Bridget Mulcahy Off Message Full transcript: POLITICO's Glenn Thrush interviews Robby Mook







GLENN THRUSH: So, Robby, the first question I'm going to ask you is going to be really boring--

ROBBY MOOK: Potentially.


THRUSH: "Potentially?" That's good. Well, that's--

MOOK: I can neither confirm nor deny.

THRUSH: Well, I'm familiar with that routine. Welcome to Philadelphia.

MOOK: Thank you. It's great to be here.

THRUSH: It started off really interestingly, right?

MOOK: It was. It was. We had--we had a fun Monday. I'm personally proud because we worked very hard for a number of weeks on the platform with the Sanders team. A lot of people on our campaign didn't. And to me, it was a significant achievement that not only did the platform pass by acclamation, but there were no minority reports. Sen. Sanders himself touted it as a big achievement. So, I thought passing that was an important moment for us.

THRUSH: Now, that was not an easy--I mean, the whole process wasn't easy. I reported in a story about, for instance, there's this kind of funny endgame that happened that I heard about where you guys, or some people in your camp, had caught wind--and we're talking about at the final platform negotiations in Orlando that somebody in your camp had caught wind of the fact--potential--I guess there was a delay of the vote from a Friday to a Saturday and somebody in the campaign caught wind of the possibility that Bernie was going to fly down from Burlington. Was it--was it a little nervous there, at the end?

MOOK: There was a widespread rumor going around in the platform meeting that Bernie Sanders was en route in a plane, that is true. That is true. And we--and it was proven to not be true.

THRUSH: Was that the feeling--was that the sense that you had that things were really going to be--everything was going to be OKOK?

MOOK: Yeah, I think both because at every step, we stuck with it, we kept going, we kept working through it. And so, I think that built a certain degree of confidence, but also everything did keep working out.

THRUSH: It was interesting, because talking with folks in both camps over the course of, like, two or three weeks, it started kind of enthusiastically, then there was a period where people were a little pissed off at each other. And then, towards the end, it seemed like the dam really broke. Was there, like, a moment--could you define sort of a moment when you realized that this thing was really going to work out?

MOOK: I think it was a gradual process. You know, the first step in this--well, actually, the first--the very first step in this was that Jeff and I were in communication at many points throughout the primary process.

THRUSH: Including that terrible issue with them looking at the data file at the DNC, right?

MOOK: We did communicate at points during that. I think the important thing was that we had talked before that point.

At one point, I remember emailing him and saying, "You know, if you ever want to jump on the phone, if you ever need anything, by all means, let me know." And we ended up talking on the phone a little while. And from then, we would see each other occasionally or talk or text--so, that was really important.

THRUSH: And it's interesting, because Jeff, in public, particularly on TV, can really be like--can be kind of a stern presence. But when you kind of talk to the guy--

MOOK: He's super witty--

THRUSH: And dry, right? You kind of--

MOOK: And very dry. And what makes him good on television makes him, like, fun when you're with him. Yeah, because, well, he's just very quick, very bright, and super witty, and has a really good sense of humor, but it is very dry. So, I think that was an important part of our chemistry.

THRUSH: Well, the funny thing with him was like, sometimes, like, I'd be talking with him and I’d think he was pissed off, and he just made a joke.

MOOK: Yeah.

THRUSH: And you're bleeding and you don’t even know it.

MOOK: Yeah.

THRUSH: But I'm a little slow.

MOOK: You get a little wine in him, too, gets even better.

THRUSH: Really?

MOOK: Yes, yes, he's a wine drinker.

THRUSH: Well, you know, this is a technique I have used before in my reporting.

MOOK: I'm not suggesting that or condoning that as a practice.

THRUSH: Note to self.

MOOK: But I think the next installment in this was that Mark Longabaugh and I--actually, here in Philadelphia--attended a meeting with the state party chairs that was half state party chairs meeting, half convention preparation briefing session, and we jointly appeared there--oh, sorry.

THRUSH: I'm telling him to move closer to the microphone.

MOOK: He wants me to be closer to the microphone.

THRUSH: Sorry about that.

MOOK: I feel like I'm on “Fresh Air.”

THRUSH: You know, she and I went to the same high school.

MOOK: Really, Terry Gross?

THRUSH: Terry Gross went to Sheepshead Bay High School, as did Larry David.

MOOK: No kidding.

THRUSH: But I've been told I talk too much about Brooklyn. So, I'm not going to.

MOOK: I went to same high school as Zephyr Teachout.

THRUSH: Are you kidding me?

MOOK: Accurate--yes, yes.

THRUSH: Are you a radical?

MOOK: Her father was chair of the school board.

THRUSH: Does everyone--in fact, does everyone in her family have that kind of name, like Lightning Teachout?

MOOK: It was--Cabot [phonetic] was her brother, and Dillon was her sister.

THRUSH: Dillon? That is pretty cool.

MOOK: If I recall. Zephyr, wherever you are, I'm giving you a shout-out.

THRUSH: And there was a Volvo involved.

MOOK: What's that?

THRUSH: They definitely had a Volvo.

