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- [00:00]
Sam Stein
Hey, guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. And I am privileged today to be joined by three of the nation's preeminent political reporters. Tyler Pager, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey. They are the co authors, co authors, triathlors, whatever, of the new book, 2024 How Trump Retook the White House and Democrats Lost America. Tyler and Isaac are not sharing a room. They just have the same backdrop and from the same hotel. Josh, I have no idea where he is. Probably the same hotel, too. But I wanted to. Before we get into it, I did want to say, and I mean this sincerely, is a great book, like a legitimately great book. There is so much fresh reporting in there on a subject that I thought we knew a lot about. But every page feels like there's a new detail. And it's a testament to the type of reporting you guys bring to really interesting and important story. So kudos to you all. We're going to just kind of go around the horn here, but I wanted to start by just. I guess most people who watch this don't understand what goes into deciding to do a book like this and how you actually go about executing on a book like this. So, like, how did you guys decide that the three of you were going to collaborate on a book like this? And. And what was the plan of action for executing on it? Tyler, you go first, and then Isaac and then Josh.
- [01:13]
Tyler Pager
Yeah. Well, thanks, Sam, for having us and for the kind words.
- [01:16]
Sam Stein
You can Venmo me later, buddy. Okay.
- [01:19]
Tyler Pager
But, yeah, it's a great question. I mean, we set out more than almost two years ago at this point because we felt that this election was going. Going to be hugely consequential. At the time, it was shaping up to be a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And we knew that it would have historic consequences for not just the United States, but for the whole world. And we felt the only way to tell that story was Tim, as you said, to have a new detail on every page. Everyone around the world was watching it play out in real time. We all saw the debate, we all saw the campaign ads. We could see that up close. But what we couldn't figure out was why they made these decisions, what was happening behind the scenes. And in order to do that on the timeline we did, it takes a lot of work. And one of the hallmarks of the Washington Post, where we all work together, is collaboration and collegiality. And so I was covering the Biden White House and Biden campaign, Josh and Isaac were covering Donald Trump and the Republican Party, and it felt like a natural partnership to bring our reporting and writing skills to bear to tell the definitive and comprehensive story of this election.
- [02:26]
Sam Stein
Yeah, but it's funny because you seem to have separate tracks of reporting, and I'm kind of curious if, like, you know, you start comparing notes and you're like, oh, man, Tyler's got a lot of good shit and I don't, or, you know, vice versa. And like, and also, what are the plan of attacks here? Like, do you play off of each other? Do you say, you know, bring this to your sources or bring that to your sources? Like, how does it actually work? Operational?
- [02:48]
Isaac Arnsdorf
Yeah, I mean, that's part of the collaboration that Tyler was talking about, you know, and broadly, Joe, Josh and I focus more on the Republicans and Tyler was covering the Democrats, although he's now a Trump reporter. Also, to cover this amount of territory in this short amount of time, it took teamwork.
- [03:05]
Sam Stein
Josh, you've been following Trump forever and you kind of. Anyone in the business. Well, I know, I was thinking about it, like, back in 2016, did we think it was going to be, you know, what is it, nine years now? Geez, were you ever concerned? Like, what more do we have to say about this guy? Like, what more is there to even unearth?
- [03:24]
Josh Dawsey
Yeah, I mean, that's why I'd never written a book. I thought there was probably a lot of it was done in real time. And, you know, there has been so much reporting done on him by, you know, folks at the Times, like Maggie and Swan and, you know, folks in my new paper, the Journal and the Post and ABC and Politico. I mean, it feels like there's a crazy amount of stories every day about him. I will say the thing that I enjoyed most on the Trump side of his project was like, taking time to, like, really a lot of times covering Trump, you sort of are like filing a crazy story for that night or that weekend. You're getting someone on the phone for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, you're like asking them as many questions as they can until they hang up on you. There's like a real sort of rat, a tat, you know, like 90 mile an hour roller coaster. And what we were able to do here that I enjoyed really a lot was have four or five, six hour interviews with people where we sat down with the important players on the campaign on both sides. But Tyler did a lot of the Biden and Harris ones and actually try to understand the meaning of what they were doing and not just, oh, we've got to file this tonight. Can you give me a quote? Or we have these two details here or there. Can you confirm that that was said or that happened? Because that's what a lot of the Trump reporting for me has been over the years. Like, you know, filing a lot of copy and he moves at such a crazy speed that this was the first time, really the exception of sort of a big January 6th project that we did at the Post. It was the first time I felt like I had enough time to sort of step back and like try and sort of understand a little bit more of like the psyche and the like players and what they were really doing.
