← The Rachel Maddow Show
The Rachel Maddow Show
For Trump's opponents, a model for finding their fight to stop him
00:50:13
While Donald Trump has made clear how he intends to wield his power and retain his power, the most pressing question for Americans is how his opponents intend to stop him. Jon Ralston, founder and CEO of the Nevada Independent, and author of the newly published "The Game Changer: How Harry Reid remade the rules and showed Democrats how to fight," talks with Rachel Maddow about how the Democrats' best political tactician and savviest fighter in living memory would have handled stopping Trump and retaking power before it's too late.
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A
Had to boil it down to something really, really simple, perhaps over simple but simple. What we have learned in the past year is that there is no ambiguity at all, no suspense about what kind of designs President Donald Trump has on this country, what he wants, who he is, what his intentions are, how he's going to try to do it. Even there's really no mystery at all. So the time for warnings and red flags, you know, watch out, this might be coming. That time is over. It's here now. We are living it. It is the challenge of our generation. Because of that, I really think that the most important thing to try to understand now, the most important thing to report on, the most important news story in the country, the true black box open question. The what's gonna happen here edge of your seat drama in our lives right now is not at all about Trump, about whom there is no mystery, there is no ambiguity. It's not about Trump at all. It's about Trump's opponen. How strong will they be? How strong can they be in trying to stop him from doing what he wants to do? And from the start of this second term for Trump, some of the most shocking and interesting questions there have just been about the most basic part of it. Namely who is the opposition to Trump? Who is a Trump opponent right as he tries to overthrow the US System of government, who is standing against him and who is not? And of course we saw that the tech billionaires all immediately get into bed with him. We saw the non tech billionaires get into bed with him too. We saw powerful, supposedly confident, supposedly patriotic people and entities just cave instantly to him without a fight. Big powerful law firms, universities, business, so called leaders, The real opponents of Trump, the people who really are standing in opposition to what Trump is trying to do. I think one of the things they have to figure out now is if they can get those kinds of people back on their side if they can get those people who caved, the people that decided to plight their trough with, with, with Trump, to get into bed with Trump. The real opponents of Trump are going to have to decide whether they can get those people to cross back over, to defect from Trump and to once again, you know, join their country, join the opposition to Trump in trying to defend the republic against him. Right. The real opponents of Trump are going to have to decide if they even try to do that or you just give off, give up on those people, write them off and decide, you know, basically you're going to have to fight them too. That's going to be a really major question in 2026, whether any of the people who made the, I think moral, strategic, political error of siding with Trump, whether they can be peeled off and brought back to the other side. So that's gonna be very interesting to watch in 2026. I think that's becoming a very, very ripe question for this year, as is the question of whether the frontline institutions that do day to day battle for our democracy, whether those institutions are still gonna be standing by the end of this year. Right. Institutions like the press. The press, of course, is wobbling. Pro Trump oligarchs have started buying up the press. Many of the remaining major news organizations have been targeted by Trump and have responded by cowering and trying to appease him. The press is absolutely wobbling. Legal system is wobbling. He's now turned the US Department of Justice into an unprofessional mercenary force that just attacks on command in the judiciary. It's a more complicated picture, I think. But the Supreme Court, very clear, they're not wobbling. They're already. His Supreme Court is definitely gone. The military is wobbling. That's a very big deal. You know, when foreign countries start looking like they might fall into dictatorship, the first thing, you know, we start googling and thinking about those countries is, is what's going on with their military there. Is the military in that faraway country still professional and independent, or can this would be dictator count on being able to use the military against his own people to accomplish his takeover? Right. That's like the first thing you look to when you're reporting on some sort of coup, some sort of anti democratic authoritarian overthrow in a faraway country? Well, in our country. What's the status of the military vis a vis what's going on in politics? Well, the military is wobbling. Our military is wobbling with its professional ethics just wrecked by Trump and his radical defense secretary, you know, with the legal bright lines that used to bracket the actions of our military, those legal bright lines have essentially been rubbed out and very quickly. So I know there's a lot of reasons to be worried, There's a lot of reasons to be disgusted, a lot of things to think about in terms of what defenses we have left to try to keep the republic as we head into the second year of Trump being back in office. But there are also reasons to be confident, to be impressed, to even be inspired. There's reasons to think that this next year might see Trump really bluntly fail at what he's trying to do. And that's, again, it's a story about the opposition to Trump. And I think the reasons to be hopeful, the reasons to be sort of impressed come down to two things. Two core components of the opposition to Trump that are things that he has not been able to win over and that he is losing against, losing against now losing against this past year. And he seems to be losing against these things more and more with each passing day. Two core components to the