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Looking back at the past year, at least when it comes to the presidential race, Democrats and Republicans have had opposite challenges. Democrats are dealing with the lack of enthusiasm from some voters to re-elect President Biden. For Republicans and Donald Trump, there's a different problem. The base of the Republican Party loves him, but everyone else is not so sure. Regardless,
Trump dominated in the Republican primary. And on Tuesday night, Donald Trump has crossed the threshold. The former president has yet again secured the Republican Party nomination for the third presidential election cycle in a row. He won in Mississippi, Hawaii, Washington, and Georgia, officially becoming the presumptive Republican nominee.
That's despite the criminal charges, the defamation and sexual abuse findings, the hundreds of millions of dollars in legal penalties, the two impeachments, the ongoing election denial, and the continued fallout from January 6th. So considering all this, I wanted to ask Republicans the same question we posed to Democrats last week and answer it more directly than we ever have before. How exactly did we end up with Donald Trump again?
And why? From The New York Times, I'm Ested Herndon. This is The Run-Up. Hi, how are you? Hey, man. How are you, Ested? I first met Henry Barber last year at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting in Dana Point, California. It's, uh, I get wistful thinking about the weather and the location right now. Yeah, we were looking at the Pacific Ocean. Not too shabby. Barber's been a member of the RNC since 2005.
His uncle, Haley Barber, used to be governor of Mississippi and served as RNC chairman in the 1990s. I talked to him Monday morning, after what was actually a big week for the RNC. Ronald McDaniel, who'd served as RNC chair for seven years, stepped down, and the Trump campaign then installed several close allies in key positions, including Trump's daughter-in-law, Laura Trump, who will now serve as RNC co-chair.
That's right. The Republican Party itself is now a Trump family business, and people like Barber seem to be on the outs. So I wanted to know, as a self-proclaimed party loyalist, what he thought about these changes, and the state of the Republican establishment in general, considering back in Dana Point, when Ronald McDaniel was chair, there was widespread confidence that this Republican primary would at least be competitive.
You know, Ronna McDaniel, the outgoing RNC chair, spoke to RNC members on Friday. And in that speech, she called for party unity really explicitly, kind of like she did last year in Dana Point. I guess I wanted to start there. Would you say that the Republican Party is united behind Trump? And are you yourself behind him?
Well, I am for him. I will say I was for Nikki Haley in the primary. But when you transition from the primary to the general, it gets down to it's a one-on-one situation and you make a choice. And for me, I would much prefer a Republican in the White House or Republican Senate or Republican House. And just much more aligns with my theory and take on how the government works.
should act in Washington and around the country. Would you say the party is united behind him?
No, it's not yet. We're transitioning, as I said before, from primary to general, and that just takes time. And it takes time on the Republican side. It takes time on the Democrat side as well. And my counsel to former President Trump would be pick up the phone, call Nikki Haley, call Ron DeSantis, and begin to talk to
Republican voters who voted for others in the primary and let them know that, "Hey, you know what? I need your help. You're welcome. You're included." And if they don't feel included, you run the risk of a lot of traditional Republican voters sitting out the election or possibly voting for some third party. Politics is about math, and it's particularly about addition. So we need to add, not subtract, to be able to win in November.
What was your reasoning for supporting Haley? Why did you back her? Well, honestly, I was very interested in us moving beyond former President Trump. And she was the viable alternative. But we're at a point where Republicans do need to come together. President Trump is our nominee. And if we want to win—
And if we want to get the country back on track and ask our friend Joe Biden to move out come next January, Republicans have got to come together. Yeah, yeah. I want to talk about that. I mean, that's really where I want to sit in this conversation is about Trump, about the prospects of a Republican victory in November and the challenges there.
You know, when we talked in January last year, Trump was pretty down after the midterms. And I remember you citing people like Governor DeSantis, like Governor Brian Kemp, Mike DeWine, as people who were pointing a better direction for Republicans to win. Since the Republican primary was so lopsided, I'm wondering, was Trump more dominant than you expected? He's more dominant than I wanted him to be. Look, I wanted us to move on. And the voters decided differently.
