Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: When Anthony Scaramucci joined Donald Trump's twenty sixteen presidential campaign,
Speaker 2: he said, even insiders thought it was a long shot.
Speaker 1: Nobody on that campaign thought that Donald Trump was gonna win. Nobody.
Speaker 2: Unlike most politicians, Trump had fiery rhetoric, but it worked
Speaker 2: for him, and his unpredictable approach foreshadowed what was to
Speaker 2: come from his administration. It was no surprise that the
Speaker 2: man who's known for saying you're fired was quick to
Speaker 2: turn over his staff while on the trail, and when
Speaker 2: he eventually won the White House, Trump fired Scaramucci after
Speaker 2: eleven days as communications director.
Speaker 3: Oh so it was chaotic, But that was then.
Speaker 2: It's twenty twenty four. Trump has new challenges in front
Speaker 2: of him as his latest presidential bid comes into focus,
Speaker 2: and his old campaign playbook, which was basically a lack
Speaker 2: of a playbook, has gotten some updates.
Speaker 1: He's not raising money that he was once raising. Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's eclipsing him on the money, but he is well
Speaker 1: established now. He has a more disciplined campaign, and they
Speaker 1: have him on message and they have him disciplined. It's
Speaker 1: a better campaign.
Speaker 2: But just how does Trump's twenty twenty four campaign strategy
Speaker 2: compare to his previous ones, and will those changes be
Speaker 2: enough to win over an electorate that didn't vote to
Speaker 2: keep him in the Oval office in twenty twenty. Today
Speaker 2: on The Show, with Donald Trump on trial in Manhattan
Speaker 2: and the likes of his former lawyer Michael Cohen testifying,
Speaker 2: all eyes are on how the former president is campaigning
Speaker 2: through it, we take stock of Trump's twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: strategy through the lens of his past two runs. I
Speaker 2: speak with former White House Communications director Anthony Scary Mucci,
Speaker 2: along with Bloomberg reporter Nancy Cook, who's followed Trump since
Speaker 2: the moment he descended the Trump Tower escalator and announced
Speaker 2: a bid for the presidency in twenty fifteen. From Bloomberg's
Speaker 2: Washington bureau. This is the Big Take DC podcast, I'm
Speaker 2: your host Seleia Mosen. When Trump launched his very first
Speaker 2: presidential bid, he was the first to do so with
Speaker 2: no previous public service experience, although he'd flirted with the
Speaker 2: idea for decades. That's part of the reason people didn't
Speaker 2: take the reality TV host and businessman seriously when he
Speaker 2: announced his intent to run for president back in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: But those experiences shaped his approach to politics.
Speaker 3: So the Trump campaign in twenty fifteen was super chaotic,
Speaker 3: and he really ran this presidential campaign almost like a
Speaker 3: family of business.
Speaker 2: Nancy Cook is a politics reporter at Bloomberg.
Speaker 3: There was like a tiny group of people around him.
Speaker 3: You had a bunch of different campaign managers. People were
Speaker 3: fired and then brought in Corey Luandaus. He was in charge,
Speaker 3: he got fired. Paul Mannifort was in charge, he got fired.
Speaker 3: You know, he brought in Kelly and Conway. There was
Speaker 3: just a ton of churn. And I remember very distinctly
Speaker 3: I worked at Politico then sitting in the Politico newsroom
Speaker 3: when the Access Hollywood story broke.
Speaker 4: A video obtained by the Washington Post features audio of
Speaker 4: Trump in two thousand and five making comments that the
Speaker 4: words lude and vulgar are mild descriptions for He was
Speaker 4: talking to Billy Bush from Access Hollywood.
Speaker 3: And thinking, oh wow, like this is really going to
Speaker 3: be the end for him.
Speaker 4: Wamen are going to come out and droves and they're
Speaker 4: going to speak, and that's what the election ended today.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't. There were just so many moments like
Speaker 3: that where you thought, oh wow, Republicans don't talk about
Speaker 3: trade this way, or oh wow, you know he's saying
Speaker 3: all these insane things about immigrants, and you know people
Speaker 3: aren't going to like that.
