Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 3: What do we have, Crystal?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do many interesting things happening this morning. So
Speaker 1: there were a couple of big rallies yesterday for Harris Walls,
Speaker 1: one in particular in Detroit, huge crowd, and a big
Speaker 1: new poll that is going to breize a whole lot
Speaker 1: of eyebrows.
Speaker 4: We'll get into all of that.
Speaker 1: We also have more behind the scenes reporting of how
Speaker 1: she chose Tim Walls over Josh Shapiro, so we'll break.
Speaker 4: All of that down for you.
Speaker 1: Republicans have dropped a new line of attack alleging stolen
Speaker 1: valor against him Wall, so I show you all of
Speaker 1: those details and talk about whether or not we think
Speaker 1: that one will land. There is a horrific new video
Speaker 1: that we have of that rape of Palestinian prisoner by
Speaker 1: IDF soldiers. Remember, this is the situation that led to
Speaker 1: a riot in defense of these soldiers and their right
Speaker 1: to rape Palestinians. There's also a debate apparently unfolding on
Speaker 1: Israeli TV where you have commentators who are upset that
Speaker 1: this rape is not systematized. Of course it may actually be,
Speaker 1: so we'll get into all of that our own. Ryan
Speaker 1: Grimm also asking any state department some important questions there.
Speaker 1: I'm taking a look in a monologue today about why
Speaker 1: I think Tim Walls could be such a consequential pick.
Speaker 1: And Jeff Stein of the Washington Post has done an
Speaker 1: extraordinary job reporting out the failure over years of our
Speaker 1: sanctions regime. So we're going to talk to him about that.
Speaker 1: Really a fantastic piece of reporting.
Speaker 3: There, incredible peace.
Speaker 2: Took him months and months to do, so really excited
Speaker 2: to dive into with a lot of him and what else.
Speaker 2: Let's see, we've got eighty nine days. We're just looking
Speaker 2: at the countdown clock this morning till election day. Pretty stunning,
Speaker 2: the vast majority election up until the last month or so.
Speaker 3: It was actually quite boring.
Speaker 2: You know, we're a bit stunned, and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden and it becomes perhaps not only one of
Speaker 2: the closest, but most exciting presidential races in quite some times.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that real interesting, real fast.
Speaker 2: I certainly did. I'm so excited for all of us
Speaker 2: to be at the DNC. Thank you to all of
Speaker 2: our premium subscribers for enabling that breakingpoints dot com where
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Speaker 2: get to support our work here, So continue to do that.
Speaker 3: Other than that, let's start with what Crystal said.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've got these incredible rallies, and really what
Speaker 2: it is is an injection of massive enthusiasm into the
Speaker 2: Kamalist Harris campaign. Let's go ahead and play some of this.
Speaker 2: This was at the arrival of one of her two
Speaker 2: rallies yesterday, and what's stunning is that this was the
Speaker 2: second one in Detroit. Obviously Michigan a critical battleground state.
Speaker 2: But look at the zoom out that we have in
Speaker 2: this airplane hangar. I mean, these crowd sizes are reminiscent
Speaker 2: really of the Obama campaign and the Trump campaign. From
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen where the crowd size. Look, it's not everything.
Speaker 2: You know, losing candidates very frequently can draw large crowds.
Speaker 2: But this is not something that we had previously seen
Speaker 2: from the Kamala Harris or even the Joe Biden campaign.
Speaker 2: I remember these pathetic scenes Crystal of Joe Biden speaking
Speaker 2: in a high school gymnasium.
Speaker 3: This is not high school gymnasium.
Speaker 2: And no matter what any honest analysts can tell you,
Speaker 2: both from the data that we have and from the
Speaker 2: visuals of multi hours in some cases, the line I
Speaker 2: believe to get into her first rally in it was
Speaker 2: Eau Claire in Wisconsin was some one point five miles long,
Speaker 2: some three hours just to get into the space.
Speaker 3: Yeah it was.
Speaker 2: I mean, look like it is undeniable. Something is happening,
Speaker 2: you know, on the ground here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, the level of exciting, I mean, compared this to
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, it's just stunning. It's crazy total turnaround. And
Speaker 1: it's not just the crowd size. As you point out,
Speaker 1: you see it in the polling data, where previously Republicans
Speaker 1: had a massive advantage in terms of enthusiasm. Now Democrats
Speaker 1: at the very least have pulled even with Republicans in
Speaker 1: terms of enthusiasm. Now, listen, were most of these people
Speaker 1: going to vote the Democratic to it anyway, whether it
Speaker 1: was Biden or Kamala, et cetera, of course, But these
Speaker 1: are the people who are kicking in their ten dollars,
Speaker 1: their twenty dollars. These are the people who are phone banking.
Speaker 1: These are the people who are posting about you know,
Speaker 1: Kamala's bratt and whatever online and generally creating a vibe
Speaker 1: of excitement and momentum. So in that respect, it really
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. It really is like astonishing to see the
Speaker 1: way this thing turned on a dime. We were talking
Speaker 1: before we started the segment today. It was like, you know,
Speaker 1: we kept saying, for like a year now, we've been saying,
Speaker 1: it just feels like something is going to happen.
Speaker 4: And sure, right, sure, surely it did.
Speaker 3: Didn't take a genius or you know, be particular depression.
Speaker 2: It was more of a gamble that in general, politics
Speaker 2: always can eventually end up interesting.
Speaker 4: Sometimes at some point in this case.
Speaker 3: It certainly did.
Speaker 2: There was one moment though, that we're all taking a
Speaker 2: look at, where some highlights from the Kamala Harris campaign
Speaker 2: we put together here some of the snippets that prosecuting
Speaker 2: the case quote unquote against Trump and how she is
Speaker 2: conducting herself also a clash with some protesters.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 5: We fight for our future where every senior can retire
Speaker 5: with dignity, a future where we build a broad based economy,
Speaker 5: and one where every American has the opportunity to own
Speaker 5: a home, to start a business, to build wealth and
Speaker 5: understand in this fight, as Tim Walls likes to point out,
Speaker 5: we are joyful warriors. Joyful warriors because we know that
Speaker 5: while fighting for a brighter future may be hard work,
Speaker 5: hard work is good work. Hard work is good work
Speaker 5: focused on the future. The other focused on the past.
Speaker 5: And with Wisconsin, we here we fight for the future.
Speaker 5: We fight for a future where every worker has the
Speaker 5: freedom to join a union.
Speaker 3: I've been dealing with people like in my whole career, for.
Speaker 5: Example, as Attorney General of California. We'll hold on the
Speaker 5: you know what, the courts are going to handle that
Speaker 5: part of it.
Speaker 3: What we're gonna do is beat him.
Speaker 5: In November, he intends to surrender our fight against the
Speaker 5: climate crisis, and he intends to end the affordable care act.
Speaker 5: You know what, if you want Donald Trump to win,
Speaker 5: then say that otherwise.
Speaker 3: I'm speaking so Crystal.
Speaker 2: I think that is the duality of Kamala Harris, that
Speaker 2: very generic democratic language against Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: I mean, who am I here to sit here and judge.
Speaker 2: She's got a massive craft size, got a major enthusiasm.
Speaker 2: But you also that took place that second part in Detroit, Michigan, Michigan,
Speaker 2: the site of course of a lot of the un
Speaker 2: committed voters. Allegedly there was some meeting between her and
Speaker 2: some uncommitted donors or sorry, uncommitted voters prior to the rally,
Speaker 2: but then obviously the disruption and the protest, she very
Speaker 2: forcefully kind of shut them down and said, you know,
Speaker 2: by interrupting me, you're helping Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: So I think that was a good duality to show.
Speaker 4: Every that's one hundred for that.
Speaker 1: I mean it is very Hillary Clinton as absolutely, and
Speaker 1: I think I'm a Bigglin's that online like using your
Speaker 1: like girl boss energy to shut down people who are
Speaker 1: worried about a genocide. I mean, we're going to cover
Speaker 1: some of the horrific things that are coming out of
Speaker 1: Israel with regards to their conduct in this war right now,
Speaker 1: So obviously, in my opinion, not a good look. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are those who will appreciate that or whatver.
Speaker 1: But you know, she has really risen in part on
Speaker 1: the strength of how much better she's doing with young
Speaker 1: people then Joe Biden, and you don't want to risk that.
Speaker 1: And she's you know, earned a lot of goodwill also
Speaker 1: with the pick of Tim Walls, who was very respectful
Speaker 1: of the uncommitted voter group. In the state of Minnesota,
Speaker 1: there was also a significant uncommitted movement there. He said, basically,
Speaker 1: you know, they're talking, they're saying something important, their voice
Speaker 1: needs to be heard, so very respectful, very different tone
Speaker 1: coming here. However, you do point out and I want to,
Speaker 1: you know, make it clear and be fully transparent. She
Speaker 1: did meet with the co founders of the Uncommitted National Movement.
Speaker 1: This is part of the New York Times, and they
Speaker 1: argued to her in favor of an arms embargo to
Speaker 1: immediately stop the carnage in Gaza, and she said she
Speaker 1: was open.
Speaker 4: To that, and she gave them.
Speaker 1: They introduced them to two leaders and they also asked
Speaker 1: for a direct another direct meeting with her, So you know,
Speaker 1: I do think that is different from what Biden. We
Speaker 1: know Biden was not meeting with them, he was not
Speaker 1: giving them the time of day. He was certainly not
Speaker 1: expressing any sort of openness to an arms embargo. So
Speaker 1: that's a good indication. The response in the rally is
Speaker 1: a bad indication. That's basically where we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a very good summary, and that's
Speaker 2: where I think the duality and kind of where playing
Speaker 2: this out will continue. Don't forget, you know, we all
Speaker 2: continue overnight to always be on guard as well as Israel.
Speaker 2: They're like, hey, what is going to happen here? You know,
Speaker 2: we've seen some indications about potentially a broader war. There
Speaker 2: are discussions right now by the Israelis where they believe
Speaker 2: Hezbola is literally going to target Masad headquarters in the middle.
Speaker 3: Of Tel Aviv.
Speaker 2: So it's like, well, now what madam you know, Madam
Speaker 2: Vice President, So where are we standing on this? You know,
Speaker 2: are we going to go fully go to war for
Speaker 2: Israel under your administration? Are you going to support that?
Speaker 2: I mean, those are big, big question marks and this
Speaker 2: could be a signal in either direction, you know, continuing now,
Speaker 2: let's say that doesn't happen, which is also you know,
Speaker 2: I would say relatively likely, or it escalation goes down,
Speaker 2: and then it's going to stay to the domestic front
Speaker 2: where it is right now, and that is where she
Speaker 2: has probably seen the most enthusiasm, especially coming on the
Speaker 2: heels of picking Governor Tim Walls of Minnesota. He hit
Speaker 2: the campaign trail yesterday at two of these rallies. He
Speaker 2: was very joyfully received. That's his new line. Let's take
Speaker 2: a listen.
Speaker 6: He froze in the face of COVID and it cost
Speaker 6: people's lives. He drove the economy into the ground. And
Speaker 6: make no mistake about it, violent crime was up when
Speaker 6: Donald Trump was president. Those of you who are a
Speaker 6: little older know this. Older Republicans used to talk about freedom.
Speaker 6: These guys today, it turns out that freedom to them
Speaker 6: means government should be free to invade your exam room
Speaker 6: with your doctor. Now, look, we're pretty neighborly with Wisconsin.
Speaker 6: We get our friendly battles. But in Minnesota, just like
Speaker 6: in Wisconsin, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices
Speaker 6: they make, even if we wouldn't make the same choices
Speaker 6: for ourselves. Because we know there's a golden rule. Mind
Speaker 6: your own damn business. Mind your own damn business.
Speaker 4: I don't need you telling me about our healthcare.
Speaker 6: I don't need you telling us who we love, and
Speaker 6: I sure the hell don't need you telling us what
Speaker 6: books we're gonna read.
Speaker 2: All right, So there's the line happy warrior, almost a
Speaker 2: libertarian framing there. I would just say, maybe you should
Speaker 2: expect to extend that to some other issues, but we
Speaker 2: can talk about that and debate it later. I will
Speaker 2: just look at the rhetoric itself in the way that
Speaker 2: it is being received. I think the joyful line and
Speaker 2: that energy he's bringing to the ticket is smart. And
Speaker 2: the reason why is it gives them the change campaign
Speaker 2: that they didn't previously have. It gives them a veneer
Speaker 2: and an aesthetic previously, which obviously Democrats really were yearning for.
