With just a few weeks until the election, you’ve probably noticed that Vice President Kamala Harris has been doing a lot of media. How does she decide which outlets to give interviews to? What does the process look like behind the scenes? Lucky for us, we have the perfect guest to unpack the ins and outs of campaign media strategy, particularly in an election as consequential as this one. Symone Sanders-Townsend is a co-host of “The Weekend” on MSNBC, a Democratic strategist and the author of “No, You Shut Up.” She also was a senior adviser to Vice President Harris. She joins “WITHpod” to discuss how campaign political media strategy is crafted and her experience working closely with VP Harris.
And if you love hearing Symone in conversation as much as we did, you’re in luck. As a bonus for MSNBC Premium subscribers, we’re sharing a bonus episode with Symone this, in which where we talk all about her trajectory, how she became Symone Sanders-Townsend and more. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium for that bonus and other special offerings from MSNBC Audio.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: I think that Donald Trump has really ruined many of us because —
Chris Hayes: Ruined everything. I agree.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: He’s ruined it all. He’s ruined it all because now we — every interview is not supposed to be adversarial. There are times where the interviewer does have to get in the proverbial tale of the interviewee —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — because they are not answering the question. You know, lives are on the line.
Chris Hayes: Right. Totally.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Like, there are many things. But like, in general, why does every interview have to be adversarial? I’m not saying we got to be buddy-buddy. But you don’t have to have an attitude every single way you ask a question. You don’t have to. It doesn’t have to be like, argh.
Chris Hayes: Hello and welcome to “Why Is This Happening?” with me your host, Chris Hayes.
We’ve got just a few weeks until the election. Kamala Harris, if you haven’t noticed, has been doing a lot of media. I’m talking to you on Wednesday, October 9th, which is the day that Hurricane Milton is about to hit Florida. It has not hit yet. But today, the vice president actually called into the weather channel. She called into CNN to talk about storm preparations. She’s been on “Colbert,” she’s been on “The View,” she’s been on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. And it’s interesting because there’s a lot of back and forth about her press strategy, is she talking to media enough? Is she talking too much? Is she talking to the right people? Yada, yada.
And it occurred to me that I don’t actually really know how to think about this. Like I’ve been a journalist my whole life. And as a journalist, you just have one way of thinking about it, which is I want you to agree to an interview with me. That’s it. Like there’s nothing more complicated than that. It’s like, I want you to say yes, if I want to talk to you. And I’m bummed if you say no, and I’m going to try to hound you. But there’s, you’re not making any like assessments, complicated assessments. On the other side, there’s a whole bunch of complicated assessments, particularly in a national campaign that has been thrown together basically in 48 hours that is running in an incredibly high stakes environment, in a media environment that is more sort of strange and shifting than any than I’ve ever seen in my life.
And so, I thought a great person to talk to about all this who’s been on both sides of that decision-making, my colleague, Symone Sanders-Townsend. She is, of course, the cohost of “The Weekend,” which airs Saturday and Sunday, 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. Eastern on MSNBC. She’s author of the book, “No, You Shut Up.” She’s also one of the cohosts with our good friend, Melissa Murray of “Black Women in America: The Road to 2024.” That aired on MSNBC, it’s available on Peacock. And before all that, when she was on this side of the camera, she worked in political communications, former senior advisor of Vice President Harris and worked on several campaigns. So Symone, great to have you in the program.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Good to see you, Chris. This is great. And I mean, literally, it is a perfect time for me to join to talk about it.
Chris Hayes: Well, let’s start right on that because it did occur to me, it’s so funny that I’ve just never thought of this. I have never been in a meeting or a decision process where it’s like, okay, we’re going to write on the whiteboard, these are the 12, you know, obviously if you’re Kamala Harris, it’s literally thousands. But okay, we’ve narrowed it down to, here are 20 possibilities of people that want interviews and want media appearances. Okay, now we run the meeting. Walk me through it. I literally have no idea.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Well, usually there’s a pre-meeting. So, I mean, truly, sometimes this is in a campaign situation, there are a lot of requests. And so on all of the campaigns I used to work on, and when I was in the White House, when I worked for Vice President Harris, we would keep a spreadsheet of the requests of interviews that come in, whether they are print, radio, television, or podcast. And sometimes, depending on who it was, it got bumped to the top, but you know, maybe, you know, Joe Shmoe from North Omaha, Nebraska, where I’m from. Joe just started a podcast and he would like to interview the vice president. Well, Joe, we’re going to record it. We’re going to put you on the list.
Chris Hayes: That would go in. That would make it to the spreadsheet.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: It was a request. We need to track them all because I believe —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — we need to respond to people.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And so, one of the criticisms, you know you get press people, you’re reaching out to a campaign or office. People do deserve a response. Even if it is no, you know, our thought process was always don’t leave people in limbo.
Chris Hayes: Yep.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: But outside of the request, there’s also some things that, you know, proactively things you want to do. And so maybe one of the columnists from “The Washington Post” or “The New York Times” hasn’t requested something, but for what your candidate or your principal is about to do, whether it’s international trip, right, maybe a hurricane, something has happened, you’re going to unveil something. You want to proactively reach out to them because they make sense for what you’re doing.
Chris Hayes: So that’s like a pit, right? So, there’s incoming requests and then there’s outgoing pitches where you’re affirmatively reaching out to some outlet. And we obviously, that I’m on the receiving end all the time.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: My inbox is full.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: You’re used to people hitting you up.
Chris Hayes: That I know.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Exactly. So, but for, especially when I worked for the vice president and then when I worked for the president’s first campaign, and Senator Sanders as well, for the proactive pitches, we didn’t want to pitch someone that we weren’t pretty sure that the principal would say yes to. Because the worst thing is to go, if I pitch you, you say yes, and then I take it back to, you know, the vice president. She’s like, I don’t want to do that. Because at the end of the day, the principal does have the last say because they’re the person that has to sit in the interview. And so once we’ve identified, we would have identified kind of these are the requests and then these are the pitches. And then we would say, we would put in like a, this is what we would like to do. And so we will put together like a media plan, if you will, for the next two weeks or for a month. And then when you get the meeting with the principal, in this case with the vice president, we would go on with the vice president, a scheduling meeting most likely, and everybody else would do their things. You know, the political people would talk about what they wanted on the schedule. The scheduler would go through the events that they’re proposing doing, and like, if this was okay, somebody wanted her to speak somewhere. And then it would be my turn, and myself and my deputy at the time, Sabrina, who’s now the deputy spokesperson at the Pentagon, we would go in and say, this is what we’d like to do, and whether we’re traveling or not traveling, and this is when we think we can do it. These are the requests.
