May 16, 2024 • 17 mins
Team Trump is up against historic criminal trials and a failed reelection bid in 2020. Despite this, his 2024 campaign is organized, frugal – and getting results.
On today’s Big Take podcast, DC host Saleha Mohsin takes stock of the 2024 Trump campaign through the lens of his past two runs, speaking with former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci and Bloomberg politics reporter Nancy Cook.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
When Anthony Scaramucci joined Donald Trump's twenty sixteen presidential campaign,
he said, even insiders thought it was a long shot.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Nobody on that campaign thought that Donald Trump was gonna win. Nobody.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Unlike most politicians, Trump had fiery rhetoric, but it worked
for him, and his unpredictable approach foreshadowed what was to
come from his administration. It was no surprise that the
man who's known for saying you're fired was quick to
turn over his staff while on the trail, and when
he eventually won the White House, Trump fired Scaramucci after
eleven days as communications director.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Oh so it was chaotic, But that was then.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It's twenty twenty four. Trump has new challenges in front
of him as his latest presidential bid comes into focus,
and his old campaign playbook, which was basically a lack
of a playbook, has gotten some updates.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
He's not raising money that he was once raising. Joe
Biden's eclipsing him on the money, but he is well
established now. He has a more disciplined campaign, and they
have him on message and they have him disciplined. It's
a better campaign.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
But just how does Trump's twenty twenty four campaign strategy
compare to his previous ones, and will those changes be
enough to win over an electorate that didn't vote to
keep him in the Oval office in twenty twenty. Today
on The Show, with Donald Trump on trial in Manhattan
and the likes of his former lawyer Michael Cohen testifying,
(01:38):
all eyes are on how the former president is campaigning
through it, we take stock of Trump's twenty twenty four
strategy through the lens of his past two runs. I
speak with former White House Communications director Anthony Scary Mucci,
along with Bloomberg reporter Nancy Cook, who's followed Trump since
the moment he descended the Trump Tower escalator and announced
(01:58):
a bid for the presidency in twenty fifteen. From Bloomberg's
Washington bureau. This is the Big Take DC podcast, I'm
your host Seleia Mosen. When Trump launched his very first
presidential bid, he was the first to do so with
(02:20):
no previous public service experience, although he'd flirted with the
idea for decades. That's part of the reason people didn't
take the reality TV host and businessman seriously when he
announced his intent to run for president back in twenty fifteen.
But those experiences shaped his approach to politics.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
So the Trump campaign in twenty fifteen was super chaotic,
and he really ran this presidential campaign almost like a
family of business.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Nancy Cook is a politics reporter at Bloomberg.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
There was like a tiny group of people around him.
You had a bunch of different campaign managers. People were
fired and then brought in Corey Luandaus. He was in charge,
he got fired. Paul Mannifort was in charge, he got fired.
You know, he brought in Kelly and Conway. There was
just a ton of churn. And I remember very distinctly
I worked at Politico then sitting in the Politico newsroom
(03:11):
when the Access Hollywood story broke.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
A video obtained by the Washington Post features audio of
Trump in two thousand and five making comments that the
words lude and vulgar are mild descriptions for He was
talking to Billy Bush from Access Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
And thinking, oh wow, like this is really going to
be the end for him.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Wamen are going to come out and droves and they're
going to speak, and that's what the election ended today.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
And it wasn't. There were just so many moments like
that where you thought, oh wow, Republicans don't talk about
trade this way, or oh wow, you know he's saying
all these insane things about immigrants, and you know people
aren't going to like that.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
All this turnover and the bad headlines sparked in fighting
a mid team Trump. Remember, for most of the twenty
sixteen general election campaign, even most Republicans thought Trump would
lose to Hillary Clinton. The polls were not in his favor,
and Trump's campaign wasn't the first to become chaotic due
to about of bad headlines and bad poll numbers.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
My takeaway from that is that, you know, Trump really
has had nine lives politically, but even more so, you know,
he sort of always comes back again and manages to
turn a lot of things that would be political disadvantages
for other candidates into strengths.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Even before the Access Hollywood tape that many thought would
sink Trump's campaign, his divisive brand made it an uphill battle.
Some traditional Republican donors shied away from his bed.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
It wasn't well funded, it was kind of scrappy. They
kind of had like no battleground operation or strategy other
than Trump's own instinct and his ability to define his
opponents very quickly and succinctly Marco Rubio, who he's now
considering for vice president. He named, you know, little Marco.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
It's a strategy that shocked Republican Party fixtures like Mitt Romney.
