37. Has Biden cost Harris the election?

0:06Welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me Kaddy Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and we are in Cadizone now. Yes, we're doing the tour of each other's houses at the moment. Doing a home tour. But my house is a little different from your house. This is like an 1880s, which by American standards is ancient. It's a ruin sometimes. This is an absolutely gorgeous house, and I can see Jackie Kennedy and Jack Kennedy walking in front of the house in the 1950s, right? This is their neighborhood. You know, can I tell you one little tidbit about this house? In the house across the street, there's a little carriage house, which is reportedly where Marilyn Monroe and JFK used to meet for their trysts.

0:44So we're doing this extra edition this week. Of course, we're just a few days out now from the election. So this week on The Rest is Politics US, we're bringing you a few bonus episodes to keep up with the news because there is so much going on. In the first half, Anthony, we're going to have a look at what's happening with the Democrats, how they're feeling about the race. I know you've got a bit of news you can bring us on that from and I've got a little bit too from the campaign. And then in the back half, we are going to talk about the Republicans and how they are feeling. And let's start there.

1:16It looks like before we get to what we're both hearing from the campaign about how they're feeling, there's been this what could be a little bit of an October surprise moment with Joe Biden having said on a phone call, the audio of which then came out, that the only garbage he could see was Donald Trump's supporters. And the reference was to what we talked about on our last episode, the Madison Square Garden comedian who talked about Puerto Rico being an island of garbage. Yeah. Okay. So let's just characterize what the president was trying to say and why this is a huge gap. Well, this is what the White House says the president was trying to say.

1:58The supporter, meaning the comedian that made the remark about the garbage, not the 60 to 80 million people that are going to vote for former President Trump. But it really doesn't matter. He had an opportunity to get out of the fray and allow for the ellipse speech, which I know we're going to talk about. I thought it was a great speech. I went through the transcript this morning. I watched it last night. And, you know, I think she was generally positive and it was positively viewed. and it was a centrist speech. Biden bigfooted that speech, if we're just being honest. He stepped in it. Yeah, because everybody's running it now.

2:34And of course, Trump is running it. And Fox News is mentioning it every five minutes. Yeah, I've just been watching Fox News, and it's pretty much the only subject on Fox News at the moment. I also actually have been watching CNN, though, and it's running on CNN too. So the White House debating whether there was an apostrophe in the word supporters, I think you have a problem. It reminds me of covering Bill Clinton when he was saying It depends what the meaning of is is around his affair. Is he having an affair with Monica Lewinsky? And it's just not a position. And it sounds just terribly like politicians.

3:04I mean, it sounds that's what politicians do. They pass words. And I think that doesn't help her. And I've mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning again. Richard Nixon was devastated personally, but it also hurt his campaign when roughly the same time, five or six days before the campaign was over, election day, they asked Dwight Eisenhower. So Richard Nixon was your vice president for eight years. What were his contributions to the administration? And Eisenhower looked at them and said, well, if you give me a week, I'll think of one. And it was absolutely devastating to Nixon. And the papers ran with it.

3:36It's not as mass media 60 years ago, but it hurt Nixon. It definitely hurt him. And, you know, there are people on Fox News saying, well, that's intentional. Joe Biden is sore that he got ejected from the campaign. He wore a Trump hat. I don't buy that. I see you wincing. It's not whether you or I buy it. Of course. It's whether they buy it, right? Remember what John Maynard Keyne said about the stock market? I am a beauty contest judge, and it's not for me to examine what's beautiful, but it's for me to think of what my judges, fellow judges are examining what's beautiful. That's how you judge the stock market.

4:11That's how you judge a campaign. And Fox is running with that, Caddy, because they want people in Trump's camp to know or think that the other side thinks you're garbage, which hopefully will intensify their passion to get out there and vote for Donald Trump. And also will somehow mitigate for what was said at Madison Square Garden. Yes. And the explosion that that had around Puerto Rican voters and whether it became a big... Does it do that? So we should remember that at this point, we are recording this on Wednesday around 3 p.m. in D.C. and about 55, 60 million people have already voted. So even before all this, tens of millions of Americans have voted.

4:52And this, of course, won't impact their vote. one way or another. I guess there is a chance that it distracts from Kamala Harris, first of all. It distracts from what I do agree with you was a very good speech on the ellipse last night, and we can dig into that a little bit more. It just doesn't help. I mean, as somebody from the Trump campaign texted me on Monday - You are so polite. You were so polite and diplomatic. This devastates her. But, okay. It does. It devastates her because it takes - Are you saying this could cost her the election? I don't know if it's going to cost her the election, but this is like a bomb going on.

