Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds.
Speaker 2: We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean we don't have
Speaker 2: a great show for you today. Solidarity Strategies founder Chuck
Speaker 2: Rosche talks to us about Biden's path to victory. But
Speaker 2: first we talked to Ramin Setuta about his new book,
Speaker 2: Apprentice in Wonderland, How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett took
Speaker 2: America through the Looking Glass.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics formIn.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Mollie. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you could start by talking to me about why
Speaker 1: you decided to write this book about The Apprentice and
Speaker 1: which is ultimately, weirdly the most important television program ever.
Speaker 3: Probably I agree. I think it unlocks the mystery and
Speaker 3: secret of Donald Trump. And there's a lot of questions
Speaker 3: about who is he and how did he come to power,
Speaker 3: and why do people like him? And what is going on?
Speaker 3: And I think if you look back on The Apprentice,
Speaker 3: it answers all of those questions. And the reason I
Speaker 3: decided to write this book was that one I was
Speaker 3: a reporter in my twenties. I was working for Newsweek,
Speaker 3: and I needed a beat, and I needed something to
Speaker 3: cover pretty consistently. And at the time, The Apprentice was
Speaker 3: the hot show on TV. And at the time the
Speaker 3: person who was the easiest to interview was Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: He would call office at Trump Tower. He had no publicist,
Speaker 3: he had no bedding. He was his publicist right he publisher,
Speaker 3: and as secretary would patch him through directly. I would
Speaker 3: call his office. I would be on the phone with
Speaker 3: him before I could even turned on my tape recorder.
Speaker 3: He would give me three minutes, he'd answer any question
Speaker 3: I asked, and then he'd hang up. And so when
Speaker 3: he became President of the United States, I would often
Speaker 3: think back to that time of how easy it was
Speaker 3: to access him, and how easy it was to talk
Speaker 3: to him, and how surreal the whole thing was that
Speaker 3: we as a country were trapped in a reality show.
Speaker 3: And so when he left the White House against his
Speaker 3: own will, I decided to work on this book, and
Speaker 3: he reached out to me. Before I even had to
Speaker 3: call his office, write a letter, send an email. He
Speaker 3: reached out to me and wanted to talk to me,
Speaker 3: And between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three, we
Speaker 3: actually spoke six times, four times in person. We watched
Speaker 3: clips of The Apprentice in his boardroom in Trump Tower.
Speaker 3: I went to mar A Lago, and I think this
Speaker 3: book it's a dual narrative. It looks back on The Apprentice,
Speaker 3: but also looks forward on this shell of a man
Speaker 3: that Donald Trump became after he left the White House,
Speaker 3: fixating on feuds, fixating on celebrities, very resentful of what happened,
Speaker 3: and it was unlike any post presidency. I think we
Speaker 3: can imagine as the American public.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about Deborah Messing.
Speaker 3: Well, Donald Trump is obsessed with celebrities even when he
Speaker 3: left the White House, and so a lot of our
Speaker 3: time was that talking about his feuds and him feeling
Speaker 3: like he was slighted by Martha Stewart, by Bette Midler,
Speaker 3: by people that weren't on The Apprentice, because when he
Speaker 3: became famous on a reality show and became a famous
Speaker 3: reality star, he thought all these famous people that were
Speaker 3: momentarily nice to him were actually his friends. And one
Speaker 3: that he's really obsessed with is Deborah Messing. He recalls
Speaker 3: very specifically being at the NBC Upfronts, which is a
Speaker 3: term of people using the industry when they're going to
Speaker 3: go and try to sell advertising for their show. And
Speaker 3: they were here in New York and they were walking
Speaker 3: in and Debora Messing said something nice to him because
Speaker 3: at the time Willin and Grace are on the same
Speaker 3: night as The Apprentice, and she said that his good
Speaker 3: ratings helped will embrace. That's his memory. That's a story, A.
Speaker 1: Very polite thing to say to someone you don't know.
Speaker 3: Very appropriate, totally like whatever. I'm sure famous people will
Speaker 3: have conversations like this all the time. They're not really
Speaker 3: meant to indicate anything. It's just being polite, absolutely right.
Speaker 3: So he talked about how, in kind of creepy language,
Speaker 3: how attracted she found her with her red hair, spoke
Speaker 3: in this way that objectified her, and over the multiple
Speaker 3: times he brought up Debora Messing indicated that he found
Speaker 3: her attractive and had a crush on her, and so
Speaker 3: when she would tweet about him, he found it particularly
Speaker 3: hurtful that this person who sitcom star, who at one
Speaker 3: point said something vaguely nice to him, was no longer
Speaker 3: on his side as President a States of America. And
Speaker 3: he was very aware and cognizant of what Devora Messing
Speaker 3: was posting on Twitter about him, more so than his
Speaker 3: own policies, more so than his own legislation, more so
Speaker 3: than his time in the White House. There was a
Speaker 3: lot of conversation about Debra Messing and our time together.
Speaker 1: It's both very stupid but also makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: So more interested in the celebrities than his own policy.
