Senator Claire McCaskill is away this week, so former White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri tapped another former co-host to join, veteran GOP strategist and creator of “The Circus”, Mark McKinnon. As President Biden hosts a NATO summit at the White House, all Beltway eyes are focused on whether he has staying power as the Democratic nominee. So, Jen and Mark zero in on how keenly lawmakers and pundits are tracking the shifting winds on that calculation. And NBC correspondent Vaughn Hillyard previews the Republican Convention set to begin Monday, and the many unknowns still hanging in the air—including who is speaking, how strongly they embrace Project 2025, and who Trump will choose as his running mate.
Note: Next week, we’ll be recording and releasing on Friday so we can break down the Republican Convention as a whole. In the meantime, we’ll be sharing audio of MSNBC’s coverage in this feed for people to stay up to date during the convention next week.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Jennifer Palmieri: Hello. Welcome to “How to Win 2024.” We’re taping this episode on Wednesday, July 10th. I’m Jennifer Palmieri and my usual partner in crime, Claire McCaskill, is away this week. So, I’m here with a very special co-host, Mark McKinnon. Yay. Also known as MKat. Hello, Kat.
Mark McKinnon: Hello, JPalm.
Jennifer Palmieri: Friends of Showtime’s “The Circus” might remember that Mark and I were co-hosts in a previous life. The show was Mark’s idea. He was a co-executive producer, co-host for all eight seasons, and veteran campaign pro. I mean, you’ve had the most interesting life of any friend I have, honestly, starting with a music career in Nashville. For real, people, I’m not making that up.
And then a campaign consultant for Democrats, then moved to be a campaign consultant for George W. Bush as governor, helped get him elected president twice, and then the presidential campaign of John McCain, all along pushing this idea of we should have a very cool show that shows you what’s really going on in politics. Thank you, Kat.
Mark McKinnon: Well, thank you. You made “The Circus” great, Jen.
Jennifer Palmieri: No, it was fun.
Mark McKinnon: It was a ton of fun. It really was.
Jennifer Palmieri: So this week, Mark and I are going to talk Biden strategy, Trump’s veepstakes, and we’ll also preview the Republican convention set to kick off this Monday with NBC’s own Vaughn Hillyard. But first, continuing fallout for Biden. So this is where we’re like, okay, if we were in the room on the Biden campaign, what would we be doing? This is Wednesday morning. Let me tell you like my assessment and see where you are, Kat. So I felt like Sunday, the Biden campaign sort of turned a corner. Good appearance of the black church president had. Some members of Congress started coming out against him. They were all white members of Congress. Black members of Congress were having his back. The CBC comes out and says, you know, this is, of course, Sunday, Monday, they’re going to be for him. And, you know, he’s able to say sort of the elites in the party are against me, but I’m listening to voters and I’ve always had their back and they have mine. That worked for a while. But then I feel like the big thing today was, well, first of all, last night it was reported that Senator Michael Bennet from Colorado in a meeting of the Senate Democratic Caucus said that he did not think President Biden could win. It was also reported that Senator Sherrod Brown and Senator Jon Tester also said that. Michael Bennett went ahead and went on CNN last night to say, yes, I said that, and I’m not going to say one thing privately and one thing publicly. We’re not going to do what the Republicans do. We’re saying it out loud. I don’t think he can win. And then former Speaker Pelosi was on “Morning Show” this morning with a very tepid support for the president.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Nancy Pelosi: It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short. The, I think, overwhelming support of the caucus, it’s not for me to say, I’m not the head of the caucus anymore, but he’s beloved. He is respected and people want him to make that decision, not me.
Jonathan Lemire: He has said he has made the decision. He has said firmly this week he is going to run. Do you want him to run?
Nancy Pelosi: I want him to do whatever he decides to do. And that’s the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with.
(END AUDIO)
Jennifer Palmieri: She kept saying we want him to make his decision, even though we all know he’s already made a decision to stay in and kind of noted that the NATO summit was happening and sort of a takeaway is maybe, you know, I think if you’re a member of Congress, you’re trying to read the tea leaves here and thinking, okay, it sounds like Pelosi is saying everybody hold your fire until the summit is over, but there’s still some pretty serious concerns here. What’s your take? What do you think the Biden campaign should do?
Mark McKinnon: Well, I agree with you. I think the Biden campaign did an artful job of trying to shore up, you know, what little support they had and really threaded the needle with the congressional black caucus and —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: — with his schedule calling in the “Morning Joe,” all of that was, you know, pinpoint perfect exactly what they needed to do to shore up the dam. But —
Jennifer Palmieri: And like, just live for another day. I mean —
Mark McKinnon: Live for another day, exactly. I think that’s it.
Jennifer Palmieri: We have both been in these situations. It’s just like get through that.
Mark McKinnon: Get to tomorrow. The problem is tomorrow —
Jennifer Palmieri: Get to tomorrow.
Mark McKinnon: — tomorrow has not been any better. In fact, a lot worse, particularly, and especially because of Nancy Pelosi. I mean, you don’t have to be a deep student of the game to understand, first of all, how formidable she is and how nuanced.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: I mean, she is the Zen master and her statement that it’s up to the president to decide if he’s going to run. Well, what? I thought he said that.
Jennifer Palmieri: Could he be more clear?
Mark McKinnon: Okay.
Jennifer Palmieri: Could he be more clear?
Mark McKinnon: She’s just giving him more runways. Like, okay, we’re good. We’re good here a little more time. And the problem is that, yeah, I mean, the whole elites and the media are after us is fine —
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Mark McKinnon: — but there’s more and more data coming in and it’s worse and worse and worse. Voters.