- [05:20]
Sam Stein
Well, let's jump off that. Although it's not in my sequence of questions, but you did raise it. I mean, the beauty of a, of writing a book is that you do get to sort of understand these people at a depth that I don't think Daily News reporters can get to because you spend time with them, you study them, you talk to people who know them, so on and so forth. What is. And Tyler, we'll start with you because you cover the Democrats. But what's one thing about Harris and what's one thing about Biden that where you feel like the public perception actually is wrong and that from your own reporting you got a different flavor of them as individuals.
- [05:54]
Tyler Pager
Yeah. I think one of the interesting storylines about Kamala Harris was there was this intense period in the early part of Biden's presidency where she was just being eviscerated by everyone, including people in the White House. They just thought she was doing a pretty bad job. There was that famous moment with Lester Holt where he asks her why she hasn't been to the border and she says, well, I haven't been to Europe. And so that sort of of the, the high or the low point of. Of her tenure in that early period, her staff are fighting. It's sort of a mess. And then there's like a two year period where a lot of people just aren't paying attention to her all that much. And sort of behind the scenes, she's re. Overhauled her staff and sort of found her groove on some key issues, particularly abortion, where she sort of became the forefront of the administration's response, in part because Joe Biden just was not interested in that issue. In fact, he was probably opp. Opposed to some of the things his.
- [06:50]
Sam Stein
Administration might have doing Prominent Catholic. Right. It was not comfortable for him. Yeah.
- [06:55]
Tyler Pager
So I think one of the interesting things is how much. She was able to sort of quietly transform her reputation, at least internally within the White House, and also practice because we see her come out guns blazing after she takes over the campaign and has these very successful early campaign appearances. There's a lot of sort of, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking about she should have been out there even more, doing more media, not hiding away. But those rallies were quite successful in ginning up energy and also consolidating the party behind her. And so I think that transformation, which we cover in the book over the course of several months, is a really interesting thing for Harris and also potentially portends what that might mean for her future as she mulls her run for California governor.
- [07:38]
Sam Stein
Is there a similar thing with Trump where, like the. So the public perception is not quite attuned to what's actually going on in private? Isaac?
- [07:46]
Isaac Arnsdorf
I think so, in that we have some private moments with him in the book where he is showing himself to make these shrewd political calculations that are at odds with this kind of madman that he plays on the rally stage. The moment I always think of is after he got convicted. And Larry Hogan said everyone should respect the outcome. And Chris Lacivita, one of Trump's top advisers, who, you know, is kind of the ID side of the operation, goes after Larry Hogan. And then when he sees Trump privately, Trump says, go easy on Larry. We need the vote. And so, like, for Trump actually to be the one saying, like, don't attack their help, you know, you don't expect that. And so he, he was, he actually, you know, he's not, was not like, a disciplined candidate. You know, there are also lots of scenes where his aides and advisors want him to talk about the economy, and he doesn't want to talk about the economy. But he was more focused and he was more able to kind of let things go and keep his eye on the prize.
- [08:58]
Sam Stein
I don't know if the anecdote says more about La Civita or Trump. Yeah, go ahead, Josh boy.
- [09:04]
Josh Dawsey
And I also think in real time, as these investigations into his conduct were sort of mushrooming, inspiring, and there were more charges and, you know, search warrants and subpoenas and all of the various things from Jack Smith and Georgia and New York, he was sort of like, swinging wildly away at prosecutors. And I think the common sort of perception was Trump is so angry about these cases and he's losing his mind. And reporting found that to be somewhat true. But what it also found was he sort of had, like, and his legal team a more holistic strategy. About these cases and how to, like, systematically, you know, delay the cases until he could be the nominee, how to sort of diminish the prosecutors, how to use them for political gain. I think. I think what happened on the criminal side and all of those, you know, various charges he found himself against is like he had a. He had a more, like, intuitive, and I would maybe even argue, like, slightly more sophisticated, going to pugilistic pushback against those cases and those prosecutors that I really understood at the time, like, that was one of the things that reporting, you know, sort of born out for me.