You know, what's clear is that Republican voters believe Donald Trump. He really connects with them. It's interesting, I think when he ran in '16, Trump just really connected with working-class folks and increasingly working-class minorities.
And you see that in polling today. These are groups of people who have traditionally, over the last 20 years, been voting for Democrats. And all of a sudden, there's a material percentage of them
who appear to be very open to change. And it gives a real opportunity for Trump and the Republican ticket overall. In retrospect, was Trump inevitable as the nominee again in 24 because of that connection that you mentioned that's longstanding and deeper among the base?
I think that's fair to say, Ested, that he was inevitable. And it's interesting. I think a bunch of prosecutors have overreached in various court cases. I was going to ask about those coming up. Yeah. And there's no question that when that started happening last spring, at that point, DeSantis was the one with the momentum.
But all of a sudden, Republican voters started rallying around the former president, and they wanted to defend him. And then it became inevitable. I mean, he had the momentum. He kept his foot on the gas. And nobody ever was able to really threaten him politically. Look, I am a Republican who disagrees with Donald Trump on a number of things, and particularly the post-election action that he took.
The sort of stop the still stuff that I don't buy into, January 6th, all of those things had me really positioned as a Republican who thought, we need to move on beyond this and let's get back to public policy.
But a lot of my Republican brethren decided, no, no, we're going to fight for this guy. Democrats are overreaching. And I will say, you know, this New York case where they say he exaggerated the value of various properties, right?
that they're trying to get $350 million out of him when there is no victim, as far as I can understand. I mean, the banks, I guess, would have been the victims, and they all made money. It's absurd. It is so overreaching that it makes even me, who disagrees with him on January 6th and that kind of thing—
feel like, yeah, he's getting the shaft. I mean, maybe if they exaggerated, maybe you find him five million bucks or something. But 350 million, it is absurd. So I think the prosecutors did him a political favor. I guess I'm wondering, considering you're someone who disagrees with what he's talked about in terms of last election being stolen, someone who does think that some of the allegations are serious,
Why is that not disqualifying for you to be the leader of the party? Because ultimately, I just feel like Joe Biden has failed the country. I mean, if you look at what's happened just on the border, it is just a total debacle. I think if you look at crime and inflation in the economy, if you look at Afghanistan, if you look at even...
where I think he's been weak and he seems kind of all over the place with Israel and Gaza. He just, he's failing. I guess I'm saying, how do you weigh the pros and cons of Trump's
Trump himself leading your party, considering for all those pros that he could have against Biden, there are some real downsides. I mean, we were just at CPAC with the kind of Trump grassroots base of the party, and they are still talking about a stolen election. They're still talking about calls to free the people who were there and kind of framing them as martyrs. They're still doubting that November will be free and fairly decided if Donald Trump doesn't win
How do you weigh then the reality of the things you like about Donald Trump with the fact that it does seem to come with some things that seems to strike at the real core of democratic institutions?
Well, as I said, I disagree with people who say that the election was stolen. President Trump sold that story and people bought it. But ultimately instead, for me, and I think for a lot of Republicans, would they rather have a Republican administration that fits better in their view of what the government should do on issues like the border and crime, the economy, and what's going on around the world?
or Joe Biden. So it becomes more of a generic Republican versus Democrat thing for me personally. So I guess, can I try one more time? Yeah, you can keep trying. He's not a generic Republican though. He's not even promising kind of generic Republican policies to your point. This is someone who's explicitly promising to weaponize the DOJ, to go after political opponents. This seems to be the exact thing you're deriding the New York DA for doing here, allegedly. So I guess I'm saying,
Is it fair to call Donald Trump a generic Republican versus Joe Biden a generic Democrat, considering his policies do seem outside of where the Republican Party typically is? I'm not calling...
President Trump a generic Republican. I'm just saying that's more how I view this because I'm looking at the bigger picture of can we have a Republican in the White House? Can we have a Republican Senate or Republican House working together? And when I compare that to Joe Biden and
Chuck Schumer, it's just sort of a much easier decision for me to get there. Not that there's not baggage that I dislike. There is. But my view is if you compare the four years of Donald Trump and the results that he got, they're just much stronger than what we've gotten from Joe Biden. And so ultimately,
that gets made to return to the flock, if you will, as a Republican.
