fixer in his 40s. Donald Trump was 27. And Roy Cohn had come on the American political landscape in 1952, 53, as one of the prosecutors of the Rosenberg atomic spy case, famous spy case in America.