24. The Kamala Harris Movement

0:05Welcome to the Rest is Politics US with me Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci is here too And we are live on YouTube. And also, this will be a podcast that will run on the Restless Politics US feed on Friday morning. I have to say, Anthony, I'm kind of confused about which day it is because I've been stuck in that convention hall for the last four days. And it's pretty hard to remember. But I have just rushed back from the Democratic National Convention. I started watching Kamala Harris's speech live there in the hall. They were in raptures, the Democratic audience there, watching her. I'm interested to hear.

0:40I was in the hall, so I want to talk about what that felt like. But what did it feel like to you watching it on television? Why don't we start in the hall? Because most of the people listening, including myself, were not in the hall. So, Katty, what was it like in the hall? So, it had been, you know, it was quite a long buildup towards her. We had to wait a good couple of hours, maybe even three, of other people giving speeches. There were some sweet moments where her little two nieces came out. They're kind of, you know, elementary school-age girls. These two girls came out and with Kerry Washington, the actress, taught us all how to say her name.

1:15There were some families who came out who talked about how they had been impacted. There was a very moving story of a young woman who had been sex trafficked. And Kamala Harris, when she was a prosecutor in California, had shut down the website and prosecuted the people who had sex trafficked. This young, brave young woman who got up and told her story. But there had been some nice personal stories that also, to be honest, quite a lot of kind of politicians speaking, giving their little stump speeches. So everyone had had to get in there early because it was all shut down and absolutely packed.

1:48You weren't allowed in for a good two or three hours beforehand unless you'd already got in and got a seat. By the time then Kamala Harris comes on stage and it's bang on time at 9.30 Chicago time and she takes the stage and the whole stadium just erupts in cheers. They're waving banners. They've got these big, tall kind of posters that they're waving with her name. And they are cheering and cheering and cheering so much so that Kamala Harris kind of has to say to them, OK, let's get down to business. Let's, you know, we've got to talk now. Let's get down to business. And she comes out on stage in this kind of Navy suit with a Navy shirt.

2:31And she smiles. I mean, my sort of initial takeaway was that this woman did not stop smiling. She looked genuinely happy to be there. This is now my ninth convention, the ninth time I've been in that position of being in a convention hall and watching a nominee from the Republican Party or from the Democratic Party take the stage. and I don't think I've ever seen a candidate who looked so genuinely happy to be there. I think I texted you, Anthony, saying, my God, does this woman ever stop smiling? She really looked like she was thrilled to be there. And then she gave about a 40-minute speech and we can go through that.

3:08But the atmosphere, as you'd expect, they were delighted to have her up on stage. She was super energetic. The energy in the room was very high level. men and women all dancing in their seats in the stadium to the music that accompanied her. And I have to say, I think I texted you this, for people who watched Kamala Harris go through her 2020 kind of very low-key, low-performance, really, election campaign, I don't think I have seen a politician come this far, this fast, and perform this well in that bigger setting, with the stakes that high. I can't remember one who's done it on this quicker turnaround.

3:53And this was the most important speech of her political career, the most important moment of her political career, her chance to introduce herself to the American people. And she handled it like a pro. She handled it like somebody who's been given this kind of speech in this kind of huge audience. And she hit all the right notes. She pointed out her family. She wished her husband a happy anniversary. He was sitting there right in front of her. And they'd been like the family were right yards from her. And I think that it was really nice the way she pointed them out. So I think she nailed it. Before this speech, I said, this has to be a really good speech and she has to deliver it really well.

4:36And I think she hit all the notes she needed to hit. Okay. Well, play Republican strategist for a second. And you've now come out of there, you've watched the speech and now you're going to hit that speech and you're going to attack that speech. How would you attack that speech? You're going to go after her for what she kept saying several times over on banks and what she did. There was a kind of slightly anti-corporate note to the speech. It was a very, it was a progressive democratic speech in standing up for the little guy. There was not much outreach to Trump voters. There was, I think, Tim Walls did some of that just by nature of his persona.

