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I'm going to just be honest, there were times where Joe Biden greatly disappointed me,

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and frankly, you know, angered me. Like, on the day of my debate with Trump,

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the stakes were so high and the president caused, and he said to me,

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it just was so unnecessary. And you took something from that? That his motivation was all that

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himself. Do you think he wanted you to win the election?

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I've met him, vice president. There's nothing you said I couldn't ask you.

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Because I have a lot to say. And so...

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Okay, so do you wish you hadn't ran?

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No, but I do regret that we did not have more time.

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And then the debate that came before with Biden and Trump, it was a car crash.

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I mean, this was clearly an individual that was very much struggling.

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He didn't want that to be. I could tell something was a little off.

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How'd you know?

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Well, I could start with this.

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And what about I'm not going on Joe Rogan's show?

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I definitely regret that we didn't do it.

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But there was a lot of games being played.

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And then on that night when the election hasn't gone your way,

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what would I have seen if I was a fly on the wall in the room?

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I was in a state of shock.

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Like, I haven't felt anything similar to the emotion I felt that day.

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Other than the grief I felt when my mother died.

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And I knew what was going to happen to our country.

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So I'd had a hard time reconciling that we can't still do something about it.

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Because I grew up in an environment where everyone was fighting for justice and for equality.

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So I do think about how different I could have been.

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But sometimes the fight takes a while.

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Does that mean that you're going to run again?

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Just give me 30 seconds of your time.

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Two things I wanted to say.

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The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show

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week after week means the world to all of us.

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And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had

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and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.

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But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.

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And if you enjoy what we do here,

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please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly

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and follow us on this app.

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Here's a promise I'm going to make to you.

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I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.

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We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to

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and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.

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Thank you.

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What are you doing?

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Well, I am well.

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I mean, all things considered.

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I am well.

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My family is good health, so I start there.

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But otherwise, it's a troubling time.

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What are the full range of emotions?

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When you said all things considered,

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what are the full, what's the full picture there?

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Everything from grateful and feeling very blessed

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to extremely troubled, disappointed, concerned

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of the state of our country and by extension the world.

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Like a lot of people who are watching the news and reading the news,

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there's a state of anxiety.

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What will happen next?

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I often have found myself saying to people,

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you make it worse before it gets better.

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And so the knowledge of that, perhaps the anticipation of that,

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I think keeps me and many others on edge.

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Do you believe that?

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Do you believe it could get worse before it gets better?

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I think it's very possible.

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Every day, because actually during the book tour,

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I've said it to audiences.

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And in one city and then the next day, something happens.

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There's a lot that's very unpredictable about this administration,

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although there is almost all of it that I did predict.

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No, I know you only had 107 days to potentially intervene in the course of history.

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But when you see these things playing out that you're referring to,

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that insight, those feelings you have of frustration,

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a little bit of anxiety, etc.

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Do you feel a sense of responsibility in a weird way?

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Because there was a percentage chance of intervening in these things.

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This is a complex question to ask, but it's...

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I do think about how different it could have been.

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I do think about it in the context of the number of people who are being impacted in such a horrible way.

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I think of it in terms of the number of people who are existing and living in utter fear right now.

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Afraid of being attacked or afraid of being targeted with hate.

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Not much less misinformation, I do.

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And I know that the race that I ran for President of the United States,

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the outcome of that election is what has happened.

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And it would have been different.

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It would have been very different.

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I try not to allow myself to think too much this way.

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I will tell you that because I, for better and worse, really do like to be centered on the present.

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So, let's... I want to understand the set of circumstances that created someone like you,

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because you're an anomaly.

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There's a lot of firsts that appear in your career.

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But if we start at the beginning, what is the context that shapes someone to become such an anomaly

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in their professional career?

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My parents and the community that raised me.

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My mother arrived from India in the United States at the age of 19 by herself.

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My mother, naturally at that young age, became aligned with civil rights movement.

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In Berkeley and Oakland, California, my father, who had been a national scholar in Jamaica,

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they fell in love.

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And here I am.

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My sister and I were born and we were born in an environment where everyone was fighting for justice

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and for freedom and for equality.

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Every message we got was you are important and you have a duty

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to figure out how you're going to participate.

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I noticed this as I was reading to your story how service and helping others seems to be so

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interwoven into your DNA and even we spoke to Doug, your husband.

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And he was telling me a story about your first date with him.

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Uh-huh, what did he tell you?

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Well, Pranny, you made a remark on that first date that you're here to help people

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and to serve people.

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He told me many things.

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We have many pages of what Doug said, very fascinating.

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He's very in love with you, by the way.

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I mean, very in love with my husband and he's very funny.

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I hope you got a sense of it.

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He was a hilarious guy.

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Yeah, well, he and I had such different careers, both of us being lawyers, right?

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He went immediately into private practice.

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I never wanted to be in private practice.

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It was never about money for me.

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It was always about people and how could I do the work that was about protecting people

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and giving people dignity?

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Why protecting people?

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I think there's a lot that has to do also maybe with birth order.

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I'm the eldest.

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And from the age of two years old, my mother told me, take care of your sister.

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Look out for your sister.

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You've got all kinds of stuff.

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And all the pitches, yeah, I've been through everything.

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Yeah, this is my sister, Maya.

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That's you protecting her.

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And that's me protecting her.

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I grew up also, you know, seeing my mother who was a five-foot tall brown woman with an accent

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would be treated.

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She taught me this, my extended family taught me.

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But then I also witnessed the importance of making sure that all people that their dignity

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is respected and protected.

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And because I, you know, I have lived a life to see where that doesn't always happen.

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So you decide to focus on law in public practice.

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You have a phenomenal career from that point onwards.

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It's really remarkable what you're able to accomplish.

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And this is, I guess, a where a lot of the firsts come in.

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Because from the age of 24 to 51, you rise from deputy district attorney to California's attorney general,

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becoming the first woman and first black person told both roles.

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And you led major reforms in that time, including securing $25 billion in homeowner,

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really, after the 2008 crisis, launching the back-on-track LA rehabilitation program

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and making California the state, the first state to mandate body cameras for justice agents.

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And much more.

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An incredible career up until that point.

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That could have been it.

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You could have bowed out at that point and celebrate.

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But there's so much more to be done.

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There's so much more to be done.

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I think one of my strengths and weaknesses is I like to solve problems.

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But that means that I tend to,

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to once a problem has been addressed, move on to the next one,

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without maybe taking the time to pat myself on the back.

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Because now it's time to move on to the next issue.

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During your career, you saw some horrific things.

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That's the nature of your job.

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You deal with the darkest parts of reality.

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The worst parts of human behavior in nature, I've seen.

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Yeah, you're right.

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Give me some context there.

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What does that mean in reality?

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Well, for a while, I specialized in child sexual assault.

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Which is about the most horrendous of abuse and crime,

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which is an adult abusing a child.

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And those cases were so difficult.

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For so many reasons, I mean, there's a couple that I remember in particular where I just,

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where the children were so young that they were,

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they wouldn't be able to testify.

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One was an elementary school low girl.

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And I mean, I remember going into the bathroom of the courthouse and crying.

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Because I knew a jury would not have enough to convict.

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And I broke my heart.

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I mean, and I have thought about that low girl.

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Yeah, years and years and years later.

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But those cases, it's the worst of human behavior,

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which is we as a society should be in the business of protecting children

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and protecting their vulnerability so that they can thrive.

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But I've prosecuted homicide cases.

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I've prosecuted fraud cases.

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How does one deal with all of this stress and responsibility?

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And I'm not just referring to a time as a tiny general, but even they're after

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with running for president and the ups and downs of that, the public feedback, the pressure,

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the responsibility of potentially running the free world, basically,

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and becoming the most powerful person on earth and the ups and downs, the attacks, the child abuses.

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How does one, is there a framework you've built?

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Is there other ideas or principles that you've developed to deal with such pressure?

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Yeah.

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Well, this may sound trite, but I work out every day.

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Yeah.

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I work out every morning, no matter how little sleep I've had.

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I just find it to be just my body and soul.

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Have you changed over time?

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Oh, for sure. I've changed over time.

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The pressure has changed in magnitude.

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But the pressure that I feel in terms of my sense of personal responsibility has not changed,

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I put a lot of, I hold myself to a very high standard, and I tend to be a perfectionist,

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even though I am far from perfect.

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I mean, even during the 107 days, every night, I would stay awake thinking,

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what more could I have done with that one day?

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24-year-old, Kamala Harris, who starts as that eventually becomes a deputy district attorney.

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If I start her there, and you're set there now as Madam Vice President,

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what would be the notable differences in personality, mentality,

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in perspective?

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Oh, that's interesting.

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Well, I mean, I don't know if it's changed, but she was fearless.

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She was fearless.

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She was fearless.

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She didn't hear no, it can't be done.

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And whether it was the first case that I had, and I was a young prosecutor,

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and I was going through the files, and it was a Friday evening, and I realized that the person

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who had been arrested had young children at home, a woman, and all the courts were shutting down,

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and I went to the courtroom, and I asked the judge, please take the bench again.

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She has young children.

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She can't stay in over the weekend.

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And the clerk was like, no, he's gone for the day.

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He's leaving for the day, and I would not leave.

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And they call the case, you know?

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But not hearing no, that has been probably a through line of my life.

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I don't rest easy with the idea that something is not possible.

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At least I don't rest easy with it without trying to show that it is possible.

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And that's probably not changed.

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I also have started to sit better with the idea that, but you can't change everyone.

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How does that change your approach, knowing that you can't change everybody?

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I'm better able to assess a situation to figure out what is the potential there.

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Okay, yeah.

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And be perhaps a bit more realistic without being, I think, jaded about it.

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I guess that's wisdom and experiences.

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Yeah, it comes with, it comes with, I think, a bit of experience.

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Which allows you to be more efficient and effective?

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That's right, yeah.

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That's exactly right.

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That's exactly right.

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Because that is how I reconcile it, which is the effort is better placed somewhere else.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And at what point in this journey, did you realize that you wanted to be president of the United States?

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Was there a lunch or a dinner you had with Doug, when does that decision get made in your career?

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It was when I was in the Senate.

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Yeah.

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I ran into a friend who came up, Doug and I were at a, basically, a family table in a local

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restaurant eating, and he said to me, you should run for president.

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And it had not occurred to me until then.

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It had not occurred to me to run for president.

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There are people who are born thinking they're going to be president.

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There are people who look in the mirror every day and see a president.

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I was not one of those people.

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But then the thought, it kind of germinated.

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And then, of course, being vice president and doing the work of vice president of the United States,

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I met with over 150 world leaders, presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, and kings.

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I've negotiated very important deals and issues on behalf of the American people.

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I've spent countless hours not only in the Oval Office, but the situation room and traveling

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around the world.

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And so in those 107 days, I was fully aware of not only the importance of the job, but fully

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aware that I had the experience and knowledge to be able to do it effectively.

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I mean, this is one of the things.

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I was actually talking to a friend of mine downstairs, Lucy Mengini, who sat out there.

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And we were talking about this idea of like, does imposter syndrome ever leave you?

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And imposter syndrome is a bit of a loaded term.

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But you kind of assume that people in higher places than you are,

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have some like genetic or mentors or some gift.

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They have all the answers, but higher you climb with your own continued naivety.

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You start to suspect that no one really is genetically gifted or like has some superpar

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that you don't have.

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Right.

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And I'm wondering if you've experienced that in your career where the higher you've climbed,

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you realize that actually everybody up here is like, I'm like that, like, oh, I'm at least on

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that level.

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Have you had that experience in your career?

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Yes, I have.

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And, but I've also had the imposter syndrome experience.

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And that was when I was first elected DA.

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And I challenged them in the incumbent.

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I started out at six points in the polls, which is six out of 100.

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You know, people recently asked me, what about polls?

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Well, you know, if I listened to polls, I would have never run from my first office.

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And therefore, we wouldn't be having this interview probably.

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And I won.

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And it was, you know, it was not expected that I would, at least when I jumped in the race.

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And there I was sitting in the office.

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And I thought, oh, my God, I'm now the elected DA of a major city in the United States.

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In hindsight, it was maybe it's, we call it an imposter syndrome.

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To your point, maybe it is a very loaded term because I think there's nothing wrong with having.

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And I think that there's a lot that is good with having a certain level of humility.

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And in particular, when the people have vested you with great power,

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right, to understand it's not about you, right?

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I think that that is, that is part and parcel of what we call an imposter syndrome or who has it.

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I think often it is because they understand how serious the job is on behalf of others.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And I applaud a bit of humility, honest humility, not feign humility.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, right?

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Because there are plenty of people that are, you know, self-deprecating for the sake of the

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stick of it all.

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Yeah.

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But yes, to your point, the higher you go, it does, it does because the more you're exposed to being,

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the more you're in the rooms with the people who are, who otherwise feel untouchable,

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the more you understand that they are not untouchable.

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Supply.

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We're putting it.

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The more you understand, everyone's got a little dust on them.

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Yeah.

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They're not, not everyone's shiny.

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But it's liberating to know that that's the case because, you know, there's,

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we all put the ceiling above us.

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Yeah.

