Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Jonathan Karl:

The challenge right now that she has is defining who she is a vice president is … obviously, people know the name, they know what she looks like. They don’t really know anything about her.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Jonathan Karl. He’s the Chief Washington correspondent at ABC News. He’s also a co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos and one of the country’s leading White House reporters. Name a beat in Washington and Karl has covered it. From the White House to Capitol Hill to the State Department, Karl is deeply sourced and often breaks the biggest stories in politics. He’s covered four presidencies and seven presidential elections. He’s also the author of the book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and The End of The Grand Old Party. He joins me today to talk about this unprecedented, historic, and frankly unhinged election season. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

Hey folks, I have some pretty exciting news to share with you this week. Some of you might not know this about me, but now, in addition to being a lawyer and a podcaster, I can now also add music producer to the list. Yep, it’s true. Tomorrow on Friday, July 26th, my good friend Zeshan B is coming out with his new album, O Say, Can You See, an album that I was privileged to executive produce. Zeshan started working on the album during the pandemic in 2020, channeling his frustration around politics and social justice, into music and lyrics. And when I met Zeshan somewhat by chance a few years ago, I was blown away by his talent. It’s been such a privilege to watch Zeshan pour his heart and soul into his music.

And I can’t wait for you all to hear it. Make sure to check out O Say, Can You See, out this Friday, July 26th, and stay tuned for a special conversation with me and Zeshan on next week’s episode. I’ll be right back with my conversation with Jonathan Karl.

THE INTERVIEW

The 2024 election has been turned upside down, again. ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl is here to help us understand what’s going on behind the scenes. Jonathan Karl, welcome back to the show.

Jonathan Karl:

Thanks for having me.

Preet Bharara:

A couple of things going on in the news politically?

Jonathan Karl:

It may be the most insane three and a half weeks of American politics that I’ve ever witnessed.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, it’s hard to believe it’s only been three and a half weeks or a little less than four weeks, since the debate by the time this thing comes out. So there’s a lot of things to talk about. I want to talk about what’s next for Kamala Harris, how you see the race, how you, as the author of the book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, how the theses from that book sit as we look in today’s climate. Before we do any of that, I wonder if you have a sense from your reporting of the real tick tock with respect to the sitting president deciding not to run. We were told in adamant terms by him and all the people around him that he was in, he was in, he was in.

And then sort of out of nowhere on Sunday afternoon, suddenly he was out. And the reporting has been that even fairly close members, fairly high ranking members of his staff and his orbit learned about it, learned about the withdrawal from social media. What was the final straw for the sitting president?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, I’ll tell you what I know, and with the understanding, there may be other elements that we haven’t learned yet, but what I learned on Saturday when all systems were go, when he was still insisting he was in, when people close to him were saying he’s in, he’s in. I had been told that a group of senators led by Senator Patty Murray had essentially written a letter calling on him to drop out of the race. A letter that they were making it clear would go public if he didn’t make his own decision. They didn’t want to go public with it, but they were ready to turn the screws.

Preet Bharara:

Why Patty Murray, by the way?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, Patty Murray is the most senior Democrat in the Senate. She was-

Preet Bharara:

I though it was Chuck Schumer.

Jonathan Karl:

Well, I mean, Chuck Schumer had … as I reported in the midst of the Republican Convention, Chuck Schumer had gone directly to Rehoboth to make that case straight to Biden, but in a private way. I learned about it days later. By the way, that trip of Chuck Schumer, which I think was also an incredibly important piece of this puzzle, that trip was Saturday, just a couple of hours before the shots rang out in Butler, Pennsylvania and Schumer’s office put out a one sentence statement about that meeting at 6:05 PM on Saturday.

Preet Bharara:

My goodness.

Jonathan Karl:

The shots rang out at about 6:11, so nobody even noticed that Schumer had gone to Rehoboth, but his message was quite blunt, as I reported a few days later. He basically made the case that it was best for Biden, it was best for the party, and it was best for the country if he made a decision to leave the race that he was poised to lose and that he was poised to be a drag on Democrats running in the House and the Senate and possibly cause Republicans to be in a position to win all of it.

Preet Bharara:

What about Nancy Pelosi’s role?

Jonathan Karl:

So that was key and clearly Nancy Pelosi’s role was central here. I mean, you could see it. Pelosi herself was saying very little publicly, but what she said publicly, she said very loudly. I mean, she said when she went on MSNBC and said, it’s the President’s decision to make, and he had already made the decision, so what’s she talking … what decision? He had already decided to stay in, but then when you saw Adam Schiff come out and publicly call on Biden to get out, and then, you saw Congresswoman Lofgren come out, these are perhaps two of the very closest allies to Nancy Pelosi in the house. So when they’re coming out, it’s … you get a sense that it’s Nancy Pelosi speaking, but she didn’t want to be publicly … I mean, she’s the conscience of the party.