Jennifer Palmieri: And this is the thing I want to pause for people. You know, we’ve been on a journey with our listeners in the last two weeks and this podcast is like, I’ve been very convinced by my former Republican friends, not my former friends, but my friends who are former Republicans, like Stuart Stevens. You’ve been in a different place. So we’ll talk about the place you’ve been in, but like Michael Steele, who were like, why would you not have the president’s back. Have his back. He’s your guy. It’s crazy to try to switch somebody out at this point. The only time people lose is when incumbents back out. This is crazy. I don’t see any use of like beating up on the president and doing harm to him while we were in this sort of like two weeks suspended animation period where you’re trying to figure out how’s he really doing —
Mark McKinnon: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: — and how are the American people absorbing this. And you know, we’ve been saying, you got to wait two weeks for the American people to really sort of absorb what happened and reflect their sentiment and polls. And that’s why you see people like Michael Bennett going on television to say he can’t win now, where he wouldn’t have done that a week ago. That’s why I think Speaker Pelosi said what you said today is because it seems like maybe the bigger risk is keeping him, you know, there’s all sorts of risks and we can talk about them, about having a new person, but where you have an electoral map that looks like Trump winning in a landslide and it’s not, you know, a one-off.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah, exactly right. I mean, the data is sort of incontrovertible now. I mean, you got a few days ago, Biden was sort of arguing with George Stephanopoulos, oh, you know, we’re within the margin of error. Well, not anymore.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, not anymore. Okay. So I think we’d have to switch this topic from if I were in the Biden campaign headquarters, what I would do as opposed to if I were in charge of the Democratic Party, not that there is such a person, like, what do you think should happen now, Kat?
Mark McKinnon: I’m with James Carville, you know, he was the guy who —
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh my God, the Democrats have talent ideas. Okay, explain the idea and then explain the idea.
Mark McKinnon: Well, listen, I mean, broadly the idea is you have two options. You either have what appears to be a sure loss and perhaps a devastating one that takes out the House and the Senate, just takes everybody down. That’s one alternative.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Mark McKinnon: Or you have —
Jennifer Palmieri: You mean by keeping President Biden?
Mark McKinnon: — by keeping President Biden. Or you have what is certainly and admittedly a chaotic, unknown nomination of somebody, and we’re not sure exactly how it happens, but it can happen. I mean, you just make it happen. And there’s lots of different ideas about it. Carville has this kind of weird mini convention idea, and I’m not sure about that. But what I will tell you is that it would be dramatic, it’d be interesting, it’d be compelling, it’d be exciting. You know, Democrats would be all tuned in. I mean, the alternative is just this horrible, depressing slog. God, you know, imagine how great it would be for “The Circus” to be covering a Democratic open convention.
Jennifer Palmieri: I know.
Mark McKinnon: And so, you know, I’m for anything other than sure death.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. The James Carville idea, what I think is not workable about it, his idea is that President Obama and President Clinton would select four sort of tickets that could be possible nominees, and then the two of them would host town halls as sort of a mini primary. Like, Obama and Clinton are not going to play that role.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah, yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: There’s just no scenario. Obama and Clinton are like, if people want to run —
Mark McKinnon: You’re going to piss off everybody but eight people, yeah. No, that’s not workable, but just the general principle of opening it up on four, yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right, right. Yeah, like, they’re like, if people want to run for president, they should do that.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: They don’t need President Obama, President Clinton to select them.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah, he overcomplicated it. He put too many ingredients in the stew.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, yeah. And I think one question people are wrestling with is, how did we get here? Like, how did the Democrats find themselves in this position? You wrote about this a few times, sort of, you know, raising the alarm about where you thought this was headed. You predicted, and you’re like, something’s going to happen that’s going to be a huge deal and shake up this race, and here we are.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: I think it’s worth saying, like, what do we think should have happened?
Mark McKinnon: Well, I’ll just roll back the tape a little bit to just say, you know, I think, like, a lot of people, and certainly a lot of never Trump Republicans, I supported Biden in ‘20, and I think there is an inarguable case, there’s lots of data points to prove it, that Biden was likely the only Democrat that would have won in ‘20. Now, I think he may be the only Democrat that could lose to Trump. And the great tragedy of all this is that it not only, you know, will hurt the Democratic Party, hurt the country, it hurts Joe Biden and his legacy. He could have gone out a hero. And you know, Jennifer, there’s, and again, just, you know, there’s receipts for this about how he said pretty explicitly, I intend to be a one-term president.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Mark McKinnon: And there was nothing but upside for that for Biden. He had a lot of good stuff that he did, could have just gotten the gold watch, been great Uncle Joe presider over the convention, been the hero, and gone out with a great legacy. And he has risked all of that. And by the way, and this is an interesting point, you know, his sort of fundamental message was Trump’s all about me and I’m about you. Well, now because of all this, everybody say, well, I guess Joe Biden’s just about himself too.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. It is like, I don’t, I don’t love being in the situation of, you know, I try not to be too precious about this, right, because you can say, well, it doesn’t seem like the president is up to the job and we can’t be just like the Republicans. So we should push him to, to step back from being the nominee. That’s just a big gamble when there’s a lot on the line for this country, particularly, you know, obviously very worried about democracy, but there’s people in the country that’d be far more impacted than I would —
Mark McKinnon: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: — by a Trump presidency. But I think we are at the point now where the bigger risk is looking like holding on to him. The other thing that, and John Stewart made this point on Monday, that four months is a lifetime. The other thing that I think people sort of come to terms with today is like, we’re all holding our breath now about the NATO press conference. How’s he going to do in the NATO press conference, which is on Thursday, and it’s like, okay, the polls are not good. We can’t be holding our breath every time he has to do an event and it’s still his decision and that’s still like, I’m not clear on how it would actually happen. But in my mind on, you know, Wednesday morning, it’s been like a 51-49 decision all along in my head about like, what’s the thing to do here with an integrity? What’s the responsible thing here to do? What’s the thing that honors President Biden, but protects the country? And it’s, you know, it’s feeling like that 51 is now on him leaving as opposed to saying. But now there’s a question about Vice President Harris.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: So piled on for four years and still her polling’s not so bad.
