Episode 829: Barbaric voting practices hotline

Zain 0:01

This is The Strategist, episode 829. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, another Sunday is here.

Corey 0:11

That was not a given. That was not a given we'd get another Sunday because the U.S. election was between the two. This

Zain 0:17

This is true. The sun did rise. Another Sunday is upon us, the day of the Holy Lord. Yeah, it's happening, Carter. carter one of the holy lords yeah

Carter 0:28

yeah i mean it's a great day i was outside again today you know went skiing it was so much fun you need some new material yeah this is all i need this is all i need why don't you guys do basketball again that'd be great oh we got any basketball stuff today guys not no one cares about basketball cory

Zain 0:44

cory tom brady was down 31 nothing at the half i feel like justice is being served in a big way by the way uh rest in peace alex trebek outside of that one one element justice is being served in a big way this week outside

Zain 0:57

outside of that one element what

Zain 0:59

what i'm just saying i'm just saying outside of that one element trump loses tom brady's down 31 nothing alex trebek was great i'm

Corey 1:07

i'm just trying to put that all together in one sentence that was a pretty good week when you put it like that and

Corey 1:11

and you know what trebek had a good run uh he um he's

Corey 1:16

he's he's a nice guy and uh and we'll all miss him but you know not everybody gets to leave a hero trebek gets to leave a hero unlike some other people we'll be talking about today yeah

Zain 1:26

yeah yeah we'll do it let's jump into our first segment our first segment four yes indeed donald trump was at the golf course and while he was another four was being chanted amongst his campaign saying which four seasons are we going to the hotel no we are at four seasons total landscaping cory hogan Morgan, please

Zain 1:50

please tee this story up for us because I know you have been following it so intimately. And I go ahead. Just go ahead. No,

Corey 1:59

No, it's the funniest thing that has happened all year, maybe all decade. I just I think it's if this was on television, we would think it was kind of absurdist humor. Like it feels very Arrested Development. You know, this notion of like, oh, yes, Michael, we're going to have the thing at the Four Seasons. Oh, the Four Seasons. Well, the Four Seasons landscaping company. and uh it's just as good though they're really the top of their landscaping game

Corey 2:26

don't know the story like no matter what the story is it's great so one of many things has happened here yeah

Zain 2:31

yeah do you want to do you want to like strategically scenario plan for us on the stupid okay

Zain 2:35

okay go ahead go ahead do

Corey 2:37

all right so one of these things has happened either they

Corey 2:41

thought they were booking the four seasons hotel and they accidentally booked a a landscaping company just off the highway next to a porn shop across from a crematorium. Or maybe they intentionally

Corey 2:53

intentionally booked this place, which is equally baffling to me. And then, of course, there's been some reporting that it's a combination of the two, that Rudy Giuliani intentionally booked this place, and Donald Trump misunderstood him, believing it was the Four Seasons Hotel.

Corey 3:09

But why? That still doesn't answer why Rudy Giuliani did that. And then there's so many details that make you think that it does look like they just really badly screwed up. Like they delayed it by half an hour and it takes about 25 minutes to get from the Four Seasons Hotel to the Four Seasons Landscaping Company.

Corey 3:28

It's so great. And let's just say, let's just take, for example, maybe that did happen. Maybe they accidentally booked the wrong venue.

Corey 3:37

Landscaping companies don't normally take bookings at their venues. you so like

Corey 3:43

they picked up the phone oh

Zain 3:45

oh no i can't even explain the imagery of like these eight and a half by eleven trump signs taped together on the back of a really old garage in this parking lot carter uh which of the scenarios that cory has laid out for us uh do you think is most likely and then uh followed closely by which of the scenarios is the most hilarious i

Carter 4:08

i think the the most likely is that they booked you know that there is some advanced person somewhere who is told to book the four seasons and i

Carter 4:23

think that that's reasonable i think that's the most likely but

Carter 4:27

but i've been here like i haven't been in there because that that's gonna haunt for years like someone has to find out who's responsible for that because it wasn't rudy giuliani really Rudy Giuliani books like doesn't book anything like he's not involved in any of the tactics. Right. Like there's no way he does the tactics. So I want to find the person who did this. There's usually there's an advanced team that does these things. Now, this

Carter 4:51

this could be considered out external to the actual campaign. So there might have been like a separate group of people who did this. But my God, someone booked this.

Carter 5:02

I think thinking it was the Four Seasons. someone then told like no one books a landscaping company to

Carter 5:08

to announce the legal challenge like no one does this it's just not done the address should have been a tell but it also tells me that there was no one on the ground like there was there's no one prepared for any of this like we talked in a previous i think you the people like episode about how all the lawyers were going to be prepped and ready and there was all going to be standing by ready to go you know as as the challenges needed to be done uh there's

Carter 5:35

there's no way that anybody was standing by to book the four seasons landscaping company oh my god it's too bad well

Corey 5:43

well apparently it's hard to find a republican in philadelphia we did learn that this week so well

Carter 5:48

well the one guy who is the republican in philadelphia has been getting death threats because he actually counted the ballots so that guy's not going to be a republican much longer you

Zain 5:57

you know the best part about this is that the landscaping company has put out a statement saying they were equally as surprised to get a phone call, but were happy to just be part of the democratic process. They felt like they were partaking in a process and are now putting up their merchandise store at midnight tonight. So if you want, you know, four seasons total landscaping merchandise, which I feel like will remain in our political zeitgeist, just out of Corey's sheer will, I feel like it will remain. Corey, you have, you have willed, you're going to of willed this story beyond the news cycle that it deserves uh just because when you take a step back and think how funny it is it is probably one of the funniest things that we've heard about in politics it

Zain 6:35

just makes me so happy it's

Corey 6:39

there there are just so many ways i can allow my my imagination to drift and think about how this possibly could have happened i love to imagine the phone conversation between whoever this advanced person was and whoever it was who answered the phone i'm assuming on a saturday at uh total or you know four seasons total escaping

Corey 6:59

like like do you think they do you think they clued in part way through and if they did did they tell the advanced person like you know this is not the hotel or did they

Corey 7:07

actively troll them and say oh yeah no the president can come here for sure did they take them seriously or just to think this was like one of their buddies joking with them i don't know No, but I can tell you, it's

Zain 7:18

legends. So much joy. Stephen Carter, I'm going to move on very quickly. I should have moved on five minutes ago, but here we are. Oh, no, this is brilliant.

Carter 7:24

brilliant. We could do a whole episode on this.

Zain 7:26

Wait, I'm going to ask you a pseudo-serious question. If you are this company, are you trying to monetize on your success? Are you trying to make yourself a little museum section in the total landscaping area of your little business? What are you doing? As

Carter 7:44

much fun as this is, and I think it could last for a little while, they have to take advantage of it while it lasts. You can't not take advantage of this. This is fantastic.

Zain 7:52

fantastic. Beer koozies? You think that's where they merge? Yeah,

Carter 7:55

they're already going to throw – they're throwing T-shirts up. I mean, if they were as good as the Biden team, they'd have had fly swatters. You remember we were talking about fly swatters that were turned around like the same day? This is the same thing. They get to make money for three weeks. Make as much money as you can for three weeks and then laugh about it at all of the company barbecues that happen subsequently. This is something

Carter 8:18

you talk about for the rest of your life.

Zain 8:20

It's a family business. So at all family dinners, at dinner every evening, they will be laughing about it. But yes, indeed. Corey, finish us off on any

Zain 8:29

final comments you have. Just get it out there.

Corey 8:33

Why don't we bridge to something more pertinent, more relevant? If we are supposed to take Donald Trump at face value you that he thinks democracy is under assault and this is effectively a coup by joe biden the fact that he was hanging out on the golf course while his idiot lawyer went to nowhere pennsylvania what is just like is isn't that just the trump it

Corey 8:55

it is legacy in a nutshell it

Zain 8:57

it is let's let's let's move into this because you have cute on something uh this was not the only stupid stuff they had uh this weekend they they started uh their election defense fund solely after the the election trying to raise money uh from their supporters cory you've talked extensively on you the people about trump's emails they also started a and carter you know this works tremendously well a hotline a hotline where you could call in to report uh fraudulent cases we talked you know last time that this is what the last gasp of a of a presidency looks like but this is even more bizarre and absurd than we thought we'd see um what do you kind of make of this this cocktail tale of strategies, if I can put it, their tactics more and more accurately in the dying final days of the Trump presidency, Carter?

Carter 9:46

Well, I think that, you know, desperate campaigns do desperate tactics. We've seen that and campaign professionals try and avoid them, right? Like, we know this is what's going to happen. So we try not to screw

Carter 9:59

screw it up and wind up in this situation. So we have We have safeguards put in place. We have mature leadership that's making sure that nothing is happening outside of our campaign structures. All of that's gone. There is no mature leadership. The mature leadership thought that putting up a voter fraud hotline was going to work for them. I

Carter 10:22

mean, all it's done is had Biden voters call in and report fraud, right? Like it's

Carter 10:28

it's just turned into a giant joke that's flooded their system and they can't keep up with the number of telephone calls. This is an enormous joke that would never be done by a normal campaign. But then again, we're in the land of Never Never Land. We've never seen anybody behave like this. So why are we surprised? But my God, like put a grown up in charge of something. There is no one in charge of anything that seems to matter except sending out, you know, what was it, 15 emails in the last, I think, two or three days, all with a fundraising bent to try and raise enough money to pay the legal bills. But really what it seems to be is pay the debts that are owed by the Trump campaign. Like every other one of Trump's businesses, this one is running at an enormous loss. Is anybody surprised? Is anybody surprised?