I want to talk about what Trump did with the RNC over the weekend. You know, you've been a part of that organization since 2005. And last week, Trump instituted several of his close allies, including Michael Watley of North Carolina and his daughter-in-law, Laura Trump, at the top of the RNC. One of Trump's campaign advisors, Chris Lasavita, is also expected to take over operations of the place. What has it been like to essentially see Trump swoop in and consume the institution that you've served in? Well...
Instead, it is normal for the Republican nominee to have great influence and even to take over, you know, sort of the day-to-day operations of the RNC once they become the presumptive nominee. Some of that is the natural primary general transition. Totally. And that's all that's happened here. Honestly, Michael Whatley, who is the new RNC chairman, was a very successful state chairman in North Carolina. He
Look, he's won. He's won lots of big races in North Carolina, so give him credit. Laura Trump is, I think, new to all this, and she's learning. But I will say she commands the room. I think once she kind of gets her head around the message and some of the details, I think she can be an effective spokesperson. But I mean, no question from day one, she can get any rich person just about on the phone
and make the ask for the RNC. And that's a huge advantage that Laura Trump has. And so I think they have a great opportunity in a political environment that is set up very nicely for Republicans to do well in November. I mean, it's,
seem like you had some uncomfort with the changes. You did try to introduce two resolutions at the RNC, one that said they should remain neutral throughout the primary. The other said that the RNC would be barred from paying Trump's legal bills. Why did you introduce those? And can you tell me what happened to those resolutions? Sure. Well, the first resolution essentially said, look, the Republican Party, by rule, has to be neutral in the primary. And
And we put that out there. Once Nikki Haley dropped out of the race, that became obsolete. The second resolution really emphasized that the RNC has one job, and that one job is winning elections. And that means the RNC should spend its resources on winning elections, not paying any candidates legal bills, including former President Trump's.
So it was a pretty straightforward deal. It was just, we were trying to protect the institution and the rules and the mission of the RNC. But that wasn't successful, the second one either, right? Neither were successful. And instead, I knew when we presented these that they weren't going to be successful. But what we had was a really robust conversation, and particularly about the fact that
R and C dollars should be spent on winning elections and not paying legal bills. And that's really important because we have a lot of money to raise and donors need to be confident that their donations will be spent on winning elections and not legal bills. If I remember correctly, I mean, they've said mixed things on this subject, Laura Trump and others have said that they think the Republican electorate would be okay. If R and C and others pay Donald Trump's legal bills. And I think that's where she's learning. And,
the Trump campaign, clean that up. You know, it seems as if the Republican establishment, if we use those words that they, the Trump campaign likes to, has been uncomfortable with some of the ways the base has pushed them in new directions, but has largely gone along with it. I know that the goal is winning and the goal is implementing policy. And so that's one of the reasons to go along with it. But one question I have is like, does that have a limit? And do you worry about something like the sixth happening? Again, there's no indication that
Folks who were, you know, the leading voices of that are show contrition. I mean, is there any fear you have that the path that you're laying can bring us back to something that was, even as you describe it, you know, really uncomfortable and really kind of anti-democratic? No. I mean, look. No? No, not really. No. Okay. I guess why not? Maybe you know something I don't.
Well, I'm hopeful that we're not going to make that mistake again. But look, the country is very divided and we do need to come together. So in the primary, there's all this infighting.
We've got to get beyond that. And President Trump's got to be the leader there. He's got to be the one that sets the tone. And he needs to say to people who didn't vote for him, I need your help. Can you be part of my team? And then he reaches out to the suburbanite voters and then to even traditional Democrat voters who are very open to change. It does sound like a different person, though, than the person we both know, right? It's hard for me to imagine Donald Trump reaching out to Democrats. I'm just telling you how to win. Okay.
