We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and to the premium version
of our website as well. I'm joined today by Christopher Bedford, executive editor
over at the Common Sense Society, and our guest is Charlie Spearing. Charlie
is a political reporter and author of the new book Amateur Hour Kamala Harris in
the White House. Great title, Charlie, thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks so much, Emily, And we kind of were going for a
little bit of VP, but also a little bit of a House of Cards,
a little bit of both. You know, there is some comparisons being
drawn to Ronda Santis in the last couple of weeks, just before we're recording
this. You know, the Desantas campaign obviously didn't make it to New Hampshire,
came in second in Iowa, and Kamala Harris didn't even make it to
Iowa. So I'm not so sure those comparisons are totally apt. I think,
yeah, there was a few people that were comparing him to you know,
that Randa Santis is somehow are Kamala Harris. But yeah, he made
it a little further than Kamala who spent you know, forty million and didn't
even make it to the Iowa caucus, dropped out right after Thanksgiving. That's
you know, maybe we should start even before that, because I was going
to ask you, Charlie, let's start here just in recent memory. So
the last five or so years, Kamala Harris went from a senator getting immense
support from elite media and sort of the political establishment to being really a laughing
stock, and not just on the right. What has happened to her recently?
And then I want to go back to kind of early comic because I
know you're right about that, but just recently, what has become of Kamala
Harris? How did this happen? Right? Yeah? I think just in
that I think the left is really discouraged by how she's performing as vice president.
I think that we saw that with some of the Charlemagne interactions, and
now that she is sort of the vice president and kind of on lockdown,
she has a difficult time even just with basic communications, and conservatives and conservative
media have really enjoyed the word salads, but even the left it's kind of
face palming at the the multiple clips that are coming out. And I think
that's why the Biden campaign has just kind of buckled down, as they're now
sort of campaigning in earnest and putting her in her safe spaces. Right now,
she's sort of campaigning on abortion, doing the whole women's rights tour,
and at the end of last year she finished up a college. To her
you know what is what is easier for Democrat candidate than to go to colleges
and talk to the youth, I think, and then that's why I an
interviewed. She's kind of repeatedly talking about her love of gen Z and the
young people, and that's really where the Biden campaign wants there. So a
little behind the curtain movie magic here, I said that we were joined by
Christopher Bedford, when in fact we had not yet been joined by Christopher Bedford,
who came in in the middle of Charlie's answer and just whispered gently into
the microphone. What was the question? I am the phantom of the podcast.
I come and go as I please. Yes, yes, but Chris
was secretly working on his wrap track because apparently that's what that's what what is
called for on the internet. Now, Charlie, does she resonate with the
young people? Does she move crabs? I mean they tried to make her
into like a feminist icon, a girl power girl boss when she first came
to see, Not really when she first came to to see, when she
first was vice president, No one really cared about her when she was a
senator. Uh well, I was just saying that the elite media really did
love her. They gave her splash spreads and all the good stuff. Yeah,
they tried to make her quotes from the debate with Pence like I'm still
talking or something. There was some kind of thing like I'm still talking,
and uh I remember there was a quilt down by navy yard, my navy
yard or all these like you know, fifty year old white cat ladies had
knit together to try to show that, hey, we love Kamala and it
was a picture. But you don't really see that anymore because like the culture
personality couldn't really last how awkward she was in public, how how she clearly
wasn't doing the research, or she clearly wasn't doing the work that her life
was kind of a veep episode. It's just so just when she goes to
campuses, is it does she draw the crouch? Yeah? I think that
when she goes to some of these colleges, it's safe. It's her safe
space. There's enough, there's enough college students in the crowd that'll come and
take selfies and appear for the moments. You know. I spoke about this
with Emily earlier. The college campus is really a safe space for Democrat candidates
unless you go to some radical hotbed where they're going to stand up and protest.
The schools she picked aren't necessarily any sort of controversial, any sort of
really intense hotbeds of political activism. So I think that she's pretty safe right
now. And Charlie, can we rewind a bit and take us back.
I mean, there's a lot of rumor. There are a lot of rumors.