- [10:25]
Sam Stein
Now I'm just gonna note the fire alarm has gone off in our building. I'm gonna actually stick around and ask some questions. But if people hear the firearm in the background and if they read about my death tomorrow, that's why the cases actually were kind of interesting. Because in your book, it's pretty clear that that's why he won, or at least one of the real reasons he won, which is that the Republican Party really rallied around the guy as soon as he was indicted, and in a way that even surprised Trump. I mean, he's quoted in your book telling you as. I was surprised by it. And I'm kind of curious if the Democrats felt the same way. Like, oh, my God, this is happening. It's actually not a detriment to him, but it's, you know, it's helping his candidacy.
- [11:03]
Tyler Pager
Yeah. I think the Democrats really struggled with how to respond to Trump's criminal problems, in part because some of were prosecuted by Biden's own Department of Justice. And so they wanted to make it clear that the President was not ordering his attorney General to prosecute. Prosecute his chief political opponent, I think. So there was just, like, a lot of challenge for Biden and the Democrats to figure out how to message around this. I do think that there was some alarm that the Republican Party was so quickly consolidating behind him. But also, if you remember, I think Democrats thought Trump was the person they could best beat, or at least Biden thought that. Right. Biden said, I beat him once, and I'll beat him again. And so the idea of facing Trump, who they felt, you know, would be wounded by the fact that he was a convicted felon, they were eager to exploit that. They just didn't really know how to do it because of the complications of the Justice Department involved in that. And I think one of the interesting moments in the book that really captures this is towards the end when the Supreme Court rules on the immunity decision, and there's this sort of debate about how Biden, Biden should respond. And Hunter Biden pops up out of nowhere on a, on a conference call that aides didn't even know he was part of and sort of urges his dad and his aides to like, do a full throated response in the Oval Office. The White House lawyer at the time, Ed Siskel, says that's not a good idea. We have to be careful about making Oval Office addresses. Ultimately, that's not what they decide to do. But clearly it was a source of tension because Hunter chimed in out of nowhere to sort of weigh in on that, on that call.
- [12:42]
Sam Stein
Well, what's going on? I want to get back to Hunter in a bit, but, like, what's going on in the Republican side of the ledger? I mean, there's so many rich anecdotes of just befuddlement from, like, the DeSantis camp being like, we cannot break through. And you and you have this weird duality where Trump in theory should be at his nadir. He's just been arraigned and yet his power internally with Republicans is only consolidating and growing. Surely there must have been immense frustration from his political opponents as this was transpired.
- [13:13]
Isaac Arnsdorf
Yeah, I mean, Trump was actually at his low after the midterms when he launched the campaign, and he had regained so much strength with a head start that everyone gave him to, to redefine his candidacy and remind Republican voters why they liked him such that he had, was already running away with the polls by the time the first indictment came. And the desantis people will argue that there was nothing that they ever could have done at the point that Trump was going to get indicted four times and that was going to take over the news. But really, if you look at the sequencing, what happened was DeSantis disappeared. Like, DeSantis missed his moment. And if, you know, imagine the counterfactual where everyone had jumped in and said, you know, Trump is old news, Trump is a loser, Trump is done. And by the, the time the indictments came, it would have been kicking a guy who was down. Not. But let me, let me, let me.
- [14:11]
Sam Stein
Let me push back on that. And I'm kind of curious for your take and Josh's take, is this a game of tactics like, or, or the macro trend such that nothing would have actually mattered? Like, yeah, sure, let's say Ron DeSantis jumps in a couple months earlier. And I know he had issues with the Florida state law. Right. He couldn't necessarily do it. But let's say in theory, he. Does it. Does it change anything? I mean, that. I guess that's. That's sort of the prevailing debate is like, how much of this is about tactical decisions and how much. How much of this is about sort of macro trends.
