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- [00:01]
Mike Pesca
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's tax season and we're all a bit tired of numbers, but here's one you need to $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for.
- [00:13]
Sponsor Representative
Possible identity fraud last year.
- [00:15]
Mike Pesca
Now here's a good number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com podcast terms apply.
- [00:30]
Jonathan Allen
Hi, it's Mike with a major announcement. It is not about the Gist. It is about something called the Gist List. So let me tell you. Every day I construct the show by reading and listening and imbibing a tremendous amount of information. A lot of it doesn't make it onto the show, of course. So what do we do with that? What do we do with the effluvia, the jetsam, the sods, but also the odds. Enter the Gist List. Every day on Substack, I will be compiling the most interesting, important, maybe unfairly ignored stories that I look at and say, there's something there. You know, we must nurture that which is interesting in this world. Some of these stories do end up as segments. They all start off as ideas. We need ideas. The Gist List is designed to interest you, definitely not to waste your time to make you smarter. To see where I'm heading every day on the Gist, so head over to Mike pesca.substack.com the debut is this afternoon. And sign up for the Just list. It's Wednesday, April 16, 2025, from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. You may have heard in such promos is the one that just played that we're doing a new newsletter every day on Substack. It's called the Gist List. I wasn't even gonna talk about it today. I was just gonna talk about something in the news. But what the newsletter is, is a compendium things I come across in the news. And I have to say, what a blessing. The news gave gifts today. So, for instance, I came across in the Washington Globe. I think the link is to the Washington. There is no Washington Globe. I came across in the Washington Post. I'm so excited. I'm conflating newspapers because of the Just List. Came across a story about a professor at Harvard and they're using Sarah Fortune, who's the chair of the Department of Immunology at the Harvard T.C. chan School of Public Health. They're using her to illustrate the effects of the crackdown of Trump taking away funding. So I came across the costs that Sarah Fortune is saying might have to be paid. And one of the trials, a vaccine trial that she has in place, uses rhesus macaque monkeys that is set to end in December. But I'll quote the Washington Post, there is a painful real time discussion of whether the monkeys may have to be euthanized now that funding has been abruptly pulled. We're halfway through. To have to euthanize these animals is so morally repugnant to me. Fortune said it. Yes, I would agree. Here's an alternate strategy. Don't kill the monkeys. I know you might run out of funding, but don't kill the monkeys. I know that killing the monkeys might galvanize public support, and yet I still have to offer this idea, don't kill the monkeys. But they're tucked away in the article. Was the idea that, you know, the funding's dried up and I was wondering, are the monkeys filled with a disease that that will give them horrible lives? No, I think she's just saying, look, you know, monkey feed costs a lot. We're just going to have to kill them. And yet I say again, don't kill the monkeys. Another story, and this was another great one tucked away, a detail of a story. A little scandal, very mini scandal in the New York mayor's race. Andrew Cuomo came out with a plan on housing and people noticed it seemed to be concocted by chat GPT. There was even a link that was a giveaway it was chat GPT. And there was some one day back and forth his rival saying the show is Andrew Cuomo, Cuomo doesn't care. And Andrew Cuomo spokesman saying, no, it shows like it's very relatable who doesn't use chat GPT. Now here's the detail in the next day story. The Cuomo campaign again, they dealt with this for about a day before they put this particular explanation forward, which seems somewhat compelling. Here we go. The Cuomo campaign said the policy paper was written by Paul Francis. Mr. Francis had his left arm amputated in 2012 and in an interview said he relied on voice recognition software. And that explains why language in the policy paper was a bit garbled. It's very hard to type with one hand, he said. So I dictate. And what happens when you dictate is, well, what we saw this to me to sit for a day on the story, you know, the explanation is our one armed staffer couldn't quite typewrite. And yet you don't say that. You don't put this forward, the one armed man explanation. It didn't work for the fugitive. Is it going to work for Andrew Cuomo? And also to point out that Andrew Cuomo was pushed out of public life essentially for the accusation that he was a bit handsy. I mean, that's what it amounted to. I could see the attraction of going entirely or at least 50% the opposite direction. But you just have to wonder if this really raises more questions than it answers. By a show of hands. Let's see if you think it does. Okay. I'm not being cruel to Mr. Francis. He, he has overcome and done a lot. It's more of a tweak of the Cuomo campaign. But really a thank you, a thank you for Cuomo, a thank you for Harvard, a thank you for the news. That is the news today and every day, five days a week. We will be giving you the just list over on substack. It's@substack.mike pesca.com and sign up and you'll find out how I think about the things I think about when I think about the show and other things that for whatever reason can't possibly find their way into the gist. That is called the gist list on this show. The Gist today. It is a full show interview about the 2024 presidential campaign. Now a few weeks ago we had Alex Eisenstadt on and he talked a lot about Trump campaign inner deliberations. Now to add to the body of knowledge comes Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Republicans are in this book. But man, what is going on with the Dems? That is the question that's answered. We talk about Biden's decline, the party ouster of Biden, Kamala Harris's positioning and the strategy of her 107 day campaign. Jonathan Allen, Amy Parnes are the authors and they join me up next.
