Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. We’re at about the first 100 days mark for the second Trump presidency, that milestone is being marked across the media. Today, we're going to take a look backward at how we got here. My guest is Amie Parnes. She's a senior political correspondent at The Hill. And with Jonathan Allen, another political journalist, she's written an account of the 2024 presidential election. It's titled, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”. She was previously on this program to discuss her book about the 2016 election entitled, “Shattered” and he also wrote a book about 2020 titled, “Lucky”. She wrote those books with Jonathan Allen as well. Amie, welcome back to the program and congratulations on penning another bestseller.
Amie Parnes: Thanks, Grant. Thank you so much.
GR: It's good to see you again and thanks for making the time. So let me just start with a very basic question, where does this book, do you think, fit in with the assessments of the 2024 election that are going to come later? I mean, journalism in the moment is sometimes called the first draft of history. Is this book the second draft of history?
AP: I think John and I like to think so. I mean, we wrote this book very much, I mean, people saw what happened in the election. We all saw it play out. We saw the twists and turns. But I think these books are good because they essentially take you inside the room, these backroom conversations. You are privy to learning what is happening about, you know, what Nancy Pelosi is telling Barack Obama, what Nancy Pelosi is thinking as she's watching the debate, who she's talking to. So, you know, it's, we look back, but we write these books also to look ahead and we can get into that later. But, you know, it's a good playbook for Democrats and Republicans about what went right and what went wrong.
GR: It's interesting, you mentioned Nancy Pelosi and that's your opening scene there watching that debate. It grabs you, it pulls you right from the first paragraph.
AP: Yeah, intentionally so. I mean, she had her fingerprints all over this so we wanted to put you right in there with her watching the debate and that's exactly what we do.
GR: That's good, it was well done. So I don't want you to give away necessarily the best nuggets in the book. You know, you want people to buy the book and find those. But basically, maybe you already touched on this, but what are readers going to find in this book that they haven't already lived through? It's the inside backroom story and are there other things about the election that they'll find in here?
AP: Yeah, I mean, I think you learn about both sides. I mean, our book has gotten a lot of attention about the Democratic train wreck. But I think you also learn about what was going on Trump's end, too, and what he was thinking and what his aides were thinking. And it was a tumultuous time over there, too, especially during the candidate switch. You know, when Kamala Harris comes in, it's something that, you know, Trump was very surprised about. And so you learn exactly what was going on there. It was really quiet at that time during the switch. But we take you inside what he is thinking and how he wants to change things up. So I think he really, I think I'm not just saying this because I co-wrote this book, but I think you learn something new on every page.
GR: Yeah. Well, you mentioned that, you know, not just the Democratic side, but also thinking about what the Trump campaign was doing. And I was wondering, and this is a morbid question, I'm just going to say at the beginning, but was there a moment where the Trump campaign really thought, okay, you know, this is ours to lose? And in my mind, it was when he got shot and survived, I thought, I remember turning to someone and saying, there's this he's probably got this now.
AP: Yeah. And what's fascinating is Joe Biden's campaign, it was still the Biden campaign at the time, was thinking the same thing in those moments. And we take you inside one really funny moment with a senior adviser who was at his mother's house. And his mother essentially tells him, well, that's over, the race is over, essentially.
GR: (laughter)
AP: But yeah, I think John and I both saw that moment. And I think the, you know, on both sides, they kind of thought that they had it wrapped up in that moment. And it was amazing that Trump actually knew what he needed to do in the moment, which was to project strength. And he does that, he accomplishes that in that very morbid moment. And, you know, you look at what was happening on the other side of the election and the campaign and Joe Biden was projecting weakness in that moment. So you had that dichotomy of these two, strength versus weak and I think it really played to Trump's favor.
