Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Trump says he'll end shoplifting in America with, quote, one really violent day. Tim Walz and J.D. Vance head into Tuesday night's VP debate with the race stuck in a dead heat. And the raging Cajun himself, James Carville, stops by to talk about the state of the race and the new documentary about his career in democratic politics. But first, as you all know, the death toll from Hurricane Helene is now north of 100. There is unbelievable devastation across the southeastern states. And as we're recording this, thousands of people in western North Carolina are still stranded without power, water, or fuel. The normal response to a disaster like this from...
Political leaders would be to pledge support, send relief, figure out how to immediately help people in need. That's what President Biden is doing. That's what Vice President Harris did when she spoke at FEMA headquarters in D.C. on Monday. Here's a clip. To everyone who has been impacted by this storm and to all of those of you who are rightly feeling overwhelmed by the destruction and the loss, our nation is with you.
And President Biden and I and all of the folks behind me are with you. We will continue to do everything we can to help you recover and to help you rebuild, no matter how long it takes. Over the past 24 hours, I have spoken with Governor Kemp of Georgia, Governor Cooper of North Carolina, and many local officials. I have shared with them that we will do everything in our power to help communities respond and recover. And I've shared with them that I plan to be on the ground as soon as possible, but as soon as possible without disrupting any emergency response operations, because that must be the highest priority in the first order of business.
So the Republican nominee for president taking a slightly different path, even though local officials, as the VP just mentioned, have asked both campaigns to temporarily stay away from the affected areas so that resources aren't diverted from the emergency response. Trump went to Georgia on Monday to, quote, deliver supplies after he falsely accused the Biden administration and Democratic Governor Roy Cooper of, quote, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. Trump also said that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has, quote, been having a very hard time getting the president on the phone, which was a little weird when Governor Kemp then said he just spoke to the president on Sunday. How shocked were you guys that Trump decided to play politics here? And by play politics, I mean tell the most easily refuted lies. I was not surprised at all. It is like, I was trying to like...
you know, Trump, like, moves your baseline because he's so fucking crazy. And I was, like, trying to remember, like, well, things have happened before. And I remember in 2004, I was an intern for the Kerry campaign. There happened to have been four hurricanes that hit Florida in that cycle. And I went back and looked at what happened after that. And there were headlines about how there would be politics about the Kerry campaign and the Bush campaign. Very clear, like, we're not playing politics with this. They both talked about how privately people were worried about what the implications would be. Bush got to go be, as the AP referred to him, comforter in chief. John Kerry waited a few days because he was listening to local authorities. And then he went down there to talk to people and meet with people. There was a Bill Nelson, was a Democratic senator from Florida, toured with him saying, we wanted John Kerry to come because if he becomes president.
We want to understand the damage here. Kerry went to great lengths to say this is a bipartisan moment. And so what you have is two politicians trying to make the most of it politically, if we're being honest, right? It's okay to be cynical about some aspect of this, but understanding what they were supposed to do to at least model being somewhat apolitical. And Trump just obliterates that instantly, both by going, despite even the nonpartisan mayor of that town saying we would have liked for him to come on another fucking day, give us a few days to figure out what we have to do to dig out of this, but also then make up conspiracies, show up in a Make America Great Again hat, have a little wall of bricks built around him. It's like a disaster photo op, and it's gross.
Remember there also was an expectation back in the day that candidates would even pull down attack ads or political ads generally. I mean, there used to be so much like care and thought put into these things and now he just makes stuff up. Trump also said that no one expected a hurricane like this because we're after hurricane seasons. Absolutely not. We're dead square in the middle of hurricane season. Everyone expected this to happen. It is only Trump too. I mean, we remember just in 2012, right? After Hurricane Sandy and Barack Obama goes and gives Chris Christie a big hug, which, you know, hurt Chris Christie's career in the Trump era. Worst talk he's ever gotten. Like Governor Kemp, Republican governor.
Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, they're all working together. They're all helping each other out. And there's Donald Trump out there just trying like just lying. And here's the problem, too, because the, you know, there is the hurricane has disrupted power and Wi-Fi service out in Western North Carolina. There's sort of like a lack of local news coverage. There's garbage Twitter accounts on the right and even some on the far left. They're just spreading absolute.
lies, craziness about like Biden not helping. Meanwhile, there's like hundreds and hundreds of FEMA responders there helping out. The federal government's doing like the federal government signed an emergency declaration that like before the hurricane even hit just so that resources would be freed up. I mean, it's just crazy. There's some sequencing to this too. And that's why in these times of crisis, the governors and the president have to work together because the governor makes a request and then the White House has to grant it. And that unlocks certain authorities. And in this case, I think Biden could have gotten either an emergency declaration request or a major disaster declaration request, which unlocks even more federal government resources. And he did the major disaster declaration.
Biden literally is doing everything he can in real time. Yeah, it's just completely made up. Even for Trump, these things used to be based on like a hint of, oh, was he a little slow on something? There was just nothing, absolutely nothing. Yeah, and there is sort of like a bottom-up, top-down thing because there's a conspiratorial mindset that has taken hold on the right that has spread on social media. And I noticed it as the storm was unfolding, there were already people on social media saying, where's the federal government? They haven't responded. They're abandoning this region. And you realize, okay, so that is the mindset that Trump has sort of, I think, like part of what led him to be successful and also what he feeds. And then he's just ready to come right on top and to like sort of feed that worst impulse.
What do you guys think of Harris's response so far and what she should do? Obviously, it happens a lot in these situations that local officials tell politicians not to come right away, but then the politicians don't want to be accused of looking like they don't care, so they want to go. Yeah, I mean, I think she's doing everything she should be doing. She got briefed by the head of FEMA. She's talked to Roy Cooper. She went to FEMA today. I think in terms of the visit, I would just be in constant contact with Roy Cooper's office in North Carolina and figure out the earliest possible time that doesn't impede relief operations. And you don't have to go to downtown Asheville. You could go to a county over where FEMA is staging relief operations and go there and talk to people, hear directly from folks affected. But I think showing up is really, really important. I think the more complicated political...
question is going to be, do you go with Joe Biden? Do you go separately? Navigating that is going to be is going to be hard. But I also think, you know, if I were the Harris campaign, I would consider finding a bunch of really good local relief organizations and then sending an email to my list fundraising for them and then saying to my field staff in Western North Carolina, like for the next two weeks, we're not doing campaign stuff. You're putting on a Harris Wall shirt and you're going doing whatever relief is happening, sandbagging, cleaning up, helping people get food, like whatever it takes, just be in the community representing the Harris Walls campaign, but do what it takes to help those people. I think that would be pretty impactful.