MOOK: They may well have. If it wasn't a Volvo, it was a Subaru.

THRUSH: All right, back to Philadelphia and Jeff Weaver.

MOOK: Back to being here in Philadelphia--no, with Mark Longabaugh--that was with Mark Longabaugh. And what was important with that was that we both agreed to appear jointly in front of the chairs, that we both made what I guess I would call matching introductory remarks, where we said we were committed to making sure that a Democrat is elected president, that we defeat Donald Trump, and that we run a coordinated campaign on the ground.

If I recall correctly--Mark at that point was even saying Secretary Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee.

THRUSH: And this was what timeframe?

MOOK: Oh, man. I want to say that this was in--this was after--this was after California.

THRUSH: So, this was--but this was before Bernie was giving a more full-throated public endorsement, like he did in that--

MOOK: That's correct. I'd have to--I'd have to go back and look. I believe it was after California, and--

THRUSH: But there were camps--in talking with the Sanders people at that point in time--there were definite camps. Like, I don't think I'm telling any tale out of school, it's been written before. I think Tad was more in the--this, we might want to get an endgame here, but the perception publicly was that Jeff was a hard-liner along with Jane, but I'm learning now that that was less so the case, that Jeff was really--and Longabaugh were really more negotiating, right?

MOOK: I think both of them were. We were talking with both of them quite a bit, and they were both essential to moving all of this forward.

But the other thing I would say is that we were doing everything we could to reach out directly to Senator Sanders’ supporters. So, I personally met with some of their delegates. Other members of our team met with their delegates. We also tasked all of our state delegations to the convention with putting together an outreach plan within their state. So, this was--literally, at every level of the campaign, we were making every effort we could to reach out, and I think that was important.

THRUSH: And you had some rocky--I had heard you guys had some rocky introductions, right? I mean, you'd go in there and people were not necessarily in an accommodating mood, right?

MOOK: Oh, I actually would slightly take issue with that. I was always treated with respect. I would like to think that I treated the people I met with with respect. I think that there was always some degree of skepticism from one side or either side--both sides--but I never felt that people were not interested in making sure not only that a Democrat won but that, ultimately, that Hillary won.

THRUSH: So, you felt throughout this process--because there was a lot of external anxiety among donors--I'm sure you're aware of that, but you always felt a general sense of confidence that you were going to get these people to where they needed to be, right?

MOOK: Yeah. I think it's like anything else in politics. You have an objective and, if you don't believe that you're going to meet that objective, then what are you doing? Why are you bothering to do it? And so, on both sides, I think we believed that we can get there and every day we made a little of progress and, ultimately, we got to where we were yesterday which was, I thought, an incredible moment.

First of all, I thought it was incredible when the Senator's brother got up and said what he said. It was moving and it was touching but I also--I thought it was really important that Sanders had that moment.

THRUSH: Which, to be totally--and I wrote about this today--like, to be differentiated from the way that Trump treated Cruz, didn't give him any space. You know, you were with Hillary in '08, that was a difficult ramp-down period, those weeks in late June, between the last primary and the “glass ceiling” speech, she really had to go through a certain thing. Talk a little about that.

Did you guys feel like--I think people don't really get that there's an emotional component to that. they think of candidates as these machines, right?

MOOK: Right.

THRUSH: But Sanders really needed--and you could see it on his face last night, as he was sort of, like--I described--it was like a progressive prince enthroned as the legions were marching in front of him, right? People were paying their respect for him.

How important--a convoluted question, but your '08 experience with Hillary, did that really inform you understanding that you needed to give this man his due on the floor?

MOOK: I think my posture in this process and perhaps, to some degree, patience at the time was probably the result of having been through '08 but also '04, because I went to go work for John Kerry after Howard Dean dropped out.

THRUSH: That's right.

MOOK: So, I think that informed how I did what I did, but I think what you saw last night was deserved. You know, our party is going to be different as a result of Bernie Sanders. Our platform certainly was different as a result of Bernie Sanders. So, that wasn't--that wasn't something that was necessarily strategically crafted, I just think it was the right thing to do, and important for us as a Democratic Party community to pay that respect, to acknowledge the difference he's made and the difference that he's going to make for years to come.

THRUSH: Well, it's good you told me you weren't going to be boring.

MOOK: Especially when it's audio. So, so two-dimensional.

THRUSH: So, let's talk--yeah, I'm sorry. So, let's talk about the Russians--wait, we'll talk about the Russians in a second. The Russians will make an appearance. The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.

But OKOK, so, in terms of the--one last--

MOOK: He's wearing a tinfoil hat, everybody. You can't see it, but he's wearing.

THRUSH: We just have it covering the windows.

One last question on this and I'll move on, because it's really interesting to me how he kind of landed this plane.

In terms of their communication, and you don’t have to give away, you know, super specifics, but in terms of the communications between the candidates themselves, I mean, we don't get a sense that there's an awful lot of interaction between them, but there must have been some level of interaction, right?

MOOK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they had a number of debates together. They saw each other at forums occasionally. So, yeah.

