Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 3: All right, Welcome back to Counterpoints. Tom Ryan Grim here
Speaker 3: with Emily Dashinsky. It's my favorite time of the year,
Speaker 3: the show after an election night when the anti abortion
Speaker 3: crowd just gets completely trounced. Every come out here and
Speaker 3: do a little victory lap and weed. Also, we'd we
Speaker 3: did well. Last name, Public Power got rinsed in Maine.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about that. So it was not
Speaker 3: complete wins across the board on ballot measures, but for
Speaker 3: the most part, pretty triumphant night. Yeah for the center left,
Speaker 3: let's say yeah.
Speaker 4: And some big results we're going to go through right now.
Speaker 4: And Ryan was also Keyton and some pretty interesting races
Speaker 4: that you may not have heard about from a lot
Speaker 4: of the big coverage. There were sort of down ballot
Speaker 4: races or local races that are worth paying attention to.
Speaker 4: We're also going to do some updates, of course, on Israel.
Speaker 4: Rashida Talib was formally censured by the House of Representatives
Speaker 4: last night.
Speaker 5: We're going to get into all of that.
Speaker 4: We're going to get into the raging debate over tying
Speaker 4: Ukraine funding to Israel that took place in the Senate
Speaker 4: yesterday and is ongoing. And then of course we're going
Speaker 4: to dive into the twenty twenty four race. Sager caught
Speaker 4: some numbers in the New York Times poll that everyone
Speaker 4: was talking about this week, that nobody was talking about.
Speaker 4: Turns out there was something in the poll pretty interesting
Speaker 4: that had a pretty interesting implications for RFK Junior's run.
Speaker 4: We're also lest you think there's too much news happening,
Speaker 4: but wait, there's more. There's a Republican debate tonight, a
Speaker 4: little preview of.
Speaker 3: That Republican vice presidential debate at best.
Speaker 5: Republican state debate.
Speaker 3: Maybe yeah, like maybe vice president. There might be a
Speaker 3: vice president on that stage, but there's no guarantee, no,
Speaker 3: not at all. All right, so let's start with Ohio.
Speaker 5: Let's start with Ohio.
Speaker 3: So two measures on. The two important measures were on
Speaker 3: the ballot. There one abortion and we can put this
Speaker 3: first element up here, the second one being marijuana. And
Speaker 3: so back in the summer, as you guys remember, there
Speaker 3: was an effort by Republicans to change the way that
Speaker 3: the Constitution is amended to put the threshold at sixty percent,
Speaker 3: so you would need a sixty percent vote to change
Speaker 3: the amendment. That was happening as support for abortion rice
Speaker 3: was polling in the high fifties, and everybody thought, oh,
Speaker 3: they're trying to keep this from passing. If they had succeeded,
Speaker 3: they failed. If they had succeeded, this would have failed.
Speaker 3: Abortion would have filed because it currently it's just under
Speaker 3: fifty seven percent support. So an over whelming vote on
Speaker 3: and we can put up weed to weed actually edged
Speaker 3: out the abortion rights So you did have, you know what,
Speaker 3: non trivial number of people go into the ballot box
Speaker 3: and say, yes, I support legal weed, No, I do
Speaker 3: not support abortion rights, but.
Speaker 4: A really similar margin, which is interesting as well.
Speaker 3: It's maybe thousands of people at most around the entire state.
Speaker 3: And so both of those are going to become law.
Speaker 3: You're going to have legalized and regulated marijuana sales opening
Speaker 3: up in Ohio. But also the big win there is
Speaker 3: Question one Yes. So now you've got abortion rights enshrined
Speaker 3: into the constitution in Ohio. This comes after Montana, Kentucky, obviously, California, Vermont,
Speaker 3: not that exciting Michigan. So every Kansas, everywhere that abortion
Speaker 3: rights have been on the ballot, abortion rights have won.
Speaker 3: So what's been the response. I've seen a couple of
Speaker 3: different responses. I'm curious what you're seeing from the conservative wing, which,
Speaker 3: you know, do they want to give up on this
Speaker 3: and say like this is a huge loser for us,
Speaker 3: or like the kind of Republican Senate president are they saying,
Speaker 3: you know, let's push ahead and see if we can
Speaker 3: get this on the ballot again next year.
Speaker 4: Well, they know they can't give up on it because
Speaker 4: Democrats now see this as such an important electoral issue
Speaker 4: because it drives turnout and it brings independent leaners.
Speaker 5: Over to Dems.
Speaker 4: And on the principal issue for Democrats, it accomplishes again
Speaker 4: like enshrining a right to abortion. The wording in this
Speaker 4: became some of it somewhat of an issue issue one.
Speaker 4: The wording of it opened up the door for Republicans
Speaker 4: to come in and say, potentially, this is going to
Speaker 4: lead to all kinds of issues with same sex bathrooms,
Speaker 4: different sex bathrooms, co ed bathroot right.
Speaker 3: They tried to move away from abortion and over to
Speaker 3: other culture stuff, and I.
Speaker 4: Think there was a real problem with the wording, to
Speaker 4: the point where even the Toledo Blade said, listen, we
Speaker 4: support abortion, but the wording here is overly broad. This
Speaker 4: is an overly broad power. Obviously that didn't make a difference.
Speaker 4: Fifty seven to forty three is roughly the margin in
Speaker 4: both the weed and abortion races.
Speaker 5: But when it probably comes.
Speaker 3: From Democratic squeamishness about saying the word abortion, is that right?
Speaker 5: It might?
Speaker 3: I mean, it actually has a broader agenda.
Speaker 5: You know, the wording.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the wording is pretty interesting. But Democrats were like
Speaker 4: leaning into this every step of the way, not just
Speaker 4: I shouldn't just say Democrats because obviously this is the
Speaker 4: broader left was fighting this really hard and Republicans. This
Speaker 4: is what I've heard a lot on the pro life side.
Speaker 4: Conservatives were wildly outspent.
Speaker 5: On issue one. So it's about.
Speaker 4: Twenty four point four million to about sixteen point three million,
Speaker 4: and pro life groups have a really hard time. Anti
Speaker 4: abortion groups have a very hard time getting money into
Speaker 4: these races, So it might be easier to fundraise for
Speaker 4: just a generic Republican race somewhere like Ohio than it
Speaker 4: is to get money for an anti abortion initiative. And
Speaker 4: that's why that ballot measure that we covered back in
Speaker 4: August was so important. Because all of the pro life
Speaker 4: groups I've talked to a bunch of them over the
Speaker 4: last few months saw the writing on the wall. They
Speaker 4: knew that if they could get to that sixty percent
Speaker 4: threshold somewhere in Ohio, there's basically no way that this
Speaker 4: would pass. It did come close, but they knew that
Speaker 4: if they could, you say, you need sixty percent to
Speaker 4: change the Constitution, that it would be safe.
Speaker 5: From their perspective.
Speaker 4: Now, that fifty seven percent number I pretty much guarantee.
Speaker 4: All along, they knew it was going to be fifty
Speaker 4: five fifty seven somewhere like that, because it's an almost
Speaker 4: impossible issue for Republicans even in places like Ohio and Kansas,
Speaker 4: and next year Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, South Dakota are
Speaker 4: looking to get similar ballot initiatives together. So you know,
Speaker 4: Republicans had what Michigan, they had, other Kansas, Montana, as
Speaker 4: you mentioned, all of that told them that this was
Speaker 4: going to happen. They just couldn't get donors interested and
Speaker 4: they still haven't figured out the messaging.
Speaker 3: And so you have Republicans Senate President, and I just
Speaker 3: referenced Matt Huffman. He said in his statement last night,
Speaker 3: this isn't the end. It is really just the beginning
Speaker 3: of a revolving door of ballot campaigns to repeal or
Speaker 3: replace Issue one. So that's the Senate President saying that
Speaker 3: they're going to continue to try to put this in
Speaker 3: the ballot. But help me understand that they know that
Speaker 3: they're going to lose. Like you said, they're going to
Speaker 3: be outspent because a lot of wealthy Democrats are strongly
Speaker 3: for abortion rights and they don't like I think a
Speaker 3: lot of wealthy Democrats give too Democrats because they kind
Speaker 3: of align with their politics, but they don't really like that.
Speaker 3: Democrats might raise their taxes a little bit, might mess
Speaker 3: with the carried interest loop ball, might do some regulation
Speaker 3: around private equity, which is where all their money's coming from.
Speaker 3: But when it comes to funding abortion measures, they're fine
Speaker 3: with that no moral confliction whatsoever, like this feels good
Speaker 3: to them, it's the right thing to do. Many of
Speaker 3: them have experience with it. It's deeply personal to them.
Speaker 3: So they're always going to there's always going to be
Speaker 3: money for these ballot measures. The public is wildly on
Speaker 3: Democrats side on this question. It brings people to the
Speaker 3: polls and hurts Republicans and we'll talk about how it
Speaker 3: hurts Republicans across the board and the rest of these
Speaker 3: elections today. So then why would you have somebody like
Speaker 3: Huffman say we're going to just keep doing this.
Speaker 5: And they, by the way, they said something I said, I'm.
Speaker 3: Against him doing, like go ahead, keep banging your head
Speaker 3: against the wall.
Speaker 4: But yeah, So for the last couple of years, especially
Speaker 4: since Dobbs pass and Roe fell, Republicans, conservatives, anti abortion
Speaker 4: people have said it's time to on the messaging level,
Speaker 4: confront this head on. That's where you saw Ron DeSantis
Speaker 4: sign the Heartbeat Bill and other people have signed Texas
Speaker 4: head Heartbeat Bill saying all right, so Roe is gone,
Speaker 4: and in the vacuum that that creates, so that you
Speaker 4: can't just sort of punt and say I support the
Speaker 4: end of row you need to have a clear stance
Speaker 4: that is honest, and it needs to confront the issue boldly,
Speaker 4: and you can't just run away from it. And so
Speaker 4: that's what a lot of these groups have been counseling
Speaker 4: candidates to do. That's where Lindsay Graham and the Susan B.
Speaker 4: Anthony List worked on that fifteen week measure on the
Speaker 4: Senate side to give Republicans something to talk about. Glenn
Speaker 4: Youngkin was pretty clear that he said if I'm elected, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm going to limit abortion rights. And that didn't do
Speaker 4: so well in Virginia and there were a lot of
Speaker 4: abortion ads on it. Let me read a quote from
Speaker 4: Lila Rose. This was part of her statement. She's from
Speaker 4: Live Action, a big anti abortion group. Lyla Rose said,
Speaker 4: the pro life movement must adapt to win. We have
Speaker 4: to throw out the old playbook and dive headfirst into
Speaker 4: a strategy that can win the hearts and minds of
Speaker 4: the American people and translate into electoral victory.
Speaker 5: So just what you're getting.
Speaker 4: From that is increasing acknowledgment that the hearts and minds
Speaker 4: of the American people are not with pro life anti
Speaker 4: abortion people like myself on this question.
Speaker 5: It is wildly.
Speaker 4: Unpopular with the American people, and it's insane for conservatives
Speaker 4: over and over again to delude themselves into thinking that's
Speaker 4: not true.
Speaker 3: Does she have a strategy? Because I agree with her
Speaker 3: that from her perspective, they should up with a strategy
Speaker 3: that loses and adopt a strategy that wins. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: what is that do they have?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 4: No, it reminds me actually of repeal and replace, because
Speaker 4: you know, Lyla Rose knows exactly what she supports on
Speaker 4: the question of abortion. What that looks like in states
Speaker 4: like Ohio. Translating into how candidates talk about this, what
Speaker 4: policy initiatives might be on the ballot or you know,
Speaker 4: fought from getting on the ballot is a completely different question.
Speaker 4: People felt really good about coalescing around that fifteen week built,
Speaker 4: although there was some internal grumbling among the right flank
Speaker 4: in sort of conservative circles about whether or not that
Speaker 4: was appropriate because it's still fifteen weeks and the majority
Speaker 4: of abortions are happening before that, So there's just it
Speaker 4: is similar to repeal and replace in the extent that
Speaker 4: it's like nobody quite knows where the sweet spot is
Speaker 4: and nobody can decide on a consensus position, because there's
Speaker 4: such an intensity of thought on one side about where
Speaker 4: those guard rails should be, and such an intensity, you know,
Speaker 4: there was I thought, just quickly, a really bad headline
Speaker 4: I saw last night and the messenger that said Republicans
Speaker 4: were what was They said something that Republicans were overjoyed
Speaker 4: when Roe v. Wade fell and now it's become one
Speaker 4: of their biggest electoral problems. In paraphrasing it, but something
Speaker 4: like that, Republicans were not overjoyed when Roevy Wade fell.
Speaker 3: Eight Republicans were like, wait a minute, what are you doing?
Speaker 4: They were, and we were on the air when it,
Speaker 4: like literally when it happened, and I remember saying something
Speaker 4: to the extent of like the RNC is freaking out
Speaker 4: right now, like quaking in their boots. And someone who
Speaker 4: wouldn't have knowledge of that came up to me afterwards
Speaker 4: and was like, I was listening when you said that.