She is, along with Obama, the most prominent elder statesman in that party. I mean, maybe we could put Hillary and Bill in that category, but she’s up there. She’s one of the absolute most prominent, and she was working clearly behind the scenes, but I think that the idea that a significant number of his Senate colleagues were going to come out publicly, not the private conversations, but publicly came out, I think was a big, big factor in that final decision. This is a decision he didn’t want to make. I mean, one prominent Democrat also on Saturday, again, the day before he announced, put it to me a little tongue in cheek, but said … the message is basically, “Are you going to do the right thing or are we going to do it for you?” I mean, he was truly left without a choice.

Preet Bharara:

The other way I heard it was apparently from the mouth of Nancy Pelosi, some version of the message, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way. Is that what happened?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly, and by the way, he held out so long that it was basically doing it the hard way. I mean, he did it. It didn’t have to go … I mean, as everybody knew from the beginning, he had to do it himself. There was no way to deny him pledge delegates that he had already won. Although I did take note when he did that press conference at NATO, and he was asked a question about his delegates and if he would allow them … free them to vote wherever they want. He did say yes, that didn’t necessarily carry any legal authority, but I thought it was very interesting that he said they can vote for whoever they want. Really?

But nobody was … I mean, Kamala Harris wasn’t going to step up and challenge the president that she was serving with.

Preet Bharara:

What was the level of consensus and/or unanimity amongst senior elected democratic officials that Biden should withdraw?

Jonathan Karl:

I was told that if you want to look at it in terms of a whip count in the Senate, that it was 45 to six. 45 senators believing he needed to go, six that were saying he should stay.

Preet Bharara:

Do you know who some of the six were?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, we know … Publicly, we know Chris Coons, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders. I mean, they were essentially public that the six were much more public than the 45.

Preet Bharara:

And you think they really thought that or were they trying to be publicly loyal to the President?

Jonathan Karl:

The six, I think a big part of it was loyalty, although Elizabeth Warren doesn’t exactly have a long and warm relationship with Joe Biden, either frankly, does Bernie Sanders. I think they saw a situation where Biden really, really needed the progressive left of the party, and they could exact a price for that. And they had, I mean, you’d seen Biden had clearly tacked pretty far to the left as he was trying to maintain his support. So I think that politics was a big part there. A guy like Chris Coons, it’s clearly loyalty.

Preet Bharara:

Okay, so here’s a tough question. So you were the sitting Vice President of the United States. You were only in that position because Joe Biden, the president put you there. Everyone is calling for Joe Biden to withdraw, you probably … if you are hearing and seeing things yourself had a feeling that maybe Joe’s time was over, but obviously, both privately and externally, you have to be supportive out of loyalty and out of good faith feelings about the sitting president, but what was really going on? Were members of the Vice President’s staff figuring out a strategy for what to do if and when the moment came that Joe Biden would step back, did they have a statement prepared? Were they coordinating with the President’s staff? How did that work to your knowledge?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, she had to do two things. She had to be absolutely, and totally and completely loyal to Joe Biden.

Preet Bharara:

Completely.

Jonathan Karl:

And part of that reason is obvious. The most important thing for her future, if she’s to be the next president, was for Biden to step down and for him to endorse her. There was no coordination between … unless we learn some time about secret conversations between the principals, there was absolutely no coordination with staff.

Preet Bharara:

Do you find it odd that there would be not … any coordination at all, even between the principals?

Jonathan Karl:

Look, there was no coordination with Biden and his senior staff. I mean, his inner circle had become so small.

Preet Bharara:

Who was it?

Jonathan Karl:

It was Ricchetti and Donilon. I’m told Bruce Reed, who also was looped in on much of this, but Anita Dunn, Jeff Zients, General O’Malley Dillon, the people that were at the uppermost reaches of the campaign and at the White House were not in … I mean, I’m not talking about just the final decision, that they weren’t looped into, that they weren’t looped into some of these conversations in the final days. The Inner Circle was … and obviously, I would add to that family, I’m talking in terms of the staff and obviously, Valerie, his sister, Hunter’s son, and Jill the First Lady. I was saying the other thing that Kamala Harris had to do while being totally and completely and utterly loyal is to be prepared to move immediately when it happened.

And clearly she was, and it was an unbelievable display. I mean, she made something like 100 calls in the hours after the announcement, including calls with the people that would’ve been potential rivals. And it was very interesting to see in the immediate aftermath, if you look at the first hour, hour and a half after the news is out, after that letter pops. You saw people like Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer, Governor Pritzker. You saw them put out statements praising Joe Biden and talking about what a great legacy he had, his great president, all the great stuff he did, and no mention of Kamala Harris whatsoever.

It didn’t take long for some of them to realize that, well, I guess we better get that at Harris endorsement out. But even after Biden because Biden’s letter doesn’t mention Harris’s candidacy.