Chris Hayes: This is in the vice president’s office we’re saying. Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: This is in the vice president’s office. And we take all of the requests to her. We say what our recommendation is about what we should do. And then you get her to say, yes. Now she might not say, we’re not going down to the nitty gritty of we’re doing this Thursday at 2 p.m.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: But it’s like, we think you should do this.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Would you like to do this? And once she says yes, then we go and we schedule it.
Chris Hayes: Okay, so that’s the sort of like logistics of it, right?
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: So you’re sort of funneling, you’ve got a spreadsheet. Tell me about the sort of the judgment part of it, what we would call editorial, right? So, it’s like, right now you’re sitting and you’re saying, well, Colbert wants to talk to her and Howard Stern wants to talk to her and also, you know, “Fox Sunday Show” wants to talk to her. And this podcast, Theo Von, who’s a very popular podcaster who interviewed Donald Trump, also wants to interview with the vice president. What are those discussions about like who gets a yes, who gets a no once you’re at the level of like these people are in the ballpark?
Symone Sanders-Townsend: It depends on what you want to accomplish. Like I would say, you know, I had some folks asked me about three weeks ago, like, oh, do I think she should do Fox News? And I said, no, I think that perhaps Governor Walz should do Fox News, but for her —
Chris Hayes: And he’s going to actually.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And he’s going to.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And he did the Sunday show, the Sunday right before we, what, on October 6th, he did Shannon Bream.
Chris Hayes: Yep.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: “Fox News Sunday” and that completely made sense for him. I think if the vice president would have done it, it would have been a different kind of interview. My suggestion to folks would have been only I think if she does do a Fox News interview, Bret Baier maybe because Bret is like — he’s a news person, but the parameters around that would have to make sense. But it’s really about what makes sense for her and what you’re trying to accomplish. There has been this debate out there, Chris, you’ve heard it about how, oh, TV doesn’t matter. They don’t reach as many people. Podcasts and these other new emerging media, that’s where all the people are. And I don’t think it’s either or. In my opinion, it’s a both/and.
And so we’re literally experiencing it right now. Hurricane Milton is making landfall today as we have this conversation in Florida. And when people are turning on the television to find out what they should do, they’re not go into a podcast, Chris. So when something happens in the world, people turn on the television.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: You know, the people in the White House, they are watching TV all day long. When they don’t like a chyron, they’re picking up the phone and they’re calling. I know, because I used to do it. So television still matters. It is not the only thing that matters though. And you have to look at the different demographics of who the audience is that this entity reaches. Is the person themselves a person of note? Steve Harvey, for example, he has a radio show. And his radio show is syndicated, which means for folks out there that it plays in multiple markets all across the country. And I remember once when I worked in the vice president’s office, someone who should have remained nameless, you know, before we went into the meeting with the vice president, I’m like, these are my top requests. And I was like, and I really want to make sure we get Steve Harvey in. And the person goes, well, why would she speak to a comedian? And I’m like, Steve Harvey has one of the highest rated syndicated radio shows in the country and his audience is disproportionately African-American and people listen to him in drive time. These are the numbers.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: That’s why she needs to do a comedian.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: So it really depends about the demographic, yes.
Chris Hayes: But that’s market research, right? Right, so like I was looking at numbers for Alexandra Cooper who’s the host of “Call Her Daddy,” and the numbers are nuts.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yeah, 5 million.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, I mean, crazy reach and also, you know, disproportionately women and young women and a high, you know, pretty evenly between the three buckets of, you know, liberal, moderate, conservative, sort of Democratic, Independent, Republican. So part of it, right, is figuring out what audiences you want to reach, who can talk to that audience, and then trying to figure that out. You know, for her first interview was with Dana Bash at CNN, sat down with Tim Walz. Like, how much are those relationships? How much are those institutionals? You know, like, you know, obviously everyone wanted that interview.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: You can’t answer the question of why it was her because you weren’t in the room. But from your perspective of expertise, you know, everyone wanted that interview. So how do you decide who gets it?
Symone Sanders-Townsend: You know, I didn’t ask them directly like why, but this is my theory on Dana Bash. And I think I’m pretty correct. When you have a high-profile interview that you have to do, particularly that one, her first with her running mate now that she’s at the top of the ticket, you want to pick someone that people perceive as like a serious journalist, right? Because you don’t want the criticism to be, you know, you don’t want the criticism to be she’s going to go talk to her former spokesperson, okay? So, i.e., not sitting down —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — with Symone and them on the weekend.
Chris Hayes: No, I think her first interview with you would have not accomplished what they wanted to.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: It would not have gone well for any of us.
Chris Hayes: Yes, it would not have accomplished what they wanted to accomplish.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Me or her. Okay. You know, just, we’re just speaking the truth here, Chris. You know, nothing but the facts.
Chris Hayes: Well, we’re both, we’re in the same boat, which is neither of us have gotten an interview with Kamala Harris. So that’s it.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: You know, so there it is. So, you know, you want the first one, you want it to be someone that folks would consider a serious journalist. Okay, got it. Maybe it is even better, frankly, if it’s somebody for the Beltway crowd that hosts a Sunday show. So that narrows it down right there. Dana hosts a Sunday show.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: You want somebody that is going to be tough and push you. But frankly, you don’t want to put yourself in a position of, you know, a circular firing squad, right?
Chris Hayes: Well, you’re not going to go on “Hannity.”