- [06:52]
Sponsor Representative
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- [08:06]
Jonathan Allen
Fight inside the Wild is Battle for the White House starts with a great panopticon of multiple scenes and perspectives. So many players, characters, storylines, the question what the hell is going on? As Joe Biden melts down in a debate with Donald Trump, Perhaps you remember it. It sets the table. It cues the reader as to the level of sourcing. I mean, if authors Jonathan Allen and Amy Parness know that Ruben Gallego got Uber eats that night, what else do they know? We'll find out now. Jonathan, Amy, welcome to the gist.
- [08:43]
Mike Pesca
Thanks, Mike. Good to be with you.
- [08:44]
Amy Parnes
Thanks, Mike. It's good to be here.
- [08:46]
Jonathan Allen
I'll not direct any question to each of you in particular. You guys take them how you will, but let's start here. Is it possible? Do you really think it's possible to learn lessons from the campaigns afterwards? Because I've read both of your books. I've read the Heilman and Halperin books. I've read all these books, and it does seem that no one ever learns. So I know I'm starting sort of at the end rather than the beginning, but what do you think of that? Do. Do the consultants read the books and just throw them away and not learn?
- [09:21]
Amy Parnes
A lot of people came after shattered after we wrote our 2016 book. A lot of Democratic consultants would tell me that they read the book and they were learning from it. But when you look at what happened during this election, it's almost like as if they're running, you know, the 2016 playbook again, or perhaps 2020. It's almost like they didn't learn their lessons. And this is why we write these books. I mean, not just to look back, but to give people a playbook on what went wrong on both sides and what went right and what they can do, what they can improve upon.
- [09:55]
Mike Pesca
And I think what's really important in terms of looking forward you know, we live in a different political environment now, but the cast of characters that run these campaigns is very much unchanged. And I think what's important in terms of looking forward is if you are a voter, a book like ours, and our book in particular, kind of gives you a sort of list or a guide of things that you should be demanding from your party and from your party leaders, and a way for the voter to sort of understand which candidates are running campaigns in the right way that might make them successful in the future. And, you know, I think we're likely to get open primaries on both sides in 2028 with lots of candidates. And if you read this book, you'll have a better understanding, I think, as a voter, of what. What to avoid in candidates and what to, you know, what to support in candidates.
- [10:46]
Jonathan Allen
Well, the prospect of an open primary certainly hungover one of the most important decisions in this race. And we'll get there. But first, I was very interested, and I will be reading, in fact, interviewing Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, who's writing a whole book about how the media missed the fact that Joe Biden was far more mentally degrade than we have been let on. But you have a lot of good reporting there. And in general, although at one point you do say or quote insiders saying that, however, Joe Biden was struggling in 2024, it really kicked in. So let's note that. And they were hiding that. But also, I was highlighting in the book incidents from 2020 to 2021. So can you talk about a couple of the incidents that you unveiled that showed that Joe Biden, you know, might have been struggling as mightily as we saw in that debate stage?
- [11:40]
Mike Pesca
Yeah.
- [11:40]
Amy Parnes
I mean, for starters, you had Eric Swalwell a year earlier, the congressman from California. He goes to a congressional picnic at the White House, and he couldn't remember him. We have other details in the book where President Biden is leading a small group of people around the White House and his wife, Jill Biden, is trying to kind of stop him from doing so because, you know, he's saying, do you want a chore? She's saying, no, they don't want this tour. And he's leading them into these random rooms.
- [12:15]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah. He takes them to the, like, the pool. He takes him to the pool house. And this was the group of the representative who had died, and he didn't realize that she wasn't in the room with him.
- [12:26]
Amy Parnes
Exactly. Exactly.