Speaker 5: I was there. Basically, it is one hundred percent accurate.
Speaker 4: So Republican voters may have been overjoyed by the fall
Speaker 4: of Row, Republicans here were terrified.
Speaker 3: Dog overjoyed. He has caught Cary. So we'll go to
Speaker 3: Virginia a second. Let's talk about Kentucky for a second.
Speaker 3: Put up this next one. So Annie Basher, popular Democratic
Speaker 3: governor in Kentucky who won a real squeaker in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: relatively smoked Daniel Cameron last night, a five point victory
Speaker 3: in a race that was expected to be within a
Speaker 3: point or so. Daniel Cameron, longtime Mitch McConnell protege. This
Speaker 3: is somebody who was basically, i think since he was
Speaker 3: an intern, pretty much been destined for this gubernatorial race
Speaker 3: and kind of guided to it by Mitch McConnell. Mitch
Speaker 3: McConnell pushed him over the finish line to be attorney general.
Speaker 3: And everyone in Kentucky's just been waiting for this guy's
Speaker 3: turn at governor. And the question wasn't when he was
Speaker 3: going to if he was going to be governor, just when.
Speaker 3: But Andy Basheer told him not yet. So what role
Speaker 3: do you think abortion played in that? And what role
Speaker 3: do you think Andy Basheer just kind of being a
Speaker 3: good and popular governor, particularly among Eastern Kentucky folks, made
Speaker 3: the difference, like what's your what's your read there?
Speaker 5: Well, and I'm.
Speaker 4: Curious for your sense of how Basher is a politician
Speaker 4: as a red state Southern Democrat, because that's a really
Speaker 4: interesting position to be in. My big takeaway, the headline
Speaker 4: that we ran at the Federalist right away was Mitch
Speaker 4: McConnell protege gets knocked down, As you said, Sean Davis
Speaker 4: over at the Federalists tweeted right away, Given that Mitch
Speaker 4: McConnell's far and away the most unpopular national political figure
Speaker 4: in the entire country minus thirty nine and net favorability
Speaker 4: according to really Clear's average, it's not surprising that McConnell
Speaker 4: ties have turned into a massive political liability in Kentucky.
Speaker 4: And he tweeted pictures of all these headlines tying Daniel
Speaker 4: Cameron to Mitch McConnell.
Speaker 5: I actually think there's something to that.
Speaker 4: Because McConnell is probably more popular in his own state
Speaker 4: than he is on a national level. When people pay
Speaker 4: attention to national media, he's a familiar figure. I think
Speaker 4: that partially helped this year. There's an incumbent advantage built
Speaker 4: into all of that. Even in a red state, he
Speaker 4: handled some storms in a way that a lot of
Speaker 4: people felt was pretty good and respectable and earned him
Speaker 4: some good will but I mean, I don't know. When
Speaker 4: I look at that, I think, how can Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 4: who's one of the most powerful people in the country,
Speaker 4: hand pick this guy and losing his own state. It
Speaker 4: basically confirms all of the conservative arguments about Mitch McConnell's
Speaker 4: political instincts actually being terrible.
Speaker 3: And Basher benefited from being in office during the pandemic,
Speaker 3: and he was widely kind of heralded across I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously you had a subset of people who, you know,
Speaker 3: hated the way that the government handled COVID across the board,
Speaker 3: but overwhelmingly his approval rating shot through the roof, just
Speaker 3: the way that like Cuomos did in New York and
Speaker 3: Hogan lack of Republican governs. Every governor who was in
Speaker 3: office during COVID saw a huge boost in their approval
Speaker 3: rating because people just kind of felt like they wanted
Speaker 3: to they were so scared, they wanted to vest some
Speaker 3: kind of authority in authority figures. And I think for
Speaker 3: a lot of people on the right and the kind
Speaker 3: of the skeptical left around that that's difficult to kind
Speaker 3: of even believe because it's so counter to the way
Speaker 3: that so many other millions of people experienced the pandemic
Speaker 3: where they turned away from authority. Yeah, there was. It
Speaker 3: created a crisis of authority and legitimacy. But that's the minority,
Speaker 3: like the Normanis were, like Basher, Andy has handled this
Speaker 3: just absolutely incredibly. And then you made a good point
Speaker 3: about the flooding and if you remember those Eastern Kentucky
Speaker 3: floods a couple of years ago, just absolutely devastated the region.
Speaker 3: We could put up this next element here from Saho Kapor.
Speaker 3: He was widely credited as handling the floods with the
Speaker 3: same level of kind of leadership that people credit him
Speaker 3: with handling the response to the pandemic. He's on TV
Speaker 3: every night, you know, he's like he's assuring people, like
Speaker 3: the way that Bill Clinton in the nineties was like
Speaker 3: the comforter in cheap like Basher kind of had that characters.
Speaker 3: So look, right, So this is Trump, Trump and Biden
Speaker 3: on one side. If you're listening on the podcast, it's
Speaker 3: an image of basically a sea of red except for
Speaker 3: Louisville and Lexingon and Frankfurt when it was Trump versus Biden.
Speaker 3: Now in this election, you see eastern Kentucky like thoroughly blue,
Speaker 3: like the Appalachian area, and particularly in these counties that
Speaker 3: were hardest hit by the flood, shows that, you know,
Speaker 3: if you deliver for people, you show leadership, you help
Speaker 3: a community, you know, pick itself up, you're going to
Speaker 3: be rewarded.
Speaker 4: You win goodwill beyond partisan and actually that's a beyond
Speaker 4: partisan boundaries. And that's something Aaron Blake actually pointed out
Speaker 4: yesterday that I think also gets to the McConnell question.
Speaker 4: He said, the best performing statewide GOP candidate in Kentucky,
Speaker 4: Kentucky with Secretary of State Michael Adams, who strongly rejected
Speaker 4: stile An election talk and turned aside a primary challenge,
Speaker 4: He's at sixty one percent. The Republican AG candidate was
Speaker 4: at fifty eight percent. So there's something about Cameron and Basher.
Speaker 4: You know, Basher was able to I think, capitalize on
Speaker 4: that built in goodwill.
Speaker 5: As you just mentioned.
Speaker 4: You look at the map Eastern Kentucky pretty favorable to Basher,
Speaker 4: especially comparable to Trump.
Speaker 5: But that's also where people on the.
Speaker 4: Trump side are going to come in and say, without
Speaker 4: Trump on the ticket and with all of these candidates
Speaker 4: running away from Trump, contra Aaron Blank, Aaron Blake, you
Speaker 4: don't get the energy that you need need to match
Speaker 4: Democrat Democratic turnout operations, mail and ballot operations, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera.
Speaker 5: So that's going to be the argument. I'm not saying
Speaker 5: that's true.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying, you know, I think there's probably some
Speaker 4: evidence of it. Also, it's really easy, though, for that
Speaker 4: to become a cope because it's just reactions to the
Speaker 4: Trump Republican Party are all over the map, depending on
Speaker 4: where you are, literally all over the map. So you know,
Speaker 4: it's easy to fall into that line of thinking and
Speaker 4: just blaming a lead established Republicans, which is sure, they
Speaker 4: deserve a whole lot of blame, and I think the
Speaker 4: Daniel Cameron results are part of that, but it's not
Speaker 4: the whole story.
Speaker 3: And Democrat Republicans are in a tricky spot because the
Speaker 3: only thing worse for Republicans than having Trump on the
Speaker 3: ballot seems to be not having Trump on them.
Speaker 5: Help, right, No, really that's true.
Speaker 3: Well they have left and before we go to Virginia
Speaker 3: real quickly. The other thing that people in Kentucky really
Speaker 3: seem to like about Bashir's jobs job increases, like he
Speaker 3: brought a lot of jobs to the state, both kind
Speaker 3: of relocating from from elsewhere, and that was a pandemic
Speaker 3: effect as well. But also being open and kind of
Speaker 3: attractive and not getting yourself caught up in like culture
Speaker 3: war stuff where you're getting boycotted by places probably helped
Speaker 3: as well. So all of those things combined to get
Speaker 3: lots and lots of people who support Trump to vote
Speaker 3: for Andy Basheer, who instantly becomes somebody that is going
Speaker 3: to be talked about as a presidential candidate.
Speaker 5: Although good luck to him courting the left flank.
Speaker 3: The left is like just beaten, so beaten down. I
Speaker 3: think it's just like whatever this point.
Speaker 4: Well, speaking of which, we actually have some results on
Speaker 4: that to go through too.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes we do. We'll get to those at a second.
Speaker 3: Let's throw up Virginia here. So Virginia Democrats kept can
Speaker 3: control of the Senate, and you can put up the
Speaker 3: next one here. They also they also flipped the House
Speaker 3: of Delegates.
Speaker 4: Absolute route for Republicans who put all of their hopes
Speaker 4: in Glenn Youngkin fundraising for two years, bringing some big
Speaker 4: money to Virginia and saying we are going to.
Speaker 3: And we're going to get a trifecta. We're going to
Speaker 3: make me a presidential candidate. We're going to restrict abortion rights.
Speaker 3: And that's where the record stopped. It's like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: you're gonna do what in Virginia. It's how much of
Speaker 3: it was just Virginia is a more democratic state than
Speaker 3: it does a republican state, and how much of it
Speaker 3: do you think came down to the question of abortion rights?
Speaker 3: And then we're going to get to Susannah Gibson as
Speaker 3: this key race, this is the cam lady who might win.
Speaker 3: We'll see, yeah's going to be very close.
Speaker 5: Right, So you know, I think yes.
Speaker 4: Of course, abortion became a big part of this, and
Speaker 4: Glenn Youngkin was using part of a strategy that the
Speaker 4: anti abortion movement and pro life people include myself by
Speaker 4: the way I think is better, which is being sort
Speaker 4: of using, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, bold colors, not pale
Speaker 4: pass stells. They'll be wishy washy on it, because then
Speaker 4: you're allowing Democrats to find you on the issue to
Speaker 4: make voters see you as dishonest. If your position is
Speaker 4: less popular and you're honest about it, you'll probably get
Speaker 4: rewarded more so than if your position is unpopular and
Speaker 4: you look.
Speaker 5: To everybody like you're lying about it.
Speaker 4: And it did not work out well for Glenn Youngkin,
Speaker 4: and I think what that speaks to is just the
Speaker 4: depth of the unpopularity of the issue.
Speaker 5: So he goes on offense.
Speaker 4: He tries to say in perhaps the best state to
Speaker 4: do this, where you had your moderate Democrat governor Ralph
Speaker 4: Northam absolutely trashed in the state, unpopular in the state
Speaker 4: for his late term abortion policies and comments just a
Speaker 4: couple of years ago. So if there is anywhere that's
Speaker 4: sort of fertile ground for Republicans to do this message,
Speaker 4: it would have been Virginia.
Speaker 5: And it did not go well for Glenn Younkin.
Speaker 4: And again, I just think that speaks the depth of
Speaker 4: the unpopularity that there, especially post Row is in a
Speaker 4: completely different place on abortion than people like me and
Speaker 4: than Republicans.
Speaker 3: And I think they mis learned the Ralph Northam lesson
Speaker 3: because as for people who forget he made some he
Speaker 3: made some weird comments about the comments that he retracted
Speaker 3: about babies like right after.
Speaker 5: Birth, something comfortable.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, and there was a state legislator who
Speaker 3: had who had like floated legislation that would allow like
Speaker 3: abortion like right up until birth or like even after
Speaker 3: it or something like that. Yes, and so the right
Speaker 3: really seized on this and it became a national story
Speaker 3: on the in the conservative media. But then in the
Speaker 3: in the next legislative elections, Democrats did just fine. Like
Speaker 3: they they they held their own because.
Speaker 4: Because they were like, oh no, we can't do this,
Speaker 4: like they totally scrapped it instead of standing by it.
Speaker 4: And I mean that's a lesson for Republicans.
Speaker 3: And some of it was just north and being like, look,
Speaker 3: I misspoke. That's not what I that's not what I meant.
Speaker 3: I think some on the right we're like, no, you
Speaker 3: didn't misspeak. That's really really is your agenda. But I
Speaker 3: think most, like almost all Democrats are like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: that's we're going to believe he misspoke. That's not actually
Speaker 3: what our position is on this issue. And then in
Speaker 3: the in those key races where that was the focal point,
Speaker 3: Democrats won. And so but there was so much energy
Speaker 3: that I think Republicans, particularly the pro life crowd, were like,
Speaker 3: we can go back in and we can do this,
Speaker 3: especially after Youngkin. But they couldn't so, but so Susannah Gibson.
Speaker 3: That's this is House District fifty seven. If you guys
Speaker 3: want to follow the votes as they come in. Currently
Speaker 3: Democrats have the House of Delegates, no matter what I think,
Speaker 3: it's you know that by at least by at least
Speaker 3: a vote. If there are two uncalled races by the
Speaker 3: Associated Press, and one of them is Susannah Gibson, she's
Speaker 3: currently trailing her opponent Owens by roughly two percentage points.