THRUSH: At the end, was there was a discussion between the two of them about how to sort of deal with all of this, or was it mostly at the staff level?

MOOK: They had a meeting together, as you know, after the primary--after the final contest. Actually, it was the night of the D.C. primary, and it was a very productive meeting. They both talked about the fact that the primary concluded. He congratulated her on winning the majority of the pledged delegates and acknowledged she was going to be the nominee. But then, they went through a process of talking through a series of issues. He had a number that he wanted to discuss. And actually, what came out of that meeting were the two policies that we ended up rolling out, the new college affordability policy as well as the community health centers policy that was rolled out, and those were both important--very important parts of the platform.

THRUSH: And that really set up the negotiations. OK, let me move on.

So, in terms of the--let's just talk about the campaign in general. It was pretty remarkable. I mean, one of the things--obviously, I've written critical stories about the campaign, but I think the general verdict was particularly from Nevada on that you guys, just in terms of the ground operation, even in Iowa--that the ground operation really overcame some other issues that you guys had.

Just reflect on, a little bit, what are you kind of--if you can look at the one or two things you think you guys really did right, what were those?

MOOK: In the primary?

THRUSH: Yeah. Decisions that you made early on.

MOOK: Well, I think the first and most important decision was that we built out a pretty well-staffed operation in all four early states.

We started planning for the March dates in the summer of the off-year and began deploying staff out around Labor Day, I believe, in the off-year.

THRUSH: Right, right.

MOOK: That was--that was a little scary for me because, from a budget standpoint, as soon as you start putting people out in a state you start generating overhead very quickly.

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: And it's literally a calculated risk. On the one hand, you don't want to staff up so much that you're blowing a lot of money that you otherwise could have saved and that wasn't necessary to spend. On the other hand, if you don't put that infrastructure in place--which some argue happened in 2008--

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: It's not something you can build late in the game.

I'd say the other thing was we tried to be very deliberate about what we did tactically. I was paranoid, particularly when we saw his first quarter filing, that we were eventually going to be outraised--that at least we were going to be at parity, but that we could eventually be outraised. And so, we couldn't ever match everything he was doing. We couldn't--also because this is a 57 state and territory contest, the nominating process, you can't do everything everywhere.

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: And so, we tried to be very deliberate about where does the ground game make a difference, where does television make a difference, where might paid mail or other tactical media might make a difference? And then, within a state, what markets actually matter? Where do we want to spend more or less?

And I think that being deliberate about those decisions upfront and having a strategic framework through which to make those decisions allowed us to craft a budget that was sustainable, but that was also built to actually win the primary.

THRUSH: And efficiency is really important. I mean, was talking to Jeff Roe in Cruz's campaign, and they said that Obama '12 was the ultimate model in terms of efficiency.

Let's talk a little about you. You--I think there's a sense that--tell everybody--where--first of all, where are you from? What do your folks do--that kind of thing.

MOOK: I'm from Vermont, originally. My folks are retired, now. They retired to Cleveland.

THRUSH: Is that true?

MOOK: Yeah, it's unusual.

THRUSH: Who the hell retires to Cleveland?

MOOK: Hey, my parents. My parents. They're pioneers. It's going to be--like, hipsters are going to start doing it, you know, soon.

THRUSH: Hey, I was down by the flats where the Cuyahoga burned. It's a very cool--

MOOK: It's really cool down there, yeah. So, they moved probably 10 years ago.

THRUSH: What did they do?

MOOK: My dad was a college professor. He taught physics.

THRUSH: Really?

MOOK: Yeah. I think he taught women's studies class occasionally, as well, which is unusual for physics professors.

THRUSH: Well, Trump says physics for women is different than physics for men. So, you're good.

MOOK: No comment.

And my mom was in nursing management at the hospital there.

THRUSH: No kidding.

MOOK: Near where we were--yeah, near where we lived.

THRUSH: Where'd you go to school?

MOOK: I went--to college?

THRUSH: Yeah.

MOOK: At Columbia, in New York--in the great City of New York.

THRUSH: The Marilon [phonetic]--where you weren't around for the Marilon--I taught at Columbia J School for years.

MOOK: Oh, really?

THRUSH: Thank you. What did you study in Columbia?

MOOK: Dead languages.

THRUSH: Which ones?

MOOK: Studied Greek and Latin.

THRUSH: You know, I'm a Greek--I took--I was a Greek minor.

MOOK: Oh, I didn't know that.

THRUSH: Absolutely. I love Thucydides.

MOOK: Why did you--why did you hide this from me?

THRUSH: I'm sorry, man.

MOOK: Thucydides is really hard.

THRUSH: Well, I really only got up to Attic Greek so I could do a couple of chapters of Palmer [phonetic]--

MOOK: Thucydides is really, really challenging.

THRUSH: Unbelievably difficult, yeah.

MOOK: So, I actually--this was probably my senior year of college, I took a class--which I didn't do very well in--where we actually had to translate English into Greek.

THRUSH: Are you kidding me?

MOOK: And they would make us do it in different styles. So, you would translate a paragraph in the style of Plato.