- [12:28]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah. So there are all these incidents, but I got the impression certainly there are people trying to keep it from the public. But I got the impression that if everyone in even the top reaches of the Democratic Party could have compared notes, they might have understood this isn't happening very rarely. This is happening very often. We just don't have visibility into it. Did any one of your source sources like Eric Swalwell or anyone else come to that conclusion?
- [12:59]
Mike Pesca
It's a great conclusion, Mike. And I think it's true that some of it is that this information is sort of fractured, right? It's little, little bits here and there. But I also think that Democrats were deluding themselves and happy to delude themselves, right? They thought Biden was their best chance. And even if they didn't think he was necessarily their best chance, they thought that there was no way to like, get him out. He's the president running for reelection. He's going to win renomination. They, the Democratic Party, you know, changes its system to make it easier and to ward off potential challengers. So they, I think even the people that were worried about it felt like they were stuck with him. And so at that point, you know, you're only doing, I think their view was you're only doing damage to him. If you say something about like, oh, he looks old or look, he looks mentally degraded and at the same time, like they, I mean, there's complicity in their silence. Like the collective neglect, I think is the way we put it, you know, in the, in the book. But like, I, I mean, they knew they could see what everybody else could see and they decided to delude themselves and to try to deceive their voters about his state because it was the path of least resistance, because it was the path that they thought was, you know, collectively thought was most likely to end up in Donald Trump's defeat. And it all blew up on them on a debate stage.
- [14:19]
Jonathan Allen
Well, I wonder how much they knew because of what you chronicle that some people get little glimpses through or straw. But I know on the show I would, I was open to evidence that he was struggling. I was also covering incidents where Republicans or Republican aligned media would exaggerate his struggles, you know, and you could always write that up as fake news. But I know, I also know that whenever I talked about, well, it really seems like, let's say the her report, it really does seem that this guy spent a lot of time with Joe Biden. He couldn't remember the year his son Hunter, his son Beau died. And he put it in the report and he did it because he said, I can't bring a prosecution. He's a well meaning elderly man. I got enormous pushback from maybe not Democrat insiders, but from died in the wool Democrats who not only didn't want to hear it, told me that I was falling for Republican talking points and they believed it. And I remember Eric Swalwell before Congress, he led the charge to try to discredit Robert her, the very same guy who met with Joe Biden who couldn't remember Eric Swalwell. Well. So did they really know or did they maybe for whatever reason, like, like diluted self interest, not know that much?
- [15:39]
Amy Parnes
Yeah, I mean, I think there was a bit of delusion happening and as John mentioned, I think it's tricky for people when you have a sitting president no one wants. It's why people go on background with a generally. Right. Because no one wants to piss off the White House or the President. And so I think while it was apparent to some and there were questions, I think no one wanted to ultimately cross him. And you know, they, they pointed to the fact that like, look, he ran a pretty successful first term largely. He had a great State of the Union appearance. It's almost like people were convincing themselves that he could, he could remain in office and he could run another term. But yeah, I think that was always sort of in the backdrop. I know that as reporters we were always trying to get at it and we're always sort of pushed back by the White House and they would get really, really upset. And that's what people don't understand. I think a lot of people keep accusing the media of being asleep at the switch here. I think for the most part we were kind of onto it the whole time.
- [16:51]
Jonathan Allen
Did you let the public know? I mean, I don't mean you personally, but what was the appetite at your day employers, NBC News, the Hill, certainly if you had some scoop, they'd go for it. But were they pushing you every day saying we got to put something out on Biden's mental degradation or. Yeah, let me ask that. And then.
- [17:09]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, so I mean, on a, on a routine basis, if not daily. Close to daily. Yeah, we were, we were looking for that. There was a, it wasn't you have to put something out on it. It was do the reporting, ask the questions. And you know, the problem for journalists and I think a lot of folks don't get this, you know, because there's such a blending of news and opinion now in the, in the media. If you're a news reporter, you're not a doctor.
- [17:36]
Amy Parnes
Right.
- [17:36]
Mike Pesca
Like I can't watch Joe Biden on television and diagnose him with something. And if I did, I should be fired from my job. So the question is, can you get people close to him to talk about what's going on and how good or bad is it? And, you know, the people who are closest to him have the most incentive to be dishonest about it or to, you know, to not talk at all about it. Or to Amy's point, she said, people, the White House got upset. I would use a different word. They got aggressive, they got threatening. And that didn't deter us. Like, we kept doing the reporting. I know. And I believe NBC was the first to report that he was using short, you know, the shorter stairs under the belly of the. The airplane. I know we, you know, reported on various. On various accommodations that his team made for him to make him not seem as fragile physically or mental, mentally. But it all gets kind of thrown into the wash of, you know, the sort of meta narrative that the media missed this. We were. I was reporting on it all the time to the point that I think the Biden White House was pretty angry with me throughout the entirety of the Biden presidency. And, you know, our last book was called Lucky How Joe Biden Barely Won the presidency. These are not people that love me and Amy.
