michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today, the White House response to the impeachment inquiry has been to dismiss the allegations, deflect the facts and discredit the Democrats. It’s the same approach used by Republicans in 2018 to push through the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. My colleagues Kate Kelly and Robin Pogrebin, the authors of “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh” talk to the Republican strategist who wrote the political playbook used then and now. It’s Thursday, October 10th. Robin, Kate, how did you first come to hear the name Mike Davis?

kate kelly

So we were looking back on the events of 2018 that were just so seismic for the country and trying to really slow down time and figure out very much from a 360-degree perspective who were the key players in that drama? Obviously, you had then-judge Kavanaugh. You had the women who had accused him of sexual misconduct and lawyers on both sides. But the political machinery — who were the important members of the Senate Judiciary Committee? And everyone said we should talk to this one operative — that he was at the center of everything. And that operative’s name was Mike Davis.

mike davis Hey, is that Robin? Or is that Kate? kate kelly That was Kate just now, but Robin’s right here. mike davis Hello.

kate kelly

And everybody told us that he was sort of an unabashed advocate for Judge Kavanaugh and really sort of the torch-carrier politically through this process. And what he did in terms of not just managing the technicalities of the Senate investigation and the Senate process, but also waging this sort of cultural war for conservatives that was crystallized during the Kavanaugh confirmation process and is now being deployed as a defense against impeachment.

michael barbaro

So you knew that you wanted to talk to him.

kate kelly

Yes.

robin pogrebin

And so in talking to him, you know, he actually turns out to be somewhat of an unlikely character.

kate kelly And would like to start by just asking you — tell us about your career background. How did you decide to become a lawyer? mike davis Ever since I was a little kid, I think my teachers, the priests, the nuns at my Catholic school knew that I was going to be a lawyer just because I was so mouthy as a kid.

robin pogrebin

He’s kind of a spark plug of a guy. He’s sort of built compactly. He’s very much of a kind of a tough talker. He takes no prisoners. But he was born and raised in Iowa.

mike davis So I was raised by two very liberal Democrats who worked in public schools. And so I was raised very working class. I was raised Catholic. So I had the bleeding heart Catholic stuff from my mom.

robin pogrebin

And he had his own kind of awakening in terms of conservative issues.

mike davis You know, I’ve always been kind of a right wing lunatic, even from a young age.

robin pogrebin

And even in sixth grade, he won the Alex P. Keaton award.

kate kelly

Alex P. Keaton, of course, being a reference to the beloved 1980s sitcom “Family Ties” where you have two bleeding heart liberal parents in Ohio with a large family, and they have this super conservative son, Alex P. Keaton, who, like, loves Reaganomics and is, like, a total black sheep within that context.

michael barbaro

Right — bounds into the kitchen every morning in his tie and his jacket.

robin pogrebin

Suspenders.

michael barbaro

Like raving about Reagan.

kate kelly

Right. Right.

mike davis I saw the effects of these policies that liberals — that Democrats thought were helping people who needed help and they actually trap people in inter-generational poverty. So for me, that was the reason I became Republican is I saw —

robin pogrebin

And so then by college, he is working as an intern for Newt Gingrich, who kind of defined the outer edges of Republican philosophy at the time with the Contract for America.

michael barbaro

Which is a very much less government is better approach.

robin pogrebin

Right. Hands off. And he kind of becomes really sort of evangelized in a way. And he wants to be a soldier.

mike davis My first job in Washington D.C. was back in 1998 as an undergraduate intern working in the office of House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

robin pogrebin

And while he works for Newt Gingrich, the Clinton impeachment is going on. So Mike Davis has a front row seat on that strategy. And it makes a strong impression on him.

mike davis I remember watching this up close and personally. The last day of my internship was the same day that the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Clinton.

kate kelly

And he’s watching all of this going on — he’s very intrigued by it. And he’s taking notes as to how these processes are unfolding and how the parties are reshaping themselves in the early to mid-90s.

michael barbaro

So the impeachment of Bill Clinton would have been Mike Davis’ first culture war, so to speak. And it sounds like he was very closely paying attention to it.