5:22She's got the big mo. They're talking about Puerto Rico being an island of garbage. She goes to the Ellipse and she gives this beautiful centrist speech. And she says, if you're a supporter of Donald Trump's, it's not going to matter to me. I'm on your team too. Right. I'll have you at the table. And then he drops a bomb and says, if you're a supporter of Donald Trump's, you're a pile of garbage. You can't do that. This is a big gaffe. There's a book being written about this election right now. And this is going to be in the book. This is going to be five, six pages of the book and what the ramifications were to the vice president.

5:55I agree, but you asked how does it impact her, and I assume you mean electorally. I don't know that we know how much it impacts her electorally, just as I don't know. It's a big distraction, Kat. It's a big distraction, yeah. It's a very tough distraction. And just as the Trump campaign was texting me on Monday saying this is a distraction because of that comedian at Madison Square Garden, and no distractions are welcome at this stage. This is a very bad distraction for her. We can't quantify whether it costs her the election is what I'm saying. I mean, maybe, yes, if she loses, is it possible that we look back and say, wow, this was the basket of deplorables moment.

6:30This was the Jim Comey letter moment. And it's possible that that's the case. And look, what we do know is that in 2016, late voters, people who decided late in the election cycle broke disproportionately for Donald Trump. So it's possible that if we still have 4 % to 6 % of voters out there who have not decided, this could impact their vote. It was an unforced error, unnecessary, absolutely hurts. It's also a reminder of why he is not the candidate. Before we go, yeah, of course, because that's a type of gaffe you can't make. Should she distance herself more forcefully from him over this than she has done?

7:08I had to do that this morning underneath the Air Force Two, but I don't think it's good enough. A more declarative statement would have been better. She's not going to do that, of course. So that's also hurtful. Before we go to the ellipse speech, I'd like to get your reaction to it. I have also been corresponding with the Trump campaign and a senior person sent me by Apple Music, Moving Out, which, of course, is a very famous Billy Joel song. And he said, I just let you know that I'm jamming to this song. And it made me think of you walking the precincts for Kamala. And so I wrote back. I said, OK, I expect to be deported soon.

7:42And he wrote back, yes, but the comedian will be first. You know, the one from Sunday? Yeah. And it's all jokey. Ha ha. But it shows you how much they're impacted by that comedian. But it shows you how they're impacted by the comedian. He's also teasing me because of the FT article where I said Billy Joel's the Long Island gospel. But he's also - all of this, aren't you? Yeah, but he's also saying something. He's saying something. Right, Deirdre? He's loving all of this. Yeah, he loves it all. I'm shameless, right, baby? Shameless. We have Anthony's wife sitting right here and she, like me, realizes that he's basically If we ever put her on the show, of course, I did a show where they're called Mooch and the Misses and she gave it up for her two boyfriends, James and Nicholas, but if we ever do a show again, she'll blast me out of the water worse than Caddy.

8:25That's their sons. I just want to say this about the Trump official. I just want to say this about him that I think he's worried because he's reaching out to me. And if he wasn't worried, I think he's worried. Do you think they think they're worried? I think the fact that they are preemptively reaching out to you is always an indication of a slight lack of confidence. When they start reaching out to people who they know have a public voice in order to try to impact that public voice, it usually suggests that they are a little worried about the message. Before we get on to the Trump campaign, because I want to do that after the break, let's talk a little bit more about the lips.

8:56You raised it. I thought the staging was great. Some critics suggested that, oh, if she's standing there against the White House, that ties her to Joe Biden. I think actually the last person she wants to be tied to today is Joe Biden. But I thought the staging was great. It made her look presidential. For voters who may be thinking, are we ready to elect a woman? Are we ready to elect this woman? Do we know enough about her? Do we think we can trust her to be commander-in-chief. I felt that having her stand there in front of the White House was a very good symbolic way of showing she belonged there.

9:30The stagecraft of it was good. I also thought her line about, he'll lock his enemies up, or in your case, Antony Scaramucci, he will send them to London, but I will give you a seat at the table. And that my philosophy of dealing with people that have different ideas to mine is to incorporate them because that's actually how you get the best I thought that was a very good, I thought it was a great line. Listen, I have a to-do list. He has an enemies list. That's just like the General Motors is alive. Osama bin Laden is dead. They're good at this. But I am including you. He is deporting you. Also very positive for her.

10:06But there's something going on right now that's quite interesting to me. The markets are moving towards Trump, both in terms of the way the money's being placed in the market and the prediction markets in terms of the betting cycle for Trump. As an example, in London, if you put a dollar down, okay, if you put$9 down, you get$4 back. Okay, that's the odds right now if you're going to bet a Donald Trump victory. Okay, so he is way ahead in the betting markets. So I don't know, are the betting markets skewed? Some people are saying they are. Some people are saying they're not. I'm a markets person, 35 years, just looking at the market, Trump's going to win.