- [18:51]
Jonathan Allen
Right, right. But. But when the. I don't know, this might be a little journalistic inside baseball, but when that Wall Street Journal story came out by Annie Lynske and Siobhan Hughes, this was in June 2024, it was assailed in much of the media as poorly sourced, relying too much on Michael Mike McCarthy, who. Who was in your book, too, what was the attitude in your newsrooms or in your circles on that question? Did they. Were you jealous that they nailed it? Or did you say something like, well, if that was the level of reporting, I could have done that weeks ago?
- [19:29]
Mike Pesca
No, the attitude was, get more. The attitude inside newsrooms was, look what they got. Why don't you have that Go get more?
- [19:40]
Jonathan Allen
So let's bring it up to Biden is out. But then there is a question of how long would Biden immediately endorse Kamala Harris? Would the party get behind Kamala Harris? How close? And we should also note, and this has been reported, but you give great details, that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama definitely weren't full force behind Kamala Harris. They both wanted an open convention. How close did we get to that?
- [20:09]
Amy Parnes
I think we got pretty close. I mean, well, for starters, we should. We should back up and start with the fact that the Biden folks were, you know, scrambling at the time. We all knew that they, their money was being cut off. People were pointing to poll numbers and saying, look, doesn't look good. And they were pushing back in a really hard way, as we reveal in the book. I mean, they were getting aggressive, so aggressive that they would push back against Kamala Harris. John and I looked at emails sent from Biden's closest advisors to donors that said, look, if you do this, you're going to be stuck with Kamala Harris. They were putting that in email and, you know, trying to scare people of the fact that this is the outcome that Harris would be the nominee. But yes, I mean, at the same time you see Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama making calls. They're hearing from people. Nancy Pelosi is almost collecting information and then bringing it to Biden's advisors privately. And then we see what she did publicly. She went on Morning Joe and said he had a decision to make. Barack Obama's doing the same thing. In fact, as we report for the first time in the book, Kamala Harris is trying to coalesce the base and everyone around her. And at the same time, Barack Obama is calling people like Jim Clyburn and Clyburn knows that the former president's about to call him and says, gosh, I have to get behind Kamala Harris quickly before this call, because he knows that Barack Obama is going to pressure him into an open primary and he knows that's not the right decision. So all of this is happening kind of at the same time also at the Harris team is also planning at the same time. I mean, I know they were saying publicly that they were not doing any of this. You know, a couple of hours before Biden actually calls Kamala Harris to tell her that he's dropping out, her closest advisors are in her pool house at the Naval Observatory discussing what it would look like, what the switch would look like, and when. So all of this is revealed for the first time in our book.
- [22:26]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah, he, they were negotiating the length of minutes between Biden dropping out and the endorsement of Harris. And that actually that stuff's very important. These weren't details like did Joe Biden jokingly put on a MAGA hat that really mattered, Right?
- [22:45]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, the sort of ability for, for clips to go viral. You know, he puts on a MAGA hat jokingly and, and it goes around. And to this day, in fact, a couple days ago, my son, my 13 year old son said to me, didn't Joe Biden endorse Donald Trump? And I said, what do you mean Joe Biden endorsed Donald Trump? He said, well, I saw him with a MAGA hat on. So didn't he endorse Trump instead of Harris? And like, let's stop watching you. I mean, Everybody should watch YouTube, the right things on YouTube. But I was kind of like, I don't know, man. Like, maybe you should watch TV with your dad when we're dealing with politics, because obviously that's not true. But it got around the. It got around the world. And, you know, I think that the suggestion is one that stuck around in some ways. Each of these things is, you know, sort of of a different kind. Right. Like. Like we don't have, like, deep reporting on why Joe Biden put the MAGA hat on, because who knows why Joe Biden put the maga? It's just a momentary thing, but I think there are so many other details that are important about, for instance, the negotiation between Biden and Harris over, you know, him endorsing her. I mean, if he doesn't endorse her immediately, it's a big vote of no confidence. And yet he wants to wait because he wants to take a victory lap and soak in what he believes is this great moment for him of voluntarily giving up power. He compared himself to George Washington when he spoke about it publicly, and he wanted it to, like, sit out there for a few days. And Harris is like, if you don't endorse me now, I'm not going to win the nomination or it's going to be a lot harder. And so they had to go back and forth, multiple calls. Like Amy said, we reveal for the first time in this book.
