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Rick Wilson Discusses the Business of Politics (Podcast) · Masters in Business

0:03
Speaker 1: I have an extra special guest this week. His name
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Speaker 1: is Rick Wilson. He is a Republican political strategist, media consultant,
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Speaker 1: and author who has produced numerous television commercials for governors,
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Speaker 1: senate candidates, super PACs corporations. He helped campaign for Connie
0:21
Speaker 1: mac for the Florida UH Senate campaign. He was George H. W.
0:27
Speaker 1: Bush's field director in Florida. He was the presidential appointee
0:31
Speaker 1: to the Department of Defense under Dick Cheney. He created
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Speaker 1: a number of award winning ads for Rudolph Giuliani in
0:38
Speaker 1: the seven mayoral election, also campaign for Giuliani for the
0:44
Speaker 1: two thousand Senate seat. And he is the author of
0:48
Speaker 1: Everything Trump Touches Dies. A Republican strategist gets Real about
0:53
Speaker 1: the worst President ever. Rick Wilson, Welcome to Bloomberg. Well,
0:58
Speaker 1: thank you, very appreciate that I've been looking forward to this.
1:01
Speaker 1: But I gotta ask you, what's your beef with Trump?
1:04
Speaker 1: He's making America great again. Well, that's a great catchphrase, Berry,
1:08
Speaker 1: but it's also at variance with a lot of the
1:10
Speaker 1: things that that I, as a conservative believe in. Okay,
1:14
Speaker 1: give us some example, limiting the size of government, engaging
1:17
Speaker 1: in a in a trade war that is ultimately going
1:20
Speaker 1: to end, as all trade wars do, with a complete
1:22
Speaker 1: economic and political disaster. But look, Donald Trump isn't a
1:26
Speaker 1: conservative in the traditional way. He's more of a status
1:28
Speaker 1: more of an authoritarian, and it's definitely some stuff that
1:30
Speaker 1: I have a lot of issues with as a conservative.
1:33
Speaker 1: There's nothing that Donald Trump's character has ever indicated that he,
1:37
Speaker 1: you know, has any of the traits of moral probity,
1:40
Speaker 1: or personal responsibility, or accountability or integrity. And so there
1:45
Speaker 1: were a lot of these reasons that I thought that
1:46
Speaker 1: Trump would be a damaging force in the country, not
1:49
Speaker 1: only for conservatism, but for our economy and for our
1:52
Speaker 1: system of government. And I've been I've been proven pretty
1:54
Speaker 1: consistently right on this over the last two years. I
1:57
Speaker 1: have to admit I was pretty shocked. I'm a lifelow
2:00
Speaker 1: in New Yorker. Everybody in New York kind of knows
2:03
Speaker 1: what Trump's gig is. It's no big surprise. We all
2:06
Speaker 1: either know someone who's worked with him, or been involved
2:09
Speaker 1: with one of his properties, or been sued by him.
2:12
Speaker 1: And um, I was shocked at how easily the right
2:16
Speaker 1: wing just what his line when it was clearly nonsense,
2:20
Speaker 1: you know, at least about being a conservative, a fiscal conservative, etcetera, exactly,
2:26
Speaker 1: you know. And and my New York experience started in
2:28
Speaker 1: ninety working for Rudy in the first in the re
2:31
Speaker 1: election campaign, and then I was here in City Hall
2:34
Speaker 1: for about a year working as this advisor and then
2:37
Speaker 1: on the campaign against Hillary. So I got enough of
2:40
Speaker 1: a taste of New York at that point to get
2:42
Speaker 1: so where people read Donald Trump and how they scanned him,
2:45
Speaker 1: And it was always like, yeah, the guy's kind of whatever,
2:47
Speaker 1: but you know, we'll throw m some parking passes once
2:50
Speaker 1: in a while. But and his ascent politically from people
2:54
Speaker 1: here and other folks that have done business with him
2:56
Speaker 1: and that I've known in Florida and elsewhere, they were
2:59
Speaker 1: always stunned. How is how is anyone buying this con
3:02
Speaker 1: How does anyone believe this guy? This bs is. Everybody
3:05
Speaker 1: knows he's bankrupt constantly, every multiple everybody knows that this
3:08
Speaker 1: guy is in debt up to his eyeballs. That this
3:11
Speaker 1: is all a character he's playing on TV and not
3:15
Speaker 1: the real guy. You know, all this idea that Trump
3:17
Speaker 1: is one of the wealthiest men in the world, and
3:18
Speaker 1: he's a amazing businessman, a masterful negotiator, all these things.
3:22
Speaker 1: It's all bs, It's all crap. And they all knew it,
3:25
Speaker 1: and and and why jump on the Trump train? And
3:29
Speaker 1: was it just raw attraction to power? And not a
3:32
Speaker 1: lot more than that. Trump identified something in the Republican
3:36
Speaker 1: base that they really wanted. They wanted someone who was
3:39
Speaker 1: so transgressive, who was going to blow up everything, because
3:43
Speaker 1: there's a huge sense of inferiority in the Republican base there.
3:46
Speaker 1: They really dislike the fact that the educated elites and
3:51
Speaker 1: the Ivy League people quote unquote looked down on them.
3:54
Speaker 1: So and that's been stoked over the years by Fox
3:57
Speaker 1: and by the right wing talk radio circuit. And so
4:00
Speaker 1: those folks got this sense that Donald Trump was going
4:02
Speaker 1: to be, uh this, as I said, a transgressive and
4:05
Speaker 1: destructive force for the establishment, which they hate. They hate
4:10
Speaker 1: the establishment Republicans more than they hate Democrats. They have
4:15
Speaker 1: a greater anxiety about about their own party's internal quote
4:20
Speaker 1: unquote elites than they do about the Democrats. And so
4:23
Speaker 1: Trump activated that very brilliantly, and the and the Republican
4:27
Speaker 1: elected officials who followed along in his wake did it
4:30
Speaker 1: for two reasons. The first reason, Man and I would
4:33
Speaker 1: say about you know, in the house, there used to
4:35
Speaker 1: be a lot fewer today. A lot of those guys
4:37
Speaker 1: were just afraid of him. They're afraid of the Twitter feed,
4:39
Speaker 1: They're afraid of his followers, they're afraid of the crazy train.
4:42
Speaker 1: They're afraid of They're afraid of the people that Trump inspires.
4:45
Speaker 1: You write about that in everything Trump touches dies that
4:49
Speaker 1: there is a genuine fear amongst rank and file Republicans
4:53
Speaker 1: that if this guy comes after me on Twitter, my
4:56
Speaker 1: life is over. And they have a political fear that
5:00
Speaker 1: they'll be primaried by some nutcase. They have to their
5:04
Speaker 1: own rights, to their own to their own right or
5:06
Speaker 1: or to the Trump zone. From the Trump zone, they
5:09
Speaker 1: have a state run media. There is a there is
5:12
Speaker 1: a deep sense that a lot of the followers of
5:16
Speaker 1: Trump are the guys that are gonna come to your
5:18
Speaker 1: town hall meeting and lose their minds with you. And
5:21
Speaker 1: I tell a story in the book of a guy
5:23
Speaker 1: who went to one of the first town hall meetings
5:24
Speaker 1: and he was asked, are you going to support president
5:27
Speaker 1: percent of the time? And he says, well, I want to.
5:30
Speaker 1: I'm a Republican. I hope we can agree on a
5:32
Speaker 1: lot of things, but you know, I'm gonna stand taking
5:34
Speaker 1: a blind I'm going to stand up for my district first.
5:37
Speaker 1: It's like, no, no, are you going to support Mr Trump?