Speaker 2: And I think it combines again to bring it to
Speaker 2: the duality here kind of in the way that Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris is being received is for the vast majority of Democrats,
Speaker 2: especially boomers, they just hate Trump. They hate him, and
Speaker 2: they always just wanted somebody who, in their eyes, could
Speaker 2: beat him.
Speaker 3: Part of the reason enthusiasm was so low is they
Speaker 3: didn't like Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: They thought he was too old and they wouldn't be
Speaker 2: able to prosecute the case against Trump. Yeah, Kamala really
Speaker 2: fulfills that. Then you got younger voters and a lot
Speaker 2: of others who are desperate to change the conditions of
Speaker 2: the Biden presidency. Kamala's real benefit here is that she's
Speaker 2: basically been memory hold for the last three years, shoved
Speaker 2: into a closet and not pat of any real public profile.
Speaker 2: Then she comes here soon to fight for the ticket,
Speaker 2: doesn't do an interview we'll get to that, doesn't do
Speaker 2: any debates, nothing anointed, and then picks the number two.
Speaker 2: This number two is trying to inject like happiness, almost
Speaker 2: a Reaganesque happy warrior style language.
Speaker 3: And that is exactly the reason why I think it's smart.
Speaker 2: Is if we look at the nineteen to eighty campaign,
Speaker 2: the happy Warrior campaign for Ronald Reagan, so much of
Speaker 2: it was let's just get the hell away from all
Speaker 2: this madness of the nineteen seventies, and so there is
Speaker 2: a similar feeling right now, similar conditions, and it's the
Speaker 2: exact type of rhetoric that I would embrace if I
Speaker 2: were them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's it gives the sense of like we're
Speaker 1: turning the page, you know, her thing, her mantra of
Speaker 1: we're not going back, which she sort of stumbled upon,
Speaker 1: I think fits with that whole vibe as well. And
Speaker 1: you know, the way he frames the position there on
Speaker 1: cultural issues of like listen, mind your business, I think
Speaker 1: whichever party feels like the one that's, you know, monitoring
Speaker 1: what you're doing in your bedroom and your.
Speaker 4: Life, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I think there is a sort of American just natural
Speaker 1: revulsion to that, which Democrats have at times definitely come
Speaker 1: across as being the party of that. And I think
Speaker 1: right now Republicans have gotten lost in that trap of
Speaker 1: feeling like they're the ones, you know, as he puts it,
Speaker 1: telling you what books your kids can read, you know,
Speaker 1: what you can do in terms of healthcare, and generally
Speaker 1: much more interested in the private decisions in your.
Speaker 2: Lives than well, okay, since he brought it up, it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to say it's like a fine.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, we shouldn't be policing books.
Speaker 2: It's like, so are we defending like pornographic material in
Speaker 2: like children's libraries.
Speaker 3: I think that's sick and grotesque.
Speaker 2: But again, like I also know and a friend of mine,
Speaker 2: I don't actually know his real name. He's an anonymous
Speaker 2: Twitter account, highly recommended. His name is Ruben Rodriguez, and
Speaker 2: he highlights the very trap that I'm kind of falling
Speaker 2: into right now. If you start bringing up porn in
Speaker 2: kids libraries, you sound to borrow the governor's term weird.
Speaker 2: Although I think it's real and I think it's gross. Now,
Speaker 2: how you message and talk about that is very difficult. Obviously,
Speaker 2: JD's had some struggles. I think Trump is probably the
Speaker 2: best at it. He's like, it's gross, we're gonna get
Speaker 2: rid of it, but we're all going to move on.
Speaker 2: He just doesn't really talk about it, but he doesn't
Speaker 2: acknowledges it a little bit.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, but yeah, I mean the.
Speaker 1: Trump has better instincts than like, you know, this is
Speaker 1: the vague Ron de Santis. JD definitely seem obsessed with
Speaker 1: these culture war issues, and so previously when it was
Speaker 1: Democrats who you know, I think in twenty sixteen there
Speaker 1: were all these debates about you know, trans bathroom bills
Speaker 1: at SATURD, I really felt like Democrats, you know, on
Speaker 1: that were more obsessed with what happened in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Democrats were the ones out policing language. You can say this,
Speaker 1: you can't say that, et cetera, et cetera. You know,
Speaker 1: now you've got Trump running a campaign that's like obsessed
Speaker 1: with Kamala's race and gender. You've got a lot of
Speaker 1: tampon tam attacks, et cetera. And so I do think
Speaker 1: that it very much comes across that they're obsessed with
Speaker 1: these niche cultural issues and missing the broader point. And
Speaker 1: so whether you agree with that assessment or not, I
Speaker 1: think the language lands, and I think it's a very good.
Speaker 2: Political I would not. Yeah, look, I agree like the
Speaker 2: tampon thing. Yeah, it's weird. Why are we putting tampon's
Speaker 2: in boys bathrooms? It's fucking weird, all right, But guess what.
Speaker 2: I also, I'm not stupid. I know that that's going
Speaker 2: to sound weird to the vast majority of people, and
Speaker 2: for most of them, they're like, hey, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: sure whatever, Let's talk about something bigger.
Speaker 3: So that would be my advice.
Speaker 2: Let's not stick to this main thing I see all
Speaker 2: over my freaking timeline. I'm like, guys, like, this is
Speaker 2: not hitting obviously, because people think that a it's niche. Now,
Speaker 2: even if you agree or disagree or whatever on the substance, like,
Speaker 2: you got to think about smart politically. So even though
Speaker 2: I think he's totally wrong, I do think that it
Speaker 2: is smart framing. In general, whichever party is generally more
Speaker 2: libertarian on the issues, at least presenting wise, usually has
Speaker 2: a better shot.
Speaker 3: Part of the reason why pro choice is so.
Speaker 2: Much more popular than pro life you have people who
Speaker 2: are even personally pro life or like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I know, somebody whatever, I.
Speaker 3: Want to be in this decision. I don't generally like
Speaker 3: telling people yeah, to do well.
Speaker 1: I'll leave it there, And that's a good place to end,
Speaker 1: because I think we both agree that yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: the most salient and powerful cultural issue right now is abortion.
Speaker 2: Yes, And that's the problem is that if you have
Speaker 2: trans like, look, I agree, I think trans is very upsetting.
Speaker 3: I think it's a very important fight.
Speaker 2: But I'm not dumb and don't know that abortion is
Speaker 2: affecting way more people, and people are way more enthused
Speaker 2: about it because it is so much more urgent in
Speaker 2: a sense where you have the Republican position so far
Speaker 2: out of step, not only from the media and voter,
Speaker 2: but especially the median voter in the battleground state, and
Speaker 2: then the people who are affected by it are so
Speaker 2: much more enthusied.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just empirically true.
Speaker 2: Republican voters do not show up to vote based on
Speaker 2: transgender or CRT or any of this other stuff. We
Speaker 2: played the play we had the playbook in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: It just straight up didn't work. Democrats care a lot
Speaker 2: more about enthusiasm, and they'll crawl over broken glass to
Speaker 2: get them and you know, five of their cousins to
Speaker 2: come out and vote for it, so that you know,
Speaker 2: as a sheer political strategy, it is a smart play
Speaker 2: for them to embrace for Right.
Speaker 1: Now, yes, I think we have Trump out there posting
Speaker 1: about Brian Kemp to show those sort of things that
Speaker 1: he's focused on. Right now, I can put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen. We discussed this a little bit, just
Speaker 1: to show you that he's.
Speaker 4: Apparently not moving on.
Speaker 1: He's the Attorney General of Georgia, must get moving on this,
Speaker 1: so must Governor Kemp and the Secretary of State Fulton.
Speaker 4: County blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, so apparently he's still obsessing with Brian Kemp, who is,
Speaker 1: of course the extremely popular Republican governor of the important
Speaker 1: swing state of Georgia. So this is what he's spending
Speaker 1: his time. I mean, it really does feel like he
Speaker 1: in a certain sense. I understand they thought they had
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. They were looking at a massive electoral landslide.
Speaker 1: They were like, we're putting New Jersey into play, right in.
Speaker 1: New Jersey is a new swing state, and now and
Speaker 1: we can actually go ahead and put the next poles
Speaker 1: up on the screen. Now, it's obviously a very different story.
Speaker 1: At best, it's a true, true toss up. This is
Speaker 1: a new Wisconsin poll from Marquette. It has Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: up by one in the state of Wisconsin. So you know,
Speaker 1: this is what most of the battlegrounds look like. It
Speaker 1: is as tight as it could possibly be. Very different
Speaker 1: picture from when it was Joe Biden at the top
Speaker 1: of the ticket. The next one it's an outlier. Let's
Speaker 1: put it up there, guys.
Speaker 3: This is a.
Speaker 4: Marquette national poll.
Speaker 1: And when you put in when you have the three
Speaker 1: way race here with RFK in the mix, you've got
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris at fifty percent and Trump at forty two percent,
Speaker 1: an eight percentage point lead that is among likely voters.
Speaker 1: Among registered voters, Harris is up forty seven forty one.
Speaker 4: Previously in this same poll.
Speaker 1: The last time they did it, when it was Joe
Speaker 1: Biden in the race, Trump led forty four forty one.
Speaker 1: So again it's an outlier. We should, you know, treat
Speaker 1: it as such, and you know, especially when you pair
Speaker 1: it with this very same polster getting a one point
Speaker 1: lead for Kamala in Wisconsin, which is probably more reflective
Speaker 1: of where the race actually is. But this is the
Speaker 1: first time we've seen this kind of lead for her,
Speaker 1: and we should also be clear Soccer, these are the
Speaker 1: types of polls that Joe Biden was getting regularly in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty last time around. So you know, are the
Speaker 1: polls understating Trump support as they did last time, are
Speaker 1: they overstating Republican support as they did in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: We genuinely don't know.
Speaker 1: But it's important to keep in mind that when Biden
Speaker 1: Biden did win, of course in twenty twenty, but it
Speaker 1: was so much closer than polls indicated, and he was
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of national polls and battleground ste polls
Speaker 1: that had massive leads.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, that's a very important point.
Speaker 2: But another important point that we're learning is that if
Speaker 2: it is fifty to what was it forty nine in Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: that doesn't include RFK Junior on the ballot.
Speaker 3: That's just the head to head.
Speaker 2: If RFK Junior is on the ballot, it's very clear
Speaker 2: in that national poll by Marquette that RFK is significantly
Speaker 2: bringing down a lot of Trump's support. And so in
Speaker 2: this particular scenario, we have to factor in that RFK
Speaker 2: is going to be on the ballot definitely in the
Speaker 2: state of Michigan and multiple other of the battleground states.
Speaker 2: Hasn't had any indication that he's going to drop out.
Speaker 2: He doesn't want to. He wants to run against Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: And it is extremely like you right now that if
Speaker 2: Donald Trump does lose, it will be largely because of
Speaker 2: RFK Junior on top of Democratic consolidation and enthusiasm in
Speaker 2: the Democratic ticket. So I really don't want to look
Speaker 2: past that. And you put it all together, I think
Speaker 2: I'm truly back to like a fifty to fifty if
Speaker 2: try not to overcorrect or anything, but I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we're at a full on toss up, and
Speaker 2: that's where Cook Political Report I think he's sent us
Speaker 2: this morning has moved Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia all back
Speaker 2: into the toss up category. And in a toss up,
Speaker 2: you know the problem is is that we only have
Speaker 2: eighty nine days until the election. You need to try
Speaker 2: and get some momentum. Donald Trump will be doing a
Speaker 2: press conference sometime later today. I think at the very
Speaker 2: least he should be doing something. But he has been
Speaker 2: absent from the campaign drail from not four or five days.
Speaker 3: It's not shocking. What are you doing?
Speaker 2: He's a conservative activist. Put he's like JD. Vans is
Speaker 2: doing three campaign events today.
Speaker 3: Where are you?
Speaker 2: Why are you at mar A Lagos just sitting and steing.
Speaker 2: In a sense, I think we can, I guess empathize
Speaker 2: to a certain extent where you're like, wow, yeah, you
Speaker 2: thought you were in the bag, you thought this was
Speaker 2: a done deal. Now you were in a full on
Speaker 2: toss up. I'm not sure he mentally was prepared for that.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you think psychologically, eighteen straight months of
Speaker 2: running against Joe Biden and then in the very last
Speaker 2: stretch this candidate gets switched out all this massive amount
Speaker 2: of money enthusiasm. So many of your polls are noisy
Speaker 2: right now because in a certain you know, think about it,
Speaker 2: when you inject a new person, especially like Tim Walls,
Speaker 2: people don't even know if Tim Walls is. People are
Speaker 2: walking around, They're like who. And so when you have
Speaker 2: to make up your mind and put in new people,
Speaker 2: and then that really can scramble the way that people
Speaker 2: who have previously been very hardened in the way that
Speaker 2: they vote, which is very common you know in a
Speaker 2: incumbent versus semi incumbent. In this race, it was well
Speaker 2: of the quote unquote the race that everybody was dreading
Speaker 2: and significantly has changed all of that up. So I
Speaker 2: don't even know if I'm taking the polls all that
Speaker 2: seriously except as a signal of democratic consolidation.