Speaker 3: More interested in celebrities than anything. He talked to me
Speaker 3: about how he has a secret vote in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 3: He's not interested in swing states or Middle America. He
Speaker 3: really wants famous people to like him. He's still incredibly
Speaker 3: resentful that he didn't win an Emmy for hosting The
Speaker 3: Apprentice in two thousand and four. In two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: when he was nominated and recalls going to get Emmy,
Speaker 3: He's thinking he was going to win. Having The Amazing
Speaker 3: Race when calling it an establishment show even though it wasn't,
Speaker 3: that makes no sense. The Amazing Race was a scrappy,
Speaker 3: small reality show that didn't actually have that big of
Speaker 3: an audience back then, and it is very resentful. But
Speaker 3: I think the reason this is all very important because
Speaker 3: we're entering into another election, right and we're there's a
Speaker 3: lot of conversation about who Donald Trump is. Can the
Speaker 3: Democrats it beat him? We know what's his take in
Speaker 3: his election, but what does that play? And Donald Trump
Speaker 3: is a product of Hollywood, He is a product reality TV.
Speaker 3: He is a product of celebrity culture. And there is
Speaker 3: a convergence in our society between political activity and celebrity culture.
Speaker 3: And we saw it perhaps with Sarah Bala, and we
Speaker 3: definitely saw it with Obama, who used it as a
Speaker 3: force of good not evil, and now we're seeing it
Speaker 3: with Donald Trump. And I think it's really important to
Speaker 3: examine who Donald Trump is, where he came from, and
Speaker 3: how he sees the world, because that is the playbook
Speaker 3: he's going to use to try it to beat Joe
Speaker 3: Biden in the fall.
Speaker 1: Mm yeah, I think that's right. So why is he
Speaker 1: interested in Beverly Hills just because it's filled with famous
Speaker 1: people or.
Speaker 3: Because where celebrities lived? You know, he never lived in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles or Hollywood, but he always wanted to be
Speaker 3: accepted by Hollywood and his dream before he went into
Speaker 3: real estate because as an ebo baby, that was the
Speaker 3: easier path. But his dream is to be a producer,
Speaker 3: either of film or Broadway shows. He was always drawn
Speaker 3: and fascinated by show business.
Speaker 1: It's such a crazy thing. Do you think that, for example,
Speaker 1: like having Robert de Niro at the debates would upset Trump?
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think that there is a way
Speaker 1: for Biden to play this.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think that Biden needs to look at Trump
Speaker 3: as a reality star, and he needs to the only
Speaker 3: way to beat a reality star is by eclipsing or
Speaker 3: dimming that star's power. So yes, absolutely. Robert de Niro,
Speaker 3: who is a real actor and a real famous person
Speaker 3: and was often much more famous than Donald Trump until
Speaker 3: Donald Trump became president, I states being at the debates
Speaker 3: would certainly unnerve Trump. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Do you think that Trump had a moment since you
Speaker 1: interviewed him after he lost the presidency? Do you think
Speaker 1: that he ever felt that he was truly famous?
Speaker 3: He felt like he was famous when he was the
Speaker 3: star of the Apprentice because he had two things right.
Speaker 3: He had fame. He was at the top of the
Speaker 3: reality TV pecking order when The Apprentice in season one,
Speaker 3: although the numbers kept dropping after season one, but whether
Speaker 3: it was the most watched show on TV for one week.
Speaker 3: He has those ratings rained both in his office and
Speaker 3: in mar A Lago and as the editor chy for Variety,
Speaker 3: he was always so excited to talk to me because
Speaker 3: those ratings mean so much to him. Was wall. He
Speaker 3: looks at them, it's like comforting, soothing, and so I
Speaker 3: think that he was very fond of the period in
Speaker 3: which he was hosted The Apprentice because first he was famous,
Speaker 3: but second, just as important as being famous was that
Speaker 3: he was white. He wasn't a divisive figure. People thought
Speaker 3: he was an entertaining and you know, mostly loved saying
Speaker 3: his catchphrase you're fired back to him. So he was
Speaker 3: a famous person who also wasn't dividing the country. And
Speaker 3: as much as he is stoking division now and creating
Speaker 3: drama and dividing the ISAs America and potentially just growing it,
Speaker 3: he liked the fact that everyone liked him and that's
Speaker 3: all that matters to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right, And it is interesting that
Speaker 1: he did feel that he was popular then as president
Speaker 1: he had a lot of power, but he was liked
Speaker 1: by the people he wanted to be liked by. Do
Speaker 1: you think that was a real tension or now.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think that was one of the central tensions
Speaker 3: of this presidency. But it was two things. He wasn't
Speaker 3: liked by famous people, which really bothered him and got
Speaker 3: under his skin so much so that he was a
Speaker 3: shell of a person after he left the White House
Speaker 3: over that, not over anything else, not over the insurrection,
Speaker 3: not over any of the other horrible things that he did.
Speaker 3: But he was very upset that famous people no longer
Speaker 3: liked him. But part of this was that he was
Speaker 3: powerful as president, I states, but he didn't know how
Speaker 3: to do the job. And when he reality show he
Speaker 3: came in, he did whatever he did, he created, whatever
Speaker 3: problems he created. Sometimes his lines didn't make sense, but
Speaker 3: through the magic of editing, Mark Burnett and his team
Speaker 3: of producers always made Donald Trump a coherent, cohesive figure.
