By the way, after weeks of watching Republican members of
Congress who support Trump showing up at the courthouse,
the Biden campaign sent a surrogate of its own to
lower Manhattan yesterday.
Actor Robert De Niro, the two time Oscar winner and
New York City resident,
showed up shortly after court got underway.
He was joined by Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler,
as well as two of the police officers who defended
the US Capitol on January 6th.
Michael Fanon and Harry Dunn
there, De Niro delivered a message on behalf of the
campaign warning about the dangers of a second Trump administration.
I don't mean to scare you.
No, no, wait, maybe I do mean to scare you.
If Trump returns to the White House,
you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take
for granted.
And elections, forget about it.
That's over. That's done. If he gets in,
I can tell you right now
he will never leave.
He will never leave.
When Trump ran in 2016,
it was like a joke.
This buffoon running for president never could happen.
We'd forgotten the lessons of history that showed us other
clowns
who weren't taken seriously until they became vicious
dictators. With Trump, we have a second chance
and no one is laughing now.
This is the time to stop him
by voting him out once and for all.
We don't want to wake up after the election saying
what again?
My God, what the hell have we done?
We can't have that happen again.
OK. Joining us now, communications director for the Biden Harris
campaign,
Michael Tyler, who, as we mentioned,
also spoke at the news conference outside the courthouse.
I guess I have to ask you why you decided
to speak there and to have the campaign show up
at the courthouse.
I don't know it it,
it doesn't feel right to me at all.
Well, good morning and thank you for having me.
We showed up there because the news media has been
incessantly posted up there day in and day out for
weeks.
And so as we said last week,
we are going to use the next month
to talk about the upcoming presidential debate in Atlanta and
the things that Donald Trump is going to have to
answer for.
First and foremost, he's going to answer for the the
continued threat that he poses to our democracy,
his continued embrace of political violence.
And so that's what Robert De Niro and officers for
Known and Done were speaking to
down in Manhattan yesterday. They are speaking to the fact
that Donald Trump still regularly embraces political violence,
is calling for a bloodbath if he loses this election
and is pledging the rule as a dictator on day
one.
And so given that the news media is everything that
you're saying,
Michael,
Michael, I get everything you're saying.
And I agree with the officers who showed up and
with Robert De Niro,
But I'm just curious about the location.
Last week, when the members of Congress showed up to
support Donald Trump, I called it unbecoming of the office.
They're serving the people of their district.
American citizens are not supposed to politicize a court proceeding.
And I'm just, I feel the same way about the
campaign.
Is there any concern about the campaign getting a little
bit too close to these court proceedings and could that
backfire?
Any concerns looking back? Was it a good decision?
No, there's no concern. This campaign is not speaking about
the substance of the trial in any way,
shape or form. What we are talking about,
what we talked about yesterday and what we'll continue to
talk about is the unique threat that Donald Trump poses
to our democracy.
And so a lot of the coverages of late has
been focused on the stakes for him.
But we're making sure that the American people understand the
stakes for them,
and that's Donald Trump's potential rise to power if he's
able to win this election.
This campaign is making sure that he does not.
That's why we are engaged and focused on highlighting the
stakes,
highlighting what he is attempting to do if he's able
to regain power,
but also highlighting the president's historic record of accomplishment,
the positive things that he has done day in and
day out for working people across this country.
That's what we're doing today in Philadelphia with the launch
of Black Voters for Biden.
And that's what we'll do day in and day out,
making sure that people understand Joe Biden's positive record of
accomplishment,
his vision for the future,
and of course, constantly calling out the danger and the
threat that Donald Trump poses to our democracy.
That's what we were doing yesterday and it's what we
will continue to do.
Hey, Michael, Jonathan Lemire, should we expect more of these
sort of gorilla surprise style campaign appearances,
whether the courthouse or elsewhere?
And secondly, we may be just hours or a day
or two away from a verdict in the Trump
case. Do you think that's going to matter to voters
one way or the other,
no matter what the outcome may be?
Well, yeah, Listen, I'll take those in order.
Look, first and foremost, I think one thing that this
campaign understands is that we operate in an increasingly fragmented
and fractured media environment.
And so when you have one thing like this trial
that's taking up a lot of oxygen,
you have to be creative.
You have to use every tool at your disposal to
breakthrough that clutter and communicate your message to the electorate.
That's what yesterday was about.
And this campaign will continue to be creative in the
ways in which we reach the voters where they are
right now as it relates to the verdict.
What this campaign is focused on and what we know
to be true is that there's one way to guarantee
that Donald Trump never returns to power,
and that's by defeating him at the ballot box.
