Vote now to make sure you, in fact, let people know he doesn't want a senator. I'm not going to answer the question because you answered that. Because the question is the question is Justice Marshall left? Would you shut up? Listen, who is all right? That was one of the most memorable moments from the first 2020 presidential debate. And we are learning more about President Biden's plans for debate prep now, less than a week out from next week's main event. Two sources tell CNN that Biden lawyer and former Obama White House counsel Bob Bauer will likely stand in for Donald Trump in mock debates like he did in 2020. And Bob Bauer is here with me right now. He's also the author of a new book, The Unraveling Reflections on Politics Without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis. Mr. Obama, thanks for joining me. I really I really appreciate it. And here's the book right here. so before we get into the book, can you confirm you're playing Trump this time around? I can't discuss anything related to the debate. Oh, boy. Highly secretive. I mean, it's a it's a, you know, you know, how lawyers are not always very informative. No, that's a very. Well, I had to try. So, let's talk about it a little bit about your book. because in the 2020 you talk about the 2020 debate I do in your book, and this is what you said. You say I, as Donald Trump played my part, lying and blustering and bullying my way through the mock sessions to prepare. I watched hours of tapes of the 45th president as a businessman, 2016 candidate and then in office. We set aside special sessions during which I was expected to be at my Trump worst, as personally insulting and unhinged as Trump can be. So take us inside that debate prep process. This is what you have to do in debate prep weather, and I played other candidates before and other debate preps in that election cycle and before and the requirement for doing it effectively. And I'm not saying I did it effectively all the time, but the requirement is to so immerse yourself in what the opposing candidate has said, the style of argument they've used, the tone that they've deployed, that you recreate as well as you can for the candidate you're helping with. The experience of debating with that candidate will be like. And so that's what I did. I threw myself into the history of Trump commentary in debates, interviews, speeches. And I did the same thing when I played other candidates. I write in the book. I believe I wrote in the book that I also played al Gore in the debates with Bill Bradley, or mock debates with Bill Bradley in the Democratic primary contest in 2000. and I've done other candidates as well, and the approach is always the same. Do you do a Trump impression? Do you sound like Donald Trump or are you talking your normal whenever, whenever, whenever you do this, you want to strike a balance between trying to approximate the experience. But it's not an opportunity for theatrics. That's a distraction. So you want to find some balance between recreating the experience and not attempting to. If you will audition for Saturday night again, you can't do a Trump impression right now. I know, I'm afraid so. I don't think I'll ever be doing it outside of debate prep. So what did you see then as and perhaps now is what his weaknesses? What is Donald Trump's weakness as a debater? I don't know that I really should speak to that. What you do try to do is not so much anticipate what the response would be, but just put that candidate for forward in the most realistic possible way, and then it's really up to the other side, if you will, the candidate you're trying to help to probe the weaknesses, to detect them and to find ways to respond to them. Interesting. And then what about his strength? What is Trump strength as well? Same thing again. That's that's something that will either be appropriately on display in the way that debating style is recreated. or if it's a failed debate, probably won't be on display. But you're trying to give a balanced you trying to do it exactly the way or as close as possible to the way the candidate you're trying to help will experience. And and whether that that will include if there are strengths, it will include the strengths of their weaknesses. It should include those weaknesses. You mentioned you did write about other people. you played Bernie Sanders, Al Gore. How different is it playing Trump than those? You can imagine that going from Bernie Sanders to Al Gore is a journey. It's a sort of an intellectual and psychological odyssey. and the preparation is the same. It's just the candidate whose experience you're trying to bring into the debate. Prep is so totally different. Whether or not you're involved in this debate, which you won't confirm. But how different do you think this debate prep will be compared to 2020, or will it be pretty similar in my experience? the format for again, there are always tweaks and modifications. It depends on what individual candidates would like to do, how often they want to do a full dress, mock how often they want to break down segments and do them separately. That varies from candidate to candidate. It may vary from debate, debate, and so it's really going to depend on what the candidate and his closest communications and political advisers think will be most helpful. What do you