-Welcome. It's so lovely to see all three of you.
-Hey. -Thank you.
-So, this is a documentary that covers how you-all covered
the 2020 primary.
And I imagine, looking back -- Even when I watch any TV now
where people are interacting with other people,
it gives me anxiety, but this is actually footage
of you in large groups of people very recently.
-It's bizarro world, right? That's what it looks like.
It's this alternate universe that you kind of remember,
but you don't remember.
Yeah, and I would agree, and especially when Kaitlan
is standing there in that huge crowd.
-I know, I know, I know.
-It's like, "What are you doing?!
Get out of there!"
-And I'm, like, shaking hands with voters,
and, like, I hug a few people.
And I'm, like, watching it. I'm like, "I touched someone."
Like, that did actually happen once.
-Remember how it feels.
-I also want to ask, you know, when you cover a campaign,
you know, I think that those of us who watch it
from a distance, we think that we are in tune with
what the candidates are saying, but you are hearing,
more often than not, the exact same
stump speech over and over again.
Does that -- Does it feel like "Groundhog Day"?
Is it exactly the same?
-Yes. For the most part, yes.
Donald Trump is a little bit different.
I mean, he actually does just kind of do his own thing
most times, and Kaitlan can tell you that.
But most candidates, it's remarkable.
I mean, I've been covering campaigns
on the road since 2000, and I can still recite
a big part of Bill Bradley's stump speeches.
I can still recite John McCain's stump speech
from 2008 because it becomes like the song in your head
that you hear in the -- and it won't go away.
-And it's really weird,
because you can expect to hear the joke.
"Oh, here comes that joke for the 7,000th time.
And there it is."
-I can't imagine anything more terrifying than knowing
an Amy Klobuchar joke is coming.
-That James Madison joke -- I mean, 700 times.
-Also, I can't imagine a less sort of necessary
party trick than being able to recite
Bill Bradley's 2000 stump speech.
"Dana, Dana, you must do this for everyone."
-It wasn't -- today.
-So, I also want to talk about -- You know, this is a --
I think a primary that nobody could predict,
and then, all of a sudden, after South Carolina,
it just coalesced so quickly behind Joe Biden,
and you sort of didn't know what was going to happen.
And then, so quickly, you know, a state that, you know,
is obviously, more likely than not,
gonna be Republican state when it votes in the general,
decided the path of this primary.
Were you-all surprised, being out on the road
with these candidates, how quickly the party coalesced
behind Joe Biden?
-Well, I was traveling with Amy Klobuchar,
and it was astonishing to see --
You were just talking about how we memorized
the stump speeches as they are reciting them.
When she went from saying her stump speech one day
to flying to Dallas, to standing next to Joe Biden,
extracting her name out of that stump speech
that we had all memorized and inserting Joe Biden's name,
it was that shocking and stunning.
So it was.
It was incredibly fast and it happened, it felt, overnight.
-There's certainly been some analysis --
or, I should say, some opining --
that this is actually playing to Joe Biden's favor right now
that he's managing a campaign of, you know,
due to the restrictions of the pandemic,
whereas it seems like these restrictions
are driving the president crazy, that he is sort of desperate
to be out in front of people.
Kaitlan, I would like to see
if that's your read on it, as well.
-No, he's, like, going stir-crazy, basically,
because the president isn't someone who only campaigns
when he has an election coming up.
He's been campaigning his entire presidency.
I mean, we have never really stopped doing these rallies.
They've amped up sometimes during around the midterms,
gone down in others, but we've always had rallies.
And so that's what was a staple of, obviously, 2016 for him.
And, so, you talk to several White House officials who say,
you know, "We just got to get him out of The White House.
Like, even if it's just going down the street, you know,
to the Veterans Affairs building or, you know,
anywhere in Washington."
And they just really know that he needs to get out,
because when he's around people, it puts him in a better mood.
And when he's just sitting at The White House,
he goes stir-crazy, and then that makes his aides --
You know, then they have all of this list of demands
of things that he wants, and so they want
the president out on the road.
And so that's something that they are having to deal with,
and I think we've seen, you know,
the negative aspects of that.
It was those rallies that he did hold during the pandemic.
And, clearly, they've learned their lesson,
and that is not something that, you know,
they're trying or even attempting anymore.
-I want to talk about the fact that, you know --
Dana, I know you've talked to Dr. Birx.
And, Kyung, I know you've actually been in
hospitals where people are treating the virus,
actual medical professionals.
How -- I don't know if "distressing" is the right word,
but, you know, how different is, you know, what you're seeing,
Kyung, in actual, you know, medical facilities
and what you're hearing from Dr. Birx?
Like, is it frustrating that you can't get a straight answer
from this administration?
And how different is their answer
from what you're seeing on the ground?
-I just came back from El Centro, California,
where there's a disproportionate number of Hispanic patients.