Speaker 3: This is the candidate who's a nurse, who was busted
Speaker 3: by Republican Operatives and the Washington Post as doing as
Speaker 3: like doing sex with her husband online, doing set right
Speaker 3: on this website, chatterbait which the Washington Post incorrectly accused
Speaker 3: her of violating its terms of service. It was hilarious,
Speaker 3: Like the six paragraphs of the Washington Post. It's the
Speaker 3: first six paragraphs of the Washing Post article about all
Speaker 3: about how she violated the terms of service by accepting tips.
Speaker 3: It's such a hilarious way to approach the issue because liberals,
Speaker 3: you know, they're fine with you know, consenting adults doing
Speaker 3: everything and doing anything that they want, as.
Speaker 5: Long as the boundaries of marriage within the.
Speaker 3: Boundaries of marriage and as long as node's getting hurt.
Speaker 3: But what you violated the terms of service this website,
Speaker 3: So we looked into a term. No, they didn't. Actually,
Speaker 3: the Post and the Republican Opera have just misunderstood the
Speaker 3: terms of service.
Speaker 5: They just didn't look closely and.
Speaker 3: They only read like a snippet and not the rest
Speaker 3: of it. So anyway, Virginia voters, you know, stood up
Speaker 3: for people who are falsely accused of violating terms of service.
Speaker 5: That's important. Read all the fun.
Speaker 3: Statewide, Democrats abandoned this race like they they tossed her aside.
Speaker 5: She probably could have won.
Speaker 3: She absolutely would have won.
Speaker 5: The margin right now is really close.
Speaker 3: If she might still win. But had Democrats not abandoned
Speaker 3: her both they're they're a little super pack that they've
Speaker 3: got out there, plus the kind of state leaders, then
Speaker 3: she wins because she's only if she loses, it'll be
Speaker 3: by triple digit votes.
Speaker 4: It was, Yeah, as we're talking, it was called that
Speaker 4: fifty one to forty eight, so by some places, by
Speaker 4: the way, Yeah, no.
Speaker 5: Not call.
Speaker 3: There's still a lot of absentee and kind of mail
Speaker 3: ballots still to be counted.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know what, Ran. I think.
Speaker 4: Another important thing to mention out of Virginia is that
Speaker 4: ad impact politics.
Speaker 5: Their study of TV.
Speaker 4: Ads, forty percent of all of those ads in Virginia
Speaker 4: state ledge and general elections were about abortion.
Speaker 5: And again, similar to.
Speaker 4: Other states we've talked about Kentucky, Ohio, Democratic advertisers outspent
Speaker 4: Republicans by seven point seven million dollars and Virginia, interestingly enough,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's shocking how expensive these races were. The
Speaker 4: Senate candidates raised ninety four million dollars. The House of
Speaker 4: Delegates candidates collected eighty million dollars. This is according to
Speaker 4: Open Secrets. That is a record because in Virginia there
Speaker 4: actually are no limits on the amount.
Speaker 3: Of money corporations can give, the loosest laws in the country.
Speaker 5: It's absolutely insane.
Speaker 4: And that's where total fundraising by state legislative candidates, according
Speaker 4: to Open Secrets, has increased.
Speaker 5: Fourfold over the last twenty years.
Speaker 4: It's gone from forty four point two million dollars in
Speaker 4: two thousand and three. When ingested for inflation, you look
Speaker 4: at those numbers, that is gargantulin and honestly a total.
Speaker 5: Waste of money.
Speaker 3: Yes, so culture were loss in Virginia. We go to
Speaker 3: New Jersey as well. Again you saw a situation where
Speaker 3: Republicans in New Jersey were hoping that backlash to trans
Speaker 3: policies in school districts, which were driving a lot of
Speaker 3: parents to school board meetings, produced a lot of slates
Speaker 3: to run for school board it would bleed into the
Speaker 3: state legislative races. But as so far, what it looks
Speaker 3: like is that Democrats actually expanded their majorities the state
Speaker 3: legislature in New Jersey. And by the way, there was
Speaker 3: Democrats also won some key school board elections in Virginia
Speaker 3: that were fought along these very narrow culture war arguments.
Speaker 3: And so what is going on? Why do you think
Speaker 3: the kind of Chris Rufo approach here is getting routed?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think it always depends on the candidate.
Speaker 4: There were some weird Republican upsets to a candidate in
Speaker 4: the Bronx. This is a strange one. There's a Canada
Speaker 4: in the Bronx who a Republican woman in the in
Speaker 4: the Bronx who like set this is like history.
Speaker 3: Usually on a pope like usually these are like that.
Speaker 3: There isn't even an opponent Republican opponent on the ballot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, Christie, it was a weird race too, Christie
Speaker 4: Marmarat Marmato.
Speaker 5: I guess I'm gonna have to learn how to say
Speaker 5: this name. It's like when.
Speaker 4: Alexandria Cassio Cortennis. But yeah, so this is thirteen City
Speaker 4: Council district. It was a really nasty race. It covers
Speaker 4: a couple of neighborhoods in the eastern part of the Bronx.
Speaker 4: That's the district they haven't had Republicans haven't had.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: This is the New York Deiliy News. It refers to
Speaker 4: it as a Republican curse that swept the Bronx for
Speaker 4: nearly twenty years.
Speaker 5: They say she broke that.
Speaker 4: She had a six percent lead over the incumbent Democratic
Speaker 4: councilwoman and they were going back and forth o republic
Speaker 4: safety land use. It was just a kind of a
Speaker 4: weird race, and she was attacking the incumbent DEM for
Speaker 4: leaning to far left. There was also a weird Republican
Speaker 4: upset in New Hampshire.
Speaker 3: Manchester right and Mayor of Manchester.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the Alleghany County DA right in DEM who
Speaker 4: ran as a Republican on a sort of anti Soros
Speaker 4: prosecutor line holds on there. So it was you know,
Speaker 4: it's pretty typical that you have these sort of the
Speaker 4: sort of smattering in and off your election of what
Speaker 4: things actually are. Overall, the top line is it was
Speaker 4: a bad night for Republicans, of course. And actually on
Speaker 4: that note, we have results as well from Mississippi because
Speaker 4: that was one of the bright spots for Republicans.
Speaker 5: We can put those up.
Speaker 3: This is eight man Tate Reeves.
Speaker 4: Literally, your manned a lot of people if you weren't watching.
Speaker 4: Last week we debated whether or not Ryan actually looks
Speaker 4: like Kate Reeves because apparently people tell you do.
Speaker 3: That is one good looking gentleman right there. I just
Speaker 3: want to congratulate him on his triumph over Elvis Presley's
Speaker 3: second cousin there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so he wins fifty about fifty two to forty seven,
Speaker 4: so fairly close for.
Speaker 3: A deeper yeah, Press it was hoping to keep under fifty,
Speaker 3: which would have forced a run off.
Speaker 4: Presley's kind of a wanna be basher, right, someone who's
Speaker 4: able to do the kind of populous dem thing in
Speaker 4: a red state.
Speaker 3: Yes, and he's doing it in an even redder state.
Speaker 3: So you know, sometimes just the objective conditions that you're
Speaker 3: faced with just make it impossible for even the best politician.
Speaker 3: Because he's his track record is pretty incredible. He was
Speaker 3: a popular mayor in a Republican area. This is Brandon Pressley.
Speaker 3: And then he's been a multi term member of the
Speaker 3: Public Commission Board in Mississippi, representing a thoroughly Republican area.
Speaker 3: And he's he defines himself as like an FDR style populist,
Speaker 3: and to get that close with a Republican Mississippi is
Speaker 3: pretty impressive. Although the state does seem to be increasingly
Speaker 3: trending blue, like are we going to see a plate
Speaker 3: a time and enough people? You know, combination of the
Speaker 3: Democratic population growth in the area plus people just moving
Speaker 3: there for cheaper cost of living. I mean, well, I
Speaker 3: think and this is makes it blue.
Speaker 4: This is where I think Dems have you know again
Speaker 4: paraphrase the Reagan bold colors on Pale Pastel's thing. This
Speaker 4: is where I think Dems have actually seen the writing
Speaker 4: on the wall when they see Bernie Sanders sweep in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen. You know, win places like Wisconsin, those populist
Speaker 4: left policies are incredibly popular with you know, those those
Speaker 4: kind of voters that maybe the Obama Trump person.
Speaker 3: Or impresses from northern Mississippi, which is you know, has
Speaker 3: some Appalachian character right.
Speaker 4: Right, and incredibly correct, worst state. I mean, there's the
Speaker 4: people there suffer a lot. And yeah, so I mean
Speaker 4: I think FDR style democratic policies as opposed to Biden's
Speaker 4: style democratic policies are probably the way to go.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about Pennsylvania real quick. Speaking of yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so a huge, huge victory for Democrats in the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court race. So they had a five to two majority
Speaker 3: on the Supreme Court, which is just incredibly crue because
Speaker 3: that's the place where election challenges go. This would have
Speaker 3: made it four three, but the Democrat won very comfortably
Speaker 3: against the Republican in a race that saw a lot
Speaker 3: of money spent on both sides. They also flipped the
Speaker 3: Superior Court, which is the court just right under the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court had been Republican controlled. Now it's Democratic controlled.
Speaker 3: And then out in talking about Philadelphia real quick, So
Speaker 3: Philadelphia has two council seats. DC has this too, that
Speaker 3: are reserved for the non majority party because it's such
Speaker 3: a blue area that it would just be all Democrats
Speaker 3: if you didn't put in some rules so that everybody
Speaker 3: gets a trophy. And four years those have been held
Speaker 3: by Republicans. So there's like the two token Republicans on
Speaker 3: the city council. The Working Families Party last election went
Speaker 3: after those two seats. One of them won one of
Speaker 3: them with Kendrick Brooks, she won reelection and they also
Speaker 3: WFP now seize the other one. So you're going to
Speaker 3: have a city council that's Democrats and then Working Families Party.
Speaker 3: Now over in western Pennsylvania, you had two really critical races.
Speaker 3: One was the district attorney race that you talked about.
Speaker 3: So the sixth time, six sixth term prosecutor, kind of
Speaker 3: tough on crime prosecutor, was beaten in the primary by
Speaker 3: a kind of, like you said, a criminal justice reformer.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he was stros funded or not,
Speaker 3: but that type of challenger. He then switched like the
Speaker 3: Buffalo sheriff did, switched parties, did a right in campaign
Speaker 3: to win the Republican nomination, won the Republican nomination, and
Speaker 3: then won the general election by like two points or something.
Speaker 3: So he will be entering his seventh term now as
Speaker 3: continuing to be the tough on crime prosecutor. The real
Speaker 3: win that Republicans wanted was the Allegheny County Executive, which
Speaker 3: is more powerful than Pittsburgh. Mayerican budget of billions oversees
Speaker 3: the elections in Pittsburgh, and Sarah Inamarado. It was a
Speaker 3: berniecrat and had been elected to the state House in
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen along with Summer Lee, with the support of DSA,
Speaker 3: won the Democratic primary. For this race, Republicans nominated this
Speaker 3: guy something Rocky. I forget Joe Rocky. Jo Rocky just
Speaker 3: classic pro business, moderate backslapping former banker.
Speaker 5: Makeup for that character.
Speaker 3: Jeff yass big funder, big Republican funder who spent a
Speaker 3: ton of money on the Supreme Court race, also spent
Speaker 3: a ton of money on Joe Rocky, and he tried
Speaker 3: to make the entire race about Hamas. And obviously it's
Speaker 3: an extra resident issue in Pittsburgh. The Tree of Life
Speaker 3: massacre has made anti Semitism there extraordinarily resident. And Robuster
Speaker 3: was community robust Jewish community, and Innamorato had that association
Speaker 3: with DSA. So Rocky said, I dare you to announce Hamas,
Speaker 3: and she's like, I denounced himas He's like, oh, I
Speaker 3: dare you to denounce DSA. She's like, I left DSA
Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen. I denounced DSA too summerly left in
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, but it was still he's still kind of
Speaker 3: hammered away at GAZA as a key issue, which was,
Speaker 3: you know, it didn't make any sense because Alleghany County
Speaker 3: Executive doesn't. But her response didn't make much sense either.
Speaker 3: Her response was, this is actually about abortion, but the
Speaker 3: Alleghany County Executive does not also have much say politics are.
Speaker 3: What it's really about is taxes, affordable housing, walk, clean eric,
Speaker 3: clean water, Like that's what the Allegheny County Executive actually does.
Speaker 3: But the vote was over abortioning Hamas, it was much
Speaker 3: closer than you would typically have a Democrat, a generic
Speaker 3: Democrat on generic Republic Allegany County race. She's only going
Speaker 3: to win by looks like ten thousand votes or fewer,
Speaker 3: but still now you're going to have a kind of
Speaker 3: Bernie Sanders type who and she's pledging to make affordable
Speaker 3: housing and clean and clean water and access to clean
Speaker 3: air and clean water like her major priorities.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, anybody running for a County executive race
Speaker 4: should probably take heed. Those are good issues to talk
Speaker 4: about with.
Speaker 3: Rocky said he was going to cut property taxes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so if we put a ten up. I think
Speaker 4: this is also just as we kind of wrap this segment,
Speaker 4: this review of everything that went down last night, I
Speaker 4: just want to put the spending up.