kate kelly

Absolutely. He’s becoming a keen observer of politics. He has worked a stint for Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley opening mail.

mike davis That was in May of 2000. I was 22 years old right out of school.

kate kelly

He works in the Justice Department for a spell. He goes to law school, becomes a lawyer. And he decides he wants to engage with all of these issues. And he’s going to do it from various angles. And at some point, he meets Neil Gorsuch.

mike davis He was in private practice, and I helped him find his way into the Justice Department and then his way onto the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Colorado.

kate kelly

Gorsuch is named to the Tenth Circuit court in Colorado.

mike davis Then when Neil Gorsuch got confirmed as Judge Gorsuch, he asked me to go out to Colorado to clerk for him. So I went out to Colorado for a year.

kate kelly

Davis clerks for him.

mike davis And I liked it so much that I stayed out there. I was in the private practice of law for 10 years.

kate kelly

Davis very early on sees a lot of potential in Gorsuch — sees him as someone, you know, he would like to align himself with and maybe help promote from behind the scenes. And he remains close to Judge Gorsuch for a long period of time.

michael barbaro

And what do you think that Davis sees in Gorsuch? Why is he latching on to him?

robin pogrebin

So what Mike Davis sees in Neil Gorsuch is kind of the embodiment of these values that Mike Davis has come to care about and be committed to. And Neil Gorsuch is kind of the perfect candidate right out of central casting. He not only has hard and strong conservative values, but he’s unapologetic about them in a way that Mike Davis feels enables him to go the distance. And Mike Davis realizes that changing the judiciary is the strongest avenue towards making lasting change in this country.

michael barbaro

How so?

robin pogrebin

Because those are judges who are — many of these appointments are for life. And this is the time when you’re making laws that are very difficult to change once you’ve made them as opposed to political administrations that can come and go. So this strategy, which is to confirm as many judges as possible as quickly as you can within kind of an ideological framework that fits with his values.

michael barbaro

So it’s kind of Alex P. Keaton woven into the law through judges like Neil Gorsuch.

robin pogrebin

Exactly.

kate kelly

So when the Trump administration begins, there’s this historic opportunity to fill the seat vacated by the conservative Justice Scalia who has died the year prior and whose seat has not been filled. Gorsuch is someone that Davis regards as an ideal choice to add to the court. So Davis is instrumental in helping Gorsuch sort of get on the map in terms of a potential nominee. Gorsuch is nominated. Davis then takes on the role of assisting Gorsuch from the outside through the nomination process — as a former clerk, a friend, a sort of colleague in legal circles for a number of years with shared government experience. Gorsuch is confirmed. And in fact, Davis is asked at age 39 to clerk for Gorsuch on the Supreme Court for the sort of stub-term that Gorsuch enters into.

mike davis I was a pretty old law clerk — 39 years old walking around with my walker around the Supreme Court.

kate kelly

So he has that experience and then there’s this opening to be the chief nominations council working for Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And Davis’ reputation by now is cemented as sort of a dogged advocate and a skilled political operator. And now, he’s poised to work on potential Supreme Court nominations that will aid the conservative majority from the inside.

robin pogrebin So take us back, Mike, to June 2018 — Justice Kennedy surprisingly announces his resignation. What is your reaction at the time? And then what is your next move? mike davis I was very excited. I thought it was a historic opportunity to solidify a conservative majority on the court. I was thinking that day, this is the reason that Republicans, that independents, even some right-thinking Democrats voted for President Trump, because of how important this vacancy would be.

robin pogrebin

And it’s the ultimate victory, because once you have a 5-4 majority on the court and you’re replacing Anthony Kennedy who was a swing vote, you will now have cemented this conservative shift, which is the ultimate goal for the Republicans.

mike davis Justice Kavanaugh — then-Judge Kavanaugh was on that list.

robin pogrebin

So when Brett Kavanaugh is nominated, Chuck Grassley enlists Mike Davis as his kind of brass knuckles to make sure to close this deal, bring this guy over the finish line, and cement the conservative majority on the high court.

mike davis There was no way I was going to let this good man, Justice Kavanaugh, get smeared with these bogus allegations and lies, because some people are fearful that he’s going to rule a certain way on Roe vs. Wade.

michael barbaro

Right, because Mike Davis saw this as an extension of the cultural wars that he’s been fighting for years.

robin pogrebin

Exactly.

mike davis The Democrats brought the perfect storm here. It was the #MeToo cultural clash with a judicial fight. And it was just a fight that I was not going to back down from.

kate kelly

So for Davis, this is a historic moment. And he’s ready to pull out all the stops.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back.