GR: I want to come back to some aspects of the question I want to ask you next a little bit later. But while we're on the subject of sort of turning points, you used the word train wreck a minute ago to talk about the Democratic campaign. I understand why that would be an adjective, because, you know, you had the implosion at the debate. You know, there was really no positive spin that could be put on that. And then the scrambling with finding another candidate, controversy about whether that should be an open or closed process. Kamala Harris gets named, kind of anointed and I want to come back to that later. But after all that, it's still a close election.
AP: Yeah.
GR: So I guess I'm wondering, why are the Democrats looking at this like a train wreck? I mean, there is a way to see the glass half full, even though obviously they hate having Trump as president. But still, I mean, you know, it was a pretty close election all that considered.
AP: It was a really close election. But they also lost the House and Senate. And that was Nancy Pelosi's biggest reason for jumping in I think, because she was hearing from members of the House that they were in jeopardy and she wanted to prevent losing the House as much as the White House. And so I think it was just across the board something that Democrats really wanted to prevent, another Trump presidency, they knew what that was like. A lot of them are thinking this one is so much worse than the first time and we could have prevented this. And the thing is, the election, as much as the Harris folks say it was a close race, but that they couldn't have won, you know, that Trump was going to win from the beginning. It was a very winnable race. The Democrats could have won this race. And I think that's why it was such a devastating loss.
GR: Right. Yeah, that's a good point. Were there any foreshadowing or tells in what you were seeing during the campaign of how Trump has approached his second term? I mean, he's doing things he said he was going to do, but nonetheless, this term looks completely different from the first term in terms of discipline and energy level and organizational, you know, I mean the organization of the messaging, I suppose, if not the people he's picked to be in the offices.
AP: Yeah, yeah. I think he, felt like he, you know, he walked in with a mandate and he's doing what he said he was going to do. I mean, anyone that's surprised about tariffs or anything else that he's doing, it was pretty much laid out during the campaign. And he brought with him Susie Wiles, someone that we profile quite a bit in this book, who is sort of the epitome of discipline. And that's what you saw in the Trump campaign. When you look at the book and you look at how the inner workings, you know, the moves and machinations that they were doing, it was all Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. A very disciplined campaign, a very tightly wound campaign, a much tighter campaign than previously with the 2020 and 2016 elections and I think it was all because of them. And he has, you know what's interesting is in the moment when Kamala, and I talked about this a moment earlier, but there's a moment where he can choose chaos again he can bring in Corey Lewandowski and the people from his past who bring a lot of drama with them and he chooses not to go that way. He chooses to keep Wiles and LaCivita on board when Kamala Harris comes in, and there's a moment where they feel like she's winning. And he kind of wants to shake up the race by doing something drastic, but he chooses the status quo and he chooses exactly where he is, which is a very un-Trumpian kind of thing to do, but he does it. And I think that moment speaks to where he was and his mindset during this campaign.
GR: Perhaps there's an analogy now in the way that he is backing off of tariffs. Seems again like he is open to a learning curve on some things at least. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with the journalist Amie Parnes. She is the coauthor of a new book on the 2024 election titled, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”. So this next question is the one I have been looking most forward to asking you, because I would like an answer and I'm actually kind of frustrated with the Democratic Party in this regard. There's one thing from the Democratic side of the campaign that I can make assumptions about, but I actually don't really know. And I think, as I just said, both former President Biden and the Democratic Party, I think they owe the nation a factual account of this, and they haven't provided it so far, I'm hoping you can tell me. And this is, everyone saw the debate or at least the parts of it that made it on the news the next morning with Joe Biden, but what exactly happened with Biden's decision to step down as a candidate? How and why was that decision actually made? Biden's speech to the nation did not really provide that answer.