opposition against Trump, and their strength is considerable, and their strength will determine the fate of our country in very short order. I believe it. Two components of the opposition to Trump. The first of those two things is something that you hear me talk about all the time. You can say it with me now, right? The people. The people, by and large, stand in opposition to Trump. And that is evident not just in the polling, as Trump's approval ratings fall through the floor, particularly with independents, but also just in absolute terms. I mean, his approval ratings have fallen through the floor and then down into the basement and then through the basement floor into the bedrock. He is just despised as a political leader in this country in almost unprecedented terms. And at the same time, the people have been willing to show that not just in the polls, but also in the streets, in large, diverse, sustained, widespread, ongoing, relentless, effective, nonviolent protest against him at levels beyond what anybody expected and with infinite capacity for future growth. As long as those protests stay nonviolent, they have infinite capacity for future growth, and they are poised for explosive growth. Trump and his administration are absolutely undone by the protests. They cannot handle them at all. The closest he can come to handling them is to pretend that they are not happening. These protests are popular, they are effective. They are seen as being on the right side of history. They are seen as being on the right side of the American credo. They are attracting new kinds of people to do new kinds of protest all the time. And that means at a popular level, the opposition to Trump is big, organic, growing and sustainable. And in political science terms, when it comes to standing up against a despot anywhere in the world, that popular opposition is the closest thing we have to magic. So that's one. I said there's two. There's two components of the opposition that Trump can't win over, can't break, and that right now are beating him. The first is the people. That's the one you hear me talking about constantly. But then there's the other one, which honestly I almost never talk about at all. Other people in the news talk about.
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C
Them all the time.
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A
Lots of people on Ms. Now talk about them all the time, are real experts on it. I almost never talk about them. And it is, it's the, the political opposition to Trump, the Democrats who I almost never talk about, I will admit it, but the Democrats are the party that is poised to take the House and maybe the Senate this year. It is the party that has wiped the floor with Trump and the Republicans in the off year elections this past year. And in basically every special election of every consequence held, any, of any consequence held anywhere in the country since Trump has been back in the White House, Democrats are 100% unified against Trump. That's not a given, but it has happened. Democrats uniformly stand against Trump. That's very important. And as a unified opposition party standing 100% against Trump, their political star is rising right now everywhere in the country. And they are poised to take control of one of our three branches of government. If our democracy is still in good enough standing later this year to allow a free and fair election, to allow the American people to vote, to put them back in power, which they will do if this fight for the Republic, for our constitutional democracy is going to be one the path to get there is not a plan to win a civil war. That is not how it's going to happen. The plan to save our democracy is a plan to save it by Democratic means. That means popular opposition to Trump. It also means political opposition to Trump. It means we really, really, really need to know right now as a country how good the Democrats are at this. How well the Democrats can stand up against Trump and his Republicans? How good are they at being political opposition against a would be despot? How good are they at fighting him? In this era of the Democratic Party, in living memory, in Democratic Party politics, who's the best they've got? Who's their best tactician? Not who's the most charismatic, who gives the best speech, speech or even who's the best on television? Who's the most effective leader of movements or of electoral campaigns? Who's their best at fighting? Who's their best tactician? Who's their savviest fighter? Who is the Democrat who most knows and best knows how to win political fights, even when it takes really hardball tactics to do it? Well, you can try to prove me wrong. We can argue about this, I know. But if you ask me, I'd say there is a pretty good case to make that in living memory in this modern era of Democratic politics. The name you are looking for is Harry Reid. Harry Reid, who was a senator for 30 years. He died in 2021 at his home in Nevada. The dean of Nevada political reporting, one of the best political reporters in the whole country, John Ralston of the Nevada Independent has just written a book about how Harry Reid showed Democrats how to fight. That's the title, in fact, of John Ralston's new book. It's called the How Harry Reid Remade the Rules and Showed Democrats how to Fight. It could not come at a better time. John Raulston joins us next.
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A
John Ralston has been covering politics in Nevada for more than 35 years, reporting for the Las Vegas Review Journal and the Las Vegas sun and the Reno Gazette Journal. He has hosted shows in Nevada, on public television, on local channel 3 in Nevada. And, oh, there is a story to tell you about that. Stick a pin in that. We will come back to it. John is now at the Nevada Independent, where he is founder and CEO. John Ralston is also a longtime friend of the Rachel Maddow show and, in fact, a longtime friend of the Rachel Maddow. John's new book is called the Game How Harry Reid Remade the Rules and Showed Democrats how to Fight. It is out on January 20th. John Ralston, it is great to see you. Thank you so much for being willing to do this.
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C
It's been too long. Rachel, thanks for having me.