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And we think, no, that's my level and everyone above that has some gift that I will never be able to attain.

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So I won't even strive to break that ceiling because, you know, I don't deserve to be up there.

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But, and also don't discount the signals that, that many people are sent,

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that you don't belong there.

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Yeah.

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And, and, you know, I, especially when I'm mentoring people, we'll often say to them,

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don't ever limit yourself based on other people's limited ability to see who you are.

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That's their limitations.

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See who you are in your capacity.

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Don't impose those limitations on yourself.

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Well, I mean, this, that photo I showed you before we start recording that LeBron posted,

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is a pretty iconic example.

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I put it on the screen, but it just goes to show, I think, all the Vice Presidents that came

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before you and, frankly, they all look the same.

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So one might fall into the trap of thinking that if I don't look like this,

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then I can't do this job.

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You know, that's what I think the human mind logically might arrive at the back conclusion.

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It looks for pattern recognition, it might think, if I'm not one of these here,

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one of these men here with this suit on and this kind of hair and this age,

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then that's not a position I can thrive in.

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I'll see you and add one.

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Okay.

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And everyone else thinks that this is the image of who can do the job.

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Yeah.

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So the added challenge is not only the limitations one puts on themselves,

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but the limitations one might be met with around other people's perceptions about who can do what?

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And have you had that through your career?

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Yes.

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Is there any particular examples that always set up the front of your mind where you really,

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really felt that the room you were in, people were discounting you purely based on appearance,

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or gender, or race, or anything like that?

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I mean, there are times in my career when I walked in the room and someone said,

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you know, something along, if they didn't know me, if they didn't know what they were walking into,

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you know, they were waiting for my boss.

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And how did you deal with that?

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How did you stop that suppressing you?

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Because it's very easy to feel that and go into shrink.

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You will often be, you may often be, the only one who walks into a bored room,

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a courtroom, a meeting room who looks like yourself or has had your life experiences.

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But when you walk in that room, walk in that room, chin up, shoulders back,

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knowing there are so many people who are not in that room,

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who are so proud of you walking in that room and expect that you will use the voice that you carry.

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You know, and there are tools that one has to employ when you otherwise are aware that

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you might be presenting the unfamiliar.

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But what I also would caution is, is don't walk in that room with the assumption that

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your value will not be recognized, right? And so again, this gets back to my point about,

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we all have to moderate what limitations are we putting on ourselves with what limitations are being

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sent our way.

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And when you say tools,

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well, just like that, don't, don't when you walk into that room, see all the people.

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I think sometimes of Mrs. Francis Wilson, who is my first grade teacher who attended my law school

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graduation. I think of my mother who would say to me, Kamala, don't you ever let anyone tell you

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who you are, you tell them who you are, right? And you think of these people when you walk into

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these important rooms to remind you.

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I, it's a tool I have used over a period of time and it has served me well.

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Yes, there's Mrs. Wilson, that's at my law school graduation and that's my mother.

364
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That's exactly right. How about that?

365
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Yeah, we should get all these pictures.

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Well, it's talking.

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Yeah, that's Mrs. Wilson.

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And so why is thinking of Mrs. Wilson helping you when you walk into those rooms?

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Because there is, I think, a key to success

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that each of us who has achieved success probably shares, which is there has been someone

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at least and it could be a parent, it could be a teacher, it could be a neighbor, it could be a

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pastor. Someone who convinced you were special. You may not have been particularly special,

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but they told you you were and you believed them.

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I know that's true for me. I may not have been particularly special,

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but I had a few people who told me I wasn't, I believed them.

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And, but with that came, therefore don't do this thing because you're, you know,

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shouldn't be doing that thing, but go in that room.

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I think, you know, when we talk about mentorship, when we think about the signals that we

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as a society send to children, and I mean all of our children, our own children, the children

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of a community which we should think of as our children, to send them signals that tell them

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they are special and then back that up with giving them the resources

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would make us a much stronger society.

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As you said that, I was reflecting on little passing comments people in my life made at certain

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points, then at the time I was suspicious about like, you know, I'm telling you that you're

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going to be special, do something great when they, that I might have not fully believed myself,

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00:25:25.360 --> 00:25:30.400
but I believe they believed it. Right. And that was enough. But that's what I'm saying. They

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told me and I believe them. I didn't think of it and maybe that's why I don't look in the

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mirror and see all these things. But yes. Have you got any tools around how you've learnt to

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hold yourself, thinking back to 24-year-old Kamala versus this Kamala? Is there a certain way you

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hold yourself in those rooms that also garners that respect? I notice when you speak, you, you don't

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rush. And I think people that are younger in their career, they tend to do that. Yeah, right. Because

392
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they're kind of almost trying to excuse the amount of time they're taking and they kind of are a

393
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I just wonder if there's anything you've any tools in that regard that have helped.

394
00:26:08.720 --> 00:26:18.960
It's important to have some sense of conceptually what you mean to say. And not that you have to

395
00:26:18.960 --> 00:26:24.960
rehearse what you're going to speak before you speak it, but do have a sense of what you intend

396
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to communicate. And I think it's also important to, especially with complex issues in the context of a

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00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:42.720
discussion, deconstruct in your mind what the issue is. So you can speak logically.

398
00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:48.240
And what about appearance generally? Do you think much about that? So do you think much about,

399
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because you're right, I mean, you look very, you're out of its stunning today.

400
00:26:51.200 --> 00:26:56.480
Does it matter? Sadly, it does. It does. I mean, depending on context,

401
00:26:59.440 --> 00:27:08.160
sadly, it does. We are still, I think, in a world where the way you appear when you walk in the room

402
00:27:09.840 --> 00:27:16.880
impacts first impressions, including just, for example, again, even in mentoring people,

403
00:27:16.880 --> 00:27:21.440
people will look at their watch or their phone to see if you've walked in the room on time.

404
00:27:23.840 --> 00:27:32.640
And we'll judge something about your character, the piece of how you look that is going to suggest

405
00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:39.520
the pride that one has in themselves as a matter of self-respect. I mean, I've always, this is,

406
00:27:39.520 --> 00:27:47.840
you know, I grew up in the black church. You dress up. And it's a reflection of your dignity

407
00:27:49.120 --> 00:27:56.320
and the respect you have for the place that you maybe. And in January 2019, you launched your

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00:27:56.320 --> 00:28:02.800
presidential campaign for the first time, which was up until you dropped out later that year in

409
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December. Correct. Why did you drop out of that presidential race? What's the, what's the full

410
00:28:08.640 --> 00:28:17.280
context behind the scenes? There was a lot there. Mostly, we ran out of money. But I learned a lot

411
00:28:17.280 --> 00:28:23.440
of lessons, obviously, about running. But that was, that was the main reason. And at some point,

412
00:28:23.440 --> 00:28:32.560
you get a call from Mr. President. You got a call from then nominee, Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

413
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He, we FaceTime, it was during the height of COVID. Yeah. And he asked me to be his running mate.

414
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And it was a great honor. And I was honored to do it. Did you have any inclination before that

415
00:28:44.800 --> 00:28:50.800
moment that he was going to ask you? Had there been like a side conversation? So no, I had an interview.

416
00:28:51.360 --> 00:28:58.320
I had an interview. And it was like something out of a spy movie where I had my assistant drove

417
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me to one location. This was in DC. And then it was a mall. And then I got out of that car to

418
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get in another car that was because the press were watching everything to see who there was a

419
00:29:11.600 --> 00:29:16.640
short list that was out who was going to be. So we had to do this whole clandestine thing. And

420
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then I got into another car being driven by one of his assistants. And then we went to this,

421
00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:28.400
you know, this very secure just route to a house. And then through the back door, the windows were

422
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closed, the shades were closed. And I had my interview went back to, because Doug and I were in

423
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our apartment in DC, because I was senator at the time. And again, height of COVID, then the

424
00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:45.280
vans, the press vans were parked out front. And we would just want to go for a walk. Remember during

425
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COVID, everyone just wanted to get some fresh air. They must have thought we couldn't see them.

426
00:29:50.560 --> 00:29:56.240
They were like an unmarked man. So from time to time, I just walked up to them say, we're going

427
00:29:56.240 --> 00:30:03.600
to get some coffee. Can't bring anything back. We'll be right back. The day I actually got the call

428
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from from Joe Biden asking me to run with him was the same day earlier where one of my girlfriends

429
00:30:11.040 --> 00:30:15.440
has a house in Virginia. And it was the end of summer. And she had all these beautiful end of

430
00:30:15.440 --> 00:30:20.880
summer tomatoes. I like to cook. She brought me this big box of tomatoes. And I was going to make

431
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a bunch of marinara and freeze it. Then I get the call from him. I said, yes, of course. And I don't

432
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know. It felt like within seconds, a parade of people walk into our apartment with a parade of

433
00:30:33.520 --> 00:30:39.680
binders sit down. Everyone's in masks to tell us, okay, this is what the campaign is going to be.

434
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And because I hate to waste food, every one of them walked out with me handing them to me as they

435
00:30:46.160 --> 00:30:51.840
left. I'm so intrigued to know, I've done many interviews in my life. I've been in a couple of

436
00:30:51.840 --> 00:30:56.160
interviews myself. How does someone get interviewed to be the vice president? Like, what are the

437
00:30:56.160 --> 00:31:02.480
questions? One is asked. Well, having been in the position of both being the interviewer and the

438
00:31:02.480 --> 00:31:12.880
interviewer. It really as much as anything comes down to chemistry. Oh, okay. Because by the time

439
00:31:12.880 --> 00:31:19.520
that that interview is happening, it's usually narrowed down to about three people. So all the

440
00:31:19.520 --> 00:31:24.560
vetting has been done. I mean, the vetting, I had such a truncated experience when I was running

441
00:31:24.560 --> 00:31:31.360
for president of just a couple of weeks. But I think Joe Biden took like nine weeks to make a

442
00:31:31.360 --> 00:31:36.560
decision. And so there's vetting when I was being vetted for vice president. I had a, I don't know,

443
00:31:36.560 --> 00:31:44.960
nine hour interview with a lawyer going through everything, everything. My taxes, my professional

444
00:31:44.960 --> 00:31:50.560
record, everything that was everything, everything, everything. I mean, talk about a colonoscopy.

445
00:31:50.560 --> 00:32:00.240
Yeah. Just virtually. That's kind of what it was. And so when all of that has been done and it's

446
00:32:00.240 --> 00:32:05.360
kind of green light, green light through that, then it's about sitting down and just deciding

447
00:32:06.240 --> 00:32:12.400
because it is going to be a partnership, right? And it has to be. It has to be where you feel that

448
00:32:12.960 --> 00:32:18.400
you can trust someone. You could work with them. You are, you're doing it for the same reasons.

449
00:32:18.880 --> 00:32:22.320
Was it what you thought it was going to be? Being vice president? Yeah.

450
00:32:23.760 --> 00:32:29.200
I didn't know exactly what it would be because there's nothing that can compare to it. I mean,

451
00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:33.600
I was the 49th vice president in United States. There have only been 48 before me, right?

452
00:32:34.880 --> 00:32:44.240
And I don't think anything can truly prepare you for what it is because it is a very unique position

453
00:32:44.320 --> 00:32:55.760
where you are. Again, you are number two in command. So the the seriousness of the responsibility is

454
00:32:55.760 --> 00:33:05.040
that I give all credit to now the late president Jimmy Carter who decided when he was president,

455
00:33:05.040 --> 00:33:10.720
having come off of Kennedy and Nixon and everything, he decided that the vice president

456
00:33:10.720 --> 00:33:15.920
should be given greater responsibilities than had been the case because God forbid something happens

457
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:22.720
to the president. There should be a smooth succession. And so Walter Mondale was his vice president and

458
00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:28.640
was the first to have an office in the West Wing. The responsibilities were again to meet with world

459
00:33:28.640 --> 00:33:34.880
leaders. The responsibilities were to travel the country on behalf of our administration and our

460
00:33:34.880 --> 00:33:46.400
policies. It's it's an incredible responsibility. And meeting with the variety of people who for

461
00:33:46.400 --> 00:33:55.760
the most part just want us to achieve good things. When I was reading your book 107 days,

462
00:33:55.760 --> 00:34:00.480
one of the one of the really surprising things was but also makes sense when I understand human

463
00:34:00.560 --> 00:34:06.480
nature was that you talk about how some of the president's staff were basically suppressing you

464
00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:10.720
a little bit, suppressing your accomplishments because you're a threat to them. And I think you

465
00:34:10.720 --> 00:34:16.320
were told pretty early on or you'd heard pretty early on from a chief of staff that the vice president

466
00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:24.400
is kind of seen as a threat to the president. So the law has it that the outgoing chief of staff

467
00:34:24.400 --> 00:34:30.560
to the president will tell the incoming chief of staff to the incoming president regardless of

468
00:34:30.560 --> 00:34:38.080
political party. Rule number one, watch the vice president. Law has it that that's the case. And

469
00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:46.960
and then I had of course run against Joe Biden. I was very and acutely aware that I would have to

470
00:34:47.920 --> 00:34:54.880
over and over again prove my loyalty that it wouldn't be assumed. You say in the book the president's

471
00:34:54.880 --> 00:34:59.360
staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprung up about me. Yeah. The president's in a

472
00:34:59.360 --> 00:35:04.320
circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little

473
00:35:04.320 --> 00:35:10.960
bit more. Yeah. I was shocked when I read that but at the same time understood it because it's

474
00:35:10.960 --> 00:35:17.680
human nature but also shocked because one wouldn't expect. And it was kind of productive.