Preet Bharara:

I was saying to a guest earlier in the week on the podcast, I was on a plane with not very good wifi. And I saw the letter, it didn’t mention Kamala, and I thought that was very, very significant, and that’s what everyone was focusing on. And then sometime later when the wifi started working again, I saw the separate tweet-

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, which came almost immediately after. But yeah, we all read that letter and we’re like, “Oh my God, he’s not endorsing Harris.” And I still don’t have a clear understanding of why that is and why he decided-

Preet Bharara:

Do you think someone was like, “Oh crap-”

Jonathan Karl:

Wait a minute-

Preet Bharara:

We forgot the Kamala piece. Get back on Twitter. It wouldn’t be shocking to me, but do you think in retrospect … I have a couple of questions, in retrospect, it was a foregone conclusion that Biden was going to endorse Kamala because I and many other people speculated that if Biden got out, there were all sorts of scenarios of somewhat similar probability, maybe be Kamala, maybe there’d be an open convention. People would vie for it. Some people thought that would be a good thing because even if it ended up being Kamala at the end of that process, she would be stronger, she would’ve been vetted.

She would’ve had some struggle that she would’ve overcome. And none of that came to pass. And it almost looks in retrospect like this was the only way it could have gone down. Is that fair or not?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, I’ll tell you this. I had very good sources as in these final days that were close to the President, that were close to those that were … and some of those that were pressuring the president to do this. And there was a lot of a sense that it was inevitable that he was going to have to do it, that he would’ve no choice, but the people I was talking to truly had no idea whether or not he would endorse Kamala.

Preet Bharara:

Right. I’m sorry. Given the endorsement, did this go the way it did because of just the structure of it and the logic of it, or was it that in combination with the extreme deafness of Kamala Harris and her team?

Jonathan Karl:

I think that there was an inevitability to this, but it was the deafness that made it happen so quickly. She had a built-in advantage here. There’s some sloppy talk by some Democrats that she had 14 million votes in the primaries. Those were people that were voting for Biden-Harris? No, Joe Biden was the only one on the ballot in those states. So she actually didn’t have any pledged delegates. But those delegates were … there’s a rules committee for the convention, and those delegates were carefully chosen as allies of the Biden-Harris ticket. They were not going to have a repeat of 2016 when you had a whole bunch of angry Bernie Sanders’ delegates fighting still into the convention.

Hillary Clinton’s nomination, and the whole mess that we saw in 2016 at that convention, they were very careful that this was going to be a clean convention with delegates that were loyal to the ticket. So I mean, she had an absolute prohibitive advantage. If somebody had tried to come in, even without Biden’s endorsement, it would’ve been virtually impossible to beat her. Now, the scenario for somebody else to win was for her not to get a majority on the first ballot, and then the Superdelegates get to vote, the so-called superdelegates for the Democrats, those are party officials, elected officials, elder statesmen in the party.

And among that group, there are many that had doubts about whether or not Harris would be the strongest candidate. So you could have had a different race, but in terms of the delegates that were coming in on that first ballot, those were going to be heavily weighted towards Harris, regardless of whether or not somebody big jumped in.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, as we think about this and talk about it, I’m just stating the obvious, but the Biden blessing, the Biden endorsement in that second tweet was all important. I mean, she probably would’ve prevailed otherwise.

Jonathan Karl:

But it might’ve been messy.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, and the only way that might’ve been an alternative was if Joe Biden remained silent. Now, what about some of these other folks that took a day, including my former boss, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi? And I have a particular question about Chuck Schumer who I used to work for. I know him fairly well. He did that press conference in the last day or two, and he was positively giddy. He was giggling like a kid. And I wonder if that’s a consequence of seeing how the rollout happened. I mean, I tweeted yesterday that it’s about as flawless as a forty-hour rollout as you could have imagined. Was that part of the plan for Nancy and Chuck and others to wait a couple of days, or is that a function of their being so pleased with how this is going that they’re happily in the camp?

Jonathan Karl:

The answer is kind of yes to both. First of all, they’re the party leaders. They obviously played a central role behind the scenes in getting Biden to make the decision he made. What they didn’t want to see is the perception that this was a few people behind closed doors. I guess we don’t have smoke-filled rooms anymore, but party leaders pushing one person out and anointing the other person, they wanted to see an organic process and not to be seen as pulling all the strings. So I think that was absolutely not about any doubts about Kamala by any of them, or any question about whether or not they would or whether they would endorse somebody else.

It was … We’ve already pushed the president out. We’re not going to be the ones that look like we’re driving the ship on everything. And then, the reason why that press conference, you mentioned from Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries happened so quickly is because of the absolute flawless rollout and the fact that she had really become the presumptive nominee by the time they held that press conference and made the endorsement.

Preet Bharara:

How happy are the Democrats about how it’s gotten? I mean, my perception is as a voter, and I’m not unbiased here, I want Kamala Harris to be the next President of the United States and want Donald Trump to fade into oblivion, I don’t have to be neutral and objective like you, on the podcast, but I wonder how widely that view is shared. I have a sense it’s fairly widely shared. Is that true?

Jonathan Karl:

I mean, they’re ecstatic. They’re ecstatic, because you had a situation where the perception was Biden was going to lose. Now, we don’t know that Kamala Harris is going to win in these 48 hours, in her first 48 hours will be reflective of the next 100 and some days, but it’s a whole new race and it’s race that they believe that they can win, which is not where they were a few days ago. They believe they can win. And also, all you have to do is look at the way Donald Trump is reacting. I mean, you’ve had full meltdown and he’s in a state of panic and they’re making noises about trying to block saying this was a betrayal of democracy, and they’re going to try to challenge the switch and all this stuff.