Speaker 2: All this turnover and the bad headlines sparked in fighting
Speaker 2: a mid team Trump. Remember, for most of the twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen general election campaign, even most Republicans thought Trump would
Speaker 2: lose to Hillary Clinton. The polls were not in his favor,
Speaker 2: and Trump's campaign wasn't the first to become chaotic due
Speaker 2: to about of bad headlines and bad poll numbers.
Speaker 3: My takeaway from that is that, you know, Trump really
Speaker 3: has had nine lives politically, but even more so, you know,
Speaker 3: he sort of always comes back again and manages to
Speaker 3: turn a lot of things that would be political disadvantages
Speaker 3: for other candidates into strengths.
Speaker 2: Even before the Access Hollywood tape that many thought would
Speaker 2: sink Trump's campaign, his divisive brand made it an uphill battle.
Speaker 2: Some traditional Republican donors shied away from his bed.
Speaker 3: It wasn't well funded, it was kind of scrappy. They
Speaker 3: kind of had like no battleground operation or strategy other
Speaker 3: than Trump's own instinct and his ability to define his
Speaker 3: opponents very quickly and succinctly Marco Rubio, who he's now
Speaker 3: considering for vice president. He named, you know, little Marco.
Speaker 2: It's a strategy that shocked Republican Party fixtures like Mitt Romney.
Speaker 2: This has been a low road campaign and pretty much
Speaker 2: from the beginning. That's Romney speaking on Bloomberg TV in
Speaker 2: March of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: He dispatched with Jeb Bush, who a lot of people
Speaker 3: thought was going to be the Republican nominee. You know,
Speaker 3: all the top political reporters that I know in Washington
Speaker 3: were put on the Jeb Bush campaign.
Speaker 1: If Jeb was running in the mid nineties, he would
Speaker 1: have been an exceptional presidential candidate. Bush was more organized,
Speaker 1: He had more money than Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Anthony Scaramucci, an investment banker, was working on the Jeb
Speaker 2: Bush campaign's finance committee at the time, but.
Speaker 1: He'd lost that campaign because the election was in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen and the electorate had shifted.
Speaker 3: Trump dispatched with him, you know, low energy Jeb. He's
Speaker 3: a low energy person by nature, and that's okay, there's
Speaker 3: nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2: Trump took the Republican primary nomination, winning over disillusioned voters
Speaker 2: and people who wanted a change, someone outside the political establishment.
Speaker 2: His campaign rhetoric was uniquely bombastic. Instead of advocating for
Speaker 2: immigration reform, he led Chance to bid Wall and it stuck.
Speaker 2: Emerging as the Republican front runner, he brought more establishment
Speaker 2: party members into the fold, people like Scaramucie.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump cruited me into that campaign with Bush got
Speaker 1: knocked out of the campaign by Donald Trump, and I
Speaker 1: made the decision to work for him. I thought it
Speaker 1: was the right loyal thing to do as a member
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party, a member of the Republican establishment.
Speaker 1: So I went to go work for mister Trump.
Speaker 2: It was Bessie, were there moments where you just thought,
Speaker 2: how on earth are we ever going to get elected
Speaker 2: if we can't get our campaign organized.
Speaker 1: Nobody on that campaign thought that Donald Trump was going
Speaker 1: to win. Nobody the ban didn't think he was going
Speaker 1: to win. Jared Kushner nobody thought he was going to
Speaker 1: win that election. Donald Trump didn't think he was going
Speaker 1: to win. On the evening of the election, he was
Speaker 1: preparing himself to take a trip to Scotland to play golf.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be out of the media spotlight. When
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton was accepting the win of the presidency.
Speaker 2: Where were you on election night?
Speaker 1: I was with him. I was sitting on a couch
Speaker 1: with Rudolph Giuliani at ten fifteen at night, and maryor
Speaker 1: Giuliani turned to me and said, I know the state
Speaker 1: of Florida very well. I have a home in the
Speaker 1: state of Florida. Those precincts that have yet to post
Speaker 1: the results, those precincts are voting for Trump. He's going
Speaker 1: to win the state of Florida. He's going to win
Speaker 1: this election.