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Like, and I just would argue.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, right, yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Not going to go on “Hannity.” And I mean, I would argue that, you know, if it were me, I would be like, if the question is Dana or Jake, for the first one, I’m going to go with Dana, because you know, Dana’s style is just a little bit different from Jake’s. And Dana is going to ask you the question, she’s going to follow up, and she’s just going to let you, unless your answer is completely egregious. Dana is like, well, that’s what you said. I’m moving on to what you have to deal with the internet and the critics that write it up. And that’s just her style, but she’s going to ask the questions. And she’s very well-researched. And then you look at what is the relationship. Like does the vice president or have a rapport with any of the people that we’re talking about? Because it’s always better to do a sit down with someone that you’ve spoken to before.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, you have some comfort.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: You have some comfort with, because it is a better conversation on both ends. It’s better for the journalist who’s doing the interview because you know, then maybe you don’t take offense, if you will, frankly, to what is some of the tougher questions that you will be asked. It’s better for the principal who is being interviewed because then it’s like, okay, I know them. Like, you know, there’s no hostility here. You know, we have a relationship.
So all of those things play into it. I think about when Steph, our colleague Stephanie Ruhle, when she got the interview after the V.P.’s big economic speech, that made complete sense.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, so she got the first solo interview for national news. The vice president had sat down with local reporters —
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — but this is the first national network solo interview after that Dana Bash interview with Tim Walz.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And it made sense because Steph’s background is business. It is economics. And so, she is going to have just a dogged commitment, if you will, to the details of this economic plan that someone else might not have.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: You know, in that interview, it was purely an economic interview. You could argue you sit down with, you know, another cable news host and they’ll feel the need to ask —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — you some news of day questions, is what we call them on the front end, before getting to the economy pieces about the plan.
Chris Hayes: More of our conversation after this quick break.
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Chris Hayes: Okay, so let’s talk about the news of day and what the goal of the interview is from the perspective of the candidate and from the perspective of the journalist. So there are two ways of thinking about these interviews. And I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been frustrated. You know, I think we all have our frustrations with the media, even when we’re part of it. And because it’s not, and the media means a million different things.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes, the media apparatus, as I like to say.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, I mean, Alex Jones is the media. You know, he is the —
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Well, he is.
Chris Hayes: And you and I are too. And we do very different things, as is an AP reporter in the Jerusalem Bureau right now. Like it’s, you know, there’s a lot of different things. So what I’ve been thinking about, I thought that Stephanie Ruhle interview was great. I thought it was good questions, hard questions, pressed her on stuff. Harris answered, the vice president answered. What it was not was an interview designed to, in the lingo of campaigners, make news.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Correct.
Chris Hayes: Like the big point, and here, I want to get at this. I think there’s a tension between the professional incentives of quote, unquote, “making news,” and what’s most informative for voters who have to make decisions. By and large, voters want to hear like, here are some problems in my life, what are you going to do about it? That won’t make news. What makes news is to catch them in saying something halting. And I’m not saying like making news is bad, I like to make news when I do interviews of newsmakers as well.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: But you know, the campaign people, when they do an interview, they think about making news too. And so, it’s from both, two different perspectives.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Like sometimes —
Chris Hayes: You want to make news.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes, sometimes we would say yes to an interview with the vice president because there was some news she wanted to make. She wanted to either break something, i.e., break news and make an announcement of some initiative or whatnot, or maybe there was, you know, something that was percolating in the ether that had happened and it’s like, okay, let’s just go over here. We know so-and-so is going to ask us this, and then you can answer the question and then it’s out there and we don’t have to field all these different media requests.
From the, as you know, from the journalist side of the perspective, when you’re sitting in the host chair or the interview chair or whatever, sometimes your make news is like, how can I get them to say something about this thing?
Chris Hayes: Something they haven’t said before.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yeah, something they haven’t said before, something about this thing over here, or there’s a little controversy in the wings, I want to know if they’ll speak to it. So everyone comes to, I think the interview with goals and from the campaign perspective, sometimes your goal is to, I want to explain a thing. Like, so they did that interview because their goal was to further the economic news about the speech. She could have gone and done an interview with anyone, but doing the interview with Stephanie Ruhle, who talks all the time about the economy, she talks about other things obviously.
Chris Hayes: Right, but the details of it, she got like, yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes, she wanted to. Steph wanted to do that.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: The campaign, and the vice president wanted that. Frankly, I think the campaign needed it.
Chris Hayes: Yep.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: They needed a forum where she could answer, you know, difficult questions about her economic policy. And that interview did what it was supposed to do. The news coming out of everything from the speech to the interview was about the economic plan. Now people have, they can disagree about the details of the plan.
Chris Hayes: Right. Sure.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: If they like what she said —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — but now they’re talking about that and not this other thing.
Chris Hayes: See, and that to me is, and I understand the imperatives of making news. I really do. Like, there are different things that different people are trying to do for professional reasons, for journalistic reasons. Making news tends to be there’s some campaign news cycle that’s happening, often it’s Donald Trump said X. And there’s a fire going that’s burning out and the idea is to throw a log onto the fire so that there’s another day of news about it, right?
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Get more legs.
Chris Hayes: That’s making news on something, right? And sometimes making news like, I think, you know, the news that was made on the question, you know, the extent there was a moment in “The View” where they said, what would you do differently from President Biden? Totally good question, not at all a gotcha question. And I think she stumbled a little, frankly. I think she didn’t have a great answer at the ready and that sort of blew up. And I thought that was an example of like, that’s all fair. That’s a totally fair question.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And then she circled back, right? So to me, the circle back says that.
Chris Hayes: She knew.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: We prepped. We prepped this, okay?
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: The circle back means that the team did their job about anticipating the kind of, because I mean, that’s what a prep is. You anticipate what you think the reporters and the people interviewing you are going to ask and then you prepare the questions for that even, and you participate, you anticipate what would be, we call them tough Q and A, that’s what we used to call it.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: But it doesn’t, you know, how was your, what would you have done differently than Joe Biden or how will you be a different president isn’t essentially I think, thought of as a tough question, but that’s a question that is not, you know, you got to prepare for that. And so she circled back later in the interview and said, you know, you asked me what I would do differently, the Biden, how I’d be different. I’d have a Republican in my cabinet.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: That would be different. And he doesn’t have that.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And it’s like, okay, they prepped that. Now I think that there is this, I have just really been maybe dismayed or slightly confused as the word, Chris, about this. There’s all this chatter from the unnamed aides that now work for the vice president on the campaign saying that they want her to distance herself more from Joe Biden and she needs to do that because that’s what the voters want. I don’t necessarily know if that’s what the voters want. I think the voters, I think many voters thought that the president was maybe too old, but some base voters are going to vote for him. Whatever. Ship has sailed.