Zain 11:19

You know, Corey, you had a phrase a couple of episodes ago saying in the final days of a campaign, a campaign runs against itself. I feel like we need a new phrase of the days after a campaign, who it runs against. Because it still seems like themselves, are they sprinting against themselves? Because it seems

Zain 11:32

seems like sheer insanity. But what do you kind of make of the final gasps of the, if I can call it, the Trump campaign and the Trump presidency colliding together as we sit here right now on a Sunday?

Corey 11:46

Well, everything is just its concentrated form, isn't it? This is this is just Trump, what you'd normally get in a month, we're getting in a week right now. And the barbaric voting practices hotline is the perfect example of that.

Corey 11:59

I mean, how backward is this? They made this accusation that the election was rigged, and the Democrats stole it. And now they're going looking for facts. Now they're saying, we've thrown this out there. So now please call us and tell us that we're right. This doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense.

Corey 12:15

Kind of intellectually, it doesn't make any sense emotionally, tactically. no matter how you want to cut this, this is just kind of absurdity at this point. And you

Corey 12:23

are starting to see Trump's allies, and now none of them are actually taking him to task because they are fundamentally as weak as he is, but they're sure not standing next to him and talking about how right he is. The equivalent, what Republicans up and down have started to say is, well, Donald Trump has a right to contest what he thinks is illegitimate.

Corey 12:48

He's welcome to avail himself of the process is as much as they're willing to say about him right now. He does not have the support of his party on this. And I

Corey 12:58

I don't know, I don't know how he thinks this is going to end, but it's not going to end well. And it's certainly, I

Corey 13:05

I mean, I can laugh again, because it doesn't seem like he's going to have even, you know, more than just his his diehard with him. This doesn't seem to be something that the public is going to be with him on.

Zain 13:15

You know what, it is interesting, because the diehard that do stand with him, those that voted for him is the second largest vote total in American history. So it is a significant portion of the population that voted for Donald Trump. Now, I'm not saying they stand with him with these tactics and this communications crusade that he is on. But there is something to be said about the coalition that stands beside Donald Trump. So maybe I'll bridge this to a a little bit more of a serious conversation saying, you know, we sit here on the Sunday, as I mentioned, 73 odd days left until Donald Trump is out of the White House officially until January 20th. There is some damage that this man can do both communications wide, perhaps even legislatively. It's a question mark I add to that. But certainly further eroding the presidency is not out of question for Donald Trump over the next 73 days. So Carter, if I bridge to that conversation. What are you worried about? And what do you kind of suspect that someone like Donald Trump might do, knowing the fact that, you know, we still have to pay attention to him for the next 73 days, despite the lame duck status, because he's still president?

Carter 14:17

Yeah, I was really worried about this. I mean, we've talked before on You the People and on The Strategist about what we were fearful of after the Trump presidency, if it was a close election, if it wasn't decided on election night, if it took a few, you know, a little while to for the results to come in. But the good news is he's done it so comically bad that I think that his inability to string together a coherent narrative has ultimately undone everything. That and the media have finally shown some backbone and they're calling him out and they're saying that, no, this isn't true. And this is the first time that we've seen those two things. So am I worried about future legislation? No, I'm not really. You know, executive orders that are implemented in the last 73 days will be undone on day one of a Joe Biden presidency. So I'm not worried about the executive orders. There's no way that anything is going to be rammed through Congress. That's just simply not going to happen. So I'm not too fussed with what he can do on the way out. I mean, he can pardon a lot of people. He can pardon, you know, everybody and their dog. I mean, he's already done Sheriff Joe Arpaio. And that's just but one of the crazed lunatics that that that Trump has looked at and said, these are my people. So, you

Carter 15:40

you know, I'm not too fussed about what he can do. Well, I was worried about what would happen if his people, the 70 plus million people who stood behind him and voted for him, actually decided to get, you know, to get upset about this. And I just think that he's done such a bad job of messaging it. You know, like it was a really bad look for him to be on the golf course yesterday and today. Like a really like a tragically bad look to be on the golf course when Biden is named the winner. like you're literally on like the seventh hole and someone comes up and says sir i'm sorry um but you know the networks have called it for biden like that's

Carter 16:17

that's it like what i

Carter 16:19

i wasn't around i was golfing that's where my priority was that's the signal that he's saying sending to the united states of america that's the signal he's been sending uh for some time so i'm not i'm not too frustrated i'm much more comfortable today than i was a few days ago cory

Zain 16:33

cory what are you worried about, if anything? Is it legislation? Is it further erosion of the presidency? Is it none of the above? Is it some of the above?

Corey 16:41

Not legislation, because of course, the Democrats have the House, so they're not going to be able to push anything through. There will be a bunch of absurd executive orders that are just for show. I'm quite confident they will find some way to be idiots like that.

Corey 16:54

Obviously, the presidential power to pardon is something that we will all be looking at. He can't pardon himself, which is why some people will have a theory that Biden will not be the 46th president. He'll be the 47th. Perhaps Pence will get a few days in the seat. I don't know if that's necessarily likely. That would certainly

Corey 17:13

look pretty guilty. And I don't know if Pence would have much of a political career after that. But that's one of those things that's floating out there. I think the bigger problem is he has access to everything, everything.

Corey 17:27

everything. And Donald Trump has not shown himself to be a man of scruples. if he thinks that there's some sort of damage

Corey 17:34

damage he can give to the institutions of the United States on the way out the door, secrets that he can make not secrets. He's the president. He can declassify an awful lot of stuff. If he just wants to start firing a bunch of random people in the State Department, for example, it

Corey 17:52

it could be very disruptive in that sense. He has the authority as president to do so and obviously if the republicans control the senate

Corey 18:03

that presents a challenge because you might have trouble getting some of these nominations in in some of the positions that require you know nomination so cabinet level everybody gives their resignation there

Corey 18:14

there are a lot of positions beyond that requiring senate confirmation that don't necessarily turn over when the president changes and you could just have this big backlog clog that Biden's got to deal with. That's probably the biggest concerns, the staffing impacts he could do and the secrets that he could reveal that could damage the United States with its allies or, you know, its standing in the world.

Zain 18:37

Yeah, Carter, you know, Corey brings up a great point here. And we've seen that Trump's history has always been self-interest. So before I wrap this up and kind of move on, anything

Zain 18:48

anything related to a self-interest that you're worried about that you know for the next 73 days that he could do cory talks about exposing state state secrets firing people declassifying anything if if you get the most selfish individual who's backed into a corner uh with the access and the power of the presidency for the next 73 days anything in that realm that you might be worried about well

Carter 19:10

well i mean i'm trying to think like like obviously they were using the trump hotels like the uh like they were American consulates overseas, you know, they would land US Air Force flights near a Trump hotel and then overnight in, I think that was in Ireland or Scotland, I think it was Scotland, you know, to stay at the resort and fill up the room nights.

Carter 19:37

I don't think you can do that right now. I think that the eyes, it's not that the eyes are on them anymore. It's just that now the civil servant who's asked to do that gets to say no in a way that they didn't get to say no, you know, earlier

Carter 19:51

earlier in Trump's tenure. So I think that it's actually a little bit safer now, safer in quotation marks, for the public service to start shifting over. I mean, I was really pleased to see the Secret Service show up in and

Carter 20:10

and start guarding Biden. I'm not sure that that came through, because I think the Secret Service now reports through the Department of Homeland Security, and the DHS secretary is still an acting Trumper. So I was worried that there

Carter 20:27

there may be orders given not to do those types of things, but they're

Carter 20:31

they're not happening, and the bureaucracy is behaving as the bureaucracy is

Carter 20:35

is supposed to. And Corey has more insight into how a bureaucracy prepares and is ready for a turnover whenever there's an election. But they're behaving as I would hope. And that's really good.

Zain 20:50

Corey, anything to add on the self-interest front before I close off this part of the conversation?

Corey 20:57

Donald Trump has proven himself to be a petty, petty man the last four years. He has incurred tens of millions of dollars of expenses to the public purse for the Secret Service following him to his golf courses. He has gotten

Corey 21:10

gotten the Secret Service to stay at hotels he owns, resorts he owns, which has enriched his family. I don't think we will see that end. I also think I think even post-presidency, we'll see him, because he has Secret Service details still, continue

Corey 21:24

continue to soak the public for basically everything. If I was Joe Biden, I would not expect to come into a White House that had towels or bathrobes. I'm sure those will be in the luggage on the way out.