475
00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:22.000
It was absolutely kind of productive. Was there a particular moment where you realized that this

476
00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:30.560
was happening for the first time? To be candid with you, I had a sense of it for quite some time

477
00:35:30.560 --> 00:35:36.000
but it was after the election that I really started to hear the stories about it. I mean,

478
00:35:36.160 --> 00:35:42.080
I had a sense of it. It was clear to me in terms of just the challenges with getting them to

479
00:35:42.080 --> 00:35:47.520
uplift, getting them to defend, especially when they were inaccurate unfair attacks.

480
00:35:48.800 --> 00:35:52.720
And then I started to hear more stories after. And what you mean by that is when there were

481
00:35:52.720 --> 00:35:58.160
unfair media attacks on you that could quite easily have been debunked or debunked. Yes.

482
00:35:58.160 --> 00:36:06.160
There was no desire to debunk them. There was there the staff and the resources

483
00:36:06.880 --> 00:36:12.960
under the president as compared to the vice president are enormous. And to the extent that the

484
00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:23.360
vice president is being attacked, resources were available but not used to defend the vice president

485
00:36:23.360 --> 00:36:27.920
in the way that they could have that would have ignored to the benefit of everyone involved.

486
00:36:27.920 --> 00:36:33.760
Because that's what I think. There was an argument to say it was in their interests because if you

487
00:36:33.760 --> 00:36:39.520
and Joe Biden are strong, you're more like Joe Biden's more likely to then win the next election.

488
00:36:39.520 --> 00:36:43.200
Exactly. That's my point. We rose and fell together.

489
00:36:43.840 --> 00:36:49.520
Yeah. And did he, did Joe Biden know that that was happening?

490
00:36:49.520 --> 00:36:53.840
I don't know if he did. But it's the staff underneath him that are in charge of that.

491
00:36:53.840 --> 00:36:59.840
Yeah. Okay. So you're saying that you think they wanted you to be weaker in public perception

492
00:37:00.400 --> 00:37:08.800
because that kind of keeps you in your place? I think that that was part of it. I do. I think that

493
00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:13.920
they decided that, you know, there are far too many people in this world and in professional

494
00:37:13.920 --> 00:37:21.280
life who approach things with a zero-sum game. Yeah. Yeah. If I have more, you have less.

495
00:37:23.040 --> 00:37:29.680
And it is incredibly short-sighted. And I think it's actually quite provincial thinking when you're

496
00:37:29.680 --> 00:37:36.240
talking about the stakes that were at play in our administration and of course in the election.

497
00:37:36.960 --> 00:37:43.520
And they, you were talking about in the book as well on page 47 of 107 days that they also didn't

498
00:37:44.800 --> 00:37:49.520
promote your accomplishments because when I read through all the research of the things that

499
00:37:49.520 --> 00:37:55.920
you had accomplished, I wasn't aware. I know. That doesn't seem to be a megaphone shouting about

500
00:37:55.920 --> 00:38:00.640
the things you were accomplished. So. It's very frustrating. I can't even tell you.

501
00:38:01.520 --> 00:38:07.440
Frustrating and painful. Really? And, well, and also not just for me, but for the people who knew

502
00:38:07.440 --> 00:38:13.200
my career and knew what was not being said and what was being said. What wasn't being said?

503
00:38:14.320 --> 00:38:22.960
The accomplishments. The credibility of my leadership.

504
00:38:24.400 --> 00:38:30.720
They thought that, you say that some page 51, if you were shining, then Joe Biden was dimmed.

505
00:38:30.800 --> 00:38:36.640
So it was very much in their interests to make sure you were dimmed.

506
00:38:38.000 --> 00:38:45.200
One one could argue then so that Joe Biden was shining. Yeah, and that was, again, it was very

507
00:38:45.200 --> 00:38:51.120
short-sighted. Are you friends with Joe Biden? Yes. Hey, is the relationship good? It's a good

508
00:38:51.120 --> 00:38:55.440
relationship. I just talked to him two days ago. He called me for my birthday.

509
00:38:55.920 --> 00:39:07.440
Is it complicated? Yes, it's very complicated. It is. And as I write in the book, it is very

510
00:39:07.440 --> 00:39:15.440
complicated. I have a great deal of affection for him. And there were times that I've been quite

511
00:39:15.440 --> 00:39:22.800
candid about where he greatly disappointed me. And frankly, you know, angered me.

512
00:39:27.840 --> 00:39:31.120
Can you give me context on us where he disappointed and angered you?

513
00:39:33.600 --> 00:39:40.640
So I write, and I, you know, I thought about this, was I going to write about it or not? And I

514
00:39:41.600 --> 00:39:45.360
I decided in writing this book, I was going to just be honest. And these are the facts,

515
00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:51.360
and the reader can take what they want from it. On the day of the debate, my debate with Trump.

516
00:39:53.760 --> 00:40:02.880
And, you know, so going into a presidential debate is an incredibly intense and intensive project,

517
00:40:03.520 --> 00:40:09.920
including what is historically happened that we even called debate camp in your imagined.

518
00:40:09.920 --> 00:40:16.560
And it's no camp at all. It's going into where you basically are sequestered for a period of time

519
00:40:16.560 --> 00:40:24.800
immediately before the debate. Where did you get all of these? This is Philippe who played Donald

520
00:40:24.800 --> 00:40:30.800
Trump in your debate camp in my debate camp. And he never broke character ever. So this is a fake

521
00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:36.160
Trump that was 14. This is the fact that he would do the makeup, the orange makeup, the long red tie.

522
00:40:37.040 --> 00:40:45.120
He was just awful, awful, awful. In the best way, it's trying to get me prepared. And,

523
00:40:46.400 --> 00:40:51.360
and there were a lot of people like Philippe. There were a lot of people who are, you know, I'm

524
00:40:51.360 --> 00:40:55.920
very fortunate. I have people who have been with me for years and years and years through these

525
00:40:56.000 --> 00:41:02.160
various offices. And, no, even if they go onto different positions, they always come back when

526
00:41:02.160 --> 00:41:12.960
needed. And so debate camp was this intense, basically, a preparation process where you, you know,

527
00:41:12.960 --> 00:41:18.000
your team will basically try to, they'll break you and then build you back up.

528
00:41:18.960 --> 00:41:27.040
So the day of the debate was after that intense period of preparation. And then that morning,

529
00:41:27.040 --> 00:41:31.120
I had a meeting with my team. I thought it was going to be more prep, but they actually were

530
00:41:31.120 --> 00:41:38.000
wonderful and just basically said to me, you're ready. So, okay, then being a woman running for

531
00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:44.320
president and many women in various high level positions get their hair and makeup back to your

532
00:41:44.320 --> 00:41:52.240
point about presentation. And it can take hours. Hair and makeup got done. I'm in the hotel room

533
00:41:52.240 --> 00:41:59.680
with Doug with my husband. And the president calls. And I, I was told that he wanted to call me so

534
00:41:59.680 --> 00:42:09.920
that I'd be ready. And I was so sure it was to buck me up and go, go get him. And he did say that

535
00:42:09.920 --> 00:42:17.040
for the first beat. And then he went on to talk about a group of people in Pennsylvania

536
00:42:17.040 --> 00:42:22.880
who were saying bad things about me because they heard I was saying bad things about him.

537
00:42:23.920 --> 00:42:32.320
And when I hung up the phone, I was just, I was, I was unbelievable. And I was, yes, I was angry.

538
00:42:32.880 --> 00:42:40.000
And deeply disappointed. It just was so unnecessary. There are only two people

539
00:42:41.200 --> 00:42:47.360
in the world other than me that has debated this guy, Hillary Clinton and him. And you know what's

540
00:42:47.360 --> 00:42:52.800
like. It's going into a debate with the stakes being that high and Trump hadn't agreed to another

541
00:42:52.800 --> 00:42:59.920
debate. The stakes were so high. So that's an example of what I mean.

542
00:43:02.240 --> 00:43:06.800
You took something from that. You took a, an underlying message about

543
00:43:07.520 --> 00:43:13.360
one's intentions from that. Because I would, if someone called me in the lead up to debate

544
00:43:13.360 --> 00:43:17.520
preps at something like that to me, I would assume that they don't want the best for me.

545
00:43:17.760 --> 00:43:26.480
My takeaway is his motivation was all that himself. That's what I would assume from that.

546
00:43:26.480 --> 00:43:33.680
Yeah, right. Obviously, right. Yeah. It wasn't about my performance at the debate.

547
00:43:35.520 --> 00:43:37.120
Do you think he wanted you to win the election?

548
00:43:37.520 --> 00:43:45.680
I do, because I was the only one who would be able to preserve his legacy.

549
00:43:46.960 --> 00:43:48.080
But even that's about him.

550
00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:53.360
Well, if I had to assume one of the reasons why he'd want me to win.

551
00:43:57.920 --> 00:44:01.360
And of course, you know, that this all wouldn't be happening. I don't think anybody

552
00:44:01.840 --> 00:44:11.840
who cares about the future of the country, the democracy, or even just protecting the

553
00:44:11.840 --> 00:44:18.560
Constitution of the United States would have wanted this. Yeah.

554
00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:27.840
Just a bit of a reminder to me that a lot of people in the highest places in power are

555
00:44:28.560 --> 00:44:32.640
maybe a little bit self-focused. Yeah. That is the case.

556
00:44:35.840 --> 00:44:44.400
I think that is the case. I've seen it. I've seen it. Maybe dare I say that it, that's how they get

557
00:44:44.400 --> 00:44:52.960
that? I think that maybe a big part of it, if they don't have something else, that is the

558
00:44:52.960 --> 00:44:57.440
polar of the push. Yeah. Because I look at your life in your career and I see a dedication to

559
00:44:57.440 --> 00:45:02.720
the same thing, which is like serving people. And it's at the expense of financial opportunities

560
00:45:02.720 --> 00:45:06.720
and other opportunities you could have pursued. And it seems to be really authentic to me that

561
00:45:06.720 --> 00:45:11.120
your agenda was to serve people. I can't say that about everybody else that I've studied or

562
00:45:11.120 --> 00:45:16.000
interviewed in the political environment. And the other thing that, so I watch all these debates,

563
00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:19.920
I've been, I'm such a big fan of American politics. So I was up at 12 years old,

564
00:45:19.920 --> 00:45:24.560
watching Obama get inaugurated or whatever it was. It was roughly a young kid at the time.

565
00:45:24.560 --> 00:45:28.560
I stay up on watch all the debates I always have since I was a kid and watch that debate.

566
00:45:28.560 --> 00:45:32.960
But the debate that came before with Biden and Trump, it was so apparently clear

567
00:45:34.080 --> 00:45:39.440
that this was not okay. And it felt like, it felt like the whole of the democratic side of politics

568
00:45:39.440 --> 00:45:45.360
was pretending everything was okay. That's kind of my observation from the UK. I was like, why are

569
00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:49.280
they all pretending everything's fine? But this was clearly an individual that was very much

570
00:45:49.280 --> 00:45:53.600
struggling with articulation, with ideas. And in the face of someone like Trump, who

571
00:45:54.720 --> 00:46:00.240
to his credit is able to pounce on that to be very quick.

572
00:46:00.240 --> 00:46:05.280
Well, and he interestingly enough, because of course, I watch that debate very closely

573
00:46:05.280 --> 00:46:12.160
for many, many reasons, including I had four interviews right after his debate.

574
00:46:12.240 --> 00:46:17.440
Okay. To speak on behalf of the president during the debate.

575
00:46:18.080 --> 00:46:23.600
And what was interesting in that debate was also to watch how it's a very rare circumstance

576
00:46:23.600 --> 00:46:30.240
that you see Donald Trump actually moderate. It was fascinating.

577
00:46:32.320 --> 00:46:36.080
You must have known, you must have you sat there, were you in LA at the time, right?

578
00:46:37.040 --> 00:46:45.760
I was in LA at the Fairmont Hotel, watching, taking vigorous notes. I had ordered,

579
00:46:46.560 --> 00:46:49.760
you know, like they had a little crew to take plate and I was like, no, this is a pizza night,

580
00:46:49.760 --> 00:46:56.160
ordered pizza for everyone. I had my, a number of people with me, but I had a tight group of people

581
00:46:56.160 --> 00:47:00.640
with me in the room. He called me from debate camp.

582
00:47:01.600 --> 00:47:06.960
The president did Biden did. And I could tell something was a little off.

583
00:47:08.400 --> 00:47:17.040
And I was concerned about, I just, I don't think he wanted to debate is my point.

584
00:47:17.600 --> 00:47:22.480
He didn't want that debate. And you know, it's like any competition you go in,

585
00:47:22.480 --> 00:47:28.640
whether it's your bidding for something, your, if it's sports, you got to want it, right?