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A
How long did it take you to write this book? I feel like you have been working on it for, I mean, since before the senator died.
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C
Yeah, I actually started interviewing him about six months before he died. As you know, he died at the end of 2021. And it's almost unreal to me, Rachel, that it's finally coming to fruition. I thought it should be X number of pages. The editors thought it should be X minus 200 pages. You know how that goes. And so it's been quite an odyssey getting to the threshold of publication, and I'm pretty excited that it's finally going to be out there in the world.
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A
I do think that it is coming at just the right time. John and I tried to explain part of that in the introduction. But for people who are too young to know about the sort of legacy of Harry Reid or who didn't live through it or just thought of him as kind of just another Democratic. Paul, I wonder if you could talk about him in terms of the fighting nature of him and his skills as a tactician. I think there's a lot of Democrats these days who are really frustrated with the Democratic leadership in Washington. They feel like they're not fighting hard enough against Trump and the Republicans or they're at least not fighting well enough. Does Harry Reid provide us, I guess, models or a better way of thinking about how Democrats can fight most effectively?
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C
You know, as you were reading that somewhat breathtaking introduction, Rachel, I was thinking, as I've thought a lot in the last year or two of something very simple, which is what would Harry do? And I think he would have been very, very frustrated by the way he was even frustrated when I interviewed him. I think about what the Democrats were doing in Washington, including his good friend Chuck Schumer, who are they're both very, very different people. Listen, the cliche about Harry Reid, as you know, is he was in his youth a boxer. And so people use the boxing metaphors for him all the time. But Harry Reid loved a good fight, but he didn't fight. He didn't punch just for the sake of punching. There was always an end goal. And that was kind of the duality of the guy is that he was going to get there in the hurly burly and flail away. But he always had an end point in mind and he would never surrender, even if he, if I may belabor the boxing metaphor, even if he was knocked down, he knew he was going to get up to live to fight another day. And I believe he would be very, very frustrated now about the Democrats in Washington, D.C. and he would be saying things as he liked to say that he did that no one else would say and be doing things that that no one else would do. Some people didn't like his tactics, some people didn't like his rhetoric, Rachel. But he always fought for what he believed was a righteous cause. Doesn't mean everyone would agree that it was a righteous cause. And he would have fought vociferously against Donald Trump. And I'm sorry to go on too long, but once you get me going about the book, what Harry Reid really despised as someone who really came from nothing, this incredibly impoverished childhood was people he thought were born on third base and thought that they had hit a triple. And he would have put Donald Trump in that category along with Mitt Romney, along with the Koch brothers and others. And he would have no patience and he would brook nothing from them, and he would go after them in the most uncertain, most certain way with the certitude that what he was doing was the right thing to do.
- [19:31]
A
Well, let's talk about some of the things that he was able to pull off. Right. So thinking about him as a fighter, I mean, the thing that has created the legend of Harry Reid, I think in my mind, and it's very much cemented by your book and all the new reporting you have on him in your book. But it's not just that he was pugnacious, but that he won most fights that he picked. So let's talk about some of the stuff that he pulled off. In 2004, George W. Bush had just been reelected, astonishingly, despite the Iraq war and torture and everything. And when George W. Bush got back in office for a second term, he decided he was going to Kill Social Security. He was gonna privatize Social Security. And at that same time, Harry Reid is just becoming the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. And he decides he's going to save Social Security against a brand new, just reelected second term president. And Harry Reid wins and George W. Bush loses and Social Security is saved. How did Reid save Social Security?
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C
I think there's two components to it. One is, as you know, no senator or congressman can do what they do without hiring great people around them to execute their plan. And so what Reid did essentially is develop a war room, and they called it a war room, where they were not going to let anything that the administration did go unanswered. And they even did national tours to go and fight Social Security, even though the president obviously has the most resonant bully pulpit. And so they were at a disadvantage. That did not stop them. They were relentless with press releases, with press events both in Washington and across the country. And of course, Harry Reid also had a great partner in doing this, someone that he considered the best speaker of the House in history, and that's Nancy Pelosi, who really had some of the same qualities that Reid did, but often wasn't as hamstrung by the rules of the Senate and having to get to 60 votes as Reid was. But they were partners in this. And he had a phenomenal staff in that war room. He went out and he started to use the blogosphere just as it was starting in a way that no one else had. He went out and hired people to staff that as well. Who knew it? He would even have them go after what he considered some of his wobbly Senate colleagues and then say, oh boy, I got to stop that. Which was just a classic Harry Reid move. But he would pull out the stops, and by the time he was done, there was the short term game that you mentioned, which is he stopped Social Security privatization, but he also brought Bush's numbers way down. So that in the midterm and that that's where the parallel might be for today, Rachel, that the Democrats had a smashing win in 2006.