5:22Outreach to less educated white men, which is her vulnerability, living in rural areas. There was not much outreach to them. It was very much a kind of statist view of what the state can do for people in a progressive context of protecting people and fighting for people. I think it was delivered really well. I've always been, I've never been a big fan of Kamala Harris's speech delivery. And I think that's where I'm saying she's got a lot better as a politician. But I think there are things in the speech that absolutely the Republicans will go after. I think she answered the immigration question.

6:05I think their argument about immigration is not a bad one. And she hit that one, that we proposed this immigration bill and we had it there and it was proposed by a conservative Republican and it was Donald Trump who asked them not to sign it. So I think that she did pretty well. It was a 40-minute speech and eight minutes of it, by my judgment, was on her childhood biography. We were still in high school, eight minutes into a 40-minute speech, which made me think that they are looking at poll numbers saying Americans don't really know who she is and maybe don't feel that comfortable with her because they don't know her biography.

6:42So, she was very much trying to paint herself in the context, although she comes from this kind of exotic American background. I mean, like many Americans are, right? She has an Indian mother who was going to go back. I didn't know that. Her mother was due to go back to India for an arranged marriage. That's not the experience of most Americans, but she was trying to put herself in the context of middle-class America. Okay. So I got a couple of things I want to get your reaction to. So you're a television person. I'm not a television person. I just play a television person on TV, but I want to step back for a second and go over programming because I thought the programming tonight was pitch perfect.

7:19When I read the itinerary and I read the message that they were trying to deliver, I thought it was pitch perfect, right? They were trying to present somebody that could unify the country. Kissinger, I thought his speech was gold. I thought Leon Panetta's speech was gold. The governor from North Carolina, Roy Cooper. Short and sweet. And that was good. He wants her to win, Katty. He wants her to win. You could feel it coming through the television. And so if you're a television producer, you're like, what am I going to do tonight? I want to introduce this woman that many Americans don't know. Many people around the world don't know.

7:55Political aficionados like you and me know, but let's introduce her. And it was family. It was unity. It was, you know, and I just said this on X. Trump is so divisive. Is he actually uniting us against him? is the is he the american putin and just give me one second on this putin saw nato so divided putin saw nato crumbling and his move into the ukraine had the opposite effect is it a cracking nato everybody got united i'm just wondering if the great divider donald trump ends up being the force that puts enough of us together that begins the healing process for the country so And just two more quick things.

8:46She was fantastic tonight. I mean, not saying that with any hyperbole. I went to law school. First thing you learn in trial advocacy, you have to make the case for yourself and you have to make the case against the other side. And that was a trial advocacy A plus. It was a dream. If that woman was in court presenting that case to the judge, It was, I'm a good person. I got raised right. I love, I love my country. And oh, by the way, I love you. Okay. Now Americans have a tendency, okay. They have a tendency, they can vote for somebody that they dislike. They gave Richard Nixon a landslide at 72.

9:35They voted him in in 68. They didn't like him, but what they don't like, they don't like voting for people that dislike them. And that's where Trump is going to find trouble here because Vice President Harris came out tonight and said, by the way, I get our alliances. I know who we are in the world. It's an amazing country. Whatever racism anybody has faced in this country, my African-American father, my Indian-American mother, it doesn't matter. I have this undying love affair for the country. So anyway, that's what I saw. And I was blown away by it. And she met not only she meet the moment, but her whole life culminated in that speech.

10:20And we just have to see if she can win, if she can stay on message. She's got to answer questions now. She's gone 32. It'll be 33 days shortly without a press conference. We have to see if she can stay on message. So I want to turn it back to you and see what you as the question you asked me, which is such a smart question about how as a strategist, if you were a Republican strategist, if you were on the Trump campaign, how would you attack that speech? But one other quick thing on the speech and the delivery of it, I think what she did really well, and I mentioned her biography, which actually I thought was very compelling, the story of how she grew up and she was very warm about her mother and very warm about her family upbringing, but she did what they always tell you to do.