THRUSH: Wow.

MOOK: You translate in the style of Thucydides. And that's just--I couldn’t--my brain was never able to handle that.

THRUSH: We have a tremendous--I've just got to tell you--there's a tremendous audience out there for this.

MOOK: It is, it is. I said I wouldn't be boring.

THRUSH: But Thucydides is a really tangled writer. Like, Herodotus is kind of fun.

MOOK: Yes.

THRUSH: But Plato is clean as a whistle.

MOOK: Plato is clean. Yeah, Thucydides is very dense. It's like Aristotle. Aristotle is like--well, they think it's like notes it's so truncated.

THRUSH: Yeah, dense and chunky. And--shit.

What made you go into that? What made--your interest in that?

MOOK: Ah, that is such a good question. I don't know. I have no idea. I love Greek history. I love Roman history.

THRUSH: Really?

MOOK: Yeah, absolutely.

THRUSH: Like, are we talking “I, Claudius?”

MOOK: Yeah, sure. I don't know why.

THRUSH: So, you don’t know why.

MOOK: I love Homer--

THRUSH: You devoted your entire college career to dead languages and you do not know why.

MOOK: Well, when I was growing up, I loved--I liked Greek myths when I was really little. So, that's probably how I got into it, because I wanted to be able to read Homer in the original, which is easy--which, as you know, is easy--fairly easy.

THRUSH: Easy, quite easy, yeah.

MOOK: And so, I got there.

THRUSH: Wow.

MOOK: That's what I spent my college education doing.

THRUSH: And what do you like--are you an "Odyssey" guy? Are you an "Iliad" guy?

MOOK: I would say that I'm an "Odyssey" guy, probably.

THRUSH: Well, judging from who you chose as your employer, I would say yeah.

[Laughter.]

MOOK: Except the first--the first word of--of ours would be "woman" instead of "man."

THRUSH: Oh, I like that.

MOOK: There you go.

THRUSH: Nice, nice. Sing us the--what is it? The--what's the--whatever. So in terms of--so what really--well, the thing about the "Iliad" is, like, that's all about mortality, right? But the thing about the "Odyssey" is it's--

MOOK: And--and anger.

THRUSH: And anger.

MOOK: Or rage, however you want--

THRUSH: Agamemnon.

MOOK: Yes.

THRUSH: Making a big mistake.

MOOK: Yes.

THRUSH: But what is it about the "Odyssey" that really attracted you? What do you like about it? Is Odysseus your favorite guy?

MOOK: I never--I never came to the Demo­cratic Convention expecting to talk about Greek--

THRUSH: Well, I'd rather--it beats the hell out of talking about Iowa.

[Laughter.]

MOOK: It's--look, it's an--I mean, it's an interesting story. We usually think of all the--you know, the sort of monsters and--

THRUSH: Yeah.

MOOK: --all that kind of stuff, but, you know, ultimately it's a story about coming of age. It's a story about--

THRUSH: The Telemachy is the first four books.

MOOK: The Telemachy. It's about--it's about somebody taking on real challenges. You know, there's that--this is getting really dorky, but, you know, in the first line he's--I don't know you call it--a man of many--

THRUSH: Polyklep--

MOOK: --ways--polytropos, yeah.

THRUSH: Yeah, polytropos. Yes, yes.

MOOK: So it's like--I don't know. I think that's--

THRUSH: So you like that.

MOOK: I mean, it's a famous piece of literature for a reason--well, because it's--

THRUSH: It's about guile, dude.

MOOK: We all deal with this stuff every day.

THRUSH: But it's about guile.

MOOK: Yes. I think that's right--that's fair, yeah.

THRUSH: It's about guile. So that--so you're attracted a little bit to that, too, right? About figuring out a clever solution to an intractable situation.

MOOK: To difficult--

THRUSH: So we have now figured out your entire psychology.

MOOK: There you go.

THRUSH: Now, I have a frame of reference--

MOOK: I should be paying you hourly for this.

THRUSH: In some--you really should, that and for other things. So the--the--so OKOK. So let's go from the "Odyssey" to the odyssey, right?

MOOK: Yeah.

THRUSH: So Iowa was--that was one of the weirdest nights, because I was in Iowa in '08, which was a stunning experience, that famous flight--famous to me, anyway, that flight back from Des Moines to--

MOOK: I wasn't on that flight.

THRUSH: That was an amazing flight, where Terry McAuliffe was saying one thing in the back and--

MOOK: Oh, in '08. I'm sorry.

THRUSH: In '08.

MOOK: Yes.

THRUSH: But the flight this time was--that was watching that number shrink.

MOOK: Yes.

THRUSH: What was that--just kind of--what did that feel like sitting there?

MOOK: I think the hardest part about that night was that there was a point where we had to make a decision about whether we thought we were going to win or we were going to lose.

THRUSH: I've heard different versions of this story, so tell me the whole story.

MOOK: Oh, very intriguing.

THRUSH: Yes.

MOOK: My recollection is we're sitting in the room, and we had a lead, and it was continuing to tighten, tighten, tighten, and we were talking--

THRUSH: 0.5, 0.3.