Mark McKinnon: Well, she’s polling better than Biden. And I —
Jennifer Palmieri: Do you know what I mean, though? Like the coverage has been, you know, she’s covered intermittently. As you know, I’ve written two books about this. There’s way too much gender and race bias.
Mark McKinnon: There’s just something about her.
Jennifer Palmieri: There’s just something about her I don’t like. So, like a room to grow, very effective in making the argument against Trump. We saw that in the rally she did last night, very effective prosecutor versus a convicted felon. Talk about her as a nominee.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah. I think in Trump world, you know, the smartest writers saying, be careful what you ask for. I think that her stock is really low and her value is really, really high. And what I mean by that is just, I think that she’s been subject to a lot of very critical press, a lot of it unfair, some of it fair, but the point is that people don’t really know her and she’s formidable. I mean, she’s the vice president of the United States. She didn’t get there by accident.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: And you know, you’ve been around her. I’ve been around her. When I’ve been around her, I’m like blown away by her. I think she’s really impressive.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: And a lot of the stuff is such inside the beltway. Management stuff, she’s not a good manager. Well, you know, some —
Jennifer Palmieri: That’s a female trope. People think women aren’t good managers.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah, a hundred percent. So I think what’s going to happen is that, it’ll have a huge ballast effect when people actually kind of see her, if she were leading the ticket and go, oh my God, that she’s way better than I heard. You know, they’re going to be like, oh shit, this woman was, you know, and she’s a woman which helps the Democrats and she’s a former prosecutor. So if you like —
Jennifer Palmieri: I love you for thinking women help Democrats–
Mark McKinnon: — if you just put on paper, like who would be great, just, you know, generically without a name, you say a black woman, a former prosecutor, a former vice president of the United States, that’d be perfect, right —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: — to run against Trump. That’s exactly what you’d want.
Jennifer Palmieri: It is. I mean, everybody else is like, you want the opposite of Trump. That is, you know, but it’s pretty good about the opposite of Trump.
Mark McKinnon: Yes, hundred percent.
Jennifer Palmieri: Okay. So there’s two scenarios for how this can go down. One is the president steps aside and he, you know, endorses vice president. And I think, you know, sort of in that scenario, like we’re all just, we’re kind of guessing, but I’ll lay out two scenarios for people so that you can talk people through the relative merits of both. Maybe the president says, you know, and I endorse my vice president and she goes to Chicago. Presumably people don’t challenge her or situation, president is like I’m stepping aside and the party will decide in which case maybe people do challenge her. I don’t know. But what do you think?
Mark McKinnon: I think the best outcome for him and for her is for him to say, listen, we’re Democrats. We compete. I love my vice president, but go out there and compete. And then I think she’ll win it. I mean, I just think the physics are such that —
Jennifer Palmieri: She would win. She would win big.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah, she would. Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Go to Chicago, win it.
Mark McKinnon: Then she’s stronger for having won it.
Jennifer Palmieri: Then she’s starting off with a win.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah. And it makes her stronger. So I think that’s the way to go.
Jennifer Palmieri: A little palate cleanser.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah, exactly.
Jennifer Palmieri: I don’t mean to be irreverent. These are serious matters. Yeah. You know, we got a question from Bethany about, you know, some people, a fear of market convention, but whether that might give Democrat’s momentum.
Mark McKinnon: I think it’d be one of the most interesting events historically ever. Can you imagine the audience —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: — and people tuning in to see what would happen rather than, you know, slogging through the next few months with Joe Biden? It’d be electric and —
Jennifer Palmieri: Trust democracy, man. Right. Trust democracy.
Mark McKinnon: We’d have to bring “The Circus” back.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, my God. Yeah, man. Yeah we would, I’m for that. Amen. Mark McKinnon and I are going to take a quick break. When we’re back, NBC correspondent Vaughn Hillyard stops by to pre-game the GOP convention with us. Back with Mark and Vaughn in a minute.
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Jennifer Palmieri: Welcome back. We’re less than a week away from the 2024 Republican convention, because that’s happening. And though Trump apparently thinks Milwaukee is a, quote, “horrible city,” the home of Brewers, brats and beer will play host this cycle. So what should we be watching for? What are the party’s expectations? And what has Trump been up to while everyone in the Democratic world has been obsessed with President Biden? To give us some pregame analysis, Vaughn Hillyard, yay, joins me and my excellent co-host this week, Mark McKinnon. Vaughn is an intrepid NBC News correspondent covering the Trump campaign. Welcome, Vaughn. Thanks so much for joining us.
Vaughn Hillyard: Hi, guys. I appreciate you having me. This forum is a little different than being on the campaign trail, I’ll say with you guys.
Mark McKinnon: You know, the thing about Vaughn, Jennifer, is I always, wherever I was on the campaign, if I’d see Vaughn, it just brightened my day. It’s like, all right, Vaughn’s here.
Jennifer Palmieri: First of all, brightens your day. Second of all, you run to him and you say, Vaughn, what is actually happening here? Whether that was — I mean, I did that so many times, whether that was CPAC in Maryland, Vaughn, what is happening?