And by the way, the other thing, you didn’t ask this question, but I just … Kamala Harris is going to bring out the absolute worst in Donald Trump. So scrambles the race and you’re going to see polls. You’re already seeing some, it’s all margin of error. And national polls don’t mean a damn thing as you know, but they can be an indicator of where the battleground state polls are headed, but clearly, you are going to see polls that show a bounce for Kamala Harris. And the reason why you know that is because Tony Fabrizio-

Preet Bharara:

Put out a memo.

Jonathan Karl:

The chief pollster for Trump has already put out a memo explaining why we’re going to see polls that show Harris in the lead because they’re already seeing it in their own research.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask a question? Did the Trump folks not anticipate that Biden might step out? I mean, it was on the lips of every senior Democratic official. The polling showed that something over 70% of the public, which includes Democrats and Republicans, but the overall number was something over 70% thought that Biden wasn’t fit and was too old to be president again. Did they do any contingency planning? Did they have an alternative strategy? Did they have messages that were in preparation or strategy that was in preparation in the same way on the other side, Kamala Harris totally did?

Jonathan Karl:

So before answering that, I want to give a little context. Strategic planning is not a big thing in Trump world.

Preet Bharara:

Well, he won once without it, and he lost once without it. You would think the third time you might want to try it.

Jonathan Karl:

There’s been a lot of talk about how Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles have created this incredible campaign that it has none of the drama that you saw in 2016. It’s a much sleeker and more effective operation than you had in 2020, et cetera, et cetera. That’s true, and let’s face it, they put together, at least from a production standpoint, a very good convention. The convention in 2016 in Cleveland was a disaster on all fronts. I remember being there on the floor watching their keynote speaker who was Joni Ernst speaking, and the hall was empty because it was just disorganized, the whole thing and they put together pretty solid convention in Milwaukee.

So it is a more competent campaign, but it is not … it’s a small campaign and not particularly strategic. Look, there had been people around Trump, had been thinking that Biden was going to be replaced for a long time. I mean, there were all the fever dreams of like, Michelle Obama is going to come in and take it over, and nobody who has any relationship has any experience with the Obama’s ever thought that was remotely possible except for … but the people around Trump really thought that was a possibility. So they thought it was a real possibility for months and months and months that Biden would ultimately be jettisoned, but I see no evidence that there was any strategic planning about what to do if he was.

Preet Bharara:

By the way, just going back to the point we were discussing a few minutes ago about the definites of Kamala Harris’s rollout, none other than Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC told a reporter, “Anyone who doubts Kamala Harris’s political expertise should pay attention to how she so perfectly handled every step post Biden’s exit, I will donate the maximum to her campaign.” Are we hearing the same thing from wealthy and powerful private citizens who are in a position to help her campaign?

Jonathan Karl:

We are. I mean, there’s a little bit of … we have heard from a few donors who are doubtful about where she’ll be, policy wise. I mean, you have … I mean, look at what they’ve done. And the 81 million in the first 24 hours was largely small dollar donations and kind of a reflection of grassroots strength, but all the donors who had stepped back and said, we’re not going to pour money into a losing Biden campaign. I mean, most of them are right back in with a vengeance. This campaign will not want for money. They’re as enthusiastic as the people you saw show up for her first rally as a presidential candidate in Milwaukee, they are all in.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Jonathan Karl after this. Is this just a sort of normal bump? Is this a honeymoon period? Don’t we expect the Trump pollster predicted that it’ll settle back, or is this sustainable? I mean, they have another opportunity for a bump as almost always happens with the candidate of either party after their convention. So Kamala Harris with great fanfare has been put at the top of the ticket presumptive nominee, and then she’s going to get inaugurated as the nominee in four weeks. How do you think that’ll play out, or how do experts think this is going to play out in the polls?

Jonathan Karl:

The challenge right now that she has is defining who she is. A vice president is obviously, people know the name, they know what she looks like, they don’t really know anything about her. So she has both the opportunity to define herself and also has to fend off the fact that Republicans are working very hard to define her. And how are they defining her? They’re defining her as a radical, as a leftist, as basically indistinguishable from the squad. She’s AOC and the far left of the Democratic Party. There’s the overtly racist stuff that will be thrown at her. We’ve already seen from at least one member of Congress calling her the DEI nominee.

So she’s going to have to fend all that often. By the way, I think there’s a real opportunity for her to do that. And she’s done it to a degree with what she’s done in the first couple of days, which is to lean heavily into something that she didn’t emphasize much when she ran for president in 2020. The fact that she’s a prosecutor. She was a DA in San Francisco. She was the Attorney general of the state of California. She’s not some soft on crime defund the police, far left progressive-

Preet Bharara:

In primaries, people on the left called her Kamala the cop-

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, they attack her for it.