Speaker 3: And as PRESIDENTI states, yes, he was powerful, but I
Speaker 3: don't think he knew how to use that power. And
Speaker 3: I think the reason why he was constantly flailing in
Speaker 3: the White House was that he wasn't in control of
Speaker 3: the situation. And I think it was very unsettling for
Speaker 3: him to not be in charge even though he was
Speaker 3: supposedly in charge.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about his cognitive issues.
Speaker 3: One of the things I noticed when I went to
Speaker 3: visit him was that he hadn't changed in many ways
Speaker 3: since I first started talking to him, but his memory
Speaker 3: was certainly much more foggy. The first time I sat
Speaker 3: down with him and talked to him, we had a
Speaker 3: very lengthy conversation. He told Jason Miller how much he
Speaker 3: loved talking to me. He extended our time to his
Speaker 3: second meeting immediately. And then the second time I went
Speaker 3: to talk to him, we had had and again, this
Speaker 3: isn't someone who's been talking to a lot of press.
Speaker 3: At that time, Donald Trump was really laying low and
Speaker 3: I sat down and he had a blank expression on
Speaker 3: his face. He didn't remember talking to me. I asked
Speaker 3: him specifically, do you remember talking to me? And he said, no,
Speaker 3: that was a long time ago, even though it was
Speaker 3: only a few months ago. And in terms of what
Speaker 3: I found is that his memory is incredibly foggy when
Speaker 3: it comes to things that are happening that are recent.
Speaker 1: Which is a dementia thing. Because my mother has dementia
Speaker 1: and recent stuff. She can remember stuff from twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: but stuff that happened, yes, she can't remember.
Speaker 3: I found that to be the exact same case to
Speaker 3: Donald Trump. He could remember with very specific detail the
Speaker 3: night that The Apprentice aired, Supposedly Alli called him to
Speaker 3: congratulate him. He could remember going to Themes, he could
Speaker 3: remember getting an Emmy nomination. But when it came to
Speaker 3: actually asking him specifically about things that happened during his
Speaker 3: time in the White House and specifically things that happened
Speaker 3: were happening in real time, it was all kind of
Speaker 3: abstract and theoretical, and it was utterly it was alarming.
Speaker 1: And he wasn't drawing from recent memories. He was drawing
Speaker 1: from other people's reminder to memories.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't seem like he's retaining recent events, which
Speaker 3: is very important as we had into this election, that
Speaker 3: needs to be a central focus of the debate. There
Speaker 3: does need to be a discussion about that. As a
Speaker 3: seventy eight year old man, what is it exactly that's
Speaker 3: going on with Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Do you think one of the things that I
Speaker 1: just wrote about that I think a lot about is
Speaker 1: his obsession with projunction. So I'm wondering if we talk
Speaker 1: about his memory issues and then we talk about his
Speaker 1: you know, he has very successfully projected the idea that
Speaker 1: Joe Biden has dementia. And even though I took to
Speaker 1: someone who was in the White House for three hours
Speaker 1: the other day. People meet with him all the time
Speaker 1: find him to be quite sharp. It has become a
Speaker 1: narrative that has really taken off. Do you think that
Speaker 1: there is some intentionality there with Trump's own issues?
Speaker 3: I think, either consciously or subconsciously, in the same way
Speaker 3: he called Hillary Clinton cricket Hillary, but the one that
Speaker 3: never really followed the rules or of the law. I
Speaker 3: think that there's something similar going on here. Yes. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: And when he said over the weekend that Joe Biden
Speaker 3: needs to take a common test, I really you know,
Speaker 3: I flashed back to that day where he had this
Speaker 3: completely blank expression on his face and didn't seem to
Speaker 3: know what was happening. And there were moments where we
Speaker 3: were talking and he wouldn't seem to know what was happening,
Speaker 3: and then he would become more clear and less clear,
Speaker 3: and he went in and out of it.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting. One of the things that I'm struck
Speaker 1: by is he's obsessed with Hunter Biden, and Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: has a substance abuse problem or had a substance abuse problem.
Speaker 1: I've written a lot about it. As someone who's sober myself,
Speaker 1: I wonder how much you think that Trump, who's never
Speaker 1: had a drink, and Biden, who's never had a drink,
Speaker 1: how much sort of substances play here with Trump.
Speaker 3: I think that is part of it, because he brought
Speaker 3: up Hunter Biden in our conversation unprompted when he was
Speaker 3: talking about the election fraud and how the media wasn't
Speaker 3: covering what was happening. But he also brought up substance
Speaker 3: on drinking when he was talking about firing Chloe Kardashian
Speaker 3: af of The Celebrity Apprentice, And there was this whole
Speaker 3: narrative on the show where he learned that she had
Speaker 3: a dui, and because of that, even though she had
Speaker 3: the dui before she was even castle on the show,
Speaker 3: he decided to randomly fire her one week helping them
Speaker 3: both later uncovered that he also majorrogatory sexist remarks about
Speaker 3: her appearance, which I think is the real reason he
Speaker 3: fired her, but using the duy as excuse. So I
Speaker 3: do think that Donald Trump doesn't have a sophisticated understanding
Speaker 3: of substance abuse issues and doesn't have a real handle
Speaker 3: on it, even though his brother suffered from it. But
Speaker 3: I also think that he has a real jealousy when
Speaker 3: it comes to the children of other famous people, because
Speaker 3: he always is kind of comparing and stacking up his
Speaker 3: own kids with other kids, and one of the ways
Speaker 3: in which he asserts dominants is by thinking he has
Speaker 3: the best kids. Whenever we talked about other children of
Speaker 3: famous people, like Wilsa Rivers, Jon Rivers daughter, I could
Speaker 3: see there was a calculation in his head where he
Speaker 3: was trying to figure out how his kids measured up.