10:41Okay, anybody that's a macro investor, Trump's going to win. If you're talking to people that are in the know, and I'd like to get your feedback on this, I ran into somebody at lunch today who I know a long time, very serious person, senior, senior person, not on the campaign, but in the administration, said that she's got big numbers in Pennsylvania favoring her early voting, also polling. She's winning big time in Pennsylvania. And then coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, this morning, Trump is tweeting out, blaring stuff on Truth Social that he's going to be bringing mega lawsuits in Pennsylvania.

11:14So what say you? So I think that is very interesting and what you're hearing, because that is based on actual data rather than hunches. And if they're seeing those big numbers in Pennsylvania, that's a very good sign for them, clearly. I have heard from the campaign that the phrase that is going around in Delaware, which is where the campaign headquarters is, is nauseously optimistic. Not cautiously optimistic, but nauseously optimistic. They're all feeling kind of anxious and nobody wants to be too upfront about being optimistic, but they feel bullish about these early voting numbers. And they do believe that the focus on abortion rights is cutting through and that they're seeing large numbers of women in particular, disproportionate previous election campaigns turning out and voting early.

12:00So before we go to the break, I'm just going to say this. If she does win, I'm going to ask our producers and our team to go through Elon Musk's tweets about early voting and about voting in Pennsylvania, voting in other parts of the country, where they're trying to beam to people that it's a fair complete for Donald Trump. Because, I don't know, maybe that's an FCC violation, Katya. I'm not sure. I'm just saying it seems weird to me that he controls that entire platform. He changed the entire algorithm. And now with his 270 million followers, he's sending out information that may or may not be accurate.

12:36So we'll have to see. We'll have to address that at some point. We're going to talk more about the Republicans and how they're feeling about this. But we're going to take a quick break.

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14:49Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US, live from my living room in Washington, D.C. We are now Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, five days out from the election. In this half, let's talk about what we're hearing from the Trump campaign and how they're feeling. We mentioned it a little bit in the first half. They are still in text to me sounding incredibly bullish. They still believe, or at least say they believe, that they're going to win six out of the seven battleground states. But you talked briefly in that last half, and I do think we should talk about this. Donald Trump, increasingly high volume levels, talking about the fact that he already believes there is cheating going on in Pennsylvania and being very specific about it.

15:30And he sent out this Truth Social post last night in which he said, Pennsylvania is cheating and getting caught at large scale levels, rarely seen before. Report cheating to authorities. Law enforcement must act now. And I think a bit like you, I read into that a sign of nervousness. I mean, if you think it's going your way why are you going to say in anticipation that it's fraudulent because if you're winning but the only document say it was i agree but the only documented cheating has been there's been a few bombs that have taken place where ballot boxes have been set on fire and and ballots lost and they're primarily democratic ballots that were set on fire so so if there's any cheating going on it's not going against donald trump but that is a tell from Donald Trump.

16:15That's a blank. Donald Trump says to you that he's not a gun waver, meaning you're at the OK Corral and he's not waving the gun. But when he's tweeting like that on true social, that's a sign of gun waving five, six days out from the election. We had the other thing that happened kind of that's interesting on the Republican side was Steve Bannon being released from prison yesterday. Actually, oddly, he was staying in the same hotel that I was staying up in New York and there was tons of security and tons of press and he was giving a press conference. When he came out, the only thing I could think of is the crab from SpongeBob.

16:46I mean, it was either he was sunburned or he had rosacea or there was something going on. And I was looking at him. And the other thing I thought is, wow, Steve ate a lot of food in prison, which usually when you're coming out of prison, you got pecs, you know, developing a six pack, but not Steve. And to quote Donald Trump, I would say sloppy Steve. That was quite sloppy. So that was my reaction. That was your aesthetic reaction. Yes. So I watched a little bit of his press conference and tuned into a tiny bit of the War Room podcast, which I'm going to admit is not part of my regular diet. You don't laugh at any of my jokes.

17:21You just stone cold Steve Austin. Okay. Stone cold catty cake. Don't laugh at the joke. Go ahead. I do laugh at plenty of your jokes. You do. Okay. All right. Not that one, apparently. It was probably too vicious of an aesthetic attack. But okay. So what do you think of Sloppy Steve while we're talking about it? So I guess we're in the stage of the campaign where we're wondering, does anything change anybody's minds? Does anything tip the scales one way or another? And I suppose you should examine the case that there is Steve Bannon with this very successful podcast and a lot of people who listen to him.

