34. Why Republicans Are Coming Home to Trump

0:06Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. And both of us, Anthony, first time ever, history is being made right now in the same room. Look at this. And it was going so well until this moment. Yes, exactly. So this could be either great that we're in the same room or who the hell knows. We should tell everybody who's watching we're actually in a dungeon in London. London, England, that is, because we've been on this tour around the country. And should Trump win the election, this is where I could be sleeping and hiding. It's an undisclosed location in London, by the way, so good luck finding it.

0:37Before we get to the politics of the week, of which there has been a lot, and we get to your dance moves, which will make sense to everybody in a few minutes' time. Oh, my God. How have you enjoyed the tour? By the way, for those of you who don't know, who've been under a rock recently, Anthony and I have been touring the United Kingdom. We've been to Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff, London. Last night, 13 ,000 people turned out to the O2 Stadium. You, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Led Zeppelin, all in the same location. You know, here's what I would say. This has been the most flattering and inspiring thing that I think I've ever done in my professional career.

1:12I love this country. I love visiting those cities. But to have 13 ,000 people in the O2 arena to listen to political nerds, I'll tell you, bravo. Okay. And well done. And the consensus was that Caddy Case stole the show last night in both appearance and presentation. Yeah. I was going to mention the suit. But then if I tell you that I went to Zadig and Voltaire and bought a new suit, you'd tell everybody. He's already just the poshest of you relative to the proletarian nature of me and Alistair. But not of Rory Stewart, who is clearly the poshest of a lot of us. His accent definitely gives him away.

1:44Anyway, we've had a lot of fun and the audiences have had a lot of fun. We've been so touched by everybody's enthusiasm. And the thing I notice is coming to the United Kingdom and how interested everybody here is in the American election. And I think that is something that our American listeners ought to know about, that there is just so much global fascination and a certain amount of trepidation about what is going to happen in the United States on November the 5th. Because whatever happens at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has an outsized impact compared to any other capital in the world on everybody who is listening to us around the world and to countries around the world.

2:23And I think the size of the audience, the kind of in-depth nature of the questions we were getting, and people were really asking us very granular questions about the state of this race. They are following it very, very closely. And I think that kind of gives you an indication of how important this is to other countries. I'd love to have you react to this because I've been thinking about this the last couple of days. When I travel outside the United States, I'm always amazed at the knowledge that people have about American politics and the centrism about American politics. and I think Rory did an amazing job last night.

2:54Rory Stewart for our American friends was a member of parliament. He was up for the prime ministership. He now does this amazing podcast with Alistair Campbell, The Rest is Politics, that paved the way for you and me. But he said something to me last night that I want to share with everybody that, you know, America, people are paying attention to it because it's for so many years, eight decades, it's been vital to helping to keep the peace and helping to promote prosperity. What is your reaction to that? Are we still vital to helping to keep the peace and promote prosperity? I have always believed that America that is strong and healthy and engaged with the world is better for the United States, but is also better for the rest of the world.

3:35And of course, there have been hiccups along the way. I mean, you can point to Vietnam and you can point to the Iraq examples, and it would be naive not to bring those up. But you can also point to World War I and you can point to World War II and you can point to American leadership in the Cold War. More recently, you can point to American leadership in reviving the NATO effort for Ukraine. And I think a world in which America retreats into isolationism, which is what Donald Trump wants, and actually if you look at the polling for the first time in those 70 years, a majority of Republicans want an America who is not leading in the world, I think the world would very quickly, particularly the West and America's allies would very quickly come to realize what a colossal problem that is for them.

4:19We live in a world in which there are still superpowers with superpower leadership. If America seeds that leadership and a vacuum is created, others will fill it. You know, there's a brand new book out on Joseph Stalin. It's called The Stalin Affair by Giles Milton. And there's a scene in the book, they're at the Yalta conference, and Stalin picks up the vodka and he's toasting the ailing president of the United States. And he says that your country wasn't invaded and you had no real need to be here in Europe to help us with the scourge of Nazism. And I just want to toast you to your humanity for helping to save the Russian people.

