Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara. The Democratic National Convention just concluded with a triumphant acceptance speech by Democratic Presidential nominee, Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris:

And every day, in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge and I said five words. Kamala Harris for the people.

Preet Bharara:

On a special episode of Stay Tuned, I am joined by two guests. The first is David Axelrod. He’s a Democratic political strategist and former chief strategist and senior advisor to President Barack Obama. The second guest is presidential historian Michael Beschloss. He has authored nine books on the U.S. Presidency. I speak with both about the convention, the political strategy guiding the Harris-Walz campaign, and the historical significance of this election. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

The Democratic National Convention marks the official nomination of Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for President. Political strategist, David Axelrod, joins me to discuss the highlights of the DNC and what we can expect from the Harris-Walz ticket as we approach election day.

David Axelrod, welcome back to the show. It’s a pleasure to have you.

David Axelrod:

It’s good to be here, especially on this occasion.

Preet Bharara:

Yes. So you’re from Chicago.

David Axelrod:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

You know all these folks well. I’ll tell you something that I’ve heard many people say to me, and I’ve seen people Tweet this as well, that given the energy, the mood of joy, enthusiasm, hope, change surrounding the Kamala Harris campaign, people have said, and I’m sure you’ve heard this also, that the last time they can remember feeling like this or feeling the aura of a campaign in this way was 2008. Now, I don’t know if you had anything to do with 2008. Is that an apt comparison?

David Axelrod:

Well, I think in some ways, it very much is. I’m a big fan of hope. I’m a big fan of optimism. I’m a big fan of a big, generous, inclusive America and those themes were all very much on display. But the thing that makes this similar is, in 2008, there was just this mood to turn the page on a grinding, negative, small politics and Barack Obama came along and he inspired people to think that we could do better. We’re in a similar period here and I think people really want to turn the page. She has emerged as this “turn the page” candidate. She’s offering relief from the grinding, and negative, and divisive politics of Donald Trump.

But the genius of what’s happened here, and this was true with Obama as well, she’s rooted her story in the mainstream story of America. She’s wrapped her story in the best story of America. Her whole convention was suffused with American values, middle class values and aspirations. It’s a portrait that I think most Americans want to associate themselves with and associate their view of the country with. So in that sense, it’s very much like 2008, as well.

Preet Bharara:

I have an interview also in this episode with the historian, Michael Beschloss, coming up. We talked about the theme of patriotism and the chanting of “USA, USA.” When have you seen that before?

David Axelrod:

We were big on flags back in 2008 as well. But again, I mention this on my own podcast and I talked about it on TV last night, and I have a personal reason for feeling so strongly about it, but something struck me last night. I saw, there was something that triggered an outburst of USA chants and flag waving, and there was Walz and his son, Gus, who the night before, had displayed such love for his dad and enthusiasm, only to be ridiculed by people on the right. Gus has learning challenges and some issues that are familiar to me because I have an adult child who has the same. The cruelty of that was so grotesque to me.

Then, here were people waving the flag around this young man and their view of America was a much different view of America. Their celebration of America was about a big, generous, embracing America where there’s room for everyone. I really, really think people are hungry for that. Especially against the relentless negative, mean spirited, grinding of Donald Trump.

Preet Bharara:

That Gus Walz moment when he’s hearing about the love of his father and he gets up and he has tears coming down his face and he says, with great pride, “That’s my dad,” my first reaction was, “Yeah, someone’s cutting onions.”

David Axelrod:

Yeah, exactly.

Preet Bharara:

Until I saw some of the cruelty that you’re talking about, it was almost inconceivable to me that a normal person, and particularly a parent, would have any reaction other than love for that moment. Charlie Sykes, I think it was Charlie Sykes, said it best. That scene was a Rorschach test for who the most terrible people in the world are. Yeah, we’re talking about you, Ann Coulter. I think she deleted the tweet.

David Axelrod:

She did delete the Tweet, but the fact that she even launched the Tweet says so much, and there were others. It wasn’t just her. It was despicable and it is not the America that the vast majority of Americans embrace. It’s not the humanity that the vast number of Americans embrace. Anyway, it’s so much on my mind, I had to say it.

Preet Bharara:

No, I was going to ask you about it. I was going to ask you about it because I think it was an important moment and it showed the difference between two different kinds of people. This is not to say, this is not a copycat act from 2008. It’s recapturing some of that joy and hope and change, but with a sharper edge, I think. So Michelle Obama famously said, “When they go low, we go high.” It’s not quite that anymore. Could you explain the difference?

David Axelrod:

Well, look. We were running against John McCain, for one thing. This is a much, much different situation. The genius of this convention was, it made it clear, you have a guy who actually lives outside the mainstream of American thought and American values, who really does represent a threat to the fundamental values and institutions of our democracy, not to mention policies that are outside the mainstream of American thought. The genius of this convention, and the speeches by the Obamas were part of it. Her speech last night was part of it and some of the other symbols and speeches that we saw augmented it, was to paint her very much in the mainstream of American thought and life, to paint her life that way. Everything about this convention did that, and at the same time, painted Trump very much outside the mainstream and as extreme in ways that I thought were very deft. They didn’t bludgeon him. They didn’t need to, but they made a really, really thoughtful case and they gave people a choice. The choice spoke to a majority of Americans.

The Republicans have been trying to paint this caricature of Kamala Harris as, not unexpectedly, because it’s what they do as a wild, radical, San Francisco liberal. Anyone who watched this convention would come away with the notion that she is fundamentally a reflection of the best of America and her politics are very much in the mainstream. That is a huge, huge thing. This convention did a ton of lift, in terms of messaging and creating an answer to the caricature that the Republicans are hoping to create. It was really, really deftly done.

Preet Bharara:

It was, and not just the caricature of Kamala Harris, but the attempt to paint Tim Walz as some kind of crazed, Marxist, communist, radical lefty.

David Axelrod:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Then you look at the guy and you hear the guy, this former history teacher, the desperation to try to paint someone in a manner that defies what your eyes and ears see. I think Donald Trump tweeted last night, this is the degree of-

David Axelrod:

Yeah, his tweets are insane.

Preet Bharara:

… he was not a coach, he was an assistant coach.

David Axelrod:

Yes. Yeah. Not to mention that, Preet, and you’ll appreciate this because you wear many hats, including that of prosecutor and following all of these legal cases, he tweets, “Where’s Hunter?” It’s like, dude, that race is over. He’s not your opponent anymore. It was like stream of consciousness panic reflected on Truth Social last night.

