Kate Bedingfield and Marc Caputo: Debate Day 50:00

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Hey, y'all. I'm in Atlanta. I'm doing an MSNBC mega marathon around the debate. And so we got a double header for you on this podcast. Up first, Kate Bedingfield, longtime advisor to Joe Biden. And then after that, my colleague Mark Caputo with a view from Trump World, a view from Magaville. In both of these interviews, I wanted to focus a little bit on the debate for those of you that are listening today, Thursday. And then after that, I wanted to focus a little bit on the debate for those of you that are listening today, Thursday.

And we wanted to focus also a little bit big picture on how both campaigns are seeing the race. And so I think you'll enjoy it, even if you've already seen the debate tonight. Fingers crossed. We're all just a little bit anxious, but hopefully it's going to be a good night.

Oh, and one more thing. If you want to do a watch along with the debate tonight, join the Bulwark Plus JVL and your favorites will be there on Zoom. I'm going to try to pop in during commercial breaks, and then we will have a live reaction on YouTube. To join the Bulwark Plus, go to plus.thebulwark.com to subscribe. We'd love to have you. We'll be seeing you tonight. Up next, Kate Bedingfield.

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is debate day. Everybody's excited. Nobody's at all anxious or nervous. You know, nobody is at all panicked. Nobody's mentorating their ultra-rare high kid. We're all vibes, Tim. We're all vibes.

Yeah, I used to. Well, hold on. Let me I'll tell you what I used to do after I introduced my guest, Kate Bedingfield. I want to have somebody that knows Joe Biden, knows debate prep. She was White House communications director for Joe Biden until she left for the finer pastures of CNN. She was also deputy campaign manager in 2020. Kate, what's going on, girl? Hi.

Thanks for having me. We love a big day. I used to vomit on debate day. Did you ever dry heave or puke before a candidate debate? I cannot say that I actively puked, although I think there were some instances where it came very close. Yes. The

The whole debate day situation, you're like, you know, you've been through the prep. You're like anxious for the candidate. Is he going to land this great thing? God, we have this great thing teed up. Is he going to crush the thing? Then there's the spin room after and all of that insanity. And if you're a comm staffer out, you know, making your way through the spin room, it's, you know, its own level of misery. So, yeah, debate days are, you know, they're intense. They're intense.

So, yeah. So, my tradition seems like it was maybe a little different for you. My tradition was about two hours out when I was finished with the last prep session. I would go. Close your ears, mom. I'd chain smoke two Parliament Light cigarettes. And then I would try to pull the trigger and I'd like dry heave in the bathroom. And then I would drink a Coca-Cola and put some mints in my mouth. And then I'd be kind of ready to go from there.

You know, I wish we'd had this conversation earlier when I was still doing debate prep because that seems like a hell of a routine. And I think I might have benefited from it. So we have to start, obviously, with the most serious topic related to your former boss. And that question is, what drug regimen is he on? Is it the Khalifa Kush, would you say? The Magic Mushroom Bon Bon? The 2-CMC pills? The...

I mean, if I told you, I'd be giving up the game. So, I mean, I can't do that. It's a special cocktail, you know, that is calibrated for him. You know, and I think America is going to see it on display tonight. It's going to be great. The one thing, obviously, Joe Biden is a teetotaler, and we're joking. Yes, very much so. It is interesting, though. The debate is at 9 p.m. Eastern.

It ends at 10.30. That's past Papa's bedtime. That's a little late. Is there... Does he do a non-narcotics? Is he a coffee drinker? Okay, here's the thing. Here's the thing. He loves late nights. Oh, really? We used to come home from domestic trips too, but foreign trips especially. And this was even back in...

VP days when it's sort of like easier for him to like move about the cabin in the plane, you know, you would be flying home, you're tired, you're asleep. And like, here comes Vice President Biden to say, you know what, we didn't get to that I really want to focus on on the next trip. And what did you think about this thing that I said? Do you think that that was that was not effective? Or would you say that wasn't effective? And can we go in depth on how effective you think that was?

And it's like, you know, you're at the end of a long day, you're tired, and he's just raring to go. So he actually is a night person. So I'm not as worried about the late start time for him. He'll get some good rest today.

And I think he'll be ready to go. That explains the Morning Joe viewership that has been reported on. It's like, he's out late, he's brainstorming in the morning. It's like me, me and the president, I guess, are maybe more on the same schedule. Kind of want to lay around the bed a little bit.

in the morning, you know, flip through the channels. You know, he gets into the gym. It's like eight o'clock hour. It's like he's in the gym. He's watching Morning Joe. So, you know, but he does some, he does good thinking at night. So we'll see. There are elements of the debate that make me anxious. That is actually not one of them because it actually like aligns with his natural rhythm.