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Speaker 1: One of the time and he says no, moves on
5:43
Speaker 1: next question. By the time he gets off stage, his
5:45
Speaker 1: Facebook page is filled up with death threats, his wife's
5:48
Speaker 1: business Facebook page is filled up with death threats. His
5:51
Speaker 1: Twitter feed is a mess, his kids school is getting
5:54
Speaker 1: phone calls the next day. And it's because appropriate. Yeah,
5:57
Speaker 1: it seems it seems like a normal political course, right, Um,
6:01
Speaker 1: But it comes down to this point where the vast
6:04
Speaker 1: majority of the members of the caucus are just afraid.
6:06
Speaker 1: They're afraid of what Trump's gonna say or do. Um.
6:10
Speaker 1: There's a handful of them who are true believers. There
6:13
Speaker 1: are a few of these guys who really have all
6:15
Speaker 1: the kool aide. Example, well, Devin is a perfect example.
6:20
Speaker 1: Data rohbockers perfect well, you know, and we should discuss
6:24
Speaker 1: his his district said, you're not putting your district first.
6:28
Speaker 1: Lust him out, and that is something that you know,
6:30
Speaker 1: that is something that we saw in this in this election.
6:33
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the GOP. And there
6:36
Speaker 1: were so many questions that I had as as I
6:39
Speaker 1: was reading the book, the first of which was, what
6:43
Speaker 1: was the response from your fellow Republicans when you pretty
6:49
Speaker 1: much declared, Hey, this guy is not a Republican, he's
6:52
Speaker 1: an impostor, and he will destroy the party if you
6:55
Speaker 1: make him your nominee. That had to be some pretty
6:58
Speaker 1: fierce pushback in the beginning, not at all. Really, in
7:01
Speaker 1: the beginning, it was absolutely right, we're all in this together.
7:05
Speaker 1: And one by one they fell to the conformity of
7:09
Speaker 1: d C, which is a corporate town, and a lot
7:12
Speaker 1: of them were dependent on work from the RNC or
7:16
Speaker 1: the NRCC, or the Senate Committee or the Governor's Association.
7:19
Speaker 1: And so they slowly, you know, shut their mouths, sat down,
7:24
Speaker 1: made their peace with the Trump world. And look, I
7:27
Speaker 1: had had a very successful career. I've done superPAC work
7:30
Speaker 1: for the last ten years. I've done campaigns in thirty
7:34
Speaker 1: eight states. I've been to the rodeo. I wasn't really,
7:38
Speaker 1: you know, subject to a lot of the same motivations
7:42
Speaker 1: that they were of, you know, keeping the keeping the
7:44
Speaker 1: mortgage payments up on their five million dollar homes in Georgetown, Right,
7:48
Speaker 1: So I had a slightly different take on some of that.
7:52
Speaker 1: But it's also that that I've never tried to be
7:55
Speaker 1: one of the d C guys. Yeah, they were all
7:58
Speaker 1: centrist Republicans and compassion to conservatives when George Bush was president,
8:02
Speaker 1: and the minute the tea party one, they were all
8:04
Speaker 1: hair on fire libertarians. We were going to burn down
8:07
Speaker 1: the government drowned in the bathtub, and and we were
8:11
Speaker 1: gonna We're gonna adhere to the Constitution strictly. That that
8:14
Speaker 1: sort of ethical um flexibility. Yeah, I mean, is it
8:19
Speaker 1: that blatant? Is it? In d C? It's not even
8:22
Speaker 1: just that obvious. Part of the trick for a lot
8:25
Speaker 1: of these people was they basically had to hire Trump
8:27
Speaker 1: people to make good with the Trump family on the
8:31
Speaker 1: Trump Organization. A lot of these people in d C
8:34
Speaker 1: who hated Donald Trump with the fire of a million
8:36
Speaker 1: sons to keep their RNC contracts. Suddenly they were hiring
8:40
Speaker 1: all these you know, cats and dogs that wandered in
8:43
Speaker 1: from the Trump world who couldn't have gotten a job
8:45
Speaker 1: at a burger king otherwise, and pretending that this was
8:49
Speaker 1: that that they had always been Trump, they had always
8:51
Speaker 1: been all about MAGA. So when did the push back
8:55
Speaker 1: to you start in earnest? When did you really start
8:58
Speaker 1: to have uh the GOP rank and file turn on you.
9:04
Speaker 1: While on the front end, a lot of them have
9:06
Speaker 1: said had to say publicly, well, are not working with
9:08
Speaker 1: wreck anymore. Um, A lot of them still talk to me,
9:12
Speaker 1: and I have taken on this weird role as like
9:14
Speaker 1: a father confessor to some of these Republicans for the
9:17
Speaker 1: last two years. They'll call me up and say, I
9:19
Speaker 1: hate him. I hate him so much, I can't stand
9:22
Speaker 1: this case destroying the country. And the next day they're
9:25
Speaker 1: sitting around the cabinet off the cabinet room table, or
9:27
Speaker 1: they're wearing a red hat at a rally because they're
9:30
Speaker 1: just afraid. So they won't even vote against them. No, no,
9:35
Speaker 1: they they're the fear defines them, and this desire to
9:38
Speaker 1: please his base defines them these days. And so look,
9:42
Speaker 1: once he got the nomination, I was definitely out of
9:45
Speaker 1: the out of the family pic necklist for a while.
9:48
Speaker 1: But I have spent the last two years speaking freely
9:52
Speaker 1: and and and making a critique of Trump from the right,
9:56
Speaker 1: and honestly, I'm liberated. You don't have a specially kind
10:00
Speaker 1: things to say about Ryan's in the book. I don't
10:02
Speaker 1: because he had every opportunity to pull this pull the
10:05
Speaker 1: circuit breakers on Trump. Yeah, why didn't he? I I
10:10
Speaker 1: think in many ways he feared that Donald Trump would
10:13
Speaker 1: leave the party quote unquote, go to the Democrat and
10:17
Speaker 1: run as an independent, and therefore would tap off a
10:20
Speaker 1: small but meaningful percentage in enough states that Hillary would
10:23
Speaker 1: be insure to win. That was That was what one
10:26
Speaker 1: of his advisers, you know, said to me at the time,
10:28
Speaker 1: And I said, is at an unreasonable position, it seems
10:30
Speaker 1: fairly logical. Well, the thing about it is Donald Trump
10:34
Speaker 1: at that point would not be able to raise money
10:36
Speaker 1: from the Republican sucker base who loved him. He would
10:39
Speaker 1: have had to actually spend his own money for real,
10:41
Speaker 1: and we know he didn't want to do that. He
10:43
Speaker 1: never does. He doesn't have any money to spend. So
10:45
Speaker 1: my pet thesis about Trump this whole time has been
10:49
Speaker 1: was a phenomenal branding opportunity for him. He ran, he
10:53
Speaker 1: raised his profile. Everything he did financially after that was
10:58
Speaker 1: a big win for him. I looked at is he
11:01
Speaker 1: has no interest in winning. He just wants to take
11:05
Speaker 1: all the free publicity, and of course and and the
11:08
Speaker 1: people inside Trump's campaign for the last month of the campaign. Oh,
11:12
Speaker 1: I can't wait till this is over. We're gonna go
11:14
Speaker 1: have a big steak dinner. I gotta tell you the
11:15
Speaker 1: crazy stories about this idiot. And on election night, Steve Bannon,
11:21
Speaker 1: rants previous, Kelly and Conway, all the senior Trump staffers
11:25
Speaker 1: are calling every reporter in the country saying it's his fault,
11:28
Speaker 1: it's her fault, it's their fault. They were already they
11:32
Speaker 1: were all this is. At at four forty five, I
11:35
Speaker 1: got a phone call from from a major national reporter
11:38
Speaker 1: who just said I just got off the phone with
11:40
Speaker 1: one of the president's senior strategists who is today in
11:43
Speaker 1: the White House. And this person told me, oh, Bannon's
11:47
Speaker 1: an idiot and writes, blew this up. And they're just
11:50
Speaker 1: morons in the family or a bunch of greedy, you know,
11:53
Speaker 1: mafia people. This is a cry, this is this is horrifying.