This has been a low road campaign and pretty much
from the beginning. That's Romney speaking on Bloomberg TV in
March of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
He dispatched with Jeb Bush, who a lot of people
thought was going to be the Republican nominee. You know,
all the top political reporters that I know in Washington
were put on the Jeb Bush campaign.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
If Jeb was running in the mid nineties, he would
have been an exceptional presidential candidate. Bush was more organized,
He had more money than Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Anthony Scaramucci, an investment banker, was working on the Jeb
Bush campaign's finance committee at the time, but.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
He'd lost that campaign because the election was in twenty
sixteen and the electorate had shifted.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Trump dispatched with him, you know, low energy Jeb. He's
a low energy person by nature, and that's okay, there's
nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Trump took the Republican primary nomination, winning over disillusioned voters
and people who wanted a change, someone outside the political establishment.
His campaign rhetoric was uniquely bombastic. Instead of advocating for
immigration reform, he led Chance to bid Wall and it stuck.
Emerging as the Republican front runner, he brought more establishment
(06:07):
party members into the fold, people like Scaramucie.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Donald Trump cruited me into that campaign with Bush got
knocked out of the campaign by Donald Trump, and I
made the decision to work for him. I thought it
was the right loyal thing to do as a member
of the Republican Party, a member of the Republican establishment.
So I went to go work for mister Trump.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
It was Bessie, were there moments where you just thought,
how on earth are we ever going to get elected
if we can't get our campaign organized.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Nobody on that campaign thought that Donald Trump was going
to win. Nobody the ban didn't think he was going
to win. Jared Kushner nobody thought he was going to
win that election. Donald Trump didn't think he was going
to win. On the evening of the election, he was
preparing himself to take a trip to Scotland to play golf.
He wanted to be out of the media spotlight. When
Hillary Clinton was accepting the win of the presidency.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Where were you on election night?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I was with him. I was sitting on a couch
with Rudolph Giuliani at ten fifteen at night, and maryor
Giuliani turned to me and said, I know the state
of Florida very well. I have a home in the
state of Florida. Those precincts that have yet to post
the results, those precincts are voting for Trump. He's going
to win the state of Florida. He's going to win
(07:19):
this election.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
And how did Trump seem?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Trump was about as serious as I've seen him in
the twenty years that I've known him. He was sober,
he was serious, he was nervous.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
That disorganization it came to define his presidency too. But
when it came time for reelection in twenty twenty, his
team took a new approach. Here's Nancy Cook again.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
In twenty twenty, I was covering the Trump White House
and his campaign tried to be one hundred percent different
than twenty fifteen. They tried to be super professional. They
had raised a bunch of money, unlike twenty fifteen, where
it was sort of a ragtag, you know, family run business.
Is kind of vibe and sort of a small group
of staff around. There was a huge amount of staff.
(08:05):
They had org charts and you know, a communications team
and a campaign manager. Their problem was that they were
well funded, but they really misspent a lot of money.
They blew a lot of money on fancy office space,
you know, on a huge staff, and they got to
the point where they did not have money for advertising
at some key points. And you have to remember too,
(08:27):
I mean when I was covering the Trump White House,
the economy was doing well. You know, I really thought
Trump was going to sail to reelection. And then COVID
hit and I would say that really just changed the
whole trajectory of the election because Americans were really disappointed
by the way Trump handled it and they really wanted
a different type of leadership.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Then leading up to the election, many people lost their jobs,
lost family or friends, and on top of it all,
America was rattled by a reckoning over racial injustice. It
was enough to cost Trump the election. In the time since,
the people around him have taken stock of what went wrong,
and it's informing some of his twenty twenty four campaign.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
It's lean and mean, sort of like twenty fifteen. But
I guess the differences is that they are very skilled
and very organized, and they know what they're.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Doing coming up, who's behind the current campaign, how they're
leveraging Trump's legal challenges, and what could pull it apart.
Trump's twenty twenty four campaign is trying to merge the
most effective elements of his past two runs. Like Bloomberg's
(09:35):
Nancy Cook said, it's lean like twenty sixteen, with a
paired down staff and a tight budget, but it's also
more professional like in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
So there's really two people running it. His campaign manager
is this woman Susie Wilds, who is a longtime Florida
operative and really like has helped hern Florida red like
to a reliably read state. She's been involved in Republican
politics for decades, has like very deep ties throughout Florida.
