Transcript
Zain
0:03
This is The Strategist, episode 595. My name is Zain Velji, with me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what is up? Big
Corey
0:14
Raptors are in town. Oh, who gives
Carter
0:17
No, no, no. This is the biggest day in Corey's entire life right now, at this moment. And all the regulars played in Vancouver. Well, since 1996. All the regulars played in Vancouver for like 20, 25 minutes. You're actually going to see the real Raptors on the floor tonight. Against
Zain
0:30
Against the powerhouse Denver Nuggets. Mike Malone,
Corey
0:34
Malone, head coach of the Denver Nuggets. My eyes
Corey
0:37
are going to be body language, doctor. Interesting fact for you. Pescatarian. Only eats fish and vegetables.
Corey
0:45
Why is that interesting? Well, I don't know. I mean, I think he's as close as a vegetarian head coach as they've
Carter
0:50
they've got. Anybody who's listening to this podcast, that is, in fact, interesting.
Carter
0:54
Because they're all about the basketball. Corey, are you going
Corey
0:56
going to the game today? I'm going to the game. Nice. So
Carter
0:58
So you bought the tickets to the Portland game instead. I bought
Corey
1:01
bought tickets to a Portland game in addition. So you doubled down. I spent way too much money on basketball tickets a few weeks ago. Yeah, I did. What else have we got to talk about? Oh, we did
Zain
1:10
did a Reddit AMA. That was pretty interesting. It asked me anything. And a live show. We'll talk about both. We'll talk about Reddit first. The folks said, what was the subreddit? Was it Canadian Politics? Is that what it is? Canada Politics. Canada Politics. So that's where they can find us. I was there on the AMA for five minutes, and my comment was still the top-ranked comment after. Sad but true, yeah. Sad but true. So just to let you know the quality I bring as opposed to the quantity the two of you bring. Listen,
Carter
1:37
Listen, there were a lot of questions, and we had to answer them very quickly. You had hours to think of your somewhat witty response. It's
Zain
1:43
It's true. It is true. So you can find that on the Canada Politics subreddit. I don't even know if that term made sense because I don't know Reddit or shit. shit uh but you will find it there if you are interested in in hearing what we do here in typed out format so measured by volume which
Corey
1:59
which is of course the only measurement the strategists care about yep it was it
Corey
2:03
was um it was amongst their top ask
Corey
2:06
ask me anythings oh was it i didn't know that in the past couple
Corey
2:09
couple of years yeah
Carter
2:11
take that ibbotson we crushed canada land
Zain
2:14
Crush them. What's the Canada land? Who even knows? Who even knows? Exactly.
Zain
2:19
We also did a live show.
Zain
2:23
Now, generally, our live shows, we like to have a particular type of cadence, audience. We like to let people know it's happening. This live show, Stephen Carter, was a little bit different, no?
Carter
2:36
my God. Tell us how this happened. Tell us how we got. So, I
Carter
2:41
I have parents. Some people believe that I was born in a test tube. This is not true. I have parents. My dad has a social club called the Gyros, not the…
Carter
2:52
I was sure it was the Gyros. Corey wanted to pronounce it.
Carter
2:55
So they had their installation event. And as part of that, they usually have a talented speaker. Yes. So needless to say, they approached us because we are, in fact… Three talented speakers. Three talented. That's so good. This is three times as good. That's a lot of value.
Zain
3:09
And so you told us about this multiple months ago. Months ago. Which is rare for us to do anything that much in advance. But you said, hey, listen, guys, my dad has this gyro club and a couple of his buddies want to talk politics. And would you be willing to join me, Stephen Carter, as the speaker? You
Corey
3:27
You know, what I thought, and I think what Zane thought, was like there would be like a table of 10, 15 people. And we'd casually just
Zain
3:33
just talk politics. That's
Corey
3:34
That's not what happened. That
Zain
3:35
That did not happen. No. What did happen, Stephen Carter?
Carter
3:39
So it turns out there were a few hundred people. There was a hundred people there, probably. Yeah, which is fine. plus their attendants, their nurses, to make sure they could continue to breathe. Why did they need nurses, Stephen? They were a little outside our normal demographic. What would that look
Carter
3:54
Stephen? Normally, we have people who aren't on breathing apparatus. So this was a step outside of that for us. And my father,
Carter
4:03
father, whom I love, had
Carter
4:06
had promoted the strategist as a… What
Carter
4:08
did they promote us
Carter
4:09
As a comedy troupe.
Corey
4:13
Which you discovered walking around. Yeah, talking to people. I'm like, hey, how
Carter
4:18
how are you? Yeah, I'm Steven. I'm going to be speaking tonight. Oh, you're part of the comedy troupe.
Zain
4:26
So you paint the picture again. We've got 100 plus people. Octogenarians.
Corey
4:31
100 plus people with a combined age of about 10,000.
Zain
4:35
An average age of, what, 85? It was pretty, it was older. Who'd think a comedy troupe. A young comedy
Zain
4:41
comedy troupe. Is there to entertain them? Well,
Carter
4:43
Well, the best part about that is
Carter
4:46
is that we decided to open with jokes. Well, Corey decided to open with jokes. Hold on.
Corey
4:52
Let me explain this. A little bit of background. What you've got to know is when we discover that we've been billed as a comedy troupe, we think, oh, maybe we can do this. Maybe we can make it a little funnier than usual. You know, a few people realize this, but our good host, Zane, was actually an intern at SNL. I mean, he has some chops in this. He,
Carter
5:08
He, I think, helped write the Donald Trump, Hillary
Corey
5:11
Hillary Clinton. the alec baldwin thing yeah uh so we start talking about maybe jokes we can open with ways we can move from jokey to politics let people understand that oh hey we hear we were built this isn't that funny here's a couple of jokes but let's move on yes
Corey
5:25
um and so we're sitting there preparing yeah we're sitting there preparing thinking of things that we can say and uh we're discussing also our bios and how it will be introduced and uh and there's some discussion that we we get our bios But then we described Zane as the cab driver on the way over. Says Zane. Classic low-hanging
Corey
5:44
I say to Zane, I don't know, Zane. That seems a little offside. We don't know this crowd. Well, I thought it would play with the crowd. A little off color.
Corey
5:52
little off color. Zane says, no, no, no. You got to do this. You got to do this. It sets me up for a joke in return. And I'm thinking, well, I guess. You know, I'm being asked to say it. So I guess that's fine. Yeah.
Corey
6:03
So we get up there.
Carter
6:05
Permissive racism. And I nail
Corey
6:07
nail the bios. It's not just permissive. Required, Rick. He asked me to do this. And
Zain
6:11
And I nail the bios. I give a great bio about Steven. I tell people who Corey is and all his accomplishments. And then I say, Corey, do you want to introduce me? Just lobbying this. Just volleying it for
Corey
6:22
so I say, Zane, he was our cab driver on the way over today.
Corey
6:29
silence. Crickets. It makes
Corey
6:31
Crickets. Now, my follow-up joke then. And so Zane's follow-up joke was, okay, moving on.