11:57
Speaker 1: And an hour and a half later, this person is
11:59
Speaker 1: on the stage age waving and smiling. Because the night
12:03
Speaker 1: came out differently, they had no anticipation of winning at all.
12:06
Speaker 1: You could tell from the lack of lists of senior
12:10
Speaker 1: cabinet people, ambassadors. There's still hundreds of unfilled slots. It's
12:14
Speaker 1: two years later. Take a look at the tax cuts.
12:17
Speaker 1: There's no rhyme, Maria. That was a Paul Ryan joint.
12:20
Speaker 1: That wasn't a Donald Trump joint. He just cares about
12:23
Speaker 1: the victory, is how I read it, and not the
12:25
Speaker 1: policy DTA. He cares about the celebrity, yes, and that
12:28
Speaker 1: that's always been what motivates Trump. A friend of his
12:32
Speaker 1: former friend, current friend, I'm not sure you describe it
12:34
Speaker 1: said any one time. Whatever makes him money, whatever puts
12:37
Speaker 1: him on the in the papers that day. That's Donald
12:39
Speaker 1: Trump's entire world. Fame, money, and love. Those are the
12:42
Speaker 1: three most I wouldn't say love. Yeah, I'm trying to
12:46
Speaker 1: put a nice spin on it. So let's talk about
12:49
Speaker 1: what the Democrats should be learning from this election cycle.
12:53
Speaker 1: What should they have done differently in sixteen, and what
12:56
Speaker 1: should they be doing differently. Well, I think what they
12:59
Speaker 1: learned this here, to their credit, and it's taken a
13:02
Speaker 1: long road for them to get there, is to try
13:05
Speaker 1: to nominate people for Congress who fit the district. For
13:08
Speaker 1: years though they had this very top down approach where
13:11
Speaker 1: no matter who you were where you were running. You
13:13
Speaker 1: had to be the same Democrat that would be acceptable
13:16
Speaker 1: in Manhattan or Democrats right. You had to be completely
13:20
Speaker 1: pro choice, you had to be completely anti gun, you
13:23
Speaker 1: had to be completely high taxes, purity tests, all the
13:26
Speaker 1: ideological monoculture that Republicans like me used to defeat Democrats
13:32
Speaker 1: all over the country. What they learned is, yeah, you
13:36
Speaker 1: can you can. You can name an Occasio Cortez in
13:39
Speaker 1: the Bronx, but you gotta name a Connor Lamb in Pennsylvania,
13:44
Speaker 1: in western Pennsylvania, in rural areas. The Democrats finally seemed
13:48
Speaker 1: to have started to learn that a little bit this year,
13:51
Speaker 1: and some of their more progressive candidates like Andrew Gilham
13:53
Speaker 1: in Florida, who you know, for all that people were
13:57
Speaker 1: very enamored of Andrew Gillham, he was very far to
14:01
Speaker 1: the left of where Florida is still came within one percent.
14:04
Speaker 1: Pretty shock. It was a very impressive campaign. He's an
14:06
Speaker 1: impressive candidate. So a lot of the more progressive guys
14:09
Speaker 1: who felt like they still had to check all those
14:11
Speaker 1: boxes fell short. And the fact that thirty one candidates
14:16
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump endorsed for the House of Them lost
14:21
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Yeah, there's a pretty thorough repudiation the Trump.
14:26
Speaker 1: The Trump hit on House campaigns is something that we'll
14:31
Speaker 1: have a longer political runout than the fact that they
14:34
Speaker 1: won some Senate races and states that were the Democrats
14:37
Speaker 1: were disproportionately holding those seats. I mean Claire mccaskell in Missouri,
14:41
Speaker 1: that is the state that has trended redder and redder.
14:43
Speaker 1: Indiana deeper and deeper red all the time. And so
14:48
Speaker 1: you know, we're shocked that people that the Republicans won
14:51
Speaker 1: in North Dakota, Trump won the state by thirty two points.
14:54
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the changes from the
14:56
Speaker 1: prior election. Uh, and you have to really begin with
15:01
Speaker 1: white college educated suburban women. How significant was that group
15:06
Speaker 1: for Democrats losing the White House in and how important
15:12
Speaker 1: was it to this midtime of left about voted for
15:15
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Isn't that a kind of a shock, but
15:20
Speaker 1: more than mid Romney. But right away, right away they
15:25
Speaker 1: realized there was an almost immediate oops oops factor and
15:29
Speaker 1: the tone and and things like Charlottesville and the immigration
15:33
Speaker 1: putting up, putting kids in cages not a good look
15:35
Speaker 1: for suburban educated women. They're not really keen on it.
15:38
Speaker 1: So what you ended up with was they sort of
15:41
Speaker 1: got a separation in the fall of in the winter,
15:46
Speaker 1: and last night the divorce was final. They walked away
15:49
Speaker 1: from the Republican Party and enormous numbers we're starting to
15:53
Speaker 1: peel through the exit polls. But if you look in
15:55
Speaker 1: places like Pennsylvania, the Democrats picked up four congressional seats there,
16:00
Speaker 1: almost all of them in suburban areas where educated white
16:03
Speaker 1: women are the driving political force. So here's the longtime question.
16:07
Speaker 1: Did they walk away from Republicans? Did they walk away
16:10
Speaker 1: from Trump? Is there a difference anymore? Well, I imagine
16:13
Speaker 1: there is. So I'm i'm I get grief from friends
16:16
Speaker 1: when I say I grew up a Jacob Javits Republican,
16:20
Speaker 1: which is pretty middle of the road, balanced budget, low taxes,
16:23
Speaker 1: no overseas adventures like Vietnam or subsequently Iraq, and keep
16:28
Speaker 1: the government the hell out of the bedroom. Fairly moderate
16:32
Speaker 1: Republican with the best part of the libertarian side. I
16:36
Speaker 1: haven't changed. It's just that the hard right part of
16:39
Speaker 1: the party has taken over and really driven things. Uh see,
16:43
Speaker 1: there's a there's a real desire that we sort of
16:46
Speaker 1: pretended wasn't there for a long time, not for limited
16:50
Speaker 1: government and you know, the rule of law and low
16:53
Speaker 1: taxes and constitutional adherents. There's been an appetite for a
16:58
Speaker 1: sort of authoritarianism and a strongman, the bully character that's
17:03
Speaker 1: been fed for a long time by the sort of
17:05
Speaker 1: talk radio culture. And so we've ended up with, you
17:09
Speaker 1: know what people wanted. They want the id of the
17:11
Speaker 1: Republican Party, not the super ego. Quite interesting. What keeps
17:15
Speaker 1: coming up all the time is that the country is
17:18
Speaker 1: so divided, and part of me feels well, Congress is divided,
17:22
Speaker 1: but there are so many things that Americans seem to
17:26
Speaker 1: agree with. It almost feels like more and more of
17:29
Speaker 1: us are living in purple states than deeper red and
17:33
Speaker 1: deeper blue. And while there's certainly exceptions to New York
17:37
Speaker 1: and California, Indiana and and um, I was gonna say Kansas,
17:42
Speaker 1: but I guess I can't say Kansas anymore? How accurate
17:45
Speaker 1: is that media depiction? Are we a nation divided? Or
17:48
Speaker 1: or are there more things that unite us than divide us?
17:51
Speaker 1: When it comes to the politics. The siloing off of
17:55
Speaker 1: Americans has divided us profoundly. And what's the cause of that.
18:00
Speaker 1: The first his politics has become a reality television show
18:03
Speaker 1: that we're all living in and people every day are
18:07
Speaker 1: fed by the channels they like, by the news sources
18:11
Speaker 1: they like, and the Internet has allowed people to silo
18:14
Speaker 1: themselves off into social groups. Look, we've become a disintermediate society.