Before we get to this debate, let's just kind of do a little bit of memory lane and just talk about his process. We've all worked for a bunch of different candidates. We both have. And some of them want some zingers. You practice some zingers. Some of my candidates wanted to spend hours discussing policy matters that would never actually come up during the debate. We won't name them. John Huntsman. Some other candidates want to do live. So how did you guys do it?

in the primary. And I guess you were there also in the general last time. Yeah, I was, I was. So he has a very methodical process. He likes to spend a lot of time going through all of the issues that he thinks are going to come up. And so there's, before you get to the mock debates, which he does and kind of understands the value of having to, you know, stand behind the podium and go through the whole, the whole format and do it with no stops. And, you know, he gets the value of that. He doesn't like that as much as he likes the,

sitting down with the team, going through Q&A, you know, workshopping answers. He views it as certainly like brushing up on policy, yes. But for him, it's less about like memorizing facts and figures that, you know, may or may not come up or be relevant during the debate and more just about

kind of talking through with his team, talking out loud, thinking out loud. Like he's a really, he thinks as the country, I think has learned a little bit, like he thinks out loud, you know, he's, as he's working through things, he likes to talk and get feedback. So,

So I would say probably like 75 to 80% of the debate prep process with him is sitting around a table, going through answers, you know, people taking his feedback, recrafting the answer. You come back for another session, he tries it out. He says like, no, actually, I don't think that's right or that's not the way I want it. And then the last kind of, you know, 25% is doing some of those mock run throughs, which is

About standing behind the podium and going through the answers, yes, but also practicing for the camera and what's your body language going to be like and mimicking what that's going to look like and recognizing that ultimately the debate is for a TV audience and making sure that he's ready to present to a TV audience. What about the bad orange man side of things? You didn't have as many practice runs. In the primary with Jeb, there must have been...

If there were two debates, there were 3,070. I don't remember how many there actually were, but like there were a lot of, a lot of, and it took us a while to like just help,

Jeb like process that he's dealing with a different animal here. Right. And like, he is just going to spout a fire hose of nonsense. And like, it is not like debating Lawton child. You can't like, we can't rebut every point that he has, right. You gotta like, you gotta pick one and lean in on it. You got a counterpunch. How'd you guys think about dealing with Trump in 2020? Well, I mean, I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that a big piece of the prep for Trump in 2020 was going through the,

the personal attacks, the family stuff, the things that, you know, essentially no other candidate or, you know, person of any level of decency would say or raise on a debate stage, but knowing full well that Donald Trump would. So it creates an interesting environment. And I give Joe Biden a lot of credit for this in the process in 2020. He,

was always very open to and willing to let people come at him with the horrible things that Donald Trump might say, you know, and it, you know, it can create a weird dynamic, right? Here's the president of the United States.

dates, somebody you work for. Oh, man, definitely. I have I definitely have had candidates get mad at me for bringing up personal things. Yeah. Yes, I had the distinct honor in the primary debate process in 2019 when I was playing a candidate of having Joe Biden accused me of enjoying it too much. So, you know, it can create a weird dynamic. But, you know, he recognized that he needed to absorb what that was going to feel like and not have, you know, the first time Donald Trump said something horrific about his son.

you know, be on the debate stage in front of millions, tens of millions of people. So that was a big piece of the process, a depressingly big piece of the process, considering, you know, you're preparing for debate for, you know, president of the United States and that's what you have to focus on. But that was a big piece of it. And then the other kind of bizarre piece of it, which you...

know well too, I'm sure, is you also have to account for the 16 different versions of Donald Trump's position on an issue and trying to anticipate which lie he's going to tell, which way he's going to present himself. I mean, there's very little consistency in the way he talks about himself. So preparing for a debate against somebody who

you know, baseline, you don't even, you're not even really certain like which, you know, version of their take on an issue is going to show up on the stage. It's a very, it's a weird process. So, you know, we tried to apply some method to the madness and, and, you know, kind of get things, um,

organized for Biden in his head so that he had a clear sense of home base on the big issues. But it was a unique process, and I can't even imagine what it's like for them this go-round. So this challenge of dealing with Trump, right, is he takes every side of everything and the odd angles. There's one side of this that it seems like the campaign has really

settled in on as far as a message standpoint that I'm interested in your take on, which is this idea that something broke in Donald Trump at the end of 2020, that he's gone even crazier, you know, and that he's totally lost it. And at one point he might've cared about other people, but now he cares about himself. So, you know, something to that effect. I assume you'll hear something like that tonight. You've been hearing it more and more from, from the president and from his campaign. Um,

Like that is a strategic choice to do that. Right. I mean, it might not be true. Like just as a fact, I mean, I'm like of the view that like Trump's been kind of crazy and racist his whole life, but it's interesting. So I'm curious what you think about that choice and what the rationale is.

To me, it seems like it's twofold. I mean, one, just as a message choice for the campaign, I think it's a way of trying to jolt people out of their kind of light nostalgia for the Trump years. Like, if you're somebody who says like, well, you know, there were things I didn't like about Trump, but you know, the economy was okay. And I don't know, was he really that dangerous?

I think their campaign brings some urgency by saying, like, look, this isn't even the guy that you saw in, you know, 2018, 2019. He's so, you know, we've since seen January 6th. We've seen him go crazy trying to defend himself from, you know, criminal wrongdoing. I mean, he's like, he's worse than you remember. I mean, I think that's from a message perspective. One of the things they're trying to do is kind of

knock the edges off of people's nostalgia about him. From a debate strategy standpoint, you could imagine how that's a tactic to try to irritate Trump, try to get under Trump's skin, try to get him fired up, try to get him defending himself. I mean, really like anything that Joe Biden can do

to get Donald Trump going. It almost doesn't matter what direction you get him going in. You just got to get him going. And so, you know, you can imagine that calling him unhinged, saying he's completely lost it, especially as Trump has spent the last,

you know, three years, four years, trying to argue that Joe Biden's lost a step. You know, you can see the way that could get under Trump's skin. But I guess, I guess we'll all find out. Yeah. So to that point, and I think that many people will be listening to this before the debate, but some after. So both tonight at the debate and the biggest picture for the campaign, like there's so many places to attack Donald Trump.