Last question is like, what motivates you? Like, what are you fighting for? Like the, Donald Trump is up
upended the party, has kind of made it more difficult for your lane to exist in the ways that it has in previous years. He's now kind of installed loyalists at the RNC, some of which is tradition, some of which is outside of it. So I guess I'm asking, what keeps you so loyal to a Republican party that has changed for, I think, the values that may have made you more loyal to it in the past? And is there any version of the party that
it wouldn't be worth it to win, where winning wouldn't be the only goal. And you would say, you know what, this candidate, I can't back. And maybe you don't back Biden or something else, but I guess I'm wondering, is there a limit to winning? Well, I'm an American before I'm a Republican. And so if I don't feel like a Republican administration can do right by America, I
At some point, I'm going to look for another option. But sitting here today, it's an easy decision for me. It's easy. It's actually an easy call for you. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, it's easy. But that doesn't mean, instead, that there aren't things that give me great pause. But again, it comes down to this one-on-one conversation.
decision. And I think lots of Republicans are going to have to think about that and think about the direction of the country and is the country going to be better off under Republican administration or Joe Biden's failed administration. Thank you. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for talking to us again. All right, instead, always good to be with you, man.
Just hours after we spoke, Trump's team tightened their grip on the RNC. Firing more than 60 employees, including the heads of major departments like data and communications.
It's a bloodbath. There's wide layoffs and they really go farther, I think, than many people at the RNC were expected, were told. We got back in touch with Henry Barber to see what he thought. And to my surprise, he downplayed the news and likened the changes the Trump team made to similar changes that happened in previous presidential cycles. Meanwhile, Trump supporters cheered the layoffs.
This is excellent, said right-wing personality Charlie Kirk. The anti-Trump sleeper cells all have to go. We'll be right back.
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Here's the thing. Henry Barber helps explain how Trump became the Republican nominee again, but he doesn't quite explain why it happened. Barber is your classic Republican, not a Trump Republican. And while he's clearly willing to support Trump as his party's nominee, he's not particularly thrilled by it. But frankly, Barber is in the minority. So I wanted to talk with someone who represents the ascended wing in the Republican Party, the MAGA wing.
Hey, hello. Can you hear me? Hey, guys. Yep. Can you hear me? Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Remind me what we're talking about again? Yeah, no problem. We're really talking about how and why Trump became the nominee. So we're really looking at the state of the Republican Party and then looking ahead to November. Got it. Vivek Ramaswamy ran the presidential campaign that was closest to Donald Trump.
in terms of ideology and style. I did take inspiration from President Trump's victory in 2016 just from the standpoint of being an outsider. He's molded himself after Trump and says the former president is part of the reason he got into politics in the first place. Right, I think that hadn't been done that somebody who had purely been a leader in business said, you know what, I'm going to bring that executive talent to leading this country. And so if he hadn't done it just by way of biography in 2016...
I don't think I would have thought of doing it in the year 2023. On the debate stage, when Trump refused to attend, Ramaswamy often played the role of lead MAGA voice, mimicking Trump's tendency to belittle his political opponents.
mocking the Republican establishment and the press, and spewing unfounded conspiracies, like January 6th was an inside job. But that's the exact reason I wanted to talk to him, someone whose journey mirrors that of many Trump supporters. So as people like Henry Barber seem to be losing influence, what does one of the new faces of the party say to the central question of this episode?
Why Trump again? The day I dropped out. You know, that journey, the reason I'm asking you about it is because it feels really reflective of a lot of the Republican voters we talked to, you know, specifically the kind of Trump side that's gotten more invested and involved in the party since he came on in 2016. And I've heard them describe this kind of movement as a MAGA, as a grassroots takeover, frankly, of the party. I guess I would wonder, do you agree with that framing?
I think it is a yes, is the answer to that question. And I think it's more than just a grassroots takeover, because that implies it's some sort of tug of war battle. I think it is filling a void of what the Republican Party actually means or what it actually stands for. I think the Republican Party has historically defined itself in opposition to the agenda of Democrats. And the way I would summarize what I believe America First stands for is a few basic propositions that
One is the people who we elect to run the government should be the ones who actually run the government, not third party actors in the what we call the deep state, unelected bureaucrats. That's number one. Number two, those elected leaders and those public officials owe their sole moral duty to the citizens of this country, not another one. It will go straight down the list from their public service should be about serving the public, not actually. He kept going with this list for a while.