Speaker 3: Or Martha Stewart's daughter Alexis, who was a judger on
Speaker 3: The Celebrity Apprentice Martha Stewart. He was very resentful of
Speaker 3: how bad she was and how good Avanca was. So
Speaker 3: I think part of the way in which he compares
Speaker 3: himself to other people and makes himself feel better is
Speaker 3: through the fame of his kids, particularly at Boonka.
Speaker 1: Right, he loves Vonka. Did you feel like he didn't
Speaker 1: like Eric? I love this topic. Please just I know
Speaker 1: I'm patty, but let's hear it.
Speaker 3: It seemed to me like clearly he likes Levonca the
Speaker 3: best for the sons. He didn't really engage that much
Speaker 3: in his sons. So Eric talked to me for this
Speaker 3: book and he actually invited me to Trump Tower and
Speaker 3: I sat in Eric's office and he went through sort
Speaker 3: of the play by play and how important the Apprentice
Speaker 3: is for the family, but he didn't give me any
Speaker 3: real sense of how we felt about his sons. But
Speaker 3: also he's very good at not even though he's great
Speaker 3: at reliving feuds and talking about all the issues that
Speaker 3: he's happened with various people, he is really good about
Speaker 3: keeping his kids out of his conversations. Although when I did,
Speaker 3: I asked him about there was a storyline on The
Speaker 3: Apprentice where apparently Don Junior was having an affair with
Speaker 3: Aubrey O. Day. He said he'd heard that and that
Speaker 3: was reported at the time, and Aubrio Day ended up
Speaker 3: saying that it happened. And again, this is I mean,
Speaker 3: you can say this is Patty and the Sicilian, this
Speaker 3: is ridiculous, but this is a family that's running a
Speaker 3: reality show. Don Junior judge on the show. He's married
Speaker 3: at the time, and he's having an affair with a
Speaker 3: can tested who he's giving a secret help to you
Speaker 3: because Audreode was like calling Don Junior and getting help
Speaker 3: on this season of The Apprentice, And it just is
Speaker 3: a playbook for how the Trumps do business.
Speaker 1: That's so crazy? Can you talk to us about what
Speaker 1: you say? The lesson Joe Biden could take from this.
Speaker 3: I think that Joe Biden needs to be aware of
Speaker 3: the fact that even though in the media it does
Speaker 3: seem like, Okay, well, how can we go through this again? Right,
Speaker 3: We're really going to do this again? There's no When
Speaker 3: Donald Trump left the White House in disgrace, I think
Speaker 3: a lot of us thought that Trump arrow was over.
Speaker 3: But Donald Trump does still have broad pockets of support
Speaker 3: throughout the United States, and I think Joe Biden needs
Speaker 3: to realize that he's not going up against a traditional
Speaker 3: political candidate. He is going up against this Frankenstein created
Speaker 3: by reality TV. And even though the polling is close
Speaker 3: and Biden now has a slight edge, I don't think
Speaker 3: we can discount the fact that Donald Trump can win.
Speaker 3: I think it's extremely possible that somehow Donald Trump can
Speaker 3: eke out of victory because he will use every trick
Speaker 3: in his playbook as a reality TV star to deflect
Speaker 3: confused suggests things on of Biden that actually are true
Speaker 3: to himself. He did the same thing to Hillary Clinton
Speaker 3: and in twenty twenty we were all suffering from COVID,
Speaker 3: we were trying to heal as a nation. There were
Speaker 3: a lot of forces that were at play. And I
Speaker 3: think that the country has gotten complacent and we have
Speaker 3: to remind ourselves that Donald Trump is a creation of
Speaker 3: reality television and this is a very dangerous thing because
Speaker 3: the general American public will fall for these tricks. He's
Speaker 3: a mirage by Mark Burnett, and I think one of
Speaker 3: the things I cover in this book is exactly how
Speaker 3: he became popular and became who we became. You know.
Speaker 3: One of the contestants told me, he's playing a character,
Speaker 3: and I believe that this is a character that Joe
Speaker 3: Biden's going up against, not an actual political figure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's playing a character. Donald Trump is not an
Speaker 1: actual political figure, right. He's a sort of Manchurian candidate.
Speaker 1: I mean, he doesn't believe in anything, does he.
Speaker 3: He believes in whatever we'll get him the most amount
Speaker 3: of phrase and approval at that time, and that's why
Speaker 3: he became so much more conservative because the bar Ray
Speaker 3: wing of the party started supporting him. But he he
Speaker 3: whatever he needs to say to feel approval and to
Speaker 3: feel like people support him. That's what drives Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll
Speaker 1: come back.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Molly, I really like talking to you.
