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July 26, 2024 20 mins

In this week's episode, Michael and James discuss the seismic shift in the 2024 election landscape as Joe Biden exits and Kamala Harris takes center stage. How did Biden's sudden departure reshape the Democratic strategy? What challenges and opportunities lie ahead for Harris as she faces off against Trump? And how is the Trump campaign adjusting to this unexpected twist? Tune in to find out.

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Trump speaking like a kind of a normal person, I
mean more than a normal person, and an expressive normal person.
I don't think we've ever heard that kind of testimony.
I was shot. This is what happened to me. And
at that point through the speech, I thought, there it
is the answer to the question all the liberals have
been asking for eight years, what do these people see

(00:26):
in Donald Trump?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Well?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
There it is. He's a genius. And it certainly did
seem that way until he finished that, and then he
did his kind of rally lean on the podium, and
there it was. Welcome to Fire and Fury the podcast.

(00:48):
I'm Michael bulf.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
And I'm James Trimman. Michael, you've mentioned quite a few
times in previous episodes that Trump's worst nightmare was that
Joe Biden drop out, And here we are Joe's out.
Kamala seems to be ninety eight percent in.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'd say one hundred percent in at this point.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Okay, should we say goodbye to Joe first?

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, I'm just observing that everyone, certainly in the New
York Times and the Washington Post and all related media outlets,
is bending over backwards to say that Joe Biden is
the greatest patriot of all time for having exited the race.
And you kind of find yourself saying, do the Democrats
know that? We know? Yeah, And I've never seen this before,

(01:34):
and this is an historic development. Hounded out of office,
he couldn't go on. It was just taken away from him,
rug pulled out.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
He was definishtrated, he was defenestrated and starved of cash.
I believe Bloomberg reported it run through ninety five percent
of his available funds from June, and there wasn't any
other money coming in.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Yeah. And also, let's not overlook the fact that he
should have known this. I'm sure he did know this.
I'm sure the people around him knew this. I'm sure
the media knew this. If you only had watched clip
after clip after clip after clip of Joe walking into walls. Yeah,
And nevertheless, this would have continued to unfold if Joe Biden,

(02:20):
no doubt, in a demented state, hadn't agreed to a
completely ridiculous idea of going in front of Donald Trump
and fifty million Americans.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah. I love that the Times yesterday managed to call
his exit surprising and stunning, having done everything other than
going there and put a pillow case over his head
and pull him out.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
A week ago, everybody was dancing on his grave. And
now that he's dead, speak no ill.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Speak no ill. So what are you hearing about, Kamala?

Speaker 1 (02:49):
I mean, we had thus set up here, and it
seemed to be the very clear setup on the part
of all responsible Democrats is that there would be a contest.
It actually made an enormous amount of political and theatrical sense.
There would be a bakeoff. This bakeoff would introduce a

(03:12):
range of candidates, It would take media time and attention
from Donald Trump. I think it's always good to go
back to Donald Trump's main strategic point, which is the
more media he gets, the less media someone else gets.
Media is a zero sum game. Donald Trump has, I think,

(03:34):
pretty much the only politician to thoroughly recognize that he
takes the media, he takes it from somebody else. And
that was certainly true throughout the primary campaign. No other
Republican got any attention except Donald Trump. Therefore he wins.
So the Democrats had this opportunity to very clearly play

(03:57):
that game, have this bakeoff. Realities show like Get It,
produced by Mark Burnett, or someone such have this convention,
effectively an old time convention, which would not be boring
because it would have in the end a reveal. Yeah,
but within twenty four hours that was over, Yes, and

(04:20):
you're left saying, hey, what happened. My theory would be
that at that moment, no one truly believed that Joe
Biden was going to go, even though it was inevitable
that he was going to go, Because this had never
happened before, no one was exactly prepared for this. And

(04:41):
then suddenly it happened, and a lineup of these very
solid swing state Democratic governors had to decide what they
were going to do. I mean, you can't have a
contest if you have no opponent. So in a very
technical sense, somebody had to come forward and say, yes,
I'm going to throw my hat into the ring. I'd