586
00:47:29.280 --> 00:47:36.560
If you don't want to be in the competition, it will absolutely have an impact on your performance.

587
00:47:36.560 --> 00:47:40.560
And I don't think he, I'm pretty sure he did not want to debate.

588
00:47:40.560 --> 00:47:45.440
How do you know what were the signs? Well, we had conversations about it. I think he got

589
00:47:45.440 --> 00:47:51.120
talked into it. And in any event, so I'm watching the debate with my tight team. I wanted it to be

590
00:47:51.120 --> 00:47:55.760
a small team so I could just be candid as it's happening because I know I have four interviews

591
00:47:55.760 --> 00:48:00.240
right after. And you know, in every debate, I don't care who you are,

592
00:48:01.200 --> 00:48:07.440
there will be statistic wrong or, you know, you name this country, but it was that country

593
00:48:08.240 --> 00:48:13.520
that always happens. There is no such thing as a perfect debate. So there will be something to

594
00:48:13.520 --> 00:48:20.080
clean up. Yeah. And I expected that. And then, you know, we saw what we all saw.

595
00:48:20.080 --> 00:48:23.360
It was a car crash. It was a historic car crash. I actually can't think of the,

596
00:48:24.240 --> 00:48:28.240
I'm a little bit of a historian of these debates because I, I think they're fascinating,

597
00:48:28.240 --> 00:48:32.080
it's sort of experiments and demonstrations of human psychology and how these things

598
00:48:32.080 --> 00:48:37.200
emerge and the bindest full of women thing. And, you know, the, the bomb is all thing about the

599
00:48:38.240 --> 00:48:43.360
Romney and Obama in that debate where they talked about the, the, the, the military was no longer

600
00:48:43.360 --> 00:48:49.360
horses and bayonets. I just think it's so interesting because it's funny how a sentence or a phrase

601
00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:55.440
can sway the general public in such a profound way. And stick. And stick. And then, as a marketer,

602
00:48:55.440 --> 00:48:59.920
I spent 10 years in marketing, I think about this a lot, how like that, that horses and bayonets,

603
00:48:59.920 --> 00:49:03.760
the fact that I can remember that, I can't remember anything else. Right. That's interesting.

604
00:49:03.760 --> 00:49:08.160
You know, the power of the word. So that in mind, and the delivery, right? So the word combined

605
00:49:08.160 --> 00:49:13.280
with the delivery and the timing. Yeah. And this is what you learned, right? That all has to

606
00:49:13.280 --> 00:49:16.640
coincide. So what was your strategy going into that debate with Trump? Because you had those

607
00:49:16.640 --> 00:49:21.440
same moments where the cats and the dogs and all those, all that unbelievable stuff. And,

608
00:49:21.440 --> 00:49:25.520
and also you, at home, I was thinking, oh, she's, she's trying to trigger him and it's working.

609
00:49:27.200 --> 00:49:30.800
Yeah, because he's so predictable that way. What were those things for you?

610
00:49:31.360 --> 00:49:40.160
Well, the first thing is that we had empty pads on our podium. And in, in the debate camp,

611
00:49:40.160 --> 00:49:44.080
and then, therefore, when I walked on stage after I shook his hand, went back to my podium,

612
00:49:44.880 --> 00:49:51.040
I wrote a smiley face. And, because I just decided I was kind of fun.

613
00:49:52.400 --> 00:49:58.080
Because one of the things about these kinds of debates in particular is the person who's having fun

614
00:49:58.080 --> 00:50:05.760
wins. That's so true. We watched it back the other day. And you're smiling. Uh-huh. And you look

615
00:50:05.760 --> 00:50:10.240
like you're enjoying it. And he looks frustrated. Yeah. So that was intentional,

616
00:50:10.720 --> 00:50:14.400
if you look like you're having fun. Well, have fun, but though not just look, because I think it's

617
00:50:14.400 --> 00:50:17.680
very difficult to look like you're having fun if you're not, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

618
00:50:19.200 --> 00:50:25.840
So you've got to find, you have to find, you have to, this is a truth for life. You got to see the

619
00:50:25.840 --> 00:50:30.320
humor in it. Otherwise, it's just going to undo you, especially if you're dealing with heavy

620
00:50:30.320 --> 00:50:36.160
stuff. You've got to see the humor in it. And, you know, like when he pulled out the cats and dogs

621
00:50:36.160 --> 00:50:45.360
thing, I couldn't even believe it. I couldn't because hairs would happen. So I didn't know that he,

622
00:50:45.360 --> 00:50:49.440
that this was being said, right? Let's give context for anyone that doesn't know. Okay. Yes,

623
00:50:49.440 --> 00:50:55.520
right. Well, so from what I understand, it's faint in my memory, but there was this like crazy

624
00:50:55.520 --> 00:51:00.720
rumor that I think it was illegal immigrants were eating cats and dogs. The mutation immigrants,

625
00:51:00.720 --> 00:51:08.560
regardless of their legal status, in Ohio, were eating their pets, cats and dogs. Yeah.

626
00:51:09.520 --> 00:51:16.320
So I hadn't even heard about it because I'm into big health, right? And then

627
00:51:17.360 --> 00:51:27.440
two members of my team see him get off his Trump plane with the main purveyor of this nonsense.

628
00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:34.880
And then they realize if she's on the plane with him, it is very possible. Last thing he heard was

629
00:51:34.880 --> 00:51:42.720
this thing. So they last minute tell me, by the way, a lot of them call me boss because it's like,

630
00:51:42.720 --> 00:51:46.640
this is what you do in law enforcement. It just stock raises. Hey, boss, we got to tell you

631
00:51:46.640 --> 00:51:51.360
something. We didn't mention it to you. There's this whole thing that they're saying on that side

632
00:51:51.360 --> 00:51:56.160
about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs. And I was like, are you kidding me? That's ridiculous.

633
00:51:56.800 --> 00:52:01.440
No, but it's what they're saying. So just it may come up in the debate. Sure enough,

634
00:52:01.440 --> 00:52:08.000
it did. But see, here's the thing that I would say to you, Stephen, that again, one of the reasons

635
00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:14.240
I wrote the book is also there are lessons to be learned from those hundred and seven days

636
00:52:15.040 --> 00:52:24.800
to be applied today. I believe that part of what is the method is say the outrageous thing.

637
00:52:26.480 --> 00:52:32.640
Then everyone is going to focus on that outrageous thing. And meanwhile, this is happening.

638
00:52:33.920 --> 00:52:42.640
Right. And so meanwhile, misdirection. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And misdirection includes, by the way,

639
00:52:42.640 --> 00:52:49.200
talking about immigrants eating cats and dogs and not talking about what's your plan for working

640
00:52:49.280 --> 00:52:56.160
Americans to bring down the prices. So then the press covers that whole thing and not, oh,

641
00:52:56.160 --> 00:53:03.200
where was his plan for bringing down prices? Here's what I've come to learn in the last

642
00:53:03.200 --> 00:53:08.560
sort of 10 years working in marketing is I have this particular chapter in my last book where I say

643
00:53:09.360 --> 00:53:14.720
useless absurdity defines will define you more as a brand than useful practicality. And what I

644
00:53:14.720 --> 00:53:20.000
mean by this right that's beautifully said is when I this is the analogy I give I went to this

645
00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.400
gym in Canary Wharf and I walk in and it's got this 100 foot climbing wall. It's massive gym

646
00:53:24.400 --> 00:53:28.080
incredible. I come home. I tell my girlfriend I go, babe, there's this incredible gym. And then

647
00:53:28.080 --> 00:53:31.680
the next sentence out of my mouth is the most absurd thing because I know that will be the most

648
00:53:31.680 --> 00:53:37.200
impactful. So I say they've even got a 100 foot climbing wall because if I say that it implicitly

649
00:53:37.200 --> 00:53:41.280
tells them, you know, tells my girlfriend this gym is big. And even in my last company,

650
00:53:41.280 --> 00:53:45.760
the thing that the press focused on in my office wasn't our work, our case studies, the clients

651
00:53:45.760 --> 00:53:50.640
we had. It was that we had this massive blue slide that went into a ball pool. So whenever the press

652
00:53:50.640 --> 00:53:55.040
came, they said, can you go stand by the blue slide? It was all about this blue slide. Right.

653
00:53:55.040 --> 00:54:00.080
The most absurd thing gone is all the attention. And I actually think that's really good. That's

654
00:54:00.080 --> 00:54:06.160
really good is he leads with. That's exactly right. He's a master laborer, sleepy Joe. You know,

655
00:54:06.160 --> 00:54:12.720
you come is very gifted. Don't discount the guy in terms of that. How do you beat someone playing

656
00:54:12.720 --> 00:54:19.120
that game? You have to be relentless on focusing on what's actually happening. Does that work?

657
00:54:19.120 --> 00:54:24.080
And it means it means also deconstructing so that I mean, one of the things, for example, that I've

658
00:54:24.080 --> 00:54:30.080
been talking about recently is there's a word that applies so well to him in this era, which is a phrase

659
00:54:30.160 --> 00:54:36.960
gaslighting. Right. So there's a whole lot of gaslighting happening, which is basically misrepresenting

660
00:54:36.960 --> 00:54:43.520
lying scapegoating, distracting, right from what's really occurring, including like this whole thing

661
00:54:43.520 --> 00:54:51.040
where he's coming down so hard with these nasty portations, which is picking up a lot of American

662
00:54:51.040 --> 00:54:57.040
citizens, by the way, in the process, hardworking people in the process. And what he would have people

663
00:54:57.040 --> 00:55:06.400
believe is that your predicament is because this is what he actually is trying to sell. Your

664
00:55:06.400 --> 00:55:12.720
predicament is because of relatively powerless people. So you don't focus on the powerful people.

665
00:55:15.200 --> 00:55:22.720
He's basically saying to the American people, you have less because of people who have even less

666
00:55:22.720 --> 00:55:32.400
than you. He is the counterpoint. It works. Yes, evidently. But at some point, the veneer and the

667
00:55:33.600 --> 00:55:39.440
deflection has to wear off. I don't know when exactly that is going to happen. I think that,

668
00:55:39.440 --> 00:55:45.040
you know, listen, the tariffs taking hold, and when we get around to the holiday season,

669
00:55:46.000 --> 00:55:52.080
and people realize how many toys are made in China, what strengthens that approach

670
00:55:52.080 --> 00:55:58.880
is the rapid amount of dissonant disinformation that is spreading. It's so much, and it just spreads

671
00:55:58.880 --> 00:56:04.560
like wildfire and trying to stay in front of that with fact, much less to your point, practical

672
00:56:04.560 --> 00:56:10.160
messaging and logic. It is a real challenge. It's funny because I sit here a lot with neuroscientists

673
00:56:10.240 --> 00:56:15.600
and psychologists tell me about how the brain works. At a simple level, they talk about these two

674
00:56:15.600 --> 00:56:20.000
parts of the brain, which is like the rational prefrontal cortex, and then the emotional center,

675
00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:25.200
like the limbic system, the amygdala, and they always tell me that most memorable, the part of

676
00:56:25.200 --> 00:56:29.920
the brain that holds memories the easiest and the best and that that garners the most attention

677
00:56:29.920 --> 00:56:34.880
is the emotional center of the brain, the amygdala. So if I say these people, these brown people

678
00:56:34.960 --> 00:56:42.160
are coming over and they're rapists and murderers, it's much more emotionally captivating than

679
00:56:42.160 --> 00:56:49.200
you telling me about like statistics on how America recovered faster than any so-called wealthy

680
00:56:49.200 --> 00:56:54.480
country economically from the pandemic. I'll forget that within 10 seconds if you're just saying it,

681
00:56:54.480 --> 00:56:59.760
but the rapists and murderers thing, like my objective sense goes that, come on, it's not the problem,

682
00:56:59.760 --> 00:57:03.600
but there's part of me that remembers that, and that's even as someone who I think is relatively

683
00:57:03.600 --> 00:57:09.760
informed on the reality of the situation. I still, I remember I'm a doctor, I think it was Dr.

684
00:57:09.760 --> 00:57:16.800
Tally Sharrett, she's a neuroscientist, so she understands that vaccines don't give kids autism,

685
00:57:16.800 --> 00:57:24.320
but she recalls this time in the election many years ago. She recalls, I think it was Ben Carson

686
00:57:24.320 --> 00:57:28.960
or someone's talking about the science, and then she, the camera pans to Trump and Trump is saying

687
00:57:29.920 --> 00:57:35.680
recounting a story where a child who was this big, three-year-old, beautiful child,

688
00:57:35.680 --> 00:57:41.680
and they came up to her with a needle this big, and they gave her the vaccine and she got autism.

689
00:57:41.680 --> 00:57:47.360
Now, science on one hand, an emotional story on the other. Tally, I think said to me at the time

690
00:57:47.360 --> 00:57:52.080
she goes, even though I know it's not true, there was part of me, that was a little bit scared.

691
00:57:52.720 --> 00:57:58.880
So my question here is, how does, how does the democratic party win in such a war when you're

692
00:57:58.880 --> 00:58:04.800
being fought with emotion and fear? How do you win with logic and rationality? Like, how?