11:05Hollywood writers are always saying this, that you must show, not tell. And in a way, she, by showing her biography, by talking about who she was and who she was raised to be, she was almost saying, this is me and this is my values. This is where I come from. I don't need to lay them out for you. I don't need to be heavy handed about it. I am somebody that grew up, you know, making gumbo on Sunday evenings with my mom who kept pushing me to do better. There was never very much money, but we didn't, you know, we didn't, we wanted for little. And I think she was almost saying, that's who I am. I am, I am you and I have always represented you.

11:46And I think that was that show not tell element of the speech was very effective. There was, there were some good lines in the speech, that line she had about my entire career. I've only had one client, the people. I thought that was a very good line. There was a sweet line about family where she was talking about. This is such an American experience. I had this with my kids, you know, the woman downstairs who looked after me after school because my mother was working, who was a second mother to me. You know, the people who helped, she name-checked all of the people who were close to her, who had helped raise her.

12:21And she had this lovely line about, they weren't family by blood, they were family by love. And so there were these, you know, it was a warm human speech, as well as taking the case to Donald Trump and then making the case for herself on foreign policy issues. And I know that they've looked at some of the polling that suggests that Donald Trump scores better on strength and effectiveness, and she scores better on energy and focus. And I think that there was quite a lot during the course of this whole convention, and quite a lot in this speech in particular, about I'm a fighter, and I have the toughness on national security.

12:59I have those chops that can make you see me as somebody who is strong. But how would you go about it if you were still advising the Trump campaign? What are the things you would go after in this speech? So he's got the Trump heat shield down right now. He's not taking any advice from anybody. He had to be told sometime this evening that you're getting creamed in Georgia had to be told that because I saw that at 8 48 p.m. he's launching into Brian Kemp. Thank you so much. We never apologized to Brian Kemp. The governor of Georgia who he had laid into just a week ago, which is the most stupid thing to do because the governor of Georgia is incredibly popular in Georgia and is a Republican who Donald Trump feels is, you know, going to get betrayed him.

13:47It's unbelievable. So he never apologizes like that. He never sends out a tweet saying, One of the most popular governors in the United States and certainly a very popular Republican governor with a great future. He eviscerates this man. Two weeks ago, and I have good sources that tell me him and his wife have smoke coming out of their ears. Now, you did put up on Twitter, I'm supporting you and so forth, but I don't think you can do that to somebody and their wife and their family and them really support you. Maybe they could support you through political expediency, but he is dropping like a fly.

14:24Also, Jeff Duncan, do not underestimate the speech that he gave. He was a lieutenant governor of Georgia. He worked with Brian Kemp. He went after Trump last night for a solid seven minutes. It was a brilliant speech. Fellow Republican, you're terrible. Here are the reasons why. I'm doing the right thing for my country to tell people the danger of you. And so his numbers are falling like a stone in Georgia. And so he's not, he would never listen. Okay. I would tell you what I would do. Okay. There are people in the chat. They're going to be mad at me, but I think we have to be very balanced. This is how it works.

15:03Okay. People need to know what he would need to do is he would need to go to the left on a few big issues. What he would need to do is what he's really good at because he's so transactional. Remember, he was against Bitcoin. Now he's for it. All the Bitcoiners are with him. He needs to do a Nixonian moment on something like parenting and something like IVF and abortion. OK, he may lose some of the conservatives on that, which is why he's fearful because of that whole low ceiling sort of thing. But he has to do something. He's in a panic. You and I are speaking right now at 1134 p.m. Eastern time.

15:42He's on the phone calling into Fox News. He's probably in his underwear. I don't want to make you throw up, but he's probably sitting there in these very big boxers, you know, looking like an open spam can. OK, talking to the Fox News person with high levels of late. I'm hoping to sleep tonight. I've had a long week. I just tell you what he I just tell you what he's doing. Right. And he's doing it because he is flipped out by that speech. He's got great political instincts. And now he's telling all of his staff, go blank yourself. It's my campaign. I'm going to do everything exactly the way I want.

