27. Trump vs. Harris: What You Didn't See

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1:35Hello and welcome to this extra edition of The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And me, Anthony Scaramucci. Good morning, Katty. Yeah, good morning after a very long night for you, a very early morning for me. That's why we're a little late coming to you. But Anthony was up all night in the spin room in Philadelphia after the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. and I want to get all of the details of what it was like down there, Anthony. So I think we're going to flip the tables a little bit and I'm going to revert to my journalism mold and ask you all the questions that I've been wanting to ask you about what it was like.

2:06I've been in that room so many times from the press point of view. What was it like for you last night being at the debate in Philadelphia, watching it and then going back and talking to the journalists about it? I think the first thing I want to say, because I want to do a compare and contrast. Okay, 2016, I went to all three debates. I was in those rooms. We got the chance to be in the audience, and then we were immediately supposed to go into the spin room. The Harris campaign ran it completely differently. It was unbelievably well organized. I got a tear sheet from the campaign on what their talking points were.

2:42I got a tear sheet on their positioning and timing of what TV hits I was going to go on. I thought they did something masterful last night that we never did in 2016, and maybe Trump's doing it now, I don't know, but we were assigned to the radio. So there were very large banks of phones and very large banks of microphones. And I got assigned to swing state radio, swing state radio. And so that was Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, into Nevada, over to Georgia. And in probably one hour, I probably did six, maybe seven radio shows with different hosts. Drive time radio caddy, 4.30 in the afternoon on the East Coast, 1.30 on the West Coast.

3:29But that's sort of in the mode where people are driving around. So that was before the debate. So before the debate, they had you speaking to all of these drive. So we should back up a little bit. The campaign called you up a few days ago and said, would you come to Philadelphia to be part of their debate team? And then would you be a surrogate for them going into the spin rooms? I think it's okay for me to say this now. I didn't want to say this in prior podcasts. I fully disclose, and I've said this all along, so I don't necessarily have objectivity here, although I do try to be objective on balls and strikes.

4:03I'm also going to lay out some of the things that I think Vice President Harris needs to do better, frankly. She won the debate. I think she won that debate hands down. We can go through the tactics, why she won the debate. Listen, even Fox News is agreeing to that. Yeah. So she won the debate, but there's always room for improvement. I'm happy to go through that. I have it all written down. But they called me mid-August and they said, listen, you know, Donald Trump, we would like to sit down and talk to you. Would you be willing to do that? And I built a matrix for them. I think I sent you my notes.

4:34And I think you responded to my notes that it's a study of how my mind works, which is a lot of bizarre things going on in my mind. These were handwritten notes that I was meant to be able to make sense of. I mean, it was nice of you to send them to me. They were more gibberish than much of what Donald Trump said on air last night. But anyway, yes. Okay, exactly. But I had a matrix and I spoke to them about what he does and how he reacts. And he's in this false prism that his staff allows him to be in. He thinks he's respected by our allies. He thinks he's respected by these dictators. Okay. He forgets that he was laughed at at the UN when he was trying to give a speech about some insane thing.

5:12And so I said to her, team, not her, but I said to her team, hit him, tell him that you know from all these people that she knows that he's incompetent. And when she did that, he would up like a bottle rocket. But it just speaks to how well prepared she was. She took input from her campaign. She took input from the Biden people. She took input from former Trump people. There are 40 of us that have said, please can't have this guy return to the Oval Office. These are all the reasons why. and she was rested. She took input from her CNN interview. Katty, she looked tired that day. Yeah, we both said that.

5:50You know, I said that. She looked fresh. She got there early. Okay. So just imagine these two people. She arrives the night before, goes to bed. She gets up early. She does some debate prep. She has a relaxing day. He shows up bombing social media with memes of cats. I mean, it was some of the more bizarre stuff that he does. It's 6.57 when the plane lands. He's supposed to go on the air at nine. He probably had Macho Man playing from YMCA because he was trying to show his uber masculinity. I'm Macho Macho Man landing two hours before. Just flying at the last minute. Exactly. I was in the spin room with the team.

6:32Who was in there with me? Governor Cooper, North Carolina, Tammy Duckworth, the Senator from Illinois. I don't know a lot of the names I'm not a Democrat. So Gavin Newsom was with me. There were several members of the House of Representatives. And we had a very colorful discussion before the debate started. And then there was stone cold silence in the holding room watching the debate. And then I'm just going to say a few more things quickly. She started out slow. She was trying to find her footing, trying to find her ground, a little bit too much explanatory about her background. I know she needs to get her narrative out there.