693
00:58:06.960 --> 00:58:12.640
I'll answer your question directly, but I want to just add to the question that I think part of

694
00:58:12.640 --> 00:58:19.520
the question has to be, what is the responsible of media? What is the role of corporate-owned media?

695
00:58:20.480 --> 00:58:30.080
God bless independent media? Because a lot of it is also about what set of information are people

696
00:58:30.080 --> 00:58:34.720
working with. For example, I've talked to a number of people who voted for me,

697
00:58:36.480 --> 00:58:43.520
saying to them who are having debates, disagreements, ending relationships with people who voted for him.

698
00:58:44.400 --> 00:58:54.400
And part of what I'm asking people to do is not to assume that the people with whom

699
00:58:54.400 --> 00:58:59.280
they disagree are working with the same set of information. Now, I didn't say facts because

700
00:58:59.280 --> 00:59:07.120
two plus two is four. But I think it's a big mistake for us to assume we're all working with

701
00:59:07.120 --> 00:59:14.560
the same information. And then when you compound that with, you know, intentional efforts to

702
00:59:14.560 --> 00:59:21.760
misinform and disinform and targeted, I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee when we

703
00:59:21.760 --> 00:59:28.640
investigated Russia's interference in the 2016 election. We declassified our findings. We made

704
00:59:28.640 --> 00:59:34.080
them public. It included the fact that this adversarial nation included in what they targeted,

705
00:59:34.080 --> 00:59:40.080
they targeted black voters. With the assumption that there are certain people and

706
00:59:40.080 --> 00:59:45.600
demographically certain groups who are more susceptible to an argument about why they should

707
00:59:45.600 --> 00:59:50.000
distrust their government because they have a lived experience that tells them that.

708
00:59:50.720 --> 00:59:55.600
And so I would say flippantly, oh, so now all of a sudden the issue of race in America is a

709
00:59:55.600 --> 01:00:01.280
national security issue so everybody needs to deal with it. We know that certain demographics are

710
01:00:01.280 --> 01:00:07.120
targeted with misinformation, be they what we've seen around targeting young voters or other groups

711
01:00:07.120 --> 01:00:14.560
based on race or gender. So when we talk about the role of the Democratic Party, there is a very big

712
01:00:14.560 --> 01:00:23.040
role to play and there is a role for us to require social media companies to play, media companies

713
01:00:23.040 --> 01:00:30.400
to play and so on because information is coming from all of these places. And the challenge is as

714
01:00:30.400 --> 01:00:39.120
big as, are we all working with facts? We have a team at my company, FlightStory,

715
01:00:39.120 --> 01:00:45.920
called FlightX. And their primary responsibility is innovating across our business so that we can

716
01:00:45.920 --> 01:00:50.400
save time, money, be better at what we do. And one of the recent challenges I've set to the team

717
01:00:50.400 --> 01:00:55.760
FlightX is to find ways to save our company more time. And in that conversation,

718
01:00:55.760 --> 01:01:00.000
five of pro who are a sponsor of this podcast came up, five of pro if you don't know is like a

719
01:01:00.000 --> 01:01:05.120
strategic lever we pull. It's a marketplace of experts across 750 different categories,

720
01:01:05.120 --> 01:01:09.920
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721
01:01:09.920 --> 01:01:13.840
And because I'm quite curious about what's possible with something like five of pro,

722
01:01:13.840 --> 01:01:17.600
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723
01:01:17.600 --> 01:01:23.600
with five of pro to see just how much time we can save and how much we can unlock using their talent

724
01:01:23.600 --> 01:01:28.960
to accelerate our business. So let's see how it goes. And in the meantime, if you're looking for

725
01:01:28.960 --> 01:01:35.120
a player talent to give your team time back, head to five.com slash diary and get 10% off your

726
01:01:35.120 --> 01:01:42.160
first order when you use my code diary. Or words you said that peaked my interest, which is the word

727
01:01:42.960 --> 01:01:50.640
independent media. Yes. I am independent media. Less you. And I'm in a group of my peers like

728
01:01:50.720 --> 01:01:54.400
the big podcast is the word like Joe Rogan, et cetera, and Alex Cooper and who show you

729
01:01:54.400 --> 01:01:59.600
Antoinette as part of your campaign. The media landscape is changing before our eyes.

730
01:01:59.600 --> 01:02:04.400
Yes, rapidly. You're sat in a set now. You're the Madame Vice President. You're sat in

731
01:02:04.400 --> 01:02:10.240
effectively my kitchen. My old kitchen where they started, you know. And that's crazy. Like 20

732
01:02:10.240 --> 01:02:15.600
years ago, the thought that you'd come to my kitchen is such a crazy thing. But it's in part now

733
01:02:15.600 --> 01:02:19.440
because of the democratization of these platforms and creating the content is much cheaper and we

734
01:02:19.440 --> 01:02:23.680
have distribution now. Of course, these big platforms. Many would say that it changed the course

735
01:02:23.680 --> 01:02:28.800
of the election podcasting. Not just the podcast you did or didn't go on, but just the conversations

736
01:02:28.800 --> 01:02:34.720
that take place on these podcasts. And as I have to say, you know, as podcasters, we don't have

737
01:02:34.720 --> 01:02:39.440
the same rig as traditional journalists who I respect a lot. We don't have the same teams and

738
01:02:39.440 --> 01:02:44.160
real-time fact, all those kinds of things podcasting. There was lots of conversation around you going

739
01:02:44.160 --> 01:02:48.880
on Joe Rogan's show or not going. What is the truth there for anyone that hasn't

740
01:02:48.880 --> 01:02:53.360
yet read the book? Because Trump did like a hundred million views on Joe Rogan's show.

741
01:02:54.000 --> 01:03:00.160
And in three hours sat there getting to know Trump. And for better or for worse,

742
01:03:00.160 --> 01:03:03.840
you probably walked away from that conversation feeling like you knew who he was.

743
01:03:03.840 --> 01:03:08.640
I wanted to do Joe Rogan's show. And there was a lot of games being played,

744
01:03:08.640 --> 01:03:16.400
but I wanted to do Joe Rogan's show. I think podcasting is a very powerful medium

745
01:03:17.280 --> 01:03:24.000
for people to get information. And to your point, a lot of people that is a main source of

746
01:03:24.000 --> 01:03:27.360
information. And it's important for us to support that.

747
01:03:28.560 --> 01:03:33.520
Joe says he wanted, he wanted him to come to you, which is very un-Joe-like in terms of he

748
01:03:33.520 --> 01:03:41.120
doesn't really travel. In hindsight, do you wish you'd gone and done the show for three hours at

749
01:03:41.120 --> 01:03:48.640
his studio in hindsight? I mean, really, it would just be what were we giving up.

750
01:03:48.640 --> 01:03:53.680
I wanted to do his show. And a lot of people advised me not to do a show because they assumed,

751
01:03:53.680 --> 01:03:59.200
as it turned out to be correct, that he was supporting Trump and that it would not be a productive

752
01:03:59.760 --> 01:04:04.960
piece for me. But just like when I went on Fox News with Brett Baer, my perspective was

753
01:04:05.920 --> 01:04:11.200
they may have their bias, but there are people that listen who are open-minded. And I'm going to go

754
01:04:11.200 --> 01:04:16.000
there and give them a chance to get to know me and give me a chance to make my case to them.

755
01:04:16.000 --> 01:04:19.760
So that was my perspective on Joe Rogan, just like it was my perspective on Fox.

756
01:04:22.160 --> 01:04:26.080
There was a lot of games being played around the scheduling, and it didn't happen.

757
01:04:26.960 --> 01:04:34.400
And I don't have anything against, certainly not against the people who turn on to Joe Rogan,

758
01:04:34.400 --> 01:04:39.520
and would love to be able to talk with them in a direct manner, as I wanted to during the campaign.

759
01:04:39.520 --> 01:04:42.560
Do you, in hindsight, wish you'd just put your foot down inside? I'm going to go do it.

760
01:04:43.680 --> 01:04:45.200
I don't know if it would have made a difference.

761
01:04:47.120 --> 01:04:50.960
But yeah, no, I wanted to do it. So let me just say that, right? So I wanted to do it,

762
01:04:50.960 --> 01:04:54.000
and it would have been great to do. And I think it would have been helpful to do.

763
01:04:54.000 --> 01:04:58.800
Yeah, I think so. So it's just, I mean, the issue was really about what's the trade-off

764
01:04:58.800 --> 01:05:03.680
in terms of votes and where I spend my time. Do I spend my time traveling for five hours and

765
01:05:03.680 --> 01:05:09.200
back versus being for that period of time in a swing state? And that was the trade-off.

766
01:05:09.200 --> 01:05:14.880
I guess it goes to the point. It wasn't about I don't want to do Joe Rogan, or it, believe me,

767
01:05:14.880 --> 01:05:19.360
at that point in a campaign, it's not about, oh, is somebody coming to me or me going to them?

768
01:05:19.360 --> 01:05:23.280
I could care less about that. Pride is not associated with it. It is more about,

769
01:05:23.840 --> 01:05:28.800
it's some, it is literally about return on investment. Okay, and this goes to a point of efficiency,

770
01:05:28.800 --> 01:05:36.560
earlier. Yeah, it's exactly right. There's only one candidate. So where am I spending my time

771
01:05:36.560 --> 01:05:40.160
to get the greatest return on the investment? If I was in charge of your campaign,

772
01:05:41.280 --> 01:05:47.840
I would have 100% put you in that environment. Even when I look at the trade-off,

773
01:05:47.840 --> 01:05:51.360
in part, because someone like me, and I consider myself to be genuinely really objective,

774
01:05:51.360 --> 01:05:56.960
and my friend's name is being not just objective on camera, but objective in my personal life,

775
01:05:56.960 --> 01:06:02.640
I would have, when you see a certain environment present someone in a certain way,

776
01:06:03.280 --> 01:06:08.320
you really, like the thing that can burst that bubble is seeing that person go into that environment,

777
01:06:08.320 --> 01:06:13.680
and like when I saw you on Fox News, I watched that interview as well. I actually think it's strengthens,

778
01:06:15.280 --> 01:06:18.400
strengthens your supporters, and actually those independents who are in that space too,

779
01:06:18.400 --> 01:06:22.800
can get a feel for you. So I would have loved to see. And I actually think I hope in this next

780
01:06:22.800 --> 01:06:28.480
election cycle, when is it, 2028, I really would love to see both sides going to both sides,

781
01:06:28.480 --> 01:06:33.920
and I actually think that's happening now, going into those environments. I do also tend to think

782
01:06:33.920 --> 01:06:39.280
that Joe would have been fair. Well, that's why I wanted to do it. I had to assume that

783
01:06:39.280 --> 01:06:45.200
that was possible. And either way, he's very popular. I would have loved to watch that.

784
01:06:46.000 --> 01:06:51.360
I regret that we didn't do it. I definitely regret that we didn't do it. And

785
01:06:53.920 --> 01:07:02.480
listen, I have been doing my work long enough that for me, it has, I've never had the luxury of

786
01:07:02.480 --> 01:07:07.120
saying, I don't want to go into uncomfortable situations. You would need to have a different

787
01:07:07.120 --> 01:07:14.480
profession. PR people can sometimes fuck things up for other people, I think. I think in the

788
01:07:14.480 --> 01:07:20.400
new world, there's this new requirement to be more like a glass box and less like a black box.

789
01:07:20.400 --> 01:07:25.840
I think in 20 years ago, the whole strategy of businesses and brands and a CEO's executives

790
01:07:25.840 --> 01:07:30.080
was to basically be black boxes where the PR team paints the perception on the outside.

791
01:07:30.080 --> 01:07:34.880
And in this digital world, where it's like the media and platforms are distributed. And all of

792
01:07:34.880 --> 01:07:40.560
my employees here have cameras on them all the time. The defense is like transparency,

793
01:07:40.560 --> 01:07:43.840
because I'm not going to let you craft my narrative. You're going to see it. That's why I wrote

794
01:07:43.840 --> 01:07:48.240
the book. Exactly. History is going to write about those hundred and seven days. And I'm not going to

795
01:07:48.240 --> 01:07:53.840
let that piece of American history be written without my voice being present. Are you going to run

796
01:07:53.840 --> 01:07:58.320
again? Because I look at the polls. I looked at the polls and you're leading for the democratic side.

797
01:07:58.320 --> 01:08:03.680
And there isn't really a clear democratic candidate. I interviewed Gavin Newsom as well. But when I

798
01:08:03.680 --> 01:08:08.560
look at the polls, you're still leading. Yeah. You don't know. I don't know, honestly. I feel like

799
01:08:08.560 --> 01:08:13.280
you know in your heart. What do I know in my heart? I feel like you know if you're you're going to

800
01:08:13.280 --> 01:08:18.240
run in your heart. Or if you have a calling or feeling to run. Is something germinating?

801
01:08:19.280 --> 01:08:25.040
I'm focused on the book tour sincerely. Yeah. And part of how I'm feeling right now,

802
01:08:25.840 --> 01:08:30.800
part of reason I didn't run for governor of California. I really don't want to be transactional

803
01:08:30.800 --> 01:08:38.480
right now. You know, I don't I don't want to be present because I'm asking for a vote.