Mark McKinnon: Yeah. He’s the guy who’d actually done his homework, was working hard up at the crack of dawn.
Vaughn Hillyard: I appreciate that.
Jennifer Palmieri: Particularly Arizona. What is going on with the Maricopa County vote counting situation, Vaughn? It’s like that one —
Vaughn Hillyard: It seems like our meetings are always under dire circumstances. And the least we can do is smile at each other.
Mark McKinnon: Always got a smile.
Jennifer Palmieri: This is true, this is true.
Mark McKinnon: That’s what we love about Vaughn.
Jennifer Palmieri: So the GOP convention’s next week. So we want to talk about like how that is. I mean, I’ve heard nothing about it. Just nothing. I’ve heard that on Monday, they’re going to talk about the economy. Somewhere along the way, I came across that.
Vaughn Hillyard: We’re still waiting for the speakers. We don’t know who’s speaking yet.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. You know, it’s been sort of eight years since there was a normal-ish Republican convention. But last time I went to it, I think McKinnon did too in D.C. It was at the Department of Commerce, and it was just kind of like a rolling Trump variety show. And each day they would decide, oh, today we’re going to do this and that and bring this person up to the stage. Almost like a telethon back in the days from like the ‘80s.
Vaughn Hillyard: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: Can you preview it? What do we know?
Vaughn Hillyard: Right. We know they have some themes that they’re going to strike on. The idea is Monday is going to be make America safe once again. They’re going to have these themes that they are going to have each day programmed around, and the speakers should accompany that. But it’s going to be a Milwaukee here. There’s a lot of question marks. This is a moment in which Donald Trump is reshaped the Republican Party in his image. There are some outside groups like the Heritage Foundation, Turning Point, others who helped craft that Project 2025 policy document —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Vaughn Hillyard: — that now Donald Trump is suddenly trying to distance himself from. But this is all coming to a head because there are so many conservative right-wing groups that see the potential in four months’ time of a transition that they get to be a part of in a potential second Trump administration. So this Republican convention, it’s not even just about Donald Trump and about beating Joe Biden, but it’s about what could four years of Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress accomplish. And that’s what I’m expecting a lot of that discourse to be about come next week.
Mark McKinnon: I’ll tell you who’s not going to be there, Bruce Springsteen or Beyonce or any entertainer worth a nickel. I was the guy at the Republican conventions who got the worst job in the world, which was get entertainment for the Republican convention. And I’d make a thousand phone calls, you know, the list of people everybody wanted. They got turned down 999 times, except for Lee Greenwood, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Wayne Newton.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, man.
Vaughn Hillyard: Kid Rock, too. Kid Rock, too, right?
Mark McKinnon: Kid Rock, yes. Kid Rock was —
Jennifer Palmieri: And half of Journey. Not all of Journey, just half of Journey. That one guy is like, don’t associate me with these crazy people.
Vaughn Hillyard: Well, a lot of people are going to be left off the list, and that includes those people can stand by Nikki Haley, because to our understanding, Nikki Haley did not even receive a convention invite. So there you go.
Jennifer Palmieri: Okay, so who is speaking? Do we know anything?
Vaughn Hillyard: I mean, we’ll know whether he has a VP pick. We still don’t know that answer yet. And so I think that there are some who would obviously like jobs in the administration. We have watched the Republican Party coalesce around Donald Trump once again, because as we all know from having covered politics, been in politics, that the access to power is, that scent is strong. And the Republican Party of today is Donald Trump’s. And so you’ve got to cozy up and you’ve got to do your part if you want a job at an agency or a department.
Mark McKinnon: Listen, I think the big thing here is the dogs that aren’t barking, right, on everything, on the convention, on Biden. I mean, they’re just strategically have this thing buttoned on 2025. I mean, it’s all like, let’s just hold our fire. Nobody talks out of turn. Nobody leaks. I mean, this is just such a different Trump operation than we’ve ever seen before, right?
Vaughn Hillyard: Right. That’s absolutely right. I mean, look, there has been no campaign staff turnover. He launched this campaign back in November of 2022. And I’ve talked to a lot of people directly in the campaign, outside of the campaign. They say the reason it’s so effective this time around is that nobody is being kept away from Donald Trump. So, the top senior advisers, Susie Wiles, she is somebody who is running a tight ship for this Trump campaign in 2024. But if Stephen Miller wants to call up Donald Trump, if Steve Bannon, when he’s not in jail, wants to call up Donald Trump, anybody’s able to do that. We’re past iterations. They tried to be the gatekeepers. You can’t visit Donald Trump in the Oval Office, right? Stay away.
Jennifer Palmieri: So Susie is like to smarts, she’s smart enough to realize, don’t even try to do that. And if you have, if you make a more open campaign, the backdoor folks, the folks that try to go through the backdoor, just open the front door, let them in. And it’s going to be more productive that way. Is that —
Vaughn Hillyard: That’s absolutely. We’ve talked about let Trump be Trump for so many years. This iteration 2024 is truly let Trump be Trump and that’s what you should expect from the White House in 2025 if he wins.
Mark McKinnon: You know, the funny thing is you remember, like 2015, you know, as a former operative, I was watching a lot of people, you know, go around to the different campaigns and interview. And as you recall, there were 18 candidates. If you were interviewing and you were, you know, up and coming Republican operative, your 18th interview was Donald Trump, right? You got turned down 17 times first.
Vaughn Hillyard: Right.
Mark McKinnon: So that was the caliber back in 2016. It was broken toys, but it is a different show this time for sure.
Vaughn Hillyard: Totally. I mean, Jason Miller is his top really communication senior advisor. And I remember Jason Miller had been working as the comms director for Ted Cruz.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, right.