Speaker 2: And how did Trump seem?
Speaker 1: Trump was about as serious as I've seen him in
Speaker 1: the twenty years that I've known him. He was sober,
Speaker 1: he was serious, he was nervous.
Speaker 2: That disorganization it came to define his presidency too. But
Speaker 2: when it came time for reelection in twenty twenty, his
Speaker 2: team took a new approach. Here's Nancy Cook again.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty, I was covering the Trump White House
Speaker 3: and his campaign tried to be one hundred percent different
Speaker 3: than twenty fifteen. They tried to be super professional. They
Speaker 3: had raised a bunch of money, unlike twenty fifteen, where
Speaker 3: it was sort of a ragtag, you know, family run business.
Speaker 3: Is kind of vibe and sort of a small group
Speaker 3: of staff around. There was a huge amount of staff.
Speaker 3: They had org charts and you know, a communications team
Speaker 3: and a campaign manager. Their problem was that they were
Speaker 3: well funded, but they really misspent a lot of money.
Speaker 3: They blew a lot of money on fancy office space,
Speaker 3: you know, on a huge staff, and they got to
Speaker 3: the point where they did not have money for advertising
Speaker 3: at some key points. And you have to remember too,
Speaker 3: I mean when I was covering the Trump White House,
Speaker 3: the economy was doing well. You know, I really thought
Speaker 3: Trump was going to sail to reelection. And then COVID
Speaker 3: hit and I would say that really just changed the
Speaker 3: whole trajectory of the election because Americans were really disappointed
Speaker 3: by the way Trump handled it and they really wanted
Speaker 3: a different type of leadership.
Speaker 2: Then leading up to the election, many people lost their jobs,
Speaker 2: lost family or friends, and on top of it all,
Speaker 2: America was rattled by a reckoning over racial injustice. It
Speaker 2: was enough to cost Trump the election. In the time since,
Speaker 2: the people around him have taken stock of what went wrong,
Speaker 2: and it's informing some of his twenty twenty four campaign.
Speaker 3: It's lean and mean, sort of like twenty fifteen. But
Speaker 3: I guess the differences is that they are very skilled
Speaker 3: and very organized, and they know what they're.
Speaker 2: Doing coming up, who's behind the current campaign, how they're
Speaker 2: leveraging Trump's legal challenges, and what could pull it apart.
Speaker 2: Trump's twenty twenty four campaign is trying to merge the
Speaker 2: most effective elements of his past two runs. Like Bloomberg's
Speaker 2: Nancy Cook said, it's lean like twenty sixteen, with a
Speaker 2: paired down staff and a tight budget, but it's also
Speaker 2: more professional like in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: So there's really two people running it. His campaign manager
Speaker 3: is this woman Susie Wilds, who is a longtime Florida
Speaker 3: operative and really like has helped hern Florida red like
Speaker 3: to a reliably read state. She's been involved in Republican
Speaker 3: politics for decades, has like very deep ties throughout Florida.
Speaker 3: She's a woman of few words. She does not try
Speaker 3: to impose her view on Trump. She presents him with options.
Speaker 3: She does not like to spend money. She's frugal, she's organized,
Speaker 3: she's militant. And then there's another key person, Chris Osavida,
Speaker 3: who is a longtime Republican operative who comes out of Virginia.
Speaker 3: He was in charge of the whole primary strategy, which
Speaker 3: Trump won quite handily, and then he has been really
Speaker 3: focused on the battleground stuff and he's helped them sort
Speaker 3: of merge the campaign in the Republican National Committee.
Speaker 2: Nancy says Wiles in Las Avita have harnessed Trump's personality
Speaker 2: as part of their campaign strategy, giving him space to
Speaker 2: use it where it helps them, without leaving much room
Speaker 2: for the infighting among Trump's official and unofficial advisors, which
Speaker 2: in the past has led to firings and chaos. We
Speaker 2: spoke about this with Danielle Alvarez, a senior advisor for
Speaker 2: communications on the Trump campaign.