Speaker 5: For you to see.
Speaker 4: Republicans were outspent in Kentucky, they were outspent in Virginia,
Speaker 4: they were outspent in Ohio. They did outspend Dems in
Speaker 4: Mississippi by by about a million dollars. They massively overspent
Speaker 4: the Republicans in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race.
Speaker 5: I mean not even close.
Speaker 3: Jeff you asked, he's a step up clearly so cheap here.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, this is like a real problem for
Speaker 4: Republicans obviously getting the donor base mobilized and energized the
Speaker 4: sort of high dollar donor race.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I mean, I just think that's.
Speaker 3: A It's true that ten million for people that don't
Speaker 3: see a ten million for Democrats on the Pennsylvania Supreme
Speaker 3: Court to six point five million. If you're Jeff, ys,
Speaker 3: why just match the ten million?
Speaker 5: Why not?
Speaker 4: I'll just throw it in there see what happens, because
Speaker 4: that really, I mean in local races. I don't think
Speaker 4: it's necessarily true in presidential races, if you look at
Speaker 4: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, I mean it's not quite
Speaker 4: the same. But in local races, when you are blitzing
Speaker 4: the airwaves with messaging that's either true or false when
Speaker 4: it comes to abortion, when it comes to women's rights,
Speaker 4: when it comes to crime, when you're able to do
Speaker 4: that and you can be louder than the other person,
Speaker 4: that does actually make a really big difference in some
Speaker 4: of these smaller down ballot races and in more localized
Speaker 4: races too. So again that isn't to say, you know,
Speaker 4: limiting abortion is wildly popular. I think that, you know,
Speaker 4: people on the sort of pro life, anti abortion side,
Speaker 4: like myself, desperately need to realize that and.
Speaker 5: Reckon with it.
Speaker 4: But they were also wildly outspent, and that could have
Speaker 4: made up some of these margins.
Speaker 5: There's no question about it.
Speaker 4: So now Republicans need to take a long, hard look
Speaker 4: in the mirror. I already saw some comments from pundits
Speaker 4: on Twitter about whether too much money is going to
Speaker 4: Trump's legal battles, whether you know, too much money is
Speaker 4: being mismanaged by the RNC runner. Ronnie McDaniel has been
Speaker 4: ahead of that for a very long time. And you know,
Speaker 4: she's had Trump obviously to contend with as an electoral
Speaker 4: benefit and disadvantage in different places throughout her tenure.
Speaker 5: But these are really bad.
Speaker 4: Results for her. Not that Republicans weren't expecting bad results.
Speaker 3: But it's still bad. Well, I think that was our
Speaker 3: longest a block in history, counterpoints history. You can even
Speaker 3: throw in rising history, and that never never been a
Speaker 3: longer a block than that one.
Speaker 5: So you're welcome.
Speaker 3: Let's move on now to what I think is the
Speaker 3: most morally depraved thing that Congress has done, at least
Speaker 3: in my lifetime, and that is to censure Rashida to
Speaker 3: leave the only Palestinian Americans serving in Congress while the
Speaker 3: US is supporting an ongoing massacre of Palestinians. I saw
Speaker 3: somebody point out on Twitter that the second person ever
Speaker 3: censured by Congress was censured for introducing a resolution proposing
Speaker 3: the abolition of slavery, which you weren't even allowed to
Speaker 3: talk about in Congress. There was a literal gag rule,
Speaker 3: and so for proposing that resolution, they censured person. I
Speaker 3: think the absolute moral depravity on display in the house
Speaker 3: yesterday just leaves me kind of speechless. There was some pushback,
Speaker 3: and so you know, Mark Pokan here has been engaged
Speaker 3: in an ongoing war war of words with a pack.
Speaker 3: He was we were hoping to have him on today
Speaker 3: actually to talk about this. He's scheduling work. We're hoping
Speaker 3: to have him next week. This was wisconstant Democrat who
Speaker 3: has kind of eagerly been taking on the slings and
Speaker 3: arrows from a pack and he's said publicly the one
Speaker 3: reason he's doing is he's If he doesn't do it,
Speaker 3: they're just going to attack mostly you know, women of
Speaker 3: color and serving in the in the in the House
Speaker 3: for Democrats and some men of color as well. Jamal
Speaker 3: Bowman has you know, been a kind of fiery opponent
Speaker 3: of APAC, which is which is recruited, is trying to recruit,
Speaker 3: and it seems like they successfully have recruited a primary
Speaker 3: opponent to him as well. Here he is unleashing on
Speaker 3: on a PAC which is airing ads against him. He says,
Speaker 3: when little kids in my district sit down to watch
Speaker 3: a princess movie, APAC is forcing them to watch lies
Speaker 3: about the worst violence people could possibly do to each other.
Speaker 3: As a father, it makes me sick, one of the things.
Speaker 3: And we could put some of it, put some we
Speaker 3: we'll play some of these in a second. One of
Speaker 3: the things that drove me the craziest about the debate yesterday,
Speaker 3: it's not just I think, just on a free speech issue,
Speaker 3: it's a free speech level. It's outrageous to center. A
Speaker 3: member of Congress, Jamie Raskin made kind of made the
Speaker 3: argument for Democrats on the House floor, and I thought
Speaker 3: he made a good one. He said, if anybody is
Speaker 3: going to censure or discipline a member of Congress for
Speaker 3: their speech, it should be their voters. And he goes
Speaker 3: on and he says, there are eleven members of the
Speaker 3: Chamber who voted to say that Turkey did not commit
Speaker 3: a genocide against Armenia. Should we censure them for that vote?
Speaker 3: And he went on talked about Mike Johnson and his
Speaker 3: views on marriage equality. Should he be censured? And Raskin
Speaker 3: was making the point that Democrats are now going to
Speaker 3: be under extreme pressure from their party's base to centerre
Speaker 3: people return to me, all they've done is just just
Speaker 3: like they've taken impeachment and made it kind of a
Speaker 3: moot power by overusing it. I think, so you get centered.
Speaker 3: Now it's gonna end up becoming a badge of honor
Speaker 3: if because what it means is that you angered the
Speaker 3: other parties. So just on a free speech level, it
Speaker 3: was really offensive to me. But the other level was
Speaker 3: the way that they weren't even centering her for what
Speaker 3: she believed, Like they kept twisting her words and saying,
Speaker 3: we're centering her because she supports AMAS and she supports
Speaker 3: the eradication of Israel. If she did, then even if
Speaker 3: she did that, I think on a free speech level,
Speaker 3: you should not censure her like voter out of Congress
Speaker 3: if you don't like that. But that's also not what
Speaker 3: she says, Like she has condemned Tomas, she does not
Speaker 3: support the eradication of Israel. And so you wound up
Speaker 3: with a bunch of these Republican speeches of saying, well,
Speaker 3: this is how we interpret what she's saying, regardless of
Speaker 3: the fact that she says that that's not what she's saying. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then we're gonna condemn and censure that interpretation of it.
Speaker 4: I think it's entirely reasonable for Jews to hear from
Speaker 4: the River to the Sea and have incredible sensitivities about it,
Speaker 4: because obviously it's appropriated and used by people who do
Speaker 4: actually really want to, you know, in some cases completely
Speaker 4: eradicate Jews and in other cases eradicate Israel in a
Speaker 4: way that it's.
Speaker 5: Like, well, where do Jewish people go? Are they safe?
Speaker 4: So I completely understand heightened sensitivities around from the River
Speaker 4: to the Sea.
Speaker 5: She also actually a lot of people forget about this.
Speaker 5: Back in twenty twenty, she had to like.
Speaker 4: Undo a retweet of from the River to the Sea,
Speaker 4: which if you are a Palestinian, a pro Palestinian activist
Speaker 4: in the United States or basically anywhere, and you are
Speaker 4: a big voice that's interacting with all these other accounts,
Speaker 4: it's such a common phrase from the river to the sea,
Speaker 4: and people can argue. Again, people with I think reason
Speaker 4: heightened sensitivities about that can argue what that means. But
Speaker 4: in the same way, and I agree with Jamie Raskin
Speaker 4: on this, in the same way that we often talk
Speaker 4: about I talk all the time about how the House
Speaker 4: of Representatives we lose sight of the fact that it
Speaker 4: is essentially supposed to be representative. It's supposed to be
Speaker 4: where voters who have ideas across the spectrum because they
Speaker 4: live in different geographic locations, are given a voice in Congress.
Speaker 4: And sometimes that means it feels icky to people, and
Speaker 4: that can go for Republicans and it can go for Democrats.
Speaker 4: Rashida Taleb represents a heavily Muslim district in Michigan where
Speaker 4: what she's doing on this issue is fully representative of
Speaker 4: her constituents. So don't censure her. Make this a political question.
Speaker 4: You can censure somebody if they're not representing their constituents
Speaker 4: and they're being sort of wildly hateful and bigoted in
Speaker 4: a way that's different than what they got elected on.
Speaker 4: This is completely representative of her constituents. There's no question
Speaker 4: about it. You're going to need to beat her at
Speaker 4: the ballot box. I think essential is a waste of time,
Speaker 4: and I think it's interesting exercise and virtue signaling, right, And.
Speaker 3: There's a couple interesting points to make there. One is
Speaker 3: that the Lecude platform that Yahu's party includes from the
Speaker 3: River to the Sea in its platform, and it says
Speaker 3: that Israeli sovereignty extends from the Israeli perspective from the yeah,
Speaker 3: so what and then Hamas and its charter would say
Speaker 3: that Israeli's Jewish people need to be pushed out, which
Speaker 3: of the entire thing.
Speaker 4: And by the way, I think that's why there's heightened
Speaker 4: sensitivity is among pro Palestinian people about when you hear
Speaker 4: Israeli lawmakers, for example, or you hear Maxim Miller talking
Speaker 4: about turning Gaza into a parking lot, it's an eradication
Speaker 4: of the Protestinian state, and people say, where are we
Speaker 4: supposed to go? So I feel like those heightened sensitivities
Speaker 4: are completely understandable when you hear people talking about either
Speaker 4: eradicating Gaza or eradicating Israel.
Speaker 3: Right, and what Talib says she means and what so
Speaker 3: many other people do mean by that is that everyone
Speaker 3: living from the river to the sea should have dignity,
Speaker 3: the franchise, and the same civil rights as anybody else
Speaker 3: living in there. There are some supporters of Israel who
Speaker 3: say that that would destroy Israel, and there are other
Speaker 3: people say, well, then what is Israel If the people
Speaker 3: who are under its control can't have basic civil rights?
Speaker 3: How can you support that? So what she is standing
Speaker 3: for is basically a one state solution in which everyone
Speaker 3: in this area is a part of a democratic polity.
Speaker 3: That doesn't necessarily mean that it can't have a Jewish
Speaker 3: character in its constitution. It doesn't mean that Jewish people
Speaker 3: from around the world can't still have Israel as a refuge,
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that Hebrew wouldn't be the national language. It
Speaker 3: would mean that a Palestinian, just by virtue of being
Speaker 3: a Palestinian, would not have lesser rights than an Israeli settler,
Speaker 3: like living right now next to them, that the settlers
Speaker 3: would not be able to just seize their seize their homes.
Speaker 3: That if a Palestinian is committed, is accused of a crime,
Speaker 3: that the Palestinian would go to a civil court and
Speaker 3: have rights in court, rather than, as currently is the
Speaker 3: case for most is put into a military court and
Speaker 3: held an indefinite administrative detention with no rights whatsoever, or
Speaker 3: just executed.
Speaker 4: And it's it's sort of impossible to envision the path
Speaker 4: from point A to point B to this hypothetical one
Speaker 4: state solution. And again I get why that's they're heightened
Speaker 4: sensitivities on that because it's like, well, what does that
Speaker 4: look like, is are we talking about the what did
Speaker 4: y'all think decolonized meant?
Speaker 5: Tweet?
Speaker 4: Because you know, there was just a civilian massacre and
Speaker 4: you know, perpetrated by essentially the de facto government of Gaza,
Speaker 4: and so I get it. I totally understand why people
Speaker 4: are have heightened sensitivities around this, and I think as
Speaker 4: a congresswoman, she is obviously sort of sensitive to those
Speaker 4: sensitivities because she I think she took the video down
Speaker 4: and she undid the retweet again. She to be clear,
Speaker 4: she's not the one who said from.
Speaker 5: The river to the sea.
Speaker 4: She tweeted a video of people chanting from the river
Speaker 4: to the sea, which I also think is a distinction.
Speaker 4: But either way, the point is Republicans and pro Israel
Speaker 4: Democrats want to have it both ways. They want to
Speaker 4: say there's this shocking uptick and anti Semitic sentiment, which
Speaker 4: you know, I think there's a good reason to believe that.
Speaker 4: They want to say there's this shocking anti Israel sentiment
Speaker 4: around the country, but also, we can't have this in
Speaker 4: the House of Representatives. Well, if there's a shocking amount
Speaker 4: of it in the country, it's going to be in
Speaker 4: the House of Representatives, and you're going to have to
Speaker 4: defeat it rhetorically. You're going to have to defeat it politically.
