- [Aaron] Governor Landrieu, Rick Wilson.

You are about to go on stage at your rally, 9:00 PM.

When your cell phones buzz, both of them, same time, you look down, it's a text message from Joy.

Joy says, "I'm sorry, governor, Mr.

Wilson, I had to come clean."

Joy is your former staffer.

- I knew this was coming.

(Rick attendees laughing) - [Aaron] Your former staffer says I have to come clean.

I know you told me not to do it.

I quit.

I went, I did it anyways.

I covered my tracks.

But, I have to tell you something else.

It's exactly as the pina colada guy said on the Soledad O'Brien show.

I cut the video.

I manipulated it to make the aide say something about candidate Severino that's not true.

The aide never said that he was going to convert everyone's children.

What are you gonna do with this inconvenient information?

- You know, I think this campaign has now become something that was a created social media frenzy, built on a lie from the very beginning.

We are at the closing moments of this campaign.

We're not on a hot mic.

My guy is an honest man who is a straightforward guy.

I believe the governor can win by going out, being straightforward about the campaign.

And by the way, I'm not sure Joy is legitimately all there anyway.

- Not crazy, but a loose cannon.

- But a loose cannon, I think, yes.

So, I'm gonna counsel the governor.

Let's settle the Joy matter at another moment.

- [Landrieu] Okay, I don't believe I have a moral dilemma about the young lady because we fired her.

She left, we disavowed it, and we didn't really have to address the issue.

- [Aaron] Good, okay.

The phone rings.

You look down.

It is not the number you expected.

It's the President of the United States.

Governor, good news.

I'm gonna do you a solid.

I'm close, I'm in a helicopter 30 minutes away from Middlevania.

I'm gonna come.

We'll show up together at your rally.

I'll talk.

Oh, one more thing.

(Rick and attendees laughing) I've read the internals.

I know that the one thing that's gonna drive your base, our voters, is the video, the secretly recorded video, pina colada guy.

Our voters love it.

The memes are hilarious.

They don't want a person to convert their children.

That's why they're gonna vote for you.

That's the plan, we're gonna go all in on this video.

- Yeah, that's a no.

- You just say no, hang up?

Yeah.

That's my decision.

- [Rick] No, Mr.

President, respectfully, we believe we've had a really good six or seven days in this campaign since the pina colada guy emerged.

- It's a no, for me it is.

- And just like that, you hear the chopper turn around.

(attendees laughing) Walter Isaacson, what a night for Middlevania.

What a night for your book.

- What a night for history.

- [Aaron] What a night for history.

Whose job do you think it is to tell the truth to voters?

The candidate's job, journalists, social media influencers and podcasters?

- The truth is always gonna come out.

And so the job is to tell the truth.

And as a writer of a book about this, I was behind the scenes, and I knew that the candidate had thought about saying, let me get the truth out right away.

Then he stepped back a bit.

And I think as we write the story, that would've been the heroic response.

And it actually may have been the best political response.

Likewise, if I'm writing the history of it, I'd say one of the heroes is a 17-year-old kid who went to his mom at the end.

And if that came out, and if he said it, he said it with his teacher, Mr.

Glaude, he would be the hero of this book.

- So it sounds like you're saying the truth will come out.

- It will.

Are you saying it's everybody's job?

Candidates- - You're gonna get a lot of blow back when the truth comes out, and you are the one who either bore false witness or didn't help get the truth out.