Corey 21:37

and um you know frankly anything that's not bolted down i would probably want to have a good index enough because i just don't trust the man but um i think his graft will be petty

Corey 21:48

petty uh not large scale because there's just too many protections in place for the large scale type at this point carter

Zain 21:54

carter you get a call tomorrow from rudy giuliani it's monday morning and he says steven i want to to meet you at the lobby of the Fairmont hair salon to have coffee.

Zain 22:08

want to talk about Donald Trump's plan. He's got 72 days left as of tomorrow morning. I want you to help me strategize how he takes the last 72 days and maximizes his output. It's, of course, not the presidency. He's given up on that. He's conceding on that internally. How do you maximize the brand that is Donald Trump beyond tomorrow? What are you putting in place for Donald Trump? And I know asking you to do this is perhaps against your morals, so to speak, but give me the strategic off-ramp for Donald Trump. What could this guy be doing after this presidency? And what do you think he's, if he plays his cards right, strategizing for?

Carter 22:53

Oh, I hate you for these These ones. These ones are just brutal.

Carter 22:57

My inclination is to say, you know, concede and be a bigger man and, you know, preserve your brand that way. That's entirely wrong, of course. What he should do is what he's doing. He should say that this thing is stolen from him the entire time. He should double down on QAnon. And he should be reading up on every conspiracy theory that's on the Internet right now, making sure that he's well versed in it so that when he has his his new television empire and hosts it is his new YouTube, because I'm sure that YouTube proper won't allow him to be on it. You know, and he has Alex Jones on as a special guest star. He'll be able to speak with a degree of intelligence towards the things that his audience wants him to speak to. so you know the election has to be stolen from them this there has to be a queue there has to be a uh

Carter 23:55

you know the the these

Carter 23:56

these are the things that he should be focused on right now not not the things around um uh

Carter 24:03

uh you know what is honest or true or you know honorable none of that matters in Trump land. So double

Carter 24:13

keep your brand, 73 days of being kicked out of there and plan your first live broadcast on January the 20th at 1158 and

Carter 24:22

carry that sucker all the way through about how you've been wronged.

Carter 24:26

There's no downside for him, so you may as well go for it.

Zain 24:30

Corey, what are you suggesting? You have that same invite to meet at the Ritz insurance company any thereafter what are you what are you doing well

Corey 24:40

well the first of all i tell them to go talk to steven carter obviously i think rudy would get along really well with them but

Corey 24:50

what i say is all right you lost now's the time to to talk about your last hundred days and how you're going to use them and make that your strategy make that the intentionality you bring into the last hundred days you

Corey 25:02

you were hoping to have more time to do it you know in a way that caused less chaos, but it's more important it gets done than that feelings are spared. So you are going to drain the swamp on your way out the door. Clean house. I talked about those 1,200 positions that are presidential with Senate appointment or Senate confirmation needed, but there's a lot more positions than that. Fire as enemies. Make a huge number of appointments of people that you think that you can trust. Basically make it just a total nightmare for the Democrats to undo. do. Broad pardoning of the people who work for you because you say you're not going to deal with the retribution on the way out the door. Make some political statements like a broad pardoning of police services who are being abused by the Democrats, you can say. Really just fuck things up in a way that your base will eat up. That is probably what you want to do if you want to maintain relevance going forward.

Corey 25:57

And even if it all gets undone immediately by Joe Biden, you will be a folk hero to a certain type of Republican, and you will have the ability to be kingmaker in 2024 if you're still upright. So that's what I do. Basically, every crazy Republican idea that you know does not actually work for governing, I implement. Knowing Joe Biden will just undo them anyhow, but people have been calling for it, and you're going to be the guy who got to do it, and maybe they'll put you on a coin someday once everybody forgets all of the nonsense and just sees you as this conservative folk hero now

Corey 26:33

again this is uh this is uh what he would want to do it's not what i would want to see happen and

Zain 26:41

and of course that's

Corey 26:41

that's not that strategy

Zain 26:42

strategy that's his face on a coin after the civil war and the republicans are their own country just to be totally clear that it's yeah

Corey 26:49

i mean he'll be

Corey 26:49

be on the republic he'll be on the one million dollar dollar bill which you'll have the buying power of exactly two american dollars yeah we'll

Zain 26:58

we'll leave that segment there and move it on to our next segment our next segment america gets its shoulder rub guys joe biden the the the new president-elects of the united states you just that just settled it just like a just like an efficient shoulder rub it took some time

Carter 27:14

it took some time

Zain 27:14

time it takes Quality takes some time.

Zain 27:18

He is here. Joe Biden is president-elect of the United States. On Saturday morning, on the day in November that had the mysteriously awesome weather across the cities of America, the liberal elite media announced Donald Trump was the—I'm sorry, Joe Biden was president-elect, and people took to the streets to celebrate. Guys, I want to talk about, first of all, the celebrations on the street. Had you seen anything like that before? And kind of tell me about, and I don't want to get into deep pop psychology, but was this a celebration of joy or celebration of relief? I'm kind of curious to get your take what these pseudo spontaneous celebrations breaking out, starting in Washington, then expanding across the cities of major cities of America, kind of meant to you and what you kind of took from them. Corey, maybe I'll start with you.

Corey 28:12

Yeah, it wasn't the celebration of the start of Joe Biden's presidency. It was a celebration of the end of Donald Trump's, right? I saw somebody online. I can't remember who, so I'm sorry I'm not giving credit. But like, what kind of asshole do you have to be that they're ringing church bells in Paris when you get fired? And it's true. The celebrations weren't even limited to the United States of America. And they were pretty delightful to watch. People literally dancing in the streets, in city after city.

Corey 28:42

I've not seen anything like that. The only time I've seen celebrations spontaneously break out into the streets was when I was in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics when we won the gold medal. Literally the only time I've seen that spontaneously happen, which

Corey 28:56

really tells you something about the state of America right now, because that's obviously a lot of relief that's driving that to your question. But I can't

Corey 29:06

can't imagine that there were celebrations in the streets in some of the rural areas of the United States that went 80% for Trump. So quite a divide. And when you see things in such existential terms, we can't be surprised turnout on both sides was so high. just so so high and um i

Corey 29:25

i don't know i mean i i guess democrats have to be careful this

Corey 29:29

i'm sure is nauseating to people who voted republican yeah

Zain 29:32

yeah does it carter to that point does this seem like rubbing it in like i know this was not campaign coordinated but is this kind of furthering the divide does this kind of feel like retribution for republicans celebrating maybe a little bit too hard in 2016 um you know give me give me your sort of take both on the the celebrations itself? And then quickly, if you can pivot to the politics of it a bit as well. I

Carter 29:53

think that the celebrations themselves are really heartfelt. I think that the people really feel like they needed to get out from underneath this. And I think there's a couple of things. Obviously, there's the Trump being, you know, Trump being out, you know, ding dong, the king is dead. But there's

Carter 30:11

there's also a sense

Carter 30:14

sense of the general challenges being faced by the country. And so So you get to celebrate because, you know, this is the first time you've been allowed out of your house for months if you're living in certain jurisdictions, right? The COVID case numbers are super, super high. And you know what? This is an excuse that it is good enough to finally allow you to go out and have something that replaces the Pride Festival, which was canceled, or something that's replaced the Friday night tailgate

Carter 30:43

parties, right? Right. These are the things that people used to do together and they're all gone. And now they took this opportunity to celebrate together. Does this hurt? Does this cause a rift with the Republicans? Absolutely. It causes a rift with the Republicans. The Republican, you know, Corey mentioned the 80 percent districts that are that weren't out celebrating. You know, the fear was that when the celebration took place, that there would be someone else who showed up who was angry. angry that didn't happen primarily because frankly the angry places are quite far removed from the happy places the happy places are anywhere that a general that there is a city the unhappy places are places where there is not a city and so those

Carter 31:29

extremes if you will

Carter 31:31

created are just reflecting the distance between the democrats and the republicans And let's be honest. I mean, it wasn't just in person, right? The celebrations on TikTok, the celebrations on Twitter, and the crying that's happening on Parler. I mean, like, all of these different mediums are aflame with people who are either feeling joy or anger. And I think,

Carter 32:02

think, though, that it's manageable at this stage. So I'm much more comfortable with the angry. But if I were the Democrats, if I were Joe Biden's, I'd say, you know, like, it is the celebration was last weekend. This weekend, it's time to get down to work. This week is time to get down to work.

Zain 32:18

Carter, you make a good point. I want to talk about transition very shortly and what that means for Biden and his team, even starting as soon as tomorrow, Monday. But Corey, before we get there, let's talk about the Saturday night events with President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Let's talk about what we usually do in these situations. Let's start with stagecraft and then perhaps let's dig a little bit deep into the message. So give me a sense of what you saw from stagecraft from both of them, both from the appearance to the set that they kind of the stage, I should say, that they were at. And then, of course, us watching them watching fireworks for 15 minutes. We can leave that till the end. But what did you kind of kind of make for from what you saw with with the Democrats and how they put together victory night on on Saturday evening?