804
01:08:38.480 --> 01:08:42.480
Okay. Yeah. What's the case for running again? And what's the case for not running again?

805
01:08:45.920 --> 01:08:52.880
I think the case for running again is if I can make a difference. Honestly, if I can make a

806
01:08:52.960 --> 01:09:02.320
difference, you know, if I feel that I can offer something as president of the United States that

807
01:09:02.320 --> 01:09:14.240
would be not only uplifting to the American people, but would be about, you know, getting us

808
01:09:16.640 --> 01:09:20.800
on a correct trajectory. Do you know what my next question is going to be? What do you believe

809
01:09:20.880 --> 01:09:23.840
that you can offer something to the United States that's going to be uplifting and get us on a

810
01:09:23.840 --> 01:09:34.240
better trajectory? I mean, that's why I ran the last time. So 28 is a far, it's I mean, it's

811
01:09:34.240 --> 01:09:37.920
practically tomorrow, but it's it's not. And we'll have to see what happens over the

812
01:09:37.920 --> 01:09:43.120
course of these next few months, several months. Is there a case against running again?

813
01:09:44.640 --> 01:09:48.640
What would that be? You know, it's difficult to run for president. It takes a toll on your

814
01:09:48.640 --> 01:09:53.040
family. It takes a real toll on your family. You know, anyone running for president

815
01:09:55.120 --> 01:10:01.360
should really take very seriously the decision because it is not for the faint of heart.

816
01:10:02.240 --> 01:10:08.480
You have to be able to take a punch and throw a punch, but you got to be able to take a punch.

817
01:10:09.200 --> 01:10:13.040
A lot of punches. Yeah, there's something that comes with success, whether you're running for

818
01:10:13.120 --> 01:10:17.440
president of the United States, build a successful business, have a public profile,

819
01:10:20.480 --> 01:10:28.640
which is among the the difficult aspects of it. And there are so many positive aspects,

820
01:10:28.640 --> 01:10:37.600
but among the difficult aspects is putting yourself out there in a way that you invariably

821
01:10:38.080 --> 01:10:46.640
will be in a position hopefully not with a lot of people, but where you will be misunderstood.

822
01:10:47.600 --> 01:10:53.600
That's an awful feeling. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Oh, it's an awful feeling to be misunderstood.

823
01:10:54.880 --> 01:11:00.320
In this environment in particular, invariably, you will put yourself in a position where some people

824
01:11:00.320 --> 01:11:12.400
will hate you. It's awful. They don't know you, but they'll hate you. And so to do anything

825
01:11:13.280 --> 01:11:21.840
that is about distinguishing yourself by virtue of the thing you can offer or a differentiation

826
01:11:21.920 --> 01:11:30.320
from yourself and others in a similar category, it exposes you to a lot.

827
01:11:32.160 --> 01:11:39.600
And so you have to know why you're doing it. And I believe that you have to do it

828
01:11:40.320 --> 01:11:47.520
for something that is bigger than yourself. Not about your own power. Not about your ego.

829
01:11:47.760 --> 01:11:57.760
Not about your entitlement. It has to be because to endure not just the process of getting

830
01:11:57.760 --> 01:12:02.800
into the job, but the job itself. You got to be clear about why you're there.

831
01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:08.720
On that night when you the results come in and you realize that the election hasn't gone your way

832
01:12:08.720 --> 01:12:13.200
and that Trump is going to be elected, what would I have seen if I was a fly on the wall in the room?

833
01:12:13.840 --> 01:12:19.600
I was in a state of shock. Did you think the day before that you were going to win?

834
01:12:22.160 --> 01:12:28.160
And so when did the proverbial penny drop? When I got a call from my campaign manager

835
01:12:29.280 --> 01:12:34.080
that it looks like we need 200,000 more votes that we can't find.

836
01:12:35.040 --> 01:12:43.600
And meaning is just the map, the numbers. And the thing I kept saying over and over again,

837
01:12:43.600 --> 01:12:51.440
I was in a state of shock. I was so inarticulate, but maybe very articulate.

838
01:12:52.160 --> 01:12:55.680
What I kept saying over and over again is my God, my God, my God.

839
01:12:55.680 --> 01:12:56.080
Really?

840
01:12:56.880 --> 01:13:05.680
Over and I couldn't stop. I haven't felt that emotion, anything similar to the emotion I felt

841
01:13:05.680 --> 01:13:13.200
that day and for quite some time other than the grief I felt when my mother died.

842
01:13:15.200 --> 01:13:23.840
I know what was going to happen to our country. I knew the harm that was going to happen to people.

843
01:13:23.840 --> 01:13:36.240
And I knew what was going to happen. It's not like it's not about

844
01:13:37.760 --> 01:13:48.960
winning versus losing. I knew the consequence of the outcome of that election and that

845
01:13:48.960 --> 01:13:53.280
pained me so. I can still see the pain in your face.

846
01:13:53.280 --> 01:14:05.040
Oh, it's awful. You look at what's happening. It's, I mean, it's awful. Right now,

847
01:14:06.800 --> 01:14:16.240
the man is building a ballroom for a bunch of his rich friends while millions and millions of

848
01:14:16.240 --> 01:14:22.000
people are about to lose their health coverage in terms of being able for premiums for their health

849
01:14:22.000 --> 01:14:30.880
care. You look at the weaponization of the Department of Justice against political enemies,

850
01:14:30.880 --> 01:14:39.440
how titans of industry are so afraid that the capitulation that we're seeing across the board,

851
01:14:39.440 --> 01:14:44.880
whether it be universities, law firms, media companies, what's happening around

852
01:14:45.440 --> 01:14:54.560
gutting the Department of Education, lunch programs for low-income children. IEPs,

853
01:14:56.000 --> 01:15:03.280
individual education plays for special needs kids. I recently, I'm hearing the stories from

854
01:15:03.360 --> 01:15:07.520
mothers in particular whose children have special needs in a catkin and IEP.

855
01:15:09.520 --> 01:15:13.440
These are babies, the children who are most in need, their parents who are struggling.

856
01:15:14.480 --> 01:15:21.200
If you know a parent who has a special needs child, what that means to their life emotionally,

857
01:15:21.840 --> 01:15:28.560
physically, financially, and we're not even giving them assistance with their educational program

858
01:15:28.560 --> 01:15:40.000
for their children. Meanwhile, you're building a gilded ballroom, so the harm is extraordinary.

859
01:15:40.800 --> 01:15:46.400
All those working people, the tariffs, what this is meaning for people, he made a promise that on

860
01:15:46.400 --> 01:15:53.280
day when he was going to bring down prices and prices are higher for groceries, inflation is higher,

861
01:15:53.280 --> 01:15:59.440
unemployment is higher. And by the way, Steven, it must be said, the failure of the Democratic

862
01:15:59.440 --> 01:16:06.480
Party will be going forward to overlook the fact that it is bigger than this one guy.

863
01:16:08.800 --> 01:16:14.560
It is not just about this one person who occupies the Oval Office. We are witnessing

864
01:16:15.440 --> 01:16:21.280
what is the swift implementation, a high velocity event that is the swift implementation of a plan

865
01:16:21.280 --> 01:16:26.880
that has been decades in the making. The strategy for dealing with this moment has to include

866
01:16:26.880 --> 01:16:31.440
having some historical perspective on how we got here. That project 2025 didn't just fall out

867
01:16:31.440 --> 01:16:37.920
of the sky. The idea of going after public education, that's not new. The Federalist Society,

868
01:16:37.920 --> 01:16:46.400
the Heritage Foundation, the gerrymandering of districts, the packing the court, this stuff,

869
01:16:47.120 --> 01:16:59.680
this is about an agenda that is not going to begin and end with one person and the destruction

870
01:16:59.680 --> 01:17:09.600
is profound. There are, however, a small group of people who have access to the power and are

871
01:17:09.600 --> 01:17:17.200
close to the power who drink quite well. The rest, you look at what's going to happen in terms

872
01:17:17.200 --> 01:17:24.320
of working people. Just the, again, as an objective observer, the Democratic Party needs to take

873
01:17:24.320 --> 01:17:30.320
responsibility for, you know, because the US operates this sort of two-party system, where it's

874
01:17:30.320 --> 01:17:36.160
kind of like this person versus this person, left versus right, the left lost, they played it wrong

875
01:17:36.240 --> 01:17:40.800
from the Democratic's perspective. They're paying the price of losing the game of chess. So I

876
01:17:40.800 --> 01:17:45.840
think about the Democratic Party and, you know, they can point at the consequences of losing that

877
01:17:45.840 --> 01:17:49.840
game, but I feel like the Democratic Party needs to get a shit together so that they don't lose the

878
01:17:49.840 --> 01:17:54.000
game again. I agree. And that's the personal responsibility point, which is like how do you stop

879
01:17:54.000 --> 01:17:59.440
yourself from finding yourself in a situation where at the last minute Joe Biden is pulled out

880
01:17:59.440 --> 01:18:04.640
with a hundred days to go and no one mentioned it. I mean, you say in the book that you, at the time

881
01:18:04.640 --> 01:18:09.280
thought of it, is grace. You talk about this on page 46. You say you thought it was grace to not

882
01:18:09.280 --> 01:18:14.240
basically mention that there was a problem in grace not to tell Joe Biden to pull out earlier,

883
01:18:14.240 --> 01:18:18.400
but actually in hindsight, you now think it was probably reckless not to tell him to pull out.

884
01:18:18.400 --> 01:18:23.600
On my part, yeah. So, what is that to you? What does the Democratic Party need to do to?

885
01:18:24.560 --> 01:18:32.960
First of all, you know, if I had done it over, again, part of the reflection,

886
01:18:35.120 --> 01:18:41.040
you know, we had the infrastructure deal. We had the chips act. So building back up America's

887
01:18:41.040 --> 01:18:50.080
infrastructure is 150 years old. Chips is about manufacturing chips. US manufacturing, both

888
01:18:50.080 --> 01:18:56.800
incredibly important. If I had to do it over again, I would have first gone with our family policy.

889
01:18:56.800 --> 01:19:04.160
That was about extension of the child tax credit, affordable child care paid family leave.

890
01:19:04.880 --> 01:19:11.200
We needed to deal with the immediate issues affecting the American people. In fact, that's why I ran

891
01:19:11.200 --> 01:19:16.320
for the hundred and seven days on those issues, including having a Medicare cover, for example,

892
01:19:16.320 --> 01:19:20.160
for people in the sandwich generation who are taking care of young children and older parents,

893
01:19:20.800 --> 01:19:27.120
Medicare cover home health care, right? Why I offered for small businesses that they would get

894
01:19:28.000 --> 01:19:33.440
a $50,000 tax credit because nobody can start up small businesses because nobody can start up

895
01:19:33.440 --> 01:19:38.240
a small business on a $5,000 tax credit, right? Do you think the left is somewhat seen as the

896
01:19:38.240 --> 01:19:44.480
enemy of entrepreneurship? I think there is that perception. I don't know if that is the case

897
01:19:44.560 --> 01:19:49.680
in reality, but I think we need we have some work to do. I mean, I talk about in the book, for

898
01:19:49.680 --> 01:19:55.840
example, I think it was a mistake to not invite Elon Musk when we had, and I'm no fan of his,

899
01:19:56.480 --> 01:20:06.240
but I admire his work as an innovator and as what he has done in terms of American manufacturing

900
01:20:06.240 --> 01:20:09.760
of electric vehicles. We should have had him at the White House when we had all the other

901
01:20:10.400 --> 01:20:15.200
electric vehicle, American electric vehicle manufacturers, right? I think this is part of the

902
01:20:15.200 --> 01:20:18.880
problem. When I read that, I was really happy to read that because you can disagree with someone

903
01:20:19.680 --> 01:20:25.200
in part, but still have the nuance to be able to acknowledge this part's good. But if you just

904
01:20:25.200 --> 01:20:29.200
shut them out because of one thing, then you really drive the vision. I mean, this gets back to

905
01:20:29.200 --> 01:20:35.360
my earlier point about what's the motivation for the decisions that a leader makes. And

906
01:20:35.760 --> 01:20:45.120
the motivation has to be what is for the greater good. And and have the ability to put aside,

907
01:20:46.000 --> 01:20:49.360
you know, those things that may may fall in the context of being more personal.

908
01:20:50.000 --> 01:20:56.160
But I think we have to do a better job of also focusing on being a bit more bold.

909
01:20:56.960 --> 01:21:07.440
For example, I think we should reduce voting age to 16. I'll tell you why. So,

910
01:21:09.040 --> 01:21:17.680
Gensy, they're age about 13 through 27. They've only known the climate crisis. They missed

911
01:21:17.680 --> 01:21:24.480
substantial parts of their education because of the pandemic. If they're in high school or college,

912
01:21:25.440 --> 01:21:30.880
especially in college, it is very likely that whatever they've chosen as their major for study

913
01:21:30.880 --> 01:21:40.000
may not result in an affordable wage. They've coined the term climate anxiety to describe the

914
01:21:40.000 --> 01:21:46.320
fear of not only being able to buy a home, but that fear will be wiped out by extreme weather,

915
01:21:46.320 --> 01:21:53.040
but fear of having children. It is expected that Gensy will have 10 to 12 jobs in their lifetime.