(05:02):
like to be the candidate. That didn't happen. Why didn't
that happen? Well, my theory is that all of a sudden,
these politicians, looking at long careers ahead of them, said, oh,
my god, do I want to run against Donald Trump?
And even more so, Donald Trump is going to win?
So why would anyone want to do this to themselves,

(05:24):
doubly so because if you run against Donald Trump, he
emocks you, your savage. So in this very short period
of time, like twenty four hours, Kamalo went from enormous
widespread disdain within the Democratic Party. And this has been
going on for more than three years now for Joe Biden,

(05:46):
who was among the least popular presidents, she was among
the least popular vice presidents. She had managed to achieve
I think safely no positive profile, no positive accomplishments, perhaps,
and I think fairly dismissed by most people. So within
twenty four hours, however, it was oh Kamala, love her. Yeah,

(06:09):
great Kamala.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Amazing gymnasium with three thousand people.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Amazing political talent. That's why I think it was literally
she's been pushed into harm's way.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
It seems to be genuine excitement for Kamala. I mean,
she raised what like eighty three eighty five million.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
No, I understand she's she's raised now all total since
and this is just since Sunday, she's raised three hundred
million dollars. So this is a this is a big,
big haul, you know. And the Hollywood guys who had
really stopped turned off the spigot for Joe. They've just
opened up again. So the money is flowing like crazy.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Going back to Trump, and he's lost his ideal candidate
to run against. Is he going to find Kamala as
easy as Joe Biden to roll over? No?

Speaker 1 (06:57):
No, no, I mean it's unclear. Now, everything is unclear. Everybody's regrouping,
and yes, this is a major blow to Trump. And
I think you can see Trump needed Biden, Biden needed Trump.
They were doing a Yin and Yang thing, a contrast
gainer and a contrast loser. Last time around, Biden was
the contrast winner. This time Trump has been the contrast

(07:21):
winner because Joe Biden is the only person on earth
who could make Donald Trump look not old, and plus
Biden is clearly weakened for all kinds of obvious reasons,
and Trump rises. The inflation of Trump is a thing
to behold against a deflated opponent.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah, well, how is the Trump camp reacting?

Speaker 1 (07:45):
You know, they had been talking about this for weeks
and weeks, theoretically getting ready to run against Kamala, and
it happened and they were utterly floored again. Four of
the rug was pulled out. What do we do now?
The entire nature of the Trump campaign has been to
run against Joe Biden. They really only have one issue.

(08:08):
He's older, He's too old. He's the invective that has
come out of Trump's mouth, which turns out to be
the truth that came out of Trump's mouth about Biden
and his inability to run this race. But having said that,
I think it's the nature of success. The Trump campaign
has been so successful that they figured out how to

(08:30):
do this. They do it well, and they continued to
want to do it right until the end, and who wouldn't.
And then suddenly that's upset and the Trump who's a
petulant guy, is back to they've stolen it from me. Literally,
that becomes the Democrats are not democratic because all of
these people in the primaries voted for Joe Biden, who

(08:53):
had no opponent. Therefore they have been disenfranchised. Let's see
how that goes. We'll be back right up to the break.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Do you think there is buyer's remorse inside the Trump
camp about Vance?

Speaker 1 (09:18):
No, I don't think yet, But I'm sure Trump has
buyer's remorse, just because right up till the end he
resisted making this decision. And I think probably he would
have preferred someone else. He would have preferred. I think
this guy, Doug Bergham. I think he liked him better
than the others. Bergham is in his late sixties and

(09:40):
he's rich. What's not to like from Trump's standpoint. Bergham's
problem was, you know, he had put a number of
weeks on the abortion thing, and that's Trump's policy. His
mantra is no weeks, no weeks, we don't say weeks.
So that got Bergham into trouble. And then Bergham was
the candidate of Rupert Murdoch. And the truth is about Trump,