Corey 33:03

I wanted to start with the fireworks. Those drones were cool.

Corey 33:06

They were moving around and doing that thing. I'm not a big fireworks guy, but that was pretty impressive.

Zain 33:11

Corey, we have the internet. We don't need fireworks anymore. Exactly.

Corey 33:14

Yeah, listen, I'm the guy who will say that first and foremost. I can't think of anything kind of dumber than just staring at things exploding for entertainment. Like, come on. This is the era of Netflix and Disney+. Have you seen The Mandalorian? It's really boring. No, you'd rather just go watch something explode outside? No, I'd watch it. Yeah, I'd rather

Zain 33:32

rather watch a 78-year-old man watch something blow his mind.

Zain 33:38

Because the awe that he had, he was like, is this Netflix? Anyways, go ahead.

Corey 33:47

I don't know, Zane. I guess I would say it was comforting in that it was pretty presidential of years past. It was those standard platitudes about bringing the nation together. You know, there's not red states or blue states. there's the United States. Listen, a version of that line has been used ever since we started referring to red states and blue states. Barack Obama famously said something very similar. But I think that was almost its value, just this idea that it's all sort of back to normal. But

Corey 34:18

the idea that you are just going to bridge this nation's divide and you're going to calm all of the fears and anxieties that exist out there is, yeah, I mean, have that feeling for Saturday night, but it's not going to be so simple. And it's not made simple by everybody celebrating as though they were the Ewoks at the end of Return of the Jedi, right?

Corey 34:41

This is the problem that the Democrats have is still a very divided nation. And the celebrations, as much as they were framed as for the nation as a whole, were really democratic celebrations still.

Corey 34:52

in many Anyways, I think that's because Biden

Corey 34:55

did what he had to do. He had to, once the outlets said, you're the winner,

Corey 35:00

winner, he's got to say, yeah, okay, I'm the winner. The outlets have said that. But for

Corey 35:04

for a big chunk of the nation, the voting's not done. It's not going to be done until the court decisions have all gone through. And when their leaders in the Republican Party stand up and actually make a statement about these things, even if they don't believe that Joe Biden is lost, they might still think it's a little soon for him to say that he's won. And certainly it's it's too soon for many of them who would otherwise be there saying, oh, there's a new president, because

Corey 35:29

because it's like this is all feeling very raw for a lot of people right now. So unfortunately

Corey 35:34

unfortunately for Joe Biden, the situation he has between the Senate still being up for grabs and divided

Corey 35:41

divided government and the fact that there are likely going to be court challenges, even if they're going to go nowhere, means he's kind of robbed of that moment that so many new presidents get of saying, OK, the partisanship's behind because he's going to have to turn himself to partisanship very quickly. And I think even his nonpartisan moment had a partisan flavor because of the moment that we were in. So it'll be interesting to see where we go from here.

Zain 36:05

Carter, I'll get to you in a second. Corey, follow up for you. Was the message right for Biden? Did you feel like the bridging together message on Victory Night was right? And then following up on that, do you feel like there was something he could have done to make his celebrations more American rather than more Democratic Party victory?

Corey 36:23

Well, it was absolutely the right message. And the thing he could have done is waited. He didn't need to do it Saturday night as soon as. And, you know, in a funny way, this is the kind of thing that people on the other side will then point to as hypocrisy. Mr. Let's count every vote. Let's wait. The minute the call is for him, he's happy to just say, no, I won. You know, we do have votes outstanding in the United States still.

Corey 36:46

He may have found himself able to get a little bit more goodwill if he had just waited a bit. But like I said, I don't know if that was an option, because then it would have made it look like it was uncertain whether he was going to be president, which may have played into Donald Trump's legal strategy.

Corey 36:58

So this is what I mean when I say he was robbed of that moment. He didn't really have a choice, but he did the best he could with the moment he found. Carter,

Zain 37:07

Carter, same question for you. What do you kind of make of the Biden stagecraft and messaging? And then, you know, to what we were talking about, Corey, I'll ask it to you all together. What did you did you feel like there was something he could have done to make his his his statement of

Zain 37:22

of bridging the country more inclusive by action, perhaps on Victory Night?

Carter 37:26

Victory Night is not a night for inclusion. Victory Night is a night for the people who got you there.

Carter 37:31

And both Biden and Harris spent

Carter 37:33

spent a lot of time talking about the people who got them there and

Carter 37:36

and giving them the opportunity to bask

Carter 37:38

bask in the glory of that night. That night is the best night in politics. The night that you stand in front of your friends and family and accept the will of the people is wonderful. I mean, Corey is unfamiliar with it. But when you win, it's a special feeling. And I think that Biden needed to take that moment for his team, not for the country in general. And I think that he did bring the country to

Carter 38:06

to the table. I mean, I think he said the right words. I think he did

Carter 38:09

did what he needed to do to give them that sense. But they

Carter 38:13

they didn't want to come to the table yet. yet. And on top of that, I mean, the part that I disliked, I mean, I'm not going to pick apart the fireworks because, you know, people like fireworks, but I will just say that I didn't like his speech. I liked the words of his speech just fine. The words of his speech were, I think that frankly, any one of the three of us could have written that speech. We know exactly the notes that needed to be

Carter 38:37

be hit. We would have hit all the notes. That wasn't the problem. The way he delivered it for

Carter 38:43

for me was the problem um

Carter 38:46

he was just yelling into that microphone he let that microphone know who's who and uh you know if you were to compare him to harris harris had a lot more um you

Carter 38:59

tonal change she had a lot more control she had you know she she silenced the audience she brought the audience back up uh some of the stagecraft things that we would uh look to see in a seasoned professional, Harris brought to the table in a way that Biden just simply couldn't or didn't. So I was a little disappointed by his speech, stagecraft

Zain 39:25

Were you disappointed or were you fine with what Biden delivered?

Corey 39:32

I was fine. I don't know if I do believe this was for his team. I don't, I think he had a lot of this was his team notes. Certainly, I agree with Stephen on that front. But you got to keep in mind, this was his third speech since election night. And so I think the moment for the team speech had passed. And given what was going on, and given the context in which he found himself declared the presumptive next president of the United States, it was not a team speech. It was an America speech. speech. And in that sense, maybe he hit the team stuff too hard. But no, I think it was a fine speech. It was the speech you give when you win an election. It's just unfortunate that we're in this moment of limbo. But like I said, them's the breaks. Carter,

Zain 40:19

Carter, let's move on to transition. We have the celebration on Saturday night. On the heels of that Biden and team announced that they are going to put together a task force that's going to be announced Monday morning to fight COVID-19. They've announced that the former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is going to be leading parts of that task force. That's the first sort of sign of business we've heard coming from the Biden team, the right first step. And where do they kind of go from here in your mind?

Carter 40:51

I don't think there's an American out there that's not primarily concerned with COVID-19. It is scary. It is running rampant. And it's killing hundreds of thousands of them. So I think that Americans are concerned about it. So having that as a first priority makes an awful lot of sense.

Carter 41:11

Personally, I mean, I think that that's what he needed to do. To Corey's point, like, I'm kind of pleased that he wasn't overly political about it. You know, he's going to come together with a group of scientists and people who are professionals at this who can help. Arguably, that in and of itself is political because the other side is rejecting. That's, you know, but for me, that was a good thing to hear. I am more worried about the politics of Georgia and what's going to happen with the Senate runoffs. So I'm actually really interested in what happens with the cabinet announcements and those types of things. But to me, Joe Biden getting down to work right now is exactly the message that Americans need to see. He didn't wait until Monday to kind of put this thing out that it was going to happen. He jumped into it, and

Carter 42:05

present the country with a solution to arguably its biggest problem.

Zain 42:12

Corey, you know, I'll ask you the same question if you've got any comments on it, but maybe I'll pivot to a slightly different one, which is what's the overarching philosophy for Joe Biden right now if you're advising Team Biden on their transition? So, you know, COVID is at the top of the list, but is there an overarching philosophy in how you're pointing, for example, to Carter's point, your cabinet? Is it a group of, you know, statesman-like people? Are you bridging on the other side of republicanism? Are you showcasing this divide and adding people from both sides? Or are you just saying, I need people who I can trust and fuck it, we have like serious times that I may only have four years to do this. I need to get my people in place. What is kind of your overarching philosophy for this messy middle that is the next 70 days for for Team Biden in their transition?

Corey 42:58

is not going to be the transition he dreamed of when he was a young man cutting transition pictures out of magazines and putting them on his hope wall, right? Right. The fact of the matter is, Trump

Corey 43:09

Trump is not going to play ball. Trump isn't playing ball. His administration is not playing ball. Under the Presidential Transition Act, the work behind the scenes, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some future date, because I do have some thoughts on that and some background on that, has been occurring for months. You know, they've been getting ready at the department level to brief all sorts of new people coming in and otherwise

Corey 43:33

otherwise turn over to a bunch of new bosses the keys to the place.