Speaker 3: Yea real head to heads. Maybe, you know, a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks.
Speaker 2: Out, I'll be like, Okay, I think we've had enough
Speaker 2: time now people can make up there.
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing you can say for sure about
Speaker 1: this Marquette poll, because it's the very same polster. I mean,
Speaker 1: the movement towards the Democrats has been massive in the
Speaker 1: switch out, there's no doubt about that. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that's been really interesting is Biden's approval rating has
Speaker 1: jumped up too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he doesn't exist an me well.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, like people are the happiest they've been
Speaker 1: with anything he's done as an administration is being like,
Speaker 1: I promise I won't be president again.
Speaker 4: You're like, yay.
Speaker 3: It's like a wax statue.
Speaker 1: In Kamala's approval rating has skyrocketed, you know, in many
Speaker 1: polls at this point, she's above water in terms of
Speaker 1: approval rating, and that should be you know, a low.
Speaker 4: Bar, but in modern politics it's not. So.
Speaker 1: The way that she has her polling has moved has
Speaker 1: been I'm sure astonishing to it's astonishing men. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's astonishing to the Trump people as well. But the
Speaker 1: Biden thing is interesting in particular because one of the
Speaker 1: questions about his low approval rating, low poll numbers, et cetera,
Speaker 1: is how much of it is just about him being
Speaker 1: too frickin' old, and how much of it is about
Speaker 1: everything else that you may be upset with with regard
Speaker 1: to the Biden administration.
Speaker 4: And it looks like the old thing was a really
Speaker 4: big deal.
Speaker 1: Just given the fact that now that he said guys, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'm out, I'm leaving. Don't worry about it, his approval
Speaker 1: rating has also skyrocketing.
Speaker 3: I've always believed that.
Speaker 2: I've always believed that his age has dragged down everything.
Speaker 2: I remember several months ago, looking at Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 2: they did polls state by state, so they would ask
Speaker 2: people in Georgia, how do you feel about your economy
Speaker 2: your state economy, oh, plus sixty five percent? How do
Speaker 2: you feel about the national economy? Minus twenty five? And
Speaker 2: a lot of Liberals who are very much like unskew
Speaker 2: the economic sentiment, were like, what's.
Speaker 4: Going on here?
Speaker 3: I don't understand people who are lying.
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, man, you don't understand how I feel
Speaker 2: about the national economy is a proxy for I hate
Speaker 2: Joe Biden, and so now, like I said, that scrambles
Speaker 2: everything keeping Biden out of the race. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: the economy is good or anything, but minus twenty five.
Speaker 2: Let's say it goes to minus two. Well, that's actually
Speaker 2: a massive advantage for Kamala Harris. I think it's been
Speaker 2: baked a bone marrow at the very center of the
Speaker 2: entire campaign, just seeing this like aging, dementia ridden figure
Speaker 2: at the top of the country is extremely demoralizing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for everyone on the top of Democrats. It feeds into
Speaker 2: the way that you think about the optimism of a literal,
Speaker 2: like functioning human being who can do a couple of
Speaker 2: campaign stops and that's enough, you know, to shift things around.
Speaker 2: So that's really the state of the race could not
Speaker 2: have been more changed than the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: I think it is genuinely a true toss up right now,
Speaker 2: and she has quite a bit of momentum. She's got
Speaker 2: the to remember this too, I was thinking about it.
Speaker 2: The Republicans picked their guy at the RNC or coordinated
Speaker 2: the guy at the RNC right before the Biden decision,
Speaker 2: so they're not going to get the RNC media bump,
Speaker 2: which you usually get.
Speaker 3: Now, usually those.
Speaker 2: Things don't matter because you've been running for eighteen months.
Speaker 2: Who is this lady? Who is Tim Walltz. We're gonna
Speaker 2: have four straight days of dedicated coverage the entire national media.
Speaker 2: So the DNC media advantage here is immense because it's
Speaker 2: literally a brand new race and a brand new candidate.
Speaker 2: So there's so many inherent strengths she's gotten what is
Speaker 2: it eighteen days now, has done an interview. We're about
Speaker 2: to get to that. Maybe I'll go thirty days, you know,
Speaker 2: if I'm hurt, maybe I'll go two months. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do an interview up until the very last time.
Speaker 2: So I think that's a very the structural advantage here
Speaker 2: on the media side, on the Democratic side, on the
Speaker 2: money side too. I mean what they raised what ten
Speaker 2: million dollars in an hour after Tim Walls was selected.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot that is happening and the Trump
Speaker 2: people should be afraid. Let's get to the next part.
Speaker 2: This is clearly I think the Trump campaign on the
Speaker 2: back foot, and they're trying to force a conversation here
Speaker 2: about Hey, why has Kamala Harris not done any interviews?
Speaker 2: Jad Vance yesterday his plane was on the same tarmac
Speaker 2: as Air Force two and decided to walk over to
Speaker 2: the press corps of the Kamala Harris campaign and ask
Speaker 2: them why they haven't been pressing Kamala to do more questions.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 7: I figured i'd come by and Warren is taking a
Speaker 7: good blue on the.
Speaker 3: Plane because hopefully it's going to be my plane in
Speaker 3: a few months.
Speaker 8: But I also thought you guys might get only because
Speaker 8: the vice president doesn't answer questions from reporters and hasn't
Speaker 8: their seventeen days. I think give you guys an explanation
Speaker 8: for why she won't take questions to reporters.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 9: Nobody, Okay, great.
Speaker 8: Well, I hope that you changed your mind, because.
Speaker 9: It'd be good for the American people, and I think
Speaker 9: it'd be good for you all.
Speaker 8: She actually ran a real campaign instead of one from
Speaker 8: a basement with the tellapropter. So have goodle guys to see, um,
Speaker 8: what would you like to hear from her answer that questions.
Speaker 8: I'd love her to just answer what she wants to
Speaker 8: do and also explain why every single position she has
Speaker 8: has changed.
Speaker 2: So he's trying to get the conversation going. Actually, some
Speaker 2: in the national media have picked it up. Let's put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen from Dave Weigel. He says, yeah,
Speaker 2: it makes sense that Harris wasn't doing media during the
Speaker 2: veep selection, when a bunch of questions would have been irrelevant.
Speaker 2: But now there's a ticket, there's a press corps. Why
Speaker 2: don't you just shoot them some news of the day
Speaker 2: questions on the plane. You know, JD actually has I
Speaker 2: think he did. I think he's done like sixteen interviews
Speaker 2: just in the last couple of days. Now, look, that's
Speaker 2: not an excuse. You know, it should be Trump who's
Speaker 2: doing a lot of these interviews. Yeah, why he's Look,
Speaker 2: I think the Aiden Ross streaming thing, it's fine, okay,
Speaker 2: Like it's fun. I'm sure it's probably very enjoyable to
Speaker 2: do an extremely friendly interview in a.
Speaker 4: Stream Alex or something like that game.
Speaker 2: Which people are wondering if that's an FEC violation. That's
Speaker 2: all this interesting one. I've never seen somebody get to
Speaker 2: interviewee something. It's usually the interviewers. We're trying to curry favor,
Speaker 2: you know, with the inter with the person who's interviewing them.
Speaker 2: So anyway, so my thing with Trump is he's doing
Speaker 2: this Aiden Ross thing. Yeah, he's got an interview with
Speaker 2: Elon on Monday, which you can ask Ron DeSantis about that.
Speaker 2: And by the way, this is all fine if you're
Speaker 2: just you know, want to gin up enthusiasm amongst people
Speaker 2: who alread agree with you. Yeah, bro, we you're in
Speaker 2: the fight of your life right now. Like he's doing
Speaker 2: a press conference today. I think that's great. I think
Speaker 2: Kamala should do one too, and hopefully they're going to
Speaker 2: try and change the conversation around that. But what do
Speaker 2: you think christ like in terms of the strategy, because
Speaker 2: I mean, Waltce hasn't done an interview yet, hopefully he
Speaker 2: does some.
Speaker 3: I'd actually like to see that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Kamala, I mean, seventeen days now, no major
Speaker 2: sit down. Joe Biden has done a CBS News sit down.
Speaker 2: So the freaking dead vice president is doing more.
Speaker 3: Interviews than you.
Speaker 2: I think he's done two interviews since he dropped out
Speaker 2: of the race. Yeah, what's happening here?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: No, I mean, listen, from a democracy, it's terrible. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: Like you got put in this position. There was no
Speaker 1: open process. You know, they canceled the primary, so that
Speaker 1: wasn't really then.
Speaker 4: They just picked you and you you know here we
Speaker 4: are okay.
Speaker 1: But and then you shouldn't even answer any questions. You
Speaker 1: a brass conference whatever. This is a little lot of
Speaker 1: census the modern media landscape, and so do I think
Speaker 1: she's going to.
Speaker 4: Pay a price for it?
Speaker 1: Like I wish that you I wish you know, Trump
Speaker 1: would pay a price for Also mostly overwhelmingly sitting with
Speaker 1: friendly people like Fox News or Aiden Ross. He's got
Speaker 1: that twelve to fifteen year old boy demo locked up there.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that they do pay a price
Speaker 1: for it. I just I just think that's like people
Speaker 1: have gotten used to this media landscape where all they
Speaker 1: do is friendly interviews, softball questions, go out and give
Speaker 1: a teleprompter speech, et cetera. And so you know, we've
Speaker 1: actually got this this the Shark Tank guy what's his name, Kevin,
Speaker 1: Kevin O'Leary saying basically like, yeah, no, they're they're in
Speaker 1: U fourg moo. No, they're not going to answer any questions.
Speaker 1: And he's like, that's probably smart strategy. And I can't
Speaker 1: really disagree because in terms of strategy, because we know
Speaker 1: Kama her weakness is when she is caught off guard.
Speaker 1: That's when she has had her worst moments, lest her
Speaker 1: whole interview in the debates, when she would be caught
Speaker 1: off guard, when Tulsi Gabbard was challenging her, etc.
Speaker 4: That's when she's most vulnerable.
Speaker 1: She's always been a very cautious politician in terms of
Speaker 1: who she would allow access to her, So it doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise me that they're pursuing this strategy, and unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: think it's probably the right one.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
Speaker 3: It's intentional.
Speaker 10: She has no intention of putting any policy out there
Speaker 10: until this convention's over. I'm very fortunate guy, because I'm
Speaker 10: an investor and for decades I've been syndicating debt, primarily
Speaker 10: for real estate. Some of her closest advisor are people
Speaker 10: I work with in finance and we're friends. So I
Speaker 10: call them up to say, hey, listen, do you want
Speaker 10: to talk about policy here? And they said, listen, everything's
Speaker 10: working right now. We're going to strong arm the press
Speaker 10: on policy.
Speaker 3: We don't need to do anything.
Speaker 4: What's everything's working.
Speaker 10: The momentum's crazy. The press she's getting right now. She's
Speaker 10: sucking her campaign.
Speaker 3: The campaign.
Speaker 10: The campaign is working, and there's no reason to sit
Speaker 10: down with any journalist and talk policy right now because
Speaker 10: we're in the euphoric stage. They think they can raise
Speaker 10: up to three hundred million dollars before this campaign, before
Speaker 10: this whole thing's going to happen over.
Speaker 3: The weekend is over.
Speaker 10: So that's extraordinary amount of money. Then it's time to
Speaker 10: talk policy. Then it's time to go to the center.
Speaker 10: Then it's time to talk about border.
Speaker 4: All right, So are they telling you where she stands.
Speaker 10: No, they're just saying, listen, we don't worry about this
Speaker 10: right now.
Speaker 3: We don't have a problem.
Speaker 10: No problem here, Houston. We're just Raisin dough and you
Speaker 10: got to head it to her. They're now talking within
Speaker 10: that campaign about a path to winning that they didn't
Speaker 10: even see eight days ago.
