There was much more attacks on Donald Trump than I was expecting, but what about Mark Penn, CEO and Chairman of Stagwell, does the Harris polls, senior strategic goals on electoral campaigns for Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, and Prime Minister Tony Blair. Mark, welcome back.
Thank you. So Mark, what was your takeaway from the Obamas yesterday? We know, just as expected, they're really strong speakers, but what about the substance?
What substance? Look, they were really good speeches. They revved up the crowd. The crowd loves the Obamas.
In fact, even the country really likes former President Obama more than probably you realize. But there was no substance. There was no Russia. There was no Iran. There was no Israel. There was no inflation. There was no crime.
There was no... Speeches filled with, I think, you know, great platitudes. And they were well delivered, but they bore kind of a little relationship to reality. And I think the most fascinating thing, of course, is that the treatment is of President Trump as the incumbent president, instead of President Biden.
That's what I think is fascinating. So you saw the Media Research Group, you're a master of polls and studies, and they came out and they looked at how the networks have covered both candidates, but what do you think? What do you think about the social media coverage of Kamala Harris and Trump? 84% positive coverage of Kamala Harris, 89% negative coverage for Trump.
Have you ever in your life seen such imbalance? You ran against the Bushes. You ran against Bush 41. You know, you... it wasn't easy for Bill Clinton to win reelection. Bob Dole was a war hero. You know, I understand the media used to lean left, but this far?
Well look Frankly, you'd be surprised. Even when I was working with Hillary Clinton, we'd get frustrated every day with her. because Barack Obama would get amazing coverage no matter what. But yes, I don't think there's any question.
St. Harris gets incredibly positive coverage virtually for everything she does and whatever Trump says gets trashed day after day in the press. That is the reality of what's happening. There's no question. Here it is.
Cut 11. One of the best convention speeches I've ever seen by anybody in any circumstance. Before President Barack Obama spoke tonight, Michelle Obama gave one of the most rousing and effective convention speeches you may ever hear. President Barack Obama is a pretty good speaker, very good speaker.
He's rarely had to follow a tougher act than that. President Obama is unmistakably extraordinary, as you said, in order. OK, you got it. Listen.
All right. This is crazy. I was not expecting.
This is my answer, but you're the expert. My answer is I didn't expect so many direct attacks on Trump. Do I expect you go against your opponent? Absolutely. But just the just the attacks on Trump kind of surprised me. I wasn't really surprised by that. Again, it's a political convention. You know, I think they they they gave good speeches. What surprised me was not the attacks on Trump.
What surprised me is acting oblivious to a world situation that is that is on the brink of hostilities, scrubbing the word Israel from virtually every speech. Yes. Good. I mean, things like that really, really were atypical.
You would normally have people talk about what they want to do and what the party really wants to do, you know, in real ways, as opposed to, you know, freedom, whatever that's supposed to mean. Yeah. So I do think that to me was more of a surprise. It didn't surprise me that that that Trump was attacked. I mean, hey, it's a political convention.
So there's a there's a few things that's going on. If you're Trump, you just weather the storm until Friday. Right. Seventy five days left.
You just realize that you're going to get beat up for four days. So tonight, Bill Clinton speaks. Do you have any idea what his goal would be? Or if I were if you were running the convention, what you'd want Clinton hit? Again, a lot of these things are, in fact, engineered by this. Having done this, generally, the central group, this planning tells everybody what they're supposed to say, what talking points they want. So obviously they want they want to play up the bio and qualifications of Harris. But, you know, President Clinton, he likes to talk about substance.
He likes not, you know, he avoids kind of gross platitudes. So if anyone is going to talk about the real situation in the world and what we face will be President Clinton. If it's not here, it's a very different President Clinton from the one that I know. So in other words, but they'll tell him to avoid Israel because they know what's happening outside the building. They know what Bernie Sanders said yesterday. Basically, he wants his cease fire to end. He's always been anti Israel, in my view.
So having said that, will they will they avoid the Middle East, which is the hottest of the hot spots? I'm sure he's been told to avoid the Middle East. But hey, he's President Clinton. He can do what he wants. So I was at an event where he was speaking and I see Joe Lockhart there.
He had been out of office maybe six years already. And these guys are writing in marker, marking up a speech, going back and forth. And I'm going, what's going on? I go, do you still work for Bill Clinton? He goes, well, we have to put a speech together.
It's not done. So we're editing his speech up until the last minute. I mean, literally, they were on the way there. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And he nailed the speech.
It was fantastic. But these guys were sweating it out. You never stop working with Bill Clinton if you ever work for him. So do you think it's written? Is it his speed to have written it already? No, it is when we when we did state even state of the unions, we were editing in the limo to to the Capitol Hill. And we were and we were just lucky to get it in the teleprompter on time. But having done some of his convention speeches with them, too.
Yes, you can be assured that it is going down to the last minute. People are arguing about do we mention Israel? You know, look, you have some quotes on about Israel. The Clintons, both of them have been very pro-Israel because they tried negotiating with the Palestinians. They got Israel to offer everything. Justice Blinken got Israel to agree to everything. And they found the other side never really does nor wants to agree.