Speaker 4: You're going to have to grapple with it. You can't
Speaker 4: just censure it and pretend that it doesn't exist and
Speaker 4: that it's outside the bounds of what normal Americans think.
Speaker 4: Because are people chanting in defada in the streets. That's
Speaker 4: something you have to deal with as a politician.
Speaker 3: Right, and which is not what she's doing, right, And yeah,
Speaker 3: this endless effort to kind of transform criticism of what
Speaker 3: Israel doing into anti semitism rather than address head on
Speaker 3: what Israel's doing. The idea that this is the debate
Speaker 3: that the House was happening while people are starving. People
Speaker 3: are dying not just under rubble, but you know, from
Speaker 3: disease from not having access to food and water for
Speaker 3: more than a month at this point. So but let's
Speaker 3: play some of the debate from the House floor yesterday.
Speaker 7: I can't believe I have to say this, but Palestinian
Speaker 7: people are not disposable.
Speaker 8: Right, We are human beings just like anyone else my city.
Speaker 7: My grandmother, like all Palestinians, just.
Speaker 8: Wants to live her life with freedom, and human dignity.
Speaker 7: We all deserve speaking enough to save lives, mister Chair,
Speaker 7: No matter faith, no matter ethnicity, should not be controversial
Speaker 7: in this chamber. The cries of the Palestinian and Palestinian
Speaker 7: and Israeli children sound no different to me. Why what
Speaker 7: I don't understand is why the cries of Palestinians.
Speaker 8: Sound different to you all.
Speaker 7: Seventy one percent of Michigan Democrats support a ceasefire, So
Speaker 7: you can try to censor me, but you can't silence
Speaker 7: their voices. I urge my colleagues to join with the
Speaker 7: majority of Americans and support a ceasefire now.
Speaker 5: To save as many lives as possible.
Speaker 7: President Biden must listen to and represent all of us,
Speaker 7: not just some of us. I urge the President to
Speaker 7: have the courage to call for a ceasefire in the
Speaker 7: end of killings.
Speaker 5: Thank you, mister speaker.
Speaker 9: It is glaring hypocrisy when you have Republicans on the
Speaker 9: other side of the isle trying to create definitions and
Speaker 9: say Rashida wants to annihilate people. When Max Miller himself
Speaker 9: went on TV and said, we're turning Gaza into a
Speaker 9: parking lot and we want to annihilate Palestinians, nobody condemned
Speaker 9: to him on that side of the isle. What is
Speaker 9: true here is that every single one of them has
Speaker 9: not acknowledged the fact that Palestinians are dying in the
Speaker 9: tens of thousands. But we'll continue to say it is
Speaker 9: us who are not acknowledging humanity.
Speaker 5: Washita will stand this true.
Speaker 3: General Lady's time has expired movement.
Speaker 5: We'll continue for liberation until.
Speaker 3: Everything General Lady's time has expired. Has the right gentleman
Speaker 3: from Maryland is recognized.
Speaker 4: And so we also have clips of trip Roy or
Speaker 4: we have video of trip Roy from the floor yesterday.
Speaker 5: We can run that right now too.
Speaker 10: What we're talking about is whether a member of the
Speaker 10: United States House of Representatives, whether a member of this
Speaker 10: body representing this nation, is justified in putting forward a
Speaker 10: defense of the actions of Hamas terrorists that murdered innocent
Speaker 10: Israeli citizens, is holding United States citizens in Israeli's hostage
Speaker 10: and in her own language, was defending On October eighth,
Speaker 10: they mirre twenty four hours into the brutal and barbaric
Speaker 10: attacks in which babies were beheaded, babies were placed into ovens,
Speaker 10: literally moms were raped in a house whither babies were
Speaker 10: put in an oven, a documented account, video evidence, and
Speaker 10: this is dismissed as resistance to an apartheid state.
Speaker 4: So I mean, I'm I think I'm with Chip Roy's
Speaker 4: Freedom Caucus colleague Thomas mass in voting against the censure
Speaker 4: thing that was. I think there was a handful of
Speaker 4: Republicans that voted with some of the Democrats to a
Speaker 4: handful of Democrats. I think twenty two Democrats that did
Speaker 4: vote to censure received Rasheeda to lead a much smaller
Speaker 4: number of Republicans who voted with Democrats not to do it.
Speaker 4: And yeah, that obviously ended up passing last night. Ryan,
Speaker 4: you actually have your book here on the desk, which
Speaker 4: it's got the faces of some of the.
Speaker 5: People you just heard from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yours hasn't showed up yet.
Speaker 4: It's a beautiful hard copy of beautiful cover. But as
Speaker 4: somebody who's covered very closely the squad, it's a perfect
Speaker 4: book title for a long time now. It's a nice book.
Speaker 4: What did you make of their exchanges yesterday was really
Speaker 4: personal on the house floor, just among Rashida, salihan Omar.
Speaker 4: What did that tell us about some of those dynamics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and for people who were just listening on the
Speaker 3: podcast worrying while you hear kind of to leave choking
Speaker 3: up Illhanomark kind of comes up and puts a hand
Speaker 3: on her shoulder. You see Primila Jayapaul behind her wiping,
Speaker 3: wiping tears away. This is you know, they've they've been
Speaker 3: forged in this, in this fight with Apak, which dates
Speaker 3: back to their rise. Like the books, bizarrely half the
Speaker 3: book really focuses on this, this fight over Israel Palestine issues,
Speaker 3: when that is not at all the book that I
Speaker 3: set out to write. But going back kind of through
Speaker 3: their trajectory in Congress, it was the case that that
Speaker 3: made up about like half of their struggle and reshaped
Speaker 3: it through the way that APAC and DMFI entered into
Speaker 3: the kind of the democratic primaries in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: making sure that anybody who was remotely critical of Israel
Speaker 3: was either pushed out or reframed their position completely. And
Speaker 3: so Democratic Majority for Israel, which has been so influential,
Speaker 3: was founded in February twenty nineteen as a very direct
Speaker 3: and immediate and specific response to elan Omar and Rashida
Speaker 3: Telib being sworn into Congress, not anything they did, their presence,
Speaker 3: like the fact that they had made it into Congress
Speaker 3: was enough to push back on them. Then you had
Speaker 3: the first six months of twenty nineteen just devoted to
Speaker 3: the question of whether or not elan Omar should be
Speaker 3: censured for various criticisms that she made, yet that famous
Speaker 3: Benjamin's tweet that she did apology that she did apologize for,
Speaker 3: And so the amount of time was consumed by this
Speaker 3: issue was shocking. But to see it's kind of climax
Speaker 3: here with this attempt at ethnic cleansing of Gaza, I
Speaker 3: think shows that what they were going through was not
Speaker 3: just made up like this. This is a real This
Speaker 3: is a real thing kind of reshaping democratic politics. And
Speaker 3: when we talk about ethnic cleansing, I'm curious for your
Speaker 3: take on this. It's not just debating a term and
Speaker 3: whether or not this whether or not the word genocide
Speaker 3: should be used or not. It's like you have people
Speaker 3: who have studied genocide for decades, academics, you have people
Speaker 3: at the United Nations who have looked at this extremely closely,
Speaker 3: all of them saying that the question of intent is
Speaker 3: always the hardest to prove. But what Israeli officials have
Speaker 3: been saying publicly about their intent basically to clear out Gaza,
Speaker 3: creates the predicate for out for genuine, serious allegations of genocide,
Speaker 3: which the United States and Israel are both actively participating in.
Speaker 3: And it's just it's one of the more shocking things.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: It's not that it's necessarily out of character for the
Speaker 3: United States support something like this, yet seeing it unfold
Speaker 3: has just been shocking. It feels like a piece of
Speaker 3: means died, like watching this, watching this unfold, and to
Speaker 3: hear the Biden administration say we would we think that
Speaker 3: they're going overboard here, this is too much, but there's
Speaker 3: just nothing we can do. Oh and also let's make
Speaker 3: sure that they have tens of billions of dollars with
Speaker 3: no strings attached. Is just insulting through the kind of
Speaker 3: you know, ethical and moral fiber of everybody who's just
Speaker 3: watching this unfold and feeling a sense of complicity in it.
Speaker 4: They also want to quote blank check and no strings
Speaker 4: attached in Ukraine, that's sort of how we've run our
Speaker 4: foreign policy, you know, recently. And yeah, I completely disagree
Speaker 4: on the question of genocidal intent. That said Shadi Hamid
Speaker 4: had a really good at the Washing Post, had a
Speaker 4: really good tweet about the way that even we prosecuted
Speaker 4: a bad war and Rock with precision compared to so
Speaker 4: if you thought that war lacked precision. You know, obviously
Speaker 4: Gaza is a difficult situation for Israel to mount any
Speaker 4: type of response without bringing civilian casualties to staggering levels.
Speaker 4: But even so, the difference in precision in Iraq and
Speaker 4: in Gaza and the way those wars have been prosecuted
Speaker 4: is serious, and that's something I think, you know, lawmakers
Speaker 4: who are talking so much about aid to Israel need
Speaker 4: to seriously consider. And actually we're gonna talk about that
Speaker 4: in the next block. My final question for you, Ryan,
Speaker 4: just because you've covered this so closely, is they've been
Speaker 4: able to paper over these huge personal divisions between a
Speaker 4: Rashida to leave and a Hakim Jeffreys on the question
Speaker 4: of Israel, betweening ilham Omar and a Nancy Pelosi on
Speaker 4: the question of Israel. Is this a moment where you
Speaker 4: have Democrats crossing the aisle actually to censure Rashida to leave,
Speaker 4: where perhaps the squad finally goes full freedom Caucus and
Speaker 4: totally breaks with leadership or will they still be able
Speaker 4: to work together going forward?
Speaker 3: And I don't think so, because leadership did not break
Speaker 3: with them on that. And the leader of the kind
Speaker 3: of the democratic forces who sided with Republicans to censure
Speaker 3: to leave was Josh Gotttheimer, who had multiple chapters are
Speaker 3: dedicated to in this book, and he has been their
Speaker 3: most consistent antagonists throughout his time there, and he was
Speaker 3: kind of one of the first to jump out and
Speaker 3: say that he's going to support the center of Rashida
Speaker 3: Talib here. I do think that it is giving them.
Speaker 3: I think it's giving people around the country something to
Speaker 3: believe in again, you know, who had lost faith that
Speaker 3: there was anybody fighting for justice in Congress, And so
Speaker 3: I do think that I do think that could be
Speaker 3: one of the developments here. But also so what I
Speaker 3: think people need to understand, we love in the US
Speaker 3: here to abstract away from the reality of the depravity
Speaker 3: of what we do around the world by talking about
Speaker 3: words and phrases and politics and horse race instead, But
Speaker 3: that doesn't change the reality on the ground. And I
Speaker 3: think that the devastation and the death toll in Gaza
Speaker 3: that we're going to finally have to accept as real
Speaker 3: in the coming weeks and months will change the way
Speaker 3: that people see this.
Speaker 4: I think social media is completely undercutting the BLOB's ability
Speaker 4: to talk in abstractions. And when you look at public
Speaker 4: polling on Gaza and Palstins, especially especially among the youngest people,
Speaker 4: which has been shocking to a lot of proosial folks,
Speaker 4: a lot of the Republican Party, you have to understand
Speaker 4: that these devastating images of suffering in Gaza are flooding
Speaker 4: people's social media feeds and that is really hurting I
Speaker 4: think people's ability to talk about these things and abstractions.
Speaker 4: By the way, the same thing happened on October seventh,
Speaker 4: as some of these masters were being a live stress.
Speaker 4: The abstractions are getting much more difficult, I think for
Speaker 4: the foreign policy elite.
Speaker 5: To carry on with.
Speaker 3: And I think what happened on October seventh with some
Speaker 3: people who either defended what Hamas did or didn't didn't
Speaker 3: denounce it, is that they had such tightly curated kind
Speaker 3: of feeds that they didn't even know and because they
Speaker 3: didn't have the kind of curiosity or the willingness to
Speaker 3: kind of look outside their feed because they might not
Speaker 3: want to hear the answer to what had actually happened,
Speaker 3: and then they're locked into a position and pride and
Speaker 3: ego kind I won't let them back down from that.
Speaker 3: But again, we're talking about people who are at the
Speaker 3: fringes of power, like way out, like just people who
Speaker 3: can't even get a hearing inside DSAY for the most part,
Speaker 3: rather than what we have on the other side, people
Speaker 3: like Congress and Mass, who ilhan Omar talked about in
Speaker 3: her speech yesterday, who has said I would caution my
Speaker 3: colleagues to use the phrase innocent civilians because you wouldn't
Speaker 3: use the phrase innocent Nazi civilians, And who has said
Speaker 3: that Israel ought to turn Gaza into a parking lot.
Speaker 5: That was Max Miller.
Speaker 3: Oh, sorry, Max Miller. What did Mass say? Oh? Mass
Speaker 3: said the first thing, that Miller said the other thing.
Speaker 3: So this is two members of two separate members of Congress.