She's a woman of few words. She does not try
(10:05):
to impose her view on Trump. She presents him with options.
She does not like to spend money. She's frugal, she's organized,
she's militant. And then there's another key person, Chris Osavida,
who is a longtime Republican operative who comes out of Virginia.
He was in charge of the whole primary strategy, which
Trump won quite handily, and then he has been really
(10:26):
focused on the battleground stuff and he's helped them sort
of merge the campaign in the Republican National Committee.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Nancy says Wiles in Las Avita have harnessed Trump's personality
as part of their campaign strategy, giving him space to
use it where it helps them, without leaving much room
for the infighting among Trump's official and unofficial advisors, which
in the past has led to firings and chaos. We
spoke about this with Danielle Alvarez, a senior advisor for
(10:52):
communications on the Trump campaign.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
We're taking our leave from the president. He ultimately dictates
their cadence and he has a massive movement behind him,
and so what we're focused on doing is harnessing that energy. Well.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Campaign operations are running smoother than in twenty sixteen and
twenty twenty. Trump is still Trump. His rhetoric remains bombastic,
just the way his supporters like it.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
I don't think that they have tried to change Trump
at all. You know, he is still out there doing
his thing. I think that what they have done successfully
is put sort of a small team around him, and
there's still sort of actors in the Trump orbit who
are sort of floating around, who called Trump and talk
to him or show up at mar A Lago. They're
not trying to sort of keep those people out. They
(11:39):
just sort of redirect them. They don't let those people
get involved in the real campaign organization.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
You could see their strategy in action during this winter's primaries.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Traditionally in politics, it's like candidates spend you know, months
and months on like a year courting Iowa voters. Ron
DeSantis visited like all of the ninety nine counties in
Iowa and like had a million in town halls and
meet and greets, and Nikkihely was in Iowa and South Carolina.
Trump did none of that.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Instead, Team Trump was focused about where and how they
spent resources.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Trump basically showed up like three days before each of
these states primaries or caucuses, would hold a few rallies.
He had a bunch of circuits who would also come
into the state with him. It was like Maga World
would land in Iowa four days before the primary, make
a big splash. Trump would hold like two rallies and
then he would completely dominate the primary. He just came
(12:32):
in at the end and made a real heavy push.
To me, just watching that unfold and covering that in
these different states was really emblematic, Like, man, these people
are organized and they have a different strategy, and they're
really kind of like broke the way people traditionally do primaries.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Trump's legal issues mean that being nimble is crucial to
his success. He can't really run a traditional campaign spending
his time on the road holding rallies and shaking Potter's hands.
Trump's been stuck in a manhatt In courtroom almost every
day for weeks, and there are no cameras or recorders
allowed inside. But Team Trump has managed to turn even
(13:08):
that into an advantage.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
They have been thinking about how to merge a political
and campaign strategy since the fall, and they have been
thinking about basically how to make the courtroom as much
kind of like a rally or a political event as possible.
So like he comes out and says something in the morning.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Here he is on Monday speaking outside of Manhattan Courthouse,
and the New York Giants came out with they all
and shows us leading everywhere.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Light a lot comes out and says something in the evening.
They've done a few little, you know, stops in Manhattan
where he's you know, brought pizza to firefighters, or he
visited a bodega in Upper Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Another day, he visited a construction site and signed red
Make Unions Great Again hats. Before going into court, he
was met with cheers.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
And so they have done these things to try to
use it to his political advantage.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
And maybe it's easier to contain a campaign that's just
in one place rather than rallies and moving around the
country and then different people having access to him.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
I think even if he didn't have this, they wouldn't
be having rallies all the time. You know, the rallies
are expensive, you know, there's I don't think they see
any point in him doing rallies like every day now,
even when he's done with the court case in New York.
I don't think we're going to see him doing like
wild of Wall campaign in the summer or wild of
Will advertising.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
The Trump campaign told us that they're trying to hold
rallies and events on days when he doesn't have to
be in court. Meanwhile, a seat at the Trump trial
has become the hottest ticket in town. That's according to
Robert Samuel, who was outside the courthouse on Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I'm a professional line sitter. Most of the times we're waiting
for cronuts and brawai shows. But I will say to
Donald Trump's credit, he is a jobs creator.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
We've been out here every day.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Samuel's company, same old line dudes, charges by the hour.