Vaughn Hillyard: And in that spring of 2016, Jason, you know, was referring to Donald Trump being a tornado and tweeting up a storm. And then two months later, that was the first time when he went and joined the campaign and made all of us turn our heads. It was like, oh, we see where the Republican party is going. And eight years later, Jason Miller is still at the forefront of this operation and has the deep trust of Donald Trump to this day.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: So, okay. We don’t really know who’s going to speak. Normally you would be like, oh, have the runner up speak. And then there’s a nice coming together of the party. But like, you know, obviously we’re well past that because this is Trump’s Republican party. I do want to get to Project 2025 because I think that one thing, even as the Democrats have been distracted by our own problems, that I think Project 2025 as the Republican blueprint for what Donald Trump will do in a second term is breaking through. I will like laud my former colleagues, the Center for American Progress. I was supposed to be there yesterday and I got sick, but they did a day long forum about what it would mean. There are good resources on their website. You know, the Republican party, the platform, Trump himself is trying to back away from Project 2025. I do think the Democrats, I mean, obviously there’s four months to go and a lot of work to do, but they’re doing a good job driving this message. It’s like, no, this is the agenda —
Mark McKinnon: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: — but tell us what’s actually happening with Project 2025. What’s the right way to think about it?
Vaughn Hillyard: Right. Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have really latched on to the idea of what Project 2025 is. On paper, Project 2025 is a 900-plus page roadmap of policies for departments and agencies that the Heritage Foundation, several close Donald Trump advisors and allies wrote in the lead up to, if there were to be a second Trump administration, they could turn over to the individuals that will fill out those personnel roles to ultimately execute on those policies. And then, you know, some of the policies written about including, right, making sure that it’s federally enforced, that no abortion medication can be sent through the mail. That’s one of the policies in there. And that is where Donald Trump understands that some of those policies were not popular among a majority of the American electorate. And so over the weekend, he put out, I don’t know anything about Project 2025. I don’t know who’s behind it. Let’s be very clear. That’s not true. He knows who is behind it. Russ Vogt, who was his former OMB director, is not only one of the authors of Project 2025, but was also one of the authors of literally the Republican Party platform that Donald Trump just signed on to as the proposed platform this very week. And so it’s really tough for him to disassociate with people like Ben Carson, who is another one of the authors of Project 2025. And this is coming at a time where, I’ll just tell you, I had an interview lined up with Paul Danz, who is a former personnel chief of staff in the Donald Trump White House, lined up for this Monday, and they called and canceled that interview after the social media post by Donald Trump saying he wanted nothing to do with Project 2025. So suddenly the conservative apparatus around Donald Trump is sort of in a holdup situation because Trump understands that some of the policies that are being proposed are not popular with the majority of the American public. Yet those who would fill out the personnel and fill out the administration are those individuals who are the ones writing these very policies.
Jennifer Palmieri: Okay, for both of you all, the interesting thing is that whereas maybe at a different time Trump could walk something back, like Project 2025, I think because we have seen the Supreme Court, you know, come out with the immunity decision, usually the best-case scenario for Trump, the worst-case scenario for democracy seems to follow any policy that Trump proposes and also what the Supreme Court rules. So I think the Democrats will have success in hanging this on them if we could ever get to making that argument. But for both of you all, what do you expect? I have noticed the former President Trump has sort of held off on really attacking Biden. And while Biden’s going through his thing, rally last night, how much do you expect to see of like bashing the vice president at this convention? This is for both of you. How much do you think it’s about bashing Biden? Is this where the gloves come off and they really start hitting Biden and not being up for the job? What do we expect in terms of how they define the opposition?
Mark McKinnon: Listen, I think until literally it is impossible to switch out Biden, they’re going to be careful about just how much they attack Biden because their worst nightmare is that it gets switched out to anybody, including Kamala. I expect there to be sort of a general attack on the policies and what have you. But I think the full-throated kind of, you know, the debate clips and that sort of thing, if I’m around Trump, I’m saying, hold your fire, hold your fire, hold your fire because again, the smartest thing that I’ve seen them do in this whole campaign is don’t catch a falling knife.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: Just let it go because what we don’t want is, you know, the X factor. We know Biden, we know it is, we know we got, we know how to do this campaign. What we don’t want is the unknown. And Kamala’s, you know, somewhat known, but again, it’s an X factor. And, you know, look at the data right now with Biden and man, that’s exactly what we want. The main role is don’t screw that up.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Vaughn Hillyard: And Donald Trump, this is the matchup he wants because for eight years, he has tried to convey to the American public, this idea of strength versus weakness, right? It was Marco Rubio, eight years ago, who literally referred to him as third world, strong man rhetoric, who somebody who says, put your faith in me, I’ll make things better and —
Jennifer Palmieri: As if it was a bad thing.
Vaughn Hillyard: — as if that was a bad thing, right?
Jennifer Palmieri: And now Rubio like runs around saying it in worship in his, part of it, yeah–
Vaughn Hillyard: He’s on the stage with him. And so for Donald Trump, I alone can fix it, right? Dictator on day one, greater use of the executive office. That is the type of idea of strength that Donald Trump wants to convey. And so the extent to which he can draw a contrast with somebody who he conveys as being weak, that is a matchup politically, characteristically that Donald Trump feels comfortable with.
Jennifer Palmieri: So do you think that they’ll go after the vice president then? Because even if President Biden stays as the nominee, you know, she’s going to be a big factor, you know, as it’s already made a successor.
Vaughn Hillyard: Absolutely. At the rally in Doral, Florida, he gave her a nickname and he began to go —
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, and good for you for not repeating it.
