Speaker 1: This is the warning week two of the Trump presidency.
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer has enunciated a strategy to The New York Times.
Speaker 1: It is the lay down on the railroad tracks strategy
Speaker 1: in front of the Trump locomotive. Let's go to the
Speaker 1: videotape of winning.
Speaker 2: We will win, we will win. We will win, we
Speaker 2: will win.
Speaker 3: We won't we won't rest, we won't rest, we won't rest,
Speaker 3: we won't rest.
Speaker 1: Yes, winning, I like the cane on the left. It's
Speaker 1: very nice. It's a good effect. Now, what Democrats need
Speaker 1: to do in this moment is fight back. And so
Speaker 1: John Stewart posed a fundamental question, and it goes to
Speaker 1: the decision making process. Let me show you.
Speaker 3: What is the decision making process here? Hey, who should
Speaker 3: we get out there to effectively battle one of the
Speaker 3: most savvy presidential media manipulators in history.
Speaker 1: I don't know how about Schumer.
Speaker 2: He's uninteresting, but at least he's monotone.
Speaker 1: So two weeks in, with almost two years to go
Speaker 1: until the next midterm election, what can be done? Many
Speaker 1: people ask what should the strategy be? Now Politico, which
Speaker 1: has some explaining to do, regardless of how insane it
Speaker 1: is that Elon Musk and six teenagers have taken control
Speaker 1: of USAID. That doesn't change the fact that Politico is
Speaker 1: getting eight million dollars plus from government. It's unacceptable, it's corruption,
Speaker 1: and it's part of the reason that there's such a
Speaker 1: collapse of trust in the media. Let's listen to Jim VandeHei,
Speaker 1: who is the founder of Politico left many years ago,
Speaker 1: talk about journalism.
Speaker 2: Be the reporters hard, really hard. You have to care,
Speaker 2: you have to do the hard work. You have to
Speaker 2: skit up every single day and say I want to
Speaker 2: get to the closest approximation of the truth without any fear,
Speaker 2: without any favoritism. You don't do that by popping off
Speaker 2: on Twitter. You don't do that by having an opinion.
Speaker 2: You'd do it by doing the hard work.
Speaker 1: What Politico under John Harris has become there's an information
Speaker 1: pipeline between the Politico and lobbying community that has turned
Speaker 1: the average congressional staffer into a quasi celebrity with their
Speaker 1: look at Me feature at the bottom of the morning playbook,
Speaker 1: which is like catnap at our age of political narcissism.
Speaker 1: And this transactional politics and transactional journalism combine to make
Speaker 1: trivia the news, to make celebrities out of politicians, and
Speaker 1: turn Washington at some level into a reality show landscape.
Speaker 1: And it's a business model. Politico debased journalism, didn't elevate,
Speaker 1: it didn't make anything better. All it did was make
Speaker 1: journalism worse. Now, how to fight back against Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is not a concern of journalism. It's not a concern
Speaker 1: for a fair media. The story right now politically in America,
Speaker 1: when it comes to Democrats through the access media, is
Speaker 1: fundamentally about what might Kamala Harris do next, or who
Speaker 1: might have power next, as opposed to what the obvious
Speaker 1: is staring everybody in the face, which is why is
Speaker 1: there no ability for Democrats in Washington to effectively fight back?
Speaker 1: Why is there no ability to stop any of the
Speaker 1: worst Trump nominees despite the thinness of the majorities. Why
Speaker 1: is there a total inability to use procedure, to use process,
Speaker 1: to use Senate rules, to use House rules. Why wasn't
Speaker 1: the House Democrats even in Washington to oppose Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Why isn't there a plan? Why isn't there an opposition vision?
Speaker 1: Why has there been no major speech coherent at least
Speaker 1: from the floor of the House, from the floor of
Speaker 1: the Senate. Why has there not been a single Democratic
Speaker 1: governor who has risen to the occasion. JB. Pritzker is
Speaker 1: the governor of Illinois, and he is a billionaire. He
Speaker 1: wants to run for president. JB. Pritsker needs to open
Speaker 1: up a political account and JB. Pritzker, who The Nation
Speaker 1: magazine has rightfully declared maybe the best governor in the country,
Speaker 1: needs to say stand with me right here on this
Speaker 1: spot and fight. There should be an effort for advertising
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC that is aimed at the Trump White
Speaker 1: House and at Trump directly to destabilize him, to cause
Speaker 1: infighting and friction amongst those that compete full time for
Speaker 1: his affection and his attention. Winning means putting Donald Trump
Speaker 1: on his heels, which means attacking him where he lives,
Speaker 1: which is the conversation inside his head. This is a
Speaker 1: big deal here when Donald Trump makes up a story
Speaker 1: about a conversation around Patrick Mahomes with Tommy Tuberville and
Speaker 1: then articulates it out loud. Because Tuberville never coached.