[music playing]

michael barbaro

So Robin, Kate, what does the Mike Davis playbook look like when he actually tries to protect Brett Kavanaugh?

kate kelly

So there are sort of four key tenants to it. The first one is after a quick assessment of the facts and a feeling of confidence that the issue can be overcome, that’s when you message to your entire support network that you are going to stay the course.

mike davis On September 20th, Kavanaugh was on life support. And Republicans were running for the hills. And what I wanted to do was send out a message that there was someone inside that Senate Judiciary Committee fighting. It was a bat signal.

kate kelly

So that’s where you see something like a September 20th tweet from Mike Davis saying, unfazed and determined. We will confirm Judge Kavanaugh. That’s days after Christine Blasey Ford has come public and Kavanaugh is very much in doubt in terms of whether his candidacy can move forward. So almost immediately, Davis is rushing to his rhetorical defense.

mike davis It was to say that these allegations are not adding up. The lawyers are playing games. And we do not have a presumption of guilt in this country.

robin pogrebin

Number two is to turn the accused into the victim. In the case of Kavanaugh, that was to make the argument that Kavanaugh has already been evaluated by the F.B.I.

mike davis He was a judge on the D.C. circuit for 12 years — the second-highest court in the land. He had six, now seven, F.B.I. full-field, single-scope background investigations. They talked to 160 people who knew him best.

robin pogrebin

This guy has already passed the test. Look what you’re putting him through again. You’re potentially ruining his family and his career.

mike davis There was not a whiff of impropriety related to alcoholism or sexual abuse.

robin pogrebin

You’re dragging his name through the mud. You haven’t given this guy a fair trial and you’re already convicting him.

mike davis In the #MeToo era, we’re just supposed to say, you know what? Let’s just throw due process out the door. Let’s just throw the presumption of innocence out the door. Let’s do this un-American presumption of guilt, because we’re in the #MeToo era. That is garbage. And we were not going to let that happen to a good man like Justice Kavanaugh.

robin pogrebin

Rather than trying to flesh out and understand better the accusations themselves.

kate kelly

The third tenet deals with casting doubt upon the facts and also tarnishing or perhaps politicizing the accuser.

mike davis Listen, I don’t believe Dr. Ford’s allegations. I don’t think she’s telling the truth. But — robin pogrebin Tell us why. mike davis There’s just so many holes in her story and little fibs here and there. And when people make little fibs on things that are smaller, will they also fib about bigger things? I just don’t —

robin pogrebin

You saw that with Dr. Ford with some of the issues about fear of flying.

mike davis She said that she had a Kavanaugh-induced fear of flying so she couldn’t come out to the hearing on a certain date. Her C.V. that she submitted to the committee shows as one of her interests international surf travel to places like Hawaii and Australia and all over the world. And I’m thinking, hm if she has this Kavanaugh-induced fear of flying, how did she get to Australia? Did she surf there?

kate kelly

Raising doubts about all those sorts of things as well as pointing to a lack of evidence or evidence that might suggest that the story is inaccurate.

michael barbaro

Even if the issue that’s being disputed is way off to the side.

kate kelly

Right.

mike davis She has no memory of key details of the night in question. She doesn’t remember who invited her to the party or how she heard about it. She doesn’t remember how she got to the party. She doesn’t remember what —

kate kelly

And that is simply a way to put a seed of doubt in an already skeptical person’s mind about this account.

robin pogrebin

And number four is to frame this all in the context of a partisan battle.

