Political Consultant, Julie Rukinski, who is also the co founder of Barrow Strategies. Julie, first, your thoughts on how former President Trump handled those questions today at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention there in Chicago. What were some of your takeaways?

Just when you think it can't get any scarier or any more ridiculous, you see you have a day like today. Just appalled watching that start to finish was like a train wreck that you couldn't turn away from. Look, you're talking about somebody who has stopped with the dog whistle. He stopped with the insinuations. He's just full on gone totally racist and totally misogynist. I mean, the way he spoke about Kamala Harris, the way he spoke to Rachel Scott. He doesn't speak to men this way, if you notice. He has a particular thing about speaking to women, calling them nasty, calling them deranged, and then specifically about women of color, where he goes even more unhinged and just starts to question their very identity and their very existence. I'm glad it happened because I'm glad that people got to see it firsthand. I don't think you need me or anybody else to translate for you what happened today. All you need to do is go to the videotape, and it's not a surprise that his people decided to cut it short because I think they understood in a real time that he was just imploding for all of us to see.

Julie, we heard from Vice President Harris just a short time ago. She said it was the same old show from Donald Trump this afternoon, quoting here divisiveness and disrespect. Before this event in Houston, we know the Vice President was at a fundraiser where she said, We are the underdogs in this race, while she acknowledged the wave of enthusiasm, Harris stressed saying there is a lot of work to do. So despite seeing the former President there insult some of the journalists there on the stage and go to the same old rhetoric, what do you say, what do you think Harris is up against right now as she moves forward with her campaign?

Well, look, first of all, I've done enough campaigns to know you never rest in your laurels no matter how much traction you think you're getting. You have to run scared. You have to run like your 10 points behind. I don't care if you're running 50 points behind in any internal poll. You have to run as though you're behind. Second, look, she was not a safe choice in the same way that Barack Obama was not a safe choice in 2008. Hillary Clinton certainly wasn't a safe choice later. I mean, you're talking about a woman and you're talking about a woman of color. We have had 46 presidents in this country. Not one has been a woman, and certainly not one has been a woman of color. In fact, we only had one president of color in our entirely, nearly 250 year history. We're a country that is incredibly divided, and we're a country that, unfortunately, is still grappling with the very real history of race relations that we've had here, and certainly with misogyny that permeates Every faction, unfortunately, of what used to be a one's great party, which is the Republican Party, which no longer is that great, and now has just become subsumed to one very racist, misogynistic man.

I understand from her perspective that she is feeling like she's up against the tide of history. She's up against not just what Joe Biden was up against four years ago, not just what Bill Clinton was up against in 1992. But except for Barack Obama, no other candidate on either side of the has been up against, and Hillary Clinton, for that matter. Look, I understand where she's coming from. I understand that she has to rile up her base and make the rest of us understand that there is a tremendous amount at stake here, and nobody should just rest in their laurels and think, Okay, well, we swapped out Joe Biden. Now it's easy sailing. It is not easy sailing. The key here is to get her base out to vote. Everybody keeps focusing on these very few undecided voters and how they're going to break. The truth of the matter is this is not that election. This is a get-out-the-vote election, which means that if she gets her people to the polls at a much higher rate than Donald Trump gets his people to the polls, she wins, and vice versa, obviously. I mean, it sounds self-evident, but the truth of the matter is, at this point, everybody has made up their mind about Donald Trump.

If you haven't made up your mind about Donald Trump yet, you may not be coming out to vote this November. If you've made up your mind, as Donald Trump himself said today, if you like him, you're going to vote for him. If you're not going to like him, you're not going to vote for him. The question is, who is actually coming out to vote and who's motivated to vote? That's what she's doing. She's motivating her base to vote by saying, We're the underdogs, you've got to not rest in your laurels. You've got to get to the polls.

Telling her voters not to get comfortable. Julie, thank you so much. Political consultant, Julie Wrigensky.