Speaker 3: Mahomes and Tommy Tupperville a great coach. You know, his
Speaker 3: quarterback was named Mahomes. He was a great college coach,
Speaker 3: and I said, how good was He said, you don't
Speaker 3: want to know how good he made me into a
Speaker 3: great coach. It's pretty good quarterback. Right.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, the political target, of course is Donald Trump. But
Speaker 1: right now, the way to get at Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: by lassoing the rock of Elon Musk to his leg
Speaker 1: and drowning him politically, proverbially, Elon Musk is a target
Speaker 1: rich environment. The Democratic Party should use his Hitler salute
Speaker 1: and his South African accent and every weird thing he
Speaker 1: ever said, and put it on television and make sure
Speaker 1: Trump sees it, and make sure Trump sees every day
Speaker 1: the impact of Trump's polling and what Elon is doing
Speaker 1: to it, how unpopular he is. This is how you
Speaker 1: fight back. It's not about the data or the polling.
Speaker 1: It's about the instinct to be in the moment, to
Speaker 1: be present, to understand what's happening. You don't need to
Speaker 1: give people dial tests to appreciate the assault. The words
Speaker 1: that you need to fight back or there there are history,
Speaker 1: there are American Canyon, there are story, and so what
Speaker 1: there must be is aggressiveness. What democratic governor is going
Speaker 1: to be the first to stand up and remind the
Speaker 1: American people what the country's about. Right now, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is past apogey. These two weeks have been shambalacked. Laughing
Speaker 1: at Trump is how he will be undone. Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: narcissism is how they will be undone. There is only
Speaker 1: one thing that matters to Donald Trump. That's Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Watch his cabinet secretaries compete for his attention and affection.
Speaker 2: Transportation Secretary Presidence leadership has been remarkable during this crisis.
Speaker 1: Defense Secretary.
Speaker 3: This is an outside the box thinker who understands Laura
Speaker 3: the definition of insanity, which is trying to do the
Speaker 3: same thing and hoping for a different result.
Speaker 1: The advertising should be built around how they are failing him,
Speaker 1: spotlighting their mistakes, how unpopular they are, because when that
Speaker 1: happens inside, their enemies will seek to take advantage by
Speaker 1: tearing them down, and by tearing them down, they in
Speaker 1: the end tear Trump down because it's a vicious hyena
Speaker 1: pack feeding on each other. That is how you fight Trump.
Speaker 1: By putting a stake in the heart of his relationship
Speaker 1: with his number one sugar daddy, Elon Musk, who's going
Speaker 1: for broke and going for the gold. What Trump loves
Speaker 1: is having the richest man in the world work for him.
Speaker 1: What Trump cannot abide is the notion that he serves
Speaker 1: the richest man in the world as his presidential puppet.
Speaker 1: And there's nobody making the argument that can make it
Speaker 1: hit home. And by the time we reach the end
Speaker 1: of the Trump four years will be an urgent national crisis.
Speaker 1: That's the strategy. That's how you fight back. That's what
Speaker 1: you do. You make every hour of every day difficult.
Speaker 1: You appoint a shadow cabinet, and every day there's content
Speaker 1: created by it that highlights the idiocies of these people,
Speaker 1: the smallness of these people, the corruption of these people,
Speaker 1: and delivers a message to the right places, through the
Speaker 1: right portals, to the right people that will get to
Speaker 1: the right places on its own because Democrats, for for
Speaker 1: some reason, don't understand that politics lies below culture in
Speaker 1: the great River of America that defines our times and
Speaker 1: lives as it flows like the Mississippi, from the headwaters
Speaker 1: into the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, Donald, it's the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico. And with that, this is the warning. I'm
Speaker 1: Steve Schmidt, this is the warning, and I invite you
Speaker 1: to join. Subscribe on our substack, on our YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: follow us, Welcome to the community.