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Speaker 2: Chuck Roscha is a Democratic strategist and the founder of
Speaker 2: Solidarity Strategies.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Chuck, Yes, tell us what's going on.
Speaker 1: Is Joe Biden going to lose Hispanic voters?
Speaker 4: No, the question is is he going to win them
Speaker 4: by enough to win the presidency? Because the Latino vote,
Speaker 4: Hispanic voters will probably be the lynchpin in this election
Speaker 4: in lots and lots of states.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Latino voters are not a monolist. It's a bunch
Speaker 1: of different groups all much together in one word that
Speaker 1: does not describe. And so maybe you could walk me
Speaker 1: through the different states, the different groups or however you
Speaker 1: want to talk and sort of give us the landscape
Speaker 1: of what the Latino voter, who is who and which
Speaker 1: group is which and how Biden can appeal to them.
Speaker 4: Or of the problem with Latino voters is that there
Speaker 4: are small groups made up within a group, and I
Speaker 4: will walk you through who we are. But just like me,
Speaker 4: if you're listening to this podcast, you're like, why would
Speaker 4: Molly have an old white man on here to talk
Speaker 4: about the Latino vote. It's because I saund like an
Speaker 4: old white man when I speak. But I'm very much
Speaker 4: a Mexican redneck from East Texas. I love it man well,
Speaker 4: because I was raised by my white grand da Eddie
Speaker 4: in Rouley's, Texas on a working farm. If you're not
Speaker 4: seeing my beautiful brown complexion with that funny cowboy hat,
Speaker 4: I sound like every other white redneck I grew up with.
Speaker 4: But I am, in fact a Latino voter. My last
Speaker 4: name is Rocha. Rocha from the Great Wanna Wato state
Speaker 4: of Mexico, and Mexicans make up about sixty eight percent
Speaker 4: of all Latino voters in America and the biggest difference
Speaker 4: between and we'll get to this, Molly, the biggest difference
Speaker 4: of what the Latino vote is now and Latino voters
Speaker 4: are the fastest group of growing, the fastest growing group
Speaker 4: of voters within that diaspora are second and third generation
Speaker 4: Latinos like myself. Twenty years ago, they were more of
Speaker 4: a foreign born group of folks who are newer immigrants.
Speaker 4: Well now the children of those folks and the children
Speaker 4: of their children, like my thirty five year old son,
Speaker 4: who's also named Charles Rocha, who lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 4: with my two beautiful grand boys, also is a Latino voter.
Speaker 4: That's what's really happened in this group that we're coming
Speaker 4: of age. The average age of a Latino in America
Speaker 4: is twenty seven and the second largest group behind the
Speaker 4: Mexicans or Puerto Ricans, and Puerto Ricans are the majority
Speaker 4: of Latinos in a state like Pennsylvania. That really matters
Speaker 4: to the president. So if you have a lot of
Speaker 4: well meaning, woke white consultant strategist around you trying to
Speaker 4: figure out the diaspora of how we reach Latinos, if
Speaker 4: you don't have one of us in the room explaining
Speaker 4: the nuances of the cultures and the differences, you'll mess up.
Speaker 4: But half of this battle is literally just showing up, Molly.
Speaker 1: Half of this battle is showing up sounds to me,
Speaker 1: like field offices, what does showing up mean?
Speaker 4: Showing up means buying a lot of digital ads, because,
Speaker 4: as I just said, the average age of a Latino
Speaker 4: is twenty seven. Most twenty seven year olds in America
Speaker 4: don't own a TV or pay for cable. That means
Speaker 4: if you run that same Spanish language TV commercial, which
Speaker 4: Univision and Telemundo will for both of them. Don't sue
Speaker 4: me here. It's very important for Latino voters. But that
Speaker 4: twenty seven year old Latino kid, my kid in Pittsburgh
Speaker 4: is not watching Univision or Telemundo in Spanish, so you
Speaker 4: have to go show up where they're consuming information normally
Speaker 4: on some streaming service, some gaming app, or something that's
Speaker 4: tied to their cell phones. And lots of times in
Speaker 4: the democratic groups, we don't spend enough time dissecting those
Speaker 4: subgroups because it's not efficient, and it's not efficient because
Speaker 4: younger voters don't vote at the propensity of older Spanish
Speaker 4: speaking voters, so we spend a lot of time talking
Speaker 4: to them instead of the young folks. Then you have
Speaker 4: generations of people who just don't get any information, so
Speaker 4: they start getting Republican curious or third party curious and
Speaker 4: that's where you start seeing just kind of getting some
Speaker 4: losses on the margins.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping you could talk about with the case that
Speaker 1: needs to be made to Latino voters. I feel like
Speaker 1: different groups have different concerns. What are the big concerns?
Speaker 1: And again not a monoliths, so different groups are going
Speaker 1: to have different concerns. But what do you see? I mean,
Speaker 1: is inflation number one? Is religion number one? I mean,
Speaker 1: are they different concerns than regular voters? Younger voters discuss.