But I wanted to get to our main question. You know, we are doing this question in response to what we get from voters often, which is why did we get these two candidates? And so we did it one for the Democrats. We are coming to you partially as someone who has been on the trail, who's talked to a lot of the Republican electorate. In your view of kind of up close look at the Republican electorate, why do you think they came back to Donald Trump in 24? So I think that what I'm about to say is true for the Republicans in a way that I don't believe is true for the Democrats this time around.
This is unambiguously who the people of this party wanted to represent them. And I say that because there was a richly contested process. And so that, I think, is at least a high conviction result of a process. Now, why are we there? Look, I think that.
They decided that they wanted to go with who was tried and true, right? You will have had four years of Biden. You had four years of Trump. Here's what happened to Trump. Here's what happened under Biden. And I'm going with what I know in terms of that contrast. So looking back in that view, do you think Trump was inevitable as a nominee? Like, was it always going to end up this way?
Yes, actually, looking back, I think the answer is yes. Obviously, if I had believed that at the outset, then I wouldn't have run. But with the benefit of hindsight and having been through that process, I do think it was inevitable because he had something that nobody else did, rightly so. He had served as U.S. president and in my opinion and in the opinion of the Republican electorate done so successfully. And if you're looking at the track record now, I'm coming at this maybe with a different view than many others who are listening to this.
To look at those side by side, it's a pretty compelling case to say that under Trump, here's the situation at the border. We did not have nearly as many illegal border crossings as we do under President Biden. Under Trump, we did not have the level of inflation that we do under President Biden. Under Trump, we were not on the cusp of major conflict in multiple parts of the world as we are under President Biden. So if you want a secure border, if you want a growing economy, if you want national pride in this country, and if you want to stay out of World War III, vote Trump. That's a clear case. And so-
Having had somebody who was already a president with that track record running against a president who has a different track record, I do think functionally it was inevitable that Trump was going to be the nominee. And frankly, even though that I've dropped out now, that's a big part of why he has my full support. You know, the other reason we're kind of pushing on this question is partially because I do think for a lot of people, there was a sense that Trump was a politically wounded figure after 2020, which made the prospect of him coming back
harder to believe. I had actually seen a statement, I think, from you that characterized that as part of the reason you were in the race was because of a feeling that Trump had political problems. And I think the people really tied that to the legal issues that have transitioned from now to then. Obviously, Trump faces 91 felony counts. He's been ordered to pay more than $500 million in various penalties.
Why don't you think the indictments or the legal shift in Trump's situation was disqualifying for Republican voters? Because in the prism of people who don't spend that much time with them, I think there was an assumption that they would be.
So the answer to that is clear. It is that these indictments are politicized lawfare. The fact that you have seen some of that lawfare even play out extra judicially, the fact that it took a nine zero Supreme Court rebuke to otherwise stymie and effect to keep him off the ballot is.
reveals, I think, to the American public and especially the Republican primary electorate that you do have forces in this country that will stop at nothing to keep this man away from office. But the more of that lawfare we saw, I think the more convinced the Republican electorate became that having somebody who has already been there, already faced up against a lot of the threats that are coming back for him is the best bet that we have to defeat them.
And so if these were indictments that I think were grounded in
real black and white black letter law, the response would be different than what you see right now, where everybody knows that the Alvin Bragg case or the Fannie Willis case or the Letitia James case, there's no way they would have brought these cases if Donald Trump were not a political figure running for office. Yeah, I hear that. And I hear a lot of Trump supporters kind of explain that to me. They specifically mentioned the cases you're talking about. But in the same way, there's an intuitive understanding of maybe the flimsiness of those.
We've also talked to people who have an intuitive understanding of the seriousness of the January 6th case. Even if that trial hasn't gone forward, why is not the facts of someone being alleged to have conspired to overturn an election a disqualifying act for a Republican nominee? So the first thing I will say is I disagree with you on the merits there, but we don't have to delve into that, though we can.