There are a lot of confirmed facts, like her prior relationships that are
completely salient and relevant to the rise of Kamala Harris, no matter how uncomfortable
that is. In polite conversation sort of about how she got her foot in
the door in Bay area politics. A lot of people know her backstory because
she likes to talk about her backstory. But can you take us back to,
you know, sort of how Kamala Harris ended up an attorney? How
does she get into just the world of politics period? Right? Kamala has
this line she continuously talks about. She cites, citing her mother to Kamala,
never let anyone else tell your story. You tell them your story.
But that's been very convenient for her thus far. She doesn't even mention her
relationship with Willy Brown in her memoir at all. There for Life, and
certainly in moments sections you'll see mentions of Willy Brown. But it's important,
and you know Democrats will say, well, how dare you bring up Willy
Brown? This was just a this was just a personal relationship. Well it's
much more than that. As I investigated, Willy Brown appointed her to two
state boards while they were dating. They only dated a year. She was
twenty nine, he was sixty. She was a relatively unknown assistant prosecutor in
Almita County. He was running for mayor of San Francisco. It was a
love story unlike any other the love story like quite a few others. So
Willie Brown gets the advantage of having a stable relationship with an adult woman,
where typically he has sort of the playboy persona a long estrange from his wife
Blanche and now just on the on the on the dating scene in the sort
of the social circles of San Francisco, with you know, only one woman
on his arm instead of several like he's used to having. And so yeah,
and at the same time, he appoints her to two state boards and
which pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a couple of years.
And you know, I think it was a total of four hundred thousand dollars
over a couple of years that she got from being appointed to these boards.
You know, you put that in today's money, that's over eight hundred thousand
dollars judge, justin for inflation. So she certainly got and she also got
the keys to BMW during their relationship. So it's definitely this is how So
that's how, that's how he got attractive twenty nine year old girls, I
mean BMW's and he took care of He's a sugar daddy. He definitely took
care of her, and other women in his political orbit have had the same
thing, not all of them, but certainly Klma got special treatment. And
so this has sort of opened the doors to her political future, right,
and once she was introduced to the rich and powerful of San Francisco, the
Democrat Party and the Democratic Party, then she was able to sort of show
up and demand a position on the stage. H Yeah, not bad for
the beginning of your career. That sounds like a lot sounds like a lot
of work to me. I know that i'd be up to it. I
would hope that you wouldn't be up to it. So what's something that really
now you said? Out on this project. She's a pretty widely known public
figure. Of course, there's been a lot of things that have been just
glanced over and passed over by me because they're her allies and it's inconvenient.
What's something that legitimately surprised you that you hadn't even read about on the blogosphere,
or that yeah, you hadn't seen anywhere, or that that didn't really
maybe or maybe that just didn't fit with your your notions going in right,
there's sort of two First, her presidential campaign, I followed I was reported
mostly on Pete Boo to judge during that twenty twenty primary, and so I
didn't follow Kamala Harris as closely. But just going back and researching her campaign,
Wow, all the signs are there, the word salads are there.
Just the complete incompetence on a national stage. You know, she sort of
got more and more frustrated the more time she spent in Iowa, the more
time she spent on the debate stage, ultimately kind of getting depressed at the
end, sort of blaming sexism and racism for why she never took off.
But wow, it's if anybody had been following her campaign and reported on it
accurately, I don't think she would be the vice president today. It was
just really, really bad. She was the first to drop out, if
I recall one of the first she dropped out in November, right after Thanksgiving,
before she even got to Iowa, and spent about forty million dollars of
you know dough If you could launch the messenger with that kind of money.
Well, so, actually, if we just pause on that point, I'm
curious about the second part of your answer, Charlie. But that's super fascinating
because it's a story about the media. If all of those signs were there
and she was still being cast, you know, to political reporters, all
of us included before the implosion of her campaign, as this adroit, deft
politician who was the second coming of Obama. And yet you know, when
you're going back and parsing answers, looking at the speech really closely, I
think that speaks to how powerful the media is at framing different candidates to their
desired ends or who fit the narrative really well. They just have so much
power to shape the way that all of us see any given person. Absolutely
Emily, and this started way back when she was Attorney General of California,
before she even ran for Senate, there were a lot of figures in the
media describing Kamala Harris as the new up and coming, the female Obama.