Preet Bharara:

In a pejorative way.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So she has to lean into that. And look, I think she has … one question is will she do what Biden had failed to do this time around, failed pretty spectacularly to do. One of the things that helped him win in 2020, which is to reach out to the independents and disaffected Republicans who are horrified by what they see in Donald Trump. So I kind of think that she needs a … for a dated reference that you’ll understand, a Sister Souljah moment, an effort to show who she is, and to dispel this notion that she’s this exotic, radical, far left progressive and pick a fight or two.

Preet Bharara:

And can she do that, the Sister Souljah moment? Maybe you should explain that it’s crazy that we’re old enough that many people may not remember that from the Clinton campaign. So I’ll allow you to do the honors in a moment. But can the Kamala Harris team be confident, given the structure of the race and who she is and how things have been trending, that Black women voters in particular will vote democratic in the fall?

Jonathan Karl:

I mean, look, it’s new star she’s going to have.

Preet Bharara:

I’m sorry, just by way of background, I asked the question in the context of reporting and polling that showed that Black voters were leading the Democratic Party and not large, but material percentage of them were thinking about voting for Trump. Has that been arrested?

Jonathan Karl:

I mean, I think that you’re going to clearly see that that has been arrested. We have to see if it can be sustained, but I mean there’s that factor. There’s also the issue that she has been pigeonholed within the White House and the previous Biden campaign. They were basically using her as the vice president of reproductive rights. I mean, so many of her events were on abortion, which is obviously going to be a central issue in this campaign for Democrats. It’s the major weakness for Republicans, but she doesn’t need to be the one emphasizing that as much anymore. I mean, that’s baked in. The weakness for Republicans is obvious. Where she stands is totally obvious.

And it’s interesting also, that she hasn’t leaned as heavily into … at least in the first couple of days, into what Hillary Clinton did, which is her identity. I’d be the first woman president to shatter that glass ceiling and all that. All true, and we all know it and everybody can see it, but she’s showing that she can be a president for all Americans, and she’s going to make history, if she’s elected. That’s a given. So what does she stand for and what does Donald Trump stand for? She doesn’t need to lean into that stuff as much because it’s there. It’s obvious, and she’s going to have that advantage.

Preet Bharara:

I want to talk a little bit more about the Trump reaction and their strategy here before we come back to the stakes, which is on everyone’s mind. So Tim Alberta of the Atlantic tweeted this a couple of days ago, “The most striking thing I heard from Trump allies yesterday was the second guessing of JD Vance, a selection they acknowledged that was born of cockiness meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail biter.” Is that the assessment that you’re hearing as well?

Jonathan Karl:

First of all, we’re not going to have a … to do another data reference. We’re not going to see a Thomas Eagleton situation where they replace him.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s even before my time, sir. I mean, I’ve read about it, but-

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, to be honest, I think I was like four years old.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I was four. I think you and I are about the same age.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Are you sure about that?

Jonathan Karl:

With Donald Trump, you definitely cannot be sure,

Preet Bharara:

Because the writers of this series, such as they are. They’ve kind of-

Jonathan Karl:

We’re running for one other big surprise, right?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. They’ve done the debate, they’ve done the assassination, they’ve done the withdrawal.

Jonathan Karl:

It was another major plot turn?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I’m trying to think what other major plot … there could be war, but what other major plot … I think you can have another similar kind of thing. I guess this would be a similar kind of thing.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

In some future episode, if this was being written in the style that it’s been written in so far, JD Vance gets replaced, doesn’t he?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah. Yeah. Whether in reality … I mean, it’s a little complicated.

Preet Bharara:

Well, he’s formally the nominee. I don’t know how that works.

Jonathan Karl:

He’s formally the nominee, so they got to go back in and talk about something that might actually face a legal challenge.

Preet Bharara:

Are they appreciated now, that the assessment that I am making just as an observer, is that JD Vance is utterly uninspiring, rambling, boring, and a turncoat on his prior beliefs in a way that some people think is real, but is very easy to say is not?

Jonathan Karl:

I had heard doubts about JD Vance on the floor of the convention in Milwaukee-

Preet Bharara:

During the speech or before the speech?

Jonathan Karl:

Before the speech, before the speech. As one delegate said to me, I thought this was perfectly kind of encapsulated the Trump Republican Party is like, so what do you think of the Vance pick? And well, I don’t know, here’s what I think. I think that he just got shot and he survived, and he can do whatever he wants. I mean, there’s no … I think that’s great, but he said it was great, so I’m all in. And he’s had a less than perfect rollout. I thought that watching the body language in the joint interview they did on Fox with Jesse Watters, I mean, you could just see. I mean, I’ve gotten to unfortunately be able to read Trump’s body language and facial expressions, I think pretty well.

He does this thing with his eyes when he is really annoyed with people. And I was seeing it all play out in that interview. And Vance was talking too much for Trump’s … what Trump would want. Trump wants a vice president that’s going to sit there and nod and look glowingly at him. He doesn’t want a vice president that’s going to be adding new points and redirecting the conversation. And then, I mean, you looked at his first rally and he’s supposed to be the red meat MAGA choice, the doubling down on MAGA, but it’s none of the spark. I mean, to use a phrase that Trump had used previously, it’s a little low energy. So there’s no public acknowledgement among the Trump campaign that there’s anything hinting of second thoughts.

