Welcome to the bully pulpit from the University of Southern California Center for the Political Future.

Our podcast brings together America's top politicians, journalists, academics, and strategists from across the political spectrum for discussions on hot button issues where we respect

each other and respect the truth. We hope you enjoy these conversations.

Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Bob Strom, the director of the center. I know a lot of you

for the political future at USC Dornside. Welcome to the second in our conversations

on the 2024 election, which we're going to be holding both before and after election day.

Well, let me introduce today's panelists. Todd Purdom is an author, former New York Times,

Washington correspondent covered the Clinton White House, was the bureau chief here in Los Angeles

from the New York Times, former national editor for Vanity Affair, and a fabulous fellow at the

Center for the Political Future in the spring of 2022. David Simmons is the former CEO of the

Obama Foundation, the former director of the Office of Political Strategy and Outreach under the Obama administration,

and we hope a future fellow at the center of the political future.

Carissa Smith is a former senior public engagement advisor in the White House Office of Public Engagement.

During the 2020 election, she served as the National

Women's Vote Director for the Biden campaign. She's currently a fall 2024 CPF fellow and

doing a great job. So what we're going to do, because we don't know when Vice President

Harris is going to speak, we're going to just keep it muted, and we won't even turn

the sound on when she comes out and everybody goes crazy. If she starts speaking, we'll turn it on.

And that leads me to my first question, which is, so a lot of us saw, and I think everybody

heard about the Madison Square Garden rally that Trump ran,

that's his closing argument.

If you saw him this morning at Mar-a-Lago, the same thing.

...