It has officially been two weeks since an election that surprised a lot of people. As our focus shifts towards what’s to come, we take a look back at some conversations that seem, in retrospect, somewhat prescient.
“I’m very optimistic, and the reason I am, since we last talked, we have found that the Republican Party has embraced us,” says Paula Obeid.
If Obeid sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve heard her on The Show before.
When I first met Obeid back in August, she had convened a meeting of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supporters at a local Panera Bread. At the time, Kennedy had just dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Donald Trump. And the folks around the table at Panera were still processing.
“This is an open dialog place, so feel free to talk,” Obeid told the group in August. “And not everyone feels comfortable, which is very fair, OK?”
But now it’s 6:30 p.m. on election night. We are at a bar in Chandler called BKD’s Backyard Joint. And Obeid is — well, you heard her.
“I’m very optimistic,” she says.
And not just because it’s election night. It’s also her birthday.
“I’m excited. I feel like I’m going to get the biggest gift of my life this year.”
Back in August, Obeid was already certain that she was going to throw her support to Donald Trump. For her, it’s all about Kennedy. She calls him “my guy Bobby.” And if voting for Trump is what it takes to get her guy to Washington, that’s what she’s going to do.
But for some of her fellow Kennedy supporters, it wasn’t that simple. I ask Obeid if Kennedy’s Trump endorsement strained any allegiances.
“Yes,” she says. “Yeah. Some people are mad that you’re voting for Trump. But I would say I’ve had friends that I just celebrate trying to find common ground and trying to just bridge the gap and just have civil conversations again. And some of them don’t even want to know that. They’ll say, ‘Just don’t text me no more.’”
Obeid says it hurt to lose those friendships, but she was undaunted. She and her fellow Kennedy volunteers got to work rebranding the campaign as AZ MAHA: Make America Healthy Again. They printed up forest green hats with that slogan in white Times New Roman stitching, all caps, MAGA style.
Zach Lauer, who’s sitting across from Obeid, is wearing one tonight. Lauer was at the Panera summit also. Back then, he wasn’t totally sold on Trump or the idea of making nice with mainstream Republicans. But as the weeks went on, Lauer noticed the Trump campaign adopting a lot of the language of the Kennedy campaign, pretty much word for word.
It was time, Trump said, to put an end to chronic disease, to stop the corporate capture of government agencies, to end the forever wars.
“Those things that weren’t really being talked about or heard by people. As soon as RFK endorsed Trump, Trump was like a megaphone for those issues, and those issues reached so many more years that were willing to listen this time around,” Lauer said.
Something else happened as soon as Kennedy endorsed Trump: The polls tightened. On Aug. 23, the day of the endorsement, Kamala Harris led Trump by almost 4 points in the FiveThirtyEight polling average. Her lead shrank on a near daily basis after that. Going into Election day, it was down to barely a point.
Which means that tonight, Lauer is feeling bullish.
“I’m super excited. I’ve probably never been so excited about an election. With Trump and with Elon (Musk) and with RFK, I actually think that we can end the corporate capture of our government agencies. I actually believe that we’re going to overhaul the FDA. We’re going to overhaul the NIH,” Lauer said.
At the other end of the table, a woman named Holly beckons me over. She, too, believes in the trinity.
“RFK coming with Trump and Elon all together, it was just — literally I was like, ‘What is this, the Avengers? We’re all going to go to Mars? Every single one of us? OK, cool. Sweet. Sign me up,’” she said.
Others around the table add billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to the new vanguard of political superheroes.
Lauer says it’s a movement to return the government to the people, a movement, he adds, that he plans to join.
“I have plans to run for office in either 2026 or 2028,” Lauer said. “I don’t know exactly what that will be yet, but I have a lot of supporters that I’ve met. And hoping to leverage that, to make a change from the inside.”
Of course, sitting there at BKD’s Backyard Joint early in the evening of Nov. 5, nobody knew yet how things were going to turn out. And I have to admit, as I listened to the MAHA crew buzzing with excitement, I couldn’t help thinking that even if Trump won, they might be disappointed. Was Trump really going to make good on his promises to actually include Kennedy, Musk and the rest of the Avengers in his administration?
It seemed more likely that he was simply using them to entice nervous voters who might otherwise be turned off by his rhetoric. But whatever he was doing, it worked. Trump did win. And we all saw what happened next.
In the following days, President-elect Trump announced that Musk and Ramaswamy would lead a new Department of Government Efficiency. He nominated Gabbard to be his director of national intelligence. And he tapped Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
So maybe Obeid and company weren’t the naive ones. Right now, anything seems possible, which has a lot of people freaked out. But Obeid, ever the optimist, saw that coming.
“If we win on my birthday, which I’m hoping for a gift, there’s half of the nation that’s going to be sad,” she says. “And they’re going to be terrified. And both people are looking at the same thing through a different lens. But it’s fear. What we have to remember is they’re fellow Americans with their families. And let’s meet them with compassion and love and bring them into the unity tent.”
Everyone else at the table agreed. Tent or rocket, there’s room for everyone. But it’s a long way to Mars. And Obeid is not about to get comfortable on the launch pad.
“We got work to do. That’s how we feel. That’s how I feel. I’m speaking for me,” she says.