Speaker 4: One of the things that me and Mike Madrid are
Speaker 4: Republican Operative do a podcast every week called The Latino
Speaker 4: Vote Podcast. That's my pitch for our podcast, and we
Speaker 4: talk a lot about this on the podcast because the
Speaker 4: fastest growing group within the quote unquote non college educated
Speaker 4: voter middle class working their way from the lower classes
Speaker 4: that do the working middle class are these Latino workers.
Speaker 3: So they're the second generation, the third generation. They're starting
Speaker 3: to go to college at a high rate, but they're
Speaker 3: still disproportionately non college educated, just workers. So they really
Speaker 3: fall in line. And when I was running Bernie Sanders
Speaker 3: presidential campaign and we got over seventy percent of the
Speaker 3: life Latino vote in every place that we competed for
Speaker 3: that was there was a Latino running the whole organization,
Speaker 3: which was me, So we were filtered into everything. But
Speaker 3: we ran on this economic populist message. Latinos really get
Speaker 3: for giving your college loans. They really get a rig
Speaker 3: system that's really tilted towards the rich and not towards
Speaker 3: folks who are just trying to work every day and
Speaker 3: make it. And Molly, if you said, how do I
Speaker 3: dumb that down to what's your thing on your hat?
Speaker 3: I would say, what are you going to do? And
Speaker 3: I see this in focus groups every week. The Latino
Speaker 3: voter wants.
Speaker 4: To know what are you going to do immediately to
Speaker 4: help me and my family have more money, make more money,
Speaker 4: and help me get my kids into school so they
Speaker 4: don't have to have this shitty job that I've got.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it strikes me that there is a certain sense
Speaker 1: in which the Latino voter is very similar.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's this idea that the system is really rigged against them,
Speaker 1: So it's populism. But one of the things that I'm
Speaker 1: struck by is Joe Biden. One of the reasons why
Speaker 1: rich people are so mad at him right now, and
Speaker 1: we're seeing that a lot. It's funny because a lot
Speaker 1: of the anchors who do finance are like telling me
Speaker 1: in horror that all these people they know are so
Speaker 1: furious at Biden because they don't like raising taxes on
Speaker 1: the wealthy, they don't like the antitrust stuff. They don't like,
Speaker 1: you know, a student loan forgiveness. I mean, it seems
Speaker 1: to me, though Biden maybe not as good at transmitting it,
Speaker 1: He's really done a lot of stuff that's economic populism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that goes back to the point about the
Speaker 4: average age of this newer electored Molly get this forty
Speaker 4: percent of the Latino voters and this election will be
Speaker 4: new since twenty sixteen, forty percent. So they're just younger.
Speaker 4: They don't know what Joe Biden has done because they
Speaker 4: just aren't tuned in to the part of how we
Speaker 4: communicate to normal voters. And what I mean by quote
Speaker 4: unquote normal voters is we in both parties spend a
Speaker 4: lot of money buying TV advertising. That's how you communicate
Speaker 4: to the masses. But I would give that an asterisk
Speaker 4: and say to the masses of old people, because old
Speaker 4: people like me like to watch the evening news because
Speaker 4: I want to know what the weather's going to be tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Or what the traffic's going to be. And young people
Speaker 3: could give a shit less. And so if that's the
Speaker 3: way you're communicating, you're missing a lot of folks. And
Speaker 3: what Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Has done is just kind of showed up in the
Speaker 4: space halfheartedly with a do and just kind of like
Speaker 4: walked in and said, I'm Donald Trump. You know me
Speaker 4: from TV. You should vote for me because that guy
Speaker 4: over there don't give a shit about you. And it's
Speaker 4: just not true. But just him showing up in the
Speaker 4: space and buying some advertising helps him get two percent,
Speaker 4: three percent, eight percent more. And so that's where you
Speaker 4: start seeing the difference is there's not this big migration
Speaker 4: to the Republican Party. You just have a bunch of
Speaker 4: Latinos that are Republican curious that.
Speaker 1: You could lose, and you have to remind them of
Speaker 1: what you're doing for them.
Speaker 4: Right every time we're in a focus group, when you
Speaker 4: tell them what Joe Biden has done for them and
Speaker 4: what he's done with bills to create jobs in America,
Speaker 4: what he's done to help their kids be able to
Speaker 4: get into college and I have affordable colleges. They're like, yes,
Speaker 4: why didn't we know this? And I'm like, cause we're
Speaker 4: not sending you that at on TikTok, which we should be.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So what should Biden be doing.
Speaker 4: He's doing exactly what I would be doing right now.
Speaker 4: Oh good, And that is this is that he realizes
Speaker 4: he has a problem. For twenty years, Democrats were like, oh,
Speaker 4: Latinos are good, They're just as reliable as black voters, almost,
Speaker 4: and we'll just go flush them out when it comes
Speaker 4: election time.
Speaker 3: Well, those days are long gone. When Donald Trump won
Speaker 3: these exponentially high numbers in Miami and in the Texas
Speaker 3: Valley in twenty sixteen, it was a wake up call
Speaker 3: to Democrats. And so what Joe Biden started doing is
Speaker 3: advertising to Latinos in digital and TV earlier than any
Speaker 3: time in the history of American elections that I've noticed.