Corey 43:39

the transition proper, what

Corey 43:42

what we consider sort of the transition that begins once the election has concluded, isn't

Corey 43:47

isn't beginning yet. end. One of these little known things that occurs is that the GSA says you are the presumptive new president. And therefore, here is your budget of $10 million. I think it's 10 million for this year, and it's more next year.

Corey 44:02

And here is your office space. And here are your.gov email addresses. Now let's get down to business figuring out how to do things smoothly.

Corey 44:10

Well, they've denied that right now. And I can't imagine that they're going to provide that until Donald Trump concedes, Because what administrator in their right mind is going to say, I am a member of the Trump administration and I've decided Donald Trump has lost, right, before Donald Trump has. So you're not going to get the transition that the Presidential Transition Act imagines, where there's this orderly sequencing

Corey 44:32

sequencing of business in and it's based on the operational needs. needs.

Corey 44:36

So if you're not going to get the operational transition, time

Corey 44:39

time for a political transition, time for one that does the things you need it to do in order to get those Senate seats in Georgia, or at least give yourself as much of a chance as possible. So the actions I'm decreeing, the comments I'm making, the people I'm appointing or acknowledging or noting that I'm going to appoint are the ones that are going to get me as much lift as possible politically in the great state of Georgia. Because if you somehow pull off a miracle and get those Senate seats, and you manage to get yourself the 50 needed to govern without Republican assistance, boy, it's a totally different ballgame. And again, you're not going to get the operational transition.

Corey 45:16

What else can you get out of this? Let's make a, you know, let's make a purse out of this sow's ear. So that's what I'd be doing. Carter,

Zain 45:23

Carter, how are you then playing to the politics of Georgia here? Like, what are some some strategic angles that you teased out last time, you know, on you, the people you mentioned, Stacey Abrams, dangling that in front of Georgia voters saying, I can't get her confirmed until you get me to Senate seats. On that same line of politicking, how are you utilizing the powers of President-elect to focus on Georgia and kind of, you know, ensuring that the work for the Senate is done in a proper way?

Carter 45:54

Well, I'm going to really dig in. I'm going to dig in really big on Stacey Abrams. I mean, I think she's, her stock has only gone up since the election. She's near rockstar level. And I think that she gives the good people of Georgia an opportunity to see themselves represented in government, in a Joe Biden administration. So I would double down on making sure that she is visible. I would also make sure that whatever is the key issue of the believe it's the peach state is it not cory um then

Carter 46:31

then i would be making sure that they get everything they want uh and i am signaling it um in a way that you know we talked about what donald trump can do donald trump can do a lot of this too but uh i think that joe biden for the next four years has a lot more weight uh than donald trump for the next uh for the next 73 days so that's kind Kind of where I would go is figuring out how – it's going to sound pretty horrible, but how can I buy their votes? Because you need them. They've got them. They're selling, and you're buying. So go see if you can reach a deal and get yourself a couple of senators. That would be the ideal way of doing it.

Zain 47:15

Right after your meeting with Rudy Giuliani. I like that, Carter. That sounds about right. Carter, I'm going to ask you the question I did to Corey, which is what is your overarching philosophy for Team Biden? 72 days, is it? I assumed it was, but I could be wrong. So is it strictly about the Senate? Or do you have other sort of overarching philosophies? Like, for example, around the cabinet, like, are you looking at making this a, I shouldn't call it a bipartisan cabinet, but maybe a bridge solution that has folks that might be center right, for example? Are you just getting people you trust? How are you kind of balancing both the needs of Georgia and the runoffs, the needs of putting together your transition in the cabinet, and then the overarching needs of like healing the country, so to speak? I'd be kind of curious to hear your philosophical take on what you'd be advising Team Biden at this point. Are

Carter 48:02

Are there any reasonable Republicans left?

Carter 48:05

I mean, like, what are you going to do, appoint John Kasich to cabinet? That's one of the rumors. I mean, yes, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it for a number of reasons, not the least of which I don't win anybody over. There is no point in putting John Kasich into the Senate into a cabinet position as secretary of the Treasury. I don't know. I'm just making something up because it's not like Mitch McConnell is going to go Kasich.

Carter 48:28

Kasich. I love that guy. You know, how can I make a deal happen with Kasich? He's my boy. It's not going to happen. So don't bother because anybody you're going to want to put in isn't going to have any value to you. unless you were to like you

Carter 48:42

know resurrect season seven of the west wing and go and ask you know donald trump himself to serve as your secretary of state you know it's just it's asinine it's not going to happen but

Zain 48:54

but but it worked out

Carter 48:55

out in that show

Zain 48:57

worked out carter so it must work vinic

Carter 48:58

vinic is no donald trump damn it um no there's no it didn't it wouldn't have worked then it it might have worked in that ideal situation where you had a a pretend republican looking like Arnold Vinnick. These aren't pretend Republicans. We know who they are. And I would counter it simply by putting in literally the best, most qualified cabinet you could possibly pull together. I wouldn't put a single person in there who was getting it on a

Carter 49:29

political front, right? Everybody who's going to be in there is going to be in there because they are the very best for that job. That's one of the reasons I wouldn't put Pete Buttigieg in.

Carter 49:38

Pete Buttigieg would be nowhere near my cabinet. He would be well outside of it because it

Carter 49:45

it would be so political. He is so good and so political. Just

Carter 49:49

Just let him be excellent and be political.

Zain 49:53

Corey, I did not want to get into this today per se, but Carter's kind of teased it up. So here we go. There is also the running parallel commentary, which I want to spend a full episode deep diving on because there is once the data comes in. But the progressive Democrats, the left Democrats, the social justice, Justice Dems, AOC was out today with an extensive New York Times interview, calling the Democratic establishment dinosaurs, not knowing how to campaign. campaign, you know, pushing back against the emerging narrative that it was the fact that Joe Biden had to live in the same camp with these progressive Democrats, which is what cost him a lot of votes and perhaps cost him seats in at least at the Senate level and perhaps even at the House level. How are you playing this if you're team Biden right now? Like, are you ignoring this chatter? Are you giving any hat tip to the social democratic wing of your party? Are you just powering through using your mandate to going center right, center left, so to speak? How are you kind of reconciling this, this increase, you know, this narrative that's starting to be emerged, this both offense and defense of the social Democrat strategy?

Corey 51:00

If I'm Joe Biden, I don't mind this narrative, in a sense, because it allows you to be a little bit more towards the center, which may help you in Georgia. You know, Georgia is interesting to me.

Corey 51:10

Georgia has, you know, some foundational progressive values driving the big turnout we saw there and the registration. registration.

Corey 51:19

But on the whole, I suspect that Georgia probably is a little bit more conservative on some issues than, you

Corey 51:27

you know, the Ocasio-Cortez's of the world are. So I

Corey 51:30

don't mind people saying, well, Biden's going to be a little more right. And it's proven that they're, you know, that that's not where the power of the Democrats is. But you wouldn't want it to get out of control either. And you wouldn't want your coalition to start showing some cracks. And certainly, I think job Job number one is making sure that you are still all one team for the next bit because Trump

Corey 51:49

Trump is still president. There's still a couple of elections going on until, what, January 5th, I think, is the runoffs. And beyond

Corey 51:55

beyond that, there's going to be a rough slog governing, and

Corey 51:58

and Democrats divided will get even less done than Democrats united, and they might not get very much done as Democrats united against Mitch McConnell. So, you

Corey 52:08

know, it's something that you may want to make sure that you're not going too nuts on. But I'm sure that

Corey 52:16

that there are people in Biden's camp, perhaps even Biden himself, saying like, well, good, maybe we don't need to kowtow so much to the progressive side of this organization. And now that there's these, you know, kind of flags on the field, shall we say, the fact that the Democrats have lost seats in the House, they've gained seats, but not as many as expected in the Senate, and obviously underperformed in the presidential race relative to where hopes were, if not expectations. Carter

Zain 52:45

Carter finishes off here. What do you think of the emerging narrative about the Social Democrats, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party? Is this something Biden leans into? Is it something he shows and hat tips either at a cabinet level, for example, anywhere within his party? Or, or does he kind of just outright ignore it in these in these early stages of transition? Pick

Carter 53:05

your spots. You're going to say to the far

Carter 53:09

far left, if you will, the AOCs, you're going to get your climate initiatives because that's how I'm going to rebuild the economy, but you're not going to get your Medicare for all. So stand with me on the climate and the economy, but you don't get Medicare for all. Instead, we're going to do this other piece, this other imagining of a fair system.

Carter 53:34

That's going to have to be tradeoffs. So put in a progressive as a secretary that's going to be implementing the

Carter 53:42

the climate change initiative. Put in a brand new department. I don't care. Go for it. Give them someone that they love. But don't hand this all over. It's not going to be handed over. And this is why one of the reasons I think that it shouldn't be that political of a cabinet. Make it a competence cabinet. And in theory, you keep more Democrats than you lose.

Zain 54:04

Corey, I was going to jump there, but you're shaking your head. So I want to go to you before I move on to the next segment. But I

Corey 54:11

think that we'd have another hour if we let this unpack a bit further. I do want to say the idea that progressivism was an anchor in some areas needs a lot of unpacking because there are, quote

Corey 54:22

quote unquote, progressive ideas that are absurdly popular, including Medicare for all.