Zain
6:40
follow-up joke was supposed to be, little do they know I have left the meter running because I thought it would be an extension. But this crowd was like, oh, fuck, he could really be the taxi driver. And maybe he's the fill-in on the comedy troupe. So suffice to say, Carter, we
Corey
6:57
through it. I got to tell you, people those age, no way I was the first guy they saw die. No
Zain
7:01
By the way, joke of the night Carter referencing Jimmy Carter saying You guys may remember Jimmy Carter like it was yesterday Unless the dementia has already kicked in Great
Carter
7:11
Great joke, Steven It's a good joke They laughed at that joke They
Carter
7:15
They thought that was funny That's not exactly how I worded it Comedy comes from truth It does So that
Zain
7:20
that was our live show Unfortunately, there is no recording of it Mercifully, there is no recording of
Corey
7:26
To be fair, it actually ended up, I think, pretty good Once they realized what was actually there We had a good discussion. We
Carter
7:31
We got solid talking to you afterwards about how climate change wasn't real. And I have to mention Stephen's
Zain
7:37
Stephen's parents were the sweetest. They were great hosts. They wrote us a great card. That's true. It was very nice. Ultimately, the card said, and I'm paraphrasing here, Stephen has a hard time making friends. Thank you for being Stephen's friend. I think that was a fantastic
Zain
7:53
that I got from your parents. Any comments, Carter?
Corey
7:58
They've been writing those cards for decades.
Carter
8:01
Just pretty happy that you guys are my friends, because, you
Carter
8:03
you know, if you weren't, you'd make fun of me, and that would make me feel bad. Yeah,
Corey
8:06
Yeah, but we wouldn't do that. Never.
Corey
8:08
Should we get into Zogging Politics? Hey, why not? Let's do it. I mean, it's only been- Longest
Carter
8:11
preamble in the history of the Strategist podcast.
Corey
8:13
Totally not relevant to anybody else's life.
Zain
8:16
Our first segment, change the channel to porn. Stephen Carter.
Carter
8:21
Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay, this is my best- This made me so happy. So for those who remember, the debate for Donald Trump was, what's
Carter
8:31
what's the word I'm looking for here?
Carter
8:33
Okay, a debacle. Disastrous debacle. Okay, let's go with that. We'll combine them. So immediately, we'd even talked about how the first thing you've got to do, so if you listen to the big special emergency podcast, you would know, change the channel. You've got to change the channel. Yes.
Corey
8:49
Yes. And you advocated for that. Totally advocated for
Corey
8:52
Trump just decided to turn on more TVs. he he
Carter
8:54
he his change the channel was to go on to twitter at 3 a.m and essentially tweet out you should look at this woman's sex tape uh referring to miss universe who he had slagged in the uh debate so
Corey
9:10
so of course to be fair he knows what twitter wants and at 3 a.m it's porn recommendations yeah
Carter
9:16
yeah he does so he says check out the sexting the best part about this the best part was later that same day they
Carter
9:24
found the trump soft porn sex tape
Carter
9:28
tape sex tape i mean he wasn't it's not like he's no but he was naked but he was in a playboy soft porn tape and that was the only sex tape that could be found that made me so happy because it's so trump right everything he says about someone else is actually a reflection upon himself right when he says that to hillary doesn't have the temperament to be president it's not about hillary it's about him and that that was actually pointed out by his biographer who you know turned on him after i think it was the art of the deal that he yeah he was written uh that's the point that the biographers made is that trump when he points his finger at someone else and says that someone else has got a problem it's actually all about him so
Corey
10:09
so i seem to recall that this tweet was made 3 a.m our time yeah 5 a.m in
Corey
10:14
in new york but he had tweeted two hours earlier than that too so he couldn't even play that he just got up early no but you know what
Carter
10:22
i'm a little bit older than you two so the bathroom breaks are legitimate sitting on the golden
Zain
10:25
golden throat so this is what we're talking about we we had that emergency episode
Corey
10:29
i gotta i gotta ask you how come we don't see tweets from you at three in the morning well
Carter
10:33
well i want to go back to sleep at three in the morning so i stumble to the bathroom
Corey
10:37
you don't want to rage do
Carter
10:38
do what i need to do and
Carter
10:39
go back to bed you
Zain
10:41
you see you're not what What we're hearing is that there are no porn recommendations from Carter at 3 a.m. No,
Carter
10:45
No, my porn recommendations come out around 9 o'clock, like everybody else's.
Zain
10:50
So this is what I want to talk about. Not the porn recommendations. Horrible week for Donald Trump. We said
Zain
10:55
said that he needs to change the channel. He does in the craziest way. Corey, great analogy. Turns on more televisions, right? On one TV, you got this Twitter rant. On another one, you got his porn appearances. On another one, you've got this, let's just call it the biggest TV screen you can find, where he may not have paid his taxes in 20 years or may not have paid any taxes in 20 years. He unspools at a rally in Pennsylvania. And just today, he says that veterans who take their own lives can't handle the pressure.
Carter
11:28
know. I didn't even see
Carter
11:29
see that. That is fucking crazy. Yeah, that one came out today. It's one of those things that you're reading it. Now, in fairness, I actually read his full quote.
Carter
11:37
It's not as crazy as it sounds. Right. But the
Carter
11:40
of it? Well, he was trying to win over the audience. The first half of his quote was winning over the audience in the room, right? So you people are strong enough. You people have faced these enormous odds, and you're strong enough. By the end of the quote, in fairness to Donald Trump, which always makes me sad, he's saying we've got to do more. We've got to get more mental assistance for these people. So he's not saying— Agreed. He didn't actually say, but
Carter
12:05
but the media at this point— Thanks for conceptualizing.
Carter
12:08
The media have decided that
Carter
12:10
that the free ride that they gave him is over. Everything that's coming out of his mouth is now being screwed. This
Zain
12:16
This is what I want to talk about. And I'll go to Corey on this first. Is Carter's point correct? Do you think this is just the media stopping the Trump free ride from going, continuing unabated? Or is this like a new level of low for Donald Trump?
Corey
12:33
think the media for a long time has not known how to deal with Donald Trump. Trump, they've been conditioned and trained and beaten into this mold since the 80s, which is we give equal billing to both sides of the argument. And a lot of people have complained about it for a long time. You know, it's like a lie versus the truth. You shouldn't give equal measure to both. And this is a change from where the media traditionally saw itself, right? I mean, the golden age was probably in the 60s and 70s. All the president's men, Washington Post, you know, we're going to tell it like it is. We're going to break the story. We're going to give you the facts. They haven't done that for a long time. And in fact, when you start looking at how much access plays into it and the need for so much content, you know, you need to keep both sides happy so both sides show up on your cable news program so you have people watching your cable news program, right?
Corey
13:18
They've sort of figured out that there is still a way to bring down Trump, I think. Or maybe that's not even the right words because that makes it sound in some ways less malicious and other ways more malicious. um the
Corey
13:30
fact of the matter is they
Corey
13:32
they know that trump is a danger to democracy you know not universally but by and large and they know that they've done a bad job of dealing with them so they're starting to get a little more steel in their spine and they're saying let's take this let's take this to them let's be very clear about what this guy is and it took him a while to figure out a journalistic way to do that after decades of covering
Corey
13:53
covering things in an entirely different way Now, as to this week, if anything, I'm shocked by how resilient these poll numbers have been in the past week. It's kind of crazy. Although I've been looking at 538 just right now. And in the past, I don't know, 20 minutes, two polls have come out that show Clinton with a double-digit lead in Colorado.
Corey
14:13
things are definitely shifting. Things are starting to shift pretty big. That was a swing state, let's not forget, up until 20 minutes ago.