You know, this is sort of getting started back in twenty ten, and
she was already sort of expanding her national brand to attract media and donor attention,
and it was pretty good at it. I detail a nuggett in the
book of how Jeff Zucker, when he was sort of head of NBC News,
had a breakfast for her and really just gushed endlessly about her, calling
her the future of the Democrat Party. How he never endorses candidates but was
just completely wowed by Kamala Harris. And even in California, Kamala had you
know, you're not necessarily focused on winning over voters in California. You have
to prove to party elites, to the donors, to the celebrities that you
are the one to lead the beat, to represent the party. And once
you once you convince them, then the rest is all but history. You
just kind of get appointed. And if you show up in a demand a
place on the stage, you kind of get that. And certainly when she
kicked off her presidential campaign that there was just glowing media, you know,
referring to her as the next Obama. Even Trump was, you know,
based on what he was listening to in the media, was, you know,
describing Kamala Harris as a serious threat. I don't know how you could
get that. And I used to watch her. I don't know how the
establishment could get that. Not you, Charlie, because I used to watch
her on these panels, and like she gave Macy Herono a run for her
money for how dumb her questions were, didn't she was Barack Obama. I
wasn't in the center for very long. He didn't really do a lot or
say a lot, but he at least he had an impressive air about him.
But why do you think the Obama's never took a shine to her?
I mean, you and I were talking in the green room when I saw
you last week on your book tour about how Michelle Obama recorded her DNC speech
and then Kamala was chosen and they had like a couple of days to re
record it if they wanted to, and she didn't. She was like,
I'm not She decided not to say anything about the first black female major party
candidate. Obama thought she was hot. Remember this, Charlie will tell us
all about this. So yeah, back when Obama was supporting her, he
described her as, you know, the one of the best looking attorney generals
in the country. And yeah, that really kicked off, you know,
back in I guess what would this be in early twenty tens, I guess,
yeah, that kicked off, you know, a firestorm on social media,
right, it was like, how dare you describe a woman based on
your looks? And there were a lot of progressive dudes that were like,
but she actually is hot. It's okay, she's a good looking lady,
and it'll ultimately, you know, the White House. Let it be known
that Obama personally called her and apologized, but he never really addressed it publicly.
Well, Charlie, one of the reasons I was I covered Kamala Harris's
Senate run, not you know, on the ground or anything, but I
paid attention to it closer than the others in twenty eighteen. Maybe it was
even before that, like twenty seventeen, so I was at the Examiner,
and I actually the reason that I thought she was a sleeper candidate is that
I'm sure you saw this. This was an interview with like the LA Times
or the LA Times profiled her around the time she was launching her campaign,
and she was talking about her three AM issues, which she then used in
a very different way I think in the presidential primary campaign and on the campaign
trial since. But she was talking about how you know, when voters go
to sleep at night, they're not thinking about identity politics, and they're not
thinking they're thinking about how they can feed their kids and pay their health care
bills. And from the mouth of somebody who was being feted by the media
as this identity politics hero, as the sort of black female progressive champion of
intersectionality, the embodiment of you know, the intersectional dream. I just thought
that was really interesting at the time. And then she immediately sort of,
you know, was fundraising in the Hamptons and kind of selling out to the
establishment and all that stuff. But what happened to her, Like, was
there an evolution or does that speak to her maybe having good political instincts that
were corrupted or has she just always had, you know, bad political instincts.
Well, I think the three AM line and the three AM ad that
they pushed really hard in the beginning in Iowa was the product of a consultant
driven message. It wasn't necessarily and it was left over from her Senate campaign.