4:58And he held up the glass and everyone, of course, cheers. And then Churchill kicks in with an equally eloquent toast. But I just want you to think about that for a moment. Stalin admitted to Khrushchev and others, without the help of the Americans, the supply of goods through the lend-lease, it would have been impossible for them to beat the Germans. And think of the world that we've had. Now, whatever the failures of the world are, there have been 80 years of relative peace and prosperity, lots of growth in these economies, but there is a sense that there's a group of people that want to tear that down.

5:28It's not working for them, Katty. And Donald Trump represents those people. And so the question is, Is Vice President Harris, is she framing the narrative to keep the status quo or to improve the status quo? Or is Trump going to come in and try to wreck that system? Okay. So we've been doing these great shows. And before I get to today's running order and what's in the program today, I should make a quick plug. We are going to be doing a show in New York on 28th of October. That is now sold out. Thank you to everyone that's coming in New York. But Team DC, we do still have tickets for Washington, D.C.

6:02on October the 30th. We would love to see you all there. Super interesting time. This is going to be just days before the election. So do come. Tickets are selling fast. Make sure you head to therestispoliticsus.com to buy your tickets now. That is therestispoliticsus.com to buy your tickets now. I think it's going to be a great night, Katty. I mean, we're obviously looking forward to the face-to-face with these wonderful listeners of ours. There'll be great stories to tell. There'll be Ask Me Anythings. It's six days before the election. So it's TheRestIsPoliticsUS.com. The link is in the podcast episode description box.

6:40We'd love to see you guys. I tell you, I've been gratified by this. I think I'll even be more gratified by doing this in the States. So thank you guys. Please come. Okay. On with today's show. Today, we're going to do a look at the state of the race as it stands, less than three weeks out until the election. There have been a couple of weird and bizarre things, troubling things, perhaps that we want to talk about. I've been having conversations with people on the Harris team with other Democrats around the country. Let me give you a kind of I want to give you a kind of sense of what they're feeling right now.

7:09And then we're going to talk about the kind of media strategy. Get to your question, Anthony, about what the strategy is for the last three weeks. So the state of the race, this has been such an interesting week, I think, because I think it's now there's some clarity coming in. And I'm just going to say a couple of things. I have been reaching out to people on the Democratic side, and there has definitely been what's been described to me as a vibe shift. I think that's a technical term for everyone's panicking. And they can see that there is a tightening of the polls, that they see Republicans, and I want to get your take on this, Anthony.

7:42There's two things they're worried about that are surprising. We've spoken a lot about Hispanic voters. We've spoken about black voters. We can do that a bit more. But there's two new elements which kind of surprised me and that I think are surprising them a little bit. the number of what are called country club Republicans. I never really loved that phrase, country club Republican, because I think it kind of embraces a whole load of people. But let's say they are sort of more moderate Republicans who don't like very much about Trump's language. They probably don't like the way he's talking about immigration.

8:11And we can get onto that in a moment. They don't really like much about him, but they are seduced by the prospect of tax cuts. So the campaign, the Harris campaign is seeing quite a lot of those moderate Republicans. I'm sure you know many of them from Wall Street. They're the kind of Wall Street types who are coming home to Donald Trump. And then the second thing that they're worried about, and this is a little bit more shocking, I think, for the campaign, is the problem they have with young people. That young voters are not coming out for the Democrats or trending for the Democrats in the way that you might expect them to be, and certainly in the way that the campaign hopes that they should be and hopes that they will be.

8:50And there are a couple of factors behind that. I understand. One, of course, is Gaza. We know that. There's a lot of dissatisfaction. I have spoken to young voters who have told me that they are absolute Democrats, but they really don't like America's policy on Gaza. They don't like the fact that their own tax dollars are being used to fund Israel's effort against Palestinians in Gaza. So that is still a problem for the Democrats and It's still a problem for Kamala Harris. And then the other reason I think for young voters is that Harris has not managed to distinguish herself sufficiently from Joe Biden and comes across as just for some of these young voters, it's kind of same old, same old, right?

9:27She's just part of that two-party structure that is never really going to change very much, that has not delivered very much for young voters. And I've spoken to young voters who have said, listen, you know, I am a Democrat. I'm never going to vote for Donald Trump, but I'll just vote third party because I'm kind of throwing up my hands in despair at the prospect of anything ever changing in this country. So to me, that's the central question. The narrative that I'm not Donald Trump, I get that. Lots of people will vote not Donald Trump. But what am I, what's my vision for the future? What's my vision for America's role in the national security of the world?