Corey
14:22
It may be over. The bottom may be falling out of this thing, and it's
Corey
14:26
it's in no small part because Donald Trump himself has decided to just
Corey
14:31
just double down on all of the things that went wrong last week. Carter, tell me, is – and
Zain
14:37
and I don't mean this flippantly, but does anything he does matter anymore? Like can he just do whatever and still maintain that 37-38 top-line number?
Zain
14:49
And is that dangerous regardless of him winning or not?
Carter
14:53
Well, I'm telling you, I'm very interested in what the difference is between the polls and the actual voter turnout. Traditionally, the polls are pretty good in the U.S., right? So polls reflect because of a whole bunch of reasons. Less volatility, more connection to the parties, more tradition within those parties. Correct. Less choice. Yes.
Carter
15:11
And actually a polarized field where you're generally not going to jump from one extreme to another extreme. uh
Carter
15:19
think that this could be the very first election that we see a significant number well not the first election but we could see a significant number of people who
Carter
15:26
who just stay home right
Carter
15:28
right a pox upon both of their houses and then it's going to be reflective of uh gotv right
Carter
15:34
right so so get out the vote how
Carter
15:36
how many people will actually get out and vote for hillary clinton is going to be staggeringly different than the number of people who get out and vote for donald trump And I think that that's where we're actually going to see it. And I'm going to go on the record right now saying that I'm expecting to see lower
Carter
15:51
lower voter turnout and a much bigger margin of gap than we're seeing in the polls. Corey,
Zain
15:56
Corey, what do you make on that in terms of as it relates to voter turnout? Do you feel like we might be destined for this whole concept of saying, screw these guys, I don't care for either of them, I'm staying home? Well,
Corey
16:06
Well, the countervailing forces, society, as we know, hinges on this election, which the extremes of both sides seem to believe. And, you know, frankly, I think that Trump is such a generationally, multi-generationally bad candidate that there's probably some truth to that. And it will be interesting to see when these two winds collide, you know, what that hurricane looks like. Is it going to be low turnout? Is it going to be epically high turnout? out. I wouldn't rule either out, particularly if it starts to look like it's close at the end and people get really panicked about the idea of either candidate winning. Although I think if we continue down the path we're on, if Donald Trump is truly in free fall, if we have truly witnessed a meltdown, then
Corey
16:47
then I think turnout will be lower because the Republicans will just be so fucking depressed about it.
Zain
16:53
Carter, tell me about this false equivalency that seems to be going on with with the two of the most disliked candidates in recent memory, and people seem to be having writ large this false equivalency on how controversial they both are. Hillary and her emails on one hand, Donald Trump and his insanity on the other, and both sides are using that excuse to kind of stay home for each of theirs. It seems quite irrational, but they're not equivalent, are they? Well,
Carter
17:19
Well, I don't think they're equivalent. So I look at Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and I see a buffoon who's running for president and someone who's qualified. There are another group of people who look at Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and see a buffoon who's running for president and someone who's qualified. And
Carter
17:37
it just depends on your point of view which one's the buffoon, right? Hillary Clinton is corrupt, right? There's a group of people on my Facebook pages. My cousin keeps tweeting at me all this stuff about how bad Hillary is, And it makes me want to fly
Carter
17:54
fly to Dubai and kill him. As I said to him on Twitter, listen, I'm three hours away from the United States. You're 30 hours away from the United States. It's going to have less impact on you. Shut up. But this is what's happening. People look at the data. They look at the information. And they are still coming to the conclusion that these people are equivalent or, worse yet, Hillary is still worse than Donald Trump. Corey,
Corey
18:19
Corey, yeah. I mean, people are bad at comparisons. It's like IQ to a person with 100 IQ, 120 and 150 look the same. Right. They're both a lot smarter than you. And unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, she's in the same direction as Donald Trump. Right. I mean, he is miles down the road, but they look and they say, that's that's shady. I don't like shady. Right. And she's politician shady. She's normal society shady. Right. Donald Trump has he's got his cart in the next county over in evil shady, but they're
Corey
18:50
they're both down that road. No, you can point in the same direction for both of them. And that's what's hurting Hillary Clinton right now, because at the end of the day, they're not talking about how far away they are. They're talking about the direction they're in. And people do not trust Hillary Clinton. So knowing
Zain
19:02
knowing that context, Corey, let's get into strategy mode a little bit. Let's talk about what the Clinton camp should be doing from potentially kind of removing
Zain
19:10
removing themselves from that narrative that people may have. How do you kind of break out of that mold where people are making these false equivalencies about you and the candidate who is, like you've said, multi-generationally bad? Yeah,
Corey
19:22
Yeah, I mean, there's two real approaches, and I think the Clintons have been largely taking the first one. And the first one is, you
Corey
19:29
you know, elevate them up. Let them see just how bad he is, just how far down that road to horror he is. The other one is just to kind of get off the road yourself. Make yourself not the story, right? So I've said many times, if this was an election between generic Democrat and Donald Trump, he would be being murdered. Now, the opposite is probably true, too. It's
Corey
19:51
It's not something you can do with 100% efficiency. But the more they make it about Democrat
Corey
19:56
Democrat values versus Trump rather than Hillary
Corey
20:00
Hillary versus Trump, I think the better the Democrats will do right now, which has got to be a bit annoying
Corey
20:05
annoying for Hillary Clinton. Because, of course, when you look at the whole of it, she's not a bad. She's exceptionally qualified. people don't like some of the things in her past i'm not wild about everything she's done but you
Corey
20:17
you know this is like this is such a this is like apples to rotten poisonous
Corey
20:22
poisonous oranges you know i mean they're just not the same carter
Zain
20:26
carter how is she making that case to the democrats at large right you know there's been recent articles that have come out that have a lot of bernie's supporters saying you know what i'm putting my vote with gary johnson okay hillary clinton is is not, you know, she did not speak exactly to the agenda that Bernie, you know, was speaking to. This is not bespoke to what we want in politics. And I'm not making like a millennial characterization, even though I kind of am. What would you be doing if you're Hillary Clinton to try to court those people back from doing maybe another stupid thing, which is putting their ex beside Gary Johnson? Well,
Carter
21:01
Well, I saw some stuff that they started to put out from the Hillary campaign that said that Hillary
Carter
21:05
Hillary voted with Senator Sanders 79 or 89 percent of the time.
Carter
21:10
Let's not throw the baby with the bathwater. This is something that they at least have many, many shared values. Do you like
Carter
21:15
that message? I think it's the only way to go. I mean, the other way to go is what the second argument is, are you fucking kidding me? Which is not having any impact at all. Like, Gary Johnson is wholly unqualified to sit in the office. Correct. And
Zain
21:30
And we're starting to learn that more and more as the days go by. Right.
Carter
21:33
Right. And so I expect that both him and Stein are going to actually go down from their polling tops. Right. So they're going to go down. Someone asked me this on the Ask Me Anything. What should we do to do this? Attack Trump.