916
01:21:54.000 --> 01:22:00.560
They are a larger number than boomers. There's specific generation of people who are going to

917
01:22:00.560 --> 01:22:06.640
impact our nation and the world. And I think we must invest in them, but I think that they are

918
01:22:06.640 --> 01:22:14.240
rightly impatient with a lot of what is the tradition of leadership right now. And if they were

919
01:22:14.240 --> 01:22:19.040
able to vote because they know everything that's happening right now is going to impact them more

920
01:22:19.040 --> 01:22:23.760
than anybody older than them for the most part in terms of how these systems work.

921
01:22:25.040 --> 01:22:31.040
If they're voting right now at 16 and up, they're going to be talking about the importance of

922
01:22:31.040 --> 01:22:36.480
climate. They're going to be talking about the importance of figuring out how AI is going to affect

923
01:22:36.480 --> 01:22:41.680
future of the workforce. They're going to be focused on what are we really doing about affordable

924
01:22:41.680 --> 01:22:49.280
housing. And basically in politics, here's the hard truth about this. There are two centers of

925
01:22:49.280 --> 01:22:56.720
power that tend to influence how politicians think. Groups that vote the most and people who

926
01:22:56.720 --> 01:23:04.960
write the most checks. And I'm going to go every day with the people, the people, and thinking

927
01:23:04.960 --> 01:23:09.840
about how do we strengthen people actually going to the polls and voting. Back to my point,

928
01:23:09.840 --> 01:23:15.840
in 2024, one third of the electorate didn't vote. Let's focus on why. And are we talking with them?

929
01:23:15.840 --> 01:23:24.080
Are we offering them bold solutions? Are we bringing ideas forward that are speaking to their

930
01:23:24.080 --> 01:23:31.520
immediate needs? Are we doing it in an effective way back to your point about podcasts and other mediums?

931
01:23:33.360 --> 01:23:37.280
If you run again, do you think you'll go into those more right-leaning environments,

932
01:23:37.280 --> 01:23:41.600
media environments? Would you go on, you know, I'm not saying Joe's right wing, but would you go on

933
01:23:42.160 --> 01:23:47.200
Joe's show? Certainly. I would go on Joe's show if I'm not running. I have a lot to say.

934
01:23:47.200 --> 01:23:50.240
Do you know when you'll make a decision? What's the time frame for someone?

935
01:23:50.240 --> 01:23:55.600
I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Obviously at some point we'll need to make the decision.

936
01:23:55.600 --> 01:24:00.560
I haven't thought about the timeline probably in the next year. I mean, it's, what is it,

937
01:24:00.560 --> 01:24:07.600
November of 28? Primaries would be in June. And since that day when Trump won the election

938
01:24:07.600 --> 01:24:13.840
and you were sat there saying, oh God, oh God, under your breath, how has the balance of that decision

939
01:24:13.840 --> 01:24:19.200
shifted over time? Has the conviction grown from that moment? Like, if I had asked you in that moment

940
01:24:19.200 --> 01:24:21.840
when you were saying, oh God, oh God, under your breath, would you have said never again?

941
01:24:23.120 --> 01:24:25.600
And today, are you more on the side of potentially?

942
01:24:26.320 --> 01:24:33.360
That's a great question. I think, well, I could start with this. I think my family would have

943
01:24:33.360 --> 01:24:41.520
said never again. I think that as time has gone by and people have had a chance, including myself,

944
01:24:41.520 --> 01:24:49.040
to kind of sit with it, reflect on it, writing the book was very cathartic, being away from it

945
01:24:49.040 --> 01:24:54.640
in terms of space and time. It has a way of mitigating the pain of what that process was.

946
01:24:55.440 --> 01:25:01.360
Just like grief. Yeah. Use the word grief to describe that feeling. So you get to

947
01:25:01.360 --> 01:25:06.240
acceptance at some point and yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, you're right. That's right.

948
01:25:06.240 --> 01:25:15.200
And you get to process it in a way that also is about what's my role to play and what could I

949
01:25:15.200 --> 01:25:19.200
have done differently as a way to help guide future decisions, whatever that may.

950
01:25:20.160 --> 01:25:25.120
I've built companies from scratch and backed many more. And there's a blind spot that I keep seeing

951
01:25:25.120 --> 01:25:30.160
in early stage founders. They spend very little time thinking about HR. And it's not because they're

952
01:25:30.160 --> 01:25:34.720
reckless or they don't care. It's because they're obsessed with building their companies and I

953
01:25:34.720 --> 01:25:38.160
can't fault them for that. At that stage, you're thinking about the product, how to attract new

954
01:25:38.160 --> 01:25:42.960
customers, how to grow your team, really how to survive. And HR slips down the list because it

955
01:25:43.040 --> 01:25:49.040
doesn't feel urgent. But sooner or later, it is. And when things get messy, tools like our sponsor

956
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957
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958
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961
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962
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963
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964
01:26:28.320 --> 01:26:33.680
All right guys, let me go get Steve. The guest is here. Ready? Come in. Oh my god, Steve!

965
01:26:35.440 --> 01:26:40.320
What are you doing? This is a bond charge face mask. It's good for blemishes, wrinkles,

966
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cleans up the skin. It's red light. Have you not used it before? I've tried this before.

967
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It's really really good. It shines red light on your face, which helps increase and boost

968
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collagen production. I actually found it out because of the misses. Seeing how wearing it,

969
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she terrified me a couple of nights in the row. I thought it was to scare people with, but actually

970
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it's really really good for your skin. So they are a sponsor of the podcast and I've been using it

971
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every day for about a year and a half now. Well Steve, I'm going on great. Yes. And the

972
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So visit bondcharge.com slash diary for 25% off on any product site wide. But you have to order

974
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through that link. That's bondcharge.com slash diary with code diary. You talked about being bold.

975
01:27:27.600 --> 01:27:31.120
Is that also in communication? Because as I've seen you on this book tour, it seems your

976
01:27:31.120 --> 01:27:36.320
communication has become increasingly more bold. I've seen you get up a couple of times and start

977
01:27:37.040 --> 01:27:41.360
shouting a little bit at certain things that pissed you off and being a bit more unfiltered.

978
01:27:41.360 --> 01:27:48.560
And I think, funnily, I think polish is actually detrimental. That's what I love about

979
01:27:48.560 --> 01:27:53.200
podcasting. It's so unpolished. Like I sit here in my fucking socks and it can just, there's no,

980
01:27:53.200 --> 01:27:56.160
you're teemed. There's no pretense. There's no pretense. There's nothing you said I couldn't

981
01:27:56.160 --> 01:28:00.880
ask you at all. I was wondering if that's you've noticed that in yourself and if that's you think

982
01:28:00.880 --> 01:28:06.960
that's important. Right. Like, am I just like fuck it?

983
01:28:13.840 --> 01:28:16.320
You're exactly. Don't ask the question with pretense.

984
01:28:16.320 --> 01:28:19.600
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I mean. You just like fuck it now, it doesn't matter.

985
01:28:19.600 --> 01:28:24.240
Because the book had fucking energy. Yeah, I think there is that energy in the book.

986
01:28:25.120 --> 01:28:32.160
But just like here, but here's part of it that I'm in writing it and now this is how I feel about it.

987
01:28:33.840 --> 01:28:37.520
In so many ways, I've been in the belly of the beast.

988
01:28:40.480 --> 01:28:51.680
And I feel that the consequence of an election for President of the United States impacts

989
01:28:51.680 --> 01:28:59.920
billions of people around the world. And yet the process can be so opaque.

990
01:29:02.240 --> 01:29:08.480
And what I also hope to do with the book is just lift up the hood on it so people could see how

991
01:29:08.480 --> 01:29:15.200
it runs. And in a way that if it's for a journalist, if it's for a high school student,

992
01:29:15.200 --> 01:29:23.840
if it's for someone's grandmother, to confirm or enlighten around what people think it is,

993
01:29:24.800 --> 01:29:31.120
in a way that they can see themselves in their own power, you know. And that does require

994
01:29:31.840 --> 01:29:37.440
demystifying it. And I guess part of demystifying is, yeah, like, I'm not going to hold on to,

995
01:29:37.440 --> 01:29:39.440
oh, this kind of thing should not be talked about.

996
01:29:40.160 --> 01:29:45.360
Do you regret running without only 107 days notice? Do you wish you hadn't ran?

997
01:29:45.360 --> 01:29:50.960
No, I don't regret running. I wish we had more time. I truly wish we had more time.

998
01:29:52.160 --> 01:29:55.040
Truly wish we had more time. I don't regret running.

999
01:29:55.040 --> 01:29:56.640
How'd you know in the outcome would you have still ran?

1000
01:29:57.280 --> 01:30:07.280
Probably because you know, one of the things that happened and to this day,

1001
01:30:08.640 --> 01:30:14.240
men and women girls and boys come up to me and say there was something about that campaign

1002
01:30:15.200 --> 01:30:19.600
that excited something in them. I can't tell you the number of people who have come up to me and

1003
01:30:19.600 --> 01:30:26.080
said, I decided to run for office because you ran. The number of people who have come up to me and

1004
01:30:26.080 --> 01:30:31.440
said, I decided to go to law school because you inspired me with what? The number of people who

1005
01:30:31.440 --> 01:30:40.480
have told me about their young children who, you know, saw something and got excited about it and

1006
01:30:40.480 --> 01:30:46.800
wanted to be a part of it. I don't regret any of that. I absolutely believe that we turned

1007
01:30:46.800 --> 01:30:52.480
something on. In fact, I'm going to say this differently because it's not like people didn't have

1008
01:30:52.560 --> 01:31:00.320
it in them. They had it in them. But there was something that those 107 days did to welcome, to invite,

1009
01:31:00.320 --> 01:31:08.560
to grow the optimism and dare I say the joy that people do carry with them. And what I hope to do

1010
01:31:08.560 --> 01:31:16.160
with my voice right now is to remind everyone, please don't let your spirit be defeated. We may not

1011
01:31:16.240 --> 01:31:22.000
have won the election, but our spirit can't be defeated because then they really win. And sometimes

1012
01:31:22.000 --> 01:31:34.640
the fight takes a while, right? So I don't regret having run in spite of the outcome. But I do regret

1013
01:31:34.640 --> 01:31:42.320
that we did not have more time. I mean, you've got more time now. Time to do a podcast. Time to run

1014
01:31:42.320 --> 01:31:47.040
for president as well, potentially. I look at it. I've got two pictures here, which I thought

1015
01:31:47.040 --> 01:31:52.400
it was beautifully sweet. I'll show you both of them. But I am these two pictures here.

1016
01:31:53.760 --> 01:32:01.040
My Duggy. Yeah. If I was in a situation where the election results had come in and I had that

1017
01:32:01.040 --> 01:32:08.240
call from my team saying that there's 200,000 votes we can't find, I think I'd probably be

1018
01:32:08.320 --> 01:32:12.240
turning to my partner in those moments. Oh, I definitely did.

1019
01:32:13.200 --> 01:32:18.960
Talk to me about that. What rule did you mean? I mean, he is, it sounds so corny, but he truly

1020
01:32:18.960 --> 01:32:28.800
is my rock. My husband is just fully self-actualized. He's not pretending to be anything. He's not.

1021
01:32:28.800 --> 01:32:36.240
He is a strong man who cares about his family, cares about hard work. He is loyal. He has a sense of

1022
01:32:36.240 --> 01:32:46.000
humor. He's very encouraging. He's very honest. I want that for anyone and everyone. I know you

1023
01:32:46.000 --> 01:32:54.240
talk with a lot of people about advice, about career and all of that. For any of us, what I want,

1024
01:32:55.280 --> 01:33:02.320
for anyone who has ambition for success, have in your life, and it doesn't have to be a lot of

1025
01:33:02.320 --> 01:33:08.640
people, but that circle of people who have some understanding of what you're going through.

1026
01:33:09.840 --> 01:33:15.040
And are there when you want to laugh at the thing you're not supposed to laugh about?

1027
01:33:16.640 --> 01:33:25.040
You want to use the words you don't use wherever you pray. The people who, you know, I talk about,

1028
01:33:25.040 --> 01:33:30.480
you know, if you slip and fall, they'll laugh at you and then pick you up and push you back out

1029
01:33:30.480 --> 01:33:37.360
there. None of us has achieved success without those people in our lives. And it might be your

1030
01:33:37.360 --> 01:33:44.240
spouse. It might be your partner. It might be a family member. It could be anybody. But be

1031
01:33:44.240 --> 01:33:51.520
intentional about having those people in your life because, look, this is life. They're, you know,

1032
01:33:51.520 --> 01:33:58.240
so cliche. They're going to be the ups. They're going to be the downs. It's the beauty of living that,

1033
01:33:59.120 --> 01:34:04.480
you know, it involves the whole spectrum. But when you have people that can be with you on your

1034
01:34:04.480 --> 01:34:09.280
journey, it just makes it better. Do you remember what he said to you that night?