And frankly, there’s really nothing even privately, I mean that I’ve talked to that, like “No, no, he’s going to be great,” but you can see it. You don’t need to … you can just look at Trump’s reactions.

Preet Bharara:

I mean, does anybody really care? I mean, when he picked Mike Pence, my recollection is that had some meaning and importance. He was a know pre-stayed, dyed in the wool, traditional conservative from Midwestern state, and Trump was unknown and a little bit nutty, and that kind of balanced the ticket point, reassured the evangelicals and cultural concerns. And this time around, everyone knows every single human in this country knows Donald Trump has an impression of Donald Trump, know that he’s the alpha male in the White House. He calls the shots. The only relevance of the vice president, it seems to me in this case is that Trump is also fairly old.

And there is some chance, given his age and how the world works, that the vice president might have to assume the presidency. So other than that, assuming that Trump gets reelected and is healthy for four years, JD Vance is an afterthought.

Jonathan Karl:

I mean, just look at Trump’s approval rating. He went through three plus weeks of the … politically, the best three weeks you could have, he’s ever had. I mean, getting shot, it’s hard to say is a good thing. But the way the assassination attempt worked out, the way he handled himself, the iconic pictures of him raising his fist, blood down his cheeks, the debate, the lawsuit getting dropped in Florida, Democrats in their circular firing squad, all of that and his approval rating in our ABC Ipsos poll on … that we came out over the weekend before the news Biden had dropped out, but after all that other stuff, and Trump’s approval rating stands at 40%, 40% favorability.

Preet Bharara:

That’s his ceiling. That’s his absolute ceiling. Is it not?

Jonathan Karl:

I mean, what more? So yeah, and by the way, his floor is probably at 37%. I mean it’s …

Preet Bharara:

It’s all about whether the opponent in this case likely to be Kamala Harris can expand her base and her voting blocks, right?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah. Trump’s is steady.

Preet Bharara:

And what’s the strategy for Harris? Is it to simply goose up the energy and enthusiasm of the base of the party to ensure it was something which Biden clearly didn’t have and win that way or is it to appeal to the independents and disaffected Republicans who would be key in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada?

Jonathan Karl:

One person that I’m kind of looking to who has said very little publicly for some time is Liz Cheney, Liz Cheney’s, dedication to the idea that Trump must never get back to the White House, is well established. I think that Liz Cheney could be a real prominent ally, an important ally to Kamala Harris if they actually reach out to her. And it’s not just her as one individual who could speak out, but it’s the people who come from where Liz Cheney is, which is, she’s a lifelong conservative Republican who will never vote for Donald Trump. Kamala Harris has to give the people like that a reason to vote for her, not just to vote against Donald Trump.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So how is Trump going to run against Harris going to make her out to be an extreme leftist, even though she had two substantial jobs as a prosecutor? I mean, I note that Trump is having trouble with the thing that he’s usually pretty good at, and that’s affixing a nickname to his political rivals. I think he tried lying, Kamala doesn’t really seem to stick. Is he out of good nicknames? And does that say anything about how this is going to go?

Jonathan Karl:

Crooked Kamala doesn’t really work either, does it? The Harris crime family, that’s not really going to work either. I think that it’s going to be … there’ll a mix of the kind of vaguely, and maybe not so vaguely racism and sexism for sure that you’re going to see thrown at her from the kind of far end of the MAGA base, but they’re going to portray her as the borders are. I think that’s going to be one of the first thing, even though that was not the job she actually had. The job she had, of course, was to work diplomatically on the root causes of migration from Central America, but they will portray her as the borders are, and therefore responsible for what they see as the single biggest failure of Joe Biden.

They will try to tie every negative from the Biden administration, from Afghanistan, to inflation, to Kamala Harris. This was the Biden-Harris White House that did this. So that’ll be the playbook and portray her as basically all the negatives you have with Biden. Plus, she is a far left radical is what they will say, which is not who she is. I actually think that Harris had a very liberal voting record as a senator. And I think that one of the things that drove that is almost from the minute she got into the Senate, there was a sense that she was preparing to run for president and voting with an eye towards the Democratic primaries. So again, it’ll be, part of it will be how she pivots and how she acts as a general election candidate, which we’ve never really seen.

I mean, we saw it as a vice presidential candidate, but that’s different, obviously. And that was such a weird campaign with COVID. So I think that, again, it gets to this notion that there’s 100 days, and probably the next 20 of those days is absolutely critical in how she will be defined in the eyes of most Americans who know her name but really don’t know anything about her.

Preet Bharara:

I have seen online already, some of the most disgusting, misogynistic, and racist things you can be saying about a major party nominee. Is there any feeling or thinking or discussion among the Trump side to try to knock that shit off among allies because A, it’s immoral and bad and B, it’s probably counterproductive and will hurt them? No.