It’s been 30 years since a sitting vice president has ran for election. The last one was Al Gore. How did it work out for Al Gore when he tried to distance himself from President Clinton?
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Like she starts to go to work every day.
Chris Hayes: Well, that’s the —
Symone Sanders-Townsend: There’s a little difference here.
Chris Hayes: Right. And that’s the reason. That is the reason. That’s a great point, right? So the reason that question is both a totally good and fair question, not a gotcha question and a difficult question to answer, is precisely because of the two roles she’s embodying. She is the sitting vice president.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: Her boss in a sort of deep sense, constitutionally, the structure of that —
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes. I think the internal people say their governing partner, but yeah, the president. There’s two names on the door, and the president’s is number one.
Chris Hayes: Right, so if I’m doing an interview, and someone says to me, what would you do differently than Rashida Jones at the network?
Symone Sanders-Townsend: You’re like, oh.
Chris Hayes: That’s a hard question for me to answer, because that’s, well, that’s not my job. She has her job. Like I work at the network, and yet she’s also a candidate for office. Right? So she’s in a difficult position with that question, which again, I think they have to figure out, like she did the, you know, she circled back to it. I’m not sure. I think it was fine. But again, it’s a perfect example to me of like a moment of tension in an interview that is like well-earned, where it’s like a totally legit question. It does put her in a difficult position. She has to kind of come up with a way of talking about it that threads the needle, which is what being a good politician is all about, being a good communicator. And then there’s more gotcha questions which are like, feel flimsier, you know? And that ends up being a significant part of campaign reporting as well.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yeah, it’s like, did you think the president was too old to serve another term?
Chris Hayes: Right, yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: That’s a direct design to be gotcha question —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — that should, if you are the sitting vice president of the United States of America, only be answered one way. But that’s very different than —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — well, what would you have done differently than Joe Biden did?
Chris Hayes: Right. Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: That’s an earnest honest question that, you know, some people have. So it is, that is the — but again, I would just go back to say that “The View” did its job in terms from their perspective of making news for “The View.” There were many news type things that came out of it.
Chris Hayes: They did a great interview. Again, I thought it was mission accomplished all around.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Well, I would just argue that the news that the vice president’s team wanted to make that they were announcing was —
Chris Hayes: Medicare.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — the home care for Medicare.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And expanding Medicare access to cover home care for folks in the sandwich generation. And I read a lot about it in the embargoed materials that the campaign put out. I’ve read much about it in the write-ups from the reporters that wrote it up. I think that it did get some conversation on “The View,” but that was not the bulk of it. You get what I’m saying?
Chris Hayes: yes.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And the clips that have gone viral, those aren’t the clips.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And so but that’s a gamble that you take when you do campaign.
Chris Hayes: But that’s always the thing, right? Because it’s like this gets back that tension I’m talking about, where I think from a voter, a voter-centric perspective, you’re like, okay, this is my life. These are the challenges I face. This is what I want to hear. And when you do that, you talk about things like, we want to make Medicare payments available to folks that are doing home care for their parents, rather than these other more campaign-focused questions. But of course, there’s always going to be that tension. Like, we want to have this. We want to talk policy, basically.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: And you want to talk campaign stuff.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: That basically is what it is, which is why I thought the Steph Ruhle interview was, and why I think, you know, there’s a lot of formats. Ezra Klein’s podcast is a good example. Or if you come on my show, for instance, you can have tough and engaged policy. Like there’s ways to make a policy interview tough because policy is tough. But what ends up happening is that the genre of tough question tends to not be policy-based.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: Other than like, how will you pay for it or whatever?
Symone Sanders-Townsend: But also, I mean, I think that Donald Trump has really ruined many of us because —
Chris Hayes: Ruined everything, I agree.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: He’s ruined it all. He’s ruined it all because now every interview is not supposed to be adversarial. There are times where the interviewer does have to get in the proverbial tale of the interviewee —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — because they are not answering the question. You know, lives are on the line. Like there are many, many things.
Chris Hayes: Right. Threat.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: But like in general, why does every interview have to be adversarial? I’m not saying we got to be buddy-buddy, but you don’t have to have an attitude every single way you ask a question. You don’t have to. It doesn’t have to be like, argh.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: But we have gotten into this lull that, oh, I mean, that’s what people were saying about the “Call Her Daddy” podcast before they saw it. They’re like, oh, she’s going to do easy interviews. That Call Your Daddy interview was, these were straightforward questions that I don’t think were easy.
Chris Hayes: And it was super interesting.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And it was very interesting, but it wasn’t adversarial.
Chris Hayes: And that’s the thing about podcasts as a format. It’s hard to listen to an adversarial hour long conversation. So formally, as a formal matter, podcasts and particularly successful ones are not particularly adversarial. In fact, like the Joe Rogan podcast is a great example where he’s basically not that adversarial to anyone he has on, which is kind of the problem because if he has someone who’s completely a kook, they don’t get really challenged. But if he has someone who’s not, then you can learn some interesting things. Like it all sort of depends.
That genre, that’s what I think is interesting about these podcast interviews because it’s not an adversarial format. Like in some ways, Donald Trump’s Theo Von podcast, was one of the most interesting interviews I’ve ever seen Donald Trump do. Partly because it was just a side of him I didn’t see him before, he was talking about his brother and his brother’s addiction. It was actually quite humanizing in its own way. Now, that was not a particularly adversarial interview, —
Symone Sanders-Townsend: No.
Chris Hayes: — but it was still interesting. There was still content there. Like I learned something from that interview. So I agree with you. Like there are different ways that interviews can be illuminating. The other thing I’ll say is with Trump, a lot of time he makes news in the least adversarial settings because when he’s the most comfortable, he says the most deranged things.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: He will just say anything. And it’s like, wait, where was he when he said this? He was on local Fox channel 82.