Vaughn Hillyard: He began to go on the attack —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Vaughn Hillyard: — against her. And I think that this is the part where, right, he referred to her as insurance policy and trying to degrade her —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Vaughn Hillyard: — in the public’s mind that the only reason Joe Biden picked her is because, right, he knew that they wouldn’t replace him with her, right. Which, of course, there’s just nothing to that. But this is the message that Donald Trump is going to try to convince the great share of the American population.
Mark McKinnon: I expect a lot of that because what they want to do is say, don’t switch horses, because if you do, here’s what you’re going to get. Here’s what’s coming.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right. Yeah. But she is pretty formidable in making the argument against him. We saw that. Also, I can trust that whatever they do to critique the vice president, they will overshoot and manage to hurt themselves.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah. You can count on that.
Jennifer Palmieri: I think we can count on that. Okay, we’re going to take a quick break here. But Vaughn Hillyard, please stick with Mark McKinnon and me. When we’re back, we’re going to look at Trump’s veepstakes as his campaign says, he’ll be deciding on a running mate in short order. Also, he needs to because this person has to be nominated by the convention next week. Back in a moment.
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Jennifer Palmieri: Welcome back. While Claire is living her best life on a well-deserved vacation, although is she? Because she just texted me asking me if I could talk to catch her up on what was happening. So maybe she’s actually not living her best life. Anyway.
Mark McKinnon: Step away from your iPhone, Claire.
Jennifer Palmieri: But I’m thrilled to have my co-captain Mark McKinnon joining today and our guest, NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard is also still with us. Okay, so Vaughn, Mark, let’s look at Trump’s veepstakes. We’re recording this on Wednesday morning. So if this happened already, you can go ahead and skip ahead to the part where we do listener questions. But tell us, you know, Vaughn, starting with you, who’s it down to? Anything you know about timing?
Vaughn Hillyard: He could wait all the way to the convention at this point, right? I mean, let the Biden news cycle play out. And for him, try to draw attention to the Milwaukee Convention in a somewhat splashy way. Right now, this is not the VP shortlist that I thought that he was going to come down to, like the three finalists being fluttered about here. You’re talking about J.D. Vance, somebody who called him literally an idiot in 2016, who said he was reprehensible and suggested he would vote for Hillary Clinton before Donald Trump. He is now the Ohio senator, largely got into the Senate with Donald Trump’s endorsement. He is somebody who is on that shortlist here. You’ve got Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor, who just one year ago told NBC’s Chuck Todd that he would never go into business with Donald Trump. He’s on the shortlist. And then you’ve got Marco Rubio, who we have gone over about their vicious relationship in 2016.
Mark McKinnon: Small hands.
Vaughn Hillyard: And, you know, I was told by somebody, don’t rule out somebody like Ben Carson, though, somebody from Michigan, somebody who is not going to be a threat that wouldn’t want to run for president again. You still have Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman, who has been perhaps his best and most ardent defender, somebody who is impeachment manager to defend him, somebody who clearly has aspirations herself. But, you know, I think the question here for Donald Trump is he threw Mike Pence off the cliff because ultimately, he wasn’t loyal to him on January 6 and certified the election results. And so each of these individuals, if you’re Donald Trump, there are reasons to still question. There is not a natural fit at this point for him as a VP, understanding what Donald Trump wants out of one.
Jennifer Palmieri: Kat, what do you think about, like, who would be best for him?
Mark McKinnon: Well, you know, I look at it completely politically, which, you know, I mean, you really as Karl Rove says, you should pick the person who would be the best vice president. But, you know, I would look at, you know, how do you add votes? And I think that’s a no brainer.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: Pick Nikki Haley. I mean, you had 20 percent of Republican voters staying at home or voting for Haley when she technically wasn’t even on the ticket. So to me, that’s just a place where you, you know, addition, not subtraction and —
Jennifer Palmieri: A little bit, maybe. But like that vote, don’t you think that vote was mostly just an anti-Trump vote, not like a pro-Nikki Haley vote?
Mark McKinnon: Yes, and yes. But I think also it’s additive. Again, I think it’s a sign of the strategic smarts of the campaign this time around that it’s not a bunch of MAGA celebrities on the list.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: There would be no addition of a MAGA celebrity and —
Jennifer Palmieri: You mean like who’s a MAGA celebrity, like Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Mark McKinnon: Yeah. Yeah. Any of those, you know, any of those.
Jennifer Palmieri: Kari Lake.
Mark McKinnon: Yep. Yep. Exactly. I think that, again, of the list that’s there, the person I pick is Rubio. Because again, I’m looking at it politically.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, me, too.
Mark McKinnon: How do you expand the tent? Well, you know, show that you’re more of a more diverse party. You know, I think it should either be a woman or a minority. That’s what I would do.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. Right.
Mark McKinnon: Again, it’s a very political consideration, but, you know, that’s what I would get paid to do is, you know, figure out how do you win the election. And to try to figure out how to win the election, not govern, then, you know, get somebody who’ll bring more votes. And of course, the Trump Republican Party has made huge inroads with Hispanics. So a Rubio pick, I think, would be a home run.
Jennifer Palmieri: And Vaughn, like, are they going through the normal sort of vetting process or that’s just like not a thing with these people, right? So it could be, I think that’s when they’re like, oh, who’s on the list? And I was like, anyone’s on the list, right? He could just —
Vaughn Hillyard: Right. Eight years ago, I mean, Mike Pence went through the longtime formal process that Republican VP candidates have typically gone through, go through the law firm, turn over all relevant documents. Mike Pence, even there was a rally in Indianapolis the night before that Donald Trump ultimately offered him the running mate slot there. It was kind of a final tryout for Mike Pence to come and take the stage alongside him and really show his political chops in front of the crowd. And that’s why it was interesting last night. Rubio spoke before the event, like two hours before Trump took the stage, but Trump never actually invited him onto stage, which if we’re looking for echoes of the past time, we went through this, he did do that with Mike Pence and never afforded any more time to that stage to Marco Rubio. So I thought that was unique.