7:10And I know the polling suggests that she needs to explain who she is more to the American people. I think that's upside there for her, for those reasons. But she did start out slow. And then all of a sudden you could feel the explosion click in and she was completely on her game. And then she did something, caddy that she practiced. And if you go back and look at it, her facial expressions while he was talking and her facial expressions while she was interacting with the moderator were pitch perfect, so much so that I took pictures of it on my phone and I sent it to my daughter, who's a stage actress and she's a singer.

7:48And I said, I just want you to study tonight how she's reacting to the former president and how she's reacting to the moderators, it was literally pitch perfect because you know half of the thing is the mojo and the feeling that's going on during the debate. Yeah. And you had that comparison of her smiling, looking dismissive, putting her hand under her chin at one point. And if you had turned the sound down, which I often do during the debates, I turned the sound down for a little bit just to watch it. And he's just looking crosser and crosser and crosser. And you're right, it was that moment where she accelerates and he starts looking crosser and crosser.

8:23Why was it, Anthony, that they wanted you to come? What do they feel you represented? I think she's made a decision. And it's interesting. And again, I'm not being critical of the Biden team. They made a decision. We don't want the Trump people involved. We don't want former people involved. We're going to do this on our own. And we got to worry about the hard left. And we don't want the hard left to be upset. I was on a progressive talk show in Philadelphia, this African-American DJ said to me, what do we say to the progressives about this Dick Cheney endorsement or even the fact that you're here?

8:57And I looked at him and I said, listen, aren't we all Americans first? There's probably stuff in the agenda that she has that I don't agree with as a center-right Republican. And there's probably stuff about me that you don't agree with, but don't you want to beat Donald Trump? Don't you see the existential danger of Donald Trump. Wouldn't you want her to build the biggest, broadest tent and broadest coalition possible? I think the Biden people just said, listen, you're a nice guy. We'll take your money, but we don't want to hear from you. And I think she's taking a different tact. I think she's decided that having Dick and Liz Cheney, having former Trump people like Olivia Detroit or myself representing her is a sign of the type of coalition that she's building.

9:37And she spoke to that from the debate. She said that she's building a broad coalition. She said from the CNN interview, she's willing to consider a Republican in her cabinet. She's trying to send a message to people that we have to get over what she called the last decade. And this last decade of heavy tribalism, the last decade of Donald Trumpism. And I think it was an overture. And I think it was also a signal because they dropped it into the press, Caddy. I think you and I talked about it the night before. I was told not to say anything. So, of course, I didn't. But sometime in the morning yesterday, they dropped it to the press because I got lots of calls and then lots of media bookings as a result of them saying that I would be down there alongside of Olivia Troy to represent her.

10:26And it ran on Politico too. I saw that. But it's interesting also the strategy for them of getting you to speak to battleground radio stations, which we know, I mean, radio stations in this country, a huge way that people get their news. That is what a lot of people are listening to, particularly drive time. Like you say, before the debate, it was as people are driving back from the offices, as they're driving to pick up their kids and they're listening. And I can't help but think that one of the things that the Harris campaign is thinking is, you know, you get somebody like you on or you get Olivia Troy, who is also a former national security member of the Trump administration on, and you can speak to wavering voters, voters who might be leaning Republican, a little bit more conservative, but who don't like Donald Trump's character in a way, actually, it's a smart move from their point because you can speak to those people, Anthony, in a way that a Democrat can't necessarily.

11:17It's just a different relationship that you would have with those listeners. And I appreciate you saying that, but there's another thing going on. Okay. These Republican surrogates, they hate Donald Trump. Let's just put it on the record, okay? Whether it's Chris Sununu, Tim Scott, you pick the person. They behind the scenes hate Donald Trump. They hate him, okay? And so they're sitting there saying to themselves, because their political consultants have said, you got to go out there and support Donald Trump, or you're not going to have a future in the Republican Party. And so you go through the people, DeSantis campaigned against him, Haley, Tim Scott, pick the people.

11:51And so they're all there. And now they got to try to defend this guy. And so he gets destroyed in the debate last night. We can talk about how badly he got destroyed in a second. I've got three things that she said that I think were winning things that they're going to use in advertising. I got two things that he said, which was very Joe Biden of him, by the way. He was talking in a way where if Donald Trump was listening to him talking, he would have said, I don't know what he just said. And I don't think he does either. Remember he said that to Joe Biden in the first debate? That's how he was talking last night.