(10:01):
he has this long time abiding crush on Murdoch and
I think he'd do anything that he could if it
pleased Murdoch. And Murdoch's thing about Burgham was that he's
a pretty traditional neo con take the Russians out kind
of thing. And I'll bet that Trump offers secretary of

(10:22):
State to Burgham. And I'll bet you know, Murdoch showed
up at the convention and they had a little tete
a tet, and I will bet that Trump said, you know, okay,
we can't do Burgham for vice president because of the
weeks thing. Weeks, No weeks, never say weeks, but I'll
make them secretary of state.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Wow, and what role do you think the Silicon Valley,
particularly Peter Teal and Musk had in vans being chosen.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
I think it's a conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
What I don't often hear you say the word conspiracy, though.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
I think that the Silicon Valley guys are seeing a
very calculated political move. We're going to push our guy
Vance into center stage and we're going to develop this career,
and we're going to try to make this guy president,
and we're going to build a political infrastructure around him.

(11:15):
Why not. We have the money to do it, we
have the will to do it. The oil guys did
it for years, the car guys did it. Every other
major and mature industry has done it. So why don't
we do it? And Vance is our guy, our puppet
at this point?

Speaker 2 (11:33):
How did they come up to him?

Speaker 1 (11:34):
They basically created the guy. He's a Peter Teal creation.
He's been facilitated into the Republican circles and into the
Trump circles by their support, their money, and everything is
a Peter Teal echo. It's that macho tech guy thing.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
So let's talk about it on Mask yesterday he backtrack
on his supposed donation of forty five million dollars a month.
Why would he do that? Why would he announce it then,
why would he back off from it? He is all
in on Trump and on Vans.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Well, there's all in on the one hand, and then
there's money on the other hand. One of the Trump
people said to me, and I think they did a
thing at John Paulson's house in Palm Beach and they
raised theoretically fifty million, which Trump was very pleased about,
because the Democrats had two weeks before raised in their

(12:27):
Radio City musical. The Clintons and Obama showed up for
Joe Biden, and actually the Trump people said they showed
up not so much to support but to find out
if he was really in as bad shape as people suspected. Anyway,
they only raised twenty five million. Trump raised fifty million.
He was very pleased about this, and one of the

(12:49):
Trump people said to me, yes, it's great, He's over
the moon fifty million. Then this person says, the only
problem is that these rich guys never come through. So
the tech guys are basically going to try to get
as much as they can out of Trump and out
of a prospective new administration as possible. I think it's

(13:11):
a potent democratic issue, since I can't imagine that anyone
except the tech community itself is fond of the tech community.
So having said that, the Democrats also love the tech
community because they're also getting cash out of it.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Right, Yeah, do you think there is any truth to
the thought that Trump will employee Vance ays his attack
dog so he can become more traditionally presidential.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
I mean, I think that if Dvance becomes the attack dog,
that only makes Trump resentful. Yeah, in annoy Trump is
the attack dog. That kind of reversal first thing I
don't think Trump is capable of, Nor do I think
it's an intuitive positive strategy. Trump has made it this

(13:59):
faring his own attack dog by being Donald Trump. I'm
not sure what is a kinder, gentler Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
There was that moment in the convention speech where he
talked about being shot, which it might now seem questionable
that he actually was hit with a bullet, but.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
We could become a conspiracy theory.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Which I could. Yeah, So everyone got excited that he
spoke with some sort of energetic quality about being almost
murdered and then he went shifted back and the media
lamented that he had gone back to being his old self.
It made me think again, how the media don't get it.
And what is following is I mean, you don't go
to a megadeath concert to listen to the ballads. Donald

(14:40):
Trump does heavy metal, That's what he does.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
And that speech, I know, was supposed to be an hour,
and it went on for ninety three minutes. It was
interesting that last day of the convention. So I understand
that the campaign had put together this convention that had
a lot of tactical and strategic goals, chip away at
the Democrats African American base, it's working cloud, you know,

(15:03):
all of those kinds of things, to push the family
up front, to disguise the fact that Milania wasn't there,
and then to get the obessence of the opponents, Nikki
and Ron. But as the campaign was constructing this, Trump
is calling all the time and say let's have so
and so who have no relationship to any of the
tactical or strategic goals. And they all got pushed to

(15:24):
the last night. So you had whul Colgan, you had
Kid Rock, you had that UFC guy Dana whyet Yeah,
who basically introduced Trumps and then you had a couple
of Trump's golfing buddies for no reason, reason whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
So, talking of performance, what did you think of Kamala
and the Milwaukee Jim yesterday?