Chris Hayes: Right, or Laura Ingraham last night —
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Or Laura Ingraham.
Chris Hayes: — three times she tried to be like, you’re not going to put your political enemies in jail, right? Trying to get him to say no. And he’s like, well, a lot of people think that’s what should happen. It’s like, oh, okay.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Okay, Donald Trump is telling you. Look, I do think, though, but there is a happy medium, because I, again, like it’s not even, you know, my occupational bias. I do think that you have to do both.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: You just can’t do the podcast and the lifestyle and the things that, you know, humanize you because I think that the fourth estate is actually very important.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And the fourth estate, obviously the definition has expanded over time, but at the end of the day, the “60 Minutes” interview was important.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, you got to subject yourself to tough questions.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Like Dana Bash was important.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: The local interviews are —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — critical because people are —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — disproportionately watching their local news than anything, than most other things on TV right now.
Chris Hayes: I also think, and I want to get into your background a little bit more, but like just on this last thing, I have been very generally impressed with the way she’s handled questions. And I also think there’s been a little bit of, I think the campaign that was working with Joe Biden, some vestigial anxiety about letting her talk carried over to this campaign, where it’s like, get her out there, man. She’s good talker. She’s good at talking. Like, I think these interviews have been good for her. I think she’s done very well.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: And yeah, there’s going to be moments, there’ll be little moments of, you know, “The View” moment, but that’s, you know, you’re running for president. Like, I think in some ways, I think that they should do more and that’s not just my bias as a journalist. I generally think that both she and Tim Walz are smart, compelling, excellent communicators who have a message and can handle tough questions —
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Absolutely.
Chris Hayes: — and should be trusted to do so by everyone around them.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Absolutely.
Chris Hayes: Like here’s a good example of that kind of question set up. Steph Ruhle asked this question to the vice president.
(BEGIN VT)
Stephanie Ruhle: Can we trust you?
Vice President Kamala Harris: Yes. Yes. I am not perfect, but I will tell you, I’m always going to put the needs of the people first.
(END VT)
Symone Sanders-Townsend: See, the thing that’s so great about that is, if the campaign staff or the comms people didn’t anticipate that question, kudos to them. Had I been doing the prep for this, I wouldn’t have flagged to the vice president and say, now, you know what? She could ask, can people trust you?
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: I could anticipate a lot of different things. I wouldn’t have anticipated that. But you know, that’s a very direct, not an adversarial question, but it is like how you answer this question matters because she’s talking about trust. Well, can we trust you? And it’s like, you heard the pause, the pause was like, damn, Steph, okay.
Chris Hayes: Right, and what’s interesting about that question too, which I think is important is, this is a question that doesn’t work in print. Because if you say to someone, can we trust you? The answer is yes.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: And no one’s going to say no, right? So we know the answer. Can we trust you? Yes. And if you’re doing a print interview, what does that get you? But in a TV interview, if you ask, can we trust you? The way they say yes and how they say yes is —
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — part of the answer to the question. Like, do they look believable? Is this a person who projects that is part of the answer there and that’s why it works as a TV question and doesn’t work as a print question.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And she felt it was an earnest question. Like I could argue, you could look back at the NABJ interview that the vice president did with Eugene Daniels —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — who’s the president of the White House Correspondents Association. There were two other journalists there and it was a three person panel interview. And there were times where one of the other questioners, not Eugene, kind of jumped in to interrupt the vice president or would redirect because they didn’t feel like she was answering the question. And it was a little tense. It was kind of like, I’m getting there. Let me keep going. And the other two journalists who were there, not Eugene, but the other two, the vice president knew one of the other journalists tangentially because he was on the White House beat.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — but one of the other journalists, she was a local reporter that the vice president, I don’t think, had ever sat down for an interview with before. So therefore, when you don’t know someone, again, having just some kind of —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — some kind of general relational, like, at least I’ve seen them, I know them, they cover me. You can get different responses, different questions. And so had the woman from the NABJ panel asked the vice president, well, can we trust you? She might not have taken it the same way —
Chris Hayes: That’s interesting.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — as it came from Stephanie Ruhle —
Chris Hayes: That’s interesting.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — given the kind of interview that they were having. As the team that preps the candidate, and then at the end of the day, the candidate themselves, I mean, frankly, you want your candidate as comfortable as possible. Even when you’re going, you know, what we used to say is, there are just some people that’s like, you know, okay, you know, they’re going to be tough, you know. I will say Savannah has that reputation across the board. She is tough. She tough on everybody. So when you’re going to sit down and do that “Today Show” interview, it’s like, well, who’s doing it? Is this Savannah? Okay. She’s going to be tough. You already know Savannah’s going to be tough. She’s going to ask you the questions. She’s America sweetheart, but America sweetheart wants the answers. Okay.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: So it is just knowing in general just the kind of style —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — that someone has and ensuring that the candidate is prepared for the style of interview they’re about to get. Howard Stern is different, you know, than you.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And his format is different. His approach is different. So understanding the style, understanding Stephen Colbert’s style, Colbert’s style. The style is important and just ensuring that whether your candidate, in this case, the vice president, is aware of what the style is, is very important so that the cues don’t come out. Like if I’m not familiar with your style and I sit down for an interview with you and you say something to me, and I’m like, what is going on?
Chris Hayes: Right. I know what you’re saying.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: We could get into something different.
Chris Hayes: Let me ask this question. So one of the things that I encounter as an interviewer is a tension between, I want people to speak freely, but speaking freely can get you in trouble. And so what happens generally, particularly if you’re talking to people that are running for office or politicians in cycle, like there’s a big difference between when I interview a senator off cycle and in cycle. Meaning when I interview them, they’re three years from up for reelection and when I interview them and they’re 30 days out from reelection, right?