Preet Bharara:

My kids were around last night and we were talking about the assistant coach thing like, did you ever go up to the assistant coach at the end of the game and say, “Hey, assistant coach, put me in.” No.

David Axelrod:

No, listen. I think the bigger point here that you’re making is that, at this point in the presidential campaign, and I always knew this. You get to this point in a campaign and what happens moment to moment and how candidates behave and what people see supersedes media and everything else. They’re going to default in favor of what they see with their own eyes. They see Kamala Harris. They see Walz, Tim Walz. They just don’t look like the caricature that Trump and the Republicans are trying to paint.

On the other hand, Trump looks exactly like what Democrats are suggesting, so that’s a big problem. If I’m sitting over there in the Trump headquarters, I’m thinking about, how do we get this dude under control because he is beating himself right now.

Preet Bharara:

Are you of the view that the more Trump gets on the air and the more he’s covered and the more he’s talked about and the more he’s filmed, that’s good? Because there’s some people on the left who say you’re platforming a guy and you’re amplifying his bullshit. That’s not true. No. It’s, the more you see, the more you realize what a disaster that would be, correct?

David Axelrod:

Yes. I would pay to have Trump out there every day if I were the Harris campaign because he cannot control himself and he’s modeling all the behavior. Look, people, even when Biden was in the race, there were a lot of people who said, “Yeah, I’m going to vote for Trump and he’s a jerk. He’s a jackass, but at least he’ll get the economy moving.”

Now they have a palatable alternative and all of a sudden, they’re not all that willing to embrace a guy who they just don’t like. There was a poll this week that had Kamala in favorable territory in terms of how people thought of her as a person. You ask two things, job approval, and you ask just favorable. What’s your view of the person? She was in the positive terrain. Trump was 22 points under water. People do not like him, especially when he behaves the way he’s behaving right now. And Preet, she is freaking him out, because the way Donald Trump looks at the world is through the prism of just a few things; how do you look on TV, how big are your crowds, as President Obama pointed out the other night, how are your poll numbers and your ratings.

He has a very narrow view of how you judge people and she is off the charts right now. The polls are very close and we should talk about that. This is a very close race, but she has closed the gap on him. That’s freaking him out, but bigger than that is, he knows a television start when he sees one. She is playing so well.

Preet Bharara:

Look, he gave her some praise recently.

David Axelrod:

Yeah, he did.

Preet Bharara:

Didn’t he talk about how good-looking she was?

David Axelrod:

Well, he said she looks like our First Lady, Melania, or something like that. I don’t even want to get into this. You crawl into Trump’s head and it’s a scary place. But he’s also, one of the things about Trump and one of the things about presidential politics is, authenticity is the coin of the realm. No one ever says, “Gee, I wish Trump would speak his mind.” Whatever else, he does speak his mind. Yeah, he has tipped his hand. He knows she’s good on TV. She is from central casting.

Someone wrote me last night, a prominent person who wasn’t predisposed to be favorable to Harris wrote last night, effusive about the speech and said, “My God, she was Jed Bartlet up there.” And she was.

Preet Bharara:

We had Jed Barlet, too.

David Axelrod:

Yeah, I know. She looked like a President. She looked strong, Preet. The big gap between Trump and Biden was this perception that the world’s out of control. Biden is not in command. Trump is strong. Biden’s weak. Vote for Trump. That was their whole message. She looks strong and now the big thing will be the debate and how she looks and acts on that stage with Trump, who’s likely going to be acting out next to her.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I want to talk about where this race is going from here, but before we do that, you were praising the deafness of the performances and the pageantry and the excellence of the convention, including, we haven’t talked about it yet, the innovative and brilliant musical roll call, which is often one of the most boring things at a convention. Do you know, who can we praise for putting all of this together? Because we need to praise those people.

David Axelrod:

I’m so glad you asked that because she’s my friend and my former colleague and one of the most brilliant people in American politics and it’s Stephanie Cutter. Stephanie Cutter-

Preet Bharara:

I know Stephanie.

David Axelrod:

Yeah. She’s pulled off two miracles in a row. In 2020, she produced the virtual convention for Biden that was probably the four most important message days of his campaign in terms of really focusing people on his middle class upbringing, his values, his faith, family, the military connection. She really changed the race in many ways, with that. And it was brilliantly produced. I think they won an Emmy for it.

This time, she was producing a convention for Biden. A little more than three weeks ago they said, “Hey, you got to turn this battleship around. It ain’t him anymore. We’ve got a whole new candidate and a much different message.” I think she did such a brilliant job and that roll call was her master stroke.

Preet Bharara:

It was amazing.

David Axelrod:

And her playlist, by the way.

Preet Bharara:

Pretty good playlist. It’s also interesting to me is, in politics, it’s very crystallized and sharply revealed, and we talked about this earlier. Some people see that moment between Gus Walz and his father and think how human that is and how touching that is, and other people think the opposite. There are people who are responding to the musical roll call and saying that’s cringe. It makes me think that there’s segments of the population I just don’t have any understanding of at all.

David Axelrod:

I think that’s one of the problems we have. We are so siloed now and that is more than a little assisted by the social media culture and the algorithms that shove us into these silos. But there’s a part of the country that was predisposed to hate everything about that convention last night. So they weren’t going to give credit for anything. That roll call was a celebration of America. There was music from the different states. It was joyful.

The word joy got maybe overworked in this convention, but it was an accurate depiction of the mood in the room. There were people who were celebrating not just a candidate, but celebrating the country, celebrating community. So yeah, there were people who looked at it through the dower lens of another tribe. But this was a celebration of the American tribe. It was very, very powerful.

Preet Bharara:

So talking about this concept of honeymoon, it’s now been a month. She has had the benefit of a particular calendar, the timing of her announcement.

David Axelrod:

Yeah, that worked out incredibly well for her, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Now we’re going to have a pretty dead week before Labor Day and then the debate. So everything’s sort of frozen, but then you have two months.

David Axelrod:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

How do you see this playing out? What are the inflection points after the debate? How’s this going to play out?

David Axelrod:

Look, first let’s level set this. She has closed the gap on Trump. She has consolidated the Democratic base. African Americans have largely come back. Still an issue with some younger African American men. That’s an issue that has to be worked on for her. Hispanics have come back to a large degree. Younger voters, and I’m talking back to 2020 levels, and remember how close that election was.