18:18
Speaker 1: We don't do the things we used to do as people,
18:20
Speaker 1: and we don't we don't have the same sort of churches,
18:24
Speaker 1: social clubs, bowling leagues, baseball teams, all these things people
18:28
Speaker 1: used to do together. What's more important to them now
18:31
Speaker 1: is their Facebook group, and they interact more with people
18:35
Speaker 1: through social media, uh than they did before. And so
18:39
Speaker 1: part of that whole social media problem is that people
18:42
Speaker 1: want to portray this optimized image of themselves and to
18:45
Speaker 1: and to get attention in that attention economy of social media,
18:49
Speaker 1: and so they become flaming partisans, they become something visible
18:53
Speaker 1: inside their social group. And so so that's that's number one.
18:57
Speaker 1: That's a that's a huge um. So we clearly have
19:01
Speaker 1: a divide set up by media. Let's talk about some
19:04
Speaker 1: of the other more interesting issues of the modern electoral campaign.
19:09
Speaker 1: The polling was under significant criticism in how they do
19:14
Speaker 1: in a little better in some places, but we are
19:18
Speaker 1: still at a point where we chase these polling stories
19:22
Speaker 1: that are built on statistical models that don't reflect what
19:26
Speaker 1: the turnout model is going to look like, and which
19:28
Speaker 1: has to do with what is it enthusiasm or just
19:30
Speaker 1: not being able to reach people, it's not. It's a
19:33
Speaker 1: lot of There are a lot of mechanical and technical
19:35
Speaker 1: problems in pulling. Now you used to have to make
19:38
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand phone calls to get a decent sample,
19:40
Speaker 1: and now you have to make ten thousand phone calls
19:42
Speaker 1: to make get a decent sample. People don't answer their
19:44
Speaker 1: cell phones from strange numbers that they don't because you
19:46
Speaker 1: just assume it's it's it's spam, it's it's you know,
19:51
Speaker 1: healthcare enrollment is open. Everybody's gotten those calls, a million
19:54
Speaker 1: of them. Landline phones are going to sickly old people
19:59
Speaker 1: plus or you know you're the chance of you owning
20:01
Speaker 1: a landline phone now it means you are sixty or older.
20:05
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of technical difficulties in pulling.
20:07
Speaker 1: We also are seeing some better analytics coming out using
20:11
Speaker 1: big data, using a lot of the things. I mean, look,
20:13
Speaker 1: it used to be you would take a random digit
20:16
Speaker 1: dial and you'd call you six hundred people and you'd
20:19
Speaker 1: ask them pulling questions. Well, then you started making that
20:22
Speaker 1: dial list off of the voter file, so you're really
20:24
Speaker 1: talking to the people that are actually gonna be there.
20:26
Speaker 1: Then you started modeling that and saying, Okay, well, this
20:28
Speaker 1: guy's record since he's voted in to the last three primaries,
20:31
Speaker 1: so we're gonna definitely talk to him. He's a likely.
20:34
Speaker 1: And now we've got consumer data, we've got clicked data
20:37
Speaker 1: from the internet, we've got you know, your we've got
20:39
Speaker 1: the ability to say, Okay, this guy reads Bloomberg every day,
20:43
Speaker 1: and he reads um the Wall Street Journal every day,
20:46
Speaker 1: and he looks at drugs three times a day, so
20:48
Speaker 1: we know he's an engaged person. Maybe the tax issues
20:51
Speaker 1: that when we want to talk to him about while
20:52
Speaker 1: asking this question. So there's a lot of stuff that's
20:55
Speaker 1: giving us an enriched picture of who the voters are. Um,
20:59
Speaker 1: but the guys I work with my posters, you know,
21:02
Speaker 1: I was saying that people were gonna get thirty five
21:03
Speaker 1: Democratic seats and two to three Republican pickups in that
21:06
Speaker 1: in the Senate. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. We
21:08
Speaker 1: were pretty happy with that. I mean, we didn't feel
21:09
Speaker 1: like we missed a lot of big calls. And I've
21:12
Speaker 1: been you know, as as a as a Purple State guy,
21:14
Speaker 1: as a guy who still lives in Florida. You know,
21:17
Speaker 1: I told people for weeks it's going to be razor Yeah,
21:21
Speaker 1: it's it's it's votes a state of twenty million people.
21:26
Speaker 1: Let's let's talk about Florida. Because what I haven't seen
21:29
Speaker 1: a lot of people discussing has been the proposition that passed. Namely,
21:35
Speaker 1: if you're a felon um and I think it's non violent,
21:39
Speaker 1: it's non violent, non violent felon throughout most of America,
21:43
Speaker 1: you go to jail and you lose the right to vote.
21:45
Speaker 1: It's very much a disenfranchising um situation that falls into
21:50
Speaker 1: proportionately on Peter. Now, there's something like a million, three
21:54
Speaker 1: or one point four million felons in Florida who now
21:59
Speaker 1: will have the right to vote. What does that do
22:02
Speaker 1: to the state's dynamics. Well, it's interesting. Look, I don't
22:06
Speaker 1: think every single one of those people is going to
22:08
Speaker 1: become a likely voter. Okay, I don't think every single
22:10
Speaker 1: one of those people is necessarily gonna be a democratic voter. However,
22:14
Speaker 1: I strongly supported this because I believe that you know
22:17
Speaker 1: our justice system, once your sentence is served, you've paid
22:21
Speaker 1: the debt, you danger debt to society and you and
22:23
Speaker 1: you get to move on. So I really think that
22:26
Speaker 1: in that with that particular amendment, it spoke to a
22:30
Speaker 1: fundamental sense of justice. It also spoke to something that
22:32
Speaker 1: in Florida, we are one of the most punitive states
22:35
Speaker 1: in the country on the criminal justice side. We put
22:37
Speaker 1: a lot of young black guys in jail, and we
22:39
Speaker 1: put a lot of them in jail for one point
22:42
Speaker 1: oh one ounces of marijuana. Yeah, I mean this is this.
22:47
Speaker 1: We we put a lot of them in jail in
22:49
Speaker 1: the nineties during the hyper enforcement of the crack epidemic.
22:54
Speaker 1: And I was part of the original right on crime movement,
22:57
Speaker 1: where as conservatives, we we wanted to look at criminal
23:00
Speaker 1: justice in this country and was this an application of
23:02
Speaker 1: state power that was disproportionate, particularly to African American man. Sure,
23:06
Speaker 1: and it is it's unarguable that that is the case.
23:09
Speaker 1: And as a conservative, I don't want the state to
23:12
Speaker 1: have this punitive thing hanging over these these guys heads
23:15
Speaker 1: for their their entire lifespan. So I got an email
23:19
Speaker 1: last night from a guy who not an African American,
23:22
Speaker 1: guy who had had a low level, white collar thing.
23:26
Speaker 1: He goes, I'm going to get to vote for the
23:27
Speaker 1: first time in twenty two years. And this is a
23:29
Speaker 1: guy who has been who went to jail for two
23:32
Speaker 1: years and absolutely turned his life around in every conceivable way,
23:36
Speaker 1: the straightest arrow in the universe. And I was like,
23:40
Speaker 1: that's where this thing comes in. You know, at some
23:42
Speaker 1: point are we going to punish people forever and ever?
23:45
Speaker 1: And look, it is vastly disproportionate with African American men.
23:48
Speaker 1: I don't know what the what the overall percentage is
23:50
Speaker 1: going to be of that one point for but I'm
23:52
Speaker 1: going to tell you it's probably close to six. So
23:54
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about voter suppression. There were
23:58
Speaker 1: all sorts of questions about vote suppression. I had no
24:01
Speaker 1: idea it was so prevalent in Texas. I read a
24:04
Speaker 1: big article I it was in the Atlantic. But we
24:07
Speaker 1: have to talk about Georgia. What what took place in Georgia? Uh,
24:11
Speaker 1: somebody tweeted if this was a foreign country, the U
24:14
Speaker 1: s would be found political from the Atlantic. Yeah, I
24:17
Speaker 1: will say this. The things that we're coming out of
24:19
Speaker 1: Georgia on election night shocked me and and Brian Kemp's
24:24
Speaker 1: you know, self interest in the case of I'm going
24:26
Speaker 1: to run an enforcement operation to make sure to make
24:30
Speaker 1: sure that I win this race. That does strike me
24:32
Speaker 1: as as a little smell of the third world around.