Jennifer Palmieri: That is very interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Vaughn Hillyard: And if he chose Rubio, I don’t think Mark is wrong on political advantages. Marco Rubio, they’re both residents from Florida. And I have a hard time believing that Donald Trump would give up his residency in Florida. And so if Marco Rubio, because of the understanding that Florida electors —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Vaughn Hillyard: — you can’t have the VP and president from the same state, suddenly you would be looking at Marco Rubio giving up his residency in Florida and therefore no longer being a senator, so.
Mark McKinnon: But that’s an upside for Trump. That means they get a Senate pick.
Vaughn Hillyard: There you go. He gets to pick somebody in his mold.
Jennifer Palmieri: And do you think it matters, like say, if the vice president, do you think that she, like Kamala Harris, weighs in on this decision at all, right? Either the matchup of a debate with her and the running mate or the notion that she may be, the possibility of her being the nominee?
Mark McKinnon: Well, again, if I’m if I’m one of the strategists around, I say pick a woman.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: You know, the one advantage that Democrats have is Harris and the abortion issue. Let’s take it off the table or let’s minimize it. Let’s neutralize it.
Vaughn Hillyard: Trump said two weeks ago that he had made up in his mind who the VP pick was going to be, but was waiting to announce. But then here just this week, he has suggested that he is now waiting to see whether Biden stays on the ticket and ultimately that could play into his determination. So in Donald Trump’s own words, to provide credence to that.
Jennifer Palmieri: And Vicky’s asking me about Katie Britt. Like what happened there? I mean, what I had heard was that President Trump, that he initially liked —
Vaughn Hillyard: Oh, listen, I’ve never seen anybody’s stock fall so fast.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, but then I was at an event and he brought her up. He’s like, Katie Britt, what about her? And people were like, yay, didn’t seem to focus group well with this crowd.
Mark McKinnon: Well, I mean, she was a disaster in her State of the Union response. I think that’s when her stock fell. Again —
Jennifer Palmieri: I’m glad that that seems to be the collective view because —
Mark McKinnon: Yeah, she would have been great, right? I mean, horrible from your point of view.
Jennifer Palmieri: Well, I know enough to know that in her normal life —
Mark McKinnon: She’s normal, right?
Jennifer Palmieri: — as I know her well. Yeah, she’s a normie, as Sarah Longwood would–
Mark McKinnon: She would have been a Mark McKinnon pick for sure. Yeah. You know, appeal to independent suburban housewives.
Jennifer Palmieri: I’m glad you’re no longer on their team, Kinnon. A closing question to you both. There is such this media frenzy over Biden. What stories, narratives are being missed right now in the two weeks that we’ve been obsessed with how our president is doing?
Vaughn Hillyard: I think it’s wild, but it’s policy. You know, Joe Biden keeps coming back to the message of, look what I’ve done. Look at the last three and a half years. Look at all the legislative achievements we’ve had. The economy has come back. You know, we had the largest job growth ever for an administration. Donald Trump is talking about his first administration and yet lost. And a lot of this is ultimately what policies would either administration enact in the second term because it’s been very much clouded over either’s ability to actually run Washington in an effective way. Number one for Biden over age and for two for Trump purely coming off of January 6 and his respect for our institutions. There are serious questions as to just the basic governance of what Washington could look like as opposed to what actual legislation and policies could best help the American people.
Mark McKinnon: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think it’s a policy, you know, bounce back to policy where you have some real credibility.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: And the big disconnect for me has been, you know, the reality of the economy versus the perception of the economy. And I would just be banging that like a drum as hard as I could every single day.
Jennifer Palmieri: The thing that struck me about the Stephanopoulos interview that I really have not heard commented on is he asked zero policy questions.
Mark McKinnon: Oh, interesting.
Jennifer Palmieri: Zero.
Mark McKinnon: Interesting.
Jennifer Palmieri: That’s not what I expected. I mean, I’m not criticizing him. I was like, oh, I thought the interview was to show if the president was up to the job. So, like, ask him about, you know, dealing with NATO, ask him about —
Mark McKinnon: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: — what’s next with Gaza. I mean, I really, particularly with George, you know —
Mark McKinnon: That’s true.
Jennifer Palmieri: — I really thought that’s what we were getting and instead it was all —
Mark McKinnon: Yeah, exactly. And I heard somebody commenting on that this morning to say that somebody who knows Biden really well. And they just said, you know, the problem is that if it were just the question whether or not Biden could be president, he’d kill it. It’s just can he be a candidate for the office? That’s where the problem is.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right. And it’s like, I mean, it’s a very tough situation to be in. Like, well, why aren’t you dropping out for 22 minutes as opposed to like seeing him parry questions that are actually about the job? Okay, anyway, switching gears to listener questions. So we love the notes and e-mails that you have been sending. It really helps to know what’s resonating with y’all as voters and questions. And, you know, it helps us to formulate how we’re putting the show together. So please keep them coming. And Vaughn has happily agreed to stick around with me and Mark. So this is interesting. This is from Mike in D.C. Kat; I’m going to — let’s go to you. Is anybody in a position of authority within the party mentioning Governor Roy Cooper as a possible replacement for President Biden? He may be a little older than I’d like, 67. Oh, that’s tough. That’s tough, Kat. But he’s a whippersnapper compared to Trump. And he’s won again and again in a red state. He’d also bring North Carolina into play. What do you think about Roy Cooper?