Carter
21:45
Continue to attack Trump and let Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, am I doing that right? I think so,
Carter
21:50
Take care of themselves. They're going to fuck up. Just let them fuck up. Let them get out of the way. And ultimately, most people are going to choose to vote for you. The only person you're running against, if you're Hillary Clinton, is Donald Trump. I
Corey
22:03
believe how, you know, I actually thought Johnson being a former governor and with another former governor on his ticket would be. would have some chops would have some chops but you know when he was asked to name a world leader he admires and they're like anywhere canada mexico europe anywhere you want it off the whole globe whole globe actually starts listing countries you know yeah he's like i guess i'm having an aleppo moment which oh man it's
Corey
22:27
it's just terrible that you're reminding people of the other time you were an idiot in your soundbite where you're going to sound like an idiot talk about talking
Corey
22:34
talking talking about you know just wrapping it all up for media consumption but to me that wasn't even the worst because afterwards he could have spun that as like guys i was asked for a leader i like i you know you could have cleaned that up being like there's not a lot of them right now there's not exactly that's not to say i don't know leaders
Corey
22:49
yeah there's not a ton of well there's no real libertarian leaders out there and in fact we've been moving towards status decisions across the globe we need to stop that here in america home of the free market you want to know some leaders just rattle off 10 you know just go through the list of european leaders get briefed right before you could have cleaned that up but instead they're asking and he's like oh yeah no nobody's more disappointed than me i really screwed that up that was a big mistake and they said to him they actually asked him they said so so what are you going to do to get better and his response was i need to get smarter he
Corey
23:20
he conceded he just did not know who these leaders were in the after the fact interviews the way
Carter
23:25
way i would have done it is listen yes let's when you're
Corey
23:27
you're on gary johnson let's talk when you
Carter
23:29
you get this question sometimes
Carter
23:31
sometimes you blank right
Carter
23:33
right we've been on panels we've blanked there's been a moment where you're struggling to
Carter
23:36
to find the word yeah i am trying to remember the person's name the person's name is come on now um yeah come on i got this yeah yeah and live
Zain
23:45
live tv or whatever yeah we stall
Carter
23:48
all the time because you know what we're
Carter
23:49
we're pros we know how to get through this he didn't have those skills he could have pretended like a normal human being on jeopardy doesn't always have the freaking answer he could have been the normal human being on jeopardy who just didn't have the answer at that moment and like cory says you come out and you clean it up afterwards he
Carter
24:06
made no such attempt and as a result he's
Carter
24:09
he's no longer real this
Carter
24:11
this is exactly what and jill stein is no longer real when she came up with the wi-fi thing note to elizabeth may wi-fi makes you look like a crazy person when you say that it causes cancer throwing it out there right this is this This is over
Carter
24:26
over for those two.
Carter
24:27
Those votes, I think, are coming back to Hillary or staying home. So
Zain
24:31
So you guys both explained how we should have cleaned up that one comment. We're on Gary Johnson, so let's stay with it for a second longer. Carter, knowing
Zain
24:39
knowing that that has happened, what is his—I don't even say pathway because that's not true. What is his best course going forward? What is his best message in your mind going forward? Knowing that you know who he is, who he is, right? You're not going to be able to change the intelligence. You're not going to be able to change the cadence or the charisma. How do you advise Gary Johnson going forward for the next month and six days?
Carter
25:03
Okay, so let me ask you a clarifying question. How
Carter
25:08
How do you advise a man who's
Carter
25:10
who's doing an interview, sitting down on a park bench, talking to an interviewer about the debate and whether or not his future would have hinged on the debate? And he's talking to her, and in the middle of the interview, in
Carter
25:20
in the middle of the interview, you in the middle of his answer yeah in the middle of a sentence yeah he takes his tongue out and says if i talk like this it wouldn't matter because people would have known there was a choice
Carter
25:33
actually did this he
Carter
25:35
stuck his tongue out and
Zain
25:36
said i am so confused as well he
Carter
25:38
he said i wouldn't have had to speak i wouldn't have had to been understood if people had seen me they would have seen a third choice and they would consider that choice this is how little this man thinks of the the electorate that he literally stuck his tongue out at them and literally tried to talk through it to the point where no one could understand it this is who he is so when you ask me i ask you when you ask me what would you do to advise this are you saying you're above that i
Carter
26:07
here's where you start don't
Carter
26:08
don't be a fucking idiot run
Carter
26:12
run for president for christ's sake
Zain
26:17
but i'm gonna pin that question back at you because i don't think you've answered it you know this is part of who he is i'm so glad
Carter
26:23
glad that you're here yeah you
Zain
26:26
know that's who he is you know he he may lack a few points of the iq department certainly a few points of the eq department what are you what are you doing though like what is what is a general game plan for someone who has that struggle maybe i'll go to cory and let you think of an answer in the meantime i
Carter
26:41
i want to think of an answer cory
Corey
26:42
cory i think that they have to acknowledge that this is not going to be the election where they have great national gains and they get above threshold like they could conceivably get above five percent and get some federal money but if i were them i think more than that federal money which would be useful to them no doubt yeah more
Corey
26:58
more useful would be to get on the electoral map so that when we're looking back on the 2016 election in 2020 in the lead up to it in 2024 and so forth there's a splash of yellow among the blue and red and it says okay the libertarians are real they got electoral votes they are on the board and that's possible in new mexico it's not probable but it's possible it
Carter
27:21
it is possible he's
Corey
27:21
he's down by about 10 in the most recent polls there and if they throw everything at new mexico everything
Corey
27:27
everything i mean and they managed to pull ahead of the other two candidates and win New Mexico's electoral votes.
Corey
27:35
The same thing where we were talking about people are bad at comparisons. People are bad at comparisons. And they're just going to see yellow of a mid-sized to large state and they're going to say, oh, they're
Corey
27:44
they're on the board. And that will give them some credibility going forward into 2020 because
Corey
27:48
because right now that's the best they can hope for. They don't have any credibility in this election except as spoiler. Carter,
Zain
27:53
Carter, anything or should I just move on?