24:36
Speaker 1: So so is this a viable issue for the Democrats
24:40
Speaker 1: to raise broadly, that we should expand voting rights to everything.
24:44
Speaker 1: They can raise it, They can raise it, but it's
24:46
Speaker 1: not a cutting political issue. It's a boutique issue. And
24:50
Speaker 1: what I would do if they were the Democrats is
24:52
Speaker 1: make sure that we were they were litigating the hell
24:55
Speaker 1: out of it, which they they need to um and
25:00
Speaker 1: I would if I were, if I were the Democrats
25:02
Speaker 1: in in a lot of these states, I would make
25:04
Speaker 1: sure that that they do more voter training and education
25:08
Speaker 1: so that people know their rights. I mean people being
25:10
Speaker 1: told up, sorry, pulls are closed, now you're standing in line.
25:13
Speaker 1: The courts have said time and time and time again
25:16
Speaker 1: that once you're at a polling place and you're in line,
25:19
Speaker 1: you get to vote. Easy lift. But a lot of
25:21
Speaker 1: people don't know that Republicans have been very good at
25:24
Speaker 1: educating their voters to get out early, to vote, absentee
25:27
Speaker 1: to vote, to do early voting. Democrats need do the
25:29
Speaker 1: same thing because it's harder to do it. It's harder
25:31
Speaker 1: to spread out a suppression effort over a week or
25:34
Speaker 1: two weeks of early voting than it is to do
25:36
Speaker 1: shenanigans on election day. We have been speaking with Rick Wilson.
25:40
Speaker 1: He is the author of the New York Times best
25:43
Speaker 1: selling book Everything Trump Touches Dies. If you enjoy this conversation,
25:48
Speaker 1: be sure and check out the podcast extras when we
25:50
Speaker 1: keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things electoral related.
25:55
Speaker 1: You can find that wherever you're finding. Podcasts are sold iTunes,
25:59
Speaker 1: over cast, Stitcher, or Bloomberg dot com. We love your comments,
26:03
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
26:08
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. You can check out my daily
26:10
Speaker 1: column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. Follow me on
26:14
Speaker 1: Twitter at Ridolts. I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Masters
26:18
Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Rick,
26:31
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. I have to
26:32
Speaker 1: tell you, I'm like two thirds of the way through
26:34
Speaker 1: the book and it's really hilarious. You have not only
26:39
Speaker 1: a wonderful writing style, but a vicious wit. I'm glad
26:44
Speaker 1: I never ran a campaign on the other side of you, because, uh,
26:49
Speaker 1: you seem to have the ability to pull out the
26:52
Speaker 1: um dagger and not only sticking in but twist it.
26:56
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of the things that you mentioned
26:59
Speaker 1: in the book look that I find absolutely fascinating. And
27:03
Speaker 1: I have to begin with the Tale of Congratulations. What
27:08
Speaker 1: to expect when you're gonna work in the Trump White House?
27:11
Speaker 1: A tail in five pieces. It's ironic, But everything I
27:17
Speaker 1: read in that list, you can name a dozen people
27:20
Speaker 1: must have gone through that. It's pretty brutal. Um. What
27:25
Speaker 1: is it about Trump that just basically uses people and
27:30
Speaker 1: throws them away? And yet there's still a line of
27:33
Speaker 1: people willing to get fed into the more of the machine. Well,
27:38
Speaker 1: I'm gonna disagree with you on the last part, but
27:40
Speaker 1: I'll look back to that. Trump is a bad manager,
27:44
Speaker 1: he's a bad leader, he's a bad person, and he's
27:47
Speaker 1: a bad president. How do you really feel I don't know,
27:49
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta get to a little bit right.
27:53
Speaker 1: But the folks that go to work for this guy,
27:56
Speaker 1: I mean, they all get they all get demolished. They
28:00
Speaker 1: they are every single person that goes into the White
28:02
Speaker 1: House loses their soul, their reputation. That's just a shocking
28:08
Speaker 1: you know. There there there are people that everyone thought
28:11
Speaker 1: would be fine, Like Nicky Haley, she's gonna be fine,
28:14
Speaker 1: she's worn out. She ran away? Who wrote? Who wrote
28:17
Speaker 1: the anonymous letter? You have any idea? I have an idea,
28:20
Speaker 1: but m you're gonna keep it. I'm gonna keep it
28:22
Speaker 1: to myself for now because if if it is so
28:25
Speaker 1: I think it is, it's actually somebody who's who's pretty
28:27
Speaker 1: senior and uh and and and it's not not completely
28:32
Speaker 1: bought in. You don't want to you know what, I
28:34
Speaker 1: don't want to out them. Yeah, but I will say
28:36
Speaker 1: this the story I told there, the what to expect
28:39
Speaker 1: when you're working for Trump story. It's a mildly fictionalized
28:42
Speaker 1: version of what we've observed over time. And it's also
28:46
Speaker 1: something that you know, guys that I knew who had
28:48
Speaker 1: done business with him here and in Florida told the
28:51
Speaker 1: same story. He's, yeah, who's that going to work for Trump?
28:53
Speaker 1: And he promises them you're gonna be a billionaire too,
28:55
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be great, and we're all gonna be
28:57
Speaker 1: driving Lamborghinis and and they bust their asked for a
29:01
Speaker 1: few years, they do that one of these projects for him,
29:03
Speaker 1: and then then they get shafted. Right. It's amazing when
29:07
Speaker 1: that story came out that there were three thousand pending
29:10
Speaker 1: litigations from contractors who want to get paid. I heard.
29:14
Speaker 1: I heard a wonderful story of a guy. Um. I
29:17
Speaker 1: have a friend who worked in his legal department briefly
29:20
Speaker 1: and went back to a farm. Said it's just insane. Um.
29:25
Speaker 1: They needed this guy to get a certificate of occupancy
29:28
Speaker 1: and he basically said, nope, you consume you could do
29:32
Speaker 1: what you want. You will not get a CEO. You
29:34
Speaker 1: could shut this whole project down. Every day what you
29:37
Speaker 1: only goes up. There's interest and penalties. My advice to
29:40
Speaker 1: you is to pay this tomorrow. And other than that guy,
29:43
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody who's been in that sort of
29:45
Speaker 1: dispute and actually got paid. And yet people continue to
29:49
Speaker 1: line up. Although you're gonna push back on that, I
29:52
Speaker 1: will push back on that. Because Trump has had so
29:55
Speaker 1: much difficulty recruiting people who can walk and chew gum
29:57
Speaker 1: at the same time he is surround it himself with
30:00
Speaker 1: a subpar, no doubt, group of people, both in the
30:04
Speaker 1: cabinet um and inside inside the White House itself. These
30:08
Speaker 1: guys are checked out. They are engaged in a constant
30:11
Speaker 1: war with each other. All of them hate one another.
30:14
Speaker 1: I mean they're constant leaking between Jared Kushner and John Kelly,
30:18
Speaker 1: and between Kelly Anne and every other human being on earth,
30:21
Speaker 1: and and Sarah Sanders sniping at other people. And these
30:24
Speaker 1: guys are all This is the leakiest white House we've
30:27
Speaker 1: seen in ages. I have a rule over time that's
30:30
Speaker 1: been proven pretty pretty accurate. Good white houses leak on purpose.
30:35
Speaker 1: Bad white houses and unhappy white houses leak all the time.
30:40
Speaker 1: This white House, this golden age of journalism we're in
30:42
Speaker 1: is because everyone in the White House, from the President
30:45
Speaker 1: on down, is leaking to dog other people around them.