mike davis It’s the whole way this process was handled. It was the gamesmanship. It was Dianne Feinstein sitting on this letter for six weeks. It was this partisan hack lawyer who is representing Christine Blasey Ford, using her —

robin pogrebin

That this is a conspiracy, that it’s a witch hunt, and some of the language around this speaks to that — this real hyperbolic, huge, sweeping statements like a “calculated, orchestrated political hit,” which were the words of Brett Kavanaugh.

mike davis I think this whole process was disgusting. And it was transparently political to me.

robin pogrebin

What that does is it removes us from the facts on the ground in terms of whether these allegations have any legitimacy and should be explored in any real way. And it takes it to the level of this is all just politics.

kate kelly

And Mike Davis has an analogy for what they’re doing here.

mike davis What I did with Kavanaugh’s confirmation, I called it the “dead chicken strategy.”

michael barbaro

What on earth does that mean? What is the dead chicken strategy?

kate kelly

So remember that Davis for a brief period was a clerk for the newly installed Justice Gorsuch. And during that clerkship, the clerks would get together for lunch with individual justices. Davis had a lunch with Justice Clarence Thomas. And during that lunch, Thomas told this story about growing up on a farm in Georgia.

mike davis Really resonated. He said when dogs killed chickens, they would take those chickens and wrap it around those dogs’ necks. And as those chickens rotted around those dogs’ necks, those dogs lost the taste for chicken. And I think that’s what Republicans need to start doing with the left.

kate kelly

Davis sees this as an analogy to what needs to be done to the liberals to punish them for their tactics.

michael barbaro

So who exactly are the characters in this colorful metaphor?

kate kelly

So in this case, the chicken is essentially the smears and lies that Davis believes that liberals have told about their political opponents — whether it was Judge Kavanaugh, whether it is President Trump, or any others who are part of the conservative objectives that Davis espouses. And they need to be punished and given a taste of their own medicine and have those smears pushed back in their face in order for them to lose the taste for that kind of political war-making.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

kate kelly

So because the Kavanaugh strategy worked so effectively, we wanted to ask Mike Davis the question — how is that playbook working for the Trump administration now as the conservatives are facing a very real threat to President Trump in the form of impeachment?

michael barbaro

And what does he say?

kate kelly

He says we’re seeing it unfold before our very eyes as it comes to handling the impeachment inquiry and defending an embattled President Trump. So you start with forceful denials and assertions that there was no wrongdoing on the part of the president.

mike davis Impeachment should be a last resort. It is for high crimes and misdemeanors. And nothing that has been alleged against President Trump even comes close to those. Even if these allegations are true, which they’re not, it doesn’t even come close.

kate kelly

You then go to a discrediting of political opponents, of whistleblowers, or even the people that leaked to the original whistleblower. Were they politically motivated? Did they do the right thing? Then there’s an attack on the facts and whether or not they’re legitimate.

mike davis With their outrageous lies and smears and impeachment mobs and #MeToo mobs. We need to fight back as conservatives, as Republicans. Because the left has a glass jaw, and if you fight back, it will break their glass jaw.

kate kelly

And then finally, there’s an invocation of this sort of the witch hunt — the persecution of the president, how un-American this is, and how inherently and disgustingly political it has become.

mike davis This is a President of the United States. He was elected by the American people, whether the left likes it or not. robin pogrebin And just to stay with your chicken metaphor and clarify it, what’s the dead chicken and around whose neck in this case? mike davis Well, I mean, I think right now you’re looking at Joe Biden. The Democrats are going to hurt the one Democrat who has a shot at beating Trump by bringing in this whole Ukraine corruption mess. Because Joe Biden has his own problems with this Ukraine corruption mess. So be careful, Democrats, what you — this impeachment can of worms.

michael barbaro

So if the dead chicken strategy succeeds in the case of impeachment the way it sounds like he thinks it succeeded in the case of Kavanaugh, then Democrats will stop pursuing impeachment, because they will see the flaws in their arguments about why he should be impeached?