Let's just pause on the premise that, because I've been in conversations like this one with folks like yourself who correctly recognize or at least implicitly recognize the politicization of politics.
criminal prosecutions by multiple different prosecutors in multiple different states. I guess I'm not trying to fight you on those merits. I was just trying to put that to the side. So I'm not actually agreeing with you about those things. I'm just putting it to the side. But I would say that at any moment where you have a U.S. presidential candidate and a former U.S. president and a frontrunner running for office and you have
an Alvin Bragg case, a Letitia James case, a Fannie Willis case, and multiple statewide efforts to remove somebody from a ballot, something that has never happened in a U.S. presidential election. Yes, that does have a profound effect on voters to wake up and say,
this is not the system working as it should. That this is a system that is trying to prevent me from voting for someone who I otherwise might want to vote for. Now I definitely want to vote for him. You know, we had the Secretary of State in Maine on the show, and I asked her these similar questions, right? I asked about the likelihood that the Supreme
Supreme Court would overturn or the impression that it could give that Democrats were acting in a politically motivated way against the eventual Republican nominee. And their response to me was that in the same way that this is unprecedented, so were the actions that Donald Trump took after the 2020 election. I guess I still don't hear a response to the question I'm asking, which is that what is it? That decision belongs to the voters is what I would say. That decision belongs to the voters. Okay. That I think is the bedrock principle that our country is founded on is that the voters get to decide what
who actually governs. And so the idea that one individual just waking up and deciding by single action of one individual by fiat, removing one of two major presidential candidates from a ballot defies the idea that we the people can choose who to vote for. I'm going to try one more time to be more specific. Sure.
Outside of the question of removal from the ballot, which I heard an answer to, that you believe it should be up to the voters. Why is Trump's actions after the last presidential election, which are alleged to have disrupted the transition of power, and for many Americans agree with that. Why is that not a disqualifying act, just as someone leading your party?
Yeah. So first of all, I disagree with the characterization itself. Right. I think that and this gets into the merits of it. But Trump specifically just spoke about peaceful democracy.
action that day on January 6th, exercising one's First Amendment rights. Not in one instance has Trump been charged, convicted or even prosecuted on the basis that he incited an insurrection. Let's not forget that they don't even have the gall to charge him of that yet without going through the courts, have the gall to try to remove him from a ballot. That is a far greater offense than what many voters who may have even disagreed with some of Trump's actions on January 6th to say that they would have handled it in a different way.
That's overridden by the government overreach in trying to keep a man off the ballot. Isn't that what Jack Smith is charging him with right now? There's literally zero, I mean, this gets into legal detail here, and we can do that if you want. I'm saying conspiracy to obstruct official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States. I mean, I'm saying, why are those charges not serious enough? Why weren't the actions serious enough? I guess that's all I'm asking. I guess I still don't feel like I heard an answer. Leave it to the people, is the answer of the Republican electorate, is that give me the chance to actually judge who I want to be the president.
And all things considered, I get to vote for who I think will be that best president.
You know, it's also more than charges, though. The last case I wanted to ask about was the findings in New York civil court where Trump was found liable of sexual abuse and defamation. Why does that, as a kind of personal character statement, not disqualify him for being the nominee in your eyes? So I just want to understand exactly what the objective is in this conversation. Is it to understand how Trump is the nominee? Are you asking me for why I support Trump? Or are you asking me for who I'm going to vote for?
It's both. And I think for a lot of voters are going through the same calculations that you are. I'm asking you as a proxy for a Republican electorate. OK, so I'll tell you one thing is one is like many of the Republican primary electorate. I reject the idea that that case was itself brought for any reason other than the fact that it was an opportunist seizing on the fact that Trump was a prominent person running for president. Now, I ran for president.
Because I had a vision for this country and believed that it was going to take a new generation of leadership to reach the next generation. So you're asking somebody who set out to run for U.S. president because I believed at the time I ran that I'd be the best person for the job. But as I look as a voter of who's going to be the best president to lead this country forward,
I think we have a unique opportunity that we've never had in our national history, which is to look at four years of Trump and four years of Biden. And if you want to choose between the four years of Trump and the four years of Biden, to look at those four years and say, what had happened with the economy? What happened with the border? What happened with our standing on the global stage? Under Trump, we had a sealed border, largely. We had a growing economy. And we had a president who did inspire a significant part of this country to be proud of who we are.