Yeah, I think you go. I thought about that too, Tommy. I think she goes with Biden. Like, I think she should go. But it's like he said he's gonna go Thursday, Friday. They're president, vice president. I mean, like two visits if you don't go with him, too. Yeah, no, that's why. And like, you know, they're she's not afraid of being like they've done events together since she's been the nominee. And it's like it's not a political rally. So I think your name is Joe. I wonder if if Trump keeps this up or even now that he's already attacked them for it. Like, do you at some point?
take a shot at Trump for doing this. Not in a way that's like, now I'm going to go after you, but just sort of like, look, we're trying to work with Republicans, Democrats. We're trying to focus on this. And, you know, a disaster just hit people in red areas and blue areas. And we're trying to help everyone that we can. And we don't need Donald Trump exploiting people suffering and trying to divide us so we can pick up a few votes. Like people are tired of this shit kind of thing. And I don't know if maybe Walls does that tomorrow night in the debate. I don't know if Harris does it like next week sometime. I mean, you don't want to do it right now, but like, I kind of think you've got to call out his game at some point if you want it to get.
traction and to like really stop it from happening or at least stop it from affecting the election. I think that's right. I think like sort of stepping back, like just she should just be modeling responsibility. Yeah, I know you're not saying otherwise, but she should be modeling responsibility. And what that looks like is not like Trump is want to seem responsible and look responsible. So he's being irresponsible. He cares what it looks like, not what it is. And she should just do the opposite. I think if she's asked a question about why she waited or something like that, I think it's like, I don't know if you like go out of your way to do it, but you respond and say there are people that want to use this to exploit a tragedy for political gain. There are people that are thinking only about how it affects themselves. I'm not going to do that.
We're here. We're all Democrats, Republicans. We're all here together trying to rebuild. And like, I think she can take a shot in that way. I think great. Just, you know, just tell the truth. Yeah, it's it gets annoying for I'm sure for President Biden people in the government, too, because it's like you model responsibility. And then because no one ever pays attention to anything who's not affected by something that like your your your model of responsibility just like doesn't just goes unnoticed. Well, this is why I think sometimes, too, it's like, you know, it's it's.
about to be October when the final sprint for this election. So it's not the time to step back and wonder, how did we get here? But like, you know, we lay at the feet of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, of any responsible elected figure, all the sins of the media environment and the crassness of our opponents. And it's like, no, like, yeah, sometimes now, because of how social media works, a politician doing everything, like Joe Biden responding exactly the way he should, still doesn't stop a Republican leader from North Carolina or from one of these states saying, where's Joe Biden? He didn't issue the response when he did exactly as he should have done in response to a request from the government. Or you hear that reporter, he got a shouted question at the White House after he talked about everything the federal government was doing. The reporter's like, why weren't you here commanding the response?
response over the weekend, Biden was like, I was on the phone for two hours yesterday, like commanding the response. Right. So you want something to look like you want the wall of bricks assembled by an advanced staffer. You want the throwing of the chicken nuggets. Like you want that. That's what you think. You want something that looks like that. You want better TV. You want the performance of empathy. Are we going to bomb the hurricane? What are we talking about? You preposition a bunch of assets and you make sure FEMA is on top of it. Like you need a competent team. That's what Joe Biden has put in place. Like people also make the comparison to Bush and Hurricane Katrina and the like Air Force One photo op over New Orleans, which is obviously very bad, but also came on the heels of a 29 day vacation in Crawford, Texas. That's part of why it was so bad.
And then on top of that, like the FEMA administrator was a clown who would run the Arabian Horse Federation. Remember Brownie in the state local response was terrible. And so he was blamed for like the most important thing that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can do is make sure that people get the help they need. Yes, that is also the most important political move, too. Like it's the right thing to do, but it's also the right politics. We should note that if Trump had his way, the federal government would be shut down right now. He did not succeed in his attempt to get Republicans to shut down the government. Biden signed the continuing resolution, so it'll be funded through the election. And as a lot of Democrats have been pointing out, Project 2025 calls for breaking up and privatizing big parts of the national web.
service, eliminating small business disaster loans and raising the threshold for disaster declarations. Is there a policy case for Harris to make here or is that too much? I don't think you do it right now, but I do think as we talk about this in the next couple of weeks, I think referring to all that, but also stepping back and saying, you know, local officials are saying they're not only just going to have to rebuild, they're going to rebuild with an eye towards being ready for future storms that are even more severe because climate change is having such an obvious impact and reminding people. the stakes around climate and the fact that like the investments that like the money to rebuild the money to invest in infrastructure like donald trump promised he would do it it was joe biden that delivered on these things whether it's through the infrastructure bill or through the inflation reduction act i feel like those are all points to me yeah i mean i think there's two points i'd make one is that like events like this are why you need a federal government it's the only entity in the world that has enough resources to like surge assets to a place like Asheville in the near term and then rebuild in the long term. And then I also think it's appropriate to talk about how Project 2025 wants to take the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and the National Weather Service and fundamentally change them. They want to privatize the weather service and commercialize it. And really, like, the goal here is you have a bunch of anti-climate change ideologues who don't want any government data going towards making the case that climate change is real and man-made, and they want to distort it. So you're going to end up with some natural gas lobbyists in charge of, like...
The National Weather Service or something. Telling people that is probably worthwhile. They don't like our satellites pointed down. They're like, oh, it's mission creep. Point it up.
Miami's underwater today, everyone. But wow, it just must have been a freak storm. And great day for kayak rentals. Also, so it's funny because you have Project 2025, which is like the brainchild of these like extreme right wing activists who just don't want government at all, right? Like they don't think the federal government has a role. Then you have Donald Trump. And his view on these things is you use the federal government to help the people that you like and who like you. The Republicans. And you screw over the people who don't support you. So everything is politicized. The government is politicized. Government power is politicized, right? And so sure enough, like Trump, who's like yelling right now about how, you know, Joe Biden is calling.
Governor Kemp, whatever. After Hurricane Matthew in 2017 hit North Carolina, the Trump administration denied 99% of the aid requested by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper for North Carolina. One of the last times North Carolina had a big disaster hit, Trump said, no thanks, all set. But we all have amnesia, but there was this sort of sickening reality after the pandemic began where Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo had to praise the dear leader because they wanted to make sure they were getting the resources they needed in the middle of an emergency. And they knew that the actual stakes, actual empathy for what people were going through was immaterial. Yeah.
That is something, that's something to look forward to with the second Trump term. Absolutely. Disaster hits and you better hope that you're, you live in a red, red state. Yeah. What's that? No atheists in a foxhole, no libertarians in a disaster relief zone. That's, there you go. We're a bumper sticker. No Heritage Foundation staff. We'll keep, we'll keep going. You got it, you got it. Before we move on to other subjects, we want to let you know that if you want to help folks affected by the storm and the flooding, you can go to votesaveamerica.com slash Helene. Your donation will go to some organizations that are helping on the ground right now and they're going to keep updating those orgs as needed.
On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Do not spend it alone. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Crooked Media Presents Live Election Results. We're going to have Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vitor, Stacey Abrams, Dan Pfeiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all going to help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. So here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3rd at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific for hot takes, catharsis, and as many results as we can possibly analyze.