- [24:34]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah, so Pelosi and Obama do want the open convention. Obama comes across as a cipher in this book. There are many times where people are wondering what Obama is thinking or when is Obama going to come in with his endorsement. Or things like Obama or the Obamas can actually be in the video where they quote, unquote, endorser because Michelle's not camera ready. And you have a line or two about how Barack Obama spends most of his time a Martha's Vineyard golfing with celebrities and sports stars. You have another line about how when George Clooney came out with that op ed, it was seen as very important because there wasn't much distance between George Clooney and Barack Obama. But this, this goes to present the idea that, you know, George Clooney is a more public figure and a more politically engaged and knowable figure than Barack Obama. So was it mostly reporting or reality that Obama is this strange cipher in Democratic politics who is much less involved than maybe you'd think or want him to be.
- [25:44]
Amy Parnes
I think he has this. There's this perception around the former president that he's this engaging, gregarious rock star of a president, but he's never been a party guy. And a lot of Democrats kind of blame him for Donald Trump in a way, because that's when you kind of saw the collapse of the Democratic Party. He had his own self interest in mind and he was building up his own brand and his own post presidency. And so what you kind of saw here is he obviously has his fingerprints on it, but he doesn't take as active a role as someone like Nancy Pelosi who genuinely cares what happens to the House and the Senate and the presidency. But she jumps in because she's hearing from her people on the House floor. They're calling her and texting her and they're saying, you know, I'm sorry, that they're scared that she's going to. That they're going to lose in their districts. And so Obama is a very. He's an interesting figure in this, in that he. He doesn't think that Joe Biden can win. He didn't think he could win in 2016 and in 2020. He has his doubts now and he wants to kind of keep his options open because he also has his doubts about Kamala Harris, which is why I think he's ultimately pushing for another alternative.
- [27:08]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah. And not to be defined by the outcome, but just in terms of process in wanting an open convention where Pelosi and Obama. Right.
- [27:18]
Mike Pesca
I think what they. And you know, what happened toward the end is I think Nancy Pelosi stepped off the gas a little bit on that. I think that's what she originally wanted. I think by the end, she was kind of resigned to the idea that it had taken too long for Biden to get out, to actually have some sort of mini primary leading to an open convention. But she and Obama wanted that for sure. And I mean, I think it was delusional to think that it would have helped the Democratic Party to have an open fight about whether or not the first black woman vice president was going to become the nominee. After the president stepped aside and after Biden endorsed her, he had all the delegates, like 90% of the delegates were in his column. Those delegates were pledged to him. They were pledged to Harris as the vice presidential candidate. And I think there was going to be a lot of blood on the floor if they had an open convention, they could have tried it. I think it would have destroyed the party, maybe not just for this election, but for future elections, too. I mean, you can just see all of the backstabbing that would go on over a short period of time. And particularly the Democrats would have had to wrestle with this question that they struggle with, which is how to deal with how to deal with the division that would have been, would have, would have come up if they tried to skip over Harris.
- [28:43]
Jonathan Allen
And we'll be back in a minute with more of Jonathan Allen and Amy Parts and we'll talk about just that. What Jonathan just said, what would happen if you skipped Kamala Harris, the first black female vice president, to be the nominee? Back in a minute with more of Fight.
- [29:03]
Amy Parnes
Foreign.
- [29:07]
Jonathan Allen
We're back with John Allen and Amy Parnes. They're the authors of the book Fight. And what we were talking about before was something that's not unmentioned in the book, but it's not emphasized. Is it one of those things that you guys felt didn't need to be emphasized, Kamala Harris's race, gender, skipping over a black nominee? Though I will say the book points out that Bakari Sellers, CNN pundit Donna Brazile, they were making calls emphasizing this. But was it in your mind, something maybe didn't need to be said?