That's what voters did in 2020,
and that's what this campaign is charging towards in
2024. And that's why we're constantly reminding people of what
the stakes are going to be,
because Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee
at this point.
And so the American electorate in this campaign has to
be ready to defeat him at the ballot box.
Michael, two things. One is as as Amica pointed out,
many had the questions about using the courthouse to make
the statement.
Because a lot of us,
I certainly thought about going down with the Central Park
5,
but we didn't want to make it look like
it was anything other than the evidence.
But at the same time,
I think that the way the Congress people came in,
I think I don't think you could have held Robert
De Niro back
anymore. There's passionate as easy as about making sure the
democracy sustained and you couldn't have had a better spokesman.
But the second thing today as you go to Philadelphia
with both both the president and vice president,
there's been those that have said that the
polls show black support declining.
And if there was any indication
of that not being the case,
in my opinion, it was the fiasco in the Bronx
last week where Donald Trump drew a mostly white crowd
that he imported and
maybe got about 3 or 4000 people,
which might fill up the bleachers at Madison Square Garden.
But as you target the black vote and as there's
been a real focus on that,
many of us, eight of the civil rights
groups that are called the
legacy groups, we were guests of the president at the
state dinner for Kenya.
And it was clear President Obama,
others there that the president and the campaign is also
focusing on reaching out to validators.
How important is energizing Black voter turn out with this
focus today?
Yeah, it's incredibly important. Thank you for the question.
That's exactly what today is about.
We have both the president and the Vice President in
Philadelphia
directly engaging with Black voters in a key city in
a key swing state.
And that is an effort that we are going to
replicate in all of the battleground states today,
tomorrow, through the weekend and throughout the summer.
We're focused not only on ramping up our paid advertising
investments,
but really deepening and scaling our organizing apparatus across the
summer,
working with partner organizations, tapping into their networks,
their grassroots networks, so that we can
communicate directly with Black voters
in their communities. We understand that you cannot show up
in September and October and just come ask for votes.
You have to earn votes.
That's what Joe Biden understands,
that's what Kamala Harris understands,
and that's the work this campaign is doing.
And I think, as you pointed out,
that sustained organizing work stands in stark contrast
to the outreach efforts, or lack thereof,
that we see from the Trump campaign.
They think to see, They seem to think that
you can shutter minority outreach centers
and meanwhile hawk bootleg sneakers or tout your own mug
shot
as evidence that Black voters should support you
as their as far as their outreach effort goes.
We know that that's bogus.
We know that Black voters
know that to be an insult to their intelligence.
And the way that you earn their support is by
reminding them of what you have done for them,
which is what this administration has done.
No administration has done more for black voters than this
administration.
I'm reminding them of the stakes in working to earn
their vote.
So that's what Philadelphia is about.
That's what this entire summer is going to be about
for this campaign.
Michael, good morning. As you understand very well,
at the end of the day,
a lot of the vote come November is going to
be on the economy.
We all see the numbers.
We talk about them every day,
about the historically low unemployment,
about GDP growth. Even consumer confidence is strong.
People feel like in their own lives,
things are going pretty well.
We talked about the Dow crossing 40,000.
And yet it is that inflation that hits people when
they're paying 8 bucks for a box of cereal that
you see show up in some of the polling that
said they think Donald Trump would do a better job
with the economy than Joe Biden is doing,
despite all the data I just laid out.
So how do you breakthrough on that key central core
issue of this campaign about the economy?
Yeah, no, thank you for the question.
You do it in a number of ways,
right? It takes a relentlessness.
That's what a campaign is all about.
But you have to remind people of where we came
from and where we are going and what the stakes
are.
We have to remind people of the historic record of
accomplishment since this president took office,
15,000,000 jobs, 800,000 manufacturing jobs.
The work that the president has done to lower cost
for middle class families,
capping the cost of insulin,
for example, at $35 for seniors,
he's going to cap the cost of insulin for everybody
in a second term.
The $2000 annual out of pocket cap for seniors on
prescription drugs.
The continued work that we have to do,
but also making sure that people understand that everything Donald
Trump is talking about doing would only worsen the gap
between the Super wealthy and the rest of us.
He's talking about reinstating even more tax cuts for the
ultra wealthy incorporations.
We see him out on the stump promising big oil
executives that he'll do whatever the hell they want if
they cut checks to his campaign while he then cuts
our Social Security. So we have to make sure that
people understand a,
what the record of accomplishment is from the president,
the work that he continues to do,
but also the damage that Donald Trump would do to
middle class families
if he's able to regain power.
And so that's what this campaign is going to relentlessly
communicate from now until November.
Communications director for the Biden Harris campaign,
Michael Tyler, thank you very much for being on THIS
MORNING.
We appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.