It is a town that is 80% Latino. It is impoverished.
And if you look at what this entire community
is going through, where there's a call,
an emergency COVID call,
for the fire department every 30 minutes,
and then you listen to one meeting out of The White House
or one press conference, it has no connection to what
we are seeing on the street.
It has no relevance to the doctors who we're interviewing,
to the patients who are connected to ventilators,
to the hospitals who are treating people
in military tents on American soil.
So it feels -- You were just talking about
bizarro world, right?
We look back at this documentary,
and it feels like a million years ago?
It feels -- Trying to cover this story today,
it feels like bizarro world right now.
-And somebody like Dr. Birx -- the reason why I think
the interview became such a thing is because
she was speaking honestly and she was trying to
sound the alarm in a way that we haven't really heard from her.
We've heard it from Dr. Fauci in layman's terms,
which is why he's become America's doctor, right?
Because he speaks English in a way that people can understand.
Dr. Birx is more of a statistician,
and so that's the way she started to talk,
but then kind of got her to the point where
she laid it out, saying that we are in a new phase,
that the Midwest is in a very dangerous position.
And, Seth, you know, after that, the president
got really mad at her because she was laying out
the truth, as opposed to laying out the reality
that the president is trying to create for people.
-Do you sort of feel like, when you're interviewing her,
you can see, in real time, as she does that calculation of
knowing there are really important things to say
and then what will be the fallout
from The White House because she said it?
-Yeah. I mean, yes, that happens.
I mean, you see it and hear it from her.
Fauci actually sometimes just articulates like,
"I'm not going to say it exactly the way you were asking me
because I can't give you the sound bite.
That will -- everything."
He actually says it.
The fine line they walk is something
that I don't think any of us could even imagine.
-Kaitlan, you got to ask the president --
and I'm sure when you were coming up as a cub reporter,
this was the sort of question you hoped you'd get to ask --
about a doctor he was touting who, among other things,
has also talked about alien DNA.
And, well, I guess my question is,
when you ask a question like that, how --
I mean, you must have to be careful in the phrasing
to make sure that people know you're actually talking about
a real thing.
-No, and you do and you never would imagine asking that.
And I even left out the most scandalous parts
of this woman's, you know, dissertation
that she's put online, talking about demon sex,
talking about these things that I actually looked into them
and read and listened to her sermons that she had given,
because I wanted to make sure I fully understood
what she was saying
and that it wasn't being taken out of context.
And it wasn't.
But the question is, how do you sum that up
to make it a question in the briefing room?
And you saw how the president responded.
I mean, he clearly wasn't aware
of this woman's statements before.
But then, even after we had told him what she had said, you know,
he stood by her and he continued to elevate her.
And it's just -- It's a remarkable moment
when you're in a pandemic
and we've had so many moments where --
I was in the briefing room when the bleach/disinfectant
suggestion came up from the president.
You've been there at other times when he's left the Rose Garden
on us because he didn't like our questions.
But I think, truly, that this took the cake,
having to ask the president about a woman
that says she thinks they're trying to come up with
a vaccine so people won't become religious.
-And while I admire your restraint in not bringing up
the demon sex, I want you to know that we covered it --
We covered it more than anybody could have possibly wanted.
-I'm sure you did us proud.
-You know, obviously, going into this primary,
it was as diverse a field as we've seen
from any major political party.
You know, we obviously ended up in a place where, you know,
for lack of a better term, we have, you know,
a couple of elderly, distinguished
white gentlemen as our nominees.
But, you know, the other thing that comes across
in the documentary is the --
You know, the reporters who cover these things have --
are more diverse than ever before.
Can you guys just speak to, you know,
how important that is to have it viewed through
a different spectrum than just, you know,
white male, you know, news reporters?
-Oh, I think that, just real quickly, I mean,
if you look at this report that just came out yesterday,
the number of women who are running for Congress
who are women of color is three times the number
that it was in 2016.
So the people who are running for office,
who want to represent this country, look different,
and the press has to look different.
And Dana has been doing this a whole lot longer than I have
in the political space, and, I mean, she's seen it,
in real time, change -- right? --
from the boys on the bus to now many more girls on the bus.
And that includes girls of color, like me.
So it's -- It is changing and it has to change
because America's changing.
-Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say.
I was going to say, I'm the grizzled veteran of this trio,
and I can't tell you how different it looks --
not just on the stump, but in the press pen,
because it was really mostly dudes
when I first started.
There were some women,
but it was mostly men and mostly white men,
and it has gradually and slowly changed.
But I think this year, 2020, it was much more stark
and it had to be to represent what we were actually
seeing from the candidates.
-Well, I really appreciate all three of you
making time for us today.
I mean this genuinely.
We could never do a show like ours
if people like you weren't out doing your job.
And keep up the great work.
-Thanks for having us. -Thank you for having us.