Speaker 3: These are not anonymous people on a university chat board.
Speaker 4: That's actually a transition, I think to the next block
Speaker 4: about how these are translating into the funding questions, because
Speaker 4: Ilhan Omar did invoke yesterday what Max Miller said on
Speaker 4: the floor and said, how dare you censure Rashida Shalib
Speaker 4: when nobody has sort of word about Max Miller claiming
Speaker 4: we're going to turn Gaza into a parking lot, and yeah,
Speaker 4: the I guess we can put We're about to play
Speaker 4: some some clips of a bitter fight that broke out
Speaker 4: on the Senate yesterday that did not get a lot
Speaker 4: of attention, but is super instructive because Republicans are trying
Speaker 4: to separate is AID to Israel from a to Ukraine.
Speaker 3: And the context for this is a wild statement from
Speaker 3: out of Ukraine from President Voladim Zelenski. I don't even
Speaker 3: want to set it up. Let's just play this clip
Speaker 3: from President Lenski.
Speaker 10: If you can give us, give us some financial support, okay, Okay,
Speaker 10: Please give us a credit and we will give you
Speaker 10: back money.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 5: The idea is like your uncle at Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3: Like please, like the like the idea that Ukraine would
Speaker 3: wage a stalemated war, stalemated at best war on credit,
Speaker 3: which they would then presumably pay back by selling off
Speaker 3: what maining state assets they've held onto since the collapse
Speaker 3: of the Soviet Union. Yeah, sounds like the worst possible
Speaker 3: deal for regular Ukrainians that you could possibly conjure. Up absolutely,
Speaker 3: And people say, well, what's the alternative that Russia conquers
Speaker 3: the entire thing. No, that's not the alternative. The alternative
Speaker 3: is a ceasefire and you enter into negotiations. Yeah, like,
Speaker 3: which was what should have happened, you know, in the
Speaker 3: very in the very beginning. Yeah, I was thinking for
Speaker 3: better conditions.
Speaker 4: I was thinking this week actually about something you said
Speaker 4: a couple of years ago, or I think maybe you
Speaker 4: said it a year ago, about you know, peace negotiations
Speaker 4: that had been scuttled. And I think at the time
Speaker 4: it was enough Tolly Bennett who had broken some information
Speaker 4: about the West scuttling America, scuttling peace negotiations in Ukraine
Speaker 4: that even Zelenski had been open to. And then looking
Speaker 4: back and looking at you know, we have a hard
Speaker 4: time knowing the death tolls. But even in that wonderful
Speaker 4: Time magazine piece, and they say wonderful because it was
Speaker 4: so insightful in a way that I don't think about
Speaker 4: what I wanted it to be.
Speaker 5: Into the war, some.
Speaker 4: Estimates of one hundred thous casualties at least on each
Speaker 4: side of this, how many of those could have been
Speaker 4: avoided if the peace negotiations hadn't been scuttled, and how
Speaker 4: many if we're going to talk about this a year
Speaker 4: from now and peace negotiations start in earnest, could have
Speaker 4: been avoided or could be avoided in the next year
Speaker 4: if we finally recognize that this is a stalemate. So
Speaker 4: in the Senate, Republicans tried to divorce the Ukraine Aid
Speaker 4: from the Israel Aid. They're also trying to tie it
Speaker 4: to a border bill that in my from my perspective,
Speaker 4: we probably disagree on this. It deals a lot with asylum,
Speaker 4: it deals with funding to a wall, but I think
Speaker 4: probably the biggest thing in the bill is asylum. It
Speaker 4: was part of a bill that was passed by the
Speaker 4: House recently. That is something they're also trying to tie
Speaker 4: to the Israel funding, to Ukraine funding. They're trying to
Speaker 4: bring it all together. This came to a head yesterday
Speaker 4: with Jeene Shaheen, Chris fin holland Democrats and the Senate
Speaker 4: freaking out and Roger Marshall and JD Vance kind of
Speaker 4: giving it back to them. So let's play this mashup
Speaker 4: of Democrats in the Senate yesterday.
Speaker 1: We the United States must support our friends and democracies
Speaker 1: that are under attack from brutal adversaries. That means ensuring
Speaker 1: that Israel has the right to defend itself in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of the brutal October seventh attack of Hamas. It
Speaker 1: also means ensuring that the people of Ukraine can defend
Speaker 1: themselves against Putin's rank aggression. This proposal on the floor
Speaker 1: today is tantamount to surrendering to Putin's aggression. This is
Speaker 1: waving the white flag. All of us were gathered in
Speaker 1: the old Senate Chamber, most of us recently when President
Speaker 1: Zelenski addressed the United States Senate. President Zelenski was very
Speaker 1: clear that the Ukrainians would continue to fight on no
Speaker 1: matter what, But he was equally clear that without the
Speaker 1: support of the United States and our allies, Putin has
Speaker 1: the upper hand.
Speaker 6: The Ukrainian people are not only defending their land and freedom,
Speaker 6: they're fighting for the preservation of liberal democracies around the world.
Speaker 6: What some of my colleagues overlook in their singular campaign
Speaker 6: and support of Israel is just how closely the fate
Speaker 6: of Ukraine and Israel are tied together, and there's one
Speaker 6: country which links both of those countries together.
Speaker 5: That country is a rant.
Speaker 4: I'm sortain that is insane. Let's hear from Senator Vance,
Speaker 4: who is responding.
Speaker 11: To this leagus may forget that a matter of weeks ago,
Speaker 11: a matter of months ago, there were people in this chamber,
Speaker 11: there were people in the United States of America, demanding
Speaker 11: that the State of Israel give money and weapons to
Speaker 11: the Ukrainians, money and weapons that the Israelis are now
Speaker 11: using this very moment to defend themselves. The idea that
Speaker 11: these policies are not in tension with one another, The
Speaker 11: idea that what happens in in Russia and Ukraine is
Speaker 11: separate from what happens in Israel, is not just obvious,
Speaker 11: it is common sense, and it has been borne out
Speaker 11: by the reality of the last couple of weeks. Now,
Speaker 11: my colleagues would like to collapse these packages too. Many
Speaker 11: of my colleagues would like to collapse these packages because
Speaker 11: they would like to use Israel as a political fig
Speaker 11: leaf for the President's Ukraine policy. But the President's Ukraine policy,
Speaker 11: just like the Israeli policy, should be debated. We should
Speaker 11: talk about it, we should discuss it, We should separate
Speaker 11: the costs and benefits and analyze them as distinct policies.
Speaker 11: Because That is what the American people deserve of their legislature.
Speaker 12: And they know full well what they came up with
Speaker 12: as a total non starter. Instead of putting together common
Speaker 12: sense border policies that can pass in divided government, Senate
Speaker 12: Republicans basically copy and pasted large chunks of the House's
Speaker 12: radical HR two bill. And that's their asking price for
Speaker 12: hell in Ukraine. Making Ukraine funding conditional on the hard
Speaker 12: right border policies that can't ever pass Congress is a
Speaker 12: huge mistake by our Republican colleagues. By tying Ukraine to border,
Speaker 12: Republicans are sadly making it harder, much harder for us
Speaker 12: to help Ukraine in their fight against Putin. It sends
Speaker 12: a terrible signal to both our friends and adversaries. It
Speaker 12: will be a moment that history will remember.
Speaker 4: Okay, so you heard Truck Schumer following Jdvans there, and
Speaker 4: typically they're talking about two different things.
Speaker 5: JD.
Speaker 4: Vance and Roger Marshall tried to vote unanimous consent yesterday
Speaker 4: on a build a house passed last week that gives
Speaker 4: fourteen billion dollars to Israel and it's paid for by
Speaker 4: cuts to the IRS. Twelve Democrats voted for it on
Speaker 4: the House side. That was obviously going to be very
Speaker 4: difficult for any Senate Democrats to do. But what you
Speaker 4: heard wasn't so much opposition to the IRS funding cuts.
Speaker 4: You heard from Jean Shaheen and you're hearing this also
Speaker 4: from Truck Schumer talking about the border that is a
Speaker 4: separate initiative, which says, okay, Biden, you want us to
Speaker 4: have money for both Israel and Ukraine tied together, then
Speaker 4: you're also going to make these changes to the asylum process.
Speaker 4: That argument that this is all interconnected, thus it must
Speaker 4: be funded at the same level.
Speaker 5: Ryan, what do you make of it?
Speaker 3: And I think the reason they didn't criticize the IRS
Speaker 3: funding portion of this is because then Republicans will say, okay, fine,
Speaker 3: we'll get rid of the IRS funding and we'll just
Speaker 3: give the money, yes, you know, to Israel, or we
Speaker 3: will find some other way to pay for Israel. Funny,
Speaker 3: because it's to your point, that's not their main objection.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a non starter. The IRS stuff is
Speaker 3: a non starter, But their main objection is that it's
Speaker 3: not collapsed together, that they want to move Ukraine money
Speaker 3: and Israel money at the same time.
Speaker 4: They know Israel's popular, they know Ukraine is lose waning
Speaker 4: in popularity, so if they can tie it to Israel,
Speaker 4: they know it has a better chance of passing.
Speaker 3: But what's interesting is that they could probably pass both.
Speaker 3: Probably like there is there is growing opposition to Ukraine
Speaker 3: funding in the Republican Party, there's not a lot of
Speaker 3: evidence that there's a lot of opposition to it among Democrats,
Speaker 3: even on the left, And so there are enough Republicans
Speaker 3: that could probably move it through. Now they're insisting on
Speaker 3: But I'd be curious for your take on that. You
Speaker 3: know the Republican Party better than me, But now they're
Speaker 3: insisting on tying it to these border policies. And I
Speaker 3: think Democrats would actually love to be dragged, kicking and
Speaker 3: screaming towards some tough immigration policy, but not that stuff.
Speaker 3: Like there's some there are things that they would like
Speaker 3: to have done so that the political issue is taken
Speaker 3: off the table a little bit. Yeah, without their fingerprints
Speaker 3: being on it. Yeah, but that's not it.
Speaker 5: It's like Republicans on abortion.
Speaker 3: And do Republicans want like I think some Republicans like
Speaker 3: the issue. I think they don't want to solve it.
Speaker 4: The White House, interestingly enough, has signaled some willingness to
Speaker 4: work on potential border policies. So that's kind of an
Speaker 4: interesting negotiating chip, especially because the House is so I mean,
Speaker 4: it's such a tight majority lead in the House of Representatives,
Speaker 4: and the White House knows that they know they desperately
Speaker 4: want to get funding for both Israel and Ukraine. I
Speaker 4: think the real bargaining chip within the immigration bill that
Speaker 4: HR two that was basically as trick Schomers had copy
Speaker 4: and pasted, is going to be DAKA is going to
Speaker 4: be asylum for people who are brought here as children.
Speaker 4: That's going to be I think where Republicans and Democrats
Speaker 4: might be able to find common ground if the White
Speaker 4: House actually decides to play ball on this question, which
Speaker 4: might be its best option going forward because of the
Speaker 4: way the House of Representatives is and to your point,
Speaker 4: a lot of people on the right see Ukraine funding
Speaker 4: as Mike Johnson's big litmus test. How is he going
Speaker 4: to be a speaker? That will be determined by how
Speaker 4: he handles this question of resisting blob pressures to continue
Speaker 4: keep the spigot running with Ukraine. Even Kevin McCarthy was
Speaker 4: sort of further right on that than most of the
Speaker 4: Republican party establishments. So I mean, could they probably pass something, Yes,
Speaker 4: because even Mike Johnson and even Senate or even House Republicans,
Speaker 4: freedomc coccus people understand that there there can be room
Speaker 4: for some Ukraine funding. It's just this keeping the pigot
Speaker 4: on to the degree that it is on with these
Speaker 4: funding levels that they're resisting. So if they come to
Speaker 4: the table, they can get something done. It might be
Speaker 4: having to come to the table on border stuff though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, both parties love war, so don't bet against military
Speaker 3: funding making it throw never less you want, unless you
Speaker 3: want to lose money.
Speaker 4: Ran speaking of that sort of two party consensus and
Speaker 4: the two party norm being broken, this is stunning, and
Speaker 4: Sager is the first person I actually saw a pick
Speaker 4: up on this.
Speaker 3: Everybody actually read the poll that the New York Times did.
Speaker 4: He decided to dig into the cross tabs, and everybody
Speaker 4: would talking about the Times Siena poll. It was rattling
Speaker 4: through the Beltway just everyone was focused on the numbers
Speaker 4: of Biden hemorrhaging support from black voters, for example, and
Speaker 4: him being down in all of these swing states. Sager
Speaker 4: looks at this and we can put the first element
Speaker 4: up on the screen and realizes it says something fascinating
Speaker 4: about Robert F. Kennedy Junior's bid for the presidency. This
Speaker 4: New York Times poll found him running it really tight.
Speaker 5: Margins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the top line has him, I don't have it
Speaker 3: in front of it. Was thirty five for Trump, thirty
Speaker 3: three for Biden was a twenty four.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So to repeat in case you think that you misheard me, Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is in six battleground states. Yeah, Trump at thirty
Speaker 3: five percent, Biden at thirty three percent, which is closer
Speaker 3: to Trump than Biden was without Kennedy in. And with
Speaker 3: Kennedy in, he was pulling twenty four percent of the vote.