16:20You asked me something. You said, is Trump watching the convention? And I said, no, immediately. My knee-jerk reaction was no. And then I called a few people. And they said, what are you, crazy? Of course, he's hate watching the convention. Tonight, he was hate tweeting. and you could feel the sweat on his fingers. He was tweeting every four minutes of her speech, all caps, all crazy, like totally insanity. I would ask independents who listen to us, go to Truth Social or go to Twitter where they post up his tweets, read them and ask yourself if you want somebody that should be in an insane asylum running the United States of America.

17:04So So he's flipped out right now. But again, you can't underestimate him. No, I think we've said this, both of us, in the last couple of weeks, the nature of the Electoral College and that it's a tight race. The college market has them up seven. They were tied coming into the convention. But I'm going to tell you something. There's still a debate to get through. And who knows? Things can happen, right? Things can happen. One of the things I was wondering about this week and tonight in particular is whether she has laid the groundwork for being a kind of movement candidate. And I know that's something that the Trump campaign is concerned about.

17:45And they're worried that if she is that kind of transformational figure, as Barack Obama was in 2008, then there's almost nothing that they can do to kind of stop the train. Do you think what you heard tonight is - You just crystallized. In my mind, you just crystallized what I actually think is now going to happen. She is the candidate for the moment. Okay. Are we going to 1947 before professional black athletes are allowed to play in professional sports? Or are we in 2024 where we've broken all color barriers in the United States and we're now colorless? And we're desperate to unify. What direction are we going to go in as a country?

18:29And I think more people in this country are about love and unity than they are about hate or division. And he's got holes in his story, Caddy. He may or may not have a hole on the ceasefire with Netanyahu, but he's got a big hole in his story when it relates to the border. You can't tell me that we're trying to fix the border and Joe Biden cedes to every single conservative totem in the legislation and you're calling your buddy saying, don't do it. I need to make the border a case for the election. And with Joe Biden out of it now, this prosecutor, if she holds herself the way she held herself tonight with that calm, okay, she'll destroy him.

19:14Okay, he won't be able to handle her. He was set up for, I'm 78, I'm going to go after the 81-year-old guy that's having a hard time stuttering. He can't put his sentences together. But he's not set up to go for what the country has become. And she represents what the country has become and what the country is becoming. And so she is the person of the moment. And I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to make this prediction on our podcast. She is listening. She is very well coached. That speech was fabricated by a lot of different people, not just her. And they said, get off that stage. And half of the time that Donald Trump was on the stage for, he spoke for 93 minutes.

20:01You get yourself off the stage earlier than that. Anyway, I was impressed. If you remember the night that Joe Biden was in the debate, I had put my suit on because I was going to a wake. I thought we had a funeral going on. okay so i'm like okay i'm like i'm ready for the high noon right now on that one i was expecting for people who don't know what was happening there in the audience and might have been watching all the women who were in the white and actually i was in the crowd there were quite a lot of men wearing white too which has now become a thing that uh you wear white for women's suffrage in in in commemoration of women getting the right to vote in the united states and there were a lot of women wearing right we were all wondering beforehand whether kamala harris would come out and wear white i thought it was kind of cool that she didn't because she sort of you know She was the presidential candidate up on the stage.

20:47I thought her lines, just to go back to a couple of moments in the speech that I think were very effective for her, the segment on Israel and Gaza, I thought she handled very well. So I've been cycling through getting backwards and forwards. I've discovered the best way to get in and out of the convention site is by e-bike. Thank you very much to the city of Chicago for providing all of these e-bikes. They've been great. and you avoid the queues and you avoid the traffic. But every time I go, there's been, I would say, a few hundred protesters, pro-Palestinian protesters, in a park near United Center.

21:22But she, with equal measure, managed to talk with compassion and humanity and strength about both sides. And I thought, this is a hornet's nest in American politics at the moment. But the way she addressed that by very firmly saying, I am strong on Israel. I am committed to Israel's right to defend itself and to protect itself. And I will always help them do that. And then pivoted and said, but what's happening in Gaza is devastating and it's heartbreaking. And the repeated bombings are heartbreaking over and over again. And the Palestinian people have to be able to realize their right to dignity and self-determination and security.