But she’s still not winning, despite some, I think, overly buoyant polls. I think you’re basically looking at tied or a little less than tied races in a lot of the main battleground states, including and most importantly, Pennsylvania. She’s become more competitive than Biden was in some of the Sun Belt states. So she’s got a shot in Georgia. She’s got a shot in North Carolina, Nevada, maybe Arizona. But you still have to piece together 270 electoral votes and that is by no means easy for her.

So the next phases of this campaign are essential. This debate, I can’t overstate the importance of this debate because these events that she’s excelled in are, she’s done great and she’s helped herself dramatically, but they basically are scripted events. Now she gets into the freeform portion of the campaign. I’m sure she’s going to do some interviews, but the debate. The debate.

Preet Bharara:

But is it really that important? Because Hillary Clinton won every debate against Trump.

David Axelrod:

It’s important because everybody knew Hillary Clinton. This is still someone, and people have made a judgment about Trump. So they’re really kicking the tires on Kamala Harris and trying to take the measure of her. If she passes that test, I think that she will win this election because there are a majority of people who just don’t want to vote for Donald Trump.

But presidential elections are a series of tests. It’s like, you clear the bar and the bar gets raised. This is a major test because people want to see how you deal with the pressures of different situations and this is high pressure, tense, high stakes stuff, just on another level. Strength was, as I said earlier, Trump’s calling card. She looked really strong on that stage last night. She looked presidential on that stage.

Now she’s going to be standing next to the guy. The question is, when he does his thing, how’s she deal with it?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So what’s the answer, David? What’s the answer? How’s she deal with it?

David Axelrod:

I think, largely, she should be unbothered by it and talk to the American people. I think there’s occasion where she’s going to need to brush him off. But one thing you don’t do, if you come to have a pissing match with Donald Trump, he always comes with a larger tank. That is not a productive thing to do. The idea isn’t to enlarge Trump. It’s to shrink him. He’s doing it himself. Help him do it. Make people focus on the question about whether this is what you want for the next four years.

There’s a better way. There’s a better path. We don’t have to go down the road of this scorched Earth negative divisive politics. That’s not America at its best. That’s not how we get things done. I would just talk past him in a lot of ways.

Preet Bharara:

Directly to the audience.

David Axelrod:

Yeah. Yeah. You can’t ignore him entirely. There’ll be opportunities, but I would use humor. I would be unbothered. Basically, the message should be, “Dude, your act is old. It’s old. We’re turning the page. We’re moving on.”

Preet Bharara:

What if you were advising Trump? I think that’s a very difficult thing for him, if you’re his advisor, because he knows only one act. Nastiness, in this context with this nominee, I think would almost certainly backfire. Don’t you think?

David Axelrod:

Yes. Especially nastiness in the way that he is inclined to project it against a person of color, a woman. This triggers all his worst instincts. Look, you say it’s a difficult job to be his strategist. I think that’s generally true right now because you can have a rational strategy, but you don’t have a rational candidate. That’s very, very hard because he won’t implement the strategy that you lay out. The strategy should be for him to act like a president and to say, “I’ve been there. I’ve actually been there and I know what the job entails and what it takes to turn an economy around,” and just go through that.

This is a battle of who enlarges and who shrinks the other. You do it not by belittling. You do it by the way you project yourself. This is a big challenge for him because his instinct is always to be on the attack, always, always, always to be on the attack. I don’t know if they can bridle that and I don’t know if they can keep him on a message.

One of the big pieces of this is, when he was running against Biden, he was change and Biden was the status quo. She has flipped the script on him and she is now change and he is the status quo. He has to push her back in the incumbent box. He has to make her an extension of Biden’s policies, that people are unhappy about inflation on the border and so on. That’s the strategy they’re trying to employ if you look at their advertising. But he, every time he goes out and delivers message, has to take a side trip into Crazyville and nastiness in a way that hijacks the story.

Preet Bharara:

It feels to me like they’re punching the air. I keep thinking about the ad that was run against you, your team, where they called Barack Obama the biggest celebrity in the world.

David Axelrod:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

When that ad came out, did you smile about it? Did you think it was damaging? What did you make of that ad?

David Axelrod:

Well, you know, it’s interesting. They got in our heads in a way that was unhelpful because we worried about that. We actually started saying, “Maybe we should pull these big rallies down and we should do more intimate events. Maybe we should be …” and we did that. We did that through, obviously, the convention was an interregnum in that, but we resumed that after the convention.

Meanwhile, he picked Sarah Palin and now he’s having big rallies. All of a sudden, he looked like the guy with momentum and we looked like our campaign was petering out. The bigger and most threatening thing that John McCain did is a place where Donald Trump can never go. That was, at that same time, when he was presenting us as callow and the Paris Hilton of politics, famous for no reason, McCain was doing country first and his lifelong service to the country, his military service, his willingness to stand up and be a maverick. It was powerful. He threw that all away when he picked Sarah Palin because she was not a country first choice.

It just goes to show, though, that there are ebbs and flows in this thing. You mentioned earlier the timing of it. This could not have worked out better for Kamala Harris because she got shot from a cannon 90 days before the election in a country that hated the choice it had and was so relieved to have another choice, who was younger and fresher, and that has really served her well. But there are always ebbs and flows, some of which you can plan on. A lot of them, you can’t.

Lehman Brothers collapsing, Osama Bin Laden releasing a tape three days before the 2004 election, Paul Pelosi, this isn’t presidential, but Paul Pelosi being assaulted days before the midterm elections. Elections can tilt on events that you just don’t know are going to happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen in this race. I think it’s a very close race. Anybody could win. If the election were today, I would not bet against Donald Trump. I have to see what impact this convention has had and we won’t know for a few days.

Preet Bharara:

There’ll be a bounce for sure, right?

David Axelrod:

Yes, although because of the inelasticity of the electorate, how big the bounce is, I just don’t know. She should get some and some in a tight race is not trivial. But mainly what she’s done is, she’s laid a great foundation for the next 70 days, message wise. They just have to build on it and be faithful to it and consistent to it and I think they’re on a good path.

Preet Bharara:

I was telling my college age son last night that when I was his age-

David Axelrod:

A young fellow like you has college age sons, huh?

Preet Bharara:

Yes, sir. In 1988, I was in college. After that convention, Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush. Dukakis I believe was up 19 points-

David Axelrod:

17 points.

Preet Bharara:

17 points.

David Axelrod:

No. I’ll tell you, though, the timing issue that you raised earlier was so important because what happened in that race was, the Democratic Convention was in July, mid-July, in the interregnum. They did the Willie Horton campaign. They did this brilliant, brilliant negative campaign that was orchestrated by Roger Ales that basically said, “This is who Dukakis is, this ultra liberal, and now he wants to do for America what he did for Massachusetts. America can’t afford that risk.” There was a series of ads like that, including Dukakis helped by this ridiculous footage of him in a helmet and a tank where he looked like Rocky the Squirrel.