AP: No. And I think in the end, he was really dug in and we get into this quite a bit in the book, Grant. But he, you know, he goes from a position of, no, I'm not doing it to he comes down with COVID and it's a really bad case of COVID and he has to get off the campaign trail. It's much worse than they let on. He was having really bad respiratory issues. And so he goes back to Wilmington with COVID, a bad case of COVID, and he is essentially locked in his house with a closed set of advisors. And they're essentially there to present him with the facts. You know, you are losing, poll numbers show that you're not going to be able to win, fundraising is completely cut off, no one is donating anything anymore. And they are essentially able to convince him after weeks of, no, I'm going to do this, I can win again, in his weakest moment he has to make the biggest political decision of his life. And he's sort of backed into a corner, and he does it. And what's interesting is he does it kind of unwillingly and wants to essentially take a victory lap and doesn't want to really endorse Kamala Harris in that moment. You know, essentially wants to take a few days and say, look how great I am, you know, I'm doing this for the good of the country. And she is the one who essentially tells him, no, I need your endorsement right now, which we reveal for the first time in the book. But there was that sort of gap where he puts out a statement and then puts out another statement endorsing her. And we kind of explained what was happening in those moments around that.
GR: Well, okay, so, well that then directly leads to the next thing I want to know is, how and why Kamala Harris was chosen as the new nominee? You said, okay, she pressures Biden to make the early endorsement. But that's just the, I mean, those are two people, you know, there's Nancy Pelosi, there are big other leaders in this party. And so how was it decided that that it wasn't going to be an open process, that there wasn't even going to be the appearance of an open process? How did that go down?
AP: What's interesting about that is that we detail in the book that Nancy Pelosi was really for an open process, as was Barack Obama and they were privately kind of lobbying, you know, and trying to get people trying to sound people out and hear people because they think, why not? You know, Nancy Pelosi doesn't think Kamala can win, she makes that known from the start. She tells a confidant, if he goes, she goes, meaning if Joe Biden goes, then Kamala Harris should go, too. And so she was very much for that. And Barack Obama up until the final hours, you know, he was calling around, talking to people like Jim Clyburn. And Clyburn feels like he needs to quickly back Kamala Harris because he knows Barack Obama is about to call him and kind of listen to him and kind of convince him about what an open primary might be like. So he quickly gets behind Harris to tell Obama, look, I'm behind Harris when Obama calls him. And that conversation lasts like 30 seconds because he's already done what he needed to do. And Kamala Harris, meanwhile, is, sort of, even before Biden gets out, what's interesting is in the hours leading up to the candidate switch, she has a set of close advisers in her pool house meeting to discuss what would happen if and when Joe Biden does drop out. So while she is trying to project loyalty and all of that, she is, you know, quietly assembling her aides to plan the next moves. So when it does happen that she is ready, and she can kind of galvanize her base and do what she needs to do. And so in that moment, she's pretty much ready to go. You know, she has the support, she knows that the fundraising is going to come to him. She pushes him because she needs the delegates, he's basically locked up all the delegates and she needs those. But she, you know, in a moment like that, in her moment of truth, she pushes him to endorse her and kind of knocks the nail in the coffin as far as, you know, the support from Democrats and she knows that. And that's what happens.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Amie Parnes. The political journalist as co-written a new book on the 2024 election has just come out. It's titled, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”. So let me just ask you this bottom line question. Were you surprised at the outcome of the election at all? Anything that surprised you about the election itself?
AP: I mean, what I think is most surprising, and I don't want to give anything away, was that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz go into it thinking that they are going to win, that they had it locked up. And I think the big bombshell in the book is that you, once again, I don't want to give away too much, but you walk into election night and we put you in the rooms with them and they're shocked that they have lost. Tim Walz can't even find the words to express how he feels, so much that his wife needs to say something because he just can't express how he's feeling. And we use the word gaslighting quite a bit in this book. But I think the biggest moment, I think, is when we reveal that Kamala Harris was essentially gaslit by her own campaign.
GR: Okay, wow, wow. And you mentioned Walz, and so, this, you may have just help me understand something. I have to say, sort of thinking about it as a political analyst, a political strategist, I am surprised that he seems to be trying to position himself in some ways for a run in ‘28. I just think that's not going to happen, man.