10:02Okay, the international security, I should say. And I'm just wondering out loud about those things. The other issue, which we both know, is that the number of African-American men that are voting for Donald Trump, that seems to be on the rise. Now, she put out a tweet this week about offering certain ideas to African-American men. And I'm just wondering, Kat, if you saw that. And then my question to you, is it a little patronizing? Because some people are suggesting that if she's going to give$20 ,000, no payback loans to black men and then quote unquote others, is that even constitutional? Can you set up something and offer, hey, if you're black and a male, I'm going to give you$20 ,000?

10:40And is that a little bit too specious and a little bit too transactional? I don't know. I want to get your opinion on that. And her going on Charlemagne. Yeah. Okay. Was that a good performance for her? I listened to it, but I'd like to hear your opinion before I give mine. So when we were out at the DNC, Charlemagne was there. And of course, he's like a huge, we should say who he is. He's a radio host, very, very popular. he has a morning show called The Breakfast Club and it's him and a couple of other hosts and he is a huge fit my son for example 30 year old son listens to Charlemagne every morning and when we were in Chicago at the DNC he was there and he was like the rock star of the show so she goes on he has a big black audience as well black men he is an African American man and my understanding is that her performance on The Breakfast Club had quite a few holes in it and that people were not thrilled by it but also partly by his performance too and his questioning so what did you think?

11:32Well, he was light on her. Here's the thing. Trump goes on stage. He's at the economic club. He says vacuous, crazy things. He tells Maria Bartiromo the tariffs could be 100, 200, 500. Okay, that's Donald Trump. We're going to give him a pass. Charlemagne's asking about specific policy proposals, specific things. She's being very cursory about it. And he's known to be more of a stickler. He didn't hammer her and say, okay, hold on, Madam Vice President, give me the details. I want to hear them. He didn't do that to her. He was very light on her. People listen to Charlemagne, in my opinion, for one reason.

12:08He's extraordinarily competent. And he understands the zeitgeist. And he's unpredictable, which I really like about him. And let me tell you something. And when he makes an argument, it's fortified with a ton of research and it's fortified with a ton of knowledge. And so he has a he has a brilliant podcast. I don't think that necessarily helped her. And I don't think these policies that she's pushing are necessarily helping her. But I do think there is something helping her. And that is the dematerialization of Donald Trump. And so we're watching Trump dance for 39 minutes awkwardly. I mean, you can't unsee that, Katty.

12:44So, you know, I don't know what that was all about. We'll describe it to the viewers and listeners in a second. But we're watching Trump become meaner and crueler. We're watching him become more misogynistic and more racist and more anti-immigrant, if you will, and more dehumanizing. And I said last night to 13 ,000 people at the O2 Arena that Donald Trump talks about non-white immigrants to the United States the way the National Socialists talked about the Jews in the 1930s. Okay, so this is very frightening stuff. And I think it's raising alarm bells with students of history. So, you know, college women, we were going over this before the show started, college women in the cross stabs, they're plus 38 for Harris.

13:23So smart people that have looked at history and see the warning signs of the nonsense that Trump is espousing are with her. You have been saying, and I've agreed for the last couple of weeks, that she just needs to do a lot more media interviews and get a lot more performances out there. The campaign, I was texting with a senior campaign official yesterday who said the strategy now is to flood the zone. She's going to do an interview with Joe Rogan. She's going to go on Fox News. She did Charlemagne. Maybe there were policy positions people didn't agree with. Her position on wanting to decriminalize marijuana.

13:57Perhaps that goes down well with Charlemagne's audience. But I think to then say, oh, well, it wasn't helpful to her. I'm not sure how can she flood the zone and really step up the media appearances and then every single media appearance we turn around and say, well, actually, that one wasn't helpful to her. I mean, either she has to do a lot more media appearances and some of them are going to have weak moments and strong moments or she doesn't do them. And I think we do have to say at this stage, we have to compare it to what Donald Trump is doing. I mean, he gets a pass. She is at least answering policy questions.