Over the weekend, while the storm was hitting the southeast, Trump was campaigning in the Midwest where he gave a speech that even he described as dark. Boy, was it. See, two years ago, I wouldn't have had a fly up here. The shelves, they literally, the people walk in, they just take everything they want, they walk out of the store. What the hell is going on? They have to be taught. Now, if you had one really violent day, like one rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will get out and it will end immediately. End immediately.
So, Lovett, you said that you know what he was suggesting with the one violent day thing. Did he think the purge was a documentary? So here's what I thought, what he was in his adult brain. He's pulling back old things he used to say, but not as clearly as he was able to say before. And what I think he's talking about is something that you would hear from a New Yorker like this. It would be something like, you know why there's no homeless people in front of Tiffany's? Or you know what restaurants used to do back in the day if somebody tried to steal from them? They would have somebody go out and beat the ever-loving shit out of them. And then that person would tell all their friends he didn't have to worry about it anymore. That's why there's no homeless people over here. That's what you used to have the mob, you used to have dirty cops, whatever it is. And you would dispatch these people and they would rough somebody up and they would get the word out.
That's that's that is what he's talking about there. That's sort of in his mind. He's referencing that kind of way people would talk about crime that like you could fix this by beating somebody up and then they'll tell all their friends. You know, the Times wrote this up and just sort of stunning to read it in a straight news story. But it said Trump has in the past urged law enforcement to be rougher when making arrests and called for the summary execution of shoplifters. Yeah, like, yeah, that is what that's true. That is what he has said before. And then the roughing up suspects thing was in a speech to police in 2017. He also wants universal stop and frisk. He wants to deny.
funding for local police departments that do not implement universal stop and frisk. I think he genuinely believes that extreme government violence is a way to prevent crime. Because he also, on the international stage, he talks about Rodrigo Duterte all the time, the former president of the Philippines, whose quote unquote war on drugs was basically just massacring people, innocent, guilty, didn't matter, thousands of them. And he would praise him all the time, publicly, privately, in phone calls. And this is just what he thinks is what you should do. He has proposed the death penalty for drug dealers. Like, just he wants to execute drug dealers, which is what Duterte did. Now, do you think of any of what we just heard from Trump in that clip is moving any voters? Should Harris respond to any of it? What do you guys think?
I don't think so. I mean, the most egregious thing in there was Trump referring to Kamala Harris as mentally disabled, which is like disgusting and offensive. I don't think you want to make it about you. So I don't know. I didn't hear anything there that I would jump on.
Yeah, I think you've got to just put it in the bucket of Trump's out here spewing all this nonsense and all this craziness and all this division and all this meanness and all this cruelty. Remember why he's doing all this. He's doing this because he's distracted from the fact that he has an incredibly unpopular agenda. He wants to cut taxes for corporations. He wants to do a mass deportation that would disrupt our economy and cause a second Great Depression. He wants to overturn abortion rights even in blue states. This is what Donald Trump is promising. So don't let the noise and don't let the bullshit and don't let the crazy ramblings fool you. He's very dangerous and these are the things he's going to do.
I would like to watch a group of undecided voters or persuadable voters, weren't sure, watching Trump talk about the one violent day, the one rough hour, the shooting shoplifters, executing. Like, I get that Republicans and Trump have an advantage on crime and we don't want to play on their territory. I just think that that kind of stuff is so extreme and has to do with what Trump wants to do in a second term. And not like you said to me, like the names he's calling Kamala Harris, I wouldn't talk about that or anything like that. But I don't know. I think this is, I think if you were.
If you were convincing someone who was going into the voting booth that day, that was like a friend of yours who was wavering, you'd be like, hey, this guy's talking about fucking executing people who were arrested for stealing drugs or people who are suspected of shoplifting. He wants them to shoot. Like, I think that's a fair data point. I think most people would watch that and think, he doesn't really mean that. He's just kidding around. He's talking. Even if you did it with the clips of shoot the shoplifters, execute the drug dealers, all that kind of stuff. I mean, I think shoot the shoplifters and execute the drug dealers are just different categories. I think some people might be like, yeah, maybe.
think about death penalty for some drug dealers. I don't think I think they would think he was not serious about shooting shoplifters. And I think broadly, people have way more harsh views on crime than I'm probably personally that we're personally comfortable with. And I don't know. I just don't know that I'd highlight it. Yeah, I just don't even I like I feel so like unworded at this point. Like we're saying shit like this. We're stuck at 48, 48 of this tiny group of people. Is this the thing that finally gets them to understand why Trump is so dangerous? I really don't feel like I know anymore. Like, are there a group of people?
that are leaning towards Trump, that can be built toward Kamala, not because of something that Kamala does, but because of something at long last that Trump says. Maybe you're right. I don't know. Yeah. I was talking to some of our pollsters and focus group folks we know, and they said, especially young people and young black and brown men, like hearing about universal stop and frisk, it's like incredibly unpopular. And that's just police. That's literally just police stopping and frisking you. That's not shooting suspected drop lifters. So actually, I totally agree that in general, probably the views of crime at this table versus like the public's views of crimes are quite different. But I think that this is so extreme that it would be, I don't know if it moves people, but it's very unpopular. I think if you're talking about pulling out certain parts of this, that would be like.
would appeal to a certain segment of young people that seem open to Trump. Sure, that makes a lot of sense to me. But on the whole, on the main, I feel like we are back into a couple of cycles of Trump's crazy in a thousand different fucking directions. And I worry about the 2016 effect of like, he's saying, oh, he's saying we didn't use to have flies as if immigrants brought all the flies. He's saying crazy shit about crime again. Wait, he's making his drug dealer point again. And like, what was that? He called her mentally disabled. And I feel like I'm in a bit of a time warp. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that you want to be on the economy. You want to be on abortion. The only other category...
of Trump stuff that I sometimes think we should push a little harder on is the using government for violence. And whether it's the mass deportations, whether it's the shooting the shoplifters, this stuff is just in a category of like, even like libertarian leaning Republicans, like you're going to use the federal government to like, like when the looting starts, the shooting starts, right? Yeah, no, I was trying to take it just a second ago. I don't feel like I was, I'm like struggling to do it. But like, I do think that there's a way to kind of, I think we like have to get, I think that kind of gets sorted into like the Trump chaos.
extremism bucket. And then there's like the Trump economy bucket. And I do think there's like a way to put them together. And they were not being clear enough with people. I talked about this with Tim, actually, because we were talking about Trump's economic speech, which was kind of glossed over because of all the crazy shit he said. But inside it wasn't actual economic speech. And you look at what he's promising and like it could cause a depression. It could cause a massive, massive, massive recession. And like we should like that's in the reverse. That's what Donald Trump would be saying. Why aren't we saying that? Like Donald Trump's chaos. Donald Trump is going to when he left office, he left the country with a recession. He is promising through tariffs and.
mass deportations, not only terror for millions of people, but an economic calamity. If you want to prevent a massive economic crash caused by Donald Trump's chaos, mismanagement and extremism, like to protect the economy, you have to vote for Kamala Harris. There's some way to kind of put those things together. Yeah. The tariff thing is, I've been an advocate for going hard at the tariffs for a while now. It is hard for people who like lived through a first Trump term.