So she really just tried to keep running on this issue and hoping that
Iowa voters would sort of celebrate this idea that everybody wakes up at three am
and with a fear and a worry, and I'm here to take those away
from you. I'm here to help you take care of them. Make sure
there's money in your pocket, make sure your kids are going to be well
educated and everything like that. So I think it's just a lot of leftovers
because the same people that ran her Senate campaign moved to her presidential campaign,
so that it was you had this these same titans of California politics sort of
running the message. So I think ultimately it sort of rang hollow because it
wasn't some big sweeping movement like we saw Pete Budha Judge sail into Ida,
Iowa with a very earnest, very personal message, and he made it very
personal with the voters. Kamlin airis starts dropping these three am speeches. Even
There's a fun clip I've found online of Willie Brown talking to California TV and
he's like, look, politics is personal. You need to have you need
to show people who you are. You can't just be running around talking about
this three am nonsense. He's absolutely right. He hit the nail on the
head. Kama is just not She did not She did not have a like
a hope or hope and change message like Obama did. She did not have
a message of progressive, enlightened freedom politics like Pete Pooda Judge did. Even
Bernie Sanders, you know, has a great. You know who Bernie Sanders
is. He's the progressive, he's the leftist. He's gonna, you know,
swing the party into hard left. But when you came to kaml It,
it was very unclear what motivated her, and it seemed like power.
She was just pursuing power for power's sake. And well, how many senators
have we seen do the same thing? Sale into Iowa with the you know,
with a few viral clips in hand, and just end up slat on
their face because she just don't get what you're trying to sell. So where'd
she go from here? I mean, she's vice president now. The party
seems to kind of regret both their choice for president and vice president. She
doesn't even get along with the president anymore. It feels slighted probably, I
mean she is slighted. She's excluded from things because she's not helpful, and
the party doesn't want her to be the next person. It seems like at
least that's none of the gossip. So what's her next step? And if
her next step is at odds is what the party wants, then how does
the party deal with that? You know, you can't just push aside the
most senior black female when brown women of color is your religion? Yeah,
that's the most important question, Chris, which is why I sort of wrote
the book. She could very well be the forty seventh president of the United
States. If Joe Biden wins. It's very unlikely he'll be able to finish
his term, and that will lead sort of Kamala next in line becoming the
president without ever running a successful national campaign on her own. So that could
be a very real scenario if Biden loses, Kamala has to believe that she
can still run for president even though she's a laughing stock. Look, Joe
Biden was a laughing stock at one point. He nobody ever thought he would
run for president. That's why Obama picked him. But lo and behold,
here he is as the president of the United States. So Kamala has to
be thinking, if Joe Biden can do it, why can't I do it.
What's also interesting is that now that South Carolina is the first in the
nation primary for the Democrat Party, then perhaps Kamala has better luck in that
state than she would in Iowa than she would in New Hampshire. Biden was
super popular in South Carolina. A lot of black voters and Democratic primaries in
South Carolina. Yeah, that's interesting. Although, yeah, no, that
is really interesting, Charlie. We've kept people in suspense for a little bit
because you were going to tell us the second thing that surprised you when you
started writing the book. First, you talked about the media, super interesting.
What else surprised you when you started writing this or when you throughout the
research process of writing this. Oh yeah, just having conversations with people in
DC you got and I'm sure you guys have had these conversations as well.
Just how few Democrats even like her, let alone feel like defending her.
I don't. That's why there's kind of this frostiness. But in public,
no one's really out there defending her or hailing her as good and you know,
really coming out strong for Kamala. It's just kind of a silence,
and that's where the party's at. They don't feel like defending her, but
they can't publicly criticize her because if they do, they'll be sort of cast
aside as a sexist or a racist. And we kind of saw a little
bit of that in James O'Keefe video that he published online yesterday. Somebody just
openly to you know, as in Kamala and really you know, pointing out
that Biden was on his way out. And I think the party is terrified
by the notion that Joe Biden doesn't make it to election day. If that
happens, then I think there will be a lot of Democrats who will loudly
who will not let Kamala be heir apparent. They will have someone else in
mind, and they will have donors backing them up, lining up to push
her aside and run someone else. One super quick follow up to that,
I've heard rumors that she's what people say, she's really bad to work for,
and I think there's like legistorm data that shows she did have pretty high
turnover in her Senate office, And that can mean different things. It's usually
taken to mean that she was unpleasant to work for, or that get any
given member was unpleasant to work for. Did you hear any of that?