Carter
27:55
No, I mean, that's it. I mean, you could give the exact same advice to Elizabeth May, right? Here,
Carter
28:00
yeah. I mean, Elizabeth May or Greg Clark, they both continue to try and be—so Greg Clark, leader of the Alberta Party. They both continue to be politicians
Carter
28:09
politicians who appeal to a
Carter
28:12
a country or a province when they should be really trying to appeal and build from a small geographic base. Let's
Zain
28:17
Let's talk Donald Trump. We mentioned him off the top. Let's get back to him for a second. So, Carter, I'm going to go back to you on this, and hopefully you don't freak out. okay
Zain
28:25
okay huge sack huge massive largest you've ever seen of cash drops in you have a 36 day contract with donald trump okay what are you doing going forward knowing the limitations of the man knowing that he's still going to tweet knowing he's still going to be insane what is what what is the path what is what is a strategic path to even have a shot at making this a go well
Carter
28:48
well the first thing you're not going to do is make a joke about his huge sack okay
Carter
28:52
okay that's not gonna gonna white sheets
Zain
28:54
sheets and huge sack the donald trump story um
Carter
28:57
okay so what are we what are we advising him to do that was funny cory come
Zain
29:03
it'll be a dick it was very good go
Carter
29:07
i answer my question please let's
Zain
29:09
let's make sure the joke landed for cory thank
Zain
29:11
yeah i'll let you know what it does keep
Zain
29:13
keep moving on i
Carter
29:17
would like to make donald trump a legitimate candidate however
Carter
29:23
that option is now gone i'm
Carter
29:25
i'm going to have him stand up at the debates
Carter
29:27
and be the buffoon that everybody wants to believe in the
Carter
29:30
the short answers the the ignoring policy the jabs at hillary uh there's a few things that landed with hillary about her emails those types of things that he can continue to do and he can continue to push on those types of things and just be an absolute shit disturber in the race and there are enough people in the united states of america sadly who have such little faith in their democratic systems that they will vote for that guy even if he's a complete and total buffoon and so i would say donald
Carter
29:59
donald it is time to let the donald out be
Carter
30:03
be donald all the time go donald because there's no rehabilitating the brand the first 10 minutes of that debate i
Carter
30:12
i was like holy fuck right but he can't do it he
Carter
30:15
he literally can't be be that guy so let's not try that anymore be the donald go nuts let's have some fun steer
Carter
30:23
steer into the skid
Carter
30:25
ultimately that's the only thing i can think of cory
Zain
30:26
cory is is there is there any nuance to that strategy or do you agree is it just let the guy go fucking nuts and hopefully something lands and catches a broader nerve what
Corey
30:36
um i've recommended that in the past yeah i've said maybe donald trump can't be reined in so just let him go but i'll throw out an opposing strategy i guess just so we can at least talk about a couple of options here his
Corey
30:50
his base will forgive anything literally anything you know he wasn't really wrong when he said he could shoot somebody on i was just gonna bring that up right
Corey
30:57
yeah and they would vote for him the fact that they can go out and be apologists for his debate performance that we're going to
Zain
31:03
to talk about sorry it's a second yeah
Corey
31:04
yeah that even in the scientific polls you know 30 are claiming he won there's no way they actually believe that what those people are doing is they're saying uh
Corey
31:13
uh it's like this we're sports fans steven carter big sports
Corey
31:17
fan is a huge sports fan he's always watching sports he calls
Zain
31:20
calls it sport but that's fine yeah um
Corey
31:21
um if you could if the winner of the game was determined by who afterwards like if the fans decided yeah you won then you'd go out and even if your team played like shit you'd be like oh that was amazing the wizards did great yeah the hansen brothers so
Corey
31:35
so you're pretty much That's too much describing soccer to me.
Corey
31:39
Well, here's my point. They're going to forgive him. Things
Corey
31:41
that we thought were way past offside have proven not to be offside. His base is going to stick with him because he's the Republican nominee.
Corey
31:50
Step one, pull out of the debates. You're done with the debates. You
Zain
31:54
You teased this last time. Pull
Corey
31:55
Pull out of the debates and pull out not now, pull out tomorrow. Pull out after the vice presidential debate. Blame it on something that happened to Pence. Pence. Maybe claim his mic wasn't working either. Say the whole thing is rigged against us. It wasn't just me. Poor Pence also had to deal with this bullshit. An aggressive moderator asking these questions. They didn't ask the similar questions of Tim Kaine. We're out. This supposedly nonpartisan debate panel is full of shit and we are out. You saw what happened to me. You saw what happened to Pence. They'll forgive him. So then you've got one of these massive infliction points. And let's be very clear. That debate was horrible for Donald Trump. Doesn't matter that they're now trying to pretend it's a win it was not a win moderates everywhere were aghast but
Corey
32:36
but that happened in september and this election is in november give him time to forget it make
Corey
32:42
make him generic candidate number one break
Corey
32:45
break his fucking thumbs don't let the man on twitter anymore make every tweet for the next five weeks be had a great rally in x was a lot of fun in y let him do his dumb ass stuff in front of the rallies i don't know how much more damage you can do there we're so numb to the trump rally shtick and just let the ads play it out let the ads play it out and ignore them it'll tighten back up to two or three points hope for an october surprise win the election that's how you win if you're donald trump that's
Carter
33:14
that's absolutely terrifying because it could totally work carter
Zain
33:17
carter back at you cory brought this up and i want to talk about this for a second was it a mistake for the trump campaign to try to spin that debate as a win or should they have accepted should they have just called it corrupt as their main thread because what they tried to do was say oh look at that hashtag it said Trump won which was actually a totally satirical hashtag and they tried to go out there and had Donald Trump on the floor spinning we talked about that in our last episode should they have actually gone with a very different message to create that offshoot so they could go into a message similar to what Corey's suggesting interesting you
Carter
33:51
know what i'd like to be able to say that i'd like to be able to say that you know they should have uh they
Carter
33:57
shouldn't have done what they did but every
Carter
33:59
every time they do this every time they take the exact opposite of what a normal human being and a normal campaign consultant would do they
Carter
34:05
they seem to be doing just fine so
Carter
34:07
so they come in and they say ridiculous
Carter
34:11
the the population buy it right like um you
Carter
34:16
you know i mean i'm really interested to see about this tax tax return stuff where
Carter
34:19
where it goes yeah like they stood up there and said he's a genius this is a genius move this is a genius move you haven't conceivably the new york times is reporting you may not have paid taxes for 18 years and first
Carter
34:31
first point may have lost a billion dollars in a year
Zain
34:35
and you're a fucking genius oh i know oh
Zain
34:38
we'll talk about surrogates in a second cory i want to move to you and talk about hillary clinton to finish this off so we we talked about her a little bit earlier on. The
Zain
34:46
The next debate is a town hall format. One of the more noticeable and publicly sort of talks about liabilities she has is her likability, her ability to connect. Despite her winning that last debate, I think one of the things we could all conclude is she didn't use story, she didn't use a narrative, she didn't actually use connection. She outright won, but she didn't use any of those instruments. If you're her advisor going into that next debate, are you going down the likability road? Are you going down the, let me just get out of the way and let this guy go crazy mode? What is your top line suggestion for Clinton heading into this upcoming debate?
Corey
35:20
No, this debate is tailor-made for her. The town hall format she will do exceptionally well in because she doesn't need to bring stories. The stories are brought to her. Right.
Corey
35:28
This is my problem. This is what's happened to me. I know friends who are worried about this, and that is how she makes it real and connects. She doesn't need to tailor those things out the other way. this format is is going to be a disaster for donald trump donald trump on the other hand talks only in superficialities he often attacks the questioner he cannot attack the questioner in a town hall format i i mean look at what he did to lester holt whenever he said like you said x like is donald trump going to be like wrong wrong i didn't say that to some possibly american who asked this question well he's going to lose again if he does that everything
Corey
36:04
everything about his personality and how he presents himself is not made for the town hall format he has no experience in it
Corey
36:11
hillary clinton's actually done quite well in the town hall formats in in the past primary and in the past yes you know she's done she's
Corey
36:18
she's done town halls a lot of the time now she's not got a lot to worry about but she can't get complacent she needs to she definitely needs to take this seriously she needs to go in and she needs to effectively run the same playbook a lot of her her weaknesses will be covered off just by the format carter
Zain
36:34
carter same playbook for clinton heading into the town hall format debate i
Carter
36:39
think so i mean i think that if she could learn one thing from her husband it's how to you know kind of connect with the average person she has a hard time with that although she's a heck of a she's a heck of a lot better at that than trump uh but she doesn't have the moves that bill clinton has in circa 1992 of the town hall format that just It just kind of crushes Perot and Bush.
Corey
37:00
Well, that's a perfect example. And I think that the personality types on one end are less extreme and on the other more extreme. But like George W.
Corey
37:09
Bush was asked about taxes and he got, I think it was taxes, H.W. Bush. He got super defensive about it, you know.