Jonathan Karl:

Well, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has already privately sent that message to fellow Republicans, already seeing some pretty gnarly stuff coming from within that conference saying that that’s wrong and also counterproductive. And look, Chris LaCivita, who is one of the key figures obviously in running that campaign, made it very clear during the convention, he gave an interview with Jonathan Martin who was trying to say, where’s the January 6th stuff? The hostage and J-6 hostages. Where’s the stolen election? And he just responded by saying, inflation gas prices, the border, crime, they want to run it on issues where they think Democrats are very vulnerable. The issue set does benefit Republicans right now, if you look at it.

Trump may have a low personal favorability rating, but he has … and we’ll see where the polls go now, but I can’t imagine this changes overnight, a huge advantage on the issues that voters say are the most important inflation, economy and the border and crime, all issues that Trump had a really big advantage, double-digit advantage in many polls over Joe Biden.

Preet Bharara:

So vice President for Kamala Harris, there is reporting that a number of people are being vetted. There’s also reporting that Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Mark Kelly of Arizona are at the top of the list. What are you hearing about how this might shake out?

Jonathan Karl:

I think it’s a little too early to say he was at the top of the list, but I am told that Kelly Shapiro, Roy Cooper and Andy Beshear, so the governors in North Carolina and Kentucky are also on that list. I’m also told that that is not exhaustive, that there is maybe another name, perhaps two. And there’s truly no front-runner yet. Obviously, she hasn’t had time to sit down and do the formal interviews. The vetting has happened, the requests for documents and the like has gone out. Obviously, Eric Holder’s firm is handling the vetting, which has to be done in a much quicker timeframe than you would normally see, which is why you’re not going to see anybody out of left field.

I mean, this is not the time to go to Mark Cuban or George Clooney or whatever. It’s going to be somebody who has been tested by winning in key races themselves.

Preet Bharara:

Are they thinking someone to the left of Kamala or someone to the right of Kamala or-

Jonathan Karl:

Someone to the right of Kamala. I mean, you can see that with those names. I mean, Cooper, Shapiro, Beshear.

Preet Bharara:

Is that going to upset this amazing coalition she has stitched together in three days?

Jonathan Karl:

I mean, this coalition is energized by the notion that she could be the next president and energized by the need to defeat Donald Trump. And I think that she’s going to have tremendous latitude and goodwill among the core constituency of the Democratic Party. She may do a thing or two over the course of the next 100 days, that might upset Bernie Sanders, but this coalition is hers. She’s going to have navigate the Israel-Gaza issue, which is a sensitive one. She couldn’t make it to Bibi Netanyahu’s-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, she had stuff going on. She was busy.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah. I mean, I’m sure she would’ve loved to have been there, sitting behind him as he ranted from in the House chamber there, but she has tremendous latitude that frankly Biden didn’t have.

Preet Bharara:

So remind me, Jonathan, what network are you with?

Jonathan Karl:

I think it’s ABC News.

Preet Bharara:

Yes. ABC. So why do you think I’m asking that?

Jonathan Karl:

Because you’re going to ask about the debate.

Preet Bharara:

Yes, sir. So Trump has alleged that you guys are not fair and you’re biased, and maybe he’ll skip that debate. Whatever bias he may have thought ABC had must have existed at the time he agreed to do the debate. So what’s going on there and will there be a debate on your storied network?

Jonathan Karl:

I expect there will be … and by the way, you should go back and see if you didn’t catch it. Michael Whatley, who is the chairman, and Trump’s handpicked chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on ABC after Trump made whatever comments he made on true social, that he fully expected that the debate would go forward as planned. And I fully expected will. And by the way, Trump likes to pop off from time to time. He did call me on Monday. I don’t know if you caught that-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Tell us about that.

Jonathan Karl:

It was an interesting call. I had texted him and I had actually left a voicemail message. I had not spoken to him for some time, but-

Preet Bharara:

What do you write in a text to Donald Trump?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, it was after the shooting in Pennsylvania. So I checked in on that and said everybody was horrified, but what happened and relieved that you’re okay. And then, I suggested he give me a call and they said the same thing in the voicemail message. And a few hours later, my phone rang. And it’s interesting when you get a call from Trump, usually when you get a call from somebody in a position like that, the number is blocked, but it’s not. So it pops up on the screen, Donald Trump. Okay.

Preet Bharara:

Do you want to share the number?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, I think I’ll keep that, but he spoke to me for 10 minutes, and was gracious, seemed to kind of almost … you never want to use the word humbled with Donald Trump, but perhaps a bit by what had happened in the fact that he had survived and marveling at the fact that he had survived and that it all happened. And this is when he said that he was going to rip up his convention speech and have something that had more of a note of unity. He talked about Vance, he talked about in detail what happened in Pennsylvania. And then he said to me … I’ve written three books on him, and at least one of which he actually liked, but he said, “You’re a good man, Jonathan.” And then he realized what he was saying, and he quickly added, “You used to be a better man,” but-

Preet Bharara:

He caught himself saying something kind and recoiled?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, so my point is, look, I think we’ll be in a good shape on September 10th, and ABC will have a great debate.

Preet Bharara:

What happened with his speech at the RNC. I didn’t catch all of it, but I got a lot of reports and I saw parts of it. Also, I didn’t have 14 hours to spare to watch that speech.

Jonathan Karl:

I had a copy of the prepared remarks, so I was reading along.