MOOK: Yeah, we're getting down to less than a percent, which is a very scary place for any political practitioner, and--

THRUSH: What hotel are you in? Paint the scene.

MOOK: I was--we were--we were in the headquarters in Des Moines, and the data folks, if I'm recalling correctly, there were empty cardboard boxes because they'd been printing out those lists and--

THRUSH: I remember this, tons of them.

MOOK: --they like stacked them up and built a little kind of cave for themselves, and they were in there doing their thing, very much a "Do not disturb" situation. And they were supposed to come out and give us regular reports, and, of course, I couldn't really handle that sort of structure very well. So I was--I was trying to be respectful of their space, but I kind of ducked my head in, like, "Hey, can you tell me something new?" And it just kept tightening, tightening, tightening. And I remember going to them at one point and just saying, "What's our percent chance of winning? Are we a 60? Are we a 50? Are we, you know, a 45? What is this?" And they said, "We think there's about a 60-percent chance, but it's going to be less than a percent. It's going to be really close." So we just had to make a call and declare victory.

I remember saying to her, "We"--"We are hopeful that you're going to win, but you have to be ready to lose by two-tenths of a percent, too."

THRUSH: So this was a calculated risk, to get her out there--

MOOK: Yeah, well, I just remember going in the room, like we got to go, get on stage, declare victory, and--

THRUSH: And how did she respond when you said, "Let's go"?

MOOK: She was awesome. She got up. She shot up and said, "Let's go."

THRUSH: But what was the--

MOOK: That's Hillary Clinton, by the way.

THRUSH: How so?

MOOK: Like--well, when the--talk about guile. Like when both--both guile but also she is just steady as a rock, and she will get up, go in and get it done, and that's what she did.

THRUSH: So in terms of the--OK. So where--and I covered New Hampshire and I wrote a story that you guys were not very happy with--in New Hampshire--about how things--people were not in a very good head space at that point in time. But has written about it. But, in general, like how did you guys--let's skip the New Hampshire experience and move--move forward in a more positive direction. How did you guys kind of get--because New Hampshire was devastating. Did you guys pull back in terms--

MOOK: Although--I don't know. The only--the only thing I will say is we--I think right in the inner sanctum of the campaign, it was hard. It was really, really hard. But we kept our spirits up. You know? We--we kept laughing and--and there was a lot of work to do. There was a lot of planning that needed to be done, so it was partly executing every day there. But--but I remember we were always looking forward, thinking about how we were going to manage into Nevada, South Carolina and into Super Tuesday. And, you know, we continued to--to have joy.

THRUSH: Nevada was really critical. People, I think, don't under­stand the extent to which that was quite a pivot point and the fact that you won pretty--I wouldn't say decisively, but--decisively is 6 points, right? Five, 6 points?

MOOK: Yeah. Four or 5.

THRUSH: And that was a really--I've heard internally that was really significant. And then obviously the--

MOOK: I don't know. I--

THRUSH: Well, let me ask you, instead of positing it as like something, what do you consider--give me like the--what do you think was the pivot point where you--

MOOK: Well, strategically, Super Tuesday.

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: We won the primary on Super Tuesday. We--we fin--effectively, in my mind, finished the primary on March 15. I don't think he had a path to victory after March 15. Now, other people would say April 26, you know, with the Mid-Atlantic primaries. But we--we had this, I would argue, won on Super Tuesday.

The reason I--the reason I say what I say about Nevada, look, I could say here, "Oh, my gosh, it was critical," and, you know, "I'd been there eight years ago, and we sort of pulled it off again." But the fact of the matter is we won by so much in South Carolina, if--if we'd lost Nevada but then won South Carolina, you would have said the pivotal moment was South Carolina.

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: And if we'd lost South Carolina but then we won big on Super Tuesday, you would have said that was the pivotal moment.

I think--I think there was a degree to which momentum mattered a lot for Sanders. I think--I think Nevada was critical in--in cutting off some momentum for him. How important that actually was at the end of the day, we'll never know.

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: I don't--could he have won South Carolina? Could he have gotten within 10 points in South Carolina if we'd lost Nevada? Maybe. I can't be sure. I'm--I'm--I'm actually a little skeptical in part because what I found fascinating about the primary was how we got into our different demo­graphic lanes, and demographics were to some extent destiny, once those dynamics were--

THRUSH: And that was not something you necessarily anticipated, right?

MOOK: No, not at all.

THRUSH: That is fascinating. So you were not seeing it break down in that particular way. Did you think--

MOOK: Not--not back in June, I hadn't, you know. What we recognized in the summer were what demographics we--were going to be critically important. For example, African-Americans were--are--were and are an incredibly important demographic in any Democratic primary.

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: That's partly why Obama did so well, was because--

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: --he did well in caucuses and in the African-American community, those things combined.

THRUSH: So that's a coalition.

MOOK: You know, it was--those--those were given to different campaigns this time, you know, the--Secretary Clinton earned the support of the African-American community. Senator Sanders did better in the caucuses.