Corey
37:17
And Bill Clinton went up and he's like, your question's really about the economy, right? That was like, I feel you're paying Bill at his peak and
Corey
37:24
and just really connected with the person. Listen, Donald Trump is going to lash out in every direction on every somewhat confrontational question. Hillary Clinton is going to do the Hillary Clinton, uh-huh, yeah, I hear you. Now, here are some facts. It's not going to be as warm and charming as Bill Clinton was or Barack Obama even sometimes could be. But
Corey
37:45
it's going to be more than enough, especially when compared next to Donald
Corey
37:48
Donald Trump, who will not take any aggressive question well.
Zain
37:52
Carter, just I'm going to ask you this. We talked about Trump earlier on. I want to tie it back into this debate. coming up his strategy heading into a town hall format uh is this also a time where you let him unleash you can't cory says if he starts attacking the questioner here like he would a moderator
Zain
38:08
what's the nuance you provide here well
Carter
38:11
in a perfect world you'd have him you
Carter
38:13
you know uh say
Carter
38:16
that make sense to the middle class um and he would he would connect with the questioner and I mean, simple answers is his strength. So hopefully he just gets questions that he's able to do simple answers with. Corey,
Zain
38:33
Corey, anything to add to the Trump strategy for this upcoming one?
Corey
38:38
Yeah, I mean, I think his best strategy is to have a cold that night. I really do. I don't think this format works for him at all. Okay,
Zain
38:44
Okay, let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, surrogate gate, guys. Let's talk about surrogates. And before we do, I want to read you some of the top-line defenses that the surrogates for Donald Trump are using as it relates to the recent tax return. Here we go. Here they are. Number one, it's legal. Number two, there's no proof he didn't pay taxes. Number three, this justifies our refusal to release his returns. Number four, he paid other taxes. Number five, everybody does it. Number six, Trump is a genius for not paying taxes. taxes number seven losses are a sign of business acumen number eight i love this one by the way guys failure is a step towards success okay take that one in number eight only an abuser can fix the system a common thread uh number 10 trump did it for others number 11 to pay the taxes would have been selfish guys there is a laundry list i've only read you 10 or 11 of these but before Before we get into what Donald Trump's surrogates are doing, I don't think we've spent any time on the show really talking about surrogate strategy. So I'd like to do that as a top-line level first and then get into the defense points that Donald Trump's surrogates are using. But, Corey, to you,
Zain
39:59
high-level question, what is the purpose of having proxies or surrogates in a campaign? Just high-level and then we'll go into it from there. It's
Corey
40:06
It's PR, right? Right. There's, there's this old adage about PR versus advertising versus marketing, right? Which is essentially, uh, marketing
Corey
40:16
marketing is to say, I do X. Well, yeah. Advertising is to say, I do X. Well, I do X. Well, I do X. Well, and repeating it until it's just agreed to, uh, PR is somebody saying,
Corey
40:28
now saying, this is your part where you say, Corey does X. Well, that's right. And it sounds more legitimate and valid because it's coming from a third party who's less vested in it. And that's the idea with surrogates. You have somebody out there who has their own expertise and background and knowledge, and they lend that to the candidate by supporting them with those messages. And,
Corey
40:47
you know, in theory, you would think a guy like Giuliani would be a great surrogate for Trump.
Carter
40:52
Oh, yeah. He should
Carter
40:52
should be a fantastic surrogate. Except
Carter
40:54
Except it turns out he's an idiot. But
Corey
40:57
we'll get to him in
Corey
40:57
in a minute. We'll get to him in a minute. But the idea with surrogates is really that. It allows you also to say things that you wouldn't want the candidate to say.
Corey
41:05
you know taking that metaphor a bit further you know coke saying coke is great is one thing coke saying pepsi shit nobody trusts you because you're coke because you're coke of course you'd say pepsi shit but if a bunch of third parties start saying pepsi is shit then
Corey
41:19
then maybe there's something to it right and generally the value as a surrogate goes up the closer you are to the other side right
Corey
41:25
right which is why you always see the token democrat on the republican campaign or vice versa Carter,
Zain
41:30
Carter, on these national campaigns or even provincial campaigns, is there a strategy around surrogates? Who goes where? Who speaks to what issue? Give us an insight as to when you were running campaigns, what surrogates have done for the campaign and if there is a specific strategy in place for them. There
Carter
41:48
There always is a strategy. You must be able to put surrogates. I mean, today's world, even in Canada, where we don't have a tremendous media world of opportunities. In the U.S., they have way more opportunities than they have principles. So you've got to use surrogates. Even in Canada, you want to use surrogates. To Corey's point, you want people to say. To some of those reasons, yeah.
Carter
42:09
So there's always a strategy, though. You never, ever send a surrogate out without giving them lines.
Carter
42:15
Here's what you're going to say. So your best surrogate work is when you have six or eight surrogates saying the same thing with different words. Then it feels like everybody's. It feels like
Carter
42:25
Right? So it's the same thing with different words. So it's not the specific thing. And there's been surrogate fails in the past where everybody's saying the exact same thing and you're kind of like, that
Carter
42:35
that was a canned line. But
Carter
42:36
when you're out and you're saying things in a different way, the
Carter
42:41
then you get a lot of positive. When you're out there and each surrogate is winging it, it
Carter
42:48
it has a negative impact. So
Carter
42:49
So you read 11
Carter
42:50
11 different lines? Sure. I blocked out after six.
Zain
42:53
I think I did too. Yeah,
Carter
42:56
lines weren't the same.
Carter
42:58
They weren't conveying the same message. No. They weren't conveying the same—they were, in fact, oftentimes directly contradictory to one another. That is, by definition, a bad surrogate strategy. I think the best book I've ever read about this is All's Fair by Mary Madeline and James Carville. So
Carter
43:14
So looking at the 1992 election where Mary Madeline's working for the Republicans and Carville's working for Clinton. And they
Carter
43:23
the failures of the Bush surrogate strategy versus the successes of the Democrats. Right. The work that they were able to do, the keeping on message that the Democrats were able to do and how hard it was to get the Republicans to do it. I mean, phenomenal
Carter
43:38
phenomenal book. I mean, there's just there's just a tremendous amount of information there. And that's that was always been my kind of guide when I've gone to how do we want to build a surrogate strategy or a proper communication strategy for that matter. Corey,
Zain
43:50
Corey, what makes a good surrogate? What are the qualifications you're looking for? In this case, some of the people we'll talk about may have held office in the past, maybe aligned to the party, but broad strokes, what makes a good surrogate to effectively do the PR for you? Two
Corey
44:06
Two things, reputation and trustworthiness. So people know who you are and they believe what you're saying. And that is going to be different issue to issue, what their reputation is and what their trustworthiness is, which is why you would like to have a stable of surrogates who can talk to different issues. uh this is exactly why when they talk about security clinton's going to talk about all of the republican security experts who back them right now if it's on the economy you're going to go to a different surrogate and it's not a one-size-fits-all thing and you want to have a stable but the idea is you want diversity of voices you don't want to be in a situation where all of your circuits are fat old white men which is sort of the situation donald trump is very close to being in now um
Corey
44:48
and you want to make sure that those people have some credibility on the issue let
Carter
44:52
let me add one thing you just want to have proximity to the candidate enough
Carter
44:55
enough to make it credible you want these surrogates to be someone who taught who is close enough to the candidate like no one gets daily access to the candidate right but the surrogate should at the very least appear to be someone that the candidate listens to or you
Carter
45:11
you know like there's a back and forth between the surrogate and the candidate. The exception to that is when you're putting out something that's going to be controversial and you distance using a third-party surrogate that's kind of a little bit different. But that's almost like a trial balloon, so it's a little bit different context. So you want the person to be as close to you as possible.