The balance between prepping someone and having them be quote, unquote “on message” and not sounding like a ChatGPT, like talking point machine. Talk me through that. Does it matter to you as someone who’s staffing the principal? Does it matter if they sound kind of talking pointsy or is the point, no, the talking points are there for a reason, we want you on message. Just say the talking points.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Well, look, for me, when now I hate when people just come and like give me the form answer. When Michael, Alicia and I were interviewing people, when we’re talking about who we want on the show, and someone suggests, you know, there are some members and somebody be like, oh, what about members so and so? I’m like, I like them, but they never going to just talk.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: So we, I’m with you, Chris. I don’t like the people on their talking points. The approach we used to have when I worked for the vice president was, and she was really the driver of this. She wants to understand what the point is, primarily for first and foremost, like. She’s number two on the door, not number one. And so oftentimes we’re talking about a policy, we would be talking about a policy of the administration. And we want to ensure that we’re very well aware of what the president has said, so that the vice president isn’t out there saying something that is contradictory to the president. And also what are the points that we developed for this? And then what did the president say? And then do you want to edit what the president said?
And for the V.P., her thing really is that when you do a document for her, if you give her all, you know, this language, if you will, she will always come back to you and say, okay, what are you trying to say? And I’m like, well, we’re trying to say, you know, we want people to, you know, be safe. If we’re talking about the hurricane, we want people to be safe. Listen to the elected officials and note that if they stay, they will die. And she will say, why don’t we just say that? So she wants to be very straightforward. And so it’s like, okay, straightforward, but if they ask you any other version of this question, note your home base is this thing over here.
So I really think it depends on the principle and just how comfortable they are being conversational, but they have to understand what the talking points are, but also you want to be conversational and be very clear about what it is that you want to say. And I think she is good on that. Some things though sound like buzzwords, like opportunity economy, that’s a buzzword. And it’s an important buzzword because she’s branding her thing. I’m talking about an opportunity economy, but I’m just not going to put a fancy name on it. I’m going to tell you what that means. And then she gives the repeats. She gives us specifics, housing. Now we know it’s housing —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — it’s care, it’s all the things. She has to say that over and over again because it does take like seven times —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — before someone, a voter who has heard it, for them to take to it.
Chris Hayes: We’ll be right back after we take this quick break.
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Chris Hayes: That point you just said about how prepping her when you worked in the vice president’s office with everything the president said, one thing that I have noticed, and this seems very clear to me. I met Kamala Harris years ago. She was obviously a very gifted politician and a very gifted communicator in many ways. I did not think she was a particularly gifted communicator in her role as vice president. I mean, she’s a gifted communicator, but she’s just very clearly hemmed in by the fact that she’s not the person. She is a messenger for the president’s agenda.
Now, when she started doing more of the post-Dobb stuff, what I interpret was that they were giving her more room, basically, like she was allowed to sort of be herself a little more and talk. And then the difference between that and her on the campaign trail, where again, everything you just said about the first thing you do about what you are going to say is what another politician who is totally different than you has said with a totally different staff and a totally different way of communicating and a 50-year life experience in politics that are not yours. Right? So you’re starting from this place of, it’s like, you got to put on Joe Biden’s suit.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Well, you need to coordinate with what Joe Biden is wearing, essentially, but keeping your authenticity. And that is something that frankly through, I think the first year of the Biden-Harris administration and her vice presidency, was a foundational year and led directly to everything —
Chris Hayes: Totally.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — that we are seeing right now. And I was there that first year. And one of the things that we learned in trial by error and from a staff perspective, is that yes, that we have to remit, not learn, but just a reminder for, I think, the staff at that time is that yes, her name is number two on the door. The nature of the vice presidency is that, you know, all of these things. However, she also like wasn’t just plucked out of the ether.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: She comes with a body of work —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — that she has worked on herself. She has things that she has said, things that she very clearly believes.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And we have to, as a staff, we had to do the work of merging that with what —
Chris Hayes: That’s hard.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Who you talking, Chris?
Chris Hayes: That’s why, I mean, I’m appreciating it so much now. And obviously like, it’s funny because everyone was talking about how “Veep” got all these repeat viewings.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: “Veep” was real.
Chris Hayes: The theme of “Veep,” the sort of enduring theme, aside from like the hilarious, you know, whatever brilliant satire, a big part of it is it like, it’s hard to be in that role. That is a very difficult role to do well. And there’s a reason for instance, this is the first time since 2000 that you’ve got that vice president running. If she’s elected, it’ll be the first time since ‘88 that it was successful. And I just think that it’s been fascinating to watch her on the campaign where it’s just a different mode that she’s in because it’s her campaign.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: She’s still the vice president, but when she is campaigning to be president, she’s the principal. She’s the number one on the door. And there’s a very big difference, I guess is what I’m trying to say. Like, do you feel that? Do you feel like that’s true?
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Oh, yeah, I feel like it’s completely true. And to be clear, not that she was being someone else, if you will up until this time, right.
Chris Hayes: No, it’s just the role, yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: The role is just different. And so now it’s not like, okay, this is what the campaign has said is the thing. And I mean, the campaign would take input, obviously, from the vice president’s team in the office and whatnot. And the president would have taken input and they collaborate on some things with the vice president. But now it’s like, okay, if you had your choice to say what it is, what would you like it to be? Because remember that body of work that she had —
Chris Hayes: That’s right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — this very long career that she’s had.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: This is now what it is, you know? The whole thing about taking on the cartels and she’s been in the tunnels, that is something that we obviously knew when she joined the ticket. That is something that we had obviously discussed after the general election during the transition and something that we talked about regularly internally as staff with the vice president when she was the vice president that first year. But that frame, you know, I don’t know if it worked well with what we were talking about.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: The president didn’t take on the cartels.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: She did.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And the president is the president. The president is setting the policy, right?
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And so, while she is a part of this administration and there are some of these policies that came directly from her work, like the child tax credit, frankly, what Gene Sperling will tell you, if he were sitting here, that child tax credit for that one year, that policy was foundationally based on policy and a bill that the vice president authored when she was a United States senator. Like, that’s something that, okay —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — perfect. Like, you did this. We can incorporate that one in. But it is different now. This is Kamala Harris as her name is on the door, but now it’s first on the door. And when your name is first on the door, you get to make all the decisions and you get to decide the direction that things are happening. And I think it is extremely authentic to her and again, a testament to these three years because it is a different campaign from the last presidential campaign she ran in 2019. But this presidential campaign specifically, I think, is different because she has also been vice president. The campaign would not look like this if she wasn’t the sitting vice president of the United States of America.