- [14:40]
Josh Dawsey
Well, I think we talked to the desantis people, which we did for the book. They would say, a, we didn't run a great campaign, and we concede that we made a lot of mistakes, and B, we could have run a perfect campaign and it really wouldn't have mattered that Trump was going to be the nominee after all of this happened. And I think that's basically true. I mean, here's really the question, right? If he was more weakened when those first charges happened in New York and his base had sort of moved away from him. I mean, you could see sort of how the other Republicans, Trump said, you know, to me in the interview for the book, I couldn't believe how these guys came out defending me so quickly. I was even surprised at it. Right. And I think if he'd have been more weakened, they may have seen opportunity, you know, for proverbial blood there, so to speak. Right. They could have, you know, potentially attacked him, but they all felt like where he was at, you know, they begrudgingly had to defend him. And then the question is this, right? Like, if you're running against someone and you're saying that person is great and that person's being unfairly attacked, and that person was the best president ever, but you should also vote for me. Like, that's a hard argument to make, right? Like, why wouldn't you just vote for the other person? And, like, I think there was a real time.
- [16:05]
Sam Stein
It's like, why did they pop him up so much? It was crazy conundrum there.
- [16:09]
Josh Dawsey
Yeah.
- [16:10]
Sam Stein
I don't know. Isaac, what do you think about that? Like, is this. Matt, I. I get caught up on this. Like, how much of this was just sort of baked into the cake and no matter, you know, it didn't. That's true with Democrats, too. And we can get to that in a second tire. Like, oh, yeah, maybe Kamala could have gone on Joe Rogan, and maybe that would have made a difference. But, like, would it have? I don't know.
- [16:28]
Isaac Arnsdorf
Yeah. I think in both cases, like, the reporting in the book shows that the renomination of Trump and Biden wasn't inevitable. It's just that the parties treated it as inevitable and so filling. Right. It's like all the Republicans were unwilling to attack him, and so. And so he regained strength and, and, and then his campaign went out there showing the polls and said, hey, we're running away with this. Get on board. And same thing with, with Biden. You know, there were all these Democrats who were, you know, the next generation who were ready to launch their campaigns and give them the little, you know, hint, hint, it's time to step aside. And, and they all chickened out and got outmaneuvered by the Biden apparatus that changed the primary calendar and made it look like they were supporting Biden. So, yeah, I mean, these were tactical things.
- [17:20]
Sam Stein
That's a good point about the advisory committee or whatever it was, where they just stuffed all the potential opponents.
- [17:25]
Tyler Pager
And I just think on the Democratic side, like, if you looked at the polling, the majority of Democrats said they didn't want Biden to be the nominee. So yes, there were structural factors that made it very difficult for any for a Democrat to mount a credible primary challenge to Joe Biden. Them changing the primary calendar, them creating this advisory board that basically, you know, cut off the knees of any Democrat that wanted to run against him. But voters wanted something different. I think that's one of the things that when we were writing about this in real time, there's a lot of coverage of this, like poll after poll after poll showed Democrats were not excited about Joe Biden, Joe Biden running for a second term. So there surely were, to your point and question about, like, could Kamala Harris have done Joe Rogan? Like, was that going to change the election, given by the margin Trump won and sweeping the battleground states? No, probably not. But it's these series of decisions and listlessness and, and sort of, you know, just over and overthinking and trying to square the circle that sort of contributed to the sense of paralysis that hurt the Democratic Party across the board.
- [18:28]
Sam Stein
So one toxic thing that obviously did matter was the debate performance, which was a catastrophe for Biden. Stepping back, you guys are launched on this book. Well, many, like over a year at this point ago, you have this idea of what it's going to be. You've been doing all this reporting. Just talk to me about what that period, that three week period was like as book authors and how it sort of affected you.