Speaker 1: And here's the other thing too, Sagar is like Kamala
Speaker 1: has already signaled that she's running away from every progressive
Speaker 1: position she took in twenty twenty, and so of course
Speaker 1: any reporter worth her salt is going to ask her
Speaker 1: about those things.
Speaker 4: And I think she very much prefers to live.
Speaker 1: In this ambiguous state of like widow Relana, what she
Speaker 1: stands for, what you want, and allowing people to project,
Speaker 1: as they did onto Obama, whatever they want to see
Speaker 1: in her. And I think they're going to keep that
Speaker 1: going as long as they can. That's not an endorsement
Speaker 1: of the strategy. I think she should be taking questions.
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to know what the agenda
Speaker 1: would be, what the priorities would be, etc.
Speaker 4: I think she should be challenged on those things.
Speaker 1: But I don't doubt that that's the way that they're
Speaker 1: thinking about.
Speaker 3: I mean to borrow.
Speaker 2: Everybody has basically said this, it's a ViBe's election, and
Speaker 2: vibes are good whenever you don't have to take any positions.
Speaker 2: With Trump, one of the things that's thinking him with
Speaker 2: gen Pop is that he's got January sixth, stop the steal,
Speaker 2: which is, look, you can you hate it and all that.
Speaker 2: It's not only a bad vibe, but on a policy level,
Speaker 2: it's explicitly like I did not agree with the votes
Speaker 2: last time around in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Now, same with abortion, where it's a concrete thing.
Speaker 2: You appointed the justices and they overturned Row versus weight
Speaker 2: with Kamala, What are you going to do at all?
Speaker 3: Are you?
Speaker 2: What are you going to do with Israel? What do
Speaker 2: you think about NATO and Ukraine? What are you going
Speaker 2: to do with the Tax cuts and Jobs Act? You know,
Speaker 2: this is literally the most urgent and pressing economic matter
Speaker 2: in decades in Washington. The extension fight probably what since
Speaker 2: the Bush tax cuts in two thousand.
Speaker 3: I forget the last time that they were extended.
Speaker 4: My Democrats caved on.
Speaker 2: The Democrats caved on right, So are you going to
Speaker 2: do that again? You said previously I would repeal TCJA
Speaker 2: on day one. Now that's not gonna happen because it's
Speaker 2: an Act of Congress. Do you agree with that?
Speaker 10: Like?
Speaker 2: Which parts of it would you extend? Would you strike?
Speaker 2: What would your strategy be? Remember, Joe Biden got so
Speaker 2: many questions on the campaign trail last time around about
Speaker 2: how he was going to work with Mitch McConnell. I
Speaker 2: know his answers were mostly stupid, but he got a
Speaker 2: lot of questions about that. That's a great thing for
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris. You literally served in the Senate. What do
Speaker 2: you believe? What would you sign? Would you see cetc?
Speaker 2: To what extent?
Speaker 3: How high? What is your tax policy? Are you borrowing
Speaker 3: from Joe Biden?
Speaker 2: You've disavowed every previous position you've ever had on the border,
Speaker 2: on everything. But because the enthusiasm is still so high,
Speaker 2: Ryan said this, and I really think it's so true.
Speaker 2: She wants to get as close to that number on
Speaker 2: the ticket that previously used to pull a generic Democrat.
Speaker 3: That's all you want.
Speaker 2: You don't want to take positions, don't want to piss
Speaker 2: the people off. And I agree though it's very unfortunate
Speaker 2: because many people are frankly totally fine with this, both
Speaker 2: in terms of partisan media.
Speaker 3: I mean, I see it all the time with Trump.
Speaker 11: They're like, oh, it was such.
Speaker 3: A genius move. I'm like, yeah, it was it a
Speaker 3: genius move. It's like Trump.
Speaker 2: I actually think Trump functions at his best and is
Speaker 2: able to capture the most media in hostile environments. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: you can hate that black journalist veentor whatever if you want.
Speaker 2: It took over the world for a brief moment the
Speaker 2: CNN town hall that he did.
Speaker 3: Same thing. I mean, everybody covered it.
Speaker 2: I think he actually functions both at a media capture
Speaker 2: level and probably at a better level in terms of
Speaker 2: showing his contrast or whatever in those Now does he
Speaker 2: also hang himself?
Speaker 3: Certainly, that's Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: But with Kamala and with her previous wish washing, as
Speaker 2: you're saying, even a lesser hole even, I frankly think
Speaker 2: even the most friendly interviewer of Rachel Mattow or somebody,
Speaker 2: you gotta ask something, because then you just completely sacrifice
Speaker 2: your sacrifice, any of your integrity, whatever scrap is left,
Speaker 2: and when you combine those two. They're still giving her
Speaker 2: a pass though, you know, you only have a few.
Speaker 2: Like Dave Wigel, I saw Maggie Haveman as well retweet that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, if the national reporters start to
Speaker 2: press her, it's possible she could cave, but it might
Speaker 2: be too late. I mean, they might wait a whole month.
Speaker 2: I think that's you can't wait a month. I think
Speaker 2: that's out rageous.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the other thing in terms of the Trump
Speaker 1: side prosecuting this case, we keep using that, but anyway,
Speaker 1: trying to make this case against Kamala Harris. The other
Speaker 1: weakness they have is like Trump has kind of gotten
Speaker 1: squishy about whether he's going to agree to a debate,
Speaker 1: So you don't exactly look like you're out front and
Speaker 1: wanting to demonstrate to the American people and get into
Speaker 1: a back and.
Speaker 4: Forth with her either.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's I mean, like you said, it's it's
Speaker 1: sad that this is the environment that we live in.
Speaker 1: It's sad that it probably you know, people don't really
Speaker 1: care that much. It feels like a kind of a
Speaker 1: process question. All of that is the case. You know,
Speaker 1: it's sad that the press doesn't press her more on
Speaker 1: these things and doesn't press Trump more on his tendency
Speaker 1: to only sit with friendly audiences.
Speaker 4: But you're absolutely right about Trump. I don't think that
Speaker 4: with Kamala.
Speaker 1: I think the strategy, whether I like it or not,
Speaker 1: I think it makes sense. With Trump, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense because he needs to reclaim this narrative.
Speaker 3: He needs to take over the airwaves. He needs sixteen.
Speaker 1: He his greatest gift is being able to drive the
Speaker 1: conversation and force people into the debate on his terms. Now,
Speaker 1: I personally think the way he did that at the
Speaker 1: NABJ conference was very destructive to him. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was helpful whatsoever. But it demonstrated his ability to
Speaker 1: seize the moment and force people to talk about whatever
Speaker 1: he wants them to be talking about. He's very good
Speaker 1: at that, and so, you know, for him to avoid
Speaker 1: any sort of hostile questioning and for him to have
Speaker 1: ghettoized himself on true social where no one really gives
Speaker 1: a shit what he's saying over there either.
Speaker 4: I think these and when.
Speaker 1: We do pay attention, it's like, oh, you're attacking Brian Kemp.
Speaker 1: Good job, great work with that, you know. I think
Speaker 1: these are some serious errors that he is making in
Speaker 1: this campaign, and I do think that he is you know,
Speaker 1: we forget he's an older man. Also, he's not as
Speaker 1: feeble as Joe Biden was, et cetera. But older people
Speaker 1: they get they get kind of stuck in a rut.
Speaker 1: And I think he's having trouble grappling with the switch
Speaker 1: in the top of the ticket. I think he really
Speaker 1: is struggling to adjust to that because even though maybe
Speaker 1: somewhere in his mind he thought it was a possibility,
Speaker 1: he clearly didn't really believe that that was going to happen,
Speaker 1: and clearly didn't really plan for the eventuality of that
Speaker 1: of that happening. And so now he's out there still
Speaker 1: talking about Joe Biden, constructing in his minds, I'm elaborate
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory that maybe we're going to bring Joe Biden
Speaker 1: back onto the ticket and can't really move on and
Speaker 1: prosecute in effective case against the ticket that he actually
Speaker 1: is running up again.
Speaker 2: We have been so gaslight by aging politicians. Is that
Speaker 2: I am so struck by just a return to normal,
Speaker 2: Like JD's got two interviews out this morning, he did
Speaker 2: four campaign events yesterday.
Speaker 3: That's actually normal that's how it's supposed to be.
Speaker 4: Kamala, they're supposed to care working a lot.
Speaker 2: The only thing for you that happened with Kamala that
Speaker 2: should have happened didn't happen yesterday, is she was supposed
Speaker 2: to take questions on the plane in between stops. Okay,
Speaker 2: and we just did a whole segment about that, But
Speaker 2: she did two campaign stops. I mean, that's what you're
Speaker 2: supposed to do. Trump has been sitting in mar A
Speaker 2: Lago for five freaking days tweeting about Brian or truth
Speaker 2: started truthing about Brian Kemp.
Speaker 3: That's not what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 2: And that's where I'm struck, just by literally the age
Speaker 2: difference of having younger people on the ticket and how
Speaker 2: much more beneficial it is. So I've probably never been
Speaker 2: more agist whenever it comes to politics. It is right
Speaker 2: now because I'm like.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, this is how it was supposed to be.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, old McCain worked harder than both
Speaker 2: of these guys did, Joe Biden and Trump did whenever
Speaker 2: he was on the campaign trail in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: and there was a whole national conversation, how old is
Speaker 2: he sixty or something sixty two about.
Speaker 4: Whether he was too Yeah, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So let's move on to We've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of new reporting about how the Tim Walls versus Josh
Speaker 1: Shapiro decision went down, and some of this is very interesting.
Speaker 1: So let's put CNN up on the screen here. They
Speaker 1: had one of the sort of most in depth deep
Speaker 1: dives into the interview and vetting process. Their headline is
Speaker 1: the Blue Walls How a low key Midwestern governor shot
Speaker 1: to the top to be Harris's VP pick. And a
Speaker 1: couple things that are of note here. Number one, apparently
Speaker 1: just the vibes with Shapiro were off and the vibes
Speaker 1: with Walls were apparently very good. Walls came in, she
Speaker 1: was like, okay, well, what do you see as the
Speaker 1: role of vice president? And he was like, whatever you
Speaker 1: want it to be. And she asked him, okay, well
Speaker 1: do you want to be the last person in the
Speaker 1: room when decisions are being made?
Speaker 4: And he's like, if you want.
Speaker 1: Me there, So it was very you know, put me in, coach,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to go. I'll do whatever you want me
Speaker 1: to do. I'll be the quote unquote happy warrior. So
Speaker 1: that was the vibe with Walls. With Shapiro, it sort
Speaker 1: of echoed the concerns that Fetterman had put out publicly
Speaker 1: that this man is very ambitious, that he may overshadow you.
Speaker 1: He had a bunch of questions for her about like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: what would my role be, and trying to carve out
Speaker 1: specifically the parameters of what that would look like. One
Speaker 1: source familiar with the meetings said it was a striking
Speaker 1: contrast between the two individuals.
Speaker 4: But another thing I noted in.
Speaker 1: This piece was the quiet organized support campaign for Walls
Speaker 1: that was unfolding behind the scenes that involved apparently Nancy
Speaker 1: Pelosi and Barack Obama.
Speaker 4: So here's what they say.
Speaker 1: They don't have a lot of details, but this is
Speaker 1: the lines from us CNN. They say Walls was propelled
Speaker 1: by support from across the Democratic Party, progressive and moderate
Speaker 1: factions alike. We saw, for example, publicly Joe Manchin coming
Speaker 1: out and praising him in a sophisticated campaign guided by
Speaker 1: some of the party's most seasoned operatives. He had former
Speaker 1: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on his side, old allies from
Speaker 1: his twelve years in Congress representing a rural Minnesota district,
Speaker 1: as well as glowing words from former President Obama, who
Speaker 1: said in a statement Tuesday of walls, he has the
Speaker 1: values and the integrity to make us proud. They go
Speaker 1: on to say Obama also served as a sounding board
Speaker 1: for Vice President Harris to talk through how she was
Speaker 1: thinking about it. I'm sure he was just the sounding
Speaker 1: boards are just listening, not offering any sort of shaping
Speaker 1: words or guidance on that. So I found that very
Speaker 1: noere That's the only place I saw that reporting about
Speaker 1: Obama's involvement here. They did mention that, you know, Shapiro
Speaker 1: came with some drama because of the comments that he
Speaker 1: had made with regard to you know, protesters being Palaestin
Speaker 1: and Propalstigne testers being a kin to the KKK. One
Speaker 1: of the Democrats involved said, no one wanted to rip
Speaker 1: that scab back Goban. So I think there were also
Speaker 1: concerns that because of how stridently he had come out
Speaker 1: in support of Israel's prosecution the war on Gazan against
Speaker 1: specifically against the protesters, that that was just a can
Speaker 1: of worms that they didn't really want to open. And
Speaker 1: so I thought that was all very interesting that, you know,
Speaker 1: the fit was different. The way they handled the interview
Speaker 1: was very, very different. And we also saw some reporting
Speaker 1: saga that you know, there was this like Josh Shapiro
Speaker 1: hype video that had come out that the Philadelphia Mayer
Speaker 1: had put out. I think because he made such a
Speaker 1: sort of aggressive and the people around him made such
Speaker 1: an aggressive play, including this highly produced video, including trying
Speaker 1: to create this narrative of his inevitability. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know if it was me, I'd be like that, like
Speaker 1: you think this is a done deal, that you've just
Speaker 1: got this in the bag. I know that I would
Speaker 1: find that to be very off putting if I was
Speaker 1: making that show well.
