Harris Goes On Fox. Trump Sticks to the Henhouse.
With Harris taking some real risks in the closing weeks, the ex-president is basically talking to fanboys.
Three weeks to go! Happy Tuesday.
Playing to Win
by Andrew Egger
Until now, Kamala Harris’s campaign has executed a smooth, hit-for-average strategy that has largely avoided big risks. Now, with three weeks to go, she’s swinging for the fences.
Tomorrow, Harris will be on Fox News in prime time, meeting with anchor Bret Baier for her first ever sit-down interview on the network. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Harris is considering an appearance with Joe Rogan, the credulous alt-center goofball who happens to host the most popular podcast in the United States.
This is, as Harris’s current boss might say, a big fucking deal.
There’s major risk here, particularly given how close we are to the election. If Harris had kicked off her campaign following what we might call the Pete Buttigieg strategy—going into hostile territory right off the bat—she’d have had plenty of time by now to put any hiccups or miscues far behind her. Instead, she’s doing a new high-wire act as voters are already starting to put their ballots in the mail.
It’s a tacit acknowledgement from her team that the status-quo media strategy wasn’t going to seal the deal. A month ago, riding a huge wave of momentum, it made sense for Harris to stay away from possible high-variance, trajectory-altering events. If her trend line were still pointing up, they’d be sticking to that strategy.
Instead, with her polling plateauing, Harris is on the hunt for a few more pockets of possibly persuadable voters to get her over the finish line.
In sparring with Baier, Harris will need to show an agility under fire she hasn’t frequently needed in this contest. Even in her debate with Trump himself, Harris mostly won by throwing a hundred rhetorical sticks for Trump to chase. Baier will be much more disciplined and dogged in his questioning.
Nevertheless, the upside is there. Harris doesn’t necessarily need to dominate the interview to win. All she needs to do is to puncture the ridiculous caricature of her abilities that Trump and conservative media continue to build up.
Here, for instance, was Trump just yesterday on Truth Social: “I believe it is very important that Kamala Harris pass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility. Her actions have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her . . . Also, she is slow and lethargic in answering even the easiest of questions.”
It’s not hard to imagine her clearing that extremely low bar—though we eagerly await the siren emoji tweets from MAGAville explaining how this or that verbal hiccup surely is the nail in the coffin for her campaign.
As interesting as Harris’s gamble is, the more remarkable media strategy may be playing out on the other side of the ledger. In recent weeks, Trump has almost exclusively decamped to outlets that are already in his tank. Since the September 10 presidential debate, with the exceptions of a Las Vegas ABC affiliate and a quick NewsNation hit, nearly all of Trump’s 14 one-on-one interviews have been with interviewers ranging from friendly to sycophantic:
Fox News hosts Maria Bartiromo, Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfield.
Chris Salcedo, Carl Higbie, and Rob Schmitt of NewsMax.
Sinclair’s Sharyl Attkisson.
Conservative radio host Dave Ramsey.
Wayne Allyn Root of Real America’s Voice.
Andrew Schultz and Akaash Singh of the comedy podcast Flagrant.
Over the same period, he’s totally eschewed tentpole mainstream outlets—making a point of skipping, for instance, the traditional interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Trump still talks with the press and takes questions at events, including (likely) today when Bloomberg News is hosting his speech at the Chicago Economic Club. But when it comes to one-on-one interviews, he’s never been more cloistered within his MAGA media bubble.
It’s enough to make you wonder if—in the wake of his terrible performance against Harris last month—Trump’s developed a bit of a case of the yips. All the harder interviews he leaves to his understudy, JD Vance, while he retreats into the warm bath of the affection of his core supporters.
The Pennsylvania town hall Trump did last night with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was a striking example of this. After a few minutes of questions interrupted by several medical episodes in the crowd—the heat in the room was reportedly oppressive—Trump spontaneously decided to take things in a different direction. “Let’s not do any more questions,” he said from the stage. “Let’s just listen to music. Who the hell wants to hear questions?” For the next half hour, he and his crowd bopped around awkwardly to a selection of Trump’s favorite tunes, from a Pavarotti rendition of “Ave Maria” to “It’s a Man’s World” to “YMCA.”
There’s little downside to this, I guess? “Bizarro MC and horrible DJ” are far, far down the list of reasons to dislike Donald Trump. (Though not quite as far down the list as I would have said before having the unpleasant experience of Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain” segue into “Memory” from Cats before my disbelieving ears.)
But with three weeks to go in a tied contest, which strategy would you rather your candidate have? The one indulging himself with sycophant-pleasing frivolities? Or the one going through the couch cushions for every last reluctant voter she can find?
It’s Up to Women (Again)
by Bill Kristol
During the Trump era, I’ve often quoted the remarkable conclusion to Chapter 12 of Part Three of the second volume of Alexis de Tocqeuville’s Democracy in America.
“If one asked me, to what do I think one must principally attribute the singular prosperity and growing force of this people, I would answer that it is to the superiority of its women.”
In Tocqueville’s papers, there are drafts and notes and scraps of memoranda to himself that he accumulated as he was working on the book. They’ve been published, and I only recently came across this note the great Frenchman wrote to himself, making his intention even more striking: “Say clearly somewhere that the women seem to me very superior to the men in America.”