- [18:55]
Tyler Pager
Yeah, I mean, I'll take this question just to start in part because I was on Air Force One and in the pool with Joe Biden for the debate and the four days after that. So I had a firsthand view to what his circle was doing and what he was doing. It was a surreal experience. I remember getting to JBA about to board Air Force One and I run into some of Biden's aides and I said, I how are you guys feeling? Just came back from Camp David and they're like, he's going to do well. It's all good. But I think the other thing just to note is we had started obviously writing and reporting this book before that moment. And the first chapter reads very similar now as it did before that debate. Like the idea that age was not a central concern and something that we were deeply reporting on much before that is a fallacy. I mean, that early draft of that second chapter where we open with Phil Murphy and talk about how these, all these Democrats were going to run was there because that was what was in the air pre midterms and right after the 2022 election. So that fast forward like it was obviously a shocking performance just given how bad he was. That being said, I saw Joe Biden for I've covered him for almost six years now. I've seen him. He's not and has never been the best public speaker. That was, you know, the worst I've seen. And so just sort of that period was this, you know, start and stop. And we have this, this excerpt that ran in the New York Times that sort of captures this. But I think the defining feature of that three week period is the insularity of Joe Biden. And it's funny, I'm getting more messages from sources now after that story ran about, oh yeah, Joe Biden was, didn't even know how much money his campaign was having, how much like he was really in the dark. I mean, obviously there was wall to wall coverage of it, but he was very much insulated from a lot of external voices during that period. And that helps explain why it took almost, you know, three weeks for him to drop out.
- [20:43]
Sam Stein
That was that your experience, Josh?
- [20:45]
Josh Dawsey
I also think, you know, the book changed a lot in that period because, you know, when we started this book, I think we all viewed, I guess I probably shouldn't speak for my dear friends and co authors here, but I think we all view Trump is probably going to be the main character of the book. Right. Whatever happened, it was a lot of a Trump story there 10 years from and he was going to make a triumphal comeback or, or he was going to have a sort of ignominious end in a way. And I think that sort of reshaped the book. I mean, so much of the most compelling material, frankly came from Tyler and on the Dim side because that part of the book and the change of the nominee and sort of the whole summer really changed the whole trajectory of the book. I mean, we started writing a book sort of about a rematch. And. And I think by the end, I mean, it was obviously a totally different book. And so during that period, I think we were all so busy, all of us at the Post at the time, just trying to cover the daily insanity. And then once sort of things settled out, I think we went back and tried to figure out what else really happened.
- [22:04]
Sam Stein
Yeah, no, I remember living it. And Tyler, you had to get sourced up in Harris world suddenly. Not that you weren't, but I'm just saying.
- [22:10]
Tyler Pager
Yeah, I mean, I cover changes. You know, I covered her campaign in 2019, and it was really an interesting experience to have covered that campaign and then covered her again. I mean, one of the things about that campaign was that it was mostly the same people. Some Harris people would say for worse. But I had known her circle because I'd covered her as vp. But of course, when it shifts so dramatically, as Josh said, of course the book was transformed. But I just think it's really important to note that that beginning stuff was. Was all there. It wasn't like this came out of nowhere.
- [22:44]
Sam Stein
I want to just kind of step back a little bit and talk about how the campaigns became kind of reflections of the candidates. And I think you guys talked. Wrote about this a little bit too. You know, for Biden, it's kind of like this meandering, slow, lethargic enterprise that really reflects his age and is, you know, even his gate and, you know, and it's all closed off and very insular. And for Trump. And some of this is misperception, right? Like, you guys have already dispelled some of this, but for Trump, it's like, you know, chaos agents that are disrupting everything and throwing against the wall and seeing what sticks and just demanding the attention and all that stuff. Did you find that those are fair descriptions or those kind of, like, tropes that we as political journalists can lean on, where it's like, oh, yeah, now everything Trump touches is chaos, and everything Biden touches is slow and lethargic.
- [23:31]
Isaac Arnsdorf
I remember one of the Trump people telling me, like, a generic campaign is a bad campaign. Like, the campaign has to be built for the message, which has to fit the messenger, right? And, like, that's one of the things that they got about Trump that worked is like, he was an authentic messenger for the message that they were. And they all, like, that worked all the way down the operation. And. And what Stuck with that about me was when you saw like basically Biden, because he had no, his personal popularity was so bad, like the Democrats basically ran a kind of generic off the shelf Democratic presidential campaign. And then, and that was such a contrast. And then when they swapped out the candidate, they just kept running the same campaign. Like Harris never got a chance in those hundred days. Whether you think that a campaign that was true to her would have been better or worse, that's not the campaign she had. It was, it was the same generic slash Biden campaign based in Wilmington. And they never, they never made those fundamental strategic decisions that ordinarily would come years ahead of time.