I think to imagine like, well, why didn't he do this crazy tariff thing in the first term? And what's his motivation for doing in the second term? You're gonna be like, I don't know. He's kind of fucking crazy. That's like the only explanation as well. And he also totally misrepresents what a tariff is. Although there's some recent people in immigration that found 56% of registered voters support mass deportations, including 27% of Harris supporters. So it just shows you how far people have moved on immigration and why like Trump is only talking about it. The other thing that's interesting from Pew on crime is they test people's feelings on crime and whether crime rates are going up or down. And in 23 of the last 27 polls, I think that's right.
People thought that crime was going up even when it was going down. So there's clearly just like so much fear of crime, mostly from the media, that it distorts views. And I'm just not sure how it cuts. Well, I definitely think you can't try to tell people, much like the economy, you can't tell people that crime is going down if they don't feel that crime is going down. I think that's a mistake. So it seems like some of this...
crap from Trump was a reaction to Harris going to the border on Friday, which Dan and I previewed a bit on Friday's show. How do you guys think she did that event? The coverage looked good. I mean, I think any opportunity to drive the message that there was this border security bill, a bipartisan, the group of lawmakers wanted to pass it and Trump tanked it because he wanted to run the issue. I think that's just like a great message. I also thought it let her highlight her work in California going after drug cartels and drug traffickers, which I bet you zero percent of voters know about if you were just to sort of ask them in sort of an open setting. She has gained back some ground on immigration as compared to where Biden was, but she's still losing pretty badly on the issue. And that similar.
that same people last month found that 56% of registered voters are extremely or very concerned about the number of immigrants entering the country illegally, including 27% of her supporters. So the same numbers as mass deportation. And so, you know, I think... So what I take from all of this is that her campaign has decided that she needs to look like she thinks the border is a crisis and the immediate priority. And we're going to solve that first. And then you move to like a broader, more holistic conversation about immigration policy. And this visit was a piece of it. I think the one criticism you can make is like maybe do this six months ago, a year ago. You do it a couple of times so it doesn't get called just a stunt as the Chiron on Fox News said as we're walking in. But it's worth doing. I just remembered. I can't remember if it was a.
Sarah Longwell focus group or one of those cable focus groups after the debate or something. But there was an undecided voter or some swing voter who was like, and you know, I heard that she, when she was in California, she prosecuted some of these gangs. And I was like, someone knows about this? Great. That's a mission accomplished there. That's one. Yeah, I watched it. I went just, I was like, what does this look like if you're in Phoenix or something? And like, what does the border coverage look like?
The images are great. It's her walking with like police in front of the wall. It's very kind of like law enforcement, kind of border security. I think the remarks were great. All that was great. But you just sort of see the challenge of trying to like make a dent. We'll get to the polling, which is how challenging this media environment is because you watch a local affiliate. It's images of her at the border. Then they go to a Trump surrogate who's basically saying like she was the borders are who failed. She hasn't been here since she was elected, which is false. And then they say, all right, well, let's cut to Kamala Harris's remarks on the border. Happened to be the part of the speech where she was doing acknowledgements. So they cut from a Trump egg going like she's never done a thing for the border. And then it's her just applauding and like pointing at people. And you're just like, man, it's just.
To Tommy's point about doing this, it's reps. It's going again. It's doing then going and doing interviews with these affiliates to talk about it more. It's just you have to hit it over and over and over again. Also, if you are making a speech about a policy that your supporters and your voters are excited about, they're going to spread the message and they're going to help you spread that message, which is tough to do in this media environment. If you are going to play defense on border security, which is what she's doing. And look, there's a lot of undecided swing voters are saying like, I'm not sure about her on the border, right? I'm not sure about her on immigration. And it's along with the economy. Those are the two things holding a lot of these voters back. But it's just like.
You're not going to get a bunch of your supporters to go and be like, look at her on the border. It was so exciting. She was really tough on border security. Like, this is a hard thing to get out there. Right. It's like you're trying to like you're trying to beat him on temperament extremism. You're trying to beat him on abortion. You try to fight to a draw on the economy. And you're trying to like mitigate your losses on immigration. Like to Tommy's point about why mass deportation polls so well, there's no conversation about whether or not there should be a mass deportation. It's people saying, well, yeah, I do agree that there's a huge problem for the impact of the impact about it. And so you show people videos of people like federal agents raiding offices and homes. I think they're not as excited about it. But then what happens is.
Donald Trump's out there saying, this is what we need. This is how we'll solve the problem. Correctly, the Harris campaign is saying, let's talk about border security. Let's talk about Trump killing the bill. Let's talk about a better immigration system. And then there's no actual debate about this heinous and terrible policy.
As you said, I love it. We keep getting more polls. They keep showing that the race is more tied than the last polls. That's possible. New York Times-Siena. Once again, Saturday morning, we all get up and more New York Times-Siena polls. Harris leads 49-47 in Wisconsin, 48-47 in Michigan. There was a Fox News poll out on Friday that had Harris up two in Pennsylvania, but tied among likely voters. Blah, blah, blah. All the same. Are we just stuck here until election day? Is this what's going to happen? Yeah. In my dark moments, I wonder if we spend years of our lives and billions of dollars on campaigns. And in the end...
What really matters is like the meta media narrative at the last week or two. Last week, yeah. You know, it's the late deciders and where they break. It's made me worry, Tommy, to that point that like the Trump people know this because it's how they won in 16 and they're just like waiting to just throw some kind of shit at the wall in the last two weeks. Come on, Jim Comey. What are you up to? They don't have to have a kernel of truth. Yeah, I will say like even if what you're saying is true.
let's that the campaigns create the space for that that like final two weeks to unfold I also like I just I think we don't know that but I think it's very possible that the race is frozen and like the very like no campaign is perfect but like Kamala Harris is like doing what she's supposed to do what like her like she has very smart people around her they are running an enthusiastic campaign they're doing everything they're supposed to do Trump is selling fucking watches and careening launching and they're tied and then the question is like is that a genuine like I think there's the race could be genuinely tied and this politics is all going through like the information mandolin and like ending up as shredded on the bottom that's possible it's also possible that these polls are accurate but It's just very hard to measure the like shifts between leaners, shifts in enthusiasm, tiny shifts amongst undecided voters that even if the polls are creating an accurate picture of what's happening, they're not able to measure these subtle and qualitative differences, which you do see in focus groups, right? There is a difference in the focus groups between how they talked about Biden versus Trump versus how they talk about Harris versus Trump. And that would just be hard to measure. The other is that like all of this polling, like we may we may discover after this election that the ways in which they were trying to correct for errors after 2016 and 2020 created totally weird results because those were weird elections between.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, between Joe Biden and Donald Trump during a pandemic, and now this election where we finally have a candidate a lot of people are enthusiastic about. Finally a normal election. Between a vice president. The answer is who knows. The answer is who knows. But we just won't know until after. I know. I'm saying that was a joke. In my dark moments, I think that. Obviously, registering voters matters. GeoTV matters. But ultimately, we're talking about 10% of the population. It's undecided and trying to convince them. And it's just, it sucks.