THRUSH: And the gun thing was--the gun thing was a key crystallizing difference, right, point of difference on the--with the African-American community?

MOOK: The gun issue?

THRUSH: Yeah. It seemed to me from externally. No?

MOOK: Umm, I think--I think that that was a difference they had that fueled some of the debate. But I think part of it was that the Clintons had a relationship with the African-American community that stretched back a long way. And--

THRUSH: And there was a desire for reconciliation almost after '08. There was almost like a sense--when I would talk to black voters, they would say--they're almost relieved to be able to give her a second chance after what happened in '08, right?

MOOK: I--I--

THRUSH: There was such--like, really in South Carolina, there was such an--

MOOK: I would like to argue it was I think she had better policies, we campaigned really hard in those communities, we--our television advertising was organized to target those communities. So I think it--I think it was more of a holistic piece of the campaign. I don't think there was a single issue that--

THRUSH: Got it. In terms of the--let's talk about Trump a little bit here. Look, there's a--what do you account this recent surge that we're seeing in the polls? You know, we saw--there's an alarming daily tracker from--out of California that shows him up 7 [points]. We're seeing mostly I think within the range of 1 to 3. Some you're up, some he's up. What did this? Is it the email thing?

MOOK: No. I mean, this is a convention bounce. And I don't think we should pay too much attention to any polling until probably early August. There's a lot of moving going around the battleground states because of--because we're in the middle of the conventions, they're back to back. So I think it's too early to make any inferences right now.

THRUSH: But do you think this trust issue is really eroding her?

MOOK: She has acknowledged that she needs to earn the trust of voters and that this is something she needs to focus on. We are doing that this week at the convention by talking about the things she's accomplished in her life and the difference that it's made for people. And I think what--Hillary Clinton is a work horse, not a show horse. And for people who've actually been with her who she's directly helped will always testify that when she says she's going to address something, she does; that she sticks at fighting something until it's finished; and that she's always about getting results.

THRUSH: But here's the issue. In '08--you know, I was thinking about the primary in '08--the trust thing was not a weapon that was used against her in '08 per se. That was not--look, there's a whole package of--the age thing was the implication that he was doing, the kind of too long on the national stage, hope and change that Obama did. But this was not--the trust thing is of relatively recent vintage.

MOOK: Well, I think the Republicans have been spending millions of taxpayer dollars trying to make it part of the public discourse, and you heard Kevin McCarthy go out and say that literally.

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: That he wanted--you know, that the purpose of the Benghazi Committee was to drive her poll numbers down, absolutely.

THRUSH: And do you think that it succeeded?

MOOK: I think that they've had some success in terms of distracting voters from what really matters. Look, when you go talk to voters and say, "What matters?" they say it's jobs, it's education, it's paying for college. Right? On--on those marks and in terms of a real record of accomplishment, she blows everybody out of the water. She certainly blows Donald Trump out of the water.

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: The Republicans are doing everything they can to--you know, to deflect and try to focus on other things.

THRUSH: How do you kind of, though--look, she's got universal name recognition. Everybody--the funny thing about her is everybody thinks they know her, but the image of her keeps changing over time. Like if you talk--if you had polled people five years ago, she's got almost an entirely--not a totally different set of metrics, but her image has changed over time. Yet everybody thinks they have a fixed idea of who she is, right? How do you kind of--Bill Clinton spent a good long time last night--I think it was fairly successful. I had issues with kind of the aesthetics of the speech. I thought Michelle Obama was insane how--that was one of the best political speeches I've ever--

MOOK: Yeah, that was great.

THRUSH: --seen in my life. Did you--let me just stop on that one. Did you guys expect that? It took me by surprise.

MOOK: So I haven't worked with her directly ever, but I've always been told she prepares meticulously and that she always builds in a lot of time to prepare for something like this. And so this was the first time I really saw that up front, and, honestly, I think--I think she was rewarded for that discipline. She--she had a very clear and focused purpose for the speech. She knew what she wanted to say. And she spent a lot of time organizing it and putting it together and executed flawlessly.

THRUSH: But it wasn't the preparation that really--I guess preparation allows you to emote in the moment, right? The thing that was really amazing was that moment where her voice broke. I had not seen her--

MOOK: Yeah, yeah.

THRUSH: I had--by the way, in 2012, she gave a great speech in 2012.

MOOK: Yeah.

THRUSH: I think even a better speech than the president did.

MOOK: Yeah.

THRUSH: President Clinton. Did--first of all, did you communicate with her after or before? And--

MOOK: No.

THRUSH: Did she--

MOOK: I was down in the bowels of the convention center.

THRUSH: Did--did Hillary talk with her afterwards? Did she give her a call? Did they communicate?

MOOK: Yeah.

THRUSH: Give us a little love on this one, will you?

[Laughter.]

MOOK: I know she--I know she thanked her. But I--I'll leave it at that.

THRUSH: Oh, come on, just a little--

MOOK: I don't want to rat out their private conver­sations.