Speaker 2: And I also didn't take I think there was a
Speaker 2: Jon Favreau who used to write Obama's speeches. One of
Speaker 2: the pod Save Bros. Even he was making fun of
Speaker 2: Josh Shapiro's Obama mannerisms. That has the great people like Obama.
Speaker 4: If you're literally Obama.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, maybe Obama. What do we really know about Obama?
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, he's in it for himself.
Speaker 2: He's probably one of the great arch narcissists in American history.
Speaker 2: He's very good at getting himself elected and getting himself
Speaker 2: a lot of media and so in this case it
Speaker 2: probably pissed him off. You know that Josh Shapiro was
Speaker 2: copying him more and more that we see and learn
Speaker 2: from behind the scenes. I do think that that was
Speaker 2: probably the biggest you called it, you know, credit to you,
Speaker 2: which is that he is just so extraordinarily ambitious. He
Speaker 2: doesn't know how to be a number two man. Tim
Speaker 2: Watts allegedly told Kamala Harris he has no desire to
Speaker 2: be president, and that's one of the reasons why he
Speaker 2: was picked as the vice president, reminiscent of that Dick
Speaker 2: Cheney pick by George W.
Speaker 3: Bush.
Speaker 2: W was a very insecure man, very much like Kamla,
Speaker 2: and he didn't want anybody to overshadow him. He didn't
Speaker 2: know what to do. He had been they've been burned
Speaker 2: by Dan Quayle because he was literally an idiot. Under
Speaker 2: hw He's like, so who do I pick? And they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you should pick somebody like Cheney. Because the thing about
Speaker 2: Cheney is he always loved being the number two man,
Speaker 2: and so he as the NBA president.
Speaker 3: It really lit him up.
Speaker 2: This idea that you have a non ambitious person who
Speaker 2: will help you run stuff for you, and I've worked
Speaker 2: out badly for the country, but he did run stuff
Speaker 2: for w That actually was the ideal position. He didn't
Speaker 2: really work that hard.
Speaker 3: He wasn't you know. He didn't like to think all
Speaker 3: that much.
Speaker 2: So I think that Walls kind of pitched himself in
Speaker 2: a similar way of I'm not going to try and
Speaker 2: upstate you. I'm just your number two man. I'm here
Speaker 2: to help you to the best of my ability. I
Speaker 2: also don't think we can discount now in retrospect how
Speaker 2: much is Washington connections really worked out for him. Helped
Speaker 2: Nancy Post to become Speaker of the House, Posted going
Speaker 2: to bat for him. A lot of his house colleagues
Speaker 2: loved him in terms of the people. I think Amy
Speaker 2: Klobahar was going to bat for him in the Senate, So,
Speaker 2: you know, having people in Washington who have a good
Speaker 2: relationship with you, especially when Josh Shapiro is way more
Speaker 2: of an unknown he's never been here in d C.
Speaker 2: I think that probably helped him, you know, much more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right, because she knew Shapiro a
Speaker 1: little better than she knew Walls going into this process.
Speaker 1: But I don't think they were like close either. The
Speaker 1: person she was probably closest tors Roy Cooper, who had
Speaker 1: taken himself out of consideration. But this was a very
Speaker 1: condensed timeline. So if this is someone who you're going
Speaker 1: to have to potentially govern with, yeah, where can you
Speaker 1: get that comfort that this is going to be someone
Speaker 1: that you're going to be able to get along with?
Speaker 1: And so the fact that Walls had so many people
Speaker 1: from across the entire ideological spectrum being like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just a great guy. And Joe Biden said something he
Speaker 1: just likes like people just like this guy. And to me,
Speaker 1: it's an incredible testament to how I guess how well
Speaker 1: he's able to pull these things off. That he said
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to be president, and it was credible
Speaker 1: enough that she believed in, you know, because.
Speaker 3: Cause it's like, bro, come, I mean, yeah, all.
Speaker 4: These people are ambitious. You know.
Speaker 1: Josh Shapiro may wear it Mara heavily, but this is
Speaker 1: a governor of an important state. He's obviously excited to
Speaker 1: be in the vice presidential pick. Like, he obviously has
Speaker 1: some ambitions of his own. So the fact that he
Speaker 1: was able to pull off that line that Nana. Of course,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to be president. I think it's
Speaker 1: the testament to the political abilities that he comes off
Speaker 1: as like a genuine nice guy.
Speaker 2: Even though he's been a professional politicians is two thousand
Speaker 2: and five for like twenty years.
Speaker 4: He still comes off is.
Speaker 1: That like, you know, high school teacher and the nice
Speaker 1: guy coach whatever, and so he's able to pull that off.
Speaker 1: That's one thing that has been insane to me, Sager,
Speaker 1: is the number of people online who think that Joshapiro
Speaker 1: is a better politician than Tim Walls, just like on
Speaker 1: the you know, oratory whatever. I just it's crazy to
Speaker 1: me because when I see Josh Peau, all I can
Speaker 1: see is the cheap Obama knockoff, and so you know,
Speaker 1: Walls has he's he's got his own thing going and
Speaker 1: it feels genuine, whether you like him or not, and
Speaker 1: whether you grow with his positions or not. So just
Speaker 1: on the pure political talent, I find that assessment to
Speaker 1: be totally crazy.
Speaker 2: I'll make the Shapiro pitch, I guess which is don't
Speaker 2: forget that or the Obama knockoff? Either one or almost
Speaker 2: won the state of Iowa for the Democratic primary in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, which was Pete Budajet.
Speaker 3: The Obama knockoff works quite.
Speaker 4: The Democratic property.
Speaker 2: I have a very lowion of Democratic boomers. No offense,
Speaker 2: but you guys love yourselves some like you know, Obama
Speaker 2: esque ty figure.
Speaker 3: Bato Rourke is another one who people liked.
Speaker 4: These people didn't do all that well sary, Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the Democratic elite loved them.
Speaker 2: So in that sense, I'm saying, like that that's who
Speaker 2: the audience and all that plays to. And when you
Speaker 2: combine that to both them, I mean, look, there's undeniable.
Speaker 2: At that Philadelphia rally, he got a massive pop.
Speaker 3: People loved him.
Speaker 2: Even the reporters on the ground were like the people
Speaker 2: who are here, they are obsessed with Joshapiro. A lot
Speaker 2: of that is also just general Democratic enthusiasm. He's got
Speaker 2: the high favorability in the state of Pennsylvania. Ultimately, what
Speaker 2: the Harris campaign found, and I'm really fascinated because I
Speaker 2: don't know to what extent this is true. They didn't
Speaker 2: believe that he could translate his personal popularity to the
Speaker 2: state of the ticket and ultimately help them win the
Speaker 2: state of Pennsylvania. Yeah, I find that hard to believe.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I just don't know how the decision
Speaker 2: was made and how much data was there. I haven't
Speaker 2: even seen you since Tim Walts was picked. Yeah, kind
Speaker 2: of my theory was, and this kind of bears us
Speaker 2: out too. In the today's toss ups, I really believe
Speaker 2: that they no longer view the Midwest as the tipping
Speaker 2: point because if you look at a two seventy win
Speaker 2: map and you play with it, you can have Kamala
Speaker 2: lose the state of Pennsylvania but win Georgia as long
Speaker 2: as she wins Nevada. That's two hundred and seventy three
Speaker 2: electoral votes. And so with the Sun Belt, with younger people,
Speaker 2: black voters who are a lot more animated, and you
Speaker 2: got Trump literally attacking Brian Camp in the state of Georgia.
Speaker 3: I think Georgia is a lot more in play than
Speaker 3: it was previously.
Speaker 2: Wet and if you've got a chance in Nevada and
Speaker 2: in Georgia, you don't have to win Pennsylvania as much.
Speaker 2: And Michigan and Wisconsin have always been razor thin PA.
Speaker 2: Even though it is the most likely tipping point state,
Speaker 2: you don't necessarily need it in a world where the
Speaker 2: Sun Belt is way more in play, and Tim Walls
Speaker 2: is the most beloved figure by these white suburban liberals.
Speaker 3: They love him.
Speaker 2: And so if you have those people who are coming
Speaker 2: out to vote in Maricopa County and in Fulton County
Speaker 2: in Atlanta, maybe you don't need to go after the
Speaker 2: Midwest as much.
Speaker 4: I mean, let's not forget though, Tim Walls.
Speaker 1: He when he was in the House, the district that
Speaker 1: he ran it, He's actually the only Democrat who has
Speaker 1: won that district in decades. He outperformed Hillary in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen by some eighteen points. Trump won that district handily
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, and Tim Walls also won it by
Speaker 1: I think Trump won it by thirteen and Tim Walls
Speaker 1: still won it by three.
Speaker 4: So you know, he does have.
Speaker 1: Demonstrated ability in Midwestern sort of swingy areas. I believe
Speaker 1: his district was sort of like half suburban, half rural,
Speaker 1: and so you know, listen, yeah, our Democrat's going to
Speaker 1: win back rural America with Tim Walls. No, but all
Speaker 1: he needs to do is hold on to the percent
Speaker 1: of the like white rural vote that Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: Did and they win.
Speaker 1: Like that's all they have to do because all the
Speaker 1: other coalitions are kind of coming back together, So I
Speaker 1: think they feel like he is an effective messenger in
Speaker 1: terms of that, and I just feel like they there
Speaker 1: was a lot of reporting that they did do some
Speaker 1: significant poll testing, and I think if it was clear that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: if you've got jos Shapiro, Pennsylvania is in the bag,
Speaker 1: I think that would have been very difficult to resist,
Speaker 1: very difficult. But the reporting suggests that they didn't really
Speaker 1: see that jos Shapiro helped them in Pennsylvania at all,
Speaker 1: that there wasn't a big electoral impact whether you put
Speaker 1: Tim Walls or Jos Shapiro on the ticket, and so
Speaker 1: that freed her up to go with the person that
Speaker 1: she had the more personal fit with, and also who
Speaker 1: you know, he really leaned into in the state of Minnesota,
Speaker 1: They really leaned into the post Roe v. Wade environment,
Speaker 1: So they feel like he's a very effective messenger there.
Speaker 1: And then you got Pelosi and Obama saying, hey, this
Speaker 1: is your guy. I think that made it all a
Speaker 1: very compelling thing.
Speaker 11: I think's totally right.
Speaker 2: I recommend people watched the Counterpoints segment for me yesterday
Speaker 2: about the Steve Kornacki segment because the quibble I have,
Speaker 2: and I think you know, given the data it's fair,
Speaker 2: is that he wanted a very different environment when you've
Speaker 2: got as politics continues to buy for Kate on the
Speaker 2: rural and suburban divide, it's very clear like he activated
Speaker 2: more or white liberals and he didn't win back the
Speaker 2: same people that he ran when he was Congress. Now
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that he doesn't know how to talk
Speaker 2: to those people, yeah, but he definitely didn't win them
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two whenever he was up on the ballot.
Speaker 3: Now, can he help bring some of those people over? Maybe?
Speaker 3: I mean, this is kind of the this is the case.
Speaker 2: That a lot of the the pundits were making against JD.
Speaker 2: They like, when you look at the swings that he
Speaker 2: had in some of these working class districts, he actually
Speaker 2: drove up the vote in more in some Republican areas,
Speaker 2: but he didn't win by the margin that he was
Speaker 2: supposed to win in the rural working class voters.
Speaker 4: So I mean, he underperformed Trump in terms of performed Trump.
Speaker 3: In white working class It's complicated.
Speaker 2: Because Tim Ryan was on the ballot, But yeah, regardless,
Speaker 2: I would not say it was perfect showing for Dad.
Speaker 2: Let's all be honest, right, he only went by six.