It's like you see these advice things from pundits. It's like, he should get him on the suckers and losers comment. Like, he should get him on Officer Sicknick. He should get him on abortion. He should get him on Medicare. Like, okay, so there's plenty of material there. If you were sitting in the debate prep room, or if you're thinking about the campaign towards the end, like, what are you honing in on?

Well, I think you've got to funnel all of these attacks through two or three of the lenses that have shown themselves to be his biggest vulnerabilities. Abortion is one. It just is. I mean, we've seen it turn voters out to the polls. We've actually seen people in elections in this country go out and vote.

because they feel motivated by the fact that Roe fell. So, you know, I think that has got to be a huge piece of his line of attack, because it's also an issue where you can draw a through line between Donald Trump being president of the United States and

And us being in the state we're in now with, you know, no longer women, no longer having a right to reproductive freedom. I mean, it's one of the easiest cases to make. And obviously, Trump has spent a lot of time trying to kind of weasel his way out of his position because he knows he's politically vulnerable on it. But you got a hammer. I think that the other lens that the campaign needs to apply to every line of attack against Trump is that.

Is this an attack that goes at how Donald Trump makes life worse for people across this country? Like, there's a lot you can attack Trump for that's about, you know, what an awful person he is, what how he's, you know, how he's like, shouldn't be representing the United States of America, that he represents a break from everything that we love and care about in this country.

But I think that ultimately for a message to land with voters, it has to feel like it has resonance in your day-to-day life. And so, you know, there are some attacks that may feel like great to the chattering class and may feel like an absolute slam dunk that just don't

you know, they don't connect in the same way. So it's like, you got to make the chaos argument, but then you got to take it down to the next level of, you know, this is how this is going to make your life worse. It's how it's going to make life more expensive for you. You know, it's how it's going to take away your right to vote and feel like your vote matters and it will be counted safely. I just think the campaign cannot lose and Biden can't lose that last step, right? There's like the satisfaction of punching Trump in the face because he's

he represents a threat to everything that we love and care about. But then you gotta like, you know, you can't just stop there. It's gotta, you gotta connect it to, to people's lives. And that means that sometimes the attack that might feel the most

satisfying ultimately winds up not landing in the right way. So you don't think the zinger I sent Ben the Bolt about the Raffensperger call in Georgia is what that's not what we're talking about? You know what, I'm not saying that that's not, that isn't in and of itself should not be disqualifying for Donald Trump to be president of the United States. But I think, you know, we also have to accept that not everybody in the country is thinking about these things in the same way that we are.

There's this conundrum that I've been working over in my brain and talking to people about on the podcast when you look at the data. It's the fact that the president is running behind Democratic senators in all of these swing states. Casey, Baldwin, Gallego.

And it's like, okay, why? Like on the one hand, you could look at that as a very big negative, right? It's like, oh, something must be really wrong if these people are switching overs. On the other hand, it might be a positive, right? Where it's like, man, if Joe Biden shows them tonight that he cares about, you know, the things they care about, that he's not, you know, dementia riddled, then maybe you can win some of those people back. Like, what's your sense for what the disconnect is? And what do you think they need to do to try to consolidate that demo?

I think they have such a difficult and just frustrating challenge here because I think the message for the most part is right. And I think if you look at a lot of the testing, you see that, you know, he's talking about corporations having too much power. He's, you know, he's talking about prices are too high at the grocery store and I'm working, doing everything I can to bring them down. He's talking about choice. And, you know, if you look at message testing, you see that that's what people, you know, want to hear from Democrats, right?

So, is there a disconnect between message and messenger? And then if so, how do you solve for if people are hearing what they want to hear, but they have concerns about or qualms about or just can't get there for whatever reason on the messenger? You know, I think they, over the next four months after this debate, I think they have to really think about how

they put Biden out in front of audiences who can connect with him. I think there has to be less standing behind the podium and there has to be more, you know, more Howard Stern. And I think that the team knows that, by the way. This is not me like, you know, it's so great, right? It's so great to be in the pundit role.

You're welcome. Isn't it lovely? I cringed when I sent a thought to somebody on the campaign the other day, and I was like, I'm that guy now. I'm that guy that I hate it. Right. Anyway. Exactly. I'm grappling with becoming the person I hated, but damn, the lack of responsibility is terrific. It is nice. And I do think the campaign knows that, but I think that it matters because I think –

I think there's so much potential for Biden as a person to assuage these concerns that people are holding onto about him. And I think it's putting him in, in venues like Stern and, you know, doing more digital where he can connect directly with people and,

and not relying so much on the podium remarks that can be really powerful, but that just because of the state of our media landscape just don't reach people the way they used to. But I also think to this point about Senate candidates running ahead, I mean, I also think at the end of the day,

Split ticket voting is a rarer occurrence than it even used to be. And I just have a hard time believing that when push comes to shove, they're going to be a significant number of Democrats who are going to vote for the Senate candidate, but not for Biden. I mean, it's a challenge campaign has to focus on. What about the age part of it? I mean, can people have real talk with them? I mean, it could just be that, right? It could just be that he's going to show up tonight and demonstrate that he has the vigor for this.