Speaker 4: And in the last off year elections, Molly we outspent
Speaker 4: Democrats Republicans almost six to one in Spanish language, everizing
Speaker 4: in Senate States. Because again, there's one way to fix
Speaker 4: a problem Democrats like to do, and that's throw money
Speaker 4: at that problem. And I will take their money at
Speaker 4: least they acknowledge that there's a problem, and you know,
Speaker 4: they hired Julie Chavez Rodriguez to be their manager for
Speaker 4: Joe Biden. That's a hat tip to Latinos. And then
Speaker 4: you start advertising because no pay so, no sayso in
Speaker 4: my world, and so you've got to show up and
Speaker 4: spend money. And they're doing that now earlier than they
Speaker 4: ever have.
Speaker 1: That's so good. I'm very happy to use this because
Speaker 1: there's a lot I don't know if you know this,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of hand ringing going on a lot.
Speaker 4: What bothers me the most, Molly, is there's no doubt
Speaker 4: that there will be no stone unturned with the Biden
Speaker 4: campaign because they'll have more money than they know what
Speaker 4: to do with to fix lots of problems. And so
Speaker 4: they have Julie Chavez there. She's going to make sure
Speaker 4: things are done. They're going to be coachly competent. They've
Speaker 4: already hired a trailer full of Latino consultants who are
Speaker 4: making adds in digital. What I worry about, Molly, is
Speaker 4: underneath that at the Senate level and at the House level,
Speaker 4: not in the party committees or they're supporting super packs.
Speaker 4: I know I'm getting down in the weeds. But in
Speaker 4: the campaigns themselves, you have it. Seeing the infrastructure of
Speaker 4: democratic campaigns keep up with this exponential growth of Latino
Speaker 4: voters with Latino managers or operatives, So you lose some
Speaker 4: of that cultural competency at that local level.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk about that because one of
Speaker 1: the great injustices in American life right now is that
Speaker 1: we've only had three black female senators this class of senators.
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of black female senators. You have
Speaker 1: a really a good group, but you're not seeing Latino senators,
Speaker 1: especially in the Sunbelt.
Speaker 4: The Ruben Diego Yes, and I'm working for Ruben and
Speaker 4: he is killing it right, He's doing great.
Speaker 3: But what a lot of these people are missing, especially
Speaker 3: not especially. I shouldn't say that because everybody does it,
Speaker 3: So I don't fault these black women who are running
Speaker 3: for the Senate, who are going to be amazing if
Speaker 3: they get elected. Also Brooks in Maryland, the amazing woman
Speaker 3: in Delaware. But they all have one thing in common, Molly,
Speaker 3: is they have white media consultants. Oh interesting, and they
Speaker 3: control the diaspora within the party apparatus. Now there is
Speaker 3: emerging amazing black and Latino on firms. But it's so
Speaker 3: hard to break into these top races because you have
Speaker 3: to show, as you should, that you could handle a
Speaker 3: race like that, So you need to have work history
Speaker 3: doing that. And it also becomes this place where, well,
Speaker 3: if you don't hire me for the first one, I
Speaker 3: never can have the experience. So it becomes a self
Speaker 3: fulfilling prophecy where there's not a lot of folks doing
Speaker 3: this at the highest level who could be making sure
Speaker 3: that we're doing it right with black or Latino. And
Speaker 3: I take it a step further with AAPI. This is
Speaker 3: a problem within the party that we need to fix
Speaker 3: now at the party committee levels. Let's say the DNC,
Speaker 3: the d TRIPLC, and the Senate Campaign Committee. They know
Speaker 3: they have a Latino problem, and they're doing the right
Speaker 3: things by hiring a lot of Latino consultants, hiring lots
Speaker 3: of Latino staffers because they're going to make sure even
Speaker 3: if the campaigns are doing a shitty job at talking
Speaker 3: to brown and black people, the party committee can make
Speaker 3: up with that with a lot of money and a
Speaker 3: lot of TV, radio and digital targeted to those subgroups
Speaker 3: of voters. And that's how I think we actually went
Speaker 3: back the House and have a shot at the Senate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree. So debunk something for me because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of anxiety on the Democratic side, not
Speaker 1: just me but all my friends, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of like this thinking that Trump has this masculinity that's
Speaker 1: very appealing to young men. Debunk that for me or don't.
Speaker 4: Well, I can tell you this that Donald Trump and
Speaker 4: Joe Biden have a problem with voters. I've been doing
Speaker 4: this for thirty four years, and I've never seen two
Speaker 4: nominees underperform their House or Senate parties, nominees or incumbents
Speaker 4: in states like these two people do. So I am
Speaker 4: a Democrat and a yellow dog Democrat, going back Molly
Speaker 4: to when I work for Anne Richards in Texas. I
Speaker 4: seen a few elections, right, And I say that to
Speaker 4: show how long in the tooth I am, and I
Speaker 4: have never seen like folks double haters. As you can say,
Speaker 4: they're double haters and they don't like either one of them.
Speaker 1: But that's not really true, right. They're bored with Biden,
Speaker 1: but they hate Trump. That crow.