30:48
Speaker 1: It is a I mean, the wave of leaks that
30:51
Speaker 1: will come out after this election, of everyone blaming Trump.
30:55
Speaker 1: They're gonna be inside the White House and he can't
30:57
Speaker 1: He's he doesn't get it. He's blowing this. It's it's
31:00
Speaker 1: it's gonna hurt him in if he talks about a
31:02
Speaker 1: red wave, which was his big conceit for weeks and
31:05
Speaker 1: weeks on end, there'll be a red wave. We're gonna
31:07
Speaker 1: gain seats in the House. It's gonna be great. We're
31:09
Speaker 1: gonna have the best day ever. I'm the King of
31:11
Speaker 1: This didn't quite work out that way. But so all
31:15
Speaker 1: these folks inside the White House, they're constantly having their
31:18
Speaker 1: egos just ground up. They're constantly forced to go out
31:21
Speaker 1: and and adopt public positions that they know our lives,
31:25
Speaker 1: that they know are anathema, that they know will end
31:27
Speaker 1: up hurting their reputations in the long run. And and
31:30
Speaker 1: yet you know, the ones they do, the ones who
31:34
Speaker 1: are the ones who were stuck there, are stuck there
31:36
Speaker 1: because you wouldn't hire these people to manage a waffle house.
31:40
Speaker 1: So you mentioned Jared and Ivanka. What's with the nepotism
31:46
Speaker 1: and bringing the family in. It just seems so at
31:48
Speaker 1: odds with everything we've learned about how do you ethically
31:53
Speaker 1: run a business? But remember, the business of Trump is
31:58
Speaker 1: not government or patriotism or loyalty to the country or
32:03
Speaker 1: service to the American people. The business of Trump is Trump,
32:08
Speaker 1: and he doesn't he skipped that part in the Constitution
32:12
Speaker 1: where we don't do titles of royalty, because he seriously
32:15
Speaker 1: considers himself to be some sort of you know, uh
32:20
Speaker 1: royal figure above the law, above the constitution, and his
32:24
Speaker 1: and the royal family idea is something that is clearly
32:28
Speaker 1: playing out here. You have his fans who say things like, well,
32:31
Speaker 1: after Trump runs, then Don Junior will run, then Ivanka
32:34
Speaker 1: will run, and then Eric will run, and then Baron
32:36
Speaker 1: will run in the near in the far far future,
32:38
Speaker 1: and they can't you know, the cult like devotion to
32:43
Speaker 1: this guy is one of the most shocking elements of Trump,
32:46
Speaker 1: isn't it is. I mean, look, I love me some,
32:50
Speaker 1: George W. R. George H. W. Bush, I love me some.
32:52
Speaker 1: George Bush, I love me some. Jeb Bush. Bush family
32:55
Speaker 1: has been great to me, and I've been loyal back.
32:59
Speaker 1: But you of what if one of them said to me, hey,
33:02
Speaker 1: go drink this poison cool aid, I wouldn't do it.
33:05
Speaker 1: But Trump could stack people up like jonestown and they
33:07
Speaker 1: would do it. The his his line about shoot somebody
33:11
Speaker 1: on Fifth Avenue had the disadvantage for our country of
33:14
Speaker 1: being entirely true. That that's shocking. Um, Let me shift
33:17
Speaker 1: games a little bit and ask you about the unspoken
33:21
Speaker 1: elephant in the room. The past month, the Mueller investigation
33:26
Speaker 1: continues silently to grind forward. My best guests is, let
33:33
Speaker 1: me rephrase that if I had to pick somebody, assuming
33:37
Speaker 1: I was running a sort of sketchy business and there
33:41
Speaker 1: perhaps might have been some Russian involvement and maybe to
33:45
Speaker 1: some money laundering, if I had to pick the one
33:47
Speaker 1: guy I didn't want investigating me, it would pretty much
33:51
Speaker 1: be Robert Mueller. This guy was built to investigate Trump.
33:55
Speaker 1: How does this play out? The last two months, Robert
33:59
Speaker 1: Mueller made a very conscious decision to become a hunter submarine.
34:04
Speaker 1: He's under the water, he's listening, he's working, he knows
34:07
Speaker 1: where the targets are. Just because you don't see him
34:10
Speaker 1: doesn't mean he doesn't see you. This is a guy
34:13
Speaker 1: with a reputation for being methodical, for being diligent, for
34:17
Speaker 1: driving home, for going for getting to the X of
34:20
Speaker 1: any operation. And he's got resources both on the intelligent side,
34:25
Speaker 1: on the on the financial investigatory side, and on the
34:29
Speaker 1: legal side that the clown show around Donald Trump has
34:32
Speaker 1: never taken seriously and never understood, and what happened with
34:36
Speaker 1: the election. Robert Mueller is protected now that Trump can't
34:41
Speaker 1: just idly fire Robert Mueller, and what happens if he does.
34:46
Speaker 1: It's the apocalypse politically. I mean this that do you
34:49
Speaker 1: end up with the House Oversight Committee hires Robert Muller
34:53
Speaker 1: and the investigation. Let's just go ahead. Now, they can
34:56
Speaker 1: also ask for Robert Mueller to provide them that report,
35:00
Speaker 1: which would not have happened, and you would not have
35:02
Speaker 1: happened with Devin Nunyez and and good Latin, those guys
35:05
Speaker 1: that would never have happened. It would never seen the
35:07
Speaker 1: light of day. There will be political consequences now. And
35:10
Speaker 1: there is no defense operation where Nunez or roar Backer
35:14
Speaker 1: or Jordan or any of these, any of these guys
35:17
Speaker 1: Team Obstruction I call them. There's no further ability for
35:21
Speaker 1: them now that they're not chairman, to go out there
35:24
Speaker 1: and filibuster on the you know, in these hearings, to
35:27
Speaker 1: blast Robert Mueller and to blow up the FBI, and
35:29
Speaker 1: to go and attack an assault an investigation, and and
35:33
Speaker 1: to look away from the involvement of Russia and trying
35:35
Speaker 1: to manipulate our elections. So what's going to happen is
35:39
Speaker 1: the shock and awe effect of of further indictments is
35:45
Speaker 1: going to cause a sort of accelerating cycle. Trump will
35:49
Speaker 1: get more and more crazed by the way. I think
35:51
Speaker 1: Jeff Sessions has gone. Within a week, I think he's out.
35:55
Speaker 1: Isn't it all I was gonna say normally, isn't the
35:57
Speaker 1: second term when when there's a turnover, But you just
36:00
Speaker 1: saying post election, he's done, post midm post mid terms.
36:03
Speaker 1: I think he's gone because Trump recognizes that the most
36:07
Speaker 1: dangerous window of time for him going forward is between
36:12
Speaker 1: right now and when the Democrats take power. His actions
36:15
Speaker 1: in the next ninety days are going to be very
36:18
Speaker 1: very telling, um, and it's gonna be very very dangerous
36:22
Speaker 1: for this country in sixty days, excise me so. So
36:25
Speaker 1: assume he he asks Sessions to resign. If Session resigns,
36:30
Speaker 1: he could do an interim appointment. But if Session says, Nope,
36:33
Speaker 1: you've gotta fire me. Oh, he's gonna you know, he's
36:37
Speaker 1: gonna have to fire Sessions. But I think Sessions will go.
36:40
Speaker 1: I think he will. He will go in the next
36:41
Speaker 1: sixty days, before before the Democrats new And I will
36:46
Speaker 1: say this also, I know, for I know the White
36:49
Speaker 1: House has been shopping for a new a g and
36:51
Speaker 1: I know, well you could see Lindsey Graham kissing up
36:55
Speaker 1: that slot. Yeah. But I the person that's rumored very
36:59
Speaker 1: heavily right now is Ham Bondi, the former Aga Florida
37:01
Speaker 1: who who By the way, when you look at the
37:04
Speaker 1: Florida foreclosure debacle, correct, it was as corrupt as any
37:09
Speaker 1: public official ever. I've spoken to Trump friendly Republicans in
37:13
Speaker 1: the Senate who are begging him, do not name her.