think? Biden's weaknesses? I can't speak to that. How can I try to get all right, so a major focus of the book is talking about what you call bad politics. And I want to read, to our viewers, an excerpt of this, because it says political actors know the difference between good and bad politics, but many can get caught up in the game driven by their own ambitions or demons, and they suppress whatever flickers of conscience they may experience. Bad politics is rationalized easily enough. Bloodsport or The Other Side started at first or the goal is winning. And so very sorry about that. But we did what we had to do. So who do you think is pushing America towards what you say is bad politics? We have clearly seen a deterioration in the quality of our public life. Now it's a complicated story. I can only give my perspective. And so I speak from my own experiences in the book. I'm giving my own perspective as a lawyer who's been involved in politics, and I cover that whole life span. I don't want to go into how old I am, but I've seen a good number of years of politics and election cycles and the like. And as you know, there are different explanations for where we are polarization, the depth of our polarization, the depth of disaffection with our institutions. But it is clear that it is taking place. And the one point I'm trying to convey again, through my own experiences, experiences, through the stories that I can appropriately tell, consistent with attorney client privilege and client confidence, whatever. The one point I'm trying to make is that at the end of the day, if we care about norms, we care about democratic norms that are so important to sustaining our democratic way of life. The people who have responsibility in government and politics have choices to make every day. Those who write speeches or write campaign ads, those who give legal advice, and on and on those in government who have decisions to make about how to advance a public policy debate. They have decisions to make every single day that bear on the health of these institutions. And if all that matters is winning, by the way, a particular debate or a particular election, and they're prepared to sweep alongside all of those other considerations having to do with the health and robustness of our democratic norms and institutions. We're going to be in a sorry state, because the people have it in their hands to really make a difference day by day will have failed us. And that is a profound concern. We're going to slide from a Democratic politics moldy to a democratic and tie politics. How does this you know, we're waiting, of course, for this ruling coming from the Supreme Court about former President Trump asking for total immunity here. How does that ruling impact what you call the unraveling of our politics? Does it have any impact on that? The ruling could be complex, and there's so many different ways it could come out, so many different potential divisions on the courts that we could see. I will say this before I wrote this book, I coauthored a book with my colleague Jack Goldsmith, who's a professor of law at Harvard on reform of the presidency, the need to have that institution. And by the way, that relates very much to the health of our democratic institutions, to reform that presidency from a variety of perspectives, but including dealing with the question of keeping the president within legal bounds. And as you know, the question of presidential immunity has been hanging out there for some time. The Office of Legal Counsel and the Department of Justice has twice ruled that the president has complete immunity from prosecution as a matter of executive branch law, complete immunity from prosecution while in office. but we've never had a ruling that is going to be, as I think, potentially as comprehensive and a significant about where the president stands in relation to the rule of law as the one that's coming up. So you want the US Supreme Court to uphold the circuit court decision on this? I I'm not going to speak to my personal views. I don't want to be confused with the views of people that I represented the moment, but I, but I, but I but I do hope I do hope, that it is a decision that can bolster public respect for law and for what the Supreme Court, the jobs court will do here and protect the press. I do want to ask you one quick thing about the Robert heart investigation. You were involved in the president's defense in that in that in a report, he said Biden would appear to do a jury as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. And, of course, that has been cited time and time again by Republicans wasn't appropriate for the special counsel to include that. No, it certainly was not. I don't think it was consistent with DOJ guidelines. The case legally ended up where it had to end up. He was absolutely correct. There was no violation of law here. However, the decision, in this report to give his, you know, opinions and impressions, which, by the way, were belied by the transcript once it was released. His personal opinion didn't even stack up from the impression that people got from reading the transcript. I don't know why he did that, and I was critical of it at the time, and I think rightly so. Okay. Bob Bauer, thank you so much for coming in and sharing your views. Really appreciate it very much.