They really changed the dynamic. Then Bush had a great convention and that led into Labor Day and the whole thing turned around. There’s not that much elasticity in the electorate now and the timing has all worked out for her, so there’s no interregnum where they could define her. By the way, Dukakis assisted by not, they didn’t have the resources. Different time and place. He didn’t respond. He hurt himself in the debates. This is a wholly different situation, but it does speak to your point, which is, everybody should feel good today. Everybody should celebrate what was a spectacular week, but this thing is not over.

I got in trouble with some of your friends by saying that Democrats should not engage in irrational exuberance. The same people who, weeks earlier, were mad at me for suggesting that Biden should step aside were now accusing me of dogging Kamala for saying that we shouldn’t be irrationally exuberant.

Preet Bharara:

What are you going to do? This is the life you’ve chosen, David.

David Axelrod:

I know.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask you this question?

David Axelrod:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

What are we to infer from the fact that Kamala Harris has done almost no free flowing interviews with the press?

David Axelrod:

Yeah. I mentioned this before. She’s going to have to do it. I think the press, the media is much more intent on this and more offended by it than voters are. But look, this is a decathlon and you have to do all the events. One of them is dealing with the media. It’s not so much to satisfy the media or peoples’ sense that you have to respect the fourth estate. They just want to see you handle it. They want to see how you respond to it. It is a test, just as the debates are a test, just as conventions are a test. If you duck it, it does compound.

I think that if they’ve made any mistake, and I think they’ve been almost flawless since the change of candidates, I would be doing regular gaggles with the press. I would go to the back of the plane and not just talk off the record, but on the record. I would make interactions with the media, I would talk to the local media in the battleground states on a regular basis via Zoom. I think the more you do, the more you make these interviews uneventful, unremarkable.

You’re raising the salience of these events, of these interviews. I would just rootanize it in a way so that people say, “Yeah, she’s talking to reporters all the time. That’s a box checked. Let’s move on.”

Let me just say one other thing. I always viewed interviews for my candidates, yes, they’re minefields in some ways, but a confident candidate and confident campaign also views them as opportunities. If you’re good and you’re agile, and you know who you are and what your message is, you should not view these interviews as trips for a root canal. You view them as opportunities. If you’re good, you can help yourself. Not just by checking the box, but by delivering message. I hope she approaches it this way.

She was a little stunned early in her vice presidency by interviews. I’ve seen her do some great ones since. She was on, with us on CNN on the night of the disastrous Biden debate and that was not an enviable task. Anderson Cooper, who is a great, great newsman asked her the obvious questions and they were tough questions. She responded with a little bit of edge and a lot of message. When it was done, we all thought, “Damn, that was pretty good.”

I’m sure there were about a million places she’d have rather been at that moment, but she handled it well. I think that should give people confidence in her campaign.

Preet Bharara:

She could not have been prepped. She could not have been prepped for a completely disastrous debate.

David Axelrod:

Nobody was.

Preet Bharara:

And it’s real time. Look, she’s a person who has been in court and court is, generally speaking, not scripted.

David Axelrod:

Yes. Yeah. You know that better than anybody.

Preet Bharara:

You have witnesses who go south on you. You have judges who go south on you. The greatest quality or skill that I learned from being a trained trial lawyer is actually how to think on your feet and respond to adversity rhetorically and substantively. She’s been doing that since she was in her 20s. I guess last question. What is the reason why Kamala Harris, in recent years, has been so dramatically underestimated and is that her superpower?

David Axelrod:

I don’t know if it’s her superpower, but it’s certainly an advantage right now. I think there are two reasons. One is, she didn’t run a good campaign in 2019. I think she was ill-advised. I think she was ill prepared for that race. I think she was swept into that race by her promise and the sense that this is a wide open race and you’re a talented person and you should jump in.

But it’s very clear to me she wasn’t prepared for that race and she took the conventional advice of the moment, which was, just keep taking left turns and you’ll get to where you need to go. When you keep taking left turns, you end up in the same place. It didn’t work for her and she didn’t look comfortable delivering the messages. She didn’t seem connected to some of the things that she was saying. They didn’t feel well thought through. When she became Vice President, she really wasn’t well-supported and she wasn’t particularly prepared for the maelstrom of that office. She did some bad interviews. The Lester Holt interview will live forever, around the border stuff. So I think that affected her.

But the biggest thing, Preet, is, Vice President is a diminishing office. You are stand-by equipment. This is a dated reference, so maybe if you have any older listeners, they’ll understand it, but you’re like Ed McMahon to the President’s Johnny Carson. You’re not there to be a star. You’re there to be a straight man and sometimes a straight man, you’re the butt of the joke. So people know you as the Vice President, but they don’t really know you. You’re in the background. You’re standing behind the President.

Now she’s the main player and people are getting to know her in much greater depth. It’s a revelation to them. I think we saw that all week long. There’s so much about her that people didn’t know. She, herself, displayed qualities that she didn’t get a chance to display as Vice President. So all of those things, I think, are working in her benefit now, or to her benefit now.

Preet Bharara:

I’m seeing the Kamala Harris that I’ve known for a number of years.

David Axelrod:

Yeah. Well, you know her better. But you’re seeing what America is just beginning to see. She may well be just the right person at the right time.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Final, final question. At the DNC, David, who was your favorite speaker and why was it Michelle Obama?

Michelle Obama:

We don’t get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. No. We put our heads down. We get to work. In America, we do something. And throughout her entire life, that’s what we’ve seen from Kamala Harris.

David Axelrod:

There are speeches that live forever. Mario Cuomo made a speech at the 1984 convention that will live forever. It was a keynote speech and it was so good that if the convention could have revoted there, they would have made him the nominee for President. Barack Obama gave a speech at the 2004 convention that was so good that if America could have voted, they would have made him the nominee then. Everybody who was around for those speeches will never forget those speeches.

Michelle Obama’s speech this week was one of those speeches. It was not a speech. It was a conversation with the American people. It just felt like straight, blunt talk, value laden. It had just the right amount of edge to it and it was big. In its bigness, it lifted Kamala Harris, but it also made Donald Trump small, which I think he is.

Preet Bharara:

David Axelrod, thanks for being on. Perfect timing.

David Axelrod:

Thanks for inviting me. Always great to chat with you, my friend. Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

Thank you, sir.