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A
Yeah. You know that point about being willing to use new media, in that case, the sort of early blogosphere, even against his own side. I mean, I remember those days and to see your reporting on it now. So there's a lot more for context here, there's a lot more moderate or even conservative Democrats in the Democratic caucus than there are today. Harry Reid has to corral them on all policy issues and all tactical issues. And he, in using this Communication strategy, which is both, crucially about never letting anything go unanswered from the other side, direct communication to the public, making sure the Democrats always have a voice in whatever the news cycle is in multiple news cycles a day, even at that time. He's also getting progressive bloggers to rake conservative Democrats over the Kohl's. He's setting them up to do that and then going to these conservative Democrats who are in his own caucus and saying, you want me to call off those dogs? I can call off those dogs, but I'm gonna need your help on. I mean, it's not mob tactics, but it is. I mean, he's really, I mean, people talk about being a brawler. This is the kind of specifics that you're talking about. It's not pretty. It's, you know, it's not what they say, you know, the Roberts rules of orders. Roberts rules of order. This is power politics. And he was willing to play it even with his own side.
- [23:56]
C
He was. And I really believe this about Harry Reid, as you mentioned. You know, I covered Reid for a long, long time, but I learned so much more about him to flesh out some of the details of his stratagems and his schemes through the research for this book and through his papers which he granted me access to, which were so revelatory. Rachel, and provided some of the details about that time period and others. But Harry Reid was, was a guy who really amassed a tremendous amount of power and he was going to use every single bit of it to get where he was going. And he was a brilliant strategist. You know, people facetiously talk about Donald Trump playing three dimensional ch or maybe some people really think he does. Harry Reid really, really did. And he would constantly say to his staff who were demoralized at a bad news cycle or at a legislative loss, don't worry, we'll get him next time. And he always had the next steps in mind. And yes, he was willing to use very ruthless tactics against his own allies. And he was actually brilliant, looking back on it, at keeping that caucus, that Democratic caucus in line. And he had some obstreperous folks in there. And I talk a lot in the book about his relationship with Joe Lieberman and when the caucus wanted to oust Lieberman after he went with John McCain and how he played the long game there. And Obamacare might not be the law of the land if he hadn't done that.
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A
Yeah, his relationship with Lieberman and with guys like Max Baucus and all of that stuff, he's keeping them in line. And he's using hardball tactics against, as you say, even his own side. But. But a lot of these people that are engaged in this sort of locking of horns with him don't actually realize what he's doing to them until they're on the other side of it. And I love how you get him. You get Reid to say, in reflecting on that time from 2004 to 2006, when Reid and Pelosi are saving Social Security, one of the Republicans they really have to contend with at the time is Bill Frist. And Reid tells you. I'm assuming this is from an interview with you, tells you, like, oh, Bill Frist was such a nice man, but, like, he wasn't very politically savvy. So, like, basically, I'm so sorry that I had to completely run rings around him and absolutely defeat him at everything he was trying to do. But the poor guy, he just didn't have the chops. That's so Harry Reid.
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C
In fact, at the end of that quote, I believe is so I messed with him. And he said it with relish, right? I mean, he enjoyed doing that with Frist. And there. There was one press conference that one of his staffers told me about where he had won a battle with Frist, and he could barely contain his smile. And because he had. And his staff was kind of giving him the, you know, don't do that, don't do. Don't, don't do that. But Harry Reid loved to win. And he. And then. And when he won, he was not afraid to brag about it.
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A
You know, John, one of the things that I really hadn't ever put into words before, I hadn't really liked put my finger on it before reading your book. But it always, I think, sort of flummoxed me about Harry Reid because I absolutely share your view of him as like, an archetypal Democratic fighter from whom Democrats today can learn something. I absolutely believe that. But I always felt like it was, like, hard for me to explain the power of Harry Reid to people in the moment, in part because he was not charismatic. And I don't mean it in a mean way. And I know that he was charismatic enough to win lots of elections and, you know, and to rise to the levels that he did in politics and to set up the Nevada political machine that nobody's ever been able to contend with. I know that he was very accomplished. But like you say in the book at one point. Oh, no, it wasn't in the book. It was when we were in Nevada together in 2010, you told me, and we put this on the air. I looked at the transcript of it just the other day when I was, as I was finishing the book, you told me in 2010, you know, he's not good in public. I thought it's such a crazy thing for a politician this complex, this powerful, this effective to not actually be very good in public. And he had a very soft spoken voice and he had lots of visual, lots of verbal gaffes, said lots of stuff. You described him as not being able to edit himself. He didn't have very much like verbal self control. And he came across as kind of this shuffling old guy in a way. And that made it hard. I think it flummoxed a lot of people in the national media in terms of understanding his power. And so I wonder if you think when we think about Democratic Party leadership in particular, we're too focused on charisma and on who's good on television and who's good at retail politicking, and Democrats in particular just don't have a way to understand or celebrate people whose strength is political brawling and background backroom skills and mastery of the rules.