Speaker 1 (15:44):
She seems not yet compelling. Let's put it that way.
Maybe she doesn't found her footing yet. She's had quite
a while to find this footing. But she's herky jerky.
It's cliche. There is nothing that you are hearing that
makes you even want to pay attention. So this, this
is real. You know, I'm going to do this by
the Democratic playbook. I'm not going to deviate from that,

(16:06):
as though that has been so successful.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
I mean, there's a flood of optimism around her, which
we saw reflected in the polls yesterday that she leads
Trump two three four points. That could be just because
everyone was bored by the previous contest and suddenly the
contest has life.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, I would say that these polls are not in
any way meaningful polls yet. But the media has another
one of these instant conversions, treating the woman terribly over
the past three years and then suddenly again in slightly
more than twenty four hours now, she's, you know, sly spread.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
Is it possible that she could morph from being fundamentally
underwhelming to be someone who can actually take Trump down?

Speaker 1 (16:47):
It is either that the media has been absolutely, categorically
one hundred percent wrong for the past three years about
Kamala and now they have discovered the truth the greatest
candidate who has ever been I don't know which is it.
And one of the things that we're seeing now is
suddenly Trump is stuck. He hasn't worked up to this yet.

(17:10):
He has some old lines about Kamala, but they're clearly
not yet inspiring him. So we haven't seen Trump get inspired,
which an opponent invariably does. This is what animates Trump,
not issues, not policy, not even really winning, I don't think,
but destroying someone else.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Jesus, all he's got so far is lyon Kamala, which
seems weak.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah, Joe was the guy he had defined himself against Joe.
He had that was mastery, and now he's got to
find it again. He's got to go into his inner
assassin again. I guess one should not say this at
this point, and then he will come out of that
workshop and Kamala will be toast.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
And one of the ways that Democrats can take him
out before he can do that.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
The Democrats hope is that somehow Kamala Harris will get
under his skin in a way that makes him blow
up in one of those Trumpian shows, which gives the
swing voter pause.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Well, a couple of days into this new race, now,
how are you handicapping?

Speaker 1 (18:14):
I think that probably the best case for Kamala is
to return this to where it was three, four, five
months ago. You know, a squeaker. It seems unlikely that
she's going to pull ahead, and it seems unlikely that
we'll be in any other situation but biting our nails.

(18:34):
Someone will be biting his nails her nails on election day.
I think that is literally the best case is a
divided nation. It remains a divided nation. She can hold
the banner for her half of the division, yes, but
it might not be. Trump has now run ahead for
basically eighteen months. He's had eighteen months to dominate the

(18:57):
news in every possible way, and unless she can figure
out a way to claim that back, and he's a
genius at claiming it for himself.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Last week, you gave Trump versus Biden one hundred percent
likelihood of winning. What are you giving Trump against Kamala today?

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Today? I would say seventy percent Trump. Maybe she has
a thirty percent chance and maybe she can push it
to fifty. If I were her, that would be my
success measure. But will she pull ahead? Will she make
this no contest? Remember in twenty twenty, Trump went into
election day clearly no longer the favorite. Yes, I don't

(19:35):
really see that happening.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Fascinating to be continued. Thank you, Michael.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
That's all the time we have for today, and we'll
be back next week. Fire and Fury The podcast is
hosted and executive produced by Michael Wolfe and James Truman.

(20:08):
The producers are Adam Waller and Emily Marino. Executive producers
for Kaleidoscope are Mangesh Heatgeta and Osvalashian. Executive producers for
iHeart On Nikki Etoor and Katrina Novel
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