I mean, obviously, it's not like he doesn't know that he's old, but what do you think about that? Yeah, and I think he will. Look, he is very much a game day player, okay? He's somebody who knows when the big moment is coming. I mean, I think the whole country saw it around the State of the Union, but he knows when a big moment is in front of him, and he focuses and prepares, and he knows that his task here, at least in part, is to show...

energy and vigor. And so, you know, I don't, I don't have any concerns. Can we stop with the whisper talk? Can we tell them the whisper? I mean, that's been, you know, that's been a trademark for 50 years. I know, I know. I loved it. It was good when it was good. Sometimes it's hard to move away from something that was, you know, part of your brand. One of these days, I'm going to have to take off the pearls, you know, like Tim, it's looking cringe. It's starting to look cringe. Where's the coterie of advisors around you who can be honest with you,

Tim about the pearls. Where are those people? That's my tip. The whisper talk. I'm lobbing a softball at you here. On the Bulwark Reddit page, which I love, people should join the Bulwark Reddit page if they haven't. It feels like it might be more lefty listeners that go to the Reddit page, but that's okay. I like hearing from the lefty listeners. We do a decent amount of complaining around here about...

the urgency from Biden world. And I think maybe it's just like, as the never Trumpers, as like the near enemy of Trump, we might feel just a different level of panic and sheer hatred and panic that's on a different level. And one thing we say is like, everybody should be out there. Like, where is everybody? Like we had a good J.B. Pritzker thing the other day, and there are little glimmers of people getting out there. It's like, where's the cabinet? Where's Kamala prosecuting it?

And where are all the Republican endorsers? And somebody wrote on the board page, it goes, hear me out. Is it possible that the Biden campaign knows what it's doing? Could the lack of forceful surrogates be that they know that trotting them out this early isn't as effective? So what do you think? Could we see more urgency? Do they know what they're doing? Is it somewhere in between?

So, okay, yes, they know what they're doing. I'm gonna I'm just gonna like put myself out there and say, I'm shocked that that was your response. I know. I really was really a hard one. I know you're stunned. That's my answer. But I worked very closely with a lot of these people was in the trenches with them through a very hard primary campaign through a very hard general election campaign. Like, they know what they're doing.

So I have faith. I have faith in them. I also think it is true that people are not as tuned in to this election right now and that they will be as we get closer and closer. I think I think this debate will mark a turning point.

I think we've seen a lot of data that suggests a lot of people are going to watch tonight. But even those who don't watch are going to hear about it. They're going to see clips. It's going to feel, I think, in a lot of ways like the kind of unofficial starting gun for the final sprint here. So, yes, I imagine we're going to see more and more of these surrogates. And I would argue you've seen VP Harris out there like really clearly.

you know, pushing the case on abortion. She's been a terrific messenger for the administration and the Biden campaign on abortion. And I have no doubt that you will see more and more of these folks out as we get closer into the fall when people are

paying attention. I hope so. I get it. It might just be me. It could be me. I would still like to see a little bit more urgency. One more VP question, though. I asked Simone about this, Simone Sanders-Townsend earlier this week. I hear you on the abortion thing. She's been good on it. Abortion is important. I really like, by the way, as somebody that has mixed views, I think in the big middle of this country where a lot of people are, that there should be some restrictions on abortion, but not

the crazy shit that they're doing in some of these red states. I liked that the Biden campaign's ads on this have focused a lot on women who wanted to have a child but had a health issue that they were denied. Okay, so I like all that.

VP Arisot also was a prosecutor, and she became a star in those Senate hearings when she was prosecuting witnesses in Kavanaugh, etc. Shouldn't we have a little bit more of that, like prosecutor, you know, cop Kamala out there, you know, doing the traditional VP attack dog thing? So one, I guess I would like dispute the premise a little bit that she's not like carrying a pretty...

heavy message against Trump. I think she is. But I also think there's, I'm going to knock you over with a feather here, but people have different perceptions of women than men on the campaign trail. And, you know, you have to be- Simone gave that answer too. I know. It just misses my male privilege. I'm just like, maybe that's true, but I want to see her with Trump's bloody shirt in her mouth. I want to see her kill him. I mean, you know, so do I.

But that's like a lot of the country doesn't receive women that way. Simone's totally right about that. And so it doesn't mean that VP Harris can't carry an effective negative message. I would argue she's been doing it. And I imagine as we get closer to November, you'll see her do it more. But

But these are the things that you have to be aware of when you're, you know, when you're thinking about the image of a woman in public office and a female candidate. It's just a slightly different ballgame than it is for men. Someday, Tim, I hope it won't be. And someday, you know, you will have women candidates accepted when they're out there, like, shredding their opponent with a bloody shirt in their mouth. But

Right now, it's not quite that simple. Yeah, when my daughter's running for mayor of New Orleans, I'm going to be feeding her punchlines, you know? I hope she crushes her male opponent, you know? All right, last question, last question. Give us something cute. Give us a cute buying story. Does he have a favorite ice cream flavor? You know, if we wanted to send him some Jennys, like is there, do you have a fun little behind the scenes laugh moment? Like, give me something. Give me a little. Oh, man. Give me a little something to make something cuddly.