- [29:20]
C
I described him several times, and by the way, he never complained about this description as charismatically challenged. And I think you're absolutely right about how a lot of the national media, there are a few who on the understood him, but most of them saw this kind of milquetoast guy who would make these verbal gaffes, wasn't charismatic at all, didn't like going on the, the, the, the Sunday shows he went on a few times, but he was happy to, to let Chuck Schumer do that because Chuck Schumer loved doing that. But what, what Harry Reid's public presence belied was not only how steely tough he was, but also how he had in private interactions. Rachel, if he was one on one with other senators, he knew how to connect with people. And you wouldn't think that about Harry Reid, but he wrote, and I found this in his archive, the hundreds, maybe thousands of personal notes which he copied and then put in his handwritten notes to these senators talking about books, talking about current events, talking about their families. He never forgot birthdays, he never forgot the names of kids, and he knew what buttons to press. And so he developed these relationships that would eventually pay off for him in legislation. And when he made his gaffes, and some of them were really, really bad gaffes, and some of them, I think, were strategic gaffes in A way in the sense that he was willing to say what his caucus believed, but no one in his caucus had the gumption to say. And they were silent, cheering him on for saying what the. What. What they wanted to say. And so I. I think that there was a duality to the guy in so many different ways, Rachel, and that. That was one of them that you would. I mean, if you play tape of Harry Reid at a press conference or Harry Reid on tv, would they come on? And by the way, Rachel, if I can just go to some history, which is now almost 40 years old, the. The first race I ever covered in Nevada was Harry Reid's Senate race. First Senate race against a guy that was recruited by Ronald Reagan and Paul Axel by the name of Jim Santini. And I met Reid for the first time in August of 1986. And I could not. I was a cub reporter. I didn't know a lot about politics, but I could not believe that this guy was a member of Congress. I mean, he was and he was. You know, he was so milquetoast, he could barely put sentences together. I'm exaggerating only to make the point. Then I met Santini, who was incredibly glib and a skilled legislator. I said, this race isn't even going to be close. And of course, Reid won that race, and the rest is history. But he always put great people around him. He had great campaigns that would save him from being charismatically challenged and from his own gaffes. And I can't say enough, by the way, Rachel, and I think I get at this in the book a bit, how many great people he put around him. And especially, especially, he really elevated females in his orbit to positions of great influence, whether it was the chief of staff, Susan McHugh was incredibly influential in his life, or Rebecca Lamb, who constructed that Democratic machine. And he had a lot of other women around him. He loves strong women, and he elevated them. And by the way, I think they had an influence on him in moderating some of his positions because he came from a Mormon background and was naturally a conservative guy. And he evolved, flip flopped, changed, matured, whatever is the proper verb over the years, partly because of some of those people in his life.
- [33:05]
A
Yeah, I will commend to people in the book the story about his evolution, or rather kind of a revolution on immigration. I had completely forgotten about what a hardliner he was on immigration in the 90s. And then in 2006, he apologizes, reverses that position like a heartfelt, dramatic apology over having taken those positions. Just. It's fascinating stuff, but to that same point, about strong women in his life, I was also fascinated, John, by the fact that Harry Reid was going to vote to confirm Clarence Thomas. And you report that he had written, like, an eloquent, beautiful Senate speech explaining why he was voting for Clarence Thomas. And then his wife, Harry Reid's wife, Lantra, essentially talks him out of it and changes and turns him around on that issue. Can you tell that story?