AP: No, I mean, it went from, you know, I think her pick of him was interesting because it initially was energizing. I think people thought that he would be able to really speak to white men in particular, you know, a demographic they desperately needed. But in the end, he kind of became a punch line. But they reined him in and they wouldn't allow him to do what he needed to do, which I think he's kind of alluded to in recent interviews. But I think, you know, he was a big disappointment, I think, to a lot of people.
GR: Yeah, this is a comment in the weeds, but one of the things that that I thought at the time was the Democrats kept emphasizing the campaign, kept emphasizing, oh, he's a coach, he's a coach, you know, and so everyone's going to trust him, everyone's going to like him. And I thought, these people had never played organized sports. Because, I mean, half of my experiences with my coaches were really horrible.
AP: Yeah.
GR: (laughter) I wouldn't want them near my political system.
AP: No, I know. But we do tell in the book that he was almost, he couldn't eat or sleep, he was almost fixated on the debate, the vice presidential debate. And that kind of got very much in his head the entire time. So aides had to remind him to eat and you know, to try to get sleep because he was losing sleep. And I think we saw all that play out, but really interesting.
GR: Wow, yeah. So let me ask you a question about the other side then. I want to ask you a question about Donald Trump. You obviously have been looking very closely at this guy for a very long time.
AP: Yeah.
GR: And you wrote a book on the 2016 election as well and the 2020 election. Do you think that Trump, putting you in the armchair psychologist moment here, do you think that Trump has any internal sense of limits of what his power ought to be?
AP: You know, it's a really interesting question. I think in key moments he does. And, you know, we detail one really fascinating thing in the book where, during the debate we kind of give you what’s playing on, the inner dialog in his mind. And he knows in that moment that he can't pummel Joe Biden because Joe Biden is essentially pummeling himself. And so he reins it in, you know, like he doesn't go after, doesn't go for the jugular, thinks in real, and we put you there, but he's thinking in real time if I do go for the jugular, how is that going to make me look? Here's a guy who's very involved in image, obviously, and branding and marketing and he knows that that's not a good look for him. So he has these moments of self-awareness, even though I think a lot of his haters would disagree with that. But he kind of, he knows what things look like. And I think that's why you're seeing sort of the push and pull on tariffs, for example, because he's aware of the headlines and the conversation around it. And so he is able to rein it in when he needs to, if that makes sense.
GR: It does make sense. And it's this really interesting paradox because one of his main appeals to a lot of people is that he's a guy who doesn't give a damn about how he looks, and he's a guy that doesn't give a damn about what he says. So it's, I guess, what is it, crazy like a fox or something. So I'm also wondering too, what your sense of JD Vance is. There was a lot of debate in both parties about how his political views had changed he was first anti-Trump and more moderate than he, you know, becomes more conservative and also more pro-Trump. I'm particularly interested because he's the likely inheritor at this point of Trump's legacy at this point. And I think he'll be a top tier candidate for president in ‘28 unless something really disastrous happens between now and then. So what's your quick sense, quick take on Vance?
AP: I think that's exactly right. But you know what we did see, especially during Signal Gate, he portrays himself, I think, going into the vice presidential pick as a loyalist. He positions himself with Trump in that way. He says, look, I know that in my past I was this, but now I'm this and I'm very much for the MAGA movement. And that's something that's very appealing to Trump. But then we saw in recent weeks, you know, with Signal Gate that he's willing to kind of part ways with Trump behind the scenes. And I'm curious to see how that relationship plays out. We saw what happened with Trump and Pence, for example, Mike Pence. I'm curious to see if those two, if this relationship ends up being as frayed as that one. And some people that I'm talking to think that it might be.
GR: Yeah, I was with political analysts the other day and they said the difference between the two of them, among others, is that Trump has no shame, but Vance had shame.
AP: Yeah.