Coming up after the break I’ll speak with presidential historian, Michael Beschloss. Stay Tuned.

This convention and this election are making history. Presidential historian, Michael Beschloss, joins me to talk about the past, present, and future.

Michael Beschloss, welcome back to the show.

Michael Beschloss:

Thanks so much, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

It’s great to have you to talk about the Democratic National Convention and maybe a little bit about the Republican National Convention, what history tells us about this moment, what this moment tells us about history. My first question to you is, in the lead up to the DNC, in this age and time of political violence, actual political violence, polarization on many, many issues, including on Israel and Gaza, fractures within the Democratic Party, a return to the scene of great violence and discord from 1968 in Chicago. There were a lot of predictions of bad things happening.

Michael Beschloss:

Yup.

Preet Bharara:

And massive unrest and perhaps protest. What happened to all that? Where was the chaos?

Michael Beschloss:

What happened is this completely amazing month. Sometimes things happen in history that are turning points. Just think, Preet, a month ago, I think we were still in a situation where Joe Biden was still the nominee, at least that week, beginning to run behind Donald Trump and Democrats throwing up their arms in despair and saying, “Democrats probably had a majority of voters on the issues,” and probably a majority of voters detest and fear Donald Trump, but somehow, it’s not getting through.

So not only did you have the selfless act that he committed, of walking away from power, although under some duress, and at the same time, you had a candidate, Kamala Harris, who has been underestimated all of her life. Has been seen as a less serious, less able potential president than she should have been. I think one thing I would say, Preet, is that it’s this terrible office of the vice presidency. It almost always diminishes people. George H.W. Bush, who was a quite good president and a pretty tough guy, looked like a pygmy under Ronald Reagan because he shrank into the background, in order to show Reagan that he was not a competitor of his.

The same thing with Kamala Harris. Most Americans got to know her as vice president. Now that, that yolk of the vice presidency is off and we saw what she could do with that Democratic convention this week, this is a very plausible president and this was almost a perfect invention for the Democrats. I agree with you.

Preet Bharara:

Can you settle an arcane political question?

Michael Beschloss:

I’ll try.

Preet Bharara:

Who was it who said the following and what was the exact phrase, that the vice presidency was not worth a bucket of spit or not worth a bucket of piss?

Michael Beschloss:

Yes. Well, actually, I’ve gone into that. That was John Nance Garner, who, as you know, served two terms under Franklin Roosevelt, and in 1960 he was very close to Linden Johnson, his fellow Texan. Johnson was asking him if Garner thought that Johnson should take the vice presidency under Kennedy. Garner said, “Linden, the vice presidency isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss.”

Preet Bharara:

Oh, warm piss.

Michael Beschloss:

Yes, warm piss. You have to get this one, every element of the nuance. But this was 1960 and when that was repeated, that was considered to be a little crude, so that was quickly changed to pitcher of warm spit, which really makes more sense. I personally, as a historian, would say, “Absolutely. Vice Presidency is not worth a pitcher of warm spit. It’s absolutely worth a bucket of warm piss and maybe not even that.”

Preet Bharara:

All right. I think we can move on from that. Although, just because we’re talking about it, how do you explain Dick Chaney?

Michael Beschloss:

Dick Chaney is the exception that proves the rule. Dick Chaney was a fluke because you had a president, George W. Bush coming in with no foreign fault policy experience, brought in Dick Chaney as essentially training wheels. So at the beginning of that presidency, especially on 9/11, Dick Chaney was almost a co-president. Once Bush was beginning to feel that he could do fine on his own, not only did Chaney lose that fabled up place in Bush’s life, but the two men were basically not on speaking terms by the end of that presidency.

Preet Bharara:

Speaking of vice presidents, obviously our current president was the vice president. He spoke on Monday and you said on television, “I’ve watched a lot of these speeches and I usually don’t get as choked up as I was tonight.” Why is that?

Michael Beschloss:

It’s because of the way this presidency ended. Joe Biden, for whatever reason, thought that he could run for a second term and win. By last month, that seemed to a majority of Democratic leaders, to put it as politely as I can, not to be a very good argument. So the result is, he stepped away from power under duress and I think it’s going to take him a long time to get over it. Giving up power is always hard, even for a president who leaves under normal circumstances. Dwight Eisenhower, after 20 years, the pinnacle of world power, hero of World War II, President of the United States for two terms, went back to Gettysburg and he found withdrawal, and he was a pretty well-adjusted guy, from power so hard that he went into a depression his family felt.

Preet Bharara:

Can we talk about some of the themes that maybe wouldn’t have been the expected themes a month ago? Freedom. You don’t always see the Democrats using that term, although they talk about civil rights and they talk about reproductive rights. There seems to be an intense focus on freedom. There’s a rift on the part of the Governor of Pennsylvania, who was not picked to be the running mate, Josh Shapiro, all about freedom. Is that an effort to take something back from the Republicans? And by the way, adjacent to that is the theme of patriotism. I don’t know that you often hear chants of, “USA, USA,” at a Democratic Convention.

Kamala Harris:

USA, USA, USA. I will make sure that we leave the world into the future.

Preet Bharara:

I, for one, love it.

Michael Beschloss:

I do, too.

Preet Bharara:

I think unabashed patriotism is good. I call myself a patriotic American in my Twitter bio and I think Democrats should be doing more of that. What do you make of all of it?

Michael Beschloss:

Actually, that has a historical provenance and that is the first time you heard anyone shouting, “USA, USA,” at a political convention was 1984, Ronald Reagan, Dallas, when Reagan was running for reelection and it was the same summer as the Los Angeles Olympics, where people were yelling, “USA, USA.” So by doing that, and that was not spontaneous on that convention floor. Reagan’s manager has planned this and encouraged it. It was their way of appropriating the popularity of the American athletes and those Olympics. The Democrats have not regained it until this week.

The other thing is, you were talking about the word freedom. President Biden, and I totally was in favor of this, and with groups of historians we talked to him about this, would give speeches, very good speeches, about the need to save our democracy. Our democracy’s under threat from a 2024 opponent, Donald Trump, who’s threatened to terminate the Constitution, wants an autocracy. But democracy, as it turns out, and this is almost a political consultant’s problem, especially among younger people, does not have the same meaning that it might to you or me.

So to use the word freedom, and I think Josh Shapiro has said it very well. The issue this year is that Republicans on the Supreme Court can be construed as trying to take away women’s freedom over their body, American’s freedom to have the right to vote, all these freedoms. That word has been used by Republicans since 1964. Barry Goldwater at the Republican convention in San Francisco when he said, “I’m the candidate of freedom. Johnson is the candidate of the great society Big Government that wants to take away your prerogatives.”