So they are, and so Tocqueville wouldn’t be surprised by our situation today, in this land that he visited almost two centuries ago. He wouldn’t be surprised to discover that if authoritarianism in America is to be stopped in 2024, it will be thanks to American women.
It’s not that complicated. As A.B. Stoddard reminds us at The Bulwark today, a majority of American men are going to vote for Donald Trump. A majority of American women are going to vote for Kamala Harris. The margin of victory for Harris among women, and the turnout of women voters, will be key to determining the outcome of this election.
Obviously, it’s important for the Harris campaign to work hard to reduce the margins against her among men. Thus the consideration of an interview with Joe Rogan, which she should probably do. But at the end of the day, it’s the women who will put her over the top.
Time and again, the main barrier to authoritarianism has been women.
It’s Nancy Pelosi, who’s been the most formidable Democratic opponent of Donald Trump. It was also Pelosi who was key to pushing Joe Biden to step aside. If that hadn’t happened, there would be, I think, little chance to defeat Trump next month.
It’s Liz Cheney, who since January 6, 2021, has been the most formidable Republican opponent of Trump. It would be good if her message about the extraordinary irresponsibility of forgetting January 6th, or minimizing its significance, could be amplified even more in the final three weeks of the campaign.
And it’s Kamala Harris herself. She is not a perfect candidate. But she rose to the occasion, first to replace Biden, and then at the most pressure-packed moment of the campaign: the September 10 debate with Trump. Without Harris’s truly impressive performance there, this wouldn’t be the 50-50 race it is now.
But Harris’s work is, of course, not yet done. If Bret Baier proves to be a fair interviewer tomorrow, it would be wise for Harris to announce, at the end of it, that she’s willing to appear with Trump at a debate hosted by Baier on Fox News. Baier would presumably welcome the offer.
Will Trump continue to duck another showdown with Harris? Wouldn’t Trump then pay some price for lacking the courage to engage her again? He might not with his credulous and aggrieved male followers. But his lack of manly spirit could further bring home his unsuitability for office with independent-minded and free-thinking American women. And perhaps even with a few open-minded men?
Quick Hits
A TEN DOLLAR TERM: We’ve been talking a lot this week about the unmappable online territory across which political information and disinformation now spread. Over at the New York Times, Ross Douthat is pondering the same thing:
There is still a big share of older Americans who experience politics through a daily newspaper, “60 Minutes” or “Face the Nation.” There is a share of Americans, the committed partisans and infovores, that will always supply an audience for national media operations.
But as the first group ages further, the older dispensation will become more and more of a niche in its own right, a small constellation in the larger, weirder panoply. A few prominent enterprises will endure, a much-diminished version of the mainstream media, but much of the industry will be a vast terra incognita of YouTube stars, podcasters and social media communities, across which algorithmic waves sweep back and forth mysteriously.
A “vast terra incognita of YouTube stars, podcasters and social media communities, across which algorithmic waves sweep back and forth mysteriously!” This is how you get that New York Times money. Stick it in your word bank and break it out on special occasions.
ADIOS, FEDSOC: The old conservative lawyers of the Federalist Society and Donald Trump always made a weird political pairing. But they became a mighty one—the offsite brain trust supplying the president’s three SCOTUS picks and guiding his reshaping of the federal judiciary.
But the Wall Street Journal reports Trump’s FedSoc-happy days might be through:
A rising faction within the conservative legal movement is laying the groundwork for Donald Trump to appoint judges who prioritize loyalty to him and aggressively advocate for dismantling the federal government should he win a second term. . . .
Since losing the 2020 election, Trump has broken with Federalist Society leaders who had eagerly boosted his blitz of judicial appointments during his first term but later balked at his efforts to thwart President Biden’s victory and didn’t openly support him as he faced dozens of criminal charges.
Trump has gravitated to more-combative lawyers outside the conservative legal establishment who have said they want to hobble regulatory agencies and concentrate power in the White House.
A conservative organization dislikes Trump, but thinks they can use him, so they help him grow. Once he’s stronger than they are, he demands they join his personal retinue. When they refuse, he cuts them loose. Tale as old as time.
Cheap Shots
Hey, at least Trump’s press secretary had fun last night:
Women indeed. I would offer this further anecdotal proof: Over the past 5 weeks, I personally have spent much of 4 full days hammering stakes and zip-tying exactly 141 large-format "Arizona Republicans for Harris" signs along major arterials in targeted "purple" precincts of North Phoenix and Scottsdale. Two things are invariably true: Every kind word or encouraging wave or friendly honk will come from a woman, or from two women together, and every bilious, profane outburst, or lob of spittle, or piece of trash will come from a man riding alone in a pick-up truck--apparently enraged by the temerity of an old man in his US Marine Corps t-shirt doing his very small and diminishing part to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Oh, we indeed have a considerable problem in this nation, and it is the aimless, envious, selfish, insecure, algorithm-addled, and destructive stupidity of 60% among that particular population which bears testicles.
“And it’s Kamala Harris herself. She is not a perfect candidate.” Why did you feel the need to say that? In your personal experience on this planet, has there EVER been a “perfect candidate”? And if you say Reagan I’m outta here! Because he wasn’t.
“And it’s Kamala Harris herself. Like every candidate who has ever run, she is not perfect. But she is damn good.”
There. A woman fixed it for you.