- [34:08]
C
I was stunned when I came across this document in the archive. It was a speech that was faxed by his primary speechwriter to read early in the morning before Reid voted. And I said, oh, this is interesting. This is his speech against Clarence Thomas. And I'm reading this, and my jaw dropped because it, as you pointed out, it's this very eloquent defense of Clarence Thomas. And I said, oh, my God, he was going to vote for Clarence Thomas. Speaking of strong women, there was no greater influence in Reid's life than Landra Reed. And that story is a true love story, Rachel. They were married when they were teenagers, married for 62 years. She wasn't one of the things I discovered that I didn't know as closely as I covered him. She was in a lot of strategic meetings with his staff, and especially during campaigns, she had tremendous influence on him. And what she told me. And Landra consented to three interviews. And she wasn't always the biggest fan of mine because of some of the things I wrote about her husband, but she was great and helped fill in details. And she basically said to me that he was so busy, he didn't have time to watch any of the hearings. I watched every minute. And I told him that essentially to vote against Clarence Thomas, she believed Anita Hill. She thought. She thought that Reid was making a big mistake. And I think he literally. It's hard to tell, but I think he literally made up his mind just about 45 minutes or so before that vote. Now, there's something to be said that by the time he voted, the die was cast already. But he knew how important that vote was and how it would be remembered. And of course, he went on from this eloquent speech praising Clarence Thomas to not only voting against him, but later saying the most vicious things imaginable about Clarence Thomas, the most Harry Reid things imaginable about Clarence Thomas once he got onto the court.
- [36:01]
A
And meanwhile, in his archives, there's the speech praising Clarence Thomas and explaining his vote for him, which he saves, which you ended up getting your hands on that. I do have to ask you John, speaking of the archives, speaking of Landra not being a fan of yours, Harry Reid not a fan of yours. So this is just the discipline it took from you to save this story for the acknowledgment section of your book, Just tell me you are going through the archives. You've been granted thanks to Harry Reid, who talked to you in the six months before he died, who knew you were doing this book, who cooperated with you. His wife talked to you, his staffers talked to you. He gave you, allowed you access to his papers before the public broadly has access to them. You are going through his papers in the archives and you find papers about you and tell me what you tell, tell everybody what you found. It's just, I absolutely cannot believe it.
- [37:04]
D
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- [37:36]
B
Angie Hicks, co founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Roof repair, done well. Kitchen sink install, done well. Deck upgrades, done well. Electrical Upgrade, done well. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros.
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A
For nearly 30 years.
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B
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E
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C
So I had known that Harry Reid had gotten upset with me many times during my career. We had kind of an on and off again relationship. He didn't talk to me for years in the 1990s and then again in, in the in 2010 kind of 2011 range. He wouldn't Come on my show when I went, when I had a show and I, his close friend owned the station that, where, where I worked at one time, Jim Rogers, who owned a bunch of NBC affiliates. And, and, and I knew how close Jim Rogers was to Harry Reid and I just worked there.
- [39:10]
A
You, you had a big politics, a dedicated Nevada politics TV show there that was a big, really big deal in Nevada and that national reporters like me spend a lot of time combing for Nevada news. I mean you were a big deal at the station.
- [39:24]
C
Well, I appreciate your saying that. I have to tell you I figured that he was whispering not such sweet nothings in Jim Rogers ear about me, but what's really ironic, and Rogers actually, and this is not, I don't believe I put this in the book, Rogers actually succumbed to his entreaties and took me off the air. And when I heard that he was going to take the show off the air, I went in and I persuaded Rogers not to do it. And I went on again that night, ironically enough, after Rogers passed away and Sinclair Broadcasting bought the station. What I did not know until I found these documents and these emails in the archives was that I should have assumed this, but that Reid had. This is worse. While Sinclair was up waiting to get licensed, et cetera, for these stations that Reid and his chief of staff at the time, David Crone essentially went to the head of Sinclair and said get this guy off the air. And it's documented, it's right there. And they celebrated it when it happened.
- [40:24]
A
And so, and Sinclair in fact took you off the air.
- [40:27]
C
And then they took me off the air. And the head of Sinclair emailed David Crone to tell him and then Crone forwarded that to Reid and they both celebrated that I had been taken off the air. This was, and the email is like.
- [40:44]
A
We understand that this show, that this show on this station that we're buying has been a real thorn in the side for the Senator and he wanted this guy gone. Well, I want the Senator to know that the minute we take over, he's gone, he's out of there. I mean it's absolutely explicit. There's no shine on it at all. Oh Senator, you want him gone, we'll get rid of him for you. And then they say, oh, thanks so much. We're really, we're really glad that you did that for us. It's just crazy.
- [41:17]
C
It was kind of stunning to read, even though I shouldn't have been that surprised that Reid would have done something like that. And, but, but it was, it I did save it for the acknowledgments, I thought, because I thought I should put in perspective Harry Reid and I had had a roller coaster of a relationship, but I think there was a mutual respect there. And I think that the main reason he was mad at me was because I wrote columns that he said attacked his family, but were more about how he used his influence to try to help his sons at various times, including getting into public sector jobs. And so if I can, real quickly, when he finally agreed to do the book, and I'd been lobbying for years, people like Susan McHugh and Rebecca Lamb and others to let him do the book because he was the most fascinating guy covered. He was the one person I really wanted to write a book about. And he knew it wasn't going to be hagiographic. And so I think he. And I think Landrieu wouldn't let him do it. But finally, after he was out of office, he summoned me to his office, which of course was at the Bellagio on the Strip at that time, because he was working for MGM Resources. And he looked at me and I had already had some sense that he had had, you know, had made attempts to get me fired. He said, john, you and I have something in common. And I said, what's that, Senator? And he said, we're both survivors. And I wanted to say to him, but I didn't because I was hoping he would do the book. No thanks to you, Senator. I was just gonna say, yeah.