That's why I would support Trump. And I think that's why so many in the Republican electorate support Trump. Is it a political problem, though, that we still hear versions of Trump's message that are completely kind of outside of, I think, majority views, specifically when it comes to the last election being stolen or not stolen, right? But specifically when it comes to, you know, an attack on institutions that remains unpopular. Does Donald Trump have to change his message to actualize the kind of opportunity that you're talking about?
Look, I think that if you listen to Trump's message, particularly in recent weeks, success will be our vengeance. That has been his message. I think it's a unifying message. I think success is unifying. And so the more we're talking about national unity, right, Biden ran on a message of uniting this country.
Well, ultimately, the buck stops with the president. We're not a united country right now, but I think we can be. And I don't think we're far so far away from it as it might seem if you turn on cable news or social media. I think most people in this country do share the same national values in common. So one of the things I learned from the presidential campaign, I went to places from the south side of Chicago to Kensington in the inner city of Philadelphia. I learned a lot from the experience, which is that.
People there are every bit as frustrated about the southern border crisis, and this is seven months ago, as they are right now in the Republican primary electorate. And so, no, I don't think we're going to win this election by adjudicating technicalities of the past. I think we're going to win this election by painting an alternative vision of the future to the one that we're actually getting from the president who's already in office, backstopped by a track record for four years of staying out of foreign wars and growing this economy and securing our national borders and our national identity.
We only have a couple more questions, and I appreciate you playing ball with us. Given how critical Trump was of Nikki Haley during the campaign, going beyond kind of political insults, but seemingly personal insults, he's called her bird brain and things like that. Is it a political problem the way Donald Trump talks about his political opponents within the Republican Party or something that he should change before November?
I don't because I think that there's a fundamental misunderstanding that a lot of the press corps has of Trump that ordinary people in the audience of the American electorate understand far better. It's that...
Donald Trump talks to you like a real human being has a conversation in their private life, right? Much of the things that he said in his speeches are said in a tongue in cheek way, are said in a way that is designed to engage and build the kind of trust that human beings friends have with each other in the jokes they tell. People trust somebody who's willing to talk openly without a filter, occasionally may overstep some type of bound of some genteel norm that's set.
And I think the sensationalization of that is a much bigger problem than the actual statement in the context of candor that it's offered. Do you talk to Trump these days? Do you have any or plan to have any formal role with the campaign? I talk to Trump.
From time to time, frequently. We've been on the campaign trail together. I've never been someone who's known to keep my thoughts to myself. It's not something I do particularly well. And so he and I have a great relationship. I mean, I often share with him my opinions, especially in areas where I think that there are things that need to be said that others may not have said already.
And, you know, I found him to be somebody who's actually really different than the media portrayal of him for the better in that respect, where he is a better listener than you. Yes, yes, actually, that he's actually really interested in converse or contrarian opinions. I think he actually is interested, at least in my experience with him, in being challenged and having a good dialogue that gets to the right answer.
I think it's a mark of a true leader who's somebody who's able to, with humility, acknowledge there are certain issues that he may not yet know about, wants the best ideas he can possibly find.
Contrarian views when necessary and then arrive at a decisive policy position on the back of that. We the people create a government that is accountable to us, not the other way around. And I do think that Donald Trump embodies that better than any politician probably in modern American history to say that I am responsive to you, the people. And so to the people who will look at that and caricature that and say, oh, he's a populist. I mean, that's a word that many people use in a negative context, right?