People just did not enjoy their time in her office or her campaign. Yeah,
we had a lot of good reporting to work with and contacting all these
people. They've had no interest in going on the record to be like,
you know, actually it was great working with her, even the one person
I was able to contact in her office about the book, and I just
sent a few mild questions after we had a phone conversation, but ultimately she
left before I could even get the book finished. So definitely a heavily rotating
staff. And we're not just talking low level, like high level people,
high level Democrats who worked with Obama, who had been in the Democrat Party
for a long time. And so it is very true that this reputation exists.
And she is not a fun person to work for, not inspirational in
any way, and at this point doesn't have much of a political future,
which is why so many people are just bailing. I was waiting for them
to maybe nominate her to Supreme Court or something. Just get her out of
there and be like, oh, Supreme Court, yay, and then she's
out of secession. It's not really their fault if it fails. Imagine her
in the Supreme Court. Well, we kind of have the identity politics.
Sophist is on the Supreme Court, Charlie. Can you tell us about Doug
M Hoff Because they're all kinds of business interests that are tangled up, and
he started making deals. He started making deals before inauguration day, long before
Inauguration day with he's kind of kind of like Vip Actually, you know,
I never watched it. Oh that's not surprising, Charlie. What did you
find about Doug. Yeah, Doug Amoff is really taken, really done well
in Washington. His you know, he resigned from his law firm. But
I think it's Piper, but that Fern is doing a lot of business,
a lot more business in DC than ever before. He's sort of seen as
affable. People like him. He's he seems to enjoy his time on the
national stage. A little mift that, you know, the Biden team has
kind of left Kamala, you know, dangling. But on the whole,
he has a really good endly relationship with Jill Biden. We've seen that,
you know, both as spouses of you know, President and Vice President.
He's developed a good relationship with Jill, started during the campaign, continued that
on. But you don't really see Jill and Kamala getting along. They don't
really have a sisterhood. You know, Kamala wants to be treated as the
next president of the United States. Jill's probably not ready to do that.
And certainly Kamala and Joe just have a pretty basic, transactual relationship. There
was a huge gap in there in their lunch schedule. You know, Biden
famously promised to have lunch with her every week, but for a while there
there were like weeks on end with when the two of them didn't meet up
for lunch and weren't spending much time together. I mean, it's a largely
unheard of arrangement. I think Cheney was the one who institutionalized that and people,
but there's no comparison between Dick Cheney and Kamala Harris's intellects and political abilities
and politics. How bad is the relationship between her and the president? Is
it just what's reported like she feels miffed and annoyed or has it? Has
it gotten ugly behind the scenes? Yeah, I mean Biden really wanted a
buddy vice president. You know, he always felt that he kind of wanted
a buddy, and Kamala just had no interest in doing that. And he
also wanted someone who is very loyal, and Kamala hasn't been interested in doing
that. With famously, her border assignment, you know, she insisted that
she was only handling root causes and refused to take any other aspect of the
border. She even corrected the President in you know, in front of other
people, in front of other lawmakers during a meeting that they had in Congress.
And she also refused to do like a remember when the baby formula crisis
was happening, they would bring it these lights from overseas to sort of look
at all the baby formula. We have palettes and pallets of baby formula,
and they would land in Dulles and have an official go out to welcome it.
Well. Comala Harris refused to do one of those, basically saying she
wasn't interested, and she ultimatelyly did one later. But you know, it
was up to Jill Biden to sort of welcome the first shipment, and so
she you know, Biden doesn't see her as loyal, He sees her as
sort of work in progress. And but you know he's not about to try
to replace her because he remembers how that feels. When reports emerged of the
Obama team, you know, thinking of replacing him with Hillary Clinton right before
they re elect. He's made made sure that nothing like that has ever sort
of emerged into the public eye. At this point, I wanted to ask,
like a real because you have so much nuance on this issue. Obviously
you devoted full book length to it, and I wanted to do a kind
of counterintuitive just exercise, Charlie, where if you were to present the best
possible argument for Kamala Harris not being as bad, you know, like the
total option, sort of like a contrarian take she's if you were to make
the argument that she's not as bad as you know, some people make her
out to be that because sometimes what happens is a stereotype starts to snowball,
or a caricature starts to snowball. And I think it happened a little bit
with DeSantis, actually that he was just so unpersonable and blah blah blah.