Speaker 4: What the point I want to make there is that
Speaker 4: this third party thing is a real problem in certain
Speaker 4: states and the more states that RFK Junior gets on
Speaker 4: could be something. Now the people flock their no, but
Speaker 4: the margins are going to be so small. And to
Speaker 4: actually answer your question about the masculinity piece, is that
Speaker 4: you have groups of people that have come of age
Speaker 4: since twenty sixteen who just want something different. And it's
Speaker 4: not as much in focused groups, this masculinity piece. It's
Speaker 4: the piece of and people they deem it that. But
Speaker 4: take it from a non college educated Mexican redneck here
Speaker 4: on this microphone who says that it's more about warning
Speaker 4: and being able to break things or say things that
Speaker 4: people are scared to say. Folks miscategorize that as toxic
Speaker 4: masculinity or masculinity, when in fact it's just people that
Speaker 4: are tired of the same old, buttoned up politician saying
Speaker 4: the same old catchphrases and they like somebody who's just different,
Speaker 4: who don't give a shit about what they're saying. It
Speaker 4: could be fascist in off the cuff and talking about
Speaker 4: sharks and all the crazy shit that Donald Trump talks about.
Speaker 4: But there's a small piece of the electric especially young
Speaker 4: men of color and other folks like that, who are
Speaker 4: just looking for they're so desperate for something different that
Speaker 4: even him breaking shit is something that they're at least
Speaker 4: curious about.
Speaker 1: Right. No, I mean I think that's right. And you're
Speaker 1: basically talking about the charisma factor, right.
Speaker 4: And then when you have a group of professionals who
Speaker 4: are some of my best friends and they do amazing work.
Speaker 4: When I talk about well meaning white consultants, they're literally
Speaker 4: the top of the heap of doing great work. But
Speaker 4: there's little pieces that we miss when we run campaigns.
Speaker 4: I never graduated from college. I went to work in
Speaker 4: a factory when I was nineteen. I had a baby
Speaker 4: when I was nineteen who I had full cust he
Speaker 4: for now for thirty five years, I have a different
Speaker 4: vision of life. Does it make it better or worse? No,
Speaker 4: But it makes me when I talk to people, I'm
Speaker 4: closer to the paint. I remember going to a payday
Speaker 4: lender to get money to make it to payday so
Speaker 4: I could buy dippers for that boy. So when I'm
Speaker 4: writing an ad, Molly, it just looks a little different
Speaker 4: than the same group of very highly educated professional some
Speaker 4: of the best in the business TV makers, because I'm
Speaker 4: just looking through a different lens and I think sometimes
Speaker 4: that's where we miss around the edges of having the
Speaker 4: same message to the same group of people because the
Speaker 4: same posters writing the same poll for every candidate, right.
Speaker 1: Right, right, right, that's a really good point. What do
Speaker 1: you think this sort of solve is with Biden when
Speaker 1: you're going against Trump?
Speaker 4: I say, contrast, contrast, contrast, and make sure that there's
Speaker 4: no such thing as a gootv universe.
Speaker 3: And for all of you at home, you follow Molly,
Speaker 3: you know that means get out the vote.
Speaker 4: There's groups of voters suit you don't worry about talking
Speaker 4: to till the very end because you just know they're
Speaker 4: going to be good Democrats. Now, those of us who
Speaker 4: work in data know that if somebody votes in a
Speaker 4: Democratic primary and their regular primary voters, we probably don't
Speaker 4: have to talk to them in the general because they're
Speaker 4: just going to show up. But we need to take
Speaker 4: more of those filters off and talk to a bigger
Speaker 4: group of people because we're just not operating in your
Speaker 4: mama or Daddy's Democratic Party anymore, and we're losing so
Speaker 4: many folks because we've over let me make up a word,
Speaker 4: we've overdatified our elections. Where we've come up with models
Speaker 4: of people who should be acting like their friends and
Speaker 4: neighbors to make sure that we run campaigns more efficiently,
Speaker 4: which is important, but we leave out swaths of people
Speaker 4: that we've not talked to in a while. And if
Speaker 4: you just go talk to them, and what I mean
Speaker 4: by talk to them is send them a mail piece,
Speaker 4: send them a text message, and call them on the
Speaker 4: phone and say there's a difference between Joe Biden and
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, and here's just a few things that are
Speaker 4: very different in drawing a contrast, and that's how you
Speaker 4: get them and you win this election. Is drawing that
Speaker 4: contrast to a li larger group of people, not just
Speaker 4: your modeled scientific universe. Of this small little group of
Speaker 4: folks that your data scientists team have told you are
Speaker 4: the most likely persuadable voters, but I'm talking about that
Speaker 4: twenty four year old kid who may have only voted
Speaker 4: in one election in their lifetime, who probably is thinking
Speaker 4: about setting this out or skipping that, like, have that conversation.
Speaker 4: We can do that now through the text messaging and
Speaker 4: other things that are out there where we've just stopped
Speaker 4: not doing that enough, And I think that's how we
Speaker 4: come back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you. Very interesting and important.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: No my pleasure. I just need to know where to
Speaker 3: send the invoysh for this thing.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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