12:25It was rambling. Kind of rambling. Yeah. Nonsensical. And then he does something, another tell for Trump, I'm in trouble. I'm going to lean into the microphone and I'm going to go on blast. I'm going to scream into the microphone. I set the timer on my phone. Well, when she sent him up like a bottle rocket, he started screaming into the microphone. and it was about 19 minutes when he was on that he was screaming into the microphone, including after the commercial break. But what I want to just mention to listeners is how does this work for the American public and how does the American public see this?

13:00This is a UFC match. This is an ultra fighting cage match of verbal sparring. This is something people are sitting down and it's a gladiator event, except they're not physically beating each other up, but they're tarring each other with their words. And this is who's on point, who's well-versed, who understands the issues and who looks presidential. Okay. Governor Christie, close friend of mine from New Jersey, texted me 45 minutes into debate. She looks like she deserves to be there. She sounds and looks like a president. Okay. That's from a Republican. He's a Trump detractor, but that's when we're Republican.

13:44I just want you to imagine these guys though, he's getting destroyed. They're in their spin room. We're in our spin room. I'm writing notes about what I'm going to say to the media when the thing's over. And they come up with what? It was three on one, Hattie. Okay. The moderators were siding with VP Harris. So the moderators were instructed that they had to do some fact checking. When he's spilling lie after lie into the microphone and saying that we're having abortions in the ninth month and we execute babies after they're born, the moderator has to say, geez, I'm sorry, we're not doing that in the United States.

14:21So I have found in my life in sports, when the other team is complaining about the refs, they lost the game. Okay, whether it's British football, American football, American baseball, as soon as the guy says they called the balls out of the strike zone and this, that, and the other thing, you know the other team is in trouble. There was a Trump person on CNN shortly after the debate last night who said, you can't blame the ref when you can't even make a goal of your own. Right. When you don't even take a shot. It was the same thing. And you're right. So that was their tactic clearly was to say, blame ABC News.

14:56Trump was actually on Fox News this morning saying that ABC News should have its license revoked and that the two moderators should be criminally investigated for their role in that debate. So that's the tactic that he's taking. Okay. But let me just say this to you because that has worked for him, by the way. And so that's why he's doing that. He's doubling, tripling down. It's a feared thing. You bully people into submission. Yes, yes. It's a bully thing. It's also - And you undermine the confidence in the media by saying, so I was, you may have seen this, but actually you saw something else.

15:28It's kind of jujitsu. You think you saw this, but it wasn't fair. And so actually I won. There's another thing. I had an American baseball coach. He said to me, once every 30 games, I'm going to get thrown out. What do you mean? You're going to get thrown out? Well, once every 30 games, I'm going to march into the field. I'm sort of screaming at the umpire behind home plate. He's going to throw me out. Okay, what the hell are you doing that for? Well, I'm doing that because I want to intimidate the son of a bitch. And I want him to, next time he comes to this stadium, he's going to, and he's going to give my players a little bit more laxity on the strike zone so he doesn't feel my wrath.

16:06You see what he's doing? He's doing that for the next debate. Okay, so he has to debate her. One of the funniest lines that he had last night was post-debate. I saw Sean Hannity, even though Sean and I are on a different side of this. Sean and I grew up together here on Long Island. We're good friends. We know each other a long time. And so I watched Trump go over to Sean Hannity. So two things. One, if he had won the debate, he would have never came into the spin room. Not his personality. He would have jumped on the plane, headed back to wherever he was going. But he knew he lost the debates.

16:34He had to go into the spin room and spin on his own, right? Because he thinks he's the best person to spin from himself. No question. He's the best communications director. He's the best chief of staff. He's the best secretary of defense. He's smarter than his generals, smarter than his virologists. And so who better than him to go spin after a debate? Which is, by the way, for people listening, I've covered now, I must have been to 16 of these debates. I have never seen the principal, the candidate themselves come into the spin room afterwards. You leave that to people like you, Anthony, or to your surrogates or to members of the campaign.