THRUSH: That had to be--but what was--what was the feel--as people were back there watching Michelle Obama, what was the feeling? I mean, do people--

MOOK: We--I mean, we were like everybody else. We were entranced. It was an incredible speech. And--and it was the first--well, Cory Booker's speech was incredible as well. And--but we--you know, it was--it was one of the first speeches in the program, and so I think it--I think for a lot of us, between her and Booker, that's where the convention really began--

THRUSH: Well, it changed the momentum. You stopped listening for boos.

MOOK: Right.

THRUSH: You did. I mean, like at the moment, that changed the paradigm.

MOOK: Well, just again, the--Monday was about business. It was about voting for stuff, passing a platform, credentials, rules, all this stuff that nobody even really knows about.

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: So we were in that head space. I think this got us into the head space of, you know, we're in a convention, this is a major event in our history, and you have the best political speakers in our country coming together. So I think it kind of pulled us back into that head space.

THRUSH: Can you really move the dial on trust? No matter how successful you are this week, do you think you can really get people to unfreeze their opinions of her?

MOOK: I do. I really do. And the convention is the beginning of that process. Again, people don't know how much she's accomplished and how big an effect it's had on people's lives. But here's what I will say. I don't think people will fully appreciate who she is until, knock on wood, she's elected president, because when she is president, I think--I think she will be phenomenally successful because she's a workhorse.

THRUSH: All you need is a time machine, though, right?

MOOK: Well, no, I--look--look at--yeah, look at her--as a U.S. sSenator she was phenomenally popular. She had very high job approval as secretary of state. Her job approval was in the 70s. You had Republicans senators saying what a great job she was doing. So I'm very confident she's going to be a phenomenal president. She--she's going to be much more successful in the public eye when they see her actually able to produce those results, which really is what drives her popularity.

THRUSH: I spent five days in Cleveland. It was--and I'm not saying this in any--with any hint of bias. It was an orgy of negativity.

[Laughter.]

THRUSH: It was really--

MOOK: Is that going to be the name of your book?

THRUSH: "The Orgy of Negativity." That's the name of my memoir, without the orgy.

[Laughter.]

THRUSH: Just negativity. But it was an incredibly negative--I mean, they'll tell you. The name of his bush is--what is it? Name of his bush? The name of his book is "Crippled America," right?

MOOK: Yeah, yeah.

THRUSH: This is a much more positive--OK. So, obviously, this is a more positive environment. I run into Dan Balz getting the Uber last night, and we're talking about this very thing. And Balz says to me, "Does it matter? Does it matter that this is more positive?" Let me ask two questions on this one. Do you think--do you think your positivity is really going to resonate in a year when people seem so angry? And the second question is: Do conventions really matter?

MOOK: I think they definitely matter. I mean, we just talked about how the numbers are fluid, so they matter. I mean, the real question is, let's say you get a lift out of your convention, does it remain? That's--

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: --I think, the more important question, and that has to do with what you do to capitalize on any momentum you have and how you keep it going.

I think it matters. I think good campaigns generally, but I think particularly presidential campaigns, they're about the voters and they're about the future. And I think it's hard to be a successful candidate who talks about the future who isn't hopeful, who isn't optimistic, and doesn't offer a vision, right?

THRUSH: Yeah.

MOOK: And I think the problem for Donald Trump was, it was so doom and gloom, and then his vision of the future was a bunch of kind of tactical, platitudinal statements: "We're going to build a wall. We're going to have law and order. People won't misbehave anymore when I'm president." That's not--that's not a vision, right? That's not a coherent operating principle.

THRUSH: But isn't there a need--OK, I agree with you in general, and it's the Reagan principle we're talking about here of the sunshine moment, right? But the--people want a recognition that things aren't good. You know, one of the things that was really noteworthy to me is when the economy started turning around when I was covering the White House and the jobs numbers stopped being negative and started climbing up, Obama and his team were incredibly--I remember talking to Axelrod and Plouffe about this--were incredibly nervous about spiking the football.

MOOK: Mm-hmm.

THRUSH: Every statement that they would make, even when there was a good jobs report, was, "We under­stand how people are hurting." To some degree, do you think the Dems are a little disadvantaged by the fact that they're painting this--such an optimistic picture? Do you think you might have to need to--

MOOK: Well, but I think we're threading the needle. On the one hand--let me just say it is not mutually--having an optimistic vision of the future and acknowledging that there are challenges right now are not mutually exclusive.

THRUSH: Right.

MOOK: And what we are saying is that the economy is not working for everybody right now, that it is rigged, that for working-class people it is harder to get a better job, to see your wages grow. But that doesn't mean that you don't offer a vision for how you are going to make it better, and that's the difference between our two campaigns. Donald Trump's simply pointing out the problem, blaming it on immigrants, saying if we build a wall it will make it better. Hillary Clinton's saying you want your wage to rise, you want to be able to get a better job, you want to have more choices of the job, and here's what I'm going to do to get there. And that's why I think she's going to win this election.

THRUSH: But the problem you have, of course, is that--and you saw it in the posters of the--of the "Bernie or Bust'ers" marching around, marching out of the convention hall last night, is that she--people have--I mean, Bernie's campaign was successful in large measure because he presented her as a representative of the rigged system, right? So in addition to kind of the trust issue, you've got to--you've got to decouple her from the notion that she's a rigger, right?