It's like he's not that bad. You know, people were comparing him to
Nixon. It's like, well, Nixon wasn't that bad either in terms of
their personability. But with Kamala Harris, is there a contrarian take to the
you know, new meme caricature of her as a sort of embodiment of an
actual deep cartoon political figure. Yeah, that's so great, family, because
people are having these kind of conversations. It's really become kind of a parlor
game in Washington for especially among Democrats, it's like, how do you fix
Kamala Harris. I think a lot of it, you know, a lot
of it is she's nervous on the national stage, unwilling, and we saw
this throughout her political creation. Doesn't really take any risks. She's always very
cautious about her political brand. So and now that she has you know,
she's not running on her message. It's the message given to her. And
that's why they have her so scripted. Now if you've seen the the interviews
on the View, the interview with Katie Kuric, the it's it's all very
very scripted now that she very rarely gets the opportunity to sort of riff and
talk because it always turns into a word salad. She tries to just very
good. Yeah, she tries to define terms and then build us a speech
around that term. She so many of her speeches, you know, we
call them word salads. But she's just talking and then just keeps piling on
dependent clauses and it's like the sentences never end. They just keep spinning and
spinning and spinning. It reminds me of the space yeah, yeah, the
space artificial intelligence. It's somebody described it once like this years ago, and
it's sucking my brain as like a fifth grader who didn't read the book but
has to present in front of the class, and just that seems to be
like, it's so clear. It must be frustrating to be your set that
she's not doing the work. Do you have a a favorite wine or speech
or a little bit of wisdom? Oh? Yeah, the words salads,
you know, the significance of the passage of time. There, you know,
you got to get to where you're going because that's where you got to
go. That's a really good one. The opposite, I think my favorite,
and not many people remember it because it was over the Fourth of July
holiday, but she started They asked her. She went to an essence Fest,
which is an event for black people to gather around and celebrate black culture.
And she's at this sort of roundtable meeting and the moderator is like,
what does black culture mean to you? Or what does that? It was
just like, what does the word culture mean to you? And she just
launched the culture is a point in the moment of time and is also important,
and then she starts laughing, and she says, and as we know,
justice comes in the morning. Was like Ampletely like, how do you
not have an answer for what culture is if you're attending a culture fest and
it's just baffling. Maybe your staff had something or maybe she didn't. It
was, what does justice comes in the morning mean? I think it's a
threat. Yeah, it was like you get hanged at dawn kind of thing.
I think it's a quote from a civil rights leader, justice comes in
the morning. And that's she just kind of riffed on that. She just
freedom popped into her head. Freedom is one of my favorites, like her
complete and total make believe stories about like celebrating with her Gwanza with her immigrant
parents were it's smoking the snoop dog. She was like, was that when
Charlie she told Tupac and called Tupac right? She she was talking with Charlia
Maine about how, of course she smokes weed because I'm my family's Jamaican.
That really angered her father, who wrote this really essay, you know,
a category wish to disassociate me and my family from those comments. He was
just horrified that she would with the Jamaican experience and in that light. I
think a lot of people also were annoyed because she'd put them in prison for
smoking weed. I don't know if you've ever seen that Giuliani clip from the
campaign, but he he's speaking about Kamma and he's like marijuana smokers and then
he imitates smoking and blunt He's like marijuana smokers were just she was just throwing
them in jail. Oh Man, Rudy, what a hero. So the
book again is called Amateur Hour. Kamala Harris in the White House. What
a topic, such a needed area of reporting. So Charlie, thank you
for your public service. You've that guys, thanks for having me. I
love talking about the book in long form. It's been a lot, real
pleasure. Oh it's so much fun. Again, go follow at Charlie Spearing,
Get the book Amateur Hour. Charlie is a political reporter. He's a
great person to follow and to read his work, So make sure to do
that. You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm
Emily Dashinski, joined today by Chris Bedford, executive editor over at the Common
Sense Society. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers
of freedom and anxious for the fray