Chris Hayes: That’s a great point. On that point about it’s different than when she ran in 2019, 2020, I mean, one of the things you see, right, is just the primary dynamics are different than general election dynamics. And, you know, that is being hung around her neck a little bit, understandably. Again, that is what it is, it’s politics. People take positions in primaries. They may have to deal with the ramifications of those positions later on, if they change their mind, if the politics of those issues move. But you were also the chief spokesperson for Bernie Sanders in 2016. And I’m just curious, like that was in some ways one of the most intense primaries I’ve ever covered in my life. I mean, oh wait, Clinton-Obama was also just —
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Very intense.
Chris Hayes: — intense. But how are those dynamics different in primaries? Like that seems like it’s just such a different thing, the kinds of people you’re trying to reach. The interest group stuff you’re doing is more fraught and more intense and probably higher stakes because you know, an AFL-CIO endorsement or an AFSCME endorsement or this, like those carry a lot more weight at the primary level than they do in other campaigns. So what was your experience in 2016 like? How does that inform the way you think about it?
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Well, you know, in 2016, I think that initially a lot of people did not take Senator Sanders’ campaign seriously, but he was garnering just crazy crowds. My first weekend on the campaign trail with him was Seattle. We did Seattle, L.A., and one other place. And I’m blanking on the third place, but we got like 10,000, 15,000, 12,000 people in every single spot. And to me, that says, okay, something is there. People are paying attention. They are coming to see this thing.
And a Bernie Sanders rally is like 45 minutes of straight up policy, honey. You might get an intro speaker. You’re going to get somebody else to introduce Bernie Sanders. And then Senator Sanders is going to get up there and he is going to make his case and you are going to get 45 minutes of straight up economic policy. We live in a rigged economy kept in place by system of corrupt campaign finance, so X, Y, Z.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And I think the difference for why Senator Sanders, I think, fared, and obviously, like, there was a primary that he was not successful in, in terms of being the nominee, but I think he was successful in terms of pushing some of this conversation, right? Like now, everybody are progressive nowadays for the last couple of years, prior to, I would argue, you know, 15, 20 years ago, it wasn’t cool to be a progressive.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: People weren’t even arguing over the moniker of the word. But I do think that- unique to Senator Sanders in that primary, as different than any of the candidates in the 2019, 2020 primary, is that he had been saying the literal same thing for the last like 25, 30 years. You could look up a video when he was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont.
Chris Hayes: Identical.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And he was saying —
Chris Hayes: Saying.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — same things, right?
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: We live in a rigged economy, kept it like, Bernie Sanders is a true believer on that.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And for most candidates, that is in fact not the case.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And so when primaries are, you know, a challenge and can be dangerous for some candidates because of the positions they feel as though they have to take in a primary to garner pieces of the electorate.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: I just would argue folks that look to a primary strategy without thinking of general election ramifications, those campaigns and those strategists are not doing their candidate a service because you do have to calculate if you really think you’re going to be successful, what does this mean for a general election?
Chris Hayes: I mean, what’s interesting is you worked on the Biden campaign in 2020, right? And were you there during the primary?
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: You were, right? Yeah.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: I joined the campaign in 2019.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, so you were super early, right? So you saw that from the perspective of the successful campaign that did the least. I think Sanders is sort of sui generis because to your point, Bernie Sanders has the same politics. I mean, he’s been saying the same thing for 40 years. He’s consistent. He’s 100% a true believer. He’s dedicated his life to this.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Like, he doesn’t do a lot of tactical adjustments.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: You can write them down for him. You get Bernie Sanders his speech with tactical adjustments, Chris, I promise you, he asks for a yellow pad or one of those white pads and a pen. He just going to rewrite your whole damn speech, okay? It’s like, well, what were we here for, sir? It’s like, oh, he’s getting a pad, you all, all right.
Chris Hayes: I believe that. But a lot of the other campaigns really did fight hard to kind of get to the left, get the sort of progressive space, and Biden just didn’t. It was just like, I am who I am, kind of. You know, he stayed. Again, I think one thing you can say about Joe Biden is he’s basically been at the center of the Democratic Party more or less his whole life.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: He’s like a tree with very deep roots.
Chris Hayes: Yes, like, at different times the party has shifted in all sorts of ways. And I think he’s been around the center of the party. He’s neither been a conservative Democrat nor a liberal Democrat for most of his career in the Senate. I think he was a Democrat. He was a, in the bell curve of a Democrat, right? He was like right in that center. And that served him well in that primary, I think, even as other people were chasing.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: I would say there were some things that because, I mean, I like your bell curve example because yes, throughout his career, he has been a consistent Democrat as the changes have changed. He has consistently been in the center of those changes. And in this particular primary, one of the things that I think had changed for folks is this question of women’s reproductive autonomy, reproductive rights, the Hyde Amendment. I will never forget the whole Hyde Amendment debacle. I worked on it. I was a senior advisor on his campaign during that time.
And the conversation around that with then candidate Biden was not about, this is where these people are so you have to move and times have changed because he felt very strongly about like why he had opposition to the Hyde amendment. He had been consistent in it throughout his career. Every time he had voted, he took an opposite position than where he ended up on this campaign. And you know, the thing that changed Joe Biden’s mind, people want to write it up. They’re like, oh, somebody said this to him. Somewhere I wrote they were like, I made him change his mind. I didn’t make Joe Biden do anything. What changed Joe Biden’s mind is the effects that the policy would have on working class women across the country, rural women, low income women.
And if he really said that he believed that health care and this economic opportunity, right, should be available to everyone and that women should be able to make their own decisions, so on and so forth, he could not endorse it. He said he couldn’t endorse a policy that stripped that away for women based on their socioeconomic status. That’s what changed it for Joe Biden. But the climate was very specific to that moment. And that was a change that came about.