And again, like I don't I think people you hear undecided and you think that those people are all torn between the two candidates. They're just checked out. A lot of them are checked out. And, you know, I just Alex Wagner did a focus group of Michigan voters last week and just hearing some of them. It's so funny because you can tell the difference between the voters who've been paying attention to this race and they talk about the convention speech or Trump did this. And then the other ones are just like, I haven't looked enough about Kamala Harris. I know she's a new candidate. I got to check it out. I do remember I had more money in my pocket when Trump was president. But I don't know. He seems kind of crazy. I mean, you just hear the same shit and they're going to they are going to tune in those last couple of weeks. Yeah. Michigan numbers. Or people are going to, you know, knock on their doors and.
or the campaign's going to be on the ground. You're going to organize it. They're going to hear from a volunteer. And again, one conversation is not going to do it. But they're going to start thinking, OK, I got some new information from that person. That's interesting. I do think that because the race has been so static and because it's so close, like it's hard to know the difference between are there just a group of people that are very hard to persuade or are they being persuaded and it's just not showing up in the numbers? And we just we just don't know. It's very hard to measure. Let's give a little hot war in Lebanon. Close this thing out. Close strong. Some more chaos and death and destruction overseas. Maybe shovel some cash over there. Can't you fix that? That's supposed to be your other podcast. Rhodes is working on it. Rhodes is working on it. He's doing his thing. I'm not doing my job. I know. I know the joke. I was going to do it too.
quote-unquote big moment left on the calendar. Tuesday night's VP debate, J.D. Vance and Tim Walls will meet on stage at CBS Studios in New York at 9 p.m. Eastern. Like the Harris-Trump debate, it'll be 90 minutes with no audience. Unlike the Harris-Trump debate, both candidates' mics will be on the entire time. The moderators are Nora O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan. We know that Pete Buttigieg has been playing Vance in Walls' debate prep sessions, and that Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer has been playing Walls in Vance's sessions. The Walls team has been trying to set expectations with leaks about Walls being nervous and not a great debater. The RNC did a preview call about the debate and teased that Vance will call Walls traitor Tim for allegedly abandoning his National Guard unit when they went to her.
rack so are they is it gonna be trader tampon tim or tampon trader tim just drop tampon oh good question yeah trader so great actually that's great that's good they should do that what a prick how are you guys feeling about the expectation setting do you buy the expectation setting do you not what do you think i'm a little nervous i watched some of tim wall's uh minnesota public radio debate from last year against scott jensen barnbrener scott jensen uh it wasn't great he seemed pretty nervous he's a little gruff got a little defensive the answers weren't always totally smooth or coherent and so i you know he's probably doing exponentially more prep this time than last time but you know the stakes couldn't are a lot higher. And Tim Wallace hasn't been doing any interviews like the lack of reps could make him rusty. He's also he's now defending Kamala Harris's record, something he learned about for the first time two months ago. Think about how complicated that is. You're not you're not like defending your own legislative record or time as governor, which, you know, inside and out. You're talking about this person you barely knew three months ago, as opposed to J.D. Vance, who's been doing fucking mop up duty for Donald Trump for four years publicly while attacking him privately. And so I like J.D. again, he's been out there. He's doing press conferences. He's doing hostile interviews. They're not always good. He's not always helping the cause, but he's got a lot of reps and he's an obnoxious, like slippery little shit who is kind of good at this stuff.
Yeah, I think a Socratic forum is a good forum for J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance is better in one-on-one interviews that are contentious with a national news reporter than he is on the stump or talking to someone trying to sell him a donut. He's better in the green room. He's better in well-lit environments. He's a green room creature, and I do worry about that. What I was thinking about this debate was actually the John Edwards. I don't know why it's...
It's 2004 for me right now. I don't know. I came out of the fucking time capsule. Do you support the surge? Yeah. Let me tell you about the last time I remember a disaster relief situation in politics. 2004. This is a coincidence. But the reason I was thinking about 2004 is because, you know, Dick Cheney had become like kind of like it was had this reputation of being a political hero. Yeah, sure. It became this sort of like, you know, this political Darth Vader. And John Edwards was this charming lawyer. And they had this debate where they kind of folks eat it up and had a really kind of mild mannered, good time. And I think it redounded to Dick Cheney's benefit because John Edwards made Dick Cheney seem like a normal person in that debate. Yeah. And the only thing I remember from it is him kind of really awkwardly being like your daughter.
who is a lesbian. Yeah, that was a weird moment. What are you doing, John? But like John, but Dick Cheney came out well out of that debate. And I was a little worried about that. Like, you know, Tim Walz is going to kind of like end up in this sort of folks each conversation with J.D. Vance and J.D. Vance comes away looking vaguely normal because he's in conversation with a normal guy. That was my concern. But the fact that they're previewing this traitor thing, I think that's fucking great. Like the more J.D. Vance is coming after Tim Walz and Tim Walz can just be like, I'm proud of my service to my country. Let's talk about Donald Trump. Let's talk about Kamala Harris. I think the better.
And I think that would be a pretty stupid strategy, which makes me think it's a head fake, but who knows? I do. I buy the spin from the Walls camp. Someone in the CNN piece about this recalls Walls saying, I think at a fundraiser, as teachers, we're trained to answer the question and we train our students to answer the questions. That's not how this goes. Barack Obama, also a teacher, felt the same way. He was not always great at debates. Kamala Harris was a prosecutor. That's like, debates are more her style, like the way that you prepare for trial, you know? So I worry a little bit, you know, about Walls, but I don't know. Maybe he's practiced a bunch and maybe Pete really gave it to him good and now he's all ready. Okay. Jesus.
Tom thought it. I can see what Tommy thought. I don't have the permission structure. I also was texting with some people on the Walls team like, are you ready to dominate? And they're like, you know, not quite how we're feeling, but we're making progress. So they're playing things down publicly and practically. And then there's a piece in the New York Times about J.D. Vance and his past debates. That was like an expectations. It's like the Walls campaign placed it, but it was like basically all about how J.D. Vance was like made for debates, just like what you said, you know? And apparently in Hillbilly Elegy, he talked about how he, in the Marines, he did media relations for the Marines. He's a combat correspondent.
me a valuable lesson that I could do it. I could work 20 hour days when I had to. I could be clearly and confident with the TV camera shoved in my face. So this guy has been like practicing doing this for a long time. And you're right. Like, I think interacting with humans, sort of tough, but like a debate stage. White nationalist podcast, great preparation for debate. And I think the smarter strategy for J.D. Vance than the traitor Tim stuff would be to run the play that Donald Trump was supposed to run at the Harris Trump debate and forget about Tim Walz and make Tim Walz answer for like.