37:17
Speaker 1: Is she gonna open an amazing she cannot, she cannot
37:20
Speaker 1: be confirmed, Do not name her. So if he tries
37:23
Speaker 1: to name Pam Bondy as the a G I think
37:25
Speaker 1: they're gonna be some there's gonna be some very very
37:28
Speaker 1: hard pushback, even from his own side. Um. But but
37:32
Speaker 1: the narrow window between now and when the Democrats what's
37:36
Speaker 1: the date of that? Um, the narrow window between now
37:42
Speaker 1: and then, it's going to be a fact, a very
37:44
Speaker 1: risky time. But I think he may buy himself more
37:47
Speaker 1: trouble if he does. I mean, the guy's already like
37:50
Speaker 1: knocking on the door of obstruction charges every single day.
37:54
Speaker 1: So if he tries to play Shenanigans between now in
37:56
Speaker 1: the time of Democrats have oversight ability, it's going to
37:59
Speaker 1: be a real uh, it's gonna be a really ugly moment.
38:02
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things about the Democrats
38:04
Speaker 1: taking over that people are underestimating They're not as dumb
38:07
Speaker 1: as they look. They're not gonna race the shift is
38:10
Speaker 1: pretty They're not They're gonna They're not gonna race to
38:13
Speaker 1: impeach Donald Trump. This is the death of a thousand cuts.
38:16
Speaker 1: This isn't easy. You know, we're trying to throw the
38:19
Speaker 1: president out of office. This is gonna be We need
38:22
Speaker 1: your taxes now. We need to talk about your business dealings.
38:26
Speaker 1: We need to talk about um, you know, your your
38:28
Speaker 1: dealings with Russia and Russian banks and Russian oligarchs. When
38:31
Speaker 1: you talk about your meetings with the Russians, we need
38:33
Speaker 1: to talk about your communication with them. When you talk
38:34
Speaker 1: about Cambridge Analytic and Steve Bannon, the relations. They're gonna
38:38
Speaker 1: just peel this thing back, one little, one little strip
38:41
Speaker 1: at a time, and it's gonna make Trump crazy. Is
38:45
Speaker 1: he dangerous when he's crazy? Is he more dangerous? I
38:48
Speaker 1: should say. I think Trump is a danger to the
38:51
Speaker 1: rule of law in this country. And I think there
38:53
Speaker 1: have been very few checks on him so far. And
38:57
Speaker 1: I think he grew accustomed to being unaccountable. And when
39:00
Speaker 1: people are accustomed to being unaccountable, they are dangerous. Now,
39:04
Speaker 1: you've been on Bill mars show right a couple times,
39:06
Speaker 1: and and mar thinks that when it's time for him
39:09
Speaker 1: to go, he's not gonna leave. I don't buy into that.
39:12
Speaker 1: I think the mechanism of between the secret service in
39:16
Speaker 1: the military and the police, it's going to be I
39:19
Speaker 1: don't care what you say, Grandpa, here here's the door.
39:22
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but I doubt it. That would
39:25
Speaker 1: be a hell of a moment. That would be a
39:28
Speaker 1: hell of a constitutional test in this country, the most
39:30
Speaker 1: severe constitutional test we've had since Nixon. And and it
39:36
Speaker 1: is a real question about whether Trump um look hypothesized
39:42
Speaker 1: that he's impeached for whatever purposes we have. They find
39:45
Speaker 1: video of a Putin giving him a sack of money,
39:47
Speaker 1: and you know, let's just hypothesize he gets impeached. It
39:52
Speaker 1: is gonna be tough to drag him out of that
39:54
Speaker 1: out of that room. I think Bill is right about that,
39:56
Speaker 1: But I think at the end, but he'll be impeached,
39:58
Speaker 1: not convicted, and so why bother correct he In the end,
40:02
Speaker 1: the impeachment thing has always been a unicorn for Democrats. Okay,
40:05
Speaker 1: let's suppose they impeach them in the House. They could
40:07
Speaker 1: do it tomorrow. So what you know they could do it?
40:10
Speaker 1: You got how you get to two thirds of the Senate,
40:12
Speaker 1: don't You don't even get the Senate. So why alienate
40:16
Speaker 1: the people? That's why I think they're going to go
40:18
Speaker 1: and investigate and tear things over slowly, and it's gonna
40:22
Speaker 1: look is an administration that is lavishly corrupt. Lavishly corrupt
40:28
Speaker 1: they are, they are you know, they are so overt
40:32
Speaker 1: about it. We look like the cold guys. They basically
40:35
Speaker 1: took a shopping list to the White House with prices
40:38
Speaker 1: next to the things they wanted. Oh, well, you get
40:39
Speaker 1: a million dollars if you if you take care of
40:41
Speaker 1: this regulation, and we'll give it. We'll give the Inaugural
40:44
Speaker 1: Committee half a million if you'll do this for this company.
40:47
Speaker 1: These guys, it's just they aren't even pretending. And so
40:52
Speaker 1: and what about the amalience clause. That's got to be
40:54
Speaker 1: an issue that comes out. It should be an issue
40:56
Speaker 1: that comes up, and it will be I think, and
40:58
Speaker 1: that as I think, by the way, one of the
41:00
Speaker 1: venues where Donald Trump's tax has become revealed because how
41:05
Speaker 1: do you know, We've got to have an answer on that,
41:07
Speaker 1: and the only way we can really get that answer
41:09
Speaker 1: because you know, Donald Trump's financial statements are always sort
41:13
Speaker 1: of mythical creatures. You know, it's it's man, bear, pig,
41:16
Speaker 1: it's whatever he thinks up at that moment. I'm worth
41:19
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars because I believe my brand is worth
41:22
Speaker 1: seven billion, okay, eight billion, in goodwill do brand equity
41:26
Speaker 1: is different than what you think it is, Donald um.
41:30
Speaker 1: But you know, so I think the emolument stuff where
41:34
Speaker 1: this guy is obviously profiting off of lobbyists. And look,
41:38
Speaker 1: I know of tunnel obbyists in d C, their friends
41:40
Speaker 1: and foreign countries going to the trumpels, and they now
41:44
Speaker 1: go to the Trump hotel to have all of their
41:47
Speaker 1: meetings and all of their events, and they pay a
41:50
Speaker 1: gigantic premium, a gigantic premium across the street at the Willard,
41:57
Speaker 1: which is not exactly the Motel six. Everything in d
42:01
Speaker 1: C now has to go through the Trump properties. And
42:03
Speaker 1: so that's it's like such small, crappy grift, but it's grift.
42:08
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just are they gonna have to disgorge
42:10
Speaker 1: those profits I don't have to disgorge them, but I
42:13
Speaker 1: think they have to disclose them. And I think that's
42:15
Speaker 1: why you get to the taxes under a monument. That's amazing.
42:18
Speaker 1: I know I don't have you forever, So let me
42:20
Speaker 1: get to my favorite questions and our speed round. Let's
42:23
Speaker 1: plow through this. Let's do it. What's the most important
42:26
Speaker 1: thing People don't know about Rick Wilson. They don't know
42:30
Speaker 1: that I am a hell of a cook. Quite fascinating.
42:34
Speaker 1: Who are some of your early mentors? Some of my
42:36
Speaker 1: early mentors, Um, Well, this guy named Dick Cheney. Uh really,
42:41
Speaker 1: he was the Secretary of Defense. I mean you you
42:43
Speaker 1: learned from Vice President well and Vice president later. Um.