Carter 54:26

Including the wealth tax.

Corey 54:27

Including the wealth tax. Yeah, including the wealth tax.

Corey 54:30

But there is a general packaging of progressivism that we need to talk about too. And I'm not even saying that I have perfect certainty in the answer, but what I do want to say is there's

Corey 54:41

there's the baby in the bathwater, and maybe there are things about the progressive message that

Corey 54:45

that are more about the

Corey 54:46

the way it was delivered than what was being delivered, and maybe that needs to be thought about rather than just wholesale saying this is a rejection of progressivism. The other thing is, I think AOC has got a point about digital campaigns. I haven't done the research. I haven't looked through it. She makes an assertion that digital campaigning was a weakness for the areas or the Democrats that underperformed. Not sure. I'm going to look into that. But I think it's an interesting hypothesis. And I definitely feel like some of those campaigns looked pretty last century. So more to come. Yeah,

Zain 55:16

Yeah, thanks for framing our special episode, Corey. This is great. We'll, for the first time in the history of The Strategist, maybe do some research prior to showing up? Probably not. But once the data is in, I do want to talk about this, because there is a really interesting both campaign, governance, message, messenger, conversation, deep dive to be done, and frankly, not even including the parallels to be made here in Canada, where we have a divided left from a federal landscape, and to talk about some of those comparators. So leave that there and move it on to our next segment. Foods are whole, but hearts are empty. Guys, I want to talk about Whole Foods. It is a bit of a mini controversy here in Canada. So if you have not heard, a U.S.-based Whole Foods market had said poppies weren't allowed under its recently updated uniform policy. It was a recent policy change that they had. They then came out with the statement doubling down. And then only after they had a conversation with the Veterans Affairs Minister, Lawrence McCauley, who talked to the COO of Whole Foods that they've now said, yes, employees of Whole Foods, you are allowed to wear poppies. You know, on this show, we've discussed quite a few times, you know, corporate communications, you know, why they make certain decisions, what their decisions were, were they right or wrong. Carter, I want to start with you first. Let's go top line. What did you make of Whole Foods' choice here to kind of double down? Because that's, I think, the strategy that I want to focus in on, on saying, no, we've got a policy. It's not like we don't support veterans and the Legion, et cetera, but we've got a policy and we're sticking with it. What did you make of their strategy and their statement? I understood

Carter 56:52

understood their strategy. I mean, they're in an incredibly polarized environment in the United States. You don't want your staff showing up and wearing buttons from various causes. I mean, Black Lives Matter is a really worthy cause, you know, especially in the United States. People are going to show up. They're going to be wearing Black Lives Matter buttons.

Carter 57:20

That's great, except in some places that's going to hurt your sales. sales the whole foods doesn't want to have to uh fight the black lives matter things and they don't want them showing up with you know the liver foundation the kidney foundation like there's a million causes and some of them are great and some of them aren't great um you know it's

Carter 57:39

it's not like they're going to show up wearing a white pride flag but maybe i don't know so

Carter 57:44

so you develop a simple little policy that says no why

Zain 57:46

why does white pride have a flag oh yeah they do it's

Carter 57:51

honestly. Like, how have you not followed? But corporations develop policies to protect themselves.

Carter 57:58

And this was designed to protect them from a polarized environment where a staff member is going to wear something that's going to offend customers. Unfortunately,

Carter 58:10

they've applied that in a situation where really no one is offended by a poppy. And a poppy is not the same statement. And they got caught in it, right? And I'm sure that they'll be caught in other things because these blanket policies are very, very tricky to manage. They they did. Now that they've backed down on this one, they're putting themselves in a really tough situation for the next issue that they're going to have to back down on. So I have empathy for Whole Foods. Well, at the same time, I think it was a stupid policy in general, but I understand why they did it.

Zain 58:49

that was not the evisceration of whole foods that i thought stephen carter would uh would no i

Carter 58:54

i totally would go down so some

Carter 58:56

i can't eviscerate them for trying to protect their business and trying to avoid a conversation that they just don't want to have

Zain 59:03

cory i'm curious to get your take uh do you do you align with with carter on this do you feel like uh that they were looking at the whole picture here from their corp comms strategy or or are you a little bit less uh should i say sympathetic

Corey 59:17

i'm less sympathetic because i think the mistakes they made were entirely avoidable and there were two primary mistakes that i'd like to point out here one

Corey 59:25

one is they became so rule bound rules are a means to an end they're in service of objectives and blind application of those rules gets you into trouble like this right they they failed to appreciate that in canada and

Corey 59:39

and this sort sort of ties to my second point but in canada the um the

Corey 59:43

the poppy is an apolitical statement of of almost regret about war right and it's it's a statement that is supported by all sides all spectrum i mean the house of commons had a unanimous vote about it if there was any doubt about whether what i'm saying is true and um it's the equivalent of the american flag lapel pin in the united states i'm sure that if whole foods in the united states had was said like can you have have an american flag on it and they said no they would realize the danger they were in there like this

Corey 1:00:12

this is this is the equivalent in our country and

Corey 1:00:15

and the other mistake they made that was entirely avoidable that i hinted to is a lack of local intelligence this is something you see with it's

Corey 1:00:23

it's a common problem with global corporations large multinationals face this all of the time but i don't think a canadian would have made this mistake and i'm sure that canadians even told them I don't know if you want to do this, or you might be stepping into something. But when you are sitting there in, I don't know, Seattle? Is that where Whole Foods is headquartered? I don't even know. Yeah, inside

Zain 1:00:44

inside Jeff Bezos' house. Yeah. Yeah.

Corey 1:00:48

Maybe you don't see the issue so clearly, and maybe you think it's pretty black and white from where you sit. But when you have these centralized command and control operations, and you apply those rules, and you disregard local intelligence, disregard intelligence of the audience that you're serving, you're committing the most serious of communications errors, right? You need to understand your audience and what your audience's reaction will be to these things. And so these tie together. Like if your objective is to stay out of controversy and that's why you didn't allow people to wear pins, well, you fucking failed on your objective even though you followed your rule perfectly. And I think, again, local people could have told you about that. So that's why I think they made a mistake. I also think the minute the media started calling

Corey 1:01:30

calling them, they should have had enough Twitter traffic to be like, oh, oh, shit. OK, let's get out of this as fast as possible.

Corey 1:01:37

And it would have been nice if they had backed out a little bit faster. And I think they had enough incoming

Corey 1:01:42

incoming for them to realize that they had really stepped in it. So, yeah, yeah, I don't I don't give them as much of sympathy as Stephen does. I

Zain 1:01:49

I want to I want to stick with you for a second, Corey, but you make an interesting point about the social media traffic. You know, companies have taken so many stances in recent memory and have gotten burnt in the past. And, you know, especially in a divided America where they feel like if they take a stance, they're going to get two sided on everything. They're going to get some support, some hate. And perhaps to them, they weren't able to discern between is this just a standard hate this issue gets? Or is this like the large majority of the population that is kind of speaking against our stance here? So I think there's probably something to be said about that. But to Carter's point, you know, Corey, I'm putting you on the spot, but how would you have navigated this particular issue? You know, you add local intelligence, okay, you add being more flexible than being rule bound. But how would you have navigated this issue that Carter mentions about now opening themselves up to other campaigns, other issues, other initiatives, which he feels like they clearly have? How would you have navigated that line for them? well

Corey 1:02:44

that's a slippery slope argument and unfortunately by the volume being risen that is more likely now that people will point to it and have this active example that they can point to and say well look you you let the poppy do it after after much blowback why can't it be the canadian flag why can't it be the alberta flag why can't it be the alberta flag in bc why can't but you

Corey 1:03:03

you have the ability to just say no right and and uh no the poppy is special is actually a pretty pretty acceptable response most of the time. So again, rules are a means to an end, and they are in service of an objective. What they needed to do was have the intelligence that this was going to get too hot and move back. So what would I have done differently?

Corey 1:03:22

I probably would have, you

Corey 1:03:24

you know, assuming I can't go back in time. So this is already a problem.

Zain 1:03:28

You're part of their executive team, for example, right there.

Corey 1:03:31

I'm part of the executive team. And somebody bursts in and says,

Corey 1:03:35

we got a problem on social media. And my response was, well, is it is it the Trump campaign or the the biden campaign mad at me and they say no the canadians right i

Corey 1:03:43

probably would say all

Corey 1:03:45

all right uh why okay

Corey 1:03:47

okay they're mad can we ground proof this can we understand whether this is just one side or if this is now we've universally stepped in it you've got to push this a bit you've got to work quickly talk to our managers on the ground ask our five smartest managers in canada what we should be doing right now guarantee you they universally would have all come back with you got to keep Keep the poppy, man. Like, this is not a question.

Corey 1:04:10

And you could have done all of that in 30 minutes. And then you wouldn't necessarily have spent two hours doubling down on it before you finally backed down on it. When literally the parliament of this country has unanimous resolution about it. When the government of Ontario is talking about legislation to essentially force people to be allowed to wear poppies in the workplace. When

Zain 1:04:29

When the Veterans Affairs Minister has to have a call with your COO, when we've got legislation, when the Premier of Ontario is trying to create it, to allow people to wear poppies, and when you have the prime minister going on national television saying it's a silly mistake by a U.S.-based company. Sorry, I just wanted to add that additional context.

Corey 1:04:46

Absolutely. And you just can't be so stubborn, because I suspect there was some stubbornness, too. I bet you they lost at least half an hour with people saying, well, this is the right policy. Tough.

Corey 1:04:54

And what they should have said is, hmm, maybe

Corey 1:04:57

maybe I better go talk to a few more people. Maybe I better do the things that I didn't do and should have done earlier, which is see what local audiences demand. Carter,

Zain 1:05:04

Carter, same question, too, that I asked Corey. Corey, what would your proposed solution to them? You're also at that executive table. You're, of course, working under Corey.

Zain 1:05:15

Corey says, I don't have time to deal with this. We've got a kale bacteria crisis that we're trying to deal with. Carter, you take this on. We've got an organic kale bacteria crisis. Sorry, that's what they're dealing with. Carter, it's on your plate. What are you suggesting?

Carter 1:05:29

You know, this is a very interesting exercise because I think that we've actually been in some of these rooms with some of these CEOs that are

Carter 1:05:38

are set. I've got the right plan. I know what I'm doing is right. I'm the one who's signed off on this plan. The people who are going to be trying to convince him not to have this policy are probably the people who brought the policy to the table. Because, you know, we can't do this with the poppy becomes just one example of things that you can't do this with. So they bring it, the policy, see like

Carter 1:06:02

like the challenge of this situation is you needed to back out of it very quickly and the the difficulty is you probably don't have a new voice at the table um

Carter 1:06:11

um this is one of the you know cory was saying you

Carter 1:06:14

you need to have someone who was local you need to elevate your regional vice president in charge of canada to the table immediately because otherwise if i was at the table if i was at the table i probably would have been one of the ones saying yeah this makes sense Like, we can't have all of our staff wearing, you know, different buttons. We'll look like, what was that stupid movie you guys probably liked?

Carter 1:06:36

Space. Office Space, yeah, yeah.

Carter 1:06:39

Pieces of flair. All the flair on their, you know.

Carter 1:06:42

I think that it's really easy to say, well, you should understand that, you know, the challenges of the Canadian market and all those things. They don't. But it is an example of bringing new voices to the table. And sometimes we've been those new voices and we have been absolute sacrificial lambs at the boardroom table because you're

Carter 1:07:03

you're brought in primarily to bring news that no one wants to hear.

Zain 1:07:08

Corey, I want to spend a little bit of time expanding, if that's OK with you, to talk about, you know, corporate advocacy. This is a cousin of what we've seen here, but just some general rules for organizations. Some of them, you know, have leaned into woke as being a business model. Everyone clamors over themselves to put in a black tile on Instagram supporting Black Lives Matter. What do you kind of think this says or doesn't say about the state of our what I'd call commercial or corporate advocacy world where activism has kind of been ingrained in our cultural DNA that companies now need to stand for something in their community? What do you kind of take stock of where we are in that moment? I'm kind of curious to get your thoughts.

Corey 1:07:51

it's a growing reality people are making purchases based on their values more and more however when you scrape a little bit you see that there's some hypocrisy there people will still buy the shirts made overseas for very little more likely than they will purchase the shirt that is made locally for quite a bit but

Corey 1:08:08

but certainly value has become a big part of brand and there are some brands that have really leaned into it really

Corey 1:08:15

really leaned into it you know there are brands we We think of as right wing brands or left wing brands. And as a result, they have essentially, you

Corey 1:08:22

know, they've chosen their market. But it's not as though they just made that bet. They were also looking at their market to begin with. They were saying, OK, of all of the people who are purchasing my product right now, again, this is my audience. What are their expectations? I'm sure part of the conversation at Whole Foods was, oh,

Corey 1:08:37

oh, yeah, the poppy seems like it's a little militaristic, a little old fashioned, a little staid. A little conservative.

Corey 1:08:41

We're Whole Foods, man. You know, we're not that conservative place like that. that. And they

Corey 1:08:47

they just misread the situation. But companies

Corey 1:08:50

companies struggle with this greatly and rightly because a company is a collection of people. It's a collection of shareholders. It's a collection of employees. It's a collection of customers. And they don't all share the same values. So there's an interesting sorting that you are subjecting yourself to whenever you take stances like this. Many companies do it quite defensively. They don't want to antagonize the people that are are out there who

Corey 1:09:12

who are their purchasers who

Corey 1:09:14

support these causes or their employees who support these causes some do it offensively saying i am making a play for this market and i know this market cares about these things and i think um you've seen some interesting stuff from nike in particular on that front yeah

Corey 1:09:28

right where their advertising is clearly not defensive it is staking ground uh and differentiating from from more staid uh you know even socially conservative groups like Like, arguably Adidas, right? So it's interesting.

Corey 1:09:43

interesting. And I guess what I am saying and why I'm rambling a bit on this is there is no one-size-fits-all for this. There is also a business model that says, my market is not the people who care about these things, right? My market is the people who are going to look for the lowest price, and that's why they come to Walmart. They don't come to Walmart for the politics one way or the other.

Corey 1:10:01

So it really just depends on your business model. And I think companies do get themselves into trouble when they lose focus on where Stephen started us. which is, what

Corey 1:10:10

what do we do here, right? How are we making money? And if you make money by taking stands, good for you. If you make money by avoiding stands, good

Corey 1:10:18

good for you. But ultimately, this idea that there is going to be this one size fits all, every corporation is going to have an opinion, I think is quite unlikely.

Zain 1:10:27

Carter, do you feel like we're leaning into an era where opinions and stances and morally or politically by corporations are being demanded more so by customers regardless of what they are do

Zain 1:10:38

you think we're shifting a bit i

Carter 1:10:40

i think that people want them to do you know i think that that certain brands and certain and they think that one of the challenges with this is that it was whole foods um the customers do demand a certain wokeness if you will if this was hobby lobby would we have been shocked you know chick-fil-a i mean are we going to be oh my god chick-fil-a doesn't want us to wear poppies um you know it the audience You brand yourself with the audience, and the brand has to reflect the audience's values. And this is where this one was particularly off because people who shop

Carter 1:11:15

shop at Whole Foods are probably going to be pretty woke, as the kids say. So I think that this was just a moment of a mistake. and um but brands need to i think i do think that most brands need to have a a position

Carter 1:11:34

position a point of view and uh

Carter 1:11:37

uh that position and point of view can be we don't have a position and point of view um you know like it can be but it you can't just luck into this you can't just say well let's give it a whirl and try and figure it out like no one knows how ikea feels about a lot of things except Except, you know, they're kind of, you know, environmentally say, you know, I think their environmentalism is entirely just a byproduct of the fact that they figured out how to do things cheap. And they also figured out, oh, hold on, that feels like it's environmentally good, too. So it was a coincidence, not necessarily a brand promise. But I think Whole Foods, Calgary Co-ops, you know, these places that are linked to who we are, that we experience on a daily basis, need to probably be walking into this advisedly

Carter 1:12:28

advisedly and not by accident.

Zain 1:12:32

Corey, you know, to that point, like, are we entering an era where because of the, I shouldn't say increased polarization, but increased value-driven decision-making people are starting to make, that

Zain 1:12:45

that brands need to start thinking about this a bit more and thinking about their sort of what Carter would call their point of view more actively, especially as it relates to activism and small-P politics?

Corey 1:12:58

No. Look, most corporations will default to generic feel goodery. They always have. That's what corporate social responsibility has been since the dawn of time.

Corey 1:13:07

Right. They avoid contention and they give to motherhood, you know, mom and apple pie kind of things that nobody is going to get mad about there. And then they just die a little whenever they get dragged into by an employee or a shareholder or a customer, one of these challenging situations.

Corey 1:13:27

The vast, vast, vast majority of corporations are not political by design because you don't want to start separating what is already a target market that is defined relatively narrowly and cutting it again and saying, now let's chop off all of the Democrats or all of the Republicans. That's just not in anybody's business interests most of the time. And so I think this becomes very overblown.

Corey 1:13:51

We see it a lot more. Corporations have to deal with it a lot more because of social media. But I don't get the sense that corporations are any more political today than they were in the past. past arguably they're less political today than they were in the past because there is so much more transparency on those things and every time they do something like that half of the internet is going to be talking about it right

Corey 1:14:11

right in the past if you were cargill you could be political and nobody would know now

Corey 1:14:16

now if you just do something if you are the president of cargill and you just happen to meet with a politician everybody

Corey 1:14:22

everybody is going to know so if anything i i believe that corporations are backing out of this space and it only feels like they're backing into it because Because the conversation has so many different tools now.

Zain 1:14:32

I want to expand on that way more, but at a later date. So we'll leave that segment there and move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Guys, are you ready? Always. I'm

Carter 1:14:41

I'm always ready. Steven, you're

Zain 1:14:42

you're always ready, which means I will be rewarding Corey with the first question. Okay. Corey, are you?

Zain 1:14:49

Corey's just like, ready for it. Corey, are you in or out on AOC this week talking to The New York Times about her fellow Democrats, more specifically the institutional Democrats, talking about their campaign strategies, lack thereof, so closely, quite literally on the day after Joe Biden gets officially named president-elect? Are you in or out on her strategy for the social Democrats?

Corey 1:15:16

is what you would expect the leader of the social democratic movement to do and she's clearly defined a leadership space there so i'm in in that context i'm

Corey 1:15:25

sure i'm not out on the arguments though i don't 100 buy some of the arguments some of them you know she doth protest too much some of them i think are interesting but are unproven at this point but you can't deny that She is clearly in the driver's seat with this movement right now. Any way you cut it, right? People aren't talking about Bernie Sanders' opinions about these things. They're talking about her opinions about these things. It's

Corey 1:15:48

It's really powerful. It's really impressive. I can only imagine what her next step is here. But she is a leader, that's for sure.

Zain 1:15:56

Carter, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez in the New York Times this week defending social Social Democrats, aggressively, loudly, pretty clearly, as well with some of her arguments, despite, you know, what Corey says about the data coming in, easy to follow, so to speak, like pretty cogent arguments. What do you think of her strategy, her strategy to do this so quickly on the heels of Joe Biden being named president-elect of the United States?

Carter 1:16:22

I think, number one, I think that she delivers a fantastic message. She knows how to do it. She She knows exactly what she's going to say, what she's expecting when she says it. And then, you know, so she did what she needed to do to put herself in a good spot. Plus, I think that she's right. I think that she's right. Like, they can't wear the blame on this. The blame can't be held by the social

Carter 1:16:47

social democratic wing of the party that still can't figure out how to buy fucking Facebook ads. It makes me nuts because we saw how much money went into television. We commented on it. We we saw that as a mistake. We're up here in Canada, for God's sake. So this this I think she's bang on. And I think Corey's point about her being a leader is also right.

Zain 1:17:11

Carter, I'm sticking with you on this one as well. Over, under, on six, over, under, on six. The federal response to to wave two of the COVID-19 over, under, on six for you. How are they doing in terms of kind of relegating certain supports and talking about the issue and encouraging Canadians? What are you thinking?

Carter 1:17:30

There's been a federal response.

Carter 1:17:34

I mean, that's what I think. I haven't seen, you know, I'm not seeing the response I wanted from any of the governments right now. I'm seeing COVID continue to skyrocket.

Zain 1:17:48

Corey, are you in the same boat? Are you in or out or over under on six on the Fed's response?

Corey 1:17:55

I share Stephen's assessment. I actually don't know what you're referring to as far as a federal response. If I have legitimately missed something, I think that that kind of speaks to maybe the week we're in more than their communications. No, and to

Zain 1:18:10

to put it together,

Zain 1:18:10

together, it's just been Theresa Tam coming out, right, talking about the importance of doing all these things and what we're seeing on the provincial level. And perhaps this is ingrained in my question, is very similar. You're seeing more briefings. You're seeing more FaceTime. It's getting buried, but you're not seeing...

Corey 1:18:26

seeing... Yeah, we're getting daily numbers again. Yeah,

Zain 1:18:27

Yeah, daily numbers, but you're perhaps not seeing the measures that you may expect from limiting sizes, et cetera, to the degree one would expect with these current rates that we're seeing right now. So

Zain 1:18:40

that's at the heart of my question.

Zain 1:18:44

So no one's impressed. No one's impressed. No one's

Zain 1:18:48

No one's impressed at anything. Corey, on a scale of not surprised to extremely surprised, how surprised were you that Stephen Carter was right, that Peter McKay said he'd be not running for the Conservatives? So please give me your take on the most important issue of the week, which is Stephen Carter nailed a prediction.

Corey 1:19:09

prediction? Extremely surprised. I don't actually quite believe it yet. I think maybe he'll change his mind just at the last minute. That seems more likely to me than Stephen Carter being right. Carter,

Zain 1:19:20

Carter, your prediction. Give me a take on your prediction. Did you feel like you nailed your prediction? Do you want to change it right now? I'm

Carter 1:19:26

I'm on a roll. I'm

Carter 1:19:26

I'm on a roll. You guys need to start writing these things down because I'm on a roll.

Zain 1:19:33

Carter, I'm going to stick with you on on this one. There was a narrative this week coming out, an op-ed piece of the New York Times saying that Joe Biden's presidency is going to be a third term of an Obama presidency. Are you in or out on that narrative? Do you feel like this is going to be term three of a Barack Obama presidency or term one of a Joe Biden presidency? Are you in or out on the narrative that this is term number three for Barack Obama?

Carter 1:19:54

Barack Obama did pretty well. He would have won a third term. I think that if it was term number three, that they might be able to actively look forward to term number four. The challenge is the Senate and the way that McConnell and the Republicans treated Obama seems to be the way that McConnell and the Republicans want to treat Biden. So, you know, it very well may look very similar insofar as the Democrats aren't able to achieve the things that they want to.

Zain 1:20:20

Corey, same question to you. Are we headed for term three of an Obama presidency sans Barack Obama?

Corey 1:20:26

No, I don't think so. I don't think that Joe Biden is Barack Obama. I think he's got different priorities. And I think America is fundamentally different than it was four years ago. It's just not not the case. That's some weird combination of wishful thinking and giving Joe Biden no credit and no agency.

Zain 1:20:42

we'll move it on to our final question which is a listener question of course yes we still have those how do we have those well you leave us five stars on apple podcasts and you ask us a question and this question comes to us from pj sperry pj sparry who knows uh the headline cool beans and the question care to comment on cbc's tyler shandro piece is it part of a campaign and if so is it a a good strategy. So to fill, to color in the lines a bit, the CBC ran what was kind of a pseudo profile on health minister Tyler Shandrow. Not entirely glowing, but a profile that we haven't seen in a while where it kind of covered some elements of how he interacts with staff, what motivates them, what drives them, etc. Carter, I want to get your take first. And maybe let's answer the suite of questions here. Is it part of a PR campaign? And is it a good strategy, So to speak, or an effective strategy. Let me let me change the question for for Chandra, who's been under under the gun for a lot of the health care cuts here in Alberta. So maybe answer both of those questions for for our listener question. progression i

Carter 1:21:45

don't think it's a particularly good strategy at this time um get through the problem then start then then start to figure out how to solve the pr problem um you know you don't you don't worry about what your personal rating is while you're in the midst of taking the beating you

Carter 1:22:00

you get through taking the beating by doing the work and then then you fix yourself uh

Carter 1:22:04

uh so i didn't quite understand it no one was i don't think anybody read it and thought oh

Carter 1:22:08

oh this is a good piece i'm not sure even chandra woke up that day and thought oh thank god this isn't you know this this is happening. You know, this is going to make my life a lot easier. I think it was ill advised and poorly timed. And it'll come later. Can I ask, are

Zain 1:22:24

are you surprised that such a piece was written in the first place? Yeah,

Carter 1:22:27

Yeah, I don't really understand how it could have gotten green lit.

Carter 1:22:30

Like it just isn't the right time.

Zain 1:22:33

Corey, let's let's before I ask you that question, let's talk about strategy. Is it part of the PR play you think? And is it a good strategy in your your mind?

Corey 1:22:40

I don't know. These things sometimes come up somewhat organically. You're talking to a reporter, you vent your frustration saying, you know, you just, you don't understand the guy. He's not the guy you think he is. He's very different. And they say, well, you know, maybe, maybe you're right. Maybe I should get to understand him a little bit better. Maybe we should sit down and talk. Or maybe it was very intentional. Maybe it was, you should call them up and see if you can pitch that line to them that they need to understand Tyler Shandro better because he's an an important player within the government it's

Corey 1:23:06

it's also quite possible the cbc said he's an important player within the government and we don't know a damn thing about him there's all these stories floating around but we don't really have a cut of this person's chip so i

Corey 1:23:17

don't know i mean there's a lot of ways these things can come out it doesn't really surprise me it's green lit every

Corey 1:23:23

every now and you used to see this a lot more frankly yeah you used to see a lot more of these longer form here's who the person is and here's how you can get to know them but media just hasn't had those uh kind kind of resources for some time it

Corey 1:23:36

seems fine it didn't um it didn't strike me as deeply offensive that they would write it i i think i agree

Corey 1:23:43

agree with steven that uh i'm not even sure that shandro woke up and said yeah it's great i love it so i don't know it's cbcb cbc and it's just fine

Zain 1:23:57

you pj for your question if you want to leave us your question question once again on Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review, five-star review. Corey monitors them extremely closely, and we only

Zain 1:24:06

questions of our five-star reviews that ask us a question. We'll be happy to answer them. And that's a wrap on episode 829 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belgey. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.

Transcript