Jim Messina: Harris Campaign Team Looks Very Exhausted Because They’re Being Called a ‘Band of Idiots’

PSAKI: “But what’s your biggest concern right now that you need to be going a little bit better over the next couple weeks?”
MESSINA: “Time. I mean, if you think about, Jen, in politics you have three things: you have time, you have money, and you have volunteers. And the one thing of those three you can’t go get more of is time. And so there’s really difficult decisions being made in Wilmington right now about what you do with her time, what you do with the surrogates time. You know, there’s competing things, the press team wants her on these TV interviews, the fundraising team wants her to do one more big event in X city. The battleground states are saying, ‘We’ve gotta have her three more times in Michigan.’ And so, you know, making those decisions becomes the most important thing. It’s why you see these campaign people on TV and they look absolutely exhausted, because everyone is telling them they’re a band of idiots and they should do it their way, and they have to make a really, really difficult decisions.”
PSAKI: “It’s such a — now, I know it’s three big questions, but I can do offshoots of them, that’s part of the role. So with that in mind, because you’re touching a little bit on this, I think of people inside at home, you’re deciding, too, with her time, where she should travel. So you’re looking at the map right now, where do you expect they’re going to double down with travel, or where should they, over the next two — just over two weeks?”
MESSINA: “The big three Midwestern blue wall states. She’s gonna be in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania a ton, especially Pennsylvania. I remember the week before the 2012 election, Barack Obama calling me saying, ‘Messina, if you send me to X city one more time I’m going to have you killed.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I know, you’ll be there on Monday.’ So, you know, they’re just going to go back and back and back.”