14:29And he's sitting there for an hour being interviewed by John Micklethwaite at the Chicago Economic Council. And the answers are kind of all over the place. So Donald Trump, whether we like it or not, he gets a pass. Okay, Mark Esper comes in. Right, but that doesn't mean we should give him a pass. Well, we're not giving him a pass on this podcast, but there's a large group of the electorate that's giving him a pass, and her team needs to analyze that and understand why. Mark Esper comes out this week and says, take Donald Trump's comments seriously about using the military. He says, I'm going to use the military on my political adversaries.

15:05I'm going to use the National Guard. And Esper told him, I am not going to deploy National Guardsmen or the military into Lafayette Square. If you want my resignation, you can have my resignation. Trump blinked in 2020. Is he going to blink in 2025 or 2026 when he has a patsy for his secretary of defense, when he wants to do that very same thing? But for some reason, it doesn't work. Okay. or said differently, everyone that's worried about what I just said is already voting for Harris. Other people have decided, you know, that's Trump just being Trump. What's the big deal? Doesn't convince me not to vote for him.

15:47And what I would say to the vice president, you got to come up with a compelling, positive reason for people to vote for you. Whilst presumably also attacking Trump. I mean, she's got to go after Trump too. She did a brilliant thing this week. She went to a rally. She said, let's roll the tape. And she showed Trump saying inane things that were fascist, okay, to reinforce for her people, you better get out and vote because he's coming for your family's freedoms and your personal freedoms. But she doesn't have a soaring speech. Obama said, this is my vision of America. This is a post-racial America.

16:20JFK said, this is my new frontier. We're going to have innovation and space. And Reagan said, this is what we're going to do to preserve democracies and eventually bring down communism. Where is the soaring Harris vision speech? Where has she made it? And when did she make it? Because I didn't hear it if she made it. If she hasn't made it, what are you guys waiting for? Why don't you get her to make it and tell us what it is? I actually thought that her speech, her speeches at the moment at rallies, like the one in North Carolina where she did that and she went after Donald Trump in that way, is better than when she's doing these longer form interviews for her.

16:56I mean, I think some of the longer form interviews, that's where she made that slip up on the view where she wasn't necessarily as strong as she might've been on Charlemagne. Whereas the rallies, I think are getting better. I think that's more powerful. Perhaps the reason I like you so much is that you're cheaper than my therapist. Okay. Make me feel better, Kathy. Okay. Tell me something to make me feel better. Tell me the narrative. You told me the narrative two episodes ago. That's impressive, but I need the vision speech. What is her vision? It's 2026 in America. It's about to be 2028 in America.

17:31Where is the vice president who's now President Harris, the 47th president of the United States, where is she taking this country and the world? Yeah, and if people feel they don't know that, will they trust voting for her when that appeal of tax cuts and people are prepared to overlook a whole load of other things or they just simply don't believe that Donald Trump will do the things he says. I mean, I think that's another big pass that Donald Trump is getting is that people who have heard Mark Esper, his former defense secretary, say, Donald Trump said to me about the Black Lives Matter protesters, can't we just shoot them in the knees or something?

18:12I mean, people are hearing this stuff about Donald Trump. They know that two of his former secretaries of defense, his former national security advisor, his former chief of staff, his former top general, General Milley, have all said that Donald Trump is unfit for office. I've covered six American elections. I have never seen so many people from a former administration come out and say that president is unfit to serve again. And yet people, I think what's happening, the reason that you're seeing Republicans come home to Donald Trump is they just don't believe it. They don't believe he's going to do this.

18:47So they don't believe the tariffs on a more kind of serious economic policy point. They don't believe that he's going to bring out the National Guard. They don't believe that he's really going to deport millions of illegal immigrants. And so they, if you don't believe that stuff, then you tell yourself, oh, well, the economy was better and America didn't have wars. So all of that stuff. Yeah, the media is talking about it. Okay, even Donald Trump is talking about it. Yes, his former chiefs of staff and senior officials are talking about it. But it's like the poll that shows that 60 % of Hispanic voters do not believe Donald Trump is talking about them when he's talking about migrants.