Speaker 3: That is higher than Ross Parro ever polled.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Soccer pointed it out. He never broke the twenty
Speaker 4: percent threshold in polling.
Speaker 3: I feel like I remember him breaking it before he
Speaker 3: Paro did this bizarre thing where he was doing extremely
Speaker 3: well and then he dropped out because he said that
Speaker 3: like Democrats had threatened his daughter's a wedding or something
Speaker 3: like that sounds right, And then months later he jumped
Speaker 3: back in and people were like, Okay, we knew you
Speaker 3: were a little bit weird, but now we're like really confused.
Speaker 5: He ends up with about nineteen percent, ended up.
Speaker 3: At nineteen percent, and a lot of people think that
Speaker 3: that helped elect Bill Clinton.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, yeah, it's hard to Yeah, those numbers are pretty
Speaker 4: that's a pretty good.
Speaker 3: Case because it's hard to know exactly who they would
Speaker 3: have gone for. But yeah, I think that's right. Clinton
Speaker 3: ended up with like forty three percent of the vote
Speaker 3: and won the White House. And so you already have
Speaker 3: Rfk Junior polling higher than Ross Perrot kind of ever did.
Speaker 3: And he's within nine points of Biden and eleven points
Speaker 3: of Trump. And if he can get some like an
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, David Sacks, these other tech billionaires that love
Speaker 3: him to fund him getting on the ballot across the
Speaker 3: country costs a lot, but you know, it's dropping the
Speaker 3: bucket for these guys. Then he's on the ballot, and
Speaker 3: if the polling shows that he's not a spoiler but
Speaker 3: could actually win, it becomes a wild contest completely because
Speaker 3: when seventy percent of the country roughly is telling you
Speaker 3: that they do not want a Biden Trump rematch, and
Speaker 3: you tell them, too bad, You're getting a Biden Trump rematch,
Speaker 3: and then you get a guy named RFK Junior on
Speaker 3: the ballot, and then you're told he's actually viable.
Speaker 4: Huge name recognition right off the bat, automatically.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent name recognition basically. And then you have
Speaker 3: the combination of the people who voted for Trump in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen as a middle finger to the system because
Speaker 3: they don't like it. They just want to flip it over. Right,
Speaker 3: do those people go back to Trump or do those
Speaker 3: people flip it over again by going up RFK Junior?
Speaker 3: Now it's wild.
Speaker 5: Well, and another thing, this is D two.
Speaker 4: We can put this up on the screen that was
Speaker 4: pointed out when you look further at these cross tabs
Speaker 4: RFK Junior and this isn't actually really that surprising, but
Speaker 4: he beats both Trump and Biden among voters under forty five.
Speaker 5: In these six swing states.
Speaker 4: So if you're looking at again Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada,
Speaker 4: and Wisconsin, he is in the lead with voters eighteen
Speaker 4: through twenty nine, so people aged eighteen to twenty nine,
Speaker 4: he has thirty four percent level of support, and then
Speaker 4: a thirty one percent level of support with thirty to
Speaker 4: forty four year olds, so from the ages of eighteen
Speaker 4: to forty four, those are great numbers. Trump with those
Speaker 4: eighteen to twenty nine year olds is at twenty nine percent,
Speaker 4: so he's losing to RFK Junior by five points. Biden
Speaker 4: is at thirty percent, so he's losing the RFK Junior
Speaker 4: by four points. With those eighteen to twenty nine year
Speaker 4: old I mean again, even in the thirty to forty
Speaker 4: four percent range or thirty to forty four year old range,
Speaker 4: Trump and Biden are each at thirty percent. RFK Junior
Speaker 4: is at thirty one percent, so he's winning with voters
Speaker 4: in swing states up to the age of forty four
Speaker 4: years old.
Speaker 3: And the assumption among the consultant class is always that
Speaker 3: as you get closer to the election, the third party
Speaker 3: candidate dwindles in support as people realize that they don't
Speaker 3: have any chance. So that'll be the key question, like
Speaker 3: when people go to vote, do they think he actually
Speaker 3: has a chance. And if they think he has zero chance,
Speaker 3: then a lot of the people who are telling pollsters
Speaker 3: that they're going to support RFK Junior as they kind
Speaker 3: of protest to those pollsters, end up saying, well, okay,
Speaker 3: if it's between Biden or Trump, here's the person that
Speaker 3: I prefer out of those two. But if they go
Speaker 3: into the poles thinking that it's actually live three way rays,
Speaker 3: you know, who knows what they end up doing. And
Speaker 3: it is fascinating that he does appear to be pulling
Speaker 3: more votes from Trump than from Biden, Like he seems
Speaker 3: to be a net benefit to Biden unless he beats Biden.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the thing I was Yeah, the thing I
Speaker 4: was just going to say is, actually, I think that's
Speaker 4: probably one of the most interesting things about the RFK
Speaker 4: junior candidacy is that as soon as he announced he
Speaker 4: was running independent, the Republican Party started sending out like
Speaker 4: that day it was Columbus Day. In my inbox, I'm
Speaker 4: seeing from the rnc OPO on OURFKA Junior. And obviously
Speaker 4: he'd been sort of going through the conservative talk show
Speaker 4: circuit or podcast circuit, the podcast circuit kind of in general,
Speaker 4: not just conservative shows. I don't think we've seen this
Speaker 4: candidacy get going yet. To your point about David Sachs
Speaker 4: and other very wealthy people who we know are actually
Speaker 4: already interested, very interested in the RFK junior candidacy, either
Speaker 4: because they support him on all of the issues, or
Speaker 4: because they so despise the Trump Biden matchup that they
Speaker 4: just want to throw it all into a state of chaos.
Speaker 4: And so that's where really curious about going forward. As
Speaker 4: Republicans start to point out that RFK Junior has a
Speaker 4: fairly statist record across the board on environmental issues, he
Speaker 4: was pretty supportive of Hillary Clinton, does that sort of
Speaker 4: start resonating with Normy Dems Because a lot of Normy
Speaker 4: Dems are so sick.
Speaker 5: Of Biden to the point where they could be.
Speaker 4: Persuaded if they find out that RFK Junior was close
Speaker 4: with Hillary Clinton and you know, maybe isn't quite as
Speaker 4: crazy as they were told. He was used to run
Speaker 4: in fairly establishment democratic circles. So as Republicans start to
Speaker 4: hit him as an establishment Democrat, does that make Normy
Speaker 4: Dems take another look at him and do these numbers
Speaker 4: start changing?
Speaker 9: That?
Speaker 4: I think is a really interesting question, especially if more
Speaker 4: money is attached to it, and especially.
Speaker 5: If we've talked about this before.
Speaker 4: The Woody Harrelson's of Hollywood start to get behind the
Speaker 4: campaign too, and it just becomes a more high profile
Speaker 4: bid that the media is forced to cover and.
Speaker 3: If we can put it this third element, which is
Speaker 3: a new study finding that media confidence in the US
Speaker 3: has matched its twenty sixteen record low. What that means
Speaker 3: is that there really isn't a Walter Cronkite type, you know,
Speaker 3: who's able to come in and referee this, yes, exactly
Speaker 3: and say, you know what, the gates are closed. These
Speaker 3: two dudes are in, and nobody else can come in.
Speaker 3: The other point is that the rules around presidential debates
Speaker 3: are that previously had been that if you're at fifteen
Speaker 3: percent or above, you're supposed to be on the debate stage.
Speaker 3: So does RFK Junior get to be on the debate stage?
Speaker 4: A fantastic question, and he's starting to. I mean, he's
Speaker 4: in that direction right now. The Gallop poll, I think
Speaker 4: actually explains across the board.
Speaker 5: This is my theory.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's you know, we don't have like
Speaker 4: clear statistics on this, but I think it explains why
Speaker 4: Biden is sort of flailing across the board and why
Speaker 4: even Trump is struggling against RFK Junior among the younger voters.
Speaker 4: Because the gatekeepers lack the power. The monopoly on truth
Speaker 4: is being eroded every single election cycle, and I think
Speaker 4: we take that for granted.
Speaker 5: Even here on our.
Speaker 4: Show, like counterpoints and breaking points, sometimes we site of
Speaker 4: how different it is that we get to do what
Speaker 4: we do as opposed to ten years ago, where.
Speaker 5: To do what we did would be you know.
Speaker 4: You would have to do it at a publication, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of a different you know, news outlet or something
Speaker 4: like that, and it was read in left circles or
Speaker 4: right circles. But to be able to have audiences that
Speaker 4: we have at this level, because this has been democracized,
Speaker 4: democratized by to some extent social media, to some extent
Speaker 4: by the Internet and things like YouTube. It's incredible, by
Speaker 4: the podcast sphere exploding. I just think people it's happened
Speaker 4: so quickly that people don't realize how much that's affecting
Speaker 4: the way. For example, black voters. Look at Joe Biden
Speaker 4: when he's dropping significantly with black voters from twenty twenty
Speaker 4: post COVID to twenty twenty four. Potentially, I do think
Speaker 4: a lot of that is because trust and media is plummeting,
Speaker 4: and the new options are coming in to replace the
Speaker 4: bad old options.
Speaker 3: On this substance of RFK Junior He's recently been a
Speaker 3: strident supporter of Israel's war on Gaza, and has even
Speaker 3: gone so far as to applaud a bunch of universities
Speaker 3: that have say like a delisted organizations that they say
Speaker 3: or that they say are supportive of Hamas or one
Speaker 3: of them. I think at Brandeis was planning a candlelight
Speaker 3: vigil in memory of Palestinians who had been killed and
Speaker 3: had their charter revoked, and RFK Junior has been applauding
Speaker 3: that type of thing, which on the one hand, cuts
Speaker 3: against all of the kind of anti censorship, anti cancel
Speaker 3: culture wave that he'd been riding with a lot of
Speaker 3: the podcasts that had elevated him. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: there has always been a Palestinian exception to cancel culture
Speaker 3: embedded in it from the very beginning. The best example
Speaker 3: being like Wise like her college career was dedicated towards
Speaker 3: literally canceling Palestinian professors, and she has never kind of
Speaker 3: said that I was wrong to do that and has
Speaker 3: continued to kind of run cancel campaigns against people that
Speaker 3: she considers to have, you know, have have aired on
Speaker 3: the Israeli Palestinian question while also being the kind of
Speaker 3: one of the lead cheerleaders of the kind of anti
Speaker 3: cancel culture campaign. So I think it probably won't hurt
Speaker 3: him because of that exception that has always been embedded
Speaker 3: in the kind of Wolke wars. But I'm curious if
Speaker 3: you think that that matters at all.
Speaker 5: It matters a lot to young voters.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think, of course Barry Weiss and RFK
Speaker 4: Junior would say, even the most ardent anti canceled culture
Speaker 4: people have to you know, they agree that they're aligned
Speaker 4: somewhere that you know, somebody drops the drops the N word,
Speaker 4: it's probably fine to cancel them from a job or somebody.
Speaker 4: You know that an advertiser could say, maybe you're not
Speaker 4: the face of Loreel anymore or whatever it is. But
Speaker 4: I do think young voters are so Polling has shown
Speaker 4: there's so much on one side of the Israel Palestine divide,
Speaker 4: and if they're super interested in RFK Junior and start
Speaker 4: seeing this, I mean he has leaned into it, but
Speaker 4: isn't more powerful than his other messages with young voters.
Speaker 4: How exasperated and exhausted are they with the Trump Biden choice.
Speaker 4: That's all going in factor into this. I think that
Speaker 4: is an interesting question, especially given how big his support
Speaker 4: is with young voters and how big their support is
Speaker 4: for Palestine, and.
Speaker 3: A huge portion of that twenty four percent, I'm guessing
Speaker 3: are people just saying just a middle finger. It's not
Speaker 3: actually necessarily support for RFK Junior. It's rejection of the
Speaker 3: two choices being offered. And some of it is genuine
Speaker 3: support for RFK Junior because they've heard him on shows,
Speaker 3: but I think a lot of it is not because
Speaker 3: we're still a year away.
Speaker 4: That's much easier to do when you have a name
Speaker 4: that people recognize and they're comfortable.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, Kennedy for example, corn Now West is like
Speaker 3: also running and getting nowhere near that kind of right.
Speaker 4: But when you put together, actually, that's another interesting that
Speaker 4: people aren't paying attention to. If you put together Maryan Williamson,
Speaker 4: Cornell West and Robert F. Kennedy Junior, the potential for
Speaker 4: an anti Biden candidate to sweep in is so high,
Speaker 4: and media doesn't even want to talk about it. They
Speaker 4: don't want to talk about where Marianne is pulling in
Speaker 4: New Hampshire. They don't want to talk about that at all.
Speaker 4: They're just completely erasing it. They're suddenly very interested in
Speaker 4: Dean Phillips, who we have no indication, despite having a
Speaker 4: ton of money, has any popular support. So the fact that,
Speaker 4: as Soccer pointed out, media didn't pick up on this,
Speaker 4: that the New York Times had these cross tabs and
Speaker 4: is looking into I mean, so anytime you do a pole.