Zain
45:30
So let's get into the specifics of what's happened here with Donald Trump, right? Because you guys have helped us explain what a strategy is, how you form it, what makes a good surrogate. So Trump has acquired a few of these. Gingrich, to name one. um chris christie to name another uh rudy giuliani most recently where cory is it going wrong for donald trump that these guys are going off the rails with some of these messages like or is this advised are they going rogue like and we'll talk about how they're being put into these situations that might be irreversible for their political reputation going forward i hope so i
Corey
46:05
i hope there's consequences for this but well
Corey
46:07
well okay we can talk about how they've done on communications But let's just also acknowledge at this point that any challenge with a campaign manifests as a communications problem. And ultimately and fundamentally, the problem these guys have is it's an utterly bullshit thing that is happening here, right? There is no real excuse for not releasing his tax returns. And to do all of this soft shoe and spin around it is just going to, of course, it's going to look stupid. When you try to defend something that's stupid, it looks stupid. If you're trying to defend something that's smart, it's much easier to do. i mean donald
Corey
46:43
donald trump has created throughout this campaign what i will now term the trump doctrine which is if it is legal it's moral and you're an idiot for not doing it that seems to be the only bar here and and because this is now what they're doing in the campaign you've got you see all sorts of things like he's a genius yeah doing this yeah
Corey
47:00
you know mitt romney was so concerned about his tax rate being too low that he didn't take charitable donation credits that he was entitled to yeah right donald
Corey
47:10
donald trump is now got people out there saying man if he didn't pay taxes for a year he's a genius here's another thing i this is very apocryphal i just heard this today i'm not sure i gotta source this but i heard it maybe 10 minutes before i came to this recording in 1995 across all of the united states there were 50 billion dollars in corporate losses recorded donald trump accounts for two percent of them with that tax return in that year that That is ridiculous.
Carter
47:37
Even if it's not true. It's a huge amount of money. So they send out all these surrogates to do all these lines and manage all this stuff.
Zain
47:46
information comes out from the New York Times just to give people some context and
Zain
47:49
deploy the surrogates, right? They're on
Zain
47:51
TV, they're on the Sunday shows, and
Zain
47:53
using some of the lines I gave
Carter
47:54
gave ahead of time. I don't believe that the campaign prepped
Carter
47:58
I don't believe that they were actually sent out with any lines. Like when Scott Reed does Beer and Popcorn, do you remember that line that he put out? Yeah,
Corey
48:05
Yeah, yeah, the child care. Yeah, I don't remember what year it
Carter
48:08
it was, but he was spinning for Martin,
Corey
48:10
Martin, right? It was like 05, 06, that election that went over Christmas. Yeah,
Carter
48:16
he goes out and says, you know, essentially we don't want to give money back to these people because they'll spend it on beer and popcorn. That's
Corey
48:21
That's not really what he's – go on. Am I spinning
Carter
48:23
spinning that? Yes, I am. Why? Because it's fun. But
Carter
48:27
the reason – he's done as a spokesperson at that point, right? He's done as a third party. it. He's done as that person is out for the campaign.
Carter
48:37
Rudy Giuliani should be done. Chris
Carter
48:39
Chris Christie should be done. These people should be disqualified for the work that they've done. Newt Gingrich should be done. They're not helping elevate Trump. They're all starting to bring him down now. And that's the ultimate failure of a surrogate program.
Zain
48:53
Corey, you wanted to add something there.
Corey
48:55
Well, you talked about 11 different messages. Yes. But, you
Corey
48:59
you know, the The most problematic chain was the ones you said to me at the beginning, which is basically if he did it, it's legal. But we're not saying he did it. There's no proof.
Corey
49:08
They have the ability to solve this question, right? They say, but this justifies us not releasing the proof of whether or not he did something. We're not going to say that he did.
Corey
49:17
I don't know if you would put up with that excuse from anybody in your life if somebody gave you a chain of logic like that, right? It is fundamentally boiled
Corey
49:27
boiled down to this. his
Corey
49:29
his tax returns strongly suggest that he wouldn't have to pay taxes for decades he can answer this question now by releasing his tax returns he
Corey
49:39
he won't do it and
Corey
49:41
and all of the bullshit about i'm under routine audit so i don't need to do this i
Corey
49:46
i mean the irs has said it's fine release your returns donald if you don't want to do that you say you've been under audit since 2008 release least 96
Corey
49:55
96 97 98 99 2000 2001 but they won't do it because there's obviously something in those returns that is so awful it would end his campaign that is the only thing you can reasonably surmise from all of this soft shoe so
Zain
50:10
so so i want to get back to to their political futures in a second but you're on the message so let's talk about that for a second what
Zain
50:17
what would you advise as this this news comes out Saturday night, you have surrogates lined up calling you as communications director for Donald Trump. What
Zain
50:27
What is the line you are telling them? And maybe it's one of the ones I gave you, maybe it's not, right? But
Zain
50:32
But what is your thread or your narrative that you're telling them to all start pounding Sunday morning, if you're advising Donald Trump?
Corey
50:40
Trump? Let's talk about that first in this sense. It is malpractice that they did not know this was coming. They knew, No, his lawyer sent a threatening note to the New York Times. It's like, don't do it. They were probably talking about this for weeks because the Times got it apparently at the start of September. And I think they asked for comments as well
Corey
50:56
well from the Trump campaign. They did. They absolutely did. So the
Corey
50:58
the fact that you didn't have messaging lined up for your surrogates, at least a coherent message, is just indefensible from a campaign management standpoint. Absolutely. There's absolutely no defense. Yeah.
Corey
51:09
if they're calling me and they're asking me, if I didn't know this was coming, you give them a holding message, right? You give them something where you say, look, not all of the facts have – not all of the sides of this story have been said. In the coming days, you bet we're going to have some things to say about the New York Times and their shady newspaper business. Paper dealings, blah, blah, blah,
Corey
51:28
Or you have your message ready. I think the easiest message is – I
Corey
51:33
I don't know. I mean I actually – what do you say? Yeah,
Zain
51:38
no, I get it's a hard question.
Corey
51:39
question. What do you say?
Corey
51:40
Carter, do you have something? What would you say? I'm actually very curious what your approach would be if you were put in this box. This is real.
Corey
51:47
We're not going to release any more releases. And
Zain
51:49
And you also don't find out that this was coming down the pike. You get that same call Saturday night. So let's assume
Carter
51:54
assume that I'm literally on TV. I
Carter
51:56
I am spinning for Trump. I didn't know this came out.
Carter
52:00
And they say to me, Donald Trump's tax returns, and he lost $900 million. What do you say to that?
Carter
52:08
Here's what I'd say.