Preet Bharara:

Well, going back, you’re the historian. Didn’t Franklin Roosevelt talk about the four freedoms?

Michael Beschloss:

Yes, he did. He did that, actually, at a very opportune time. That was his State of the Union address, 1941 and that was just at the time that Americans had to decide whether to potentially go to war against Adolph Hitler and the Imperial Japanese or not. There was an equal number and maybe even a majority of Americans who wanted to stay out of war, even as late as the beginning of 1941, the year of Pearl Harbor.

So, Roosevelt talked to his advisors and said, “If we have to go to war, this can’t just be balance of power like World War I. This has to be for a purpose.” So he went to Congress and the State of the Union said that he and Americans were for four freedoms, freedom from want, freedom of religion and so forth, and that was essentially the moral purpose of World War II when it began.

Preet Bharara:

You talked about democracy. We talk, on this program, about the threat to democracy that former President Trump presents to the country.

Michael Beschloss:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

And I think it’s very important, and the rule of law, and all of that stuff, all of that high-minded stuff.

Michael Beschloss:

It’s not high-minded. It’s our lives.

Preet Bharara:

I agree with you, but it seems that there’s a little bit of a double track here. Rather than talking so much about the danger of Trump, although there is some of that, there is, in combination of the dangers of Trump, an argument that they’re comical. There’s a strategy of making fun of Trump, making fun of JD Vance, this whole meme of weirdness. Is that effective? Is that more effective? Is that effective in tandem with the argument about dangerousness? Is it effective because it resonates with young people better? Is it effective because it’s a happy warrior kind of approach? What do you make of that shift?

Michael Beschloss:

Because a lot of people could not quite put their finger on it and once Tim Walz began saying, “These people are weirdos and strange,” that really connected because no one had really given a name to it. You’re so right. It always has to be in tandem because if it’s just, “They’re weird,” then this is some odd, eccentric candidate for president who you shake your head at and that underestimates the danger of Trump. As you well know, this is the first presidential nominee of a major party in all of American history who’s threatened to terminate the Constitution, who wants autocracy, who’s talked about using the Department of Justice, your sacred place and mine, and the Department of Defense, ditto, against American citizens, military tribunals against people who disagree with Donald Trump. There’s nothing American or small d democratic about that. Unless we keep on making that point and show Americans that this is a clear and present danger to them and their families and their communities, the kind that we’ve never had in 250 years, we’re underestimating the danger.

Preet Bharara:

Is this the most unified DNC we’ve seen in modern history? Is there another one that was like this?

Michael Beschloss:

Usually, DNCs are not very unified, so it’s like the best restaurant in a hospital. It probably is the most unified DNC in recent history, but that’s just the miracle of this last month. When before have you had a candidate like Kamala Harris who suddenly was the nominee, didn’t have to go through bruising primaries, didn’t have to discuss issues 900 different positions that are going to divide people, and where the vast majority of Democrats were so delighted to be delivered a chance to win this election against a potential tyrant that everyone is very glad to hug each other and love each other.

Preet Bharara:

We’ve been talking about the themes, the freedom theme, patriotism, joy, unity. There’s another phrase that they kept using at the convention and Kamala Harris has used it, I think very effectively and I wonder what you think of it. We’re not going back. We’re not going back. It’s a very simple phrase.

Kamala Harris:

We are not going back. We are not going back. We are not going back. We are not going back.

Preet Bharara:

What do you think of the power of that phrase, if it is powerful?

Michael Beschloss:

Well, I love it historically because it comes out of the civil rights movement. As you know, that’s a chant that was used in the 1960s when there were forces that were trying to, already in the mid-60s, roll back things like the Voting Rights Act, long before John Roberts did his damage. That’s one thing.

But you’re trying to connect with people in a primal way. Women who have been robbed of their rights over their own bodies, other rights that are being taken away, all of us robbed by the Supreme Court of just the knowledge that a president will not do bad things because he might go to jail, well, that presidential immunity decision now says that, I assume, I would defer to you, but a president can get his White House counsel to attest that having his political opponents murdered is something that’s necessary for national security. That is the most dangerous thing in the world.

Preet Bharara:

This was the line by Representative Raskin. He asked the open question of the convention of JD Vance, “Are you aware of why there’s a vacancy for the position of running mate?”

Michael Beschloss:

This is not a job with a lot of long term potential.

Preet Bharara:

This convention for the Democrats, I’m not asking you to judge it on its theatrical success or anything else, but on what they needed to do. On a scale of one to 10, how do you think it worked out?

Michael Beschloss:

Oh, 11. 11.

Preet Bharara:

It goes to 11? Really? The Spinal Tap reference now?

Michael Beschloss:

Yeah, right. Dating both of us. If you take any hour of the Democratic Convention this week, almost every hour did its work. One tiny example, but it proves the point. You and I have lived through roll call votes at Democratic and Republican Conventions all of our lives. When I was a kid, I’m older than you are, so I remember this. Democratic Party was usually some old woman from the South who I would really not have liked to know what her position on civil rights was in the 1950s and calling out, “Alabama,” and then go through this long roll call.

Preet Bharara:

You’re describing exactly how the roll call went for the Republicans.

Michael Beschloss:

Yes. Well, since they are long before the 1950s, that’s highly appropriate. But what I’m saying is that the people who planned this convention said, “Let’s even use the hour in which this boring roll call vote appears and instead make it into a dance party, a rock concert,” which they did. I hear from my sons, who are 27 and 30, that on TikTok now, and other places, people actually want to watch and listen to that roll call because they love the music and they love the DJ.

DJ Cassidy:

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is DJ Cassidy and I’d like to welcome you all to the Democratic National Convention roll call.

Preet Bharara:

There’s something else that’s sort of notable. All of us have been talking for a long time about the historic nature of this nomination. First Black woman, Asian woman, the standard-bearer for a major political party. It’s a big deal. It means a lot to a lot of people. I know it means a lot to my family and others. Yet, Kamala Harris in her acceptance speech, didn’t really talk about the historic nature as some might have expected, as some might have thought she would. Why is that?

Michael Beschloss:

Well, I was looking at the screen and I did not need anyone to remind me that she’s Black and a woman. That was done by who she is. I think it was much more important for her to say, “I want to be judged based on my experience and my ability and the content of my character.” The way to do that is to perform, which she did. That was the speech of a president last night. It looked like a president giving a State of the Union. Anyone who had doubts at the beginning of that speech about Kamala Harris as a strong, effective future president, I think if they were fair, they had very few such doubts by the end of that speech.