Mark McKinnon: I love him. I think he’s very much along the sort of Clinton model of, you know, a more sort of centrist Southern Democrat, which I think is great for the party. That’s why I think Beshear is talked about a lot in Kentucky.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Mark McKinnon: A younger Southern Democrat. But yes, I think Cooper is a big talent and, you know, won in a Southern state. And so those are precisely the sort of people that I’d look to, to expand the appeal of the Democratic Party. We talked about what Republicans need to do.
Jennifer Palmieri: But as a running mate. I mean, this Mike was asking as the actual nominee. I don’t think any scenario where Roy Cooper becomes the nominee. You know, but like a running mate for Vice President Harris.
Mark McKinnon: Harris, Cooper would be great. Yeah. Harris-Cooper. Harris-Beshear. Yes, a hundred percent. Yeah, balance the ticket with somebody from the South. You know, he’d be top three for me.
Jennifer Palmieri: Okay. So Bethany wrote, since the debate, Trump has not dominated headlines. Trump has used negative media to his advantage in the past. I think she means, right, like, you know, here’s no bad press for Donald Trump, right? He just embraces everything. Since Biden has a lot of negative media right now, is there any way to use this to his advantage? Similarly, could a drama at the Democratic Convention dominate the headlines and work in the Dems’ favor? I’m going to answer the first part of that question, because I think that the Biden campaign has done, I mean, look, they’re in a very difficult situation and I think the campaign has done just about everything they can to get the president in a good place to, you know, announce him to the president to prove that he can do this, right? But I think that one thing that they did a good job with was taking, you know, over the weekend, you saw this start to happen on Sunday when the president went to that black church and got a good response. And meanwhile, some white members of Congress and other elites, definitely like “New York Times” columnists, I saw that George Clooney just wrote a “Times” column saying that he should drop out. And it’s like, you know, Ari Emanuel, another, you know, Hollywood agent. So it’s like Hollywood, big donors, white members of Congress, not the Congressional Black Caucus calling on him to resign. And so then it’s like Joe Biden versus everybody. Joe Biden versus the elites. And that, I think for a while, I’m not sure that that sort of threat, you know, that this exists, but it did seem to give him a boost, at least in the short term, of a different kind of fight. Like, it’s me against everybody and I’m fighting for you and I’m not on the sides of the elites. And, you know, in his mind, he has never been on the side of elites his entire life. This has given him an opportunity to do that. Vaughn, what do you think?
Vaughn Hillyard: Right. I think that this is one of those moments where, I think it was Bernie Sanders this week, who was on the front lines of saying the messaging for the party needs to get back to its roots, the working class. What are we fighting for? And that is with every passing day, this is already going to be a difficult enough race. But the party is distracted from convincing the American public that Donald Trump’s version of populism is not the right one for in terms of actual execution here. And, you know, Donald Trump in the meanwhile, right? Like, everybody kind of knows what to expect out of him at this point. And that’s where, like, the lies that he said on the debate really didn’t come as a shock to, I think, us or most Americans. But even in Doral, at his campaign rally in Florida this week, he, again, called for the release of the so-called hostages, January 6th attackers, saying they’re unfairly imprisoned. And I think that so much of that, which he repeats over and over, gets lost in all of this. And so I think he has sort of flooded the zone with bad headlines Donald Trump has over the years. It’s sometimes hard to disentangle them because he almost in so many ways embraces being convicted, embraces the fact that he wants to pardon January 6th attackers. And so it’s hard to wade through that messaging while also trying to have a forward-looking vision if you’re the Democratic Party.
Jennifer Palmieri: But I do think that’s partly why Democratic members stopped calling on Biden to resign, largely, because I think what they understood, if they actually wanted him to not be the nominee, that they were fueling his fire by being a Washington insider, continuing to say that he should drop out. And I think that’s part of the reason why you largely saw people step back on Monday night, Tuesday, until Mikey Sherrill and Michael Bennet. And, Bethany, the Dem convention dominating the headlines covered that in the first segment, but that is a big thing on everybody’s minds right now. Thanks so much to Vaughn Hillyard, NBC News correspondent covering the Trump campaign. Look forward to seeing your coverage at next week’s convention.
Vaughn Hillyard: I appreciate it, you guys.
Jennifer Palmieri: So fun to have you.
Vaughn Hillyard: Thanks.
Jennifer Palmieri: And I want to give a special thanks to my co-host, Mark McKinnon. Mark and I were co-hosts in a previous life on Showtime’s “The Circus.” Mark was the, do we call him the co-creator? I call him the creator, co-executive producer and co-host of all eight seasons of the show. It was a glorious indulgence for eight years, and I got to be part of it for four years. And it was Mark’s idea and he worked 10 years to make it happen. And he’s a veteran campaign pro. He was previously an advisor to George W. Bush and John McCain, among with others. He also played guitar with Kris Kristofferson when that was a thing, people. Mark, thanks so much for hanging out with me today.
Mark McKinnon: Kick it, sister.
Jennifer Palmieri: Thanks so much for listening. If you have a question for us, you can send it to howtowinquestions@nbcuni.com, or you can leave us a voicemail at 646-974-4194. And a note that next week, we’ll be recording on Friday morning so we can share our take on the Republican convention as a whole. The highlights, the lowlights, and everything in between. In the meantime, we’ll be sharing audio of MSNBC’s coverage and the How to Win fee for people to stay up to date during convention next week. This show is produced by Vicki Vergolina. Janmaris Perez is our associate producer. Catherine Anderson is our audio engineer. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio. And Rebecca Kutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Search for “How to Win 2024” wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.