He wouldn't reveal exactly what time he showed up to
secure the coveted first and second place spots, but Milliona
Violona says that she arrived at five five.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Pm, no am, so over like twenty fo hours.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Around eight thirty in the morning on Tuesday, Violona was
handed one of the green tickets that meant she'd make
it inside, not the actual courtroom, but the overflow viewing area.
That's when she heard someone else offer up his ticket
for four hundred bucks, and.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I stopped there and I said, I'll give you can
have minds.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
For three fifty sold to her it was a fair price.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
It definitely was.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
As a college student eighteen years old, yes, it was
best money I make. Invitel P.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
There's a lot of time between now an election day,
and Nancy says what happens in the meantime could determine
the fate of the campaign.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I think what I'm curious about is can they keep
this lean me in operation that's not fighting with each other,
you know, intact? And then what happens when the polling
is bad.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Current polls are showing Trump out performing Biden in most
swing states, but public opinion is volatile. At some point
in the next five months, those polls might change.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
There will be some moment where things will go poorly
with Trump or Biden will be up in the polls
and Trump will be down. And like, Trump's not going
to take the blame for that, So does he turn
on these people who have run his campaign successfully so far? Maybe?
I mean, that's what we've seen him do in the
past in the White House with other campaigns.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Nancy told me that in her chats with Democratic Operatives,
it seems that even Trump's opposition is aware that it
would take some unanticipated event to turn polls in the
narrative against Trump and give Biden a better shot. If
the Trump campaign runs out of cash or he faces
jail time for being in contempt of court, twenty twenty
four could get complicated for his tight ship campaign. People
(16:50):
like Anthony Scaramucci, who once backed him unequivocally now denounce him,
and he could risk losing even more allies if he
takes his You're Fired approach to his twenty twenty four staff.
Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Bloomberg News. I'm Salia Mosen. This episode was produced by
(17:13):
Julia Press. It was mixed by Veronica Rodriguez and fact
checked by David Fox, Alex Sugia, and Jessica Beck. It
was edited by Aaron Edwards, Stacy Vanocksmith, and Wendy Benjaminson,
who provides editorial direction with Elizabeth Ponso. Naomi Shaven and
Kim Gidelson are our senior producers. Nicole Beemsterboer is our
executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Please
(17:37):
follow and review The Big Take DC wherever you listen
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Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
When Anthony Scaramucci joined Donald Trump's twenty sixteen presidential campaign,
he said, even insiders thought it was a long shot.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Nobody on that campaign thought that Donald Trump was gonna win. Nobody.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Unlike most politicians, Trump had fiery rhetoric, but it worked
for him, and his unpredictable approach foreshadowed what was to
come from his administration. It was no surprise that the
man who's known for saying you're fired was quick to
turn over his staff while on the trail, and when
he eventually won the White House, Trump fired Scaramucci after
eleven days as communications director.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Oh so it was chaotic, But that was then.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It's twenty twenty four. Trump has new challenges in front
of him as his latest presidential bid comes into focus,
and his old campaign playbook, which was basically a lack
of a playbook, has gotten some updates.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
He's not raising money that he was once raising. Joe
Biden's eclipsing him on the money, but he is well
established now. He has a more disciplined campaign, and they
have him on message and they have him disciplined. It's
a better campaign.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
But just how does Trump's twenty twenty four campaign strategy
compare to his previous ones, and will those changes be
enough to win over an electorate that didn't vote to
keep him in the Oval office in twenty twenty. Today
on The Show, with Donald Trump on trial in Manhattan
and the likes of his former lawyer Michael Cohen testifying,
(01:38):
all eyes are on how the former president is campaigning
through it, we take stock of Trump's twenty twenty four
strategy through the lens of his past two runs. I
speak with former White House Communications director Anthony Scary Mucci,
along with Bloomberg reporter Nancy Cook, who's followed Trump since
the moment he descended the Trump Tower escalator and announced
(01:58):
a bid for the presidency in twenty fifteen. From Bloomberg's
Washington bureau. This is the Big Take DC podcast, I'm
your host Seleia Mosen. When Trump launched his very first
presidential bid, he was the first to do so with
(02:20):
no previous public service experience, although he'd flirted with the
idea for decades. That's part of the reason people didn't
take the reality TV host and businessman seriously when he
announced his intent to run for president back in twenty fifteen.