kate kelly

I think it’s even deeper than that. I think it’s that, but it’s also, perhaps, his belief that Democrats need to check their own motives and realize that this person has been elected and he’s here at least until 2021. And that they need to just be governed by this president and focus on legislation and other issues but drop the political animus and the tools he believes they are using to achieve political ends, which in his mind are smears and lies, among other things.

michael barbaro

I wonder, though, if Mike Davis is right that the same strategy that Republicans used successfully to confirm Brett Kavanaugh can work to fend off impeachment for President Trump, because the situations are quite different. One was a debate over what happened decades ago when people were in high school and memories were hazier and witnesses not available to corroborate something. Here, in the case of the Ukraine phone call, there is a transcript. There are people who listen in on the call. And there are whistleblowers to something that happened just about a month ago. So are these fundamentally different?

robin pogrebin

I think actually the template can still be applied to a very different set of circumstances, because the ultimate goal is to win. And so what you do is you remove this from the facts and you take it out of the substance. And it’s all about this sweeping general statement that this is a political hit job and that’s all you need to know. And keep focused on the fact that we have to defend this guy against a broad-based effort to take him down.

kate kelly

And don’t lose sight of the thing that undergirds this whole effort, which is the conservative culture war. Mike Davis, President Trump, and others have a vision for how the courts should look, how the country should look, and they are trying their level best to get to that through whatever means necessary.

michael barbaro

Right. And so efforts to stop it may take many forms, but they are, in this telling and through this playbook, all a part of the same effort to just stymie this.

robin pogrebin

Exactly. The interesting hitch in this kind of well-developed strategy is that if the person in question looks to be on the ropes, if it looks as if this battle is not going to be won, there is a kind of an exit strategy — an escape hatch, if you will. And in the case of President Trump, that might mean that if it feels as if there is not enough political will to survive this battle, there is a scenario in which you could imagine a guy like Mike Davis walking away.

michael barbaro

Really? Why?

robin pogrebin

Because ultimately, the most important thing is this larger culture war, not the individuals you’re fighting for.

michael barbaro

So if it looks like the country does support not just impeachment but removing the president from office — or not reelecting him — you could foresee a day where the great warriors in this battle — the Mike Davis’ — might just washed their hands of it.

robin pogrebin

That’s right, because the important thing is to have the big picture in mind. And the big picture is they want to transform this country. And they’re going to do whatever it takes to do that. And if there are casualties along the way, including the president, so be it.

michael barbaro

Thank you both very much.

robin pogrebin

Thank you.

kate kelly

Thank you.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today.

archived recording We witnessed the beginning of this defensive at around about 4 o’clock local time this afternoon — a series of loud explosions. You can probably hear more of them now. And it’s been pretty constant.

michael barbaro

On Wednesday, Turkey began a military assault on northeast Syria, launching airstrikes and firing artillery against American-backed Kurdish forces there.

archived recording Volleys of artillery from our location in southern Turkey are being fired across the border onto Kurdish positions in northern Syria.

michael barbaro

The attack only began after President Trump approved it during a telephone call over the weekend with Turkey’s president. But on Wednesday, Trump seemed to regret that decision, saying in a statement that the US quote, “does not endorse this attack” and thinks it’s a bad idea. And —

archived recording Batteries, extra lighting, flashlights — I have extra flashlights at home. I bought some ceiling lights. And then I’m going to try to serve as much of my food as I can with the ice.

michael barbaro

In an unusual move, the largest utility in California is deliberately cutting off power to at least two million residents to avoid the possibility of wildfires over the next few days. Forecasts for hot, dry air and winds of up to 70 miles per hour have created a high risk of fires started by downed power lines — the cause of several previous wildfires across California.

archived recording We very much understand the inconvenience and difficulties such a power outage would cause. And we do not take or make this decision lightly.

michael barbaro

The power outages have disrupted life across the state, with schools canceling classes, stores closing their doors, and drivers navigating streets without working traffic lights, angering residents and prompting the utility, PG&E, to defend its decision.

archived recording We implement public safety power shut off as a last resort.

michael barbaro