- [29:36]
Mike Pesca
It was an explicit point in the argument that they were making. I think all the Democrats believed that that was a, you know, a factor to, to be considered. Even, you know, even those who wanted an open convention. I think their view was even if it's bloody and ugly and we have a race fight within the party over it, that it's worth doing that because Kamala Harris is such a bad candidate. I mean, that was the view of Obama and others, that it was sort of worth the pain. You're right. We don't overemphasize it in the book and we don't avoid it in the book. I think it is relatively self explanatory once you mention it, which is, you know, I think that's why we treated it the way that we did. I think most people can understand, you know, all the equities that are at stake there and all of the sort of internal democratic dynamics about, you know, on the one hand, being champions of women's rights and being champions of minority rights and celebrating the first of this and the first of that and then being confronted with, well, what happens if we, you know, essentially decide to jack someone who is in position to move up, who is, you know, who has These immutable characteristics of being a woman and being a person of color. And so, I mean, I think, you know, we. To your point, we showed Brooke Bakari Sellers and Mignon Moore making that point. I'm sorry, not minion Donna Brazil making that point, because they were making that point and it was a real one. But also, you know, not the only consideration. I mean, again, Joe Biden had all these delegates, so once they get released, if he's endorsing somebody, a lot of those delegates are going to go with the person he endorses. I think that the outcome of a convention would likely have been that Kamala Harris was the nominee and there would have been a lot of blood on the floor in between.
- [31:28]
Jonathan Allen
Mm. During the time when she was trying to consolidate her power and use her political skills and suasion to get other potential rivals to not run for president. The different governors. You have this scene where she's talking to him on the phone. And Harris discovered a theme emerging from some of the most prominent governors. Instead of jumping to endorse her or laying out their own thoughts, several asked her to explain how she thought the nomination process would play out. Harris smiled to herself. I'm lapping them, she thought. They are asking when the race starts. It's good detail. Here's what I drew from it. That Kamala Harris is very good at intraparty politics. Maybe she's even too good because she has risen to such a place. She's in position to be president because of her skill and success at intraparty politics. But that does not map on to success in the general election or even in a primary election the time before. What do you think about that insight?
- [32:36]
Amy Parnes
Yeah, I mean, look, I agree with you. And look what she was able to do. I mean, she had to walk a very. She had to walk a tightrope in this situation. Right. She couldn't get ahead of President Biden. She was in a very precarious spot. But she was carefully trying to figure out how to navigate the situation, which is why, as I mentioned before, she had all these advisors in her pool house talking about what to do next. So she's. She's skillful in the fact that she knows exactly where she needs to be. And I feel like people don't give her enough credit in that way.
- [33:15]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah. I don't want to give our listeners and viewers the impression that there is no Trump in this book. There's a lot of Trump in this book. There's a lot more than was in the Hillary Clinton book. That shattered the 2016 book, which you're on the show for John. The main dynamic within the Trump campaign, basically within Trump himself, is he always wants more attention, but there are times when not having attention is in his interest. Was he. Did he mostly understand that and know that there was time to take the foot off the gas, or was it Susie Wiles mostly saying to him, not now, hold your fire? Where was the. And it seems like a weird word or phrase as. As applies to Donald Trump, but where was the forbearance coming from within Trump world?
- [34:09]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, so, I mean, he was chomping at the bit right after the debate. He was angry that Biden was getting all the attention, even though it was negative attention. He calls up his communications director and basically says, you got to change the narrative. You got to get my name into the headlines. You got to get my name on tv. And, you know, I think the entire Trump team, led by Susie Wiles, really tried to impress on him, you know, the sort of the. The art of war lesson of not to get, you know, not to get in the way of an imploding enemy and, you know, not take the shrapnel, not distract from what's going on on the Democratic side. I think it was very difficult for Donald Trump. But what you see from Trump in this election, very different from 16, very different from 20, very different from how he's conducted himself in the presidency in both terms, is this. This willingness to be disciplined about things like that, to go against his nature, where he thinks that it may be helpful to him in trying to win the election. So he stays quiet for a while, and then Harris takes off, and his team tells him, don't worry, she's going to take off, and then she's going to fall back to earth. And it was taking a long time, and she was taking off more than they thought, and she wasn't falling back to earth. And he assigns Corey Lewandowski, his 2016 campaign manager, to go down to Palm beach, where the campaign is headquartered, and start, you know, messing around, tooling around. Corey starts auditing things, and he reports back to Trump that, you know, that Trump's being built, that the campaign's being mismanaged. And there's this really dramatic scene in the book where, you know, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita were annoyed at what Lewandowski was doing, and they went to Trump and they said, look, you gotta. You kind of gotta make a decision here because this is untenable. Like, this guy's mucking around in the campaign. We've gotten you to the point that you're, that you're at, and we think the plan is working. And Trump calls Corey Lewandowski forward onto, you know, on, on Trump Force One and sits him down and points at Susie and Chris and says they're in charge. And then he tells Corey to like, go campaign for him in New Hampshire, which is a state that is not in the mix of one of the top.