But those experiences shaped his approach to politics.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
So the Trump campaign in twenty fifteen was super chaotic,
and he really ran this presidential campaign almost like a
family of business.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Nancy Cook is a politics reporter at Bloomberg.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
There was like a tiny group of people around him.
You had a bunch of different campaign managers. People were
fired and then brought in Corey Luandaus. He was in charge,
he got fired. Paul Mannifort was in charge, he got fired.
You know, he brought in Kelly and Conway. There was
just a ton of churn. And I remember very distinctly
I worked at Politico then sitting in the Politico newsroom
(03:11):
when the Access Hollywood story broke.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
A video obtained by the Washington Post features audio of
Trump in two thousand and five making comments that the
words lude and vulgar are mild descriptions for He was
talking to Billy Bush from Access Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
And thinking, oh wow, like this is really going to
be the end for him.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Wamen are going to come out and droves and they're
going to speak, and that's what the election ended today.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
And it wasn't. There were just so many moments like
that where you thought, oh wow, Republicans don't talk about
trade this way, or oh wow, you know he's saying
all these insane things about immigrants, and you know people
aren't going to like that.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
All this turnover and the bad headlines sparked in fighting
a mid team Trump. Remember, for most of the twenty
sixteen general election campaign, even most Republicans thought Trump would
lose to Hillary Clinton. The polls were not in his favor,
and Trump's campaign wasn't the first to become chaotic due
to about of bad headlines and bad poll numbers.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
My takeaway from that is that, you know, Trump really
has had nine lives politically, but even more so, you know,
he sort of always comes back again and manages to
turn a lot of things that would be political disadvantages
for other candidates into strengths.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Even before the Access Hollywood tape that many thought would
sink Trump's campaign, his divisive brand made it an uphill battle.
Some traditional Republican donors shied away from his bed.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
It wasn't well funded, it was kind of scrappy. They
kind of had like no battleground operation or strategy other
than Trump's own instinct and his ability to define his
opponents very quickly and succinctly Marco Rubio, who he's now
considering for vice president. He named, you know, little Marco.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
It's a strategy that shocked Republican Party fixtures like Mitt Romney.
This has been a low road campaign and pretty much
from the beginning. That's Romney speaking on Bloomberg TV in
March of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
He dispatched with Jeb Bush, who a lot of people
thought was going to be the Republican nominee. You know,
all the top political reporters that I know in Washington
were put on the Jeb Bush campaign.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
If Jeb was running in the mid nineties, he would
have been an exceptional presidential candidate. Bush was more organized,
He had more money than Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Anthony Scaramucci, an investment banker, was working on the Jeb
Bush campaign's finance committee at the time, but.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
He'd lost that campaign because the election was in twenty
sixteen and the electorate had shifted.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Trump dispatched with him, you know, low energy Jeb. He's
a low energy person by nature, and that's okay, there's
nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Trump took the Republican primary nomination, winning over disillusioned voters
and people who wanted a change, someone outside the political establishment.
His campaign rhetoric was uniquely bombastic. Instead of advocating for
immigration reform, he led Chance to bid Wall and it stuck.
Emerging as the Republican front runner, he brought more establishment
(06:07):
party members into the fold, people like Scaramucie.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Donald Trump cruited me into that campaign with Bush got
knocked out of the campaign by Donald Trump, and I
made the decision to work for him. I thought it
was the right loyal thing to do as a member
of the Republican Party, a member of the Republican establishment.
So I went to go work for mister Trump.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
It was Bessie, were there moments where you just thought,
how on earth are we ever going to get elected
if we can't get our campaign organized.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Nobody on that campaign thought that Donald Trump was going
to win. Nobody the ban didn't think he was going
to win. Jared Kushner nobody thought he was going to
win that election. Donald Trump didn't think he was going
to win. On the evening of the election, he was
preparing himself to take a trip to Scotland to play golf.
He wanted to be out of the media spotlight. When
Hillary Clinton was accepting the win of the presidency.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Where were you on election night?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I was with him. I was sitting on a couch
with Rudolph Giuliani at ten fifteen at night, and maryor
Giuliani turned to me and said, I know the state
of Florida very well. I have a home in the
state of Florida. Those precincts that have yet to post
the results, those precincts are voting for Trump. He's going
to win the state of Florida. He's going to win
(07:19):
this election.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
And how did Trump seem?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Trump was about as serious as I've seen him in
the twenty years that I've known him. He was sober,
he was serious, he was nervous.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
That disorganization it came to define his presidency too. But
when it came time for reelection in twenty twenty, his
team took a new approach. Here's Nancy Cook again.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
In twenty twenty, I was covering the Trump White House
and his campaign tried to be one hundred percent different
than twenty fifteen. They tried to be super professional. They
had raised a bunch of money, unlike twenty fifteen, where
it was sort of a ragtag, you know, family run business.