And that's fundamentally changed them. And I don't know whether Blinken and Biden are going to wake up here, that Hamas is not agreeing to anything, you know, no matter what they do. It's kind of interesting, Mark. I'm watching. They just rolled a clip of yours on the Farkner Focus while I'm talking to you on television. That's very on radio. Very interesting.
So now something you're really going to be intrigued with. I know. And that's a subplot here. And that's RFK Junior. Here is his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, talking about the decision they're going to have to make together.
Cut 40. It's Bobby's decision. I came into this supporting him wholeheartedly to win this election. And I have to say, there's only one party that has obstructed fair, a fair election for us. And unfortunately, it was the Democratic Party.
They've done everything they can, including creating PACs to prevent us from being able to have ballot access. It's a really hard decision and we don't come to this moment lightly. We come to this moment because in every single decision we make, first and foremost, we want to make sure that we are representing the best interests of health and wellness of young people, children and future generations.
And now the money shot cut 41. I would fully support it. I would fully support a strong partnership dedicated to this issue.
A lot of people comment that in his first term, he didn't accomplish many of the things that the mothers really were hoping he would do, made some big mistakes around the pandemic. However, I think that he is sincere. I do. I think that it's a tight race right now. I wish that we had had a chance to debate that we had fair representation in the polls. I wish we had a chance to be on stage, because had we, we likely would have won this election. But he said, I wish he would support being part of the Trump administration. Trump yesterday said, I would make RFK part of my cabinet. We know they talked during the RNC. I think he's heading that direction.
Mark, what would that mean? I think it could be worth about a point for Trump. I mean, I don't think it's I don't think they'd be able to pull over the four or five points, but I think probably he'll get, you know, the his vote makeup has been a little bit more from the Trump camp than the than the Biden camp.
But I do think it'd be significant. And I do think that, you know, the Democratic establishment in many ways went so far in protecting President Biden that this is just, you know, an ignored part of what was done here to prevent real primaries. And you know, RFK is rightly steamed up about that. Right. And has that really sunk in that 14 million people came out to vote in an uncontested election just for him, except for Dean Phillips? And they all just were told, yeah, that's not going to be him.
That's it. That person just got 500 delegates on the telephone. So now she's a delegate. Do you think you talk to Democrats that are ticked off about how this went down? You know, actually, Democrats are relieved. You know, they were they were being arm twisted into something they really didn't want. So you really don't find that Democrats are angry about it. But I think there was clearly also in addition to kind of the concealing of the of the state of President Biden, there was some political actions directed at, you know, any any other candidates to prevent them from from having a full and fair hearing that might actually revealed all this a lot earlier and might have resulted in a fair process. But no, Democrats are not upset.
They're relieved. So do you believe this will be a one debate Kamala Harris right now has agreed to one debate? You think it's one and done? You know, regrettably, it seems that way. I mean, I think every presidential campaign should have three debates, including one on foreign policy, that our democracy, you know, can't and requires informed voters. And I'm really quite upset about this.
But yes, it does look to be like what I've done. And right now, who's winning? Right now, look, first, this A, this race is a toss up in the polls. B, it's the Democratic Convention. Democrats are supposed to get a bump. You know, the best day of the campaign should be, you know, Friday and over the weekend. So don't be surprised.
There's usually a four or five point convention bump. The question is, what do people say when they sit around Labor Day weekend and what are the polls look like? You know, we say September 10th. That will really tell you how this race is trending.
Right. And if you're Trump, what should your focus be on Friday, beginning Friday? Beginning Friday, you've got to you've got you know, you're everybody knows that there are clear or they believe that there are clear issue differences.
And what Trump hasn't done, you know, a very interesting question. Do you support open borders? 70 percent said no. I said, do you think Kamala Harris supports open borders?
70 percent said yes. OK, so so they're not voting that way. So when I did like the 3 a.m. ad or so forth, what I did was I made it relevant to the average voter. So Trump's job, if he's going to win, is is to make these issue differences what we call salient to the lives of average voters and not just policy papers. And I don't think he's connected in an emotional way on these issues yet.
And maybe he will and maybe he won't. And, you know, look, and the others, they're going to run a very smart campaign, treating treating Trump like he's the incumbent and he's to blame for everything that happened. Right.
And and it's going to be a race down to the finish. Right. And there is enough policy discrepancies where it should be pretty easy for someone to make a decision. It's not as if they're both too moderate to running.
It's just not the case. And remember, two thirds of the people are unhappy with the direction of the country, unhappy with the economy. And and only 40 percent approved of the Biden administration. So Trump's got a lot to work with. He does, you know, but whether he wins or not, I couldn't tell you at the moment. I mean, obviously he had defeated President Biden. So but but he's got to run on the entire second presidential race here.
And obviously that what is it? I think September 10th debate is going to be the probably the most critical day of his campaign and hers. I think I'll watch Mark Penn. Thanks so much. CEO and chairman of Stagwell, Inc., at least you'd have to scramble and write Bill Clinton's speech tonight. So at least you could relax now that you're the CEO. Thanks, Mark.
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