A handhold. Like I always, I'm going to tell a Jeb story to give you a minute to think about it. I just thought the cutest thing I ever saw with Jeb was we were leaving a debate and we were in one of those Suburbans or whatever. And I'm in the last row and he's in the second row with Columba. And they're like holding hands like in the second row from the debate to the FBO. And I was like, oh my God, they've been together 50 years. That's so cute. So anyway, cute story. So sweet.

Oh, I mean, my God, if you want to talk about like him and Jill, I mean, he's constantly calling her like he wants to know her opinion on everything. It's like they don't go like hours without talking to each other, which is I think is amazing. But he's also like, okay, like, for example, during the primaries, we were on a plane, we were landing in Iowa, and it was super turbulent. And I don't love flying generally. And I definitely don't love flying on a small plane. And I definitely don't love flying on a small plane in turbulence. And

And so it's turbulent. We're landing, and my many male colleagues, who I love dearly, were kind of making fun of me for being a wimp, and I'm gripping the arm of my chair. And Biden just reaches over and puts his hand on top of mine, and he's like, it's going to be okay. We're going to be fine. It's all right. There's an element of pop, grandpop. He brings a genuine...

and kindness to all of his interactions. So, you know, he just, what you see is what you get. Like, there's no artifice with Joe Biden. He is a genuinely kind person. And he loves chocolate chip ice cream. That's his favorite. And he will, he will like direct the motorcade off route to get to chocolate chip ice cream. I can't tell you how many times that happened. Chocolate chip is a good flavor. I wish, I wish he'd put his hand on my hand right now because we're in turbulent times. That was a metaphor. That was a metaphor for our life. It's good.

Thank you, Kate. I mean, we'll see. I will be seeing you in the spin room. We're both in Atlanta together. So I'll see you in the spin room in 3D in a little bit. We can do a squeeze. Thank you so much for coming on the Borg podcast. Anytime. Come back again soon. Would love to. Thank you. All right. Up next, we got Mark Caputo with a view from Magaville. Buckle up.

And we're back with my colleague, Mark Caputo. Mark has been suffering through MagaWorld for us. He lives in MagaWorld. He talks to MagaWorld, Magaville, I guess what the newsletter is called. You should get the newsletter if you want to know what's happening in Magaville. What's going on, bro? Not that much. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm in Atlanta. I was already at the debate site this morning. I kind of want to throw up.

You know, I used to throw up on debate nights before it was my candidates. I didn't do that in 2020, but I'm back to wanting to throw up a little bit. I want to talk first, you know, some of these folks will be listening to this when the debate is done. So I want to talk a little bit big picture also about what Trump world is thinking. But before we get to that, Mike Kevin has gone on the saddest run of any post-defenestration politician I think I've ever seen. And let's listen to him together on the Jesse Waters show, because that's what he's doing with his time now.

There were different moments every time I met with him, you got a different Joe Biden. And there's times that he was really engaging. I remember talking to him when it's Air Force One coming back from a G7 meeting and he could tell me all the different meetings he had. He was fully engaged the next day I met with him and it was a totally different Joe Biden talking off cards. So let's not lower expectations. He's going to be prepared the best he's ever going to be prepared.

Let's not lower expectations, says the guy who was on a front page Wall Street Journal story about how Joe Biden is crippled with dementia. Why is he doing this? Couldn't he just go be a respectable post speaker like John Boehner and lobby for the marijuana industry or something? Like, why is he doing this groveling nonsense? What's happening here?

Well, Kevin McCarthy always had the quality of being sort of the test tube product of a mad scientist who wanted to create a dishonest, slimy, two-faced, double-talking politician.

So the idea that he is continuing to be true to form doesn't really shock me that much. I think this stuff is pathetic. The fact that the Wall Street Journal published his sourcing about Joe Biden's mental acuity was, I think, unbelievable.

A really poor editorial choice? Yeah. As a reporter, what surprised me is that generally speaking, if you write a story that's attacking a Democrat, you usually want an admission against interest and have your first quote be Democrats. Same thing. Or any quote be a Democrat. Well, there you go. One Democrat. Or anecdotes. Or if you have a story attacking a Republican, again, you want that admission against interest. You want a Republican saying something bad.

critical about a Republican. Otherwise, it's just people are going to say, ah, of course, a Republican is going to attack a Democrat. Of course, a Democrat is going to attack a Republican. McCarthy's effort out there, you know, he's primarying Matt Gaetz. He's trying to primary Nancy Mace. It's just like, it's just failure. It's just like rake after rake he's stepping on.

He can't handle the fact that Gates totally outmaneuvered him and booted him out of the house. And all he has left with Gates is he's run this poor sad sack of a guy. I can't even remember his name running against Gates. It's going to look like cannon fodder when it's over. And then he's got his pals on the Ethics Commission who are continuing with the sort of Kafkaesque investigation where they continually say, we're investigating Matt Gates for sex crimes. It's like, okay, well, let's see the evidence after two years.

Again, plenty to criticize Matt Gaetz on, but I do kind of agree with this. It's like, okay, we've been doing the whisper campaign on this for a while now. Whisper campaign? Hell, it's been through a bullhorn. Yeah, good point. There's plenty of public things that Matt Gaetz has done worth criticizing. So maybe let's focus on those for starters and wait for the evidence.