22:08And she said both of those with equal amounts of conviction and passion. And I think that goes a long way to addressing something that could be a liability for her. And I thought it was bold the way she did it. It was a well-written segment, but more than being a well-written segment of the speech, she delivered it with strength. And I think actually that whole national security segment where she says, where she then pivoted to Iran and said, I'm never going to cozy up to dictators like Kim Jong-un. I think that she needed to do some of that because she there's been very little foreign policy during the course of this convention.

22:46but I think it helps project this image of somebody who has experience, has governing experience as vice president, has been to these places and spoken at the Munich Security Conference for example. So I think that kind of helped her, that helped burnish her foreign policy credentials as well to the extent that foreign policy is going to be an issue in this campaign but it gave her that strength right again it kind of projected strength the way that she said it. Well Lysine I agree with all those points. I want you to think about something, and I'm going to ask you to react to it if you don't mind, because I didn't go to these conventions this year, but I was at the 2016 conventions.

23:27I was at the Trump convention in Cleveland, and I was at the – We were probably on other sides of the hallway. Yeah, you may have been there as well, and I was there in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, and what I saw was a new candidate. This was a man that was a business leader. he won the nomination he slayed a lot of very successful politicians there was a grudge match with him and tez cruz at the convention but he was their nominee and he was a newbie on the block and what i also saw was that a very large group of republican politicians underestimated him and did were not prepared for him and then i went over to see the hillary clinton convention and it was well orchestrated.

24:11They always get better stars. The Democrats, ladies and gentlemen, they have way better parties than the Republicans. All the stars show up and they can use any music they want. They never get in a lawsuit with anybody. Beyonce's there saying, yes, go ahead, please. No problem. Neil Young, you want to play my song? No problem. Born in the USA, love you. Go for it. Dixie Chicks, Chicks, Chicks, whatever it is, doesn't matter. Not a ton of alcohol flowing, but a lot of music. Right. The Republicans get Kid Rock, the poor guy, right? But what I saw in 2016 was Democrats, strategists and candidates and Secretary Clinton not taking Trump seriously enough.

24:52They were wholly underestimating him. And all the Republican nominees wholly underestimated him. What I'm seeing tonight and what I've seen over the last four days is we accept Donald Trump as a political force. We accept Donald Trump, and some people are going to throw up in this chat, as a political giant. Now, he may be a malevolent giant and he may want to steer our country towards a dictatorship, but that's what he is. And a result of which we are now taking him seriously. And that speech reflected that. Yeah. And I'm going to tell you what, when I get a hold of her campaign schedule, I'm going to compare it to Secretary Clinton's campaign schedule.

25:37And I will imagine that it's going to be 4x robust in terms of the volume and where her and Governor Walz are going to be traveling in the country. So eight years later, he's a tough SOB as a politician, and we are here to take him very seriously. Yeah, they've certainly learned. I mean, she's learned a lot, I think, from the experience of 2016. They've learned to take Trump seriously. I think, I mean, it was very interesting. She didn't really talk about being a first tonight in that speech. She didn't talk about being a woman. She didn't talk about being black and Indian American, South Asian American.

26:20She didn't, again, it was the show not tell, right? She knows that that is already out there. And I think because Hillary Clinton went through that experience and it was a pretty bruising experience being the first woman to run for president, I do think this time around, just by nature of the fact that it's been done before, some people will find it a little easier, the idea of voting for a woman president. I listened today, I went back and I listened to JFK's 1960 convention speech, which actually was short. It was only 20 minutes. But out of that 20 minutes, he spent the first seven minutes talking about being Catholic and trying to reassure the American public that he would not be compromised and that he could be president for all.

27:04He wasn't going to be affected by special interests. I mean, it was remarkable the degree to which he felt he had to talk about his faith and defend his face and justify his faith. And then I thought how interesting that we've come now, what is it, 64 years later, there is Kamala Harris standing up there as a woman, as a woman of color, and she doesn't mention it. She doesn't mention the fact that as a woman, she's still going to, in the way that, you know, Barack Obama made a point in 2008 of always saying he was going to be president for all Americans. He almost overcompensated for his race or felt he had to overcompensate for his race, that when he did talk about it, it was to talk about, I'm going to be president for all America.