Carter
52:10
Donald Trump is a businessman. businessman
Carter
52:12
there's no question that he's had uh he's had ups and downs in his business life you are looking at one snapshot one day snapshot of donald trump's particular wealth
Carter
52:24
he is now in a position where he says he's worth billions look at how much this man has been able to make even
Carter
52:30
even if he lost a billion dollars in 1995 yeah
Carter
52:33
he has turned things around in a way that that other
Carter
52:37
Americans can't even imagine. And he'll
Corey
52:39
he'll turn the country around, blah, blah, blah. No, that's right. That was pretty good. You're welcome. The problem is, Stephen, the follow-up is, so did he pay taxes? Does he pay taxes? And
Zain
52:48
And that problem hinges on the fact that he did and that he is worth what he is, what he says he is today.
Corey
52:55
today. So do you guys think the Clinton camp knew this? Because it is just so perfect, the way on Monday she brought that up as a possibility. Trump didn't deny it. And the week later... Well, I think they
Carter
53:05
they knew. Because they would have been contacted for comment as well.
Carter
53:10
possibly. I mean, well, usually you may not understand the full context of something, but you're able to piece some stuff together. Let's
Zain
53:18
Let's close this segment out on the ability to defend this message and the political future of some of these surrogates. So, you know, I just asked you right now, you guys are the communication strategist for Trump. suppose you're the top political advisor for rudy giuliani what are you telling this guy like how are you trying to do you like how do you repair or protect i don't even know my fucking question his reputation
Zain
53:43
like what are you doing right now to to scale back or to to at least salvage carter it's over rudy
Carter
53:52
rudy giuliani chris christie newt uh gingrich uh even maybe mike pence are
Carter
53:58
done. Sarah Palin, we remember her, right? Her big career opportunity was to work for Fox News. That's it. That's all these guys have left. They're not, if you're a political consultant for Rudy Giuliani, you are going to find a new candidate. That is your political future because it's over for Rudy Giuliani.
Zain
54:18
How about Chris Christie,
Corey
54:19
Christie, someone who hasn't been maybe as vocal recently,
Corey
54:21
over. Corey, what do you think? He's so down in the polls in his home state. He hasn't had good news in
Zain
54:28
in his home state
Corey
54:28
state no i mean the revelations coming out about the bridge gate there him shutting down the bridge to punish a political opponent or his office doing it i should say
Corey
54:36
they continue to be just brutal for him uh i
Corey
54:40
i don't you know i i'm hesitant to say it's over because god knows it should have been over for newt gingrich 15 years ago right and yet here we are uh there there seems to be a lot of second third and fourth acts in american politics but But my
Corey
54:55
my God, I mean, these people should all just go into a hole, especially Rudy Giuliani, who is a guy that I think most people from the outside thought pretty OK about, you know, for a while. For a long time. I mean, New York had a big rebound in the 90s. He was there for 9-11. He seemed fairly statesmanlike. He didn't go anywhere in the primaries where he was running for president. Yeah.
Corey
55:18
I'm not sure anybody held that so much against him. You know, he was just another one of a list of candidates who seemed pretty good, who didn't catch fire.
Carter
55:26
Yeah. I mean, people run and lose. Yeah. You can come back from running and losing. Right.
Carter
55:31
Right. That's that's not a sin. But this is this is something bigger than that. that.
Zain
55:36
Carter, actually close us out on this, because I want to talk about Hillary Clinton's camp and what they do, if
Zain
55:42
if anything, as a response to Donald Trump's surrogates. Is it kosher in American or even politics at large to go after the surrogate to ensure they don't have a political future? Is that wasted air? What are you doing on the other side, the other strategy for defending against really effective surrogates? Maybe this is more academic than realistic, considering who Donald Trump has out there. But what is your surrogate strategy on the other side if you've got someone pounding the pavement pretty well?
Carter
56:08
I think that this, to
Carter
56:10
to me, brings up the first rule of politics. Never get in the way of someone shooting themselves in the foot.
Carter
56:19
Don't worry about it.
Carter
56:20
Get on your message. Pull your own surrogates off TV. At this particular moment in time, I think that the more time that they have in television, the better off you
Zain
56:28
are. Straight up, you leave the spots open. You deny those requests. We're
Carter
56:31
We're like, you know what? We've got a strategy meeting. I
Carter
56:34
I can't possibly send Rudy
Zain
56:35
double the time. Yeah,
Carter
56:36
Yeah, that's this Sunday.
Carter
56:40
Sunday. Big NFL day this Sunday. Can't get out. Corey,
Zain
56:43
Corey, what's your what's your if you're on the other side, what are you doing
Corey
56:46
doing if you're if you're Clinton? Well, with a few exceptions of incredibly bad behavior, attacking a circuit is kind of a waste of energy because it's not like they have to convene the RNC and replace them. They just they stop existing. They just disappear. So knocking down a surrogate just means the next surrogate comes forward. And if you have somebody who's a bad surrogate for the other side, let them go. If you have an effective surrogate for the other side. Yeah. You
Corey
57:10
can consider ways to start making them less effective. But again, you
Corey
57:15
you know, ultimately, that's a proxy war and the real war is on. You know, this is not about what we think about Rudy Giuliani or Newt Gingrich. This is about Donald Trump and his judgment, perhaps, for selecting Rudy Giuliani or Newt Gingrich. rich all righty let's move it to our final segment our final
Zain
57:28
final segment are over under our lightning round guys are you ready i was born ready okay cory hogan over under on seven alec baldwin's donald trump that was really good you're
Corey
57:38
you're so no i didn't love some of his facial expressions i thought they were just a bit too much but my god did he nail the cadence carter over under on seven what do you think give
Carter
57:47
give him an a plus he
Carter
57:47
he absolutely nailed it it was so So much fun to watch. It was just, it was joyous. It was a joyous time. Corey,
Zain
57:56
Corey, your three-word strategy for Gary Johnson going forward?
Carter
58:01
Carter? I'm going to go with four words because I hear your rules. Stay out of politics. Your
Zain
58:06
-slash-three words. See, I'm just adjusting the rules in real time. I can do that. I can do that for Hillary Clinton. What is it, Carter?
Carter
58:13
Enjoy the White House.
Zain
58:18
Yeah, that's good. Um, stay
Zain
58:21
stay the course, stay the course. Stephen Carter, you have been tasked to find Rudy Giuliani, his next job. What is it going to be?
Zain
58:32
It's retirement. Like literally it's over. No
Carter
58:36
No one wants you
Zain
58:36
you around. Nothing. He's old. He can go and retire. Corey, you have been also been tasked to find Rudy that job because Carter fucking failed at it. Uh, what are you getting him? What is his next gig? Professional
Zain
58:49
Greeter at Walmart. On a scale of 1 to 10, how entertaining do you think the next debate's going to be? Entertaining. Carter? Are we
Carter
58:55
we talking about the vice presidential debate? No, sorry. The next
Zain
58:57
next presidential town hall. That's right. 1 to 10. Oh,
Carter
58:59
Oh, it's going to be like 12.
Zain
59:01
For sure. Town hall format plus Donald Trump, entertainment value on a scale of 10. What is it?
Corey
59:06
it? Four. Really? I find this so hard to watch to begin with. This is going to be cringe city if it happens. And finally,
Zain
59:12
finally, the most softballist question I've ever given you. Who wins the next presidential debate? Stephen Carter?
Zain
59:23
the cable news networks we
Zain
59:25
we will leave it there that's a wrap on episode 595 of the strategists our last episode