The takedown of his opponent, whose name I also forget, by Kevin Williamson over the dispatch was one of the most delicious pieces of writing that I've read in quite some time. So I'm going to put it in the show notes for people. Okay, enough of my Kevin. So it's the debate. It seems a little half-hearted, the whole drugs thing this time. I mean, they tried this against Clinton. They tried it against Biden last time.

But they kind of feel like they had to do something because they were worried that Dementia Joe had set the bar too low. What's your take on the whole, you know? I think it's that. And the other thing is, it's just this is just what they do. Right. Yeah. One of the things that characterizes the Trump world style of attacks is they will use any possible attack, even a contradictory one, even from one that our opponents of theirs, as long as it hits another opponent.

So that's in keeping with that. If you're looking for consistency and a certain amount of logic behind it, you're not really going to find it. One minute, one second, one sentence in a paragraph, Joe Biden is a dementia patient. The other one, he is the evil Dr. Moriarty, right?

And by the way, if this serum exists that makes Joe Biden suddenly spry and everything, like, A, why is Joe Biden not taking it every day? And B, where can I get it? Yeah. It is funny. My buddy Peter Hamby was making this point. It's like, it's not like this is Barry Bonds, like, juicing and they're messing with the integrity of the home run records. Like, if there is some serum that makes our president's acuity a little sharper, wouldn't we want that? Like, what is that? Well, I think there is that liquid microchip that's been invented by Microsoft. I'm just kidding.

Yeah, the whole thing. Oh, no, no. Welcome to Muggaville, my friend. Yeah, watch out. You've been in Muggaville too long. Your story on the Trump debate prep was pretty delicious. I enjoyed it. My favorite part of it was...

Somebody, one of your sources said that he was working on policy refreshers. What a euphemism that is, policy refresher. It's a two-part euphemism. One, it implies that he cares about policy, that he needs to be refreshed about that. But two, it implies he's not really doing debate prep, right? Like, isn't that there's something there, like he doesn't want to admit the weakness? They literally will not call it debate prep. Is it an alpha thing? Is that why they're saying that? Like, what's the point of not calling it that? His position, and by the way, this was Trump's position in 2020.

is that he's already prepared. He doesn't need preparation. All he needs is a refresher to remind him of the things that he's done and his successes and the like. But again, it wasn't true in 2020. Famously, he almost killed Chris Christie during the policy refresher with COVID. He did. And in that one, Chris Christie, while he didn't play the part of Biden and in these debate preps,

quote-unquote debate preps or policy refreshes. What makes it different with Donald Trump, both then and now, is he doesn't have someone who is playing the part of Joe Biden. But in 2020, Chris Christie was trying to push Trump

Trump behind the scenes. He would argue with him. He would yell at him and he would try to get him used to being under pressure. That didn't work because Trump just shit the bed. That's actually a direct quote from one of his top policy advisors or debate advisors back then. Now it's a different situation. And according to Trump's campaign,

he's more relaxed and sort of more able to do it and has had four years to think about how he made mistakes in 2020 and how he actually gets a second chance to have a first debate against Joe Biden again. No reason not to be relaxed. He's been golfing a lot lately. Um, seen a lot of good pictures on his social media.

The learning from 2020 is interesting because you sent a tweet earlier that was not about Donald Trump at all, but I thought paralleled this situation. You were referencing AOC's comments after the Jamal Bowman loss, which seemed to indicate that the squad is not

really learned a lot from the joel bowman loss which is kind of crazy because they're like all these squad candidates that won primaries handily and then one lost and so you think you might like learn a lesson like what happened that was different in this one it wasn't like apac liked the other candidates anywho that's an aside my question for you is do you think donald trump has learned from his losses at all in this debate and do you think we'll see something different

I think in some ways he has, from what I gather and from what he's told others and what they told me he said, is this is not like last time. This isn't 2020. So the Donald Trump who showed up at that first 2020 debate and was just angry, had absolutely no sense of humor left in him or wit or ability to kind of manage Joe Biden, who he thought he was going to push over. From what I have been told, he has been, to the degree Trump is, chastened by that.

But to your broader point, yeah, Trump is the one guy who sort of breaks the rule. If you learn more from your losses and from your wins, he's just like, I didn't lose. I didn't lose. I didn't lose. And well, here we are. And right now, nominally, marginally, he's sort of sort of leading Joe Biden in the polls again within the march of error. But here we are.

Yeah, and we're going to learn a lot more about that than I think in the next couple of weeks. I'm interested in when it comes to that side of this debate thing. Like if the lesson for 2020 was that crazy Trump hurt Trump. Stuart Stevens and I talked about this on yesterday's podcast. Do we know whether it was the Trump campaign or the Biden campaign that wanted the muted mics? Does Trump world have a view on the muted mics? Because it seems like that helps Trump. Trump's campaign says it does help him. But...

Yeah.

Trump's people are saying, one of them told me, look, I'd never tell Trump this to his face, but it's good that his mic is muted because it sets up a guardrail and keeps him from sort of crashing off the road or driving off the road.

Yeah, I bet Susie Wiles wishes she had the mute button sometimes, you know, down there having to listen to him talk. Okay, I want to back up a little bit and talk more broadly about this, about the campaign and like the view from MAGA World. There's a new ad that the Trump campaign put out this morning. I want to listen to that together and just see if what that tells us about where they're going message-wise.