So if she had gone into a long thing or, “Isn’t it great that I’m campaigning to be the first woman to be President of the United States,” or, “Isn’t it great that I would be the second Black president in history if I were elected?” Terrific, but in a half hour’s speech with 78 days to go, I think that is really a distraction. Also, I think it says that America is getting to the point which we want, which is, you don’t look at Kamala Harris and say, “There’s a Black woman.” You say, “There’s a very smart woman of immense charm, speaks well, one of the most experienced candidates for president we have ever had.”

Preet Bharara:

I don’t remember exactly, but if you think back to 2016, my recollection is that Hillary Clinton talked a bit more about herself.

Michael Beschloss:

I was not mentioning any names.

Preet Bharara:

Was that a mistake on Hillary Clinton’s part?

Michael Beschloss:

In retrospect, I think she and I have not talked about it, but I think in retrospect, given what we now know about the outcome in 2016, especially at the Democratic convention, it may not have been the greatest idea to go so deep on Seneca Falls and on the first woman and so on. I do not know what she thinks and I would love to ask her sometimes.

Preet Bharara:

You should ask her.

Michael Beschloss:

In that Trump year.

Preet Bharara:

At this moment, at the end of the summer in 2024, what is the nature of, in the Democratic Party, what is the nature of identity politics and what is its role against the backdrop of history? How do you think that kind of emphasis on identity plays out?

Michael Beschloss:

As it has been true all of American history, you try to have a ticket that reflects America. Unfortunately, for most of American history, with the two major parties, that meant two white guys. You were balancing, perhaps, a Northern Liberal against a Southern Conservative or right of center moderate. Now, if you take a look at this ticket, for instance, I come from a small town on the edge of the suburbs of Chicago, 4600 people, called Flossmoor and all I can tell you is that Tim Walz reminds me of so many of the teachers I had, so many of the dads in town, some of my baseball coaches.

That is something, for instance, that the Democratic ticket of 2004 lacked. You had John Kerry, who was seen by Midwesterners, by myself probably, and I’m still wired that way, as a coastal elite and he could have chosen Dick Gephardt, who was the Missouri son of a milkman. If he had done so, I think Kerry would have gotten those 30,000 votes in Ohio that he lost, and therefore, Kerry would have become president over George W. Bush. So it’s not just identity politics. It is making a large as number of Americans feel that this is a ticket that not only embraces them, but understands what they’re about.

Preet Bharara:

Another unique feature, I thought, of the DNC was the prominent placement of a number, not just Adam Kinzinger, but a number of other erstwhile Republicans who were saying they put country first. Somebody said, I forget which person this was, if you vote for Kamala Harris, that doesn’t make you a Democrat, it makes you a patriot. How unusual, in the history of political conventions, is that?

Michael Beschloss:

Actually, it’s almost something that I would have predicted. 1964, Barry Goldwater, an extremist, although Trump makes Barry Goldwater look like an Upper West Side liberal in contrast. But at the time, Goldwater was seen as a right wing extremist, there was a formal group that was called Democrats for Johnson. A lot of people who had worked for Eisenhower who said, “We can’t support Goldwater,” allowed Johnson to occupy the center.

Same thing happened in 1972 when George McGovern was nominated and seen by some people as too far left. There was an organization called Democrats for Nixon that was headed by John Connolly, who was Linden Johnson’s best friend, Democratic governor of Texas for years, that did the same thing.

So the fact that, that is happening this year, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me because it means that we’ve got a healthy system.

Preet Bharara:

Can we talk about the RNC, the Republican National Convention for a moment?

Michael Beschloss:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

We had something that’s the opposite of what we saw in the Democratic National Convention and that is, some of the most prominent voices, former cabinet secretaries, the former President George Bush, still a Republican as far as I know, not present at the convention. What does it say and how uncommon is it for some of the most prominent figures in the party not to even be at the convention?

Michael Beschloss:

Well, I’ll go back to 2016. What did Donald Trump say in his acceptance speech? “I, alone, can fix it.” This goes back to the beginning. He’s got the soul of a dictator, or want to be dictator. He does not want to share the limelight. He does not want to acknowledge that the Republican Party existed before the summer of 2016 when he was nominated. The way you do that is you make sure that any contending voices are absent and it fits with his whole MO. What has the last few years been but an effort to mow down anyone in his own party who might slightly disagree with him?

Preet Bharara:

Can I throw probably not a very smart theory at you?

Michael Beschloss:

I can’t imagine a not smart theory coming from you, Preet, but please do.

Preet Bharara:

My thinking has been, it’s been a month. If post-assassination attempt, Trump had pivoted even slightly to being a little bit more above the fray, a little bit less name-calling, he would have had the excuse of having a brush with death. He did have an expression a couple of times at the convention that was different and not everyone will love me giving him some credit for this, that looked a little bit different. He looked like he might be on the cusp of understanding empathy and mortality. If he had done a little bit of that and been a little bit more open and a little bit more, I think, presidential, which is not something that is often said about him, he would have been in a tremendously powerful political position with the independents and other swing voters who are frozen in what to do because they don’t like either of the candidates. What do you make of that?

Michael Beschloss:

I think you’re right, but if you’ll forgive my saying so, it reminds me of, if my aunt had certain male body parts, she’d be my uncle. Donald Trump with modesty and humility and maybe a little bit of religion, that just is never going to happen. Can’t even feign it.

Preet Bharara:

Can’t even feign it, even after almost being shot in the head. Because some life experiences and near death experiences, it is not unprecedented for an event like that to at least slightly change a normal human being and it didn’t with him.

Michael Beschloss:

Look what it did with Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan met with the Cardinal of New York and he said later that he told the cardinal and he told himself after he survived an assassination attempt the end of March 1981, any time I’ve got left is reserved for Him, meaning God, and he felt that it had an enormous impact on his life. I’d even give a more modest hypothesis, Preet. I assume that there was someone in Trump’s entourage who said to him, “Even if you don’t feel any different after this assassination attempt, it might be a good idea to pretend that it’s made you more wise and moderate and careful in what you say because those things will help you politically, if nothing else.”

The point is, what has been demonstrated is, for whatever reason, even more than before, he has lost control over himself. The Trump of the late weeks of the 2016 campaign, and I hate to praise him, but at the very end, he was a very disciplined candidate. He had speeches that were written for him by Steve Bannon and others that went, after the neglect of, for instance, northern industrial states by the Obama administration that really began to connect. He seemed like at least the beginning of a faintly plausible president.