I call it responsive to the people who are your actual boss. The actual boss of the U.S. president is the people of this country, not some party apparatus, not some mega donor class. It's we the people. And so to have a president who listens to we the people. Is he responsive to people broadly or is he responsive to Republican base? I think he has grown the Republican base. I think he's responsive to people broadly. I think he cares about this country. And look, everyone's not going to agree on everything. I think this should be the heart of our message. You don't have to agree with 100%.
of what I say to support me. You don't have to agree with 100% of what we say to support us. That should go without saying, but it's worth saying that you can speak your mind. Even if we really disagree with you, you still have the right to say it because that's America. And so, yes, I think that that's a big part of why Donald Trump has been successful. And more importantly, I hope
why he will be in a position to, dare I say it, unite this country in a way that Biden promised to, but just didn't actually accomplish. And that's what I'm rooting for more than anything else, is a reuniting of this nation. You know, you actually zoom in on a line from Trump. You said success will be our vengeance. I remember when we were in South Carolina, you know, I am your retribution as like the line that really kind of stuck out. In that Trump message, who is the one inspiring the retribution? Who's the vengeance against?
I think the vengeance is against that unelected class, that managerial class, the class that is exercising political power that nobody delegated to them. In my parlance, what you call the administrative state, right? The deep state. Well, yeah, I mean, I think, yes, that's what we call the deep state. Now, I know that that's
A term that is caricatured by many on the left as some sort of kooky right wing conspiracy theory, which is why I prefer to talk about it as what it is, which is something that actually used to be every bit of left wing concern as it is a right wing concern today, which is a bureaucratic technocratic exploitation of political power without the backstop of political accountability.
It's old world monarchy. I mean, that's really what the old world was all about. It was skeptical that we, the people, could be trusted to self-govern. But that's what makes America great, actually, is that we decide for ourselves, not somebody from on high telling us. That's the heart of what this movement is about. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate it, man. After two weeks of talking with insiders from both parties, I have a clear answer to our question. How do we get these two candidates again? Well, how could we not?
considering Trump's grip on the GOP base and Biden's grip on the Democratic establishment. A rematch of 2020 may not be what voters prefer, but it is what they're going to get. The same candidates, each with what turns out to be a surprisingly similar core message, one that urges the country to unite against the common enemy. For Biden, that enemy is Donald Trump, and the MAGA Republicans, he says, are a threat to the country and to progress. For Trump,
The enemy is not just the Democrats, but an entire political system he's promising to upend.
This podcast is supported by USA for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. How can anyone survive blistering temperatures up to 140 degrees day in and day out without electricity or enough water? This is the dire situation for millions of refugees and displaced people in Ethiopia, Sudan, and across the Horn of Africa. But you can help. Donate to the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and help rush food, water, and shelter to those impacted by extreme heat this summer.
Visit at unrefugees.org slash heat to give now. That's the run-up for Thursday, March 14th, 2024. And now, the rundown. Hello! Hello, Doka! Hello, hello!
In the past week, President Biden traveled to Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin for campaign events and rallies. Getting out on the trail more marks a clear ramp up for the Biden campaign team as it turns to the general election.
The campaign also announced plans to hire 350 new staffers and spend $30 million in an ad push over the next several weeks. And... Fox News alert. Georgia, Mississippi, Washington state, and Hawaii all held their Democratic primaries and caucuses on Tuesday. Fox News projects that President Joe Biden has secured the delegates required to become the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
All four went to Biden, officially making him the presumptive Democratic nominee. Biden never faced any well-known challengers in this race, but he has so far lost at least 20 delegates to the uncommitted option that progressives used as a vehicle to protest Biden's support for Israel. But almost 30 percent of the vote in Hawaii and over 7 percent in Washington state were uncommitted votes.
Continuing the trend of some Democratic voters using the primary to express their dissatisfaction with the president. We're now 236 days away from the general election. We'll see you next week. The Run-Up is reported by me, Ested Herndon, and produced by Elisa Gutierrez, Caitlin O'Keefe, and Anna Foley. It's edited by Rachel Dry and Lisa Tobin.
With original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Diane Wong, Sophia Landman, and Alisha Ba'i-Tooth. It was mixed by Sophia Landman and fact-checked by Caitlin Love. Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Sam Dolnick, Larissa Anderson, David Haufinger, Maddie Maciello, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, and Elizabeth Bristow.
Do you have questions about the 2024 election? Email us at therunupatnytimes.com. Or better yet, record your question using the voice memo app in your phone. That email again is therunupatnytimes.com. Thanks for listening, y'all.
Thank you.
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