When you think about the Joe Biden you saw in the debate, ask yourself a question. Do you think the guy who was defeated by the stairs, got taken down by his bike, lost a fight with his jacket, and regularly gets lost, makes it four more years in the White House? And you know who's waiting behind him, right? Vote Joe Biden today, and Kamala Harris tomorrow. I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message.

So two interesting parts to this. I'll get to the Kamala part second. I don't know if this leaked by accident, if they put it out. But if you listen to the language, it's an ad to air after the debate. So it's the Joe Biden you saw at the debate. Like they're basically calling their shot that he's going to seem whatever, not up for it. Feeble dementia. What do you think is going on there? Is that just showing that they're going to no matter what happens to Joe Biden tonight, they're just going to keep running with the Joe Biden old thing? Yeah, because they believe that there are two things that have happened.

Trump to be in this kind of nominal leadership leader position that he's in one, the economy and to Joe Biden's frailty. So this is what they're going to keep hitting and keep hitting and keep hitting. I think what's notable here is the use of humor or the attempted use of humor depending on your sense of humor.

Generally, a campaign that starts making fun of an opponent is following one of the rules for radicals of Saul Alinsky about how there is no defense against ridicule. It's your most potent weapon. Very often, campaigns that are in front and feel like they're frontrunners do this sort of stuff. So it gives you an idea of where they're coming from. What surprised me about

The Trump campaign and specifically Tony Fabrizio, the lead pollster and top advisor to Trump or one of them is he is generally a pretty pessimistic guy and he has been very optimistic for many months.

Yeah, and it seems to show a level of optimism, I guess, about the debate. I mean, you can always pull the ad down, right? You can always pull the ad down if Joe Biden dominates Donald Trump tonight. No, I don't think they would. If Donald Trump sharts himself on stage or something. I don't know. Sorry, you got me. But no, I don't think they would. Ridicule. You said ridicule is important. So, you know, I can also employ it. It's a two-way street. But remember, there's that sort of Thanos reality stone issue with Donald Trump where –

He just comes up with a message and sticks to it. They are going to stick with this idea that Biden is mentally diminished no matter what. And so, yeah, I think even if there was a repeat of the 2020 debate,

Trump falls apart and goes nuts and Biden holds his own and, you know, looks okay. I think you're still going to, you're still going to see the Trump campaign hit that. And it's notable that Kamala Harris is, they're finally bringing her out as the kind of boogie woman or boogeyman or whatever you call her yet, or the dynamic. Yeah. What do you think the dynamic is with that? Because so Nikki Haley, you know, before, you know, her brief purge,

period as a as an attempted Trump slayer, you know, her six weeks in the light prior to that, and now post that, like, that was her big argument, right, was that she's not even running against Biden, she's running against Kamala. I found that a whiff gross for a variety of reasons. But that's different than, you know, I think that was a different situation, especially because I mean, she's like losing by 50 points in the primary. Anyway, the Trump thing now,

It feels a little bit like a weird time to bring it out. I don't know. On the one hand, I agree with you that a ridicule ad gives the air of a team that thinks that they're leading. A bank shot, oh, you might get Kamala, I think maybe betrays a little bit of weakness, though. I don't know. What say you? Why now do you think on this Kamala might be president line, which we haven't really heard?

Well, for my part, and again, this is someone who kind of covers the campaign and talks to them day in and day out. We're just looking for your perspective on what they're thinking. What surprises me is that it's this late. Yeah, right. I'm surprised they haven't been hitting this the entire time because generally polling has shown generally that her favorability ratings are lower than Biden's and Biden's by like maybe a point or two, and this depends on polls and they fluctuate, have generally been worse or about as bad as Trump's. So...

In the view of the Trump world and of Republicans generally, Kamala is an easier opponent. I'm not sure that's necessarily going to wind up being true, but that's just generally been their point of view. So as I said, I just think it's surprising it's this late, not that it's this early.

I guess I agree. I do wonder if there's maybe some reticence around, you know, kind of black voters. I do think that Trump thinks that the Trump world thinks that they could potentially be gaining with black men. Right. Right. And really not black women. Right.

It's men, right? Hispanic men, black men, white men. Yeah. It's kind of like, okay, well, you know, we don't want to jeopardize that. But maybe at this point you're at a judgment of like, I don't know, the types of black men that might be gettable for Trump are probably not...

going to be the types to be offended by like swipes at kamala i mean you know we're speaking very broadly here but but maybe that was part of the reticence because because you continue to see this offensive from them trump called into a barber shop yesterday with byron donalds it's a very weird campaign event it's one of these campaign events because you don't if you think about this it's the second one they did like that yeah like cognac it's like it's like byron donalds is in a barber shop with four other black guys and trump's on a speakerphone

and like trump's talking about tax cuts it's kind of on regulation cuts it's like i don't know if that's the prime issue and then he's talking about like how cool is his mugshot is well who the hell knows i don't know it seems like this is the kind of thing that if this was the jeb campaign and we were doing this and it was like if we had our one black surrogate in a barber shop and jeb was calling in on speakerphone i feel like we would have been just ridiculed by everybody but like people are are inured to this a little bit with trump that they definitely are

however, ham handed or like really focused on this. No. Well, they are. And remember, this is the second event like this. They did one in Philly. It was Byron Donalds and Wesley Hunt, the Texas congressman. And at that one, that's where Byron Donald decided apropos of almost nothing like, you know what? Families, black families more intact during Jim Crow. Why did you say that? And that created its own stir.