Speaker 5: We're taking our leave from the president. He ultimately dictates
Speaker 5: their cadence and he has a massive movement behind him,
Speaker 5: and so what we're focused on doing is harnessing that energy. Well.
Speaker 2: Campaign operations are running smoother than in twenty sixteen and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. Trump is still Trump. His rhetoric remains bombastic,
Speaker 2: just the way his supporters like it.
Speaker 3: I don't think that they have tried to change Trump
Speaker 3: at all. You know, he is still out there doing
Speaker 3: his thing. I think that what they have done successfully
Speaker 3: is put sort of a small team around him, and
Speaker 3: there's still sort of actors in the Trump orbit who
Speaker 3: are sort of floating around, who called Trump and talk
Speaker 3: to him or show up at mar A Lago. They're
Speaker 3: not trying to sort of keep those people out. They
Speaker 3: just sort of redirect them. They don't let those people
Speaker 3: get involved in the real campaign organization.
Speaker 2: You could see their strategy in action during this winter's primaries.
Speaker 3: Traditionally in politics, it's like candidates spend you know, months
Speaker 3: and months on like a year courting Iowa voters. Ron
Speaker 3: DeSantis visited like all of the ninety nine counties in
Speaker 3: Iowa and like had a million in town halls and
Speaker 3: meet and greets, and Nikkihely was in Iowa and South Carolina.
Speaker 3: Trump did none of that.
Speaker 2: Instead, Team Trump was focused about where and how they
Speaker 2: spent resources.
Speaker 3: Trump basically showed up like three days before each of
Speaker 3: these states primaries or caucuses, would hold a few rallies.
Speaker 3: He had a bunch of circuits who would also come
Speaker 3: into the state with him. It was like Maga World
Speaker 3: would land in Iowa four days before the primary, make
Speaker 3: a big splash. Trump would hold like two rallies and
Speaker 3: then he would completely dominate the primary. He just came
Speaker 3: in at the end and made a real heavy push.
Speaker 3: To me, just watching that unfold and covering that in
Speaker 3: these different states was really emblematic, Like, man, these people
Speaker 3: are organized and they have a different strategy, and they're
Speaker 3: really kind of like broke the way people traditionally do primaries.
Speaker 2: Trump's legal issues mean that being nimble is crucial to
Speaker 2: his success. He can't really run a traditional campaign spending
Speaker 2: his time on the road holding rallies and shaking Potter's hands.
Speaker 2: Trump's been stuck in a manhatt In courtroom almost every
Speaker 2: day for weeks, and there are no cameras or recorders
Speaker 2: allowed inside. But Team Trump has managed to turn even
Speaker 2: that into an advantage.
Speaker 3: They have been thinking about how to merge a political
Speaker 3: and campaign strategy since the fall, and they have been
Speaker 3: thinking about basically how to make the courtroom as much
Speaker 3: kind of like a rally or a political event as possible.
Speaker 3: So like he comes out and says something in the morning.
Speaker 2: Here he is on Monday speaking outside of Manhattan Courthouse,
Speaker 2: and the New York Giants came out with they all
Speaker 2: and shows us leading everywhere.
Speaker 3: Light a lot comes out and says something in the evening.
Speaker 3: They've done a few little, you know, stops in Manhattan
Speaker 3: where he's you know, brought pizza to firefighters, or he
Speaker 3: visited a bodega in Upper Manhattan.
Speaker 2: Another day, he visited a construction site and signed red
Speaker 2: Make Unions Great Again hats. Before going into court, he
Speaker 2: was met with cheers.
Speaker 3: And so they have done these things to try to
Speaker 3: use it to his political advantage.
Speaker 2: And maybe it's easier to contain a campaign that's just
Speaker 2: in one place rather than rallies and moving around the
Speaker 2: country and then different people having access to him.