17:56And if he comes out and talks as he did on the podcast about how he is a political prisoner and he's fully energized and 2020 election was absolutely stolen and people should come out in massive numbers to vote for Donald Trump. Does it make a difference? Does that kind of having that kind of reach make a difference? Does it galvanize some of his male supporters? I don't think it makes a difference, but I'm going to tell you where Steve would make a difference. Should Trump win, he won't be a part of it because they're distant from each other, but Trump will call. Trump knows how smart he is. And Trump is very, very good at calling certain people to get certain opinions on personnel, get certain opinions on policy.

18:35And it'll be from a distance, but Steve Bannon will be shaping the administration. And you live here in Washington, and I only had an 11-day stint here. But what we both know is that personnel is policy, Caddy. And Steve Bannon out of prison will be in Donald Trump's ear if he becomes a president-elect. I don't think he's going to have much impact five, six days out from the election. Do you think this election is drifting away from Donald Trump? Well, you know, if Joe Biden had got his fat tongue out of the way, I would have said the momentum was really going our way into the weekend. I think it stalled a little now, again, if I'm just being brutally honest.

19:12But I love the organization of this campaign. I've been out in the field as of you, and I love the field operation of this campaign. And my money is on that field operation. I do think that they're getting out to vote. And remember, they knock on the door. Someone comes to the door, say, I'm voting for Harris. The next thing they say is, do you have a ride? Do you have a ride to the polling station? Or do you know where the drop box is for your mail-in ballot? And they're very, very well organized. He doesn't have that. He's got the megaphone of X. How many people are really listening on X? I know there's millions of people on X, but the voters, is it 10 million people listening?

19:4620 million? I don't know the answer, but it's not the entire electorate is on X. Informed electorate, perhaps, but there's less informed people, lots of union people, lots of blue collar people that traditionally vote Democrat. And again, I've said it before, but I'll say it again. She's relying on people that consistently vote. He has to rely on people that don't vote. And I don't know. I like it because, you know, Dobbs, the very famous Supreme Court case that repealed Roe v. Wade, polls minus six, meaning there's a plus six for the Dems in the polls in 22 and in 23. And I'm just wondering there could be that in 24, in which case Trump's going to get smoked.

20:31And then you and I will be doing a podcast saying, well, he got smoked. Here are the reasons why. Organization and he got smoked because of Dobbs. If she gets smoked, it'll be because they got her started too late in the game. Joe Biden, not much of a help. And she didn't really frame the narrative about herself as much as he's saying, hey, I'm not Donald Trump. You better vote for me because he's nuts. And the only criticism I would have had about the Ellipse speech, and she did run through some economic policy issues, and she did criticize his economic policy issues. She talked about how he would impose, I like the framing of a tariffs as a sales tax, which is what actually most economists would say they are.

21:08And she framed his policies, economic policies as inflationary. But it was interesting this morning, I was on Morning Joe and Congresswoman Alyssa Slotkin from Michigan, who is running for the Senate seat up there, was on Morning Joe too. And she said that voters tell her that democracy is not the number one issue. The number one issue is still inflation in the economy. And I think if she does not win next Tuesday, it will also be a criticism of the fact that somehow her campaign did not manage to make the case to American voters that they will do something clear and concrete on the issue of prices.

21:47And she raised that in the ellipse last night. She revived the idea of putting a cap on price gouging and investing price gouging. Again, not disrupting the free market as much as making sure there isn't collusion in the free market. Exactly. Which is something she hadn't talked about for a while. I was interested to hear her say that last night because it's clearly a nod to the issue of grocery prices. I'm for her, but I've got to be objective on our podcast and say that I feel that she is not conversant in these issues. Like if I said, okay, what's the difference between secular and transitory or systemic inflation?

22:20It's not going to probably be defining those. If I said to her, okay, what is the economic impact of every 50 basis point move from the Federal Reserve in terms of how that follows down into GDP? Not super conversant on that. These tariffs are a human unmitigated disaster for the United States. I think framing them as a sales tax was a smart way to frame them, actually. I liked it. I liked it a lot last night. That was really good. But we probably needed three weeks, a month of that. I agree with you. It's a little late. Okay. But let me ask you this. The Terminator, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a full-throated endorsement of Vice President Harris.

22:58He's related to Bobby Kennedy Jr., obviously, distantly. What do you think of that? Any impact? American men love Arnold Schwarzenegger. I know, but it's been pretty clear all along that he hates Donald Trump. It doesn't really surprise me that he would endorse Kamala Harris because have you seen all the videos he's put out about Donald Trump over the course of the last five years, six years? Okay. I'm just asking the question because, you know, I have my 36-year-old who helps me and takes me out of the city from time to time and other things. Loves Arnold Schwarzenegger, texted me that that had an impact on him.