Speaker 4: I don't know if Intercept ever does polling, but anytime
Speaker 4: as a news outlet you commission a pole, you are
Speaker 4: scraping that data and looking so closely for what is newsworthy,
Speaker 4: what's the hook, what's in it? And the fact that
Speaker 4: the New York Times had that in front of them,
Speaker 4: and then every other news outlet had the cross tabs
Speaker 4: to cover that pole, and nobody picked up on this
Speaker 4: or covered it until it started going.
Speaker 5: Viral on Twitter. It's just like, what a joke.
Speaker 4: I love that this is our last segment because it's
Speaker 4: such an afterthought, and for good reason. There's a Republican
Speaker 4: debate tonight. The candidates are down in Miami. Five of
Speaker 4: them ended up qualifying for it. By the way, in
Speaker 4: order to qualify, you had to register four percent in
Speaker 4: either two national polls polls or one national poll and
Speaker 4: two polls from separate early voting states. Candidates also had
Speaker 4: to have reached according to CNN, at least seventy thousand
Speaker 4: unique donors with at least two hundred donors in twenty
Speaker 4: states or territories. So that means tonight we have the
Speaker 4: distinct pleasure of hearing from Chris Christy, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Hayley,
Speaker 4: Vivek Ramaswami, and Tim Scott.
Speaker 5: Five of them.
Speaker 4: That means no more Mike Pence who dropped out, Doug
Speaker 4: Burgham did not qualify. Asa Hutchinson didn't even make the
Speaker 4: second debate, so he doesn't even make the second debate.
Speaker 4: But we're now on the third debate. The fourth debate
Speaker 4: has already been announced. That's going to be December sixth
Speaker 4: in tusc so less than a month away. It has
Speaker 4: higher polling and donor thresholds, so this could be the
Speaker 4: last debate for maybe for Chris Christy and Tim Scott.
Speaker 4: I don't know about Vivek. I think Nikki Haley, because
Speaker 4: she's searched in New Hampshire, is probably safe. DeSantis is
Speaker 4: safe for now as well.
Speaker 3: I don't have a whole lot to say about this,
Speaker 3: you know what, I have a lot.
Speaker 4: To say about one thing, which is that the Republican
Speaker 4: Party is so so stupid, and that is not news
Speaker 4: to anyone.
Speaker 3: I think they just cancel it.
Speaker 4: They should not be having a debate with NBC News
Speaker 4: that is going to be moderated by Kristin Welker, who
Speaker 4: I think is one of the more fair members of
Speaker 4: the so called mainstream media. But less your Hoole is
Speaker 4: on the record saying quote fairness is overrated. They added
Speaker 4: Hugh hewittt into the debate to sort of legitimize it,
Speaker 4: to be a token conservative question asker. But there's just
Speaker 4: no reason for the RNC to be cooperating anymore with
Speaker 4: NBC News. The Blaze hosted a candidate forum in Iowa
Speaker 4: in the spring that was actually like way more helpful
Speaker 4: for Republican voters that trying to figure out sus out
Speaker 4: what the contrast is between you know, a Trump a
Speaker 4: DeSantis Haley than any debate moderated by corporate journalists has
Speaker 4: been in years. All you're going to do is have
Speaker 4: All you're going to have is corporate moderators racing to
Speaker 4: out condemn Republicans and to out gotcha Republicans. And I
Speaker 4: think these candidates should take the toughest questions. They should
Speaker 4: subject themselves to the toughest scrutiny, but not under the
Speaker 4: false pretense of neutrality that Lester Holt and Kristen Welker claim.
Speaker 4: I have no problem with them being on the left.
Speaker 4: I have no problem with them being center left. You know,
Speaker 4: they're certainly not leftists, but being sort of center left
Speaker 4: neoliberal corporate journalists.
Speaker 5: Have no problem with that.
Speaker 4: They should be honest with it and stop lying to
Speaker 4: voters and saying that they're fair and neutral, and the
Speaker 4: Republican Party should stop letting them do that. There's no
Speaker 4: reason to let them do that anymore. If they ever
Speaker 4: want to have a good debate, they can come here
Speaker 4: to breaking points counterpoints, they can go to do the
Speaker 4: candidate forum at the Blaze. They can figure out another
Speaker 4: way to do it. But nobody wants to see this anymore. So,
Speaker 4: in the absence of Ryan having not so much to say,
Speaker 4: I just had to go on my rant because it.
Speaker 5: Makes me so mad.
Speaker 3: It is fun to see it. I think it's useful
Speaker 3: to watch his debates just to see, like what the
Speaker 3: kind of dregs of the Republican are seeing as potential
Speaker 3: paths for Chris Christ Chris Nicky Haley trying to like
Speaker 3: hold on to some of that George W. Bush energy
Speaker 3: really fight she she seems like personally offended at the isolationism, yes,
Speaker 3: and the and the kind of selective anti war posture
Speaker 3: that has become resident within the Republican Party, and so
Speaker 3: watching her fight that and then.
Speaker 5: But who on that stage is she gonna fight with?
Speaker 4: I mean maybe maybe the Veak, Yeah, but I mean
Speaker 4: at this point, why.
Speaker 3: Well, she doesn't seem to like him for one. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: So that makes it more enjoyable to watch too, because
Speaker 3: they really do seem to like not like each other.
Speaker 3: I'm very glad that both Tim Scott and Nicky Haley
Speaker 3: are on there because I want to hear more about
Speaker 3: those curtains that Tim Scott was so mad at Nikki
Speaker 3: Haley for allegedly purchasing for her United Nations residents or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the fact that he brought that up in that debate
Speaker 3: suggests that there is a level of animosity that you
Speaker 3: can only appreciate among politicians who've known each other for decades.
Speaker 5: South Carolina Republicans.
Speaker 3: Just rivals, you know, and forced to be in the
Speaker 3: same rooms and on the same team for decades while
Speaker 3: not so secretly hating each other and undermining each other
Speaker 3: and knifing each other.
Speaker 4: Or is it easy for them to fight It easier
Speaker 4: for them to fight about drapes because they know they're
Speaker 4: going to have to get along down the line, so
Speaker 4: they will do this theatrical debate about drapes. I think
Speaker 4: you're right in this case that there's actually like this
Speaker 4: simmering animosity that bring it.
Speaker 5: She said something is so ridiculous, But that's that's the thing.
Speaker 4: When you mentioned the point about Nimmi Hailey's neo conservatism,
Speaker 4: Donald Trump isn't on the stage. I mean we should
Speaker 4: have started this segment by saying this is a.
Speaker 3: Stage is avatar of right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, and that the fact that they'll all be
Speaker 4: they'll all just be arguing against Trump instead of each
Speaker 4: other because the leading candidate by a wide margin, is
Speaker 4: not even on the stage. And so again NBC News
Speaker 4: is moderating this debate, hosting this debate, putting all the
Speaker 4: money into this debate for money and credibility, and Republicans
Speaker 4: are just giving them both of it. Despite talking constantly
Speaker 4: about how NBC News should be less powerful and is
Speaker 4: lacking incredibility without even having the leading candidate on the stage,
Speaker 4: Like there's just no reason to be doing this at
Speaker 4: this point, if you're just going to let NBC News
Speaker 4: trash a bunch of Republicans in front of the country
Speaker 4: in a way that's not productive for Republican voters. Who
Speaker 4: this is for Republican debates are for Republican voters to
Speaker 4: decide which candidate they want to go for. And I
Speaker 4: don't think, you know, no offense Lester Holt is the
Speaker 4: most qualified to help them make that decision at this point.
Speaker 3: And I wonder if this were a democratic debate, if
Speaker 3: NBC would be you know, how their approach on the
Speaker 3: question of Israel Palestine would differ between how they focus
Speaker 3: on Democrats how they focus on Republicans, Like will will
Speaker 3: you see the moderators try to pressure Republicans to condemn
Speaker 3: collective punishment of Palestinians, Like there's no question collective punishment
Speaker 3: is going on. They have shut the water off, they
Speaker 3: have stopped food and other supplies from getting in, Like
Speaker 3: that's happening.
Speaker 5: By their own admission, by their own.
Speaker 3: Emission, And they say that they have given reasons why
Speaker 3: they're doing it. It does not make it comport with
Speaker 3: international law. It is by definition collective punishment. Do you
Speaker 3: think that the moderators will push Republicans to condemn that
Speaker 3: because they would do it in any other circumstance.
Speaker 5: I think it's a great question.
Speaker 4: But I think that's also the problem with having Bernie
Speaker 4: Sanders be moderated by.
Speaker 5: A Kristen Walker or Lester Hold.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's any different between those two populist areas.
Speaker 4: I don't even think you must be a populist Republican
Speaker 4: to complain about the media, of course, but I'm actually
Speaker 4: really curious, now that you bring that up, how they
Speaker 4: handled this issue, because there isn't a lot of contrast
Speaker 4: between Republicans on it, except for maybe the veak might
Speaker 4: have a sort of outside the BI. I haven't followed
Speaker 4: closely how he's handled that question of civilians in Gaza.
Speaker 4: But actually that's a really good point as to whether
Speaker 4: he tries to use that as a foreign policy wedge
Speaker 4: with Nikki Haley, because we've actually seen him go way
Speaker 4: beyond the tip of Republican comfort zone, because he knows
Speaker 4: that there are a lot of voters that are ready
Speaker 4: to hear that in previous debates in order to have
Speaker 4: a big moment with Nikki Haley.
Speaker 5: So let's see if he does that this time.
Speaker 3: And you're not allowed to express sympathy for Palestinian civilians
Speaker 3: for their own kind of unique dignity and individuality and
Speaker 3: the fact that they're a person with a soul on
Speaker 3: this planet. What you can do, though, and what you'll
Speaker 3: see a lot of politicians do, is say it's bad
Speaker 3: because a it's going to create future terrorists that will
Speaker 3: produce blowback against us, and be it tarnishes our good name,
Speaker 3: our kind of ethical standing in the world, because we
Speaker 3: if the gap between the values that we preach and
Speaker 3: the values we practice gets too large, then Russia is
Speaker 3: gonna and China are gonna, you know, rush right through
Speaker 3: that and do barbaric things. You can't condemn our own barbarity,
Speaker 3: and you can't stand up for the dignity of people
Speaker 3: just in their own right, but you can maybe kind
Speaker 3: of do a bank shot.
Speaker 4: The Democratic senators we played early in the show immediately
Speaker 4: pivoted to the extrava, the abstractions of sort of Iran
Speaker 4: being the puppet master that's also tied in with Putin
Speaker 4: and by the way. I think there are serious concerning
Speaker 4: ties between all of those countries, but it's easy for
Speaker 4: them to use that to just you know, demand more
Speaker 4: money under this sort of national security blackmail, which by
Speaker 4: the way.
Speaker 5: They're also doing with Section seven o two.
Speaker 4: Maybe we'll cover that next week, but there the Biden
Speaker 4: administration is freaking out about the bipartisan reform efforts that
Speaker 4: Ron Wyden and Mike Lee are behind on Section seven
Speaker 4: oh two. They do this all the time with national
Speaker 4: security issues. They try to scare monger people into giving
Speaker 4: more money to Ukraine, to Israel, to UH seven oh
Speaker 4: two and giving up their privacy rights. It's just absurd.
Speaker 4: It's absurdity theater. Yeah, but the media falls for it.
Speaker 3: To your point, but I can't can't wait to watch it.
Speaker 3: We're not doing a debate special.
Speaker 5: Tonight and really no need again leading candidates very.
Speaker 3: Sorry about that. We just couldn't get it.
Speaker 4: Together for You can follow Ryan on to what though
Speaker 4: for his stream of consciousness absorbs this incredible, this incredible
Speaker 4: conversation between Republicans.
Speaker 3: That time is eight o'clock.
Speaker 5: It's an eight pm one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right in the middle of bedtime. So I
Speaker 3: might have to DVR and then live tweet the DVR version.
Speaker 4: Also, by the way, it's co hosted by Salem News
Speaker 4: and the Republican Jewish Coalition. So your question about how
Speaker 4: NBC at a debate co hosted by the Republican Jewish
Speaker 4: Coalition do they give a question to the RJC? Do
Speaker 4: they ask a question on behalf of the RJC? And
Speaker 4: then how do they kind of balance that if they
Speaker 4: purport to be neutral, which obviously we know is a lie,
Speaker 4: but if they do, how do they balance that with
Speaker 4: questions about civilians in Gaza? A great thing to watch
Speaker 4: for tonight.
Speaker 3: We'll watch for tonight because somebody's got to somebody.
Speaker 4: Has to do it, so I guess we will. That
Speaker 4: does it for us today. I kind of like Ryan today.
Speaker 4: We had fewer blocks and we got to spend longer
Speaker 4: time on them. Maybe too much time in the amb.
Speaker 5: Block, but I liked it.
Speaker 4: I could have kept going for sure. Well, yeah, that
Speaker 4: does it for us on today's edition of Counterpoints. Make
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