Is kind of vibe and sort of a small group
of staff around. There was a huge amount of staff.
(08:05):
They had org charts and you know, a communications team
and a campaign manager. Their problem was that they were
well funded, but they really misspent a lot of money.
They blew a lot of money on fancy office space,
you know, on a huge staff, and they got to
the point where they did not have money for advertising
at some key points. And you have to remember too,
(08:27):
I mean when I was covering the Trump White House,
the economy was doing well. You know, I really thought
Trump was going to sail to reelection. And then COVID
hit and I would say that really just changed the
whole trajectory of the election because Americans were really disappointed
by the way Trump handled it and they really wanted
a different type of leadership.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Then leading up to the election, many people lost their jobs,
lost family or friends, and on top of it all,
America was rattled by a reckoning over racial injustice. It
was enough to cost Trump the election. In the time since,
the people around him have taken stock of what went wrong,
and it's informing some of his twenty twenty four campaign.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
It's lean and mean, sort of like twenty fifteen. But
I guess the differences is that they are very skilled
and very organized, and they know what they're.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Doing coming up, who's behind the current campaign, how they're
leveraging Trump's legal challenges, and what could pull it apart.
Trump's twenty twenty four campaign is trying to merge the
most effective elements of his past two runs. Like Bloomberg's
(09:35):
Nancy Cook said, it's lean like twenty sixteen, with a
paired down staff and a tight budget, but it's also
more professional like in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
So there's really two people running it. His campaign manager
is this woman Susie Wilds, who is a longtime Florida
operative and really like has helped hern Florida red like
to a reliably read state. She's been involved in Republican
politics for decades, has like very deep ties throughout Florida.
She's a woman of few words. She does not try
(10:05):
to impose her view on Trump. She presents him with options.
She does not like to spend money. She's frugal, she's organized,
she's militant. And then there's another key person, Chris Osavida,
who is a longtime Republican operative who comes out of Virginia.
He was in charge of the whole primary strategy, which
Trump won quite handily, and then he has been really
(10:26):
focused on the battleground stuff and he's helped them sort
of merge the campaign in the Republican National Committee.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Nancy says Wiles in Las Avita have harnessed Trump's personality
as part of their campaign strategy, giving him space to
use it where it helps them, without leaving much room
for the infighting among Trump's official and unofficial advisors, which
in the past has led to firings and chaos. We
spoke about this with Danielle Alvarez, a senior advisor for
(10:52):
communications on the Trump campaign.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
We're taking our leave from the president. He ultimately dictates
their cadence and he has a massive movement behind him,
and so what we're focused on doing is harnessing that energy. Well.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Campaign operations are running smoother than in twenty sixteen and
twenty twenty. Trump is still Trump. His rhetoric remains bombastic,
just the way his supporters like it.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
I don't think that they have tried to change Trump
at all. You know, he is still out there doing
his thing. I think that what they have done successfully
is put sort of a small team around him, and
there's still sort of actors in the Trump orbit who
are sort of floating around, who called Trump and talk
to him or show up at mar A Lago. They're
not trying to sort of keep those people out. They
(11:39):
just sort of redirect them. They don't let those people
get involved in the real campaign organization.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
You could see their strategy in action during this winter's primaries.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Traditionally in politics, it's like candidates spend you know, months
and months on like a year courting Iowa voters. Ron
DeSantis visited like all of the ninety nine counties in
Iowa and like had a million in town halls and
meet and greets, and Nikkihely was in Iowa and South Carolina.
Trump did none of that.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Instead, Team Trump was focused about where and how they
spent resources.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Trump basically showed up like three days before each of
these states primaries or caucuses, would hold a few rallies.
He had a bunch of circuits who would also come
into the state with him. It was like Maga World
would land in Iowa four days before the primary, make
a big splash. Trump would hold like two rallies and
then he would completely dominate the primary. He just came
(12:32):
in at the end and made a real heavy push.