- [36:19]
Jonathan Allen
It is Lewandowski's home state, his home state.
- [36:21]
Mike Pesca
But it was basically like, just, just, just get out of the way. Corey, love you, but try not to mess this up. But I think the important thing about this, Mike, is Trump stayed very disciplined for him within this campaign. And I think Susie Wiles was good at doing that. I think she was good at deploying other people to get in his ear to counter the voices that are always encouraging him to go with his instincts. And what you see now, I think in the second term is almost a reaction to that, that feeling of being handcuffed, restrained, self disciplined. Now that he's got the power, now that he's the president, he is not interested in being disciplined anymore. Right. He's going to go out and say exactly what he wants, do exactly what he wants. You know, I don't want to compare it to like, well, I won't do that. But I would just say like any of us, that we exercise a bunch of discipline. You know, you run, run five miles, you know, every day for six months and then you don't do it the next day, you're never going to do it again. Right. You're like, all right, I'm done with that period of like excessive self discipline.
- [37:26]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah, but you'd have to admit that, one would have to admit that at least what Trump did in sidelining Lewandowski somewhat effectively showed executive decision making and good executive decision making. If there is a heel in this book, it is, and not excessively so. But it's Jennifer, Jenna Malley Dillon, who was top Biden adviser and then ran the Harris campaign. She got inherited and she comes off well. Read some quotes. O'Malley Dillon's cliquish top down leadership style Mean Girls Campaign edition. One Harris adviser said, I don't think she, Harris understood that Jod was a dictator. She does not come across well. She does not come across as liked. In retrospect, it seems that she didn't make the right decisions. But I wonder, all these quotes in the book and people who are in Harris world now with the knives out, doesn't it raise the point that Kamala Harris was in charge. And anything that Jod did that hurt the Harris campaign, Harris or those in her world can only blame Harris. She's the one who authorized Jod to make these decisions, right?
- [38:41]
Amy Parnes
I mean, yes, but I remember she has 100 days left in the campaign, so she essentially.
- [38:48]
Jonathan Allen
107 days. And I want to ask about that next, but please go ahead.
- [38:51]
Amy Parnes
Exactly. And so she. She inherits people like Jod because she has 107 days left. You know, I think she has respect for her. Obviously, they go back to the White House. I think they had a pretty good relationship, but she didn't really get to bring in her own people and her own ideas. She was almost handcuffed in certain ways when it came to staff. And we talk a lot about that. We have a chapter called Fuckery where you see the civil War that's essentially playing out inside the campaign at the time, where her. She brings in people that she's close to, she being Harris, but they're almost sidelined, and the Biden people are allowed to continue. So. And, you know, the list goes on and on. I think she had to make decisions according to. She essentially inherited his campaign and had to make those decisions according to. And, you know, as we report in the book, he essentially handcuffs her as well, he being President Biden, and says, no daylight, kid. Yeah. And so she is left to carry, you know, his. His legacy and his administration. And basically, as New Voice, it's him.
- [40:13]
Jonathan Allen
Whispering in her ear. No daylight that informs her disastrous view appearance. Can't think of a thing.
- [40:17]
Mike Pesca
Mike. Can I just. Amy. Amy explained the. But I'm gonna go to the yes part of what she said. Yeah. Ultimately, it falls on Harris, and there are all these limitations and reasons why she keeps the campaign team in place, but also I think it speaks a little bit to her lack of confidence. You talked about Trump's executive leadership making a decision. He made a decision to court calm rather than chaos, which is unusual for him in casting Lewandowski out and keeping Wiles and La Civita in charge. I think with Harris, she's a presidential candidate at that level for the first time. She had previously run once. It was a disaster of a campaign for some of the same reasons that this one had difficulty in terms of the infighting and stuff. But I think she gets into that position, and she's like, well, the people around me, the people that, you know, who were. Who built this campaign for Biden, they're the pros. I should, you know, listen to Them. Right. Like they know what they're doing. And I. You know, there is a different world in which she walks in and takes kind of command and control and says, here's my campaign manager. I'm not going to book any fighting internally. I'm going to go out and talk to the media immediately. Instead of. Instead of, you know, going weeks and weeks without doing interviews, I am going to distance myself from Joe Biden in a way that suggests I have a vision for the future of the American economy. She could have done all those things and did not. And I think there were a lot of forces working against her. And Amy described a lot of them, including Biden pushing back on her and saying, don't distance yourself from me. No daylight. But there is a different world in which she approaches this differently. I'm just not sure that that's. I'm just not sure that's who Kamala Harris is.