Kamala Harris and all of the unpopular parts of the Biden-Harris record and her stuff. That's what I bet he'll do. Yeah, what's confusing though about J.D. Vance is like he seems smart enough to know that and then he goes on social media and like starts bickering with reporters all day. So there's an angel and devil on his shoulder. And they're both assholes. Fucking worst angel you'd ever fucking meet. He's such a weirdo. You can see him getting triggered by Nora and Margaret too because he's like these, they're just like shouting questions at him and he just, he already has an antagonistic relationship with every reporter and so I could see him. Yeah, I got real mad at Dana Bash. Yep, I could see that too. If you were Walls, would you go after him for?
the shitty things he said, or would you keep it all about Trump? I was thinking about this over the weekend. And I think the one place I would kind of go after J.D. Vance repeatedly is be like, J.D., I was a teacher for many years. I had a lot of students like you, like kids who were in a hurry to make a name for themselves and be someone. And they were willing to say and do anything to get there. Like, that's how you end up being the attack dog for a guy who doesn't care about working people who in 2020 you said had failed to deliver as president in a DM. And now you're running around the country, you know, telling lies and trying to divide the country. And then you try to like create this narrative around J.D. that becomes a motive for everything he says and kind of undercuts him and sort of gets at his lack of.
qualifications for the jobs. Maybe you slip in a couple lines about how old Trump is. But yeah, no, I don't think you're going after the greatest oppo hits. Like maybe you're mentioning some of the top ones like Childless Cat Ladies or lying about migrants in Ohio. But yeah, I mean, most of this is going to be just the Trump show and making him defend Trump. Couldn't agree more, though. That's a great strategy to have like one motivation for J.D. Vance and his career and just like keep coming back to that, right, which is just trying to do anything to get more power. Yeah, I do think using the new stuff about the 2020, like even after Donald Trump's presidency, you're saying these things, which is new and he'll feel obligated to respond. And his response is pretty bad. I don't.
I don't know if we've, do we cover this on the show? I think just so everyone knows what we're talking about. There was a Washington Post story about this, that J.D. Vance was direct messaging on Twitter with someone where he said in 2020 that Trump, quote, thoroughly failed to deliver on economic populism. And so pretty damning. One of the more damning J.D. Vance quotes. Even more damning. That line was followed by a parenthetical, accepting a disjointed China policy. Who says accepting?
Yeah, I do think that's pretty damning. And his defense is like, I was saying how establishment Republicans let him down, which is sort of embarrassing. But he'll feel obligated because he'll know Trump is watching. Oh, God, yeah. And so he'll have to respond. He'll have to respond. The only, if I was Walls, I would look for, I mean, that's one opportunity, but other opportunities to drive a wedge between Trump and Vance with either different positions they've had. Or remember when...
Fans fucked up by saying that Donald Trump would veto a national abortion ban. Trump said, I never told him that. I would look for him on that. And know that Trump's watching and try to make him be a supplicant for Trump and just embarrass himself. I think that's a real audience of one situation for JD. What's a win for Walls look like?
it's like a relentless message about trump being in this for himself and not working people and then just getting jd on defense yeah okay i think a draw is a win do no harm and yeah and just saying how great kamala is and her record and her you know her plans everything like that because again she i would say the only missed opportunity not really missed at the time but uh in the last debate she didn't get to talk as much about her plans her policies her values stuff like that she did but i think that walls could probably do that for her even better because he's essentially a surrogate for her, not just her bragging. Yeah, she went back to, like, aspirations and ambitions, but she didn't go back to the details that much. Yeah, I think a win will be a debate in which it felt like Tim Walz was kind of putting J.D. Vance... It's very similar. It's sort of a mirror image of Trump. Like, J.D. Vance is going to be a smarter, more sophisticated kind of bulldozer coming at him. But, like, kind of being able to put that aside and letting him get himself riled up while talking to the camera and, like, kind of... He comes away kind of seeming kind of nonplussed. Is that the right way of using nonplussed? Yeah, sure. And Vance seems riled. Seems angry. How much is this going to matter? Do you think the whole race is going to be upended if Walz does bad or does well?
I wonder, what's the worst VP debate performance? It's a good question. I mean, Sarah Palin even did fine, right? Yeah. They're usually non-events. No one cares. It is weird that it could be the last big event before voting, but no one will remember it by the time they're actually on election day. You know, it could cost a few news cycles to one side or the other, but maybe a, I don't even know. If the debate between Harris and Trump didn't... That's what I'm saying. I know, I know. I don't know. This is going to be the thing? Yeah, no, I don't know. When we come back from the break, you're going to hear my conversation with the one and only James Carville. Two quick things before we do that.
For tonight's VP debate, we're going to be hosting a subscriber live chat starting at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific on our Discord server. You'll be able to watch the debate live chat with fellow Crooked listeners and vent about J.D. Vance's awfulness in real time. Not a friend of the pod yet? Sign up now at crooked.com slash friends. We'll be doing our own recap show after the debate ends, but also make sure you're subscribed to our daily news pod, What a Day. You'll wake up with a 20-minute overview of the highs and lows of the Walls Vance showdown. Best of all, Tommy's going to be joining Jane Koston for the episode. Oh yeah, can't wait. Nice. It's very fun. It's a tradition like any other. Me going on water after debates. There you go. When we come back, James Carville.
On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Do not spend it alone. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Crooked Media Presents Live Election Results. We're going to have Jon Favreau, Don Lovett, Tommy Vitor, Stacey Abrams, Dan Pfeiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all going to help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. So here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3rd at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific for hot takes, catharsis, and as many results as we can possibly analyze.
On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Do not spend it alone. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Crooked Media Presents Live Election Results. We're going to have Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vitor, Stacey Abrams, Dan Pfeiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all going to help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. So here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3rd at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific for hot takes, catharsis, and as many results as we can possibly analyze.