- [42:44]
A
What I had to survive was you. That's not. It's not like we both faced off against the plague. He was the one who was trying to kill you off. I mean, that's so Harry Reid. You talk about, you know, sort of mutual respect and him. Or even grudging respect while he's actively trying to kill your career and remove. And successfully removing you from the airwaves in Nevada.
- [43:07]
C
That's it. That's exactly right. But, you know, it was. It was something that I, you know, I understood why he was doing it. And I never. I guess it would be a stretch to say I never held it against him. Who wouldn't? But I, I listen. I had a respect for Harry Reid. I knew what he was capable of. He did things like that to other people that were not in journalism. But what he said to me, I thought after he did his prepared where both survivors speech was, I want you to do the book. I know I'm not going to like everything that you write in the book, you know, that this was about My family that I didn't talk to you for so long. I don't think you're going to attack my family in the book. And so I want you to just tell the story. You're the best person to tell it. Do what you need to do. And he. He never asked to. He said, we don't need a contract. I don't want to see a first draft, which I wouldn't have let him see anyhow, but he didn't ask for any conditions whatsoever. Just do the book. I am really sad, Rachel, that he is not alive to see the book, because I would have. I would have really, really wanted to know what his reaction to this were I, I. I sent a copy to Landra.
- [44:14]
A
I have not.
- [44:15]
C
I have not heard from her, but I will be interested to see. You never know how family's gonna react because they want all sweetness and light. Even though I'm sure that his family knows some of the things that he. That he did, since I wrote about them contemporaneously. But I'm sad that he's not around to react to the book. I really am.
- [44:35]
A
Yeah. I'd pay to be a fly on the wall hearing, even if it was just to hear him rip you for whatever it is he was gonna object to in the book. Well, John, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you just a. Of closing questions about Nevada. I mean, you know, Reid famously built a formidable political machine in Nevada that could make or break candidates that, you know, turned Nevada blue for four straight presidential elections, starting with Obama in 2008. But, of course, Nevada went for Trump in 2024. I gotta ask. If the. If the machine still exists, if Democrats are still drafting off of what Harry Reid did in Nevada, or whether they've been able to build something on their own, are you sensing any buyer's remorse in Nevada in terms of the vote for Trump for the presidency last year?
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C
Listen, Trump's numbers here are not good. They're not as bad as some other places, but they are not good. And we're still a purple state. But things have changed. It's not completely a coincidence, Rachel, that. That Trump won the state after those four successive Democratic victories. It's the first cycle after Harry Reid died. I don't think you can. You can. Presidential cycle, that is. I don't think you can discount that the machine still exists. The people who ran it still exists, but the enforcer's not there. The person who could raise unlimited amounts of money is not there anymore. Maybe that Maybe the heart and soul, even if some would say it was a dark heart, not dark soul of the Democratic machine, is not there anymore. But they have still done well. They were devastated by losing that election to Trump. But I think there were other factors at play there that a lot of people didn't see coming, including, as you know, I detailed in the book, Harry Reid courted exploited the Hispanic vote very well. And it's been well documented how especially young Hispanic men started to turn away from the Democrats. I'm not sure they could have stopped that in any way. But the state has changed, too, Rachel. The Democrats used to have a very large registration lead that has evaporated, mostly because of a surge in nonpartisan registration. And it's unclear who all of these people are. And I'm not sure that they've been able to pinpoint it. And now you have, for the first time, a Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, who's up for reelection. And this could be a litmus test in 2026, WHO has. The Republicans have copied what Reid did, and they've set up their own machine. And it's a pretty effective machine. And I think that Rebecca Lamb and others who run the Democratic machine here see 2026 as an opportunity to say, we're still around. It's not the Lombardo machine yet.