- [42:06]
Jonathan Allen
I started the interview by talking about, does the political class, the political consultant class, learn anything I want to ask about the media. You guys do a wonderful job. I could never do it after the fact. You fill in all the details so that the story is fleshed out. And we talked a little bit about during the fact. You're trying to do that to some extent, but as a critique, do you think your colleagues in whatever we call the mainstream or legacy media were. I don't want to use the word cheerleading, but given that the alternative was a Trump presidency, had a finger on the scale for really going after and dishing as best they could and unearthing all of the negatives of the Biden presidency and the Harris campaign.
- [42:59]
Amy Parnes
Yeah, I mean, it's. That's a really interesting question, Mike, and I think. Where to even begin on this. But I, you know, I do think that it's tough to cover these races. First of all, I think that. John, you might have a better thought, because I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this. But it's.
- [43:22]
Mike Pesca
I don't think the media covered itself in glory in this race, but I also don't think the media is mono. I also don't think the media is monolithic. And I think it's. I think the media is better when it is less monolithic. We have so many platforms now, and, you know, I mean, you know, if you're a listener or a viewer or a reader, you. I mean, I would just encourage people to go to multiple platforms. The only thing is that, you know, people go to the same one. They get the same sort of information over and over again. But, I mean, of course, other than your show, everybody should just go to your show all the time.
- [43:56]
Amy Parnes
The fact that people are just listening to. It's like they're listening to themselves, and they're not doing enough of the outreach and listening to other people.
- [44:06]
Jonathan Allen
Wait, who are the people who are listening to themselves? The consumers. Media consumers?
- [44:11]
Amy Parnes
Yeah.
- [44:11]
Jonathan Allen
Is that what you're saying?
- [44:12]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, we get the critique all the time. People say, you guys didn't cover X in the election. And I'm like, the person that's leveling that usually on X is not aware of all the work that I did and all the work that Amy did and all the work that the reporters at the New York Times or ABC News or wherever they are did. And most of the things that the folks know came from reporting from legacy and mainstream. And it's like, you never covered this, and, like, how do you know about it? Oh, because we covered it. And it's difficult. You know, the campaigns don't want us to unearth things, and you just keep pushing and pushing. I remember I kept pushing on the McDonald's thing. You know, Kamala Harris worked at McDonald's, and there were no receipts for it. There were no pictures of her working at McDonald's, and I pushed her campaign on it, and they were like, she did. And I'm like, but do you have evidence? Can you show me any evidence? And they're like, yes, she did. Like, what are you. You know, and like, I don't know what to do with that. I mean, you keep pushing and, like, it's hard to prove a negative. I don't have receipts for her not working there. And so, you know, I mean, it's. It's frustrating as a reporter, but you can only report what you actually have evidence for. And. And that's difficult. But I just, you know, I would remind listeners, viewers, readers, that we are not all the same person, that we are not a monolith, and that we are interested in good stories. And I think the reason that Amy and I have had success with our books and Fight, as we're speaking, just hit number two on Amazon for all of books last week, which is like, I mean, we're competing against Easter Bunny books and Mel Robbins and whatever, and we're number two in the country. And I think the reason that we've had success is that we don't care that the Biden people are angry at us or the Harris people are angry at us or the Trump people are angry at us. We're just looking for what happened and to try to tell people what happened in the most, you know, hopefully the most engaging and compelling way. And I think, you know, I hope you feel this way, Mike, but I think it's a pretty fast and engaging read and that people will enjoy it in the way that they might enjoy a good fictional story, even though all the things are true.
- [46:26]
Jonathan Allen
Trailing Only Egged the Battle for Easter Confections. The name of the book is Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Jonathan Allen, Amy Parnes, thank you both so much.
- [46:38]
Mike Pesca
Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Mike.
- [46:45]
Jonathan Allen
That's it for Teddy's show. Just it's produced by Cory Wara and cbso Michelle Pasca, Oompuru G? Peru Duparu. And thanks for listening.