I don’t think Trump has that ability anymore. If you saw the flailing around after Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech. He calls up right wing cable network after right wing cable network. Even Fox was trying to get him off the air because he was sounding so eccentric. This is not exactly a disciplined, dangerous candidate against the Democrats, which means the Democrats even have less excuse if this election is lost.

Preet Bharara:

The only time that I can think of, the only times that Donald Trump shows some discipline is when his adversary is failing terribly. I hate to say it, but during that debate, he was a disciplined debater. He didn’t do any of his crazy antics because he saw what was happening. You don’t have to pile on. Joe Biden was not having, Joe Biden was showing the world that there were issues with his running for a second term. But when his adversary is soaring and getting big crowds and doing great, he doesn’t know what to do.

Michael Beschloss:

Because he’s a deeply insecure and angry person that I would assume always feels that he’s going to be vanquished in the end and that may happen in 2024. So if he’s debating against Joe Biden who had this horrible evening and was unable to express himself in the way that Biden has for most of his life, it wouldn’t be in Trump’s nature to be charitable, but he doesn’t feel threatened.

If he is debating against Kamala Harris on ABC on September 10, if that comes off, that’s going to be a very different story. I assume you would not disagree that a prosecutor can make a very good political candidate.

Preet Bharara:

In some ways, what’s amazing about Kamala Harris is reemergence. I think everyone understood and knew she’s good in the prosecutorial setting. Some of the clips they showed at the convention and some of her most memorable viral moments as a senator were during hearings where she’s questioning somebody aggressively. That’s what she knows how to do. That’s what I was trained to do.

What was less well known was, could she stand at a podium with tens of millions of people watching on television and tens of thousands in the room and give an Obama like electric connecting speech. Now that we know she can do that, she’s very formidable.

Michael Beschloss:

Yeah. I would have said six months ago, she’s very capable of doing that. The problem is this damn job of being vice president when you have to basically bow down all the time and make yourself look like less than you are.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So my question about the future is, assume, I don’t make this assumption, but I love to think about it, Donald Trump is defeated. Let’s say even somewhat decisively defeated. He’s then done. He’s not going to run again in four years, I don’t think.

Michael Beschloss:

Assuming that he does not succeed in waging some kind of coup which is, sad to say, an open question.

Preet Bharara:

So he will then have lost multiple times. He will have been the standard-bearer for the Republicans three times in a row. I don’t know if the Republicans have ever done that three times. I think the Democrats did that with William Jennings Bryan.

Michael Beschloss:

William Jennings Bryan, right. And Stevenson almost, was almost nominated in ’60.

Preet Bharara:

My question to you is, what does the Republican Party do? What does it look like upon a second failure of Donald Trump in the future?

Michael Beschloss:

Take a look at the post-November 1964 defeat of Barry Goldwater and multiply that by 100. In other words, after November 1964, centrists like Richard Nixon and the Republican Party said, “The problem was Goldwater. We can no longer go with a radical extremist. We have to go back to the center.” So that paved the way for Richard Nixon.

If we are still in a healthy system, which I pray what will happen is that the people who were responsible for the presidential popular vote for Republicans in 2016, which Trump did not win, as you know. 2018, 2020, he lost the presidency. 2022, a surprising to some people, loss in the midterm election. People will say, “This is Trump and this is extremism and we can’t afford this craziness anymore because this party is going to be gone and it will encourage relative centrists like Nikki Haley or perhaps Governor Sununu of New Hampshire.”

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s a very optimistic assessment.

Michael Beschloss:

That’s if Trump goes.

Preet Bharara:

No, I still think it’s optimistic. Because the Trump movement is bottom up. So it’s fine to say that centrist Republicans will move to take the party back, but what about the 60 or 70 million die hard MAGA supporters of Trump? Are they really going to shift in what they want to see in a nominee, even if Trump loses again? By the way, they will believe that he was robbed of the presidency.

Michael Beschloss:

Oh, no doubt, and Trump will be on the center strip of some highway saying that he was robbed once again.

Preet Bharara:

Right, because the dynamic is a little bit different, I think. The other dynamics that we’re talking about, there is an understanding that the nominee failed and lost and we can’t stick with a loser. Here, he sufficiently warped enough people’s minds as to make them think, “No, no. Our guy won. He’s not a loser. He was robbed.” Doesn’t that make it a little bit harder to move on?

Michael Beschloss:

I just don’t think you could keep on doing this. He’s going to be 82 years old four years from this election. He’s not exactly in the most conspicuously best health and self-control.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t mean Trump himself, but people who emulate Trump.

Michael Beschloss:

Yes, but a lot of the reason that Trump has been able to do this is that he’s had a monopoly over this movement. You had someone who was on a hit TV show, The Apprentice, for what, 14 years and went into a lot of people’s living rooms. Not mine and probably not yours, but a lot of people’s. They thought he was this successful business man, tough with a heart of gold. None of those things were true, by the way, but they thought that.

Now, vying for the support of the MAGA movement is probably going to be 10 different people, some of them even more extreme. So you’re not going to have one person who can take that entire lane and dominate the Republican Party. Also, Trump has, at least in his prime, had certain political skills that made him a lot more powerful than otherwise he might have been.

Preet Bharara:

That’s an interesting note to end on. Michael Beschloss, thanks so much for joining us. Always love talking to you.

Michael Beschloss:

Same here, Preet. Be well. Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

So folks, after this big week, I wanted to take the show out with one of the most on point tracks from “O Say, Can You See?,” the amazing new album by Zeshan B, which I had the privilege of executive producing.

Zeshan B:

Change is on the way, a new age, a new day.

Preet Bharara:

The song is called Change Is On The Way. It’s a beautiful and moving track and you’ll understand why I wanted to share it with you. I should mention that Zeshan and I have been talking about how it could totally be a rally song for the Harris-Walz campaign. So if anyone from the campaign is listening, let me just say as a legal matter, that you have our full and complete permission to use this song. If this week has shown us one thing is that there’s hope that change is actually on the way.

Zeshan B:

Everyday I wake up and I wonder if today is finally the day that straw is going to break. People living hand to mouth and something’s got to give because that’s no way to live, no, no. So get ready. Get ready. I said it. Change is on its way. A new age. A new day. I said it. Change is on its way. A new age. Dawn of a new day.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guests, David Axelrod and Michael Beschloss.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can now also reach me on Threads or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an e-mail to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.