- [24:47]
Sam Stein
I want to go back to Tyler here and I keep coming back to you, but like why didn't they do. I mean you have in the book that they had plans to, you know, you know, name a Republican cabinet member and you can go through some of the names they were in the book and they had a chief of staff in place, like they had things they could done. You, you record that they had an answer prepared for how they were going to break with Biden, but you just didn't do it on the field for some, for some God forsaken reason. I don't know. But like what was it? Was it just like caution or was it as Isaac said, that they had a structure in place and they just couldn't get out of that rigidity?
- [25:17]
Tyler Pager
Yeah, I think there was a whole host of things, I mean, one of the reasons Harris was advised when she took over the campaign that it was, would be too disruptive in too short of a time period to overhaul the campaign. Obviously Biden's closest aides, Mike Donlan, Steve Ruschetti, Anthony Bernal and Tomasini, they were moved out and there were some new people brought in, David Plouffe and the like. But David Plouff was not a Harris guy. Right. David Plouffe was an Obama guy that Tony West, Harris's brother in law, was friends with, that he brought in. And so the structure in Wilmington, they just felt they needed to keep it in place because they just, just didn't have enough time to, you know, really reinvent the wheel or move it or whatever. I think there was just a sense, I mean, one of the really remarkable scenes in the book that I think might interest your audience in particular, Sam, is there was this, you know, period in early fall, September, October, where the Harris advisors are meeting to figure out how to define Donald Trump. They're worried his approval ratings are too high and they have these hour Long zoom sessions where they throw around different monikers. Dangerous Donald. And eventually what they settle on are the three UN's. Unhinged, unstable, unchecked. And, you know, there's this moment where some aides are like, we've been running against this guy for almost a decade, and we still don't know how to run against him. Like, I think that is part of this sort of just struggle that the Democrats have been in for a long time. And it was part not not knowing how to run against him, but also what she was running for. I think she has long struggled with sort of a message. And this is something I saw in 2019. She had all this excitement and energy at that big Oakland rally. When she launched that campaign, she didn't even make it to the Iowa caucuses. So I think there was this. This thing where she just didn't have a clear message about what she was running for and who she was running against. And that is not usually a successful formula for winning presidential elections.
- [27:13]
Sam Stein
All right, I got to get you guys out of here because you have about 25 more interviews to do for your book tour. But I'm going to end on this question and we can start. Josh, go to Isaac, go to you. Ty. Election night, you know, I went into it with some uncertainty. I pretty much thought Trump was going to him, but I didn't. You know, it wasn't a guarantee. I certainly could have conceived of a way that Harris could have pulled it out, and the polls certainly had that as a possibility. But as people who are, like, documenting this and writing about it day in and day out and talking to people on an in depth level, were you surprised when election night came and Trump triumphed in the way he had?
- [27:45]
Josh Dawsey
I don't know that I was surprised. I mean, talking to Trump's folks, senior people in the campaign, for weeks leading up to the election, there was a supreme confidence. And I didn't think it was just a confidence of like, oh, we gotta say this publicly, even privately. I mean, I remember I was down in Palm beach the day election day, and I went out to lunch with, like, several of his advisors, and they were all like, pretty calm and chill. We're gonna win. And these are the margins and these are the numbers, numbers of Fabrizio is sitting around, you know, we would have to. This. All these things would have to happen. And I think my reaction was like, either Trump's definitely going to win this election, or these people are all going to be spectacularly wrong, and there's going to be a Great story on, like, how they miscalculated, you know, in one of the biggest ways ever, because I just picked up so much confidence from them. You know, I think if you lived in Washington, right, there was probably a sense that he, he maybe could not win again just for probably lots of people hoping, but data was pretty clear down the stretch. He was going to win.