- [47:24]
A
Yeah. And I think. I mean, honestly, I think people are gonna be reading the book, your book, which again, is called the Game Changer, People are gonna be looking at that book to think about the nuts and bolts tactics about how Reid was able to do it. And I mean, Nevada's changed, but it hasn't changed that much. And nobody ever mastered its politics the way that he did. Let me ask you one last question, John. And we talked about this a little bit at the top, but the subtitle of your book is How Harry Reid Remade the Rules and Showed Democrats how to Fight. I, too, miss him. I'm one of those people who used to get handwritten notes from him and the occasional phone call from him, except I wasn't a senator, so he wasn't flattering me or wishing me happy birthday. It was always him taking issue with something that I'd gotten wrong or that I hadn't. I had mentioned him in a way that he didn't think was exactly right to take an issue with me. He wasn't mean, but he was really pushy. And I missed that. I do. But I also miss the kind of advice that I think he would give, even from the sidelines, if he were still Here, what do you think in 2026, right now, facing the kinds of challenges that we are facing right now, where I think it is, you know, we're not only thinking about midterm strategy, we're thinking about midterm existence. Honestly, what advice do you think he'd give Democrats right now about how to win what might be the most political what might be the most important political fight in the history of this country?
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C
I think what he would first say, Rachel, believe me, you know, I'm not obsequious at all, but he would have listened to what you said at the beginning of this, in the introduction of this, and he would have agreed with every word that you said. And he would have believed that this is an existential threat that this country is facing. He would have feared that there's going to be military in the cities, not just doing what they're doing now, but to intimidate people from voting. He would be speaking out about this every day. He would use every minute that he had on the Senate floor to be telling people that to wake up, there's no room for being nice to Trump. And he would have been speaking out in the most unvarnished terms about this. And he would be, while he's doing that, behind the scenes, going to people in Nevada and across all of the other states and sending the message, we need to organize. We need to get people registered. We need to make sure that people understand what is at stake here. And I think that it's easy for people on the outside. I have friends who are like this because I say some of the same things that you said in your introduction. Introduction relatively frequently think, oh, you're just being hysterical. Oh, you're being melodramatic. It's not that bad. This is just another cycle. It is that bad. Harry Reid would have recognized that, Rachel, and he would have said, there is no time. This is no time for moderation. This is a time where everything is at stake going back to the founding of this republic. And he wouldn't care what people said about him. He was one of his staffers says in the book in the town where everyone cares what people think about them. Harry Reid did not care when anybody thought about. And he truly did not care, Rachel, outside of his family, I think. And so he would be speaking out. He would be vehement in saying there is too much at stake for anyone not to every day be speaking out about this. I would guess that he would have said so many things that would have been considered gaffes by Some and that others would be hearing during this era and more to come. And so I think the Democrats do miss someone like him. There was no one like him, and there really is no one like him now in the U.S. senate.
- [51:23]
A
Yeah. And we think so much in terms of the, you know, where various Democratic leaders are on the ideological number line, you know, and for Harry Reid, that was just never the most important, important thing about him. The most important thing about him was what you just said in terms of knowing when moderation, not ideological moderation, but tactical moderation was inappropriate. And it was actually time to go for broke. He could not only name those times, he could do it in a way that I think, well, that I'm missing now. Harry Reid was raised in the tiny town of Searchlight, Nevada, with no running water, no indoor plumbing. His mother did laundry for brothels. He was born essentially off the edge of civilization. He rose to become one of the most important Democratic Party politicians and power brokers ever in the history of this country. And the new book about him is written by the man who knew him better than any other, the dean of Nevada political reporters, John Ralston. The book is called the How Harry Reid Remade the Rules and Showed Democrats how to Fight it. Comes out on January 20th. I gotta say, John, absolutely perfect timing on this, and congratulations on the achievement. I'm sorry that Harry got you fired, and I'm glad he helped you get the book done.
- [52:43]
C
Thank you on both those counts.
- [52:47]
A
All right, John Ralston, thanks. I'll see you soon, my friend.
- [52:49]
C
All right, thank you.
- [52:51]
A
If you pull out this race and Democrats broadly pull out this race and Democrats maintain control in your state, still Majority leader, undoubtedly there are going to be more Republicans in the Senate in the next Congress than there are now. If 60 votes has been the problem in terms of getting important legislation passed, what's the strategy for getting stuff passed with even less, even fewer Democrats than you have now?
- [53:14]
C
I really believe that the efforts to stall everything for the election, that'll be gone, and I think they will find it hasn't worked very well. It is pretty clear I'm not an expert on the House, but in the Senate, we're going to be in the majority. When this is all over with, I think there will be an effort to work together. I've spoken to Mitch McConnell before we left, and I think there will be an effort to work more closely together.
- [53:47]
B
Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co founder of angie. One thing I've learned is that you buy a house, but you make it a home. And for decades, Ang Angie's helped millions of homeowners hire skilled pros for the projects that matter. Get all your jobs done well at Angie combination.