But compared to that event, this was tame, right? This did not produce that sort of level. We didn't praise the Jim Crow South. Congratulations. You've cleared the bar, right? And also, I really wonder if Donald Trump didn't want to go to this event because he doesn't smoke, he hates cigar smoke and the stink of it, and he doesn't drink. What has he been doing?

Besides the policy refreshers, just golfing. He doesn't have a very- Golfing and fundraising. They have been doing boatloads of fundraising. That's true. They were in New Orleans. They blew the doors off of it in May. Blew the doors off of fundraising. Yeah, he was in New Orleans at this rich guy's house. A third Romney cousin was there, which I was very disappointed in. I was tisking her and Boise Bollinger. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. It was a little too close to my home for comfort. Garden district action, I would assume. Yeah, it was all the way up by Ottoman Park, actually. I want to do a little veepstakes. So your last article, I think, rightly...

had had caveats that are like, who the hell knows what Donald Trump is going to do? He's going to do what he wants to do. But the conventional wisdom is congealed around Burgum, Rubio and Vance. Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. And so I'm wondering if what you think about where we sit right now. You know, once in a while when you write a story, you discover things from your own presentation of the facts.

And while the insiders generally favor the idea of JD Vance, the more I type the pros and cons from the perspective of Trump in picking these guys, it was difficult for me to find enough cons to, to have Burgum match Vance and Rubio. Meaning I think Burgum has fewer cons. Burgum has fewer cons for Trump. And, and while the insiders think it's Vance, uh,

I'm starting to think it might be Burgum out of those three. But then again, who knows? He could pick someone off a park bench, right? It's just Donald Trump. Yeah. Are there any other names that have emerged lately or anything else floating in the ether? Not that I have heard recently. Trump played one of his games and got the media and NBC to write this piece about like, could be today or could be tomorrow. And then the campaign mocked it. So I wouldn't be surprised if Trump either holds it for whether he gets jailed or not, the announcement.

And if he gets through that, like maybe there's going to be a rose ceremony at the RNC at the Republican National Convention. To me, the con on the list is, and by the time this podcast airs, I might, there's a chance I'd be on TV with a Burgum surrogate today. So, you know, I might be able to get the chance to ask them myself. That could be interesting television, daytime cable.

It just depends of it all. The Pence element. I don't look at Doug Burgum and think that like that guy is, you know, like, let's say it's it's fall of twenty twenty eight and Trump doesn't run again. And Burgum doesn't because he's a VP. And, you know, the nominee is some Republican that is not as popular as Trump.

And they're getting schlonged by Josh Shapiro or something. And Trump is staring down the barrel of a post-presidency, second presidency, where he's going to be in court again, maybe in jail. And the next president he doesn't think is going to pardon him. And he looks at the VP and he's like, I'm going to create some trouble here. Are you going to stand with me on whatever I come up with? I don't think you look at Doug Bergman and think that guy's going to be solid.

Right? I mean, he seems a little bit like a milk drinker. A little too much milk drinking from Doug Burgum to me for Trump. Doesn't Trump want somebody with a little bit of a bad boy streak? Well, I'll admit I never considered that specific scenario. You never considered my fantasy? I spend a lot of time in the evenings, Caputo. The milk drinker one, I was like, how do I answer that? Thinking through what 2028 fall looks like, you know.

I think whoever Donald Trump is going to pick is going to make sure to stick with them through thick and thin to make sure that after he leaves the White House, he doesn't wind up in the big house, right? If he can do that. Or, you know, to try to make sure that he winds up in the White House and not the big house. So I think on that count, all three are kind of equal. I do think, and not to be too literary, the problem with Vance and Rubio is the quote from Caesar in...

Shakespeare's play where he says, let me have men about me who are fat, sleek headed men and such a sleep of nights. Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He

He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. And I think Vance and I think Rubio in the regard of ambition and another quote from, you know, the play ambitions made of sterner stuff. They, when they get in the Naval observatory, human nature is going to take over and their, their ability to not run for president four years hence is going to be greatly diminished. I think Bergam will still run for president as well, but he,

partly to your point he doesn't seem to have the same sort of like hunger and ambition for it that i think vance and rubio too yeah cassius i have nothing to add that the cash thing is right okay i gotta run i'm going to do your miami buddy dan levitard's podcast if you want some sports debate takes uh listeners you can go check out uh dan levitard show i'm gonna be on with pablo torre my buddy today and and then i'm on msnbc all day so i have 30 seconds left for you mark

the jail the jail i mean he might go to jail do they think he might what do they think about it they think he won't and i asked like hey if he's in jail and he's not at the rnc does he have a video made ahead of time and one of them told me why don't you come up to mar-a-lago and tell donald trump to film a video for his rnc address because he's going to be in jail and see how that works out for you so nobody's got the balls to do that around them

No. Guess not. Bunch of shoe shiners. All right. All right. I said it. You did it. Okay. Mark Caputo, always appreciate the candid report from Magaville. We'll be seeing you soon, amigo. Thanks, man. I'm not sure of what's going to be next, but I'll be all right.

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.