Joining us in studio today, he's the subject of a new CNN documentary coming out this weekend called Carville, Winning is Everything Stupid, the legendary Democratic strategist who inspired a generation of hacks like me to get into politics. James Carville, James, welcome to the pod. Well, thank you. Excited to be here. Always good to have a conversation with another hack. That's right. That's right. So since Kamala Harris became the nominee, we've had a convention, a debate, millions in ads, saturated media coverage, and basically nonstop polling that shows a race that is essentially tied with five weeks to go. I know the last few elections have been pretty close, so this is unusual. I can't remember a race where the polling has been.
this tight for this long. What do you think is going on? Well, first of all, in this century, the only candidate that woke up election morning knowing they were going to win was the Obama 2008. We were still a little nervous, but everything else, you might've thought you were a little better shape, but you didn't know. You certainly didn't know in 2000. I mean, Romney was actually shocked that he lost. I mean, it was like he went there thinking he was going to win. So it's not unusual in what I will say.
they usually break an end. So if there's seven swing states, the most unlikely result is they break 4-3. They're going to break. Altogether. More likely than not. My instinct, but it's nothing but instinct, it's, you know, Kentucky windage, that it'll break Harris's way. But that's only instinct. There's no evidence to support that. Were you surprised at how fast the party came together around her candidacy and how fast her favorability ratings went up?
No. I think it was clear that people just wanted something different. It was like, well, 72% wanted something different. 60% of the Democrats did. And you know what I would, the analogy I would use is that if you have an infected wisdom tooth and they pull it, you feel great. You don't feel any better than you'd have felt if you didn't have the wisdom tooth. The fact that the wisdom tooth is gone, you're like, gee, I'm on top of the world now. And I think you had some of that effect. Like in the way that, it was 1245 central time, almost a minute when I got the first text.
I was listening to, you know, political radio. I forgot what it was. In our, at 145 Central, you knew that it had already called last. There was no appetite for anything else. Yeah. Were you worried at all that? Because I know you were initially concerned that it would appear either she was anointed by the party or even another Democratic nominee. And look, she did earn the nomination. But, you know, there was no other challengers. About 24 hours. Yeah. You know, Simon, if President Biden would have dropped out on June the 15th, there might have been a lot. One of the things that I do believe, the level of talent.
And the current Democratic Party is the highest level of talent I've seen in a political party in my lifetime. I mean, if you look at the potential presidential candidates we had, they're all like really world-class talent. And Harris has kind of proved himself to be a lot better than people. The other thing that I would have people tell me that, you know, she's gotten a lot better. I'd like people working at the White House. She's become more confident. She has better staff work. I think they brought Lorraine in. So I'm gratified. I saw her 2000 presidential campaign. Ooh, man, I think stunk. But she's grown. She has. She really has. It feels like Trump and Kamala are in a battle for voters' attention, which is increasingly harder to come by these days, the state of the media. I think it's one big reason that the Harris folks really want a second debate. So far, Trump's not giving it to them.
What do you think her campaign can do to break through in these last few weeks? Any creative ideas to grab people's attention? The answer is yes. Okay. First of all, what they do is they do big events very well. The vice president will roll out. You could say maybe I could see the picture. I don't know. But it was very well done. The convention, you couldn't walk away from there and not say it's one of the better conventions you ever had. You certainly couldn't walk away from the debate and not say that they did a real good job in preparing her. I knew some of the people that were in prep, but I'm really very confident she was going to do well. What is less certain is...
how aggressive they are day to day and how they don't take a story and kick it. So Trump says, I don't like to pay people a minimum wage. I just don't pay them. I mean, overtime. And Project 2025 has this overtime provision. I wish they would be kicking the crap out of this all day. I wish they were like flooding TV. Like, come on, people work overtime. They want to get paid. You know, hourly workers, overtime is everything to them.
So I thought that they could kick that a lot harder. And what I hope that they do coming down the stretch is push a story every day. And a lot of it is just the stuff they're proposing on taxes. People don't like. The other one they should be just kicking the crap out of is the tariff stuff. You see, we're down four in Iowa. That's understandable. Agrarian people can't stand tariffs. They have a terrible... Industrial people, some are naive enough to think they're going to do some good. I think they should be pushing the Peterson Institute.
Which, okay, nobody knows what it is, we know, but all credible people say this is going to be $2,500, $3,000 over to every family. I wish they would push that harder. Yeah. It seems like, I mean, it's been a problem for years now, but Trump gives you so many different targets every day because he says a bunch of crazy shit all the time. She has the added challenge of...
voters saying, well, I want to know more about her. I want to know what she's going to do as president. But then you've got Trump up there saying, he's talking about the tariffs, he's talking about mass deportations, political prosecutions. He just talked about going after shoplifting by letting police do whatever they want for one rough hour. How do you think she should balance talking about herself and talking about him? How do you handle it?
that if she ran hard, if they pushed the tariff stuff, people would find out something about her. I think if they pushed the overtime stuff, if they pushed something simple that everybody is for, but they just don't do, the minimum wage. It's time to give America a raise. Everybody else in the world has gotten a raise, but America's not got a raise. And I read the York Times story. It's so predictable. She did the interview with, I guess, Stephanie Rule. And of course, it's that same pissy thing. Well, she really didn't say anything. It was a lack of specificity hidden in the story.
was the fact that she put out an 81-page economic plan. Yeah. Like, why didn't... So we had, in 92, we had an 85-page economic plan. No one ever read a word of it, including me. But there is actually... Well, she lacks specifics. She's not talking about the issues in any depth. It's just this bromides. Well, actually, she does have an 81-page economic plan. There's no danger. I'm going to read it. But I think if people knew that... Yeah. You know, if they said, check out the 81-page economic plan. On page 32, she says, we need to increase the minimum wage to 12...
85 an hour. Yeah. Pretty good. All we need to take taxes over, raise taxes on people who make over $400,000 and put it in a first time home buyer mortgage relief fund to help young people buy houses. Yeah. Anything like that, you know, is going to be massively popular. It pointed out, but the New York Times is never going to say that she has economic specificity. Right. Because you just, you always say that no matter what. Yeah. And when she does interviews too, she can answer questions by saying, oh, if you want to know more, I have this whole book out there. And by the way, here's what Trump wants to do. Yeah. So there are.
I do think they can be more aggressive. I think they can fight for the news cycle. And I think that, you know, you don't get that back where one day you get a bunch of good stories and you poll that night and you say, well, shit, we didn't move. You got to keep building stuff up. So polling shows a big gender gap, including especially between young women and young men, white men, Hispanic men, even black men. It's been like the big demographic debate of 2024. Do you think this is a dynamic that is specific to Trump and the current version of the Democratic Party? Or is it bigger than that? How do you think about it?
been pretty outspoken. We don't do as well, near as well with males as I think you can do. And John, you know that every election brings about a fashionable demographic. NASCAR dads, soccer moms, women of color. I think that the demographic in this cycle with the most elasticity, they'll get in trouble saying this in some quarters, but are college-educated white males. I think we have a lot of, why do I say that? First of all, they tend to be more pro-choice.
than non-college white males. You know, I'm sorry, but we have mothers, wives, children, friends. And so much of this has become that abortion is a women's issue. It's actually somewhat of a male issue too. And the other reason I think that there's upside is, you know, because of obvious reasons, they're more invested in the stock market. They have more to lose. So I do think we have some...