GR: I don't know whether he's identifying that as a strength or a weakness. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the political journalist Amie Parnes. So we’ve got about 5 minutes left, I want to try to squeeze two or three questions in before we have to stop. I want you to look ahead now and it is just, you know, prognosticating, but how long do you think it will be, if ever, that our presidential elections feel, for lack of a better word, normal again? You know, back to the way maybe they were when Obama was running. Or have we passed some kind of a threshold point that we're never going to get back to again?
AP: I mean, I think that's TBD, Grant. I think a lot of people are curious to see if Trump tries to run again for a third term, which would really throw everything into, it would be a big disaster, I think.
GR: Yeah, I think it'd be a disaster for the Republican Party as well as Trump.
AP: Yeah. But I think that is something that comes into question and various other aspects. But I think I don't think we'll ever quite be on a normal track, quote unquote, again. I think it's all going to be, you know, we write these books and we keep saying, oh, this is the craziest election cycle ever, this is the craziest election cycle and they end up being crazier each time. (laughter)
GR: Yeah. I've given up thinking I'll see a difference in my lifetime, but I am telling my students, they'll see a difference in their lifetime, but that's a long time horizon. I want to come back to something that you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, which was the train wreck for the Democratic Party and sort of, you know, where they are now. Do you have any sense of what the Democrats are generally doing to try to reboot? You know, one, I get the sense there are different potential leaders and different kinds of themes that are being tried out. You have Sanders and AOC on the road, all the while that's happening, the Trump administration's being extremely active and pushing out a lot of different dimensions. David Hogg just came out and said he's got a hit list of Democrats in safe seats he wants to primary, he’s one of the vice chair of the Democratic Party. Do you have any sense of what they're doing to reboot?
AP: You know, it's interesting, I did an interview this week with the governor Gavin Newsom of California and he was essentially making the point to me that they have not done an autopsy yet to find out what exactly went wrong. And I think that's the start. I think there needs to be some accountability, actually, of what has happened. I think Biden or someone needs to come out and essentially own what has happened or claim some responsibility. I think that's the first step and they've been unwilling to do that. But you need to sort of reckon with what happened and how you ended up getting here, what led to a second Trump presidency. And for whatever reason, they're unwilling to kind of face themselves in the mirror. You know, I think they have to do that first in order to rebuild or it's going to be, the house is going to be rebuilt on shaky foundation and they have to regain the trust of voters. I think, you know, while it was a close election, I think a lot of these voters who were traditionally supposed to be Democratic voters voted for Trump. You have to speak to those people and win those people over. So I think what Governor Newsom was saying is essentially right. They need a really thorough autopsy of what's happened. And they haven't done that yet.
GR: Yeah. And it's interesting, I've noticed that he has kind of come out and said some things and participated in some things that would suggest that he's kind of doing a reboot of himself a little bit.
AP: Yeah.
GR: Although I have to say, before I ask you my last question, I have to say that I think my own sense is that in ‘28, the Democrats need to find someone that's not on the East Coast or the West Coast, they need to go to the interior of the country. Well, here's a fun question to end things with. So you write a book on 2016. It's called, “Shattered”, perfect title for the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Then your 2020 book was called, “Lucky”, and your 2024 book is, “Fight”. What's going to be the title of the 2028 book?
AP: “Nap” (laughter), no I’m kidding.
GR: (laughter) Oh, geez, if we could only hope.
AP: No, I don't know. What's funny, Grant, is that John and I weren't even going to do a book on this election.
GR: Really?
AP: Yeah, we were pushed into it by our publisher who said you guys need to get in there. And we had no idea what was going to happen, but I'm sure glad that we jumped in.
GR: Yeah, well I am too. We'll have to leave it there. I could talk to you for hours about this, but that was Amie Parnes, and her new book is titled, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”. And if you are listening to this and you are any kind of political junkie or have any kind of significant interest in politics, this book is like a giant bowl of your favorite ice cream, you will love it. So, Amy, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me and thanks for writing the book.
AP: I love it, thank you so much.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