1035
01:34:13.200 --> 01:34:19.440
Well, he was in as much of a state of shock as I was. We didn't, I have to admit, we were not very

1036
01:34:19.440 --> 01:34:27.920
articulate that night. How long did that last? Well, not until I started writing the book

1037
01:34:29.360 --> 01:34:34.640
and getting to the chapter on election night. Do you know that was the first time Doug and I

1038
01:34:34.640 --> 01:34:41.200
talked about election night? Really? How many weeks, months was that? Months. We had never talked

1039
01:34:41.200 --> 01:34:48.320
about election night. Never had never talked about election night. It was when I was writing the book,

1040
01:34:48.320 --> 01:34:54.400
that's when he told me something. I had no idea, which is he and my brother-in-law had been

1041
01:34:54.400 --> 01:35:00.960
campaigning on election day in Michigan. I felt good. I remember talking to him and he said,

1042
01:35:00.960 --> 01:35:06.240
it feels good out here. Everybody's saying it feels good. Then on their way back to DC,

1043
01:35:07.440 --> 01:35:10.800
take out a call from a friend of ours. It was a Democrat who, but who's a, a,

1044
01:35:11.760 --> 01:35:18.880
punted on Fox News. He was in their boiler room, their war room. He calls Doug and my brother-in-law

1045
01:35:18.880 --> 01:35:22.480
Tony to say, what are you guys hearing? Because what I'm hearing concerns me.

1046
01:35:24.880 --> 01:35:31.040
I didn't know that happened. All I knew was Doug went campaigning with Tony. I was campaigning.

1047
01:35:31.040 --> 01:35:36.000
Everybody was campaigning. I had a house full of family. When he came back to the house,

1048
01:35:36.640 --> 01:35:43.040
I knew something that was like a little off in retrospect. What I didn't know is he had that

1049
01:35:43.040 --> 01:35:53.680
information. He had gone up the stairs to take a shower and pray. I didn't know until we

1050
01:35:53.680 --> 01:35:58.880
talked about that chapter because we talked about that night. Then I was talking to him about

1051
01:35:59.840 --> 01:36:05.600
we always do friends and family dinner. I said, Doug, remember the tables and do you remember

1052
01:36:05.600 --> 01:36:10.080
who was sitting at our table? Then they said, I said, remember when I gave the toast, he said,

1053
01:36:10.080 --> 01:36:15.920
you didn't give the toast. You didn't give a toast. I said, I did. He said, no, you're thinking

1054
01:36:15.920 --> 01:36:20.400
about one of the other events because we used to do dinners in that room. Now it was our friends

1055
01:36:20.400 --> 01:36:24.720
and family dinner. I gave a toast. I looked for the photographs of that night and I found one

1056
01:36:24.800 --> 01:36:31.760
and there I am standing, giving a toast. Doug was so in his head at that point worried

1057
01:36:32.880 --> 01:36:38.560
about what he heard from our friend, about what Fox News was reporting in their boiler room.

1058
01:36:39.600 --> 01:36:43.840
He didn't really experience any of that. You know, have you ever had those?

1059
01:36:43.840 --> 01:36:48.480
It was never. But you've just like something is so weighing on that you're not experiencing

1060
01:36:48.480 --> 01:36:52.960
anything because that's all you're thinking. But he didn't want to tell me that night.

1061
01:36:53.040 --> 01:36:57.360
Because he prayed it was going to be different. In hindsight, could you tell that something was

1062
01:36:57.360 --> 01:37:13.040
off with him? In hindsight, I could tell. And we had to function. We had a house full of people,

1063
01:37:13.760 --> 01:37:21.200
family. The next day, because we were going to go to Howard University's campus,

1064
01:37:21.200 --> 01:37:24.960
my alma mater, to give a victory speech the night of the election,

1065
01:37:27.040 --> 01:37:33.440
told everybody to come back the next day. And so then I had to get ready to go and give a speech,

1066
01:37:33.440 --> 01:37:40.160
which was a concession speech. And actually to the point of, you know, I had to reconcile,

1067
01:37:40.160 --> 01:37:47.760
I would close every rally by saying, when we fight, we win. And it was not as simplistic as,

1068
01:37:47.760 --> 01:37:51.840
well, you win some you lose some. And I was trying to figure out how do I, especially for all

1069
01:37:51.840 --> 01:37:57.840
those young people, how do I help them reconcile that? And on the way to the giving the speech,

1070
01:37:57.840 --> 01:38:03.760
I wrote into the speech, well, sometimes the fight takes a while. But when I got, so when we got

1071
01:38:04.720 --> 01:38:11.200
to Howard, we were in the, you know, green room and our family was there. So this is how awful I

1072
01:38:11.200 --> 01:38:16.160
am. I'm looking at everybody's crying. And I just looked at them and said, we are not having a pity

1073
01:38:16.160 --> 01:38:28.800
party. We are not having a pity party. And I was just on function. You know, and then it was,

1074
01:38:29.360 --> 01:38:38.560
um, and then it was, you know, I had the, we, we ended up, we had a, a trip plan to Hawaii for

1075
01:38:38.560 --> 01:38:45.600
vacation. From many, many months ago, and there was an emergency happening in the world. And so I

1076
01:38:45.600 --> 01:38:51.360
couldn't go and we couldn't go. And we forgot that we actually, because we had paid to rent this house.

1077
01:38:52.560 --> 01:38:57.920
And my team being so great, they're like, why don't we see if we can get you to go to that house

1078
01:38:57.920 --> 01:39:03.520
now? And as I reflected on it, it was literally, it wasn't a vacation. It was like the oxygen

1079
01:39:03.520 --> 01:39:12.080
mass just dropped and we put it on and went to Hawaii. And some friends of ours met us there.

1080
01:39:13.280 --> 01:39:19.280
And we were like zombies, you know, for a while, it was just, it was, it was a very difficult

1081
01:39:19.280 --> 01:39:26.400
thing to process that depression. Um, probably, I mean, it's, it's a, it's,

1082
01:39:29.360 --> 01:39:37.760
there is the thing about one, um, about, you know, going, going, going, going, going, going.

1083
01:39:37.760 --> 01:39:43.840
And then all of a sudden, so there is that, which is just your body is physically used to this

1084
01:39:43.920 --> 01:39:50.240
thing that all of a sudden stops. And I've had that happen every time I've run and win even, right?

1085
01:39:50.240 --> 01:39:54.000
Like what a gold medal depression. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. When you win the gold medal,

1086
01:39:54.000 --> 01:39:59.360
people get depressed because, yeah, because you, because you've been, you've been functioning the

1087
01:39:59.360 --> 01:40:05.600
whole time in a very competitive nature. And it's fight or fight. And it's adrenaline and adrenaline

1088
01:40:05.920 --> 01:40:13.600
surging, surging, surging. And then there is the piece that is about, I mean, it lasted for days,

1089
01:40:13.600 --> 01:40:20.640
which is almost that, you know, they talk about when people, um, lose a limb, there's the, like,

1090
01:40:20.640 --> 01:40:25.840
the ghost or the phantom. Phantom limb, yeah. Right. The phantom limb. And I had a hard time

1091
01:40:25.840 --> 01:40:34.560
reconciling. We can't still do something about it. I had a, just, I, I knew. It's just like I knew

1092
01:40:34.560 --> 01:40:39.120
I was going through the stages of grief. I knew, you know, so that's good to be able to put a label

1093
01:40:39.120 --> 01:40:43.200
on something, but it doesn't mean that she don't otherwise experience it. You won't help less at

1094
01:40:43.200 --> 01:40:47.920
that point. Yeah. I was, I was just like, there's something I, there must be something I can do.

1095
01:40:47.920 --> 01:40:53.440
Do you reflect on, um, I know your, your mother passed away when you, and you, you were in your early

1096
01:40:53.440 --> 01:40:59.040
forties. I think she was 70 years old, roughly, and she was colon cancer. She was just two, she was,

1097
01:40:59.040 --> 01:41:05.040
her birthday was December 7th. She died February 11th. She was just two months into being 70.

1098
01:41:05.040 --> 01:41:10.240
Is her spirit and her, her presence still with you in these moments? Yeah. Do you reflect on

1099
01:41:10.240 --> 01:41:15.840
what she would be thinking of always? Very much. Very much all the time. Um,

1100
01:41:19.920 --> 01:41:28.480
she, I mean, I can't, if my, I, you know, it's funny. I've talked to a couple people who have lost

1101
01:41:28.480 --> 01:41:36.640
their parents who were, who've lost them recently, but whose parents had a similar nature to my

1102
01:41:36.640 --> 01:41:43.200
mother. And one of them said to me most recently, she said, I'm so glad my father is not alive to

1103
01:41:43.200 --> 01:41:50.080
see this because it would kill him. I was just talking to somebody recently who just said that, um,

1104
01:41:50.080 --> 01:41:55.360
oh, my mother would be, I'd probably, you know, it would be a great distraction for me if my mother

1105
01:41:55.360 --> 01:42:02.560
were alive right now because I'd have to spend full time talking her down. Oh, you know,

1106
01:42:02.560 --> 01:42:07.520
when I talked about that safe space. So early on when I was running for, yeah, this is when I realized

1107
01:42:07.520 --> 01:42:12.400
I need to have like that core group of like that safe space. And I thought my mother would be a

1108
01:42:12.400 --> 01:42:19.360
perfect person to be in it. And I realized that was a huge mistake on my part because my mother

1109
01:42:19.520 --> 01:42:29.440
wanted to kill everybody. And then I have to spend full time talking her down instead of dealing

1110
01:42:29.440 --> 01:42:39.280
with how I needed to address a situation. So that's my mother's nature. We used to call her mommy.

1111
01:42:39.280 --> 01:42:44.960
That's mommy's nature. She should be so proud. Oh, she would be proud. She'd be very proud. She, um,

1112
01:42:45.840 --> 01:42:55.520
oh, my God. So she passed just before my election as attorney general. And I took care of her

1113
01:42:55.520 --> 01:43:02.320
when she was sick. And we were, um, this was one of those days and there were weeks where she

1114
01:43:02.320 --> 01:43:08.000
needed to be in the hospital. And so she was, I was with her in the hospital. She's in the bed.

1115
01:43:08.000 --> 01:43:12.880
And I was in the chair sitting next to her. And so like, I'm here and she's here and she was just

1116
01:43:12.880 --> 01:43:22.160
kind of resting. And she said to me, how's the campaign going? And she's, and I'm sitting here.

1117
01:43:23.040 --> 01:43:28.720
I said, well, mommy, this is true. I said, well, mommy, they said they're going to kick my ass.

1118
01:43:29.040 --> 01:43:35.200
Yes. My mother turned over and looked at me and smiled.

1119
01:43:38.960 --> 01:43:48.640
Sort of God. She didn't say anything. She smiled. Like, yeah, let them try. Uh-huh. That was my mother.

1120
01:43:49.360 --> 01:43:58.000
Yeah. Yeah. You miss her? Oh, all the time. Yeah. All the time. But you know, it's, um,

1121
01:44:00.160 --> 01:44:05.920
here's the thing about life. One of the things that I've learned. Um,

1122
01:44:08.240 --> 01:44:14.720
you know, it's just like having the things that can be, it's the duality.

1123
01:44:15.360 --> 01:44:24.320
The things that can be a great blessing and have a huge impact when it's not there.

1124
01:44:24.320 --> 01:44:29.680
It feels like a huge loss. It's like you asked earlier, would you have done it differently then?

1125
01:44:30.880 --> 01:44:36.240
Would we ever say because we've experienced the loss of someone we love that we would not have

1126
01:44:36.240 --> 01:44:48.320
loved. Never. Right. Never. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Um, I'm not going to, we do have a

1127
01:44:48.320 --> 01:44:52.320
closing tradition, but I think we're at a time. Um, I'm going to ask you anyway. Fuck it. Um,

1128
01:44:52.320 --> 01:44:55.040
the closing tradition is the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. Not that you're

1129
01:44:55.040 --> 01:44:58.800
leaving it for. Okay. The question left for you is if there was a moment in the last 10 years,

1130
01:44:58.800 --> 01:45:06.800
you would do differently. What would it be? And why? Oh, this is quite.

1131
01:45:10.000 --> 01:45:15.760
I read my book. Okay. We'll leave it at that. Read the book. 107 days, um,

1132
01:45:15.760 --> 01:45:19.920
comular Harris. It's an incredible book because it's so unbelievably honest and it's so

1133
01:45:19.920 --> 01:45:24.160
unbelievably human and it lets you see behind a curve. One does not usually get to see behind,

1134
01:45:24.160 --> 01:45:28.560
which is extremely extremely rare, but extremely illuminating and valuable. Your career is one

1135
01:45:28.560 --> 01:45:32.960
that is inspired me tremendously because you've broken down walls, broken through ceilings and

1136
01:45:32.960 --> 01:45:36.480
continue to do that. And if anyone takes the time to read your book or look through the story of

1137
01:45:36.480 --> 01:45:41.840
your life, it is irrefutable that your agenda is to serve people. Thank you so much for giving me

1138
01:45:41.840 --> 01:45:45.200
your time today. Thank you. I'm very, very touched by that. Thank you. Thank you.