Speaker 2: I think Trump won by eight with Tim Walls. What
Speaker 2: Steve Kornaki was saying is like, if you look at
Speaker 2: those rural districts that he was supposed to activate, it
Speaker 2: just didn't materialize last time around. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: rhetorically he can't try and hold on like you said,
Speaker 2: But you know, any fantasy if he's gonna like he's
Speaker 2: gonna flip votes, I don't think that's gonna happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So if you've got.
Speaker 1: Like I said, he doesn't have to do better, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have to do better than the Joe Biden totals
Speaker 1: in those areas, and I think that's probably what they're
Speaker 1: aiming for. Go to be four guys, because this was interesting.
Speaker 1: There was a Maris poll that showed that Jos Shapiro
Speaker 1: had elevated negatives and was underwater in favorability with gen
Speaker 1: Z voters in particular. So if you're looking at pulling,
Speaker 1: if you're the Kamala Harris team that says Shapiro doesn't
Speaker 1: really help you in Pennsylvania and he brings this negative
Speaker 1: to the ticket with regard to gen Z, voters, and
Speaker 1: I think this has to be largely because of how
Speaker 1: aggressively he talked about the pro Palestine protesters and his
Speaker 1: positioning on Israel in general. Then you're saying, okay, well,
Speaker 1: why do I want to bring a negative onto the
Speaker 1: ticket when Walls has this cross ideological support across the
Speaker 1: entire democratic spectrum, from Joe Mansion to Bernie Sanders literally,
Speaker 1: And you know, I think it also is a statement
Speaker 1: on how the rejuvenated union movement through.
Speaker 4: Their weight around in this process too.
Speaker 1: You know, we forget to talk about them, but Sean
Speaker 1: Fan made it very clear the you know, new leader
Speaker 1: of the the UAW who has been very strong and
Speaker 1: actually was at that rally in Detroit yesterday, he said, listen,
Speaker 1: I want Andy Basheer or Tim Walls, and he said
Speaker 1: he even said, listen, I'm with them no matter what.
Speaker 1: But those are the two that we really trust. And
Speaker 1: I do think that the fact that labor unions didn't
Speaker 1: like Mark Kelly, labor unions did not like jos Shapiro
Speaker 1: because of his charter school stands as another very Obama
Speaker 1: as position.
Speaker 4: By the way, I think that.
Speaker 1: Also hindered them because again you're talking about Okay, a
Speaker 1: fracturing within the Democratic coalition, and you're talking about enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: You're talking about reopening wounds that you don't really want
Speaker 1: to have to reopen. And so you know, when you
Speaker 1: look at that picture and then you also think about, oh,
Speaker 1: she just liked Tim Walls better when she met with him,
Speaker 1: the choice makes a lot of sense and does not
Speaker 1: have to be about anti Semitism as being insisted by
Speaker 1: many across O.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's definitely a fun one. Although that discourse
Speaker 3: has mostly been killed at this point, so let's just
Speaker 3: put it.
Speaker 1: Into the Yeah, that's why I only brought it up
Speaker 1: here briefly at the end, so we can all move forward.
Speaker 3: With our thank you.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: I a lways go on to the attacks.
Speaker 2: After the selection of Tim Wallas's vice president, Republicans tried
Speaker 2: a variety I think of different attacks. The one though,
Speaker 2: that is beginning to stick, is claims of quote unquote
Speaker 2: stolen valor. So we are going to go through everything
Speaker 2: that we know today. It was kicked off by the
Speaker 2: vice presidential candidate for the Republican Senator JD.
Speaker 3: Vance. Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 8: What really bothers me about Tim Waltz as a Marine
Speaker 8: who served this country in uniform when the United States
Speaker 8: Marine Corps, when the United States of America asked me
Speaker 8: to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it.
Speaker 8: I did what they asked me to do it, and
Speaker 8: I did it honorably, and I'm very proud of that service.
Speaker 8: When Tim Waltz was asked by his country to go
Speaker 8: to Iraq, you know what he did.
Speaker 3: He dropped out of the.
Speaker 8: Army and allowed his unit to go without him, a
Speaker 8: fact that he's been criticized for aggressively by a lot
Speaker 8: of the people that he served with. I think it's
Speaker 8: shameful to prepare your unit to go to Iraq, to
Speaker 8: make a promise that you're going to follow through, and
Speaker 8: then to drop out.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's go all the way back in time
Speaker 2: to two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: Crystal. You can weigh in here if he would like.
Speaker 3: So the timeline is such.
Speaker 2: Tim Waltz is a twenty four year veteran of the
Speaker 2: Minnesota National Guard. He rises to the level of master
Speaker 2: sergeant and then is I believe I don't exactly understand
Speaker 2: how the term works, but he was then quasi promoted
Speaker 2: to command sergeant Majors, one of the highest enlisted ranks
Speaker 2: in the United States Military, in two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: That is the tail end of his career at that
Speaker 2: exact moment. Whenever he files to run for Congress, some
Speaker 2: four months before the deployment order comes down, there is
Speaker 2: a decision that he has to make on whether he
Speaker 2: is going to go to Iraq with the Minnesota National
Speaker 2: Guard unit that he is attached to as a senior
Speaker 2: enlisted officer for the artillery unit or not. He decides
Speaker 2: not to go and to retire. Now there's questions here
Speaker 2: around the retirement date. So if we look at there's
Speaker 2: two separate factors. The defense of Tim Walls is that
Speaker 2: Walls did not know that his unit was going to
Speaker 2: go to Iraq, so the retirement came two months.
Speaker 3: Before the official order.
Speaker 2: The detractors say that the senior enlisted personnel and some
Speaker 2: people served in that unit said that they knew for
Speaker 2: months before the official order came down. I spoke some
Speaker 2: people in the military. They said, yeah, it's actually quite
Speaker 2: common before an official order comes down or not. So
Speaker 2: I would say it's somewhat believable. That is, I would
Speaker 2: say the first with these quote unquote attacks, they didn't
Speaker 2: go to Iraq whenever he helped prepare the unit for
Speaker 2: do you want to weigh in before I get to
Speaker 2: any of the others.
Speaker 1: I mean, he so the specific details Minnesota National Guard.
Speaker 1: So the unit got the alert for mobilization in July.
Speaker 1: He had retired two months earlier in Maye and been
Speaker 1: playing a congressional run.
Speaker 3: So there you go, right, So that's the time.
Speaker 2: The second one cubs back to this clip where he
Speaker 2: had claimed that he had carried weapons in war while
Speaker 2: discussing gun control. So this was a quote from a
Speaker 2: video that was posted actually by the Kamala Harris campaign.
Speaker 2: This was the quote then that people are seizing on.
Speaker 2: Let's take a listen, op cool.
Speaker 6: Cup, like many of you did five weeks ago, and
Speaker 6: dead said, Dad, you're the only person I know who's
Speaker 6: an elected office. You need to stop what's happening with this.
Speaker 6: I'll take my kick in the butt for the NRA.
Speaker 6: I spent twenty five years in the army, and I
Speaker 6: hunt and I gave the money back, and I'll tell
Speaker 6: you what I have been doing. I've been voting for
Speaker 6: common sense legislation that protects a second amendment. But we
Speaker 6: can do background checks, we can do CDC research, we
Speaker 6: can make sure we don't have reciprocal carry amongst states,
Speaker 6: and we can make sure that those weapons of war
Speaker 6: that I carried in war is the only place where
Speaker 6: those weapons.
Speaker 2: Were all right, So that last part is becoming what's
Speaker 2: significant here for the attack. Let's put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. The reason why is he claimed he
Speaker 2: quote carried weapons in war. Let's put NBC News up
Speaker 2: on the screen here. Asked about the video, a Harris
Speaker 2: campaign spokesperson did not deny Walts had embellished when he
Speaker 2: spoke of carrying weapons in war. They said, in his
Speaker 2: twenty four years of service, the governor carried, fired, and
Speaker 2: trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. Governor
Speaker 2: Walsh would never insult or undermine any American service to
Speaker 2: his country. In fact, he thanks Senator Advance for putting
Speaker 2: his life on the line. It's the American way. So
Speaker 2: this has now become one of the I guess the
Speaker 2: attacks here and it kind of stems not necessarily from
Speaker 2: this one quote, but whether there's been a pattern here
Speaker 2: of claiming service that was not they did not actually
Speaker 2: happen so for example, let's put this place up on
Speaker 2: the screen. This is from a two thousand and four
Speaker 2: interview or sorry, two thousand and six interview that Wals
Speaker 2: did with Bloomberg News. So basically there is a question
Speaker 2: here of whether he claimed to Bloomberg News.
Speaker 3: Is Joshua Green, so may know him.
Speaker 2: He wrote a book about Joe Steve Bannon in twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen on whether he deployed to Iraq. So he wrote
Speaker 2: Joshua Green at that time a twenty four year veteran
Speaker 2: of the Army National Guard recently returned from serving in
Speaker 2: Iraq as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Now this is
Speaker 2: Jeffery Ingersoll, actually my former boss over the Daily Caller.
Speaker 2: As he points out, Operation during Freedom was actually about Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: But the claim here as to whether he claimed he
Speaker 2: served in Iraq or not, Bloomberg actually came out and
Speaker 2: stealth edited it saying Italy. In this Joshua Green has
Speaker 2: not clarified whether he was told, whether he was told
Speaker 2: by Tim Walls that it had happened or not. If
Speaker 2: we go to the next part, this is the next
Speaker 2: part of the controversy, which is that the National Guard
Speaker 2: has had to come out and I mean they say
Speaker 2: dispute here, I would just say clarify. So Wals ran
Speaker 2: as a retired command sergeant major. Now apparently he actually
Speaker 2: fully retired as a master sergeant because according to the
Speaker 2: National Guard, he did not officially reach the rank. This
Speaker 2: is what I was talking about previously of command sergeant major,
Speaker 2: although he did use it in campaign materials and yeah, sorry,
Speaker 2: go ahead.
Speaker 1: He reached the rank, he didn't complete additional course work.
Speaker 4: That's right too, so you didn't check the additional course.
Speaker 3: I know this all sounds tedious.
Speaker 2: I'm going through everything just so everybody has it because
Speaker 2: the amount of misinformation and not information that is out there.
Speaker 3: I want everybody to know the truth.
Speaker 2: Army people please fact check me if I get anything wrong.
Speaker 2: The ranks and all this are very tedious. I apologize
Speaker 2: now as I understand the retire you know, claiming thing.
Speaker 2: That's a little bit of a problem because whatever it's
Speaker 2: your d D two fourteen, whatever your paperwork that you
Speaker 2: receive upon discharge. He was discharge officially, I believe, retired
Speaker 2: as a master sergeant despite running later.
Speaker 3: Now, why does any of this matter?
Speaker 2: Because politically, this is probably the attack that I have
Speaker 2: seen more embraced by Republicans and operatives, and it is
Speaker 2: one very familiar to the head of the Trump campaign.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up here on the screen.
Speaker 2: Chris las Svida, who was actually one of the people
Speaker 2: who helped orchestrate the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign
Speaker 2: back in two thousand and four, is literally the campaign
Speaker 2: manager for Donald Trump. And so that obviously was an
Speaker 2: effort to try and to bring up questions about John
Speaker 2: Kerry's service in Vietnam from people who had served with
Speaker 2: him in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth media campaign.
Speaker 3: That really was a big deal in two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: And the real reason too is this is part I
Speaker 2: actually I want to talk about with you, is how
Speaker 2: effective this is going to be to say this is
Speaker 2: another swift voat.
Speaker 11: I don't think it's true.
Speaker 2: I do think it definitely embellished military service and the
Speaker 2: weapons of war thing is straight up bullshit. The issue
Speaker 2: I think for the Trump campaign, oh four, was the
Speaker 2: security election. That was the Iraq election. That was the
Speaker 2: military elect where we're going to surge, We're not going
Speaker 2: to surge, who's going to handle So that's why it
Speaker 2: was extremely relevant here. The issue I find only here
Speaker 2: is that I think it helps the idea for Republicans
Speaker 2: to run phony. Phony was the term that we saw
Speaker 2: stuck incompetent in others, doesn't believe in anything in our
Speaker 2: word clouds against Kamala Harris. If they could try and
Speaker 2: attach that label for Tim Watson, for Kamala, it will
Speaker 2: be a net benefit or not. And so it's not
Speaker 2: going to be as helpful as swift Boat was, I
Speaker 2: think in two thousand and four for the George W.
Speaker 2: Bush campaign. That's kind of where I fall on it.