17:09Obama never turned up in the spin room. Bush never turned up in the spin room. Nobody's ever turned up in the spin room. This was super unusual. No. And the only time Trump did turn up in the spin room was during the primaries because he was a new candidate. and we said to him, get into the spin room. But during the regular presidential debates and stuff like that, he never did that. But he went into the spin room, talked to his buddy Hannity, and the Harris people told us halfway through the debate that they were requesting another debate. Okay. And you know, and I know, Cady, if Trump had won that debate, he would never debate her again because he would want to stick to that one and done, one and done.

17:48Why would Harris, even though she bested him last night, wanted an additional debate. And this is the genius of their organization. They know that she needs more national exposure. They know that she needs millions of viewers to see her exactly as she was last night. Yeah, because the polls are still showing people don't know her very well. Exactly. And they also know, and they're confident in her. They know she's going to come prepared. They know she's going to build the case like a good prosecutor would. They know that she's going to react to him beautifully. And he could not figure her out last night.

18:24And I'm going to explain this. And if you went to tapes of Hillary Clinton debating Donald Trump, and you saw her debate last night, let me see if I can try to explain this to you. She was very tentative with Trump. Clinton was trying to be the school valedictorian that was going to go through everything she knew about policy into debate. When I was in debate prep with these guys, I said, don't do that. Do not be the school marm. You can't be Charlie Brown's teacher calling him on every one of his lies. He's had seven presidential debates. He's told on average about one lie every 97 seconds. If you calculate all the lies he told over the course of seven presidential days.

19:05Don't be the school teacher, the headmaster, calling him out on that. The second thing, it is not your job to be a professor in the room explaining policy. It's your job to get the vibe right. And what was the vibe last night? I'm here for everybody. I represent everybody. These are the three things that I wrote down that I thought were fantastic. As a prosecutor, I never once said to a victim, are you a Democrat or a Republican? Because I'm for everybody. And my only client has always been the American people or the citizens of the state. Second thing she said, which she got very high numbers on.

19:43So I walked up. It was interesting. Gavin Newsom, never met him before, got on with him well. There were two rooms. I was in the large holding room. I saw Gavin get up and go into this smaller room. I'm like, okay, what is he doing? I'm curious. I went into the room to follow him. and they were... This is while the debate is playing. This is while the debate is playing. And they had focus groups that they had, I guess, paid, or they were sitting around and they had these meters. You've probably seen them, right? So, I'm saying something about immigration and these focus groups like it, they'll turn the meter on and the thing goes up.

20:18I'm saying something that they don't like, the meter is going this way, because the people that were analyzing her and getting her ready for her next debate or for the They wanted to know what was working, what wasn't. The line that worked the most, according to the meter people, she casually said, I am here for everybody. And she said, and I know that we have way more in common than what separates us in this country. And we have to move to unifying the country again. And that meter was up here. Okay. Okay. So that was the second thing that she said that I was blown away by and very impressed with.

20:54That was in the response to the question that they'd asked Donald Trump about, why did you say she wasn't black? Yeah, exactly right. And the third thing was something she didn't say. So, Catty, there's a really memorable moment where he's talking about eating cats and dogs and people's pets are being eaten. And have a listen to this. And let's look at her facial expressions for YouTube, and then we'll explain them in audio. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country.

21:31And it's a shame. Do you remember that moment, Cady? Were you watching? Did you see her face? Oh, yeah, yeah. Her face where she's like, are you really going to do this? She's destroying him with her face. Okay, you got to go back. So there were two things she said. And then there was one thing where she looked at him and she's like, you are one crazy son of a bitch. Are you seriously going to go there? Okay. You know, because body language in life is everything, right? You can tell when people like each other. You can tell people, oh, fuck, I don't like the guy. The body language is everything.

22:02And she looked at him and it's like, you are a crazy son of a bitch. And it was no words. And all it was was her face and her smile and the way her head cocked when he said that. And so those were the three things. It was something else that happened and it totally unraveled him. And I think it came from David Muir. He said, so you've been saying for the last three and a half years that the election was stolen, but you finally admitted to Lex Friedman on his podcast that you lost. And he was like, what? And he saw the face and he makes the big mushroom cloud face of his. And then he said, I was being sarcastic.

22:39And I thought it was very interesting. He said that he lost by a whisker because everything goes back to these cats for some reason in the guy's mind. And by the way, that was one of the moments where David Muir then came back and said, I watched all the videotape and I didn't pick up any sarcasm. Okay, let's take a quick break and we will get more from Anthony and his night in Philadelphia in the second half.

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