To me, just watching that unfold and covering that in
these different states was really emblematic, Like, man, these people
are organized and they have a different strategy, and they're
really kind of like broke the way people traditionally do primaries.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Trump's legal issues mean that being nimble is crucial to
his success. He can't really run a traditional campaign spending
his time on the road holding rallies and shaking Potter's hands.
Trump's been stuck in a manhatt In courtroom almost every
day for weeks, and there are no cameras or recorders
allowed inside. But Team Trump has managed to turn even
(13:08):
that into an advantage.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
They have been thinking about how to merge a political
and campaign strategy since the fall, and they have been
thinking about basically how to make the courtroom as much
kind of like a rally or a political event as possible.
So like he comes out and says something in the morning.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Here he is on Monday speaking outside of Manhattan Courthouse,
and the New York Giants came out with they all
and shows us leading everywhere.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Light a lot comes out and says something in the evening.
They've done a few little, you know, stops in Manhattan
where he's you know, brought pizza to firefighters, or he
visited a bodega in Upper Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Another day, he visited a construction site and signed red
Make Unions Great Again hats. Before going into court, he
was met with cheers.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
And so they have done these things to try to
use it to his political advantage.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
And maybe it's easier to contain a campaign that's just
in one place rather than rallies and moving around the
country and then different people having access to him.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
I think even if he didn't have this, they wouldn't
be having rallies all the time. You know, the rallies
are expensive, you know, there's I don't think they see
any point in him doing rallies like every day now,
even when he's done with the court case in New York.
I don't think we're going to see him doing like
wild of Wall campaign in the summer or wild of
Will advertising.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
The Trump campaign told us that they're trying to hold
rallies and events on days when he doesn't have to
be in court. Meanwhile, a seat at the Trump trial
has become the hottest ticket in town. That's according to
Robert Samuel, who was outside the courthouse on Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I'm a professional line sitter. Most of the times we're waiting
for cronuts and brawai shows. But I will say to
Donald Trump's credit, he is a jobs creator.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
We've been out here every day.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Samuel's company, same old line dudes, charges by the hour.
He wouldn't reveal exactly what time he showed up to
secure the coveted first and second place spots, but Milliona
Violona says that she arrived at five five.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Pm, no am, so over like twenty fo hours.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Around eight thirty in the morning on Tuesday, Violona was
handed one of the green tickets that meant she'd make
it inside, not the actual courtroom, but the overflow viewing area.
That's when she heard someone else offer up his ticket
for four hundred bucks, and.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I stopped there and I said, I'll give you can
have minds.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
For three fifty sold to her it was a fair price.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
It definitely was.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
As a college student eighteen years old, yes, it was
best money I make. Invitel P.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
There's a lot of time between now an election day,
and Nancy says what happens in the meantime could determine
the fate of the campaign.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I think what I'm curious about is can they keep
this lean me in operation that's not fighting with each other,
you know, intact? And then what happens when the polling
is bad.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Current polls are showing Trump out performing Biden in most
swing states, but public opinion is volatile. At some point
in the next five months, those polls might change.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
There will be some moment where things will go poorly
with Trump or Biden will be up in the polls
and Trump will be down. And like, Trump's not going
to take the blame for that, So does he turn
on these people who have run his campaign successfully so far? Maybe?
I mean, that's what we've seen him do in the
past in the White House with other campaigns.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Nancy told me that in her chats with Democratic Operatives,
it seems that even Trump's opposition is aware that it
would take some unanticipated event to turn polls in the
narrative against Trump and give Biden a better shot. If
the Trump campaign runs out of cash or he faces
jail time for being in contempt of court, twenty twenty
four could get complicated for his tight ship campaign. People
(16:50):
like Anthony Scaramucci, who once backed him unequivocally now denounce him,
and he could risk losing even more allies if he
takes his You're Fired approach to his twenty twenty four staff.
Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Bloomberg News. I'm Salia Mosen. This episode was produced by
(17:13):
Julia Press. It was mixed by Veronica Rodriguez and fact
checked by David Fox, Alex Sugia, and Jessica Beck. It
was edited by Aaron Edwards, Stacy Vanocksmith, and Wendy Benjaminson,
who provides editorial direction with Elizabeth Ponso. Naomi Shaven and
Kim Gidelson are our senior producers. Nicole Beemsterboer is our
executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Please
(17:37):
follow and review The Big Take DC wherever you listen
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