Speaker 2: Although I do think, I mean, listen, should do an interview,
Speaker 2: I should tell the truth about what happened here.
Speaker 4: I think it's a better attack than tampon Tim.
Speaker 1: I think we're I think we're reaching closer to something
Speaker 1: that I mean, listen, I can tell you go through
Speaker 1: each of these and tell you, like, I think this
Speaker 1: is pretty flimsy. The Iraq thing doesn't really hold up
Speaker 1: in terms of the timeline, the operation and during Freedom thing.
Speaker 4: All right, he serves in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Speaker 4: They have one prosper where.
Speaker 1: He says something about that and him holding up a
Speaker 1: sign at a at an anti warproce.
Speaker 3: We got that next, we want to put that up there. No,
Speaker 3: but Christy leg the one, Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, it's not.
Speaker 2: You can't clean you're a veteran if he didn't fight
Speaker 2: in the war. He literally said he was a veteran
Speaker 2: of Operation during Freedom.
Speaker 1: When I've seen inspect one of the clips that's circulating us, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we got him.
Speaker 4: He said Operation Enduring Freedom. He goes on to explain,
Speaker 4: I served in Italy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom
Speaker 4: and here's what that means. So listen. But putting all
Speaker 4: of that aside, ask yourself this question.
Speaker 1: Is anyone gonna not vote for Donald Trump because of
Speaker 1: the whole bone spurs situation?
Speaker 4: No? Why?
Speaker 1: Because number one, like you said, it's not a secure election.
Speaker 1: Number two, most importantly, he's just the type of politician
Speaker 1: who can get away with stuff like this. And I
Speaker 1: think Tim Walls in contrast to John Kerrey, who was
Speaker 1: a terrible politician and also who really leaned very heavily
Speaker 1: on his whole war hero thing in a way that
Speaker 1: Tim Walls, you know, he talks about his service, but
Speaker 1: his he identifies himself more. And Kamin was calling him,
Speaker 1: you know, coach Walls, like that's the persona he's leaning
Speaker 1: more into but we also know because these attacks against
Speaker 1: him were came out during his gubernatorial campaign as well,
Speaker 1: he's the type of politician who can get through something
Speaker 1: like this because we've seen him do it in the past.
Speaker 1: So that would be the biggest thing I would say
Speaker 1: is just like you know, some politicians, they really struggle
Speaker 1: when they're faced with any sort of attack or question
Speaker 1: about et cetera, et cetera. I don't think that this
Speaker 1: will end up landing or significantly harming the appearance of walls.
Speaker 1: I think because he does come off as just like
Speaker 1: you know, the guy that he is, I think it's
Speaker 1: hard to put that label of phony onto him. So
Speaker 1: that would be sort of my you know, political assessment
Speaker 1: putting the merits of the claims.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll put the last one up there. Could I
Speaker 2: actually find that the worst one? Put that up there
Speaker 2: please on the screen. Well, so we should have put
Speaker 2: the article. But basically, he held up a sign where
Speaker 2: he said he was a veteran and he ran as
Speaker 2: a veteran of operation during Freedom.
Speaker 3: I wasn't even the military even I know it's bullshit.
Speaker 3: So that's actually what I would say.
Speaker 2: I find the most egregious now can he apologize and
Speaker 2: can he get his way out of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think so, And generally, I mean, this is kind
Speaker 2: of what I used say about the JD stuff as well,
Speaker 2: whenever I was worried about it. Bottom of the ticket
Speaker 2: attacks will work only to a certain extent. The top
Speaker 2: of the ticket is ultimately what matters. And yeah, Trump
Speaker 2: has himself no faith whenever he's basically got himself out
Speaker 2: of Vietnam.
Speaker 3: Now, in terms.
Speaker 2: Of politically, like what the overall effect of this has been,
Speaker 2: it is the only time I've seen the media begin
Speaker 2: to pick up on some of it now. Partially it's
Speaker 2: because he has the most teeth in terms of the attack.
Speaker 2: But I believe the way that the Trump campaign and
Speaker 2: others appear to be looking at it is they feel
Speaker 2: like this is a way that they could try to
Speaker 2: change the conversation, not necessarily about the Tim Walls thing
Speaker 2: in general, but to try and get the media to
Speaker 2: quote ask questions of Waltz. But what they want is
Speaker 2: for them to ask questions to Kamala about this, And
Speaker 2: they want Kamala to have to be compelled to come
Speaker 2: out and ask questions not just about this, but to
Speaker 2: be asked questions in general.
Speaker 3: So like, that's kind of how they are thinking about it.
Speaker 1: We see, I mean this is chrys losavida. This is
Speaker 1: what he gets successfully with John Carries.
Speaker 4: He turned a strength into a weakness.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that's you know, they want to recapture that
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourths with boat Magic. And something that
Speaker 1: is a strength for Tim Walls is that he has
Speaker 1: this career You're based on service, whether serving in the
Speaker 1: military or being a high school teacher, which trust me,
Speaker 1: as a form of service. I I'm from a family
Speaker 1: of teachers, or you know, being the winning football coach.
Speaker 1: Like service, service, service, And they want to turn that
Speaker 1: into a negative. And so that's why they're really you know,
Speaker 1: honing in on this and doing everything they can possibly.
Speaker 2: Exactly the final part. It's so funny. This is just
Speaker 2: so classic Trump. One of the emerging attacks on Walls
Speaker 2: was handling of BLM. Well, it turns out though Tim
Speaker 2: Walls has been sitting on this audio for what four years,
Speaker 2: and leaked video or leaked audio of Trump actually praising
Speaker 2: Tim Walls for his handling of the BLM protests.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 9: Vern Wolves is on the phone and we spoke and
Speaker 9: I totally agree with the way he handled it the
Speaker 9: last couple of days. I asked him to do that,
Speaker 9: and the whole world was laughing. Two days three days later,
Speaker 9: I spoke to the governor the governors, I think on
Speaker 9: the quality an excellent guy, big National Guard up there
Speaker 9: and is ready to come in a fight like Hill.
Speaker 9: I tell you, the best they did in Minneapolis was incredible.
Speaker 9: They did win it and dominating and it happened immediately
Speaker 9: and is on the phone now, Jim Walls. Again, I
Speaker 9: was very happy with the last couple of days. Tim,
Speaker 9: you called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked
Speaker 9: them out so fast it was like bowlings.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so uh, that's gonna be tough. That's gonna
Speaker 3: be tough for the Trump people. Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 2: I actually saw a lot of Rohn DeSantis boosters who
Speaker 2: were like, yeah, this is the issue with Trump. They're like,
Speaker 2: anytime he's on the phone with and he could be
Speaker 2: on the phone with like his arch nemesis and'd be like,
Speaker 2: you're tremendous, You're an amazing person and we love her,
Speaker 2: but and then you would continue later so yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that is as Trump as it gets can't attack him
Speaker 2: if Trump is a literal opponent said that he was
Speaker 2: doing a good job on the phone at the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes it difficult.
Speaker 1: I mean to be honest with you, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you agree with this or not, but I don't
Speaker 1: think that anything that happen and in the COVID era
Speaker 1: is going like whether people didn't like the decisions in COVID,
Speaker 1: didn't like you know, what happened during BLM, what.
Speaker 4: I just think people are moving forward totally.
Speaker 1: And this was the problem with the Desanta's campaign was
Speaker 1: that was the COVID stuff was really central to his
Speaker 1: political status within the Republican Party, and you know he
Speaker 1: wanted to lean into that and actually moved away from
Speaker 1: it pretty quickly because people just were like, all right,
Speaker 1: that's in the past. I don't really want to think
Speaker 1: about it or talk about it anymore. So even if
Speaker 1: you didn't have Trump on the phone literally being like this,
Speaker 1: You've done an incredible job, was amazing, and you came in.
Speaker 4: So fast and so whatever he said, even.
Speaker 1: If you didn't have that, I don't know that that
Speaker 1: really sticks to walls. I think, listen, I think it's
Speaker 1: it will be difficult I think to.
Speaker 4: Label Walls as.
Speaker 1: Far left just because of his identity and the way
Speaker 1: you know, white older white dudes just code is sort
Speaker 1: of moderate in America, I think.
Speaker 4: That'll be difficult.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the foot flop charge that you
Speaker 1: can definitely level at Kamala Harris, that is going to
Speaker 1: be difficult. So if I were them, I would just
Speaker 1: train their fire on Kamala Harris. I think she's more
Speaker 1: easily dinged up on your phone.
Speaker 4: You're incompetent.
Speaker 1: That was the big word that jumped down of our
Speaker 1: word clouds, like that's probably where the best juice is,
Speaker 1: even more so than the like far left, liberal, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 4: I think the.
Speaker 1: More accurate thing, which is usually the one that lands
Speaker 1: and has the most teeth, is you just don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you just does.
Speaker 4: This woman doesn't know where she is.
Speaker 1: You don't know where she is, You don't know what
Speaker 1: she's going to be one day to the next. I
Speaker 1: think that's probably the most effective political attack.
Speaker 4: That they could go with.
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you, and competent is the best
Speaker 2: I was going to say. This is another thing I
Speaker 2: find is anyone I find still complaining about something from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. And I do this for a living, and
Speaker 2: I probably complain and remember much better than both, even
Speaker 2: though I'm like, ah, that just doesn't hit. And I'll
Speaker 2: tell you, I think the reason why this country has
Speaker 2: a tremendous, you know, a tremendous capacity for amnesia. Joe
Speaker 2: Biden was our presidential candidate and is our president a
Speaker 2: month ago, one month ago, Ask anybody in your life.
Speaker 3: I don't even think about Joe Biden now, an they don't,
Speaker 3: They don't think about him.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump was almost MESSI he came millimeters away from
Speaker 2: getting his head split open on national television. Both he
Speaker 2: and everybody else has completely moved on from that. That
Speaker 2: was again, not even a month ago. And so so
Speaker 2: you're talking to me about four years ago. I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of analysis has actually been done.
Speaker 2: If you look at people's political attitudes after pandemics, just
Speaker 2: because it happened a one hundred years ago, by two
Speaker 2: years after the nineteen eighteen people are like, what, who flew?
Speaker 2: What what are you talking about? They don't even think
Speaker 2: about it, and way more people died percentage ways at
Speaker 2: that time. There's an incredible capacity for amnesia. Within humanity
Speaker 2: and especially in our modern media environment, anybody's relitigating some
Speaker 2: from four years ago. I mean even somebody who tells
Speaker 2: me but remember when this, If they're trying to run
Speaker 2: on something Kamma said in twenty sixteen, I'm like, guys
Speaker 2: like this just so long ago. I mean, the only
Speaker 2: reason the Kama flip flop is relevant today is because
Speaker 2: she basically had no policy position and it was the
Speaker 2: default up until now, and now she's changing what she did.
Speaker 2: So I think that's relevant and that's you know, correct today.
Speaker 2: But if you're trying to say something that she said
Speaker 2: twenty twelve or whatever, I'm like, that's rough, man. I
Speaker 2: just don't think it sticks both in the media environment today,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't hit home for what Americans want. Americans
Speaker 2: want change, they want something new, and they want to
Speaker 2: move forward, and we're doing that. That in general just
Speaker 2: captures some of the most successful campaigns that we've ever
Speaker 2: seen Obama Change. I mean, just the word change became
Speaker 2: synonymous with this campaigns, probably the most brilliant political moves
Speaker 2: ever because it doesn't mean anything, but it also means everything.
Speaker 3: And that's what you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly and that's what the Harris people are
Speaker 1: clearly trying to seize on.
Speaker 4: And you know the fact that she.
Speaker 1: Looks, feel sounds different gives her a real leg up
Speaker 1: in that competition. And so, I mean you can see
Speaker 1: Republicans are struggling to figure out where they want to be,
Speaker 1: how they want to approach this, coming up with a
Speaker 1: consistent messaging message. And you know, for people who are
Speaker 1: hopeful about the Harris Walls ticket, like, they are going
Speaker 1: to find some things that are going to work right there.
Speaker 1: They are going to have some ads up and come
Speaker 1: up with some lines of attack that are going to
Speaker 1: have some teeth that are going to be more effective
Speaker 1: than let's say, tamp on Tim. But I think they're
Speaker 1: still going through that, going through that process of workshopping
Speaker 1: things on the fly and seeing what might actually stick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go ahead and get to some horrific
Speaker 1: updates coming out of Israel. And I just want to
Speaker 1: warn everyone trigger warning here before I show this video.
Speaker 1: I find it deeply disturbing and you probably will too.