Chris Hayes: Just so folks don’t know this, so the Hyde Amendment, which has passed pretty soon after the Roe decision, I think it’s in the first Reagan term in the ‘80s. Henry Hyde, who’s an Illinois Republican and an opponent of abortion rights would call himself pro-life, basically makes it so that federal money, particularly through Medicaid, cannot pay for abortion services. So if you’re poor and that’s the healthcare you have, your insurance, which is government insurance, won’t pay. And this was, I would say, a fairly settled issue for a long time.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Every Democrat voted for it.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Most oftentimes, 95% of Democrats —
Chris Hayes: Yes. They voted for the Hyde Amendment.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — they voted for the Hyde Amendment.
Chris Hayes: Which is not to say there were opponents of it. There were absolutely opponents of it in reproductive rights movements and there were sitting Democrats, progressive Democrats, but it was just this sort of, I would say like tactical retreat settled accommodation around, okay, we’re not going to make the government pay for abortions, even though it meant that if you’re on Medicaid, like you can’t get it covered. He had supported it for his career. He flipped in the primary. And this was the source of a lot of controversy and as an example of the kind of fight that happens in primaries, that are the kinds of fights that can be brought up later. You know, like Kamala Harris right now, they are running this ad, she filled out a survey for the ACLU. She talked about basically prisoners having access to full range of healthcare, including gender reassignment surgery or gender-based care, however they need, right?
Now, I got to say, like, I believe that’s a reasonable policy. That’s the correct policy. Like, if you’re in the state’s care, if you need a kidney transplant, which is very expensive, we don’t say, well, we’re not going to pay for a new kidney. What are we? It’s like, you’re in the state’s care. So, if you need expensive care, I mean, you know, the head of Hamas, okay, Sinwar had cancer treatment in an Israeli prison when he was in Israel because he had cancer in an Israeli prison, so you treat him. So I think this idea that this is some like crazy, extremist idea is nuts, but it is being used now. I mean, the Trump campaign is literally running ads on this one little thing.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: I’ve seen that, yes.
Chris Hayes: Every football game on this one thing, which is an example of the kind of ways that these positions, which again, has a specific audience, I think, at the time, and I think she believed in it at the time. I don’t know what her position is on it now, are something that your opponents will make political hay of later.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Chris, those questionnaires, woo. Let me just tell you.
Chris Hayes: The questionnaires.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: The questionnaires.
Chris Hayes: Wait, explain for people that don’t know what the questionnaires are, because the questionnaires are a minefield.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: These questionnaires.
Chris Hayes: And people who are listening don’t know what the questionnaires are, so explain to them.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Many groups, the unions, groups like Planned Parenthood.
Chris Hayes: ACLU in this case.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: ACLU, NARAL, which is now Reproductive Freedom for All, under Mini Timmaraju, all of these groups in a primary, the way in which many of these entities decide who they’re going to endorse is they want an interview, like a sit down, like a board type interview, and they want you to fill out their questionnaire. Because you fill out the questionnaire, then you do this interview where, you know, the people on this panel, this board, ask your candidate all these questions about what they said in the questionnaire to figure out if they are where they say they are, and if then they want to, you know, vote to endorse this person. Oh, but honey, these questionnaires, Chris, they’re long. Sometimes the questionnaires are like 20 pages and they require detailed responses.
Chris Hayes: Which you’re then committing to writing to.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: And there are very specific policy asks and you’ve got 12 groups, 15 groups across the range being like, now again, that’s democratic politics. They’re doing their thing. They want hard commitments on policy. But from a candidate perspective, like, you are tying yourself down into every possible direction.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Honey, that’s why when these questionnaires, now in a good campaign, the questionnaires go through many different stages, okay? The research people are looking at them, the policy people are looking at them, the comms people are looking at them, the political people are taking a look, the campaign managers and senior advisors, they go on through the questionnaire giving they answers. And then you go over the answers depending on the questionnaire with the candidate to ensure that what you put on this form, this candidate is going to say in the interview.
Chris Hayes: And just last point on this though, sometimes it will be like really in the weeds of say housing policy, like do you think, and again, this stuff, you know, not everyone knows everything about every policy issue. You can’t possibly. It’s a complicated country, right? Then you got to like actually go down to the weeds like wait, where are we on this —
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — this specific housing voucher?
Symone Sanders-Townsend: And it’s like, what do we think about so on and so forth? And it’s like, well, we don’t really want to get into it. Okay, well, what can I say because we do need this on the form, so, what is the, we’re not going to get into it, but we’re in it a little bit answer —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: — that we are all comfortable with? And the question is they literally, they live forever.
Chris Hayes: Symone Sanders-Townsend is cohost of “The Weekend” airing Saturdays and Sundays, 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. Eastern on MSNBC. You should check out her special that she did with our good friend, Melissa Murray, “Black Women in America: Road to 2024.” Lots of incredible, eye-opening stuff in there. Her book is called “No, You Shut Up.” She was a former senior advisor to Vice President Harris, and that was a great conversation. And if you’re listening, if you have MSNBC Premium, we’re going to have a special premium extra with Symone Sanders. So stick around for that. Symone, thanks so much.
Symone Sanders-Townsend: Thanks so much, Chris.
Chris Hayes: Once again, my great thanks to Symone Sanders-Townsend. And if you love hearing Symone in conversation as much as I do, you are in luck because as a bonus to MSNBC Premium subscribers, we’re sharing a bonus episode with Symone where we talk about how she became Symone Sanders-Townsend and more. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium for that bonus and other special offerings from MSNBC audio. You can email us at withpod@gmail.com. Get in touch with us using the hashtag #WITHpod. You can follow us on TikTok by searching for WITHpod. You can follow me on Threads, Bluesky, and what was formerly known as Twitter with the username @chrislhayes.
Be sure to hear new episodes every Tuesday. “Why Is This Happening?” is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and Brendan O’Melia. This episode was engineered by Cedric Wilson and features music by Eddie Cooper. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening.
“Why Is This Happening?” is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and Brendan O’Melia, engineered by Cedric Wilson, and featuring music by Eddie Cooper. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening