JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Next week, Democrats will gather in Chicago to formally nominate Kamala Harris as their candidate to replace the person they thought they were going to be nominating, Joe Biden.
Among those who miss Biden the most, Donald Trump, who will now be facing a much younger black woman in the general election, and he doesn't seem to have a strategy for taking on his new opponent, next.
Good evening, and welcome to Washington Week.
So, we're heading into deepest August, it's 80 days until the election, and everything is so different than it was at the beginning of the summer.
It's hard to remember, but way back on June 27th, the country was facing the prospect of two elderly white men facing off in November, and only one of those white men was riding high at the time.
But now it's Kamala Harris who has the momentum, and Donald Trump's campaign seems, at least to me and the other obsessives who track these kinds of things, heading for a shakeup.
I'll talk about this and a lot more with Susan Glasser, a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The New York Times.
Tarini Parti is a national politics reporter at The Wall Street Journal.
And Chuck Todd is NBC News' chief political analyst.
Thank you all for being here.
I know you're all off to Chicago soon, the unlucky people who have to go through O'Hare in the summer.
But I'm glad to have you here.
Let me start with Susan, because Monday night at the convention is going to be Joe Biden night, right?
And, you know, we really haven't thought about him a lot in the last few weeks, but you've been tracking this.
I want you to just take a look at something that Biden just said.
It's very interesting.
JOE BIDEN, U.S. President: I served in the Senate for 270 years.
I know I only look 40, but I'm a little bit older.
The longest time I was too damn young because I was only about 29 when I got elected, but now I'm too damn old.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, I'm not asking you to do sort of geriatric psychiatry here, but he seems loose and maybe not happy, but in an accepting mode.
What's your read of Biden and his mood as he enters this very important week in his life and the life of the Democratic Party?
SUSAN GLASSER, Staff Writer, The New Yorker: Well, that's right.
I mean, look, his legacy, in many ways, is riding on the outcome of this election, even though he's not running in it.
And certainly, you know, if Kamala Harris doesn't win, there will be plenty of recriminations that find their way to Biden.
And, conversely, if she does win, people will hail him for having made a decision to step aside in favor of, you know, the greater good of defeating Donald Trump.
And he's already said that.
But that event where we just saw the clip from Jeff, it was very interesting.
It was the first time that Biden has appeared in public with Kamala Harris since he announced this incredible decision.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It was quite a while ago, actually.
SUSAN GLASSER: Yes, it's been more than three weeks.
And, you know, I would say that the outer vibe was warm, but there was an undercurrent there, first of all, watching Biden step to the side while Harris, the big exciting draw, introduces him.
There was almost a sense of like, you know, that he's back to watching from the sidelines, that they had reversed roles.
And then I also think that he hasn't fully come to terms with it.
He has a hard time talking really like why exactly did he decide to step aside.
They started chanting, thank you, Joe, thank you, Joe.
And you can't help but wonder where they saying thank you for all of his service, yes, of course, but also thank you for stepping aside.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: For clearing the way.
Yes.
What are you hearing inside the White House about their relationship right now?
And this is a question for all of you, what role are we going to see Joe Biden play in the next 80 days?
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Yes, that's right.
I mean, when it comes to the president and the vice president, you know, everything that we hear is still that relationship is good.
You still see the vice president as she's hit the trail, still being gracious towards President Biden.
Relationship is good.
You still see the vice president as she's hit the trail, still being gracious towards President Biden, but there's also still a defensiveness when you kind of broaden your context to those throughout the White House.
A reporter asked President Biden this week what he thought about the potential that the vice president would break away from his economic messaging and his economic agenda.
And he was very quick to say that she will not do that.
He snapped out another reporter who brought up the newest inflation numbers saying, will you finally sort of fight about this?
There's still a sort of defensiveness around his agenda, his domestic agenda.
I think that when you talk to White House officials, they still feel like they didn't get enough credit for some of the domestic policies that, to be quite honest, the vice president is somewhat running on right now.
I mean, she released an economic agenda, but it does very much mirror President Biden.
So, difference in scale and, importantly, difference in tone and rhetoric.
That's the primary difference between the two candidates.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
What's the hardest thing for the two of them to go forward together?
What's the hardest part of this relationship?
CHUCK TODD, Chief Political Analyst, NBC News: Well, I think that he's not an asset, all right?
I think he's a liability with voters.
And I think the hardest part is going to be him accepting that he's not going to be used on the trail.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Stay with that.
So, Monday night, big Joe Biden night, and then Tuesday night, we don't hear any -- CHUCK TODD: We might not hear Joe Biden's name again.
But in passing, I mean, you know, Monday is Biden night and you'll have Joe Biden and you're going to have Joe Biden.
Look, he's got one job.
Keep -- go get a ceasefire deal.
That is literally, there's one thing he can do -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Before the convention starts?
CHUCK TODD: Whenever, just get it before college campuses totally come in before the start of the fall campaign, which is essentially in the next week.
That's the one thing he can do.
But I think the toughest part of this relationship is going to be, they're not going to want him on the trail.
I mean, look, you're right about the thank you voters.
I mean, Biden at least, you know, in the interview he gave to CBS last week, he did at least admit the reality of why he got talked into getting out, which was every Democrat was going to run against him, right?
He has admitted that's what it was going to be, and that wasn't going to be good for the party.
So, what does that tell you?
They don't want him on the trail.
There's a reason -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: How do you keep the president of the United States off the trail?
CHUCK TODD: Ask Al Gore.
He did it.
TARINI PARTI, White House Reporter, The Wall Street Journal: I think that's the trick that they're trying to figure out right now, which is, how do you distance yourself from an unpopular president, while also sort of running on his policies?
And, you know, Kamala Harris was a part of the administration.
She can't totally distance herself from him.
She is, even though she's out on the campaign trail and putting out her own policies.
As Zolan said, they're essentially building on what Biden has already done.
And so, I mean, it's got to be somewhat awkward for both of them.
And even though they're trying to portray this very warm relationship, everything is all right, you know, I'm sure, at the convention, I'm sure we're going to see some of this awkwardness at play here because the convention for all these months was being set up to be headlined by someone else.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
You've covered Kamala Harris since 2019.
What's something we don't understand about the relationship between Biden and Harris?
TARINI PARTI: I think the biggest factor was that they really had no relationship, I mean, at the start.
And they had to build a relationship.
And from what I've heard, you know, there was obviously the debate moment that everyone remembers, and so the relationship, one could argue, didn't get off to the best start.
You know, the person who sort of connected them was Biden's late son, Beau Biden, who knew Kamala Harris.
And other than that, they didn't really know each other.
So, the first year with COVID and being stuck at the White House, they started getting to know each other.
Eventually, you know, they did establish a working relationship.
They did get closer, but they had to start from scratch.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
So, Chuck, I want to ask you this.
This election has moved from Trump being favored to sort of tossup.
And now there's like this feeling, and, again, these are feelings, and we don't use the word -- CHUCK TODD: We're not using vibe here?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It's a vibe-free zone.
We're not -- CHUCK TODD: Only feelings?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.
Feelings is the old fashioned way of saying that.
So, there's a feeling that, you know, Kamala Harris has the momentum.
It doesn't mean anything until you actually start looking at votes.
But, you know, you have this theory that 2024 could be 2016 in reverse.
What do you mean by that?
Go over that a little bit.
CHUCK TODD: Well, it's sort of -- look, what did Donald Trump benefit from in 2016?
He just simply was something the country hadn't tried before, period.
And against Hillary Clinton, she was the incumbent without being an incumbent.
She was seen as sort of, well, we know exactly the type of president.
She's establishment.
She's the wife of one president, the secretary of state for another.
We know exactly what it's going to be.
It's going to be kind of status quo-ish or whatever it was.
And even though he was slightly more unpopular than she was, he ends up winning more of those sort of hold-your-nose voters because he was new and they thought they tried.
Now, we're in a different -- he's now the incumbent without being an incumbent, right?
You don't get any of the upside of incumbency, but suddenly now he gets all the downside of it.
And she's something we haven't tried.
And if we're -- if you look at -- we've been a nation that has not liked the direction that the country has been going in for basically two decades, but for like one blip in the first two years of the Obama administration.
But polls have sustained.
It's been a sustained thing.
Anywhere from 55 to 70 percent of the country says we're heading in the wrong direction, which explains why we keep changing precedents.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
CHUCK TODD: So, you're not -- you know, that's Donald Trump's challenge now, is that suddenly he's the incumbent.
Against Joe Biden, he was tank (ph).
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: We have a single term followed by a single term, followed by the way, a new -- CHUCK TODD: Yes.
By the way, we are going to have two terms.
We haven't done this since the 19th century.
And, you know, we may end up doing three or four one-term presidents in a row if we continue to be a nation sort of unsatisfied.
The narrow swing voters are all voting against they don't vote for, right?
They voted against Hillary Clinton.
That benefited Donald Trump.
They voted against Donald Trump.
That benefited Joe Biden.
It looks like right now it's setting up to be an election that's more about Donald Trump than about Kamala Harris.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And, Zolan, it's interesting.
It's kind of amazing to think of Kamala Harris as the agent of change or the new flavor.
I mean, senator, A.G. before that, vice president three and a half years.
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: I think it almost speaks to sort of how frustrated the Democratic base was, too, just how energetic they are, that there was this kind of change on the ticket, because, quite honestly -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: We're all serving people crackers.
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Right.
Like, because, quite honestly, like, when you you talk to Democrats, when you talk to people that have known Vice President Harris for a while, often they'll say, this is somebody that absolutely represents the Democratic sort of establishment.
I mean, she was a D.A., then A.G., she, you know, was a Senator, obviously now vice president.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The mainstream liberal opinions about a whole basket of issues.
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Right.
And she does represent the incumbent president.
I mean, she's his number two as well.
So, I mean, she is still a part of that establishment.
But I think this leads to a question here of this energy we're seeing when it comes to Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party.
You know, is that simply energy connected to the change in the ticket now or is it there to last?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
Susan, I want to read something that you just wrote about the relationship, this almost psychological relationship between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
If Biden is not yet Harris' cheerleader-in-chief, these last few wild weeks have established that there is no better surrogate for her campaign than Trump himself.
Practically, every time Trump has opened his mouth since Biden stepped aside, the ex-president has made the case for his own manifest on fitness for office.
What better assistance could she ask for?
What's going on with -- I'm going to stay on this for a couple minutes because it's important.
It seems like Donald Trump is having -- I mean, obviously everything about Donald Trump is tumultuous and even chaotic.
But it seems like he's having a particularly hard time getting it adjusted to this new reality.
What's going on here?
SUSAN GLASSER: Yes, Jeff.
I think that is an important caveat.
You know, it's not that Donald Trump was super hinged and now he's become unhinged or, you know, you often hear now Republican surrogates, Republican officials saying, oh, well, if only he would talk more about policy and be disciplined.
Well, that's like saying if only pigs could fly in the sense that Donald Trump has never been a model of policy-oriented message discipline.
But with that caveat, I think -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That might be the greatest understatement you've ever made.
SUSAN GLASSER: I appreciate that.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, you're welcome.
SUSAN GLASSER: But I do think it's an important point that you're making, because we're all observing it in real time.
Donald Trump has talked about Joe Biden far more than the Democrats have.
To Chuck's point, they have -- the Democrats have largely deleted Joe Biden's name from any, even mention of it.
It was very -- it did not -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It's kind of ghosting, yes.
SUSAN GLASSER: Yes, he's out of the chat, you know?
Tim Walz, when he was introduced as the vice presidential running mate of Kamala Harris, he actually thanked her for bringing back the joy.
I don't know that he meant it as an explicit barb at Joe Biden, but it certainly read as one.
Donald Trump talks about Joe Biden constantly.
He is also frenetic almost with the shifting of the media's attention and the public's attention, the excitement and crowds that Kamala Harris have generated.
He has demanded, basically, pull the spotlight back to me, me, me.
And, of course, when Donald Trump then talks and talks and talks, as he did just yesterday, he gave another press conference at his home in Bedminster, and, you know, this is the opposite of a disciplined, focused message about Harris.
He's making the campaign about himself in a way that is very likely to benefit the Democrats.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, what are the things -- yes, go quickly.
CHUCK TODD: No, I just want to go -- I had somebody tell me that the reason why he's obsessed with Biden is now he can never avenge 2020, and he is single minded about it.
And defeating Joe Biden in '24 would allow him to say, see, I was right.
There's no way he could have beaten me or whatever.
Now, it's always there.
And we're all sitting here very rational and going, okay, you move on, you pivot.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But it's actually like a Mel Gibson movie.
CHUCK TODD: This is like he cannot let it go because he now never gets to revenge 2020.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.
Wait, I want you all to watch this.
This is -- you know, remember right after the assassination attempt, we were promised for 12 to 24 minutes, a kinder, gentler -- SUSAN GLASSER: Unifier.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, unifier.
I want you to watch this.
This is what he said yesterday about his approach to Kamala Harris.
DONALD TRUMP (R), Former U.S. President, 2024 Presidential Nominee: I think I'm entitled to personal attacks.
I don't have a lot of respect for her.
I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence.
She certainly attacks me personally.
She actually called me weird.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Weird.
He's clearly promising to unleash the furies, possibly after the Democratic National Convention.
I mean, one obvious question is, does it work?
Kamala Harris is an ex-prosecutor.
I don't get the sense that she's going to just kind of be overwhelmed by his meanness.
TARINI PARTI: Yes.
And this is a campaign where she's actually trying to highlight her former prosecutor background.
She's on the campaign trail using the cases that she fought on as a contrast to Donald Trump in a way that she didn't do in her last presidential campaign.
She's bringing up the fact that, he's in part, weird, as Trump put it, because he's so fixated on her identity, on issues that aren't related to policy.
And as much as Republicans would like for Trump to start talking about policy, he's making it very clear he's not going to do that.
So -- SUSAN GLASSER: Well, again, I just -- I actually -- because of this policy thing, they succeeded in one respect, which is getting us all to accept the frame that there's some sort of policy-oriented campaign.
Donald Trump and the Republicans' version of talking about policy right now is to be like, she's a communist, and that's their version of a substance -- CHUCK TODD: But he's falling into the same trap Hillary Clinton fell into.
SUSAN GLASSER: Yes.
CHUCK TODD: Hillary Clinton never respected Donald Trump, never thought he was worthy.
And swing voters picked up on that.
Basket full of deplorables was the exclamation point.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But it's now reversed.
CHUCK TODD: It's now reversed.
He doesn't -- and that's going to turn swing voters off, that he doesn't respect her.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I want to read you something that Donald Trump posted on Truth Social this week.
I'm going to read the whole thing.
It's quite long.
We might have to preempt Antiques Roadshow for this, but it's worth it.
This was a post in reference to crowd size, which is, of course, his main fixation, a crowd size of Kamala Harris.
He said, has anyone noticed that Kamala cheated, all capital letters, at the airport?
There was nobody at the plane and she A.I.
'd it and showed a massive crowd square, square quotes, of so-called followers, but they didn't exist, also in all caps.
She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the vice presidential plane.
She's a cheater, all caps.
She had nobody, all caps, waiting.
And the crowd, scare quotes, looked like 10,000 people.
Same thing is happening with her fake crowds at her speeches.
This is the way the Democrats win elections, by cheating, again, all caps, and they're even worse at the ballot box.
She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is election interference.
Anyone who does that will cheat at anything.
So, I read this and I was like, you know -- and I'm a student of the writing style of Donald Trump.
And I thought, whoa, this one -- this is a man who has lost control or who believes he's lost control of the narrative.
Susan?
SUSAN GLASSER: You know, Jeff, I mean, you know, if it was anyone you knew, you would be deeply concerned about them.
Not only -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You know, my mom sent me this.
SUSAN GLASSER: Yes.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, probably drive over here.
SUSAN GLASSER: I don't think your mom would do that.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: No, I don't think my mom thinks about crowd size as much as Donald Trump.
SUSAN GLASSER: But the point is it's not just the casual lying or the slinging or the invention of bizarre conspiracy theories but, you know, it has the feeling of an act of self-harm as an effort to gain attention no matter what.
And I think that, you know, it's been undercovered.
And I know that we are all inured to Donald Trump's excesses now that we're nine years into this show.
And I know that you have to get more and more attention in the ninth season of a failing show, but the truth is, this, in any other context, would be an extremely significant -- CHUCK TODD: But guess what happens in the ninth season of a show like Celebrity Apprentice?
SUSAN GLASSER: Yes, it got canceled.
CHUCK TODD: The ratings go down.
Gary Busey doesn't do it anymore, right?
It is -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: No matter how many Shark Tanks you jump.
CHUCK TODD: Exactly, and that's what it feels like here.
The shtick is wearing thin.
He's doing the same thing.
And he's now bringing the band back together.
He's going back to the one time he had success, 2016, so Corey Lewandowski's coming back.
I'm sure Kellyanne Conway -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, this is what I was going to ask.
I don't know.
CHUCK TODD: And it's all coming, because it's like comfort food.
He needs his blankie, whatever you want to call it.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Big shakeup coming?
CHUCK TODD: Well, it'll be layered.
SUSAN GLASSER: They already announced today.
Well, I mean, they're -- CHUCK TODD: But it's layered.
It's never going to be firing anybody, I think.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
But if this ends with Corey Lewandowski being on top of the campaign somehow, I have that sent -- CHUCK TODD: Maybe Kellyanne.
I wouldn't -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG:Tarini, I want to turn to questions about Kamala Harris and her policy announcements.
And, you know, she has gotten an easy ride so far, especially in the sense that she has not answered any questions from professional question askers, such as us.
And that's a problem because everything is scripted.
So, my question is about her economic ideas.
I'm kind of curious to know what your questions would be about some of these new ideas, because some of them are in the category of let's give money to voters and they'll like us kind of stuff.
There's economists who say that the price gouging ideas that she's floating are not actually rooted in economic reality, but they're popular notions.
It's popular to say that corporations are causing your food prices to go up because they're gouging.
But what do we need to know that we're not getting answers to?
TARINI PARTI: Yes, I think we've seen sort of a very loose framework of this economic agenda.
We don't really have too many specifics on how she's going to pay for these things and how much do they cost.
That type of stuff has not really been explicitly put out there.
And, of course, she has not answered questions in an interview.
She said she's going to ask her team to set up an interview sometime this month.
She tends to keep -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: An interview.
TARINI PARTI: Exactly.
She tends to answer these questions in sort of a vague, open ended way, which she's done throughout her career.
And I think in an interview, of course, she would find that people like you and all of us here would push her more and ask her for these specifics.
Another question about her economic agenda, you know, she's calling for a boost in housing supply, which is something that's needed for the prices right now.
But, you know, pushing so much money into this specific plan somewhere, it could actually increase prices because they would create this shortage and the administration wouldn't be able to keep up with the housing supply.
So, there's some economists who have different views on that.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
Zolan, I want to go to you to talk about something that you've written.
By the way, it's just fascinating thinking about this conversation, the bifurcation of all these conversations.
We talk about the Kamala Harris campaign as, well, she hasn't answered sufficient questions about her economic policy.
And with Donald Trump, we're saying he's imagining A.I.
manipulation of airfield rallies.
And there's an asymmetry here that's just astonishing.
So, you had a fascinating piece that you wrote with Erica Green this week about some of the difficulties that Kamala Harris might face with black male voters, in particular.
You wrote, while black men have been reliable voters for Democrats for decades, Mr. Raul, that was the state attorney general, was touching on an uncomfortable truth.
A small but significant slice of black men have historically been hesitant to support black women seeking the highest positions of power.
The numbers are on the margins, but could be crucial to carrying Ms. Harris to victory in November.
How serious a problem is this when we're talking about maybe tens of thousands of people deciding this election in three states?
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: I mean, look, when it comes to swing states, you know, it may be slight, but it's significant.
You know, you need all the votes that you can get.
And I can tell you this is something that's been on the vice president's mind too.
Starting in early 2023, we reported that there were people in the White House that definitely were paying attention to polls showing lagging support among black voters, but specifically black men, and she was inviting people business leaders in the community, black men who are leaders of civil rights organizations, to the residents, to sort of hear their concerns.
That story wants to tap into something too.
There's sort of two layers to this.
You have black voters and black men who are frustrated at the overall Democratic system and losing faith in the government, feeling that we are the most reliable voters that have turned out, but not seeing your life improve at a fast rate.
And I should note, it's not a monolith.
You know, this is a slight majority.
I'm not talking about all voters here.
But then you also have on that call what I thought made that interesting and different than some of the other calls that were happening for her, where you have elected officials and just leaders and voters themselves also confronting this uncomfortable truth that for some, you know, in the community, being a sort of leader of your household, a black male leader, was not synonymous with standing behind a black woman.
And when you talk to scholars, when you talk to academics, and you talk to leaders, politicians, that dates, there's a long history of that, that, you know, you can't talk about politics in the black community without talking about the church and a streak of social conservatism.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
Tarini, in the few seconds that we have left, you cover this campaign on a very granular, very detailed way.
How much are they focused on actually getting out the black vote in the crucial swing states, especially?
Are they ready for this?
TARINI PARTI: Yes.
They have more of a ground operation than what we've seen from Trump right now.
And all of the ground operation that Biden built out spent all these months building out now Kamala Harris has just inherited.
So, you know, she has the starter pack ready to go and she needs to turn out the black vote in particular.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
Well, we can talk about all this stuff all day.
This is a good vibes discussion, I think.
We got a good vibe.
CHUCK TODD: I thought you said no more vibes.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: No, I'm just -- I'm mocking myself.
I'm mocking myself.
But we had a good conversation about where we are heading into the Democratic National Convention next week.
You'll all be there, I imagine.
But I'm sorry to say that we need to leave it here for now.
And I want to thank our panelists for a great conversation and, again, I wish them well at O'Hare in summer.
And to our viewers at home, those at O'Hare and those not, thank you for joining us.
For more on Kamala Harris' economic policy visit theatlantic.com.
I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.
Good night from Washington.