MOOK: Well, I think on every campaign, you have to start by asking why my candidate right now, and I actually think the reason that Hillary is the right person to be our president right now is precisely because she's the one who can, in a very complicated political environment and political system that is full of road blocks, actually break through and get something done. Not everybody likes that, right, because this--any sort of real change or reform that's going to help the middle class is going to be really, really hard. Getting anything through Congress right now is really hard.

We saw Obamacare, we saw the stimulus. To get that through in a Democratic Congress was really, really hard.

THRUSH: Look, man, I watched her--you know, I covered her in Congress. I think one of the biggest selling points--and it's some--it's something you guys really didn't--haven't emphasized in the convention so much. She was a--she was very good with Republicans. I remember the way she wooed--like she went to their prayer group. I don't know if you remember that.

MOOK: Yeah. No, I do. I do remember that. And that's why she's the right person to lead us right now. And that's more nuanced, right? But--but that's really--that is what I believe, and I think the voters are going to come around to that.

THRUSH: OK. One final thing. Let's talk--you got mocked pretty wildly over the weekend for saying, "The Russians"--

[Laughter.]

THRUSH: "The Russians are behind this DNC thing." It's been validated now. Talk a little bit about that. I mean, what the hell is going on? And how damaging do you think this is for Trump?

MOOK: You know, I think--first of all, thank you for your validation.

[Laughter.]

THRUSH: That's what I'm here for.

MOOK: That's what you're here for.

Here's what I'll say. What the experts are saying is very troubling. It does appear that the Russians broke into the DNC. It does appear that, because the Russians had this information, they were the ones that released it, and they did so at a time that would create maximum damage for our campaign. It's troubling today that Donald Trump seems to be encouraging this kind of espionage. But I think what's most dangerous in this situation is that some things are bigger than the campaign and some things are above politics, or at least I would hope that that's the case. And I think this is becoming much more an issue of national security. And what I hope doesn't happen is that this is treated as a political issue.

THRUSH: Is this on a scale--and I ask this--I mean, we throw around--it's so funny, like people--Benghazi's the next Watergate. I mean, this is comparable--I mean, compare this to Watergate. Is this on a scale--is this potentially on a scale of Watergate?

MOOK: I--I don't want to--I don't want to make too many inferences, and I don't want to decide the facts for the experts. They need to tell us what actually happened here. I guess my bigger point is--

THRUSH: But doesn't this have like--dude, we're talking about a break-in at the DNC in which stuff was--you can argue that nothing was taken in Watergate, right? It was obviously connected to the president, so it's a different thing. But now we're talking about a foreign power potentially.

MOOK: Well, I was going to say--I mean, look, it's--this is something that's incredibly disturbing, and my hope is that the--that the government is putting the full throw weight of law enforcement and national intelligence to stop something like this from happening in any election in our country, because if we can't rely on our elections to be run by the voters, not by foreign countries, then we're really in trouble.

THRUSH: Do you feel that there's a connection--and it's been insinuated--between the Trump campaign and the Russians?

MOOK: I--look, here's what we know. We know that this was--it appears as if this was done to damage our campaign. I find it disturbing that last week Donald Trump said that the U.S. does not necessarily need to come to the aid of our Eastern European allies if the Russians make aggressive actions. I found it disturbing that for some reason that nobody seems to have explained, they removed aid for the Ukraine from the platform, somewhat inexplicably. And then yet--and then repeatedly, including today, Donald Trump has praised Vladimir Putin, praised his regime, even in the context--for example, on "Morning Joe," in the context of him killing journalists. That's frightening that he--that he gives so much respect to a leader like that.

THRUSH: I lied. One last question. Terry McAuliffe--my colleague Annie Karni buttonholed Terry McAuliffe last night. Terry, who is known to speak his mind on things, talked about TPP. Two questions.

First of all, do you--is Hillary Clinton going to flip on TPP?

MOOK: No.

THRUSH: OK. Second question is: It seems to me--you know, it's funny. He doubled down on this on MSNBC. We tend to view this, because I'm a political reporter, as like, "What the hell is Terry thinking?" But here's what Terry's thinking, is he supports free trade deals. So it was an articulation of principle for Terry. So my question is: You guys have made an accommodation with the Sanders folks, and the party platform, as you said, has moved to the left. You might have a little trouble here with the moderate wing of the party saying, "Now, wait a second, we may have gone a little too far in the other direction"?

MOOK: I don't--I don't know where Terry's coming from on this issue, so it's hard for me to say. I know that what she said is that she has three very clear criteria for any trade deal: It has to create jobs, raise wages and protect our national security interests. Those are the criteria she used to judge TPP. Those are the criteria she uses to judge any trade deal. And if somebody's not OK with it, they're going to have to live with it, because that's what right for jobs in the country.

THRUSH: OK. Well, back to our Thucydides. Thanks for taking the time--

MOOK: Thank you. Thank you.