Speaker 3: I think even if he didn't have this, they wouldn't
Speaker 3: be having rallies all the time. You know, the rallies
Speaker 3: are expensive, you know, there's I don't think they see
Speaker 3: any point in him doing rallies like every day now,
Speaker 3: even when he's done with the court case in New York.
Speaker 3: I don't think we're going to see him doing like
Speaker 3: wild of Wall campaign in the summer or wild of
Speaker 3: Will advertising.
Speaker 2: The Trump campaign told us that they're trying to hold
Speaker 2: rallies and events on days when he doesn't have to
Speaker 2: be in court. Meanwhile, a seat at the Trump trial
Speaker 2: has become the hottest ticket in town. That's according to
Speaker 2: Robert Samuel, who was outside the courthouse on Tuesday.
Speaker 3: I'm a professional line sitter. Most of the times we're waiting
Speaker 3: for cronuts and brawai shows. But I will say to
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's credit, he is a jobs creator.
Speaker 1: We've been out here every day.
Speaker 2: Samuel's company, same old line dudes, charges by the hour.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't reveal exactly what time he showed up to
Speaker 2: secure the coveted first and second place spots, but Milliona
Speaker 2: Violona says that she arrived at five five.
Speaker 1: Pm, no am, so over like twenty fo hours.
Speaker 2: Around eight thirty in the morning on Tuesday, Violona was
Speaker 2: handed one of the green tickets that meant she'd make
Speaker 2: it inside, not the actual courtroom, but the overflow viewing area.
Speaker 2: That's when she heard someone else offer up his ticket
Speaker 2: for four hundred bucks, and.
Speaker 3: I stopped there and I said, I'll give you can
Speaker 3: have minds.
Speaker 2: For three fifty sold to her it was a fair price.
Speaker 3: It definitely was.
Speaker 5: As a college student eighteen years old, yes, it was
Speaker 5: best money I make. Invitel P.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of time between now an election day,
Speaker 2: and Nancy says what happens in the meantime could determine
Speaker 2: the fate of the campaign.
Speaker 3: I think what I'm curious about is can they keep
Speaker 3: this lean me in operation that's not fighting with each other,
Speaker 3: you know, intact? And then what happens when the polling
Speaker 3: is bad.
Speaker 2: Current polls are showing Trump out performing Biden in most
Speaker 2: swing states, but public opinion is volatile. At some point
Speaker 2: in the next five months, those polls might change.
Speaker 3: There will be some moment where things will go poorly
Speaker 3: with Trump or Biden will be up in the polls
Speaker 3: and Trump will be down. And like, Trump's not going
Speaker 3: to take the blame for that, So does he turn
Speaker 3: on these people who have run his campaign successfully so far? Maybe?
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what we've seen him do in the
Speaker 3: past in the White House with other campaigns.
Speaker 2: Nancy told me that in her chats with Democratic Operatives,
Speaker 2: it seems that even Trump's opposition is aware that it
Speaker 2: would take some unanticipated event to turn polls in the
Speaker 2: narrative against Trump and give Biden a better shot. If
Speaker 2: the Trump campaign runs out of cash or he faces
Speaker 2: jail time for being in contempt of court, twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four could get complicated for his tight ship campaign. People
Speaker 2: like Anthony Scaramucci, who once backed him unequivocally now denounce him,
Speaker 2: and he could risk losing even more allies if he
Speaker 2: takes his You're Fired approach to his twenty twenty four staff.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. I'm Salia Mosen. This episode was produced by
Speaker 2: Julia Press. It was mixed by Veronica Rodriguez and fact
Speaker 2: checked by David Fox, Alex Sugia, and Jessica Beck. It
Speaker 2: was edited by Aaron Edwards, Stacy Vanocksmith, and Wendy Benjaminson,
Speaker 2: who provides editorial direction with Elizabeth Ponso. Naomi Shaven and
Speaker 2: Kim Gidelson are our senior producers. Nicole Beemsterboer is our
Speaker 2: executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Please
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