42:47
Speaker 1: There was a guy that I also worked with a
42:49
Speaker 1: lot named Donald Rice. He was the Secretary of the
42:50
Speaker 1: Air Force. One of the most brilliant, considered policy guys
42:54
Speaker 1: I ever met in my career. Um And and I've
42:58
Speaker 1: been I've been very fortunate over the years to learn
43:00
Speaker 1: from great people in New York. Ray Harding, who was
43:02
Speaker 1: the chairman of the New York Liberal Party, which is
43:04
Speaker 1: very used to say it's neither liberal nor a party,
43:06
Speaker 1: it's my political machine. Ray taught me more about New
43:09
Speaker 1: York politics than any human being on earth. But I've
43:11
Speaker 1: been very fortunate over the years. Since you're here discussing
43:14
Speaker 1: your book, let's talk about books. What are some of
43:16
Speaker 1: your favorite books, be they politics or what have you. Well, um,
43:20
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say my one of my favorite books, um
43:23
Speaker 1: is Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson. Sure, which is about money
43:27
Speaker 1: and encryption and war. I'm I'm I'm a big fan
43:31
Speaker 1: of overly complicated stuff like that. Um. Um. It was
43:35
Speaker 1: a classically educated guy, so I read a lot of
43:37
Speaker 1: I read a lot of ancient history. UM. Give us
43:40
Speaker 1: a name. Well, Livy and and Plutarch and Tacitus. So
43:45
Speaker 1: you're talking about real classic yeah, yes, like actual um,
43:49
Speaker 1: but for modern version, modern interpretation that Michael Grant's very
43:51
Speaker 1: good about a lot of that stuff. Um. I read voraciously.
43:55
Speaker 1: So my my house is way too fold books. So
43:58
Speaker 1: there are worse things to have filling up your house. UM.
44:03
Speaker 1: So what are you excited about right now? What? What?
44:05
Speaker 1: And I know that's a silly question because I know
44:07
Speaker 1: what you're excited about. I'm excited about the fact that
44:12
Speaker 1: America is under a big stress test right now, and
44:17
Speaker 1: and I'm excited to watch how our resilience plays itself
44:21
Speaker 1: out this time. I am really fundamentally optimistic about the country.
44:24
Speaker 1: I think Trump is a terrible, destructive, horrible figure in
44:27
Speaker 1: our in our politics and our society. But I also
44:30
Speaker 1: think that there have been our immune system. It takes
44:34
Speaker 1: a while to kick in sometimes, but it always does
44:36
Speaker 1: in the end. And I feel that starting to reshape
44:40
Speaker 1: where we're going politically in the country. And I'm also
44:42
Speaker 1: excited about the sort of you know, modern elements of
44:47
Speaker 1: of you know, the bad sides of social media we've
44:49
Speaker 1: seen now, but I think it's also providing this new
44:52
Speaker 1: organizing tool and and and and this new way of
44:55
Speaker 1: for people to remediate themselves into effective political groups. So
44:59
Speaker 1: tell us about time you failed and what you learned
45:01
Speaker 1: from the experience. Sure, it failed in I did everything
45:06
Speaker 1: I could to stop Donald Trump. I helped run Evan
45:08
Speaker 1: McMullen's presidential campaign as an independent. We absolutely crashed and burned.
45:13
Speaker 1: It was horrifying. What I learned was the two party
45:15
Speaker 1: system is really strong, that tribal affinity is really strong,
45:20
Speaker 1: and you have to bring a real a game to
45:22
Speaker 1: those things to to break that mold. And and you know,
45:26
Speaker 1: you learn more from the campaigns you lose in the
45:28
Speaker 1: campaigns you win. Isn't it always that way? Always always
45:31
Speaker 1: learn from failure. What do you do for fun? You
45:33
Speaker 1: mentioned cooking? What else? Hunt? I fly? I like to
45:37
Speaker 1: be out on the water, pilots in pilots license, Um
45:41
Speaker 1: what do you fly? Piper archer? So this a little thing,
45:45
Speaker 1: but um I I I get out as much as
45:47
Speaker 1: I can on the water, which I love. I love
45:49
Speaker 1: my I've got a bunch of hunting dogs, German short
45:52
Speaker 1: hair pointers and uh and and luckily, since I live
45:56
Speaker 1: in Florida, I love the chainsaw things because we have
45:59
Speaker 1: a lot of trees down after the big storms lately,
46:01
Speaker 1: so we came very close to getting a griff on
46:04
Speaker 1: German short haired. Uh. They're just spectacular. Juran short hairs
46:09
Speaker 1: are an amazing They're great hunting dogs in the field.
46:11
Speaker 1: They're great family dogs at all. Just have to run them.
46:14
Speaker 1: You do have to run them. I have a Portuguese
46:16
Speaker 1: word dog love them in the pool, out on the
46:19
Speaker 1: boat constantly. Um. All right, So a millennial comes up
46:22
Speaker 1: to you and says, I'm interested in a career in
46:26
Speaker 1: political consulting. What sort of advice would you give them? Um?
46:30
Speaker 1: The first advice I would give them is go volunteer
46:32
Speaker 1: on a campaign, to do the crappiest job you can find. Drive.
46:36
Speaker 1: You know, I started out with Connie Mack as a
46:38
Speaker 1: as an advanced kid, as a driver. That was how
46:41
Speaker 1: I started in this thing. I ended up meeting and
46:44
Speaker 1: getting to work for the president of the future president
46:47
Speaker 1: of the United States because I had hustle and you know,
46:51
Speaker 1: being willing to go out and do the and do
46:53
Speaker 1: the scut work and the crap jobs and the stuff
46:55
Speaker 1: that you don't you know, they get this sort of
46:58
Speaker 1: wrong impression from watching television where there's these twenty four
47:01
Speaker 1: year olds in perfect suits in the White House being,
47:03
Speaker 1: you know, senior officials. You gotta go do the hard work.
47:07
Speaker 1: And politics is one of those few things in this
47:09
Speaker 1: country where it doesn't matter where you went to school.
47:12
Speaker 1: You've got to go out and be in the field
47:14
Speaker 1: and bust your tail, and you've got to go do
47:16
Speaker 1: the things that you put up the stupid yard signs
47:18
Speaker 1: and go deal with the with the cranky volunteers and
47:22
Speaker 1: go knock the doors. You don't get into this, into
47:25
Speaker 1: this tribe of consulting unless you go and do those
47:28
Speaker 1: things and and it's all. It's it's there's no shortcut
47:32
Speaker 1: to it makes sense. And our final question, what do
47:36
Speaker 1: you know about the world of politics today? You wish
47:38
Speaker 1: you knew thirty or so years ago. People lie upholsters
47:42
Speaker 1: all the time? Really, yes, that they lie upholsters all
47:45
Speaker 1: the time. That is not well understood by a lot
47:48
Speaker 1: of fun though, And it's it's clearer and clearer all
47:50
Speaker 1: the time. How much they're a bunch of damn liars. Amazing.
47:54
Speaker 1: I love it. I love I love trying to like
47:56
Speaker 1: get to the nut of a question with with polling.
47:59
Speaker 1: But you've got a dispactor that in these days quite
48:02
Speaker 1: quite astonishing. We have been speaking with Rick Wilson. He
48:06
Speaker 1: is the author of the New York Times bestseller Everything
48:10
Speaker 1: Trump Touches Dies. If you enjoy this conversation, well look
48:13
Speaker 1: up an inch or down an inch on Apple iTunes
48:16
Speaker 1: and you could see any of our other Let's uh
48:19
Speaker 1: round it up to the size of Trump's inaugural address
48:23
Speaker 1: and call it two d and fifty previous conversations over
48:27
Speaker 1: the past five years. We love your comments, feedback and
48:30
Speaker 1: suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg
48:34
Speaker 1: dot net. You can check out my daily column on
48:37
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot Com. Follow me on Twitter at rit Halts.
48:40
Speaker 1: I would be remiss if I did not thank the
48:43
Speaker 1: crack staff that helps put these conversations together each week.
48:46
Speaker 1: Michael Batnick is my head of research. Taylor Riggs is
48:50
Speaker 1: our book or Slash producer. I'm Barry rit Halts. You've
48:53
Speaker 1: been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.