We can't do any better than we're doing in post-bachelor white women. But we certainly can do better with younger black males. That's a problem that I think still largely said our cultures help create that. But I think the trendy demographic are college white males. And what do you think is the best way to lock down college white males? Keep talking about abortion. Keep talking about freedom. And say that Trump says, the argument is, is it a good economy or bad economy? It's very hard to talk people into something that they don't believe.
But Trump gave us a tremendous opening. He says, you have nothing to lose. We're going to try everything because it's all in a toilet. I don't think people look at it that way. I think people say, well, yeah, I got a job. I think most people, if you say, yeah, I feel pretty good about the next year, year and a half. Some people may have a savings account. Maybe they're doing a little better. And so if the question is, is it good or bad?
That's not the question we should be asking. Do you have something to lose in this? Can you do better? Yes. But if we do things like start slapping tariffs on everything, we're not going to do very well. You have something to lose. And he keeps running these ads. What the hell you got to lose? Actually, a fair amount. Yeah. And it's not just people like you and I have something to lose. A pipe that has something to lose. Yeah. I mean, that guy is all she is going down to the union hall and you got work every day. Yeah.
I know you've taken your share of shit for warning Democrats about identity politics and woke language and all that. I've always wondered about this from the perspective of Democratic politicians, like 99% of whom don't actually talk like that. They get tagged as, you know, woke party because of activists and people on social media that they have very little control over. If you're a Democratic politician or working for one, what do you do about this issue? Well, first of all, no one uses that language. I mean, it just don't. Okay. And it started and it was like an idea that never caught on.
All right. So there's no chance that, you know, I tell people, and this is true, I, you saw the film, I probably had more encounters with black people than any democratic consultant, just where I grew up and where I live. And if I was like, which I see all the time, let's just say there's three black guys shooting a bull out in front of the supermarket. If I walked up and I said, good morning, fellas, how are things in the community of color today? What's this giant ass motherfucker talking about? Okay. What I was saying. And.
I think it was well-intentioned people that just made a giant mistake and they tried to lead and no one followed them. And the best thing we can do is just move on. We don't need to go remind NPR that no one talks like that, that everybody knows no one talks like that anymore. There's no danger that Adam Schiff is going to be running for Senate in California and start talking about. Latinx or something. It's just not going to happen. There's no value in it. I love the documentary. It focuses on your life, your career, your marriage. A good chunk of it is also about your very vocal push to get Biden to step aside, which was a bit of a lonely crusade before the debate. I know that you probably weren't too concerned with the criticism you received during that period. There is a moment in the doc where you worry a lot about becoming one of those people you used to hate, the goddamn carping Democratic pundits who were never satisfied. How do you think about giving advice that's still pertinent and persuasive, even though you're not working inside these campaigns like you used to? So you and I work in campaigns.
And you would see people on television. Son of a bitch has no idea what he's talking about. We're sitting here 16 hours a day trying to, you know, crank out a schedule, trying to get spots written and talking points pushed and, you know, doing vocal TV hits. And this asshole's popping off. And I always, so here he says, well, yeah, that guy is sitting there and, you know, knocking down $35,000 of speech and, you know, sitting on TV. And I've always hated that kind of person. Yeah. And that's so true that I had become.
that which I had always detested. But I just didn't, because I was old. If you see the documentary, it's pretty clear that I'm in the midst of the aging process. I had, like you, I had maybe a better view, but who has an idea of what the job entails? It's not easy. And I had a platform. I thought it out. I talked to a lot of people about it.
I thought about it myself. I just didn't think I had any other choice. Just given the unique circumstances, maybe if somebody got really vocal, they would cut guests off from you. If you were lobbying, or you've had other campaigns you were working on, or even if you were working on foreign campaigns, they'd call. the government of Nigeria and say, you know, if you don't get rid of this son of a bitch, you're not getting something. I mean, but there was no pressure point that could be applied to me. And I just thought I was in a unique situation. I don't blame other people. And I would have people would say, God, I wish I could say that, but I can't. I couldn't have said this 15 years ago. Right. All right. But you can do it now. I'm sure you get asked a lot by young people for advice, especially people who are interested in pursuing a career in politics. I know one of the reasons you really...
wanted to do this doc or what you hoped from this doc was to get young people involved in politics again. What do you say to people who ask? Well, the origins of the doc was Susan McHugh. She's kind of a friend. I think it's post-pandemic. And she said, you know, I was a student at Rutgers and I started War Room. And she became Harry Reid's chief of staff at 30 years old. And Susan's just one of these like uber-connected people.
And she said, I want to make another documentary. And that was really the kind of origin of what started it. And, you know, whatever you call this, the profession, the business, the industry, it's taken a lot of hits. You know, so a young person says, everybody says it's dirty. It's all negative. It's all polarized. Everybody's in it for themselves. And guess what? That message actually broke through. I mean, they were actually successful in convincing people that this was a shitty business that shitty people were in. And that's just not people like you and I.
that work in campaigns. It's people who every election, Miss Mabel, who sits there at the card table and checks off the list. That's, you know, the person that walks the precinct, that goes into the projects, the flusher that goes to get the votes out. It's also the local newscaster that covers politics. It's the people that write about politics. And the entire business, to the extent that this movie lives beyond the cycle, which I hope it does, I hope it gives people like, you know what?
Those people looked like they were having a pretty good time. It didn't look like they went to work with a half shirt on. They were particularly embarrassed by the way they earned a living. Yeah. I think, Matt, the advantage we had was our director actually like worked, was a gopher in the Mondale campaign, was Susan Estrich's kind of assistant in the 88 Dukakis campaign, and covered politics at Vanity Fair. So he actually had some idea.
Because most people think, what kind of carnival barkers? You know, itinerant people, vagabonds. They move from one place to another. You know, and I hope, you know, some young John Favreau says, you know, some young Susan McHugh says, well, shit, maybe I want to be chief of staff. I'm 30 years old and be some Irish.
Woman from that went to Rutgers. That's fine. I mean, I was a kid when I first saw The War Room. And to this day, I can still remember your line that at the end, outside of a person's love, the most sacred thing they can give is their labor. And anytime you can combine labor and love, you've made a merger. Because that was the moment. That was the first moment I thought about getting into politics. So thank you for that. Well, thank you for that. Actually, you know, that's what I hope we're able to do with this movie. I mean, that's my hope is that, you know, 30 years now, somebody says, you know, I got out of UCLA or not.
I got an offer, but I thought I'd maybe run for the Sewage and Water Commission. Who would have a thought that one day I would be the governor of California? There you go. The doc is fantastic. It's called Carville, Winning is Everything Stupid. Directed by Matt Turnhour, premieres on CNN on Saturday, October 5th, and in theaters in New York, LA, and other spots across the country. James Carville, thanks for coming on Pod Save America. Thank you, and thank you for your current words about the war room inspiring you. I hope this will inspire somebody else. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's our show for today. Thanks again to James Carville for coming by. We'll have our VP Debate Reaction Show in your feed tomorrow morning. Bye, everyone.
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