19:27Yeah. Every outsider in America wants to feel like an insider. So even though he's talking about you, you don't think he is. But here's something I would say to the Harris people. You can easily get under her skin. You know exactly how to do it. She releases her medical information. He doesn't. He goes berserk. That was the bit you liked, right? He goes berserk. 1 a.m. He's writing all cap nonsense about his medical condition. She's going on Fox. He's nervous about it because he's got good political instincts. If she Buttigiegs Brett Mayer and she outperforms on Fox and she pushes back on the Fox narrative about her.

20:02By the way, the Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, would love the fact that he has now become a verb. Yeah. Yeah. But he's very effective on Fox. He goes on Fox and he destroys that right wing narrative. And if she does that, Trump is going to go berserk because Trump knows that Democrats watch Fox, Republicans watch Fox. And if the bubble gets popped and she's out there saying stuff that's moderate and pro business, she's out there saying stuff that's tough on the border and accusing him of not helping to get that border deal signed, all the things that she's capable of doing. okay she can move voters okay so she's got to be ready for that she should treat that interview like it's debate prep okay anthony i've got two bits of news for you good news and bad news as your therapist which do you want first well just don't send me a bill as long as you don't send me a bill i can take both things absolutely sending the bill do you want the good news or the bad news first give me the bad news first okay the bad news is i'm a catastrophizer like you go ahead give me the bad news democratic congressman brendan ball and i were texting just yesterday Very good guy from the suburbs of Philadelphia.

21:05I asked him how Pennsylvania is looking. Of course, we're all focused on Pennsylvania, the key battleground state. And he says, Pennsylvania is 50-50, which means the electoral college is 50-50. Okay, one other quick piece of bad news. Jim Messina, I got a text from him yesterday, who was the architect of Barack Obama's successful 2012 re-election campaign. He also helped David Cameron in the UK, here in the UK. Which Alistair Campbell does not like him for. Oh, I know. He gets really upset. You know, he switched size turncoat. Anyway, Jim Messina texted me to say, Kamala Harris cannot lose white men as she is doing and win this election.

21:40Okay, so that's the bad news. The good news. I'm past the vodka. Go ahead. Let me hear the good news. It's midday. It's time for vodka. Okay, so a Democratic strategist who spoke to a very good pollster told me Kamala Harris is up 20 points in New York and California. Strong Democratic states. Now, generally, Democratic candidates, presidential candidates are winning California and New York by 40 points. So if she's only up 20 points in those two states, but she is up three points in the national poll, that means she is winning votes somewhere else. Now, we don't know exactly where those votes are, but there is a chance that she is picking up more votes in the battleground states, in the states that matter, than she is picking up at the moment in California.

22:23But there's also, but just I want to point out to viewers and listeners, there's been since 2017 and the tax code changes with the limitation now on state and local income tax deductions. There's been a half a million people leave California, a half a million people leave New York. And I think Katty's making the point they may have been spread into other states. And some of these lower tax states are actually swing states. There's a Marist poll out this week, plus five for her nationally. So again, you know, and I know, and you said this before we got started that there's a poll for everything.

22:54We could say that Trump's up five, she's up five, Rasmussen will have him up five before the election's over. But where I am optimistic and where I am positive is the early polling in Pennsylvania, she has wide margins, Katty. Take a look at those numbers. Democrats always have wide margins in early polling. He could come in, but it's wider than it was in 2020. And it certainly is a lot wider than it was in 16. So, you know, let me just throw these two narrows at you. She wins, shocks everybody, lots of women vote, lots of registrations. She wins overwhelmingly. And takes all the battleground states.

23:31Yeah. He wins and he takes the House and Senate with him because he's got coattails and he drives David McCormick over the fence in Pennsylvania. I would say that scenario one and scenario two and scenario three is Anthony Scaramucci finds an estate agent in London. Okay. I'm going to be living here in the podcast cave. The podcast is not sleeping on the floor somewhere. I think it's quite comfortable in here. I'll have hair grow out of my ears like Yoda. Little caveman. And I'll come and knock on the door once a week and we'll talk. I think it's time for a break. And after the break, we're going to talk about Donald Trump's strategy in the closing weeks.

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