Preet Bharara:

Wait, but how much of the prepared remarks were read?

Jonathan Karl:

Almost all of them. It’s just that you had an additional … so he gave two speeches. He gave the speech that he had ripped up and said he wasn’t going to deliver, and he gave the unifying speech. He read all the remarks, and there were some very unifying lines in that speech. I am not running to be president of half of America. I am running to be president of all of America. And then, there was a line kind of about … not quite “United, we stand, divided we fall,” but expressing that same sentiment and the prepared remarks didn’t mention Biden, didn’t mention “Crazy Nancy Pelosi.” That was all the ad lib stuff, but he would be reading from prompter and then he would go off for extended riffs that were not on prompter.

Then he would go back to the prompter and then go off on extended riffs. And I wasn’t on the floor. I was in our booth. We were broadcasting it. We had a show in and out of the speech, but the folks who had visibility on the teleprompter in the back of the hall were noting and how the poor teleprompter operator was trying to figure out what was going on, scrolling forward, then scrolling back. I saw a similar thing, not in terms of the substance, but with Bill Clinton in 2012 at that Democratic convention in Charlotte, where there was a lot of back and forth. And the organizers of the convention wanted Clinton to keep his speech shorter than what Clinton wanted to do. So they edited him down.

And then, he went out and he gave the full speech, and I was on the floor for that-

Preet Bharara:

From memory, right?

Jonathan Karl:

And I could see the teleprompter … yeah, from memory, and I could see the teleprompter, and I could see him read flawlessly from the teleprompter and then go off, but clearly in what he had written and then pick up the teleprompter. And the amazing thing about Clinton was if you were just watching him, you would’ve no idea to tell When he was reading and when he was reciting what he had memorized. With Trump, it was pretty obvious when he was on teleprompter and when he was off.

Preet Bharara:

Political speech is interesting, to examine what’s effective and what’s not. And I’ve always said one difficulty in being a politician, if you have a brain, is on the one hand, politics suggests you should repeat the same thing simply again and again and again and again. And that’s what gets through to the electorate. That’s how people understand your platform because overlapping groups of people see different parts of the news and your speeches. And so in that sense, Trump has extraordinary discipline. One could say because he says the same stuff again and again and again and again. But on reflection, I often think it’s not discipline, it’s just the way he is. He doesn’t have novel or new interesting thoughts.

He doesn’t have nuanced views about policy. He doesn’t evolve very much. He doesn’t mind repeating himself, and that actually turns out to be very effective. I heard one of Trump’s supporters, and maybe someone who will be back in the cabinet, Rick Grenell, literally comment on Twitter when Kamala Harris’s speech was televised at the rally, said, “Oh, this is the same speech she already gave.” As if that’s a bad thing, and as if his mentor and former boss doesn’t deliver the same damn speech every day for years and years and years, how do you think about the discipline of message and who’s going to be able to do that better?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, probably what Grenell was referring to was the real money line in-

Preet Bharara:

Well, you have a money line like that. She’s like … she says, I’ve dealt with all sorts of perpetrators. That’s a laugh line. And she talks about the crime she prosecuted.

Kamala Harris:

So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.

Preet Bharara:

That’s a money line, and she should be saying it again and again and again up to and including the convention.

Jonathan Karl:

And until the eve of the election. I mean, she’ll say that over and over again. And good campaigns do have message discipline.

Preet Bharara:

Do some of the Trump supporters, do you think … I don’t mean to ask you to make a partisan comment, and I try to do the same, and I’m sure there’s some version of this bias on the other side as well, but I sometimes hear Trump supporters, significant public-facing supporters, say things about the Democrats and about Kamala Harris. And I wonder, are you even listening to yourself? Are you familiar with your guy at all?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, they have an amazing ability. It’s what Trump is. It’s how he’s remade the party. It’s to have total flexibility.

Preet Bharara:

From time to time, you’ll see someone say, “Wow, Kamala Harris has no class over some comment. Are you literally … are you effing kidding me?” So there’s some collective mind rot, I think that goes on and again-

Jonathan Karl:

And you mentioned the idea … I mean, Grenell criticizing or giving quote the same speech, which wasn’t quite, but Trump has been giving the same speech since 2015 with a couple of exceptions. He no longer talks about Mexico paying for the wall, which was the centerpiece, but he still talks about the wall, but it’s the same speech, and Trump’s had the same ideas.

Preet Bharara:

He’s done his Hannibal Lecter riff repeatedly.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And if you’re going to repeat something, it should be a good riff.

Jonathan Karl:

And when he gets criticized for something for that, it will tend to make sure it stays in the speech. He doubles down on it.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Jonathan Karl, thanks so much for being on the show again.

Jonathan Karl:

Great. Thanks a lot Preet. Take care.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Jonathan Karl continues for members of the Cafe Insider Community. In the bonus for insiders, we discuss what Kamala Harris’s foreign and economic policy might look like as president.

Jonathan Karl:

I just don’t think you should expect that it will be a straight on continuation of the Biden policies.

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Jonathan Karl. 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 Preet Bharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now 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 email 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.