- [28:50]
Sam Stein
Isaac, I guess the question for you, like, and then to Tyler, you know, it's, I guess it depends on your vantage point. But, like, what's like the overarching lesson of the election? Is it, I mean, what's the main storyline? 1A is like resurrection, triumph of Trump, you know, is the tragedy of Joe Biden. Is it a mix of both? Like, what were your main, what's your main sort of thematic takeaway from how this all played out?
- [29:12]
Isaac Arnsdorf
I mean, can I say, like, listen to the voters, right? I mean, the, the, the Trump campaign just had a better theory of the case and a better read on the electorate. I don't know. And, you know, like, the, I mean, the Biden theory of the case was when people are faced with a binary choice between Trump and Biden, they're going to come home to Biden.
- [29:34]
Josh Dawsey
Wrong.
- [29:35]
Isaac Arnsdorf
The Harris theory of the case, I'm not sure I actually, like, I'm not sure she ever really articulated one. And, you know, the Trump theory of the case was a reach. Like, I think that we were on, on solid ground to be skeptical is like, okay, you're going to run up the score with men because you have issues with women, and you're going to get a bunch of people who don't usually vote to vote. Like, all right, like, hard way of going about it, they pulled it off. But I think that the lesson from that going forward is that could be hard to replicate because you're relying on people who don't usually vote and the personal appeal of a guy who's term limited.
- [30:13]
Sam Stein
What do you think?
- [30:15]
Tyler Pager
Yeah, I mean, I just will always remember I was in Philadelphia at the final rally that Kamala Harris was doing, Lady Gaga performed. And I got a call from a source, a senior official on the Harris campaign, and they said they had just gotten out of their final closeout meeting and the analytics team did their final presentation and they had them losing. They had them losing very narrowly. And we report those numbers in the book, in that chapter about election Eve. And I came out of that thinking, you know, it, it's not determinative that she's going to lose, but it seems pretty clear that it is headed that way. And so I think, you know, I had that insight there. And the Harris people said, you know, well, it's within the margin of error. It could go either way. It's going to be tight. We still think we could pull it off. But if their numbers were saying they were basically going to lose the night before, they're usually pretty on this.
- [31:10]
Sam Stein
Then maybe about. Talk to a little bit about Joe Biden. Like, what is that? It's complicated, obviously, but what is the ultimate legacy that he leaves is a stubborn man who just didn't know when to leave the stage.
- [31:22]
Tyler Pager
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really one of the things that this book carries out is a sort of psychological study of Joe Biden to a certain extent. We have in the book that when he first met the wife, when he, his first wife's parents, they asked him what he wanted to be and he said president. And they said, of what? And he said the United States. So this man has always wanted to be president. He's been in public service, you know, more than half his life. And I think what's important to note is he thought he was doing a good job and he has this chip on his shoulder that no one ever gave him the credit he deserved. And they felt the 2022 midterms were validating his strateg and his presidency. They would often tell me, look, historians rank Joe Biden one of the most successful presidents in American history. Historians don't make up enough of the American population to determine who's going to win the presidency. So I think a huge part of his legacy is this decision to run again and to set the party up for failure against Donald Trump. And I think they were keenly aware of that. And that is one of the reasons he ran. They thought he beat him once and he was the only one that and beat him again. And in fact, as we have in the book, some of his aides still believe to this day that he should have stayed in the race and he would have won. There's no polling that suggests that to be true, but I do think that there is this. The, the, the legacy of Joe Biden has been very complicated by, by this. His whole reason for running in 2020 was he thought that Trump was an existential threat to the, to the country. And arguably he paved the way back for his return.
- [32:53]
Sam Stein
Well, look, I appreciate you guys joining me and I appreciate the viewers for watching through a tumultuous video, including a RLM in the office that has gone on, on and off. So I survived that one. I encourage people to buy the book, too. 2024 How Trump re took the White House and the Democrats Lost America. Josh D. Isaac Einserv, Tyler Pager, thank you so much. Appreciate you guys. Good luck selling this thing. It deserves to be sold. And we will talk to you, hopefully, a little later.
- [33:18]
Tyler Pager
Thanks so much, Sam. We really appreciate it.
- [33:20]
Isaac Arnsdorf
Thank you, Sam.
- [33:21]
Sam Stein
All right.