Speaker 1: We've been discussing for a while on this show the
Speaker 1: horrific abuse and torture and rape of Palestinine prisoners at
Speaker 1: this Israeli prison camp. You had a number of soldiers
Speaker 1: who were initially arrested, although I believe now they've all
Speaker 1: been released, were arrested by these Raelies because of raping
Speaker 1: a Palestinin prisoner, specifically sodomizing him.
Speaker 4: And there were.
Speaker 1: Riots that broke out in including government in defense of
Speaker 1: those soldiers who u and let's go ahead and put
Speaker 1: the video up on the screen while I'm talking, who
Speaker 1: were on camera while they were committing this rape.
Speaker 4: So I'm going to play this out.
Speaker 1: You can see them getting the prisoner up, they're going
Speaker 1: to walk him over, They're going to shield themselves because
Speaker 1: apparently they know.
Speaker 4: That they're being recorded.
Speaker 1: I believe this is like being live streamed into IDF headquarters,
Speaker 1: and so they shield what's going on with literal shields.
Speaker 1: But you know, this is where the horrific sexual assaults occurs.
Speaker 1: And you know the fact that there's video evidence and
Speaker 1: the fact that we have multiple mainstream media reports that
Speaker 1: say this was not an isolated incident that particular person
Speaker 1: and we can take this down now. That particular prisoner
Speaker 1: sustained horrific injuries, and that's part of why they felt
Speaker 1: that they had to at least initially arrest these soldiers.
Speaker 1: They're also playing a bit of a political game here
Speaker 1: with regard to the ICJ, the ICC and also some
Speaker 1: countries that are putting pressure on them of trying to
Speaker 1: show through you know, a case or two.
Speaker 4: Oh, of course we hold our people.
Speaker 1: Accountable, but again, when you look at the body of evidence,
Speaker 1: this was part of systematic torture and abuse of these
Speaker 1: prisoners that occurred regularly. So to show you the way
Speaker 1: that this is all being received within the state of Israel,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is I don't even know what to
Speaker 1: say about this. They were debating on one of the
Speaker 1: Israeli news channels, and this is a quote unquote journalist
Speaker 1: for an Israeli daily newspaper who's arguing in favor of
Speaker 1: raping Palestinian prisoners and actually complains that the only problem
Speaker 1: he sees is that this isn't systematized, which actually there's
Speaker 1: a question about whether or not it is. The UN report,
Speaker 1: the Pramila patent report suggested that it was probably systematized.
Speaker 4: Put this up on the scramma to do my best
Speaker 4: to read the subtitles.
Speaker 1: He says, I don't give a rats ask what they
Speaker 1: did to that Hamasman. I always remember, first of all,
Speaker 1: the only thing that is a problem for me here
Speaker 1: is that it's not a regulated policy of the state
Speaker 1: to abuse the detainees. He goes on, first of all,
Speaker 1: they deserve it, and it's great revenge that we need
Speaker 1: to give them, and secondly, maybe it will also serve
Speaker 1: as a little bore as a deterrent. And he goes
Speaker 1: on from there, so unbelievable, unbelievable. And you know, I
Speaker 1: have been certainly a critic of our country and very
Speaker 1: much a critic of our country in terms of our
Speaker 1: support of what is happening here and our inability to
Speaker 1: criticize even these sort of horrific abuses.
Speaker 4: But I have never.
Speaker 1: Seen anything approaching this sort of argument being made in
Speaker 1: public in the US on any sort of cable news channel, etc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was saying about that interview we
Speaker 2: did with that liberal Zionist. I mean, they're out of control,
Speaker 2: like their society and their civil society is being posted to.
Speaker 3: The literal brink. Where what are the hell are they going.
Speaker 2: To look like after this, Like a couple of years
Speaker 2: from now, when you open the Overton window to this
Speaker 2: type of activity and then the you know, basically theak
Speaker 2: the breakdown of literal rule of law and a basic
Speaker 2: military justice. That irony too is like you know, you
Speaker 2: can hate the IDF all you want for the generals
Speaker 2: are the ones who want to prosecute these guys, but
Speaker 2: then they are beholden to these far right wing protesters
Speaker 2: and like paramilitary style groups who are trying to break
Speaker 2: them out. So the secular religious divide and then the
Speaker 2: nationalist divide and all that has now reached a point
Speaker 2: where they have a literal hostage of the government of
Speaker 2: this very powerful state Yea, with a monopoly on the
Speaker 2: use of force in the entire region and with nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: I would add, yes, that's right, and this.
Speaker 4: Sentiment has become quite mainstream.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the numbers are, but you can
Speaker 1: see by the fact that you have Lakut party ministers
Speaker 1: which kud is the governing party BB not in Nahuis party,
Speaker 1: who are making arguments such as this and protesting in
Speaker 1: support of these soldiers who raped on camera a Palaestinian prisoner.
Speaker 1: Also really worth remembering, which we've also learned from the
Speaker 1: reporting on the ground that yes, I'm sure some of
Speaker 1: the prisoners who are being held are in fact Hamas
Speaker 1: or Palastinian. As long as you had militants, many of
Speaker 1: them are just Palestinian men who got swept up because
Speaker 1: if you are a Palestinian man, you are automatically suspect,
Speaker 1: you are automatically assumed to be quote unquote Hamas. Not
Speaker 1: that even if this is a Hamas individual, obviously that
Speaker 1: doesn't excuse anything whatsoever, because if you are a civilized
Speaker 1: people and country, this is not how you treat anyone.
Speaker 4: So horrifying.
Speaker 1: There, our own Ryan Grimm did a fantastic job, of course,
Speaker 1: pressing State Department spokesperson slash School Matthew Miller on Hey,
Speaker 1: now they're running this open torture camp. It's very clear,
Speaker 1: we have multiple documented instances, and now we have this
Speaker 1: rape on camera. What do you think, US government? How
Speaker 1: do you feel about this? And of course you get
Speaker 1: nothing but denial, dodging, obfuscation as usual.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 12: Finally on this, like this rape and torture center, that
Speaker 12: seems to be pretty clear. All sides seem to agree
Speaker 12: that horrible things are taking place here. How is it
Speaker 12: still open? Does the US believe that it needs to
Speaker 12: be closed at this point, and.
Speaker 7: Just so, we believe that all of the investigation, all
Speaker 7: of the allegations need to be fully investigated, and anyone
Speaker 7: responsible needs to be held accountable. I think that's the
Speaker 7: appropriate first step before moving to anything else. We have
Speaker 7: seen the video and reports of sexual abuse of detainees
Speaker 7: are horrific. They ought to be investigated fully by the
Speaker 7: government of Israel, by the idef ought.
Speaker 1: To be investigated fully by Israel. I'm sure, I'm sure
Speaker 1: they're going to.
Speaker 2: Be and that look by actually considering that we were
Speaker 2: all basically gaslt about fake rape claims on October seventh,
Speaker 2: and it was held up by our president, by their
Speaker 2: government and by our media, and this one is on camera.
Speaker 2: That's look, what really drives me crazy is the hypocrisy. Like,
Speaker 2: that's actually where I just come down. I'm like, what
Speaker 2: are we doing? Why are we Why are we subverting
Speaker 2: ourselves to this client state that it's supposed to be
Speaker 2: a reverse relationship, but they just can't help themselves. And
Speaker 2: look again, for the Israelis, I think domestically what's been
Speaker 2: happening over there, especially recently, is crazy and is going
Speaker 2: to be so detrimental to them in the long run,
Speaker 2: not only in terms of international legitimacy, but their own
Speaker 2: domestic populace. I mean, when you straight up can't prevent
Speaker 2: prisoners in a jail from being set free and having
Speaker 2: right wing or like protesters be hostage, you don't have
Speaker 2: rule of law as a country anymore. You straight up
Speaker 2: it's over. And this is a tiny ass country. This
Speaker 2: is not the United States of America. You can't even
Speaker 2: argue federalism or local or any of that. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a small population, small place, and when they
Speaker 2: have control over nukes and all this, who knows what's
Speaker 2: going to happen there in the next ten years.
Speaker 3: It's a big problem.
Speaker 4: About in the next ten days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you know, we're really on the brink here,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think we're all surprised that we
Speaker 1: haven't seen the Iranian response yet. But no, that has
Speaker 1: a blow response yet. But that doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 1: not coming. In fact, in some ways, the length of
Speaker 1: time that has gone by between the provocation and the
Speaker 1: expected attack is deeply worrying. So yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: have a society is completely hinge, And I don't throw
Speaker 1: the Nazi word around freely. But there is no other
Speaker 1: way to describe the rhetoric and the ideology that was
Speaker 1: being expressed on that television program, and the fact that
Speaker 1: that has become a mainstream enough view that the military
Speaker 1: is afraid to act to, you know, adjudicate our whole
Speaker 1: accountable even the most egregious and obviously well founded abuses,
Speaker 1: is a terrifying state of affairs from our great friends,
Speaker 1: the Israeli governments.
Speaker 3: Really crazy, Chris, what are you taking all well?
Speaker 1: When LBJ was considering joining JFK's ticket, he was famously
Speaker 1: counseled by former Vice President John Nance Garner that there
Speaker 1: wasn't much to be gained from the VP slot. As
Speaker 1: Garner colorfully put it, the vice presidency was quote not
Speaker 1: worth a bucket of warm piss.
Speaker 4: Now Trump and JD.
Speaker 1: Vance both been desperately trying to convince themselves that's actually
Speaker 1: the case. After Trump's own pick rapidly descended into heavy
Speaker 1: negative ratings. When asked if Vance was ready to serve
Speaker 1: on day one, Trump dumard before insisting that electorally the
Speaker 1: vice presidential pick, it really doesn't matter. Vance has, in
Speaker 1: humiliating fashion, picked up the talking point of insisting that
Speaker 1: his existence is really utterly inconsequential. This is, of course
Speaker 1: extreme cope, even if we're just talking electorally. Biden mattered
Speaker 1: for Obama's election, Palin matter for McCain's loss, and Pence
Speaker 1: mattered for Trump's twenty sixteen victory.
Speaker 4: As for LBJ, he took the job, of course.
Speaker 1: Because he understood that's become vice president is to be
Speaker 1: placed on a likely path to power. Think George hw
Speaker 1: Bush running and winning after being VP for Reagan al
Speaker 1: Gore winning the Democratic nomination, of course, losing to Bush
Speaker 1: and Kamala Harris's sudden elevation to the top of the ticket.
Speaker 1: But in my opinion, the significance of Tim Walls could
Speaker 1: be even more far reaching than that. Walls's selection has
Speaker 1: added weight because of the amorphous nature of Kamala's own ideology,
Speaker 1: due to how Walls breaks the mold of typical Democratic politicians,
Speaker 1: and most of all, because his selection comes at a
Speaker 1: pivot point in history when voters are desperate to shed
Speaker 1: the neoliberalism of the last forty years but have not
Speaker 1: yet settled on what might come next. In fact, Walls
Speaker 1: could just end up being the most consequential Vice presidential pick.
Speaker 1: Since LBJ let me make the case so uptill morning
Speaker 1: the announcement, I really personally couldn't quite believe Kamala might
Speaker 1: actually select Walls.
Speaker 4: Just think about it.
Speaker 1: Her choice came down to a literal Obama mimic in
Speaker 1: Josh Shapiro. And I'm not just talking about the caden's
Speaker 1: and mannerisms. He's got the legal background Obama and literally
Speaker 1: every other Democratic ticket has had for decades.
Speaker 4: Like Obama, he kept.
Speaker 1: Unions at arm's length, even mirroring Obama's school voucher and
Speaker 1: charter school friendly approach. Shapiro was the darling of the
Speaker 1: Democratic conscier class and the pro Israel donor set, and
Speaker 1: these are the types of groups that typically get their way,
Speaker 1: and Shapiro is the type of highly educated technocrat who
Speaker 1: Democratic elites have found absolutely irresistible. But in what came
Speaker 1: to me as an absolute shock, Kamala instead selected the
Speaker 1: most diverse pick the Democratic Party has perhaps ever made.
Speaker 1: He's diverse in that his entirely ordinary, everyman life is
Speaker 1: rare to the point of near non existence in Washington.
Speaker 1: A veteran who went to a state school before transitioning
Speaker 1: to become a public school teacher and football coach. This
Speaker 1: man literally just traveled to San Francisco for the first
Speaker 1: time ever this year. He wasn't a lawyer like Kamala
Speaker 1: and Obama, or a ventry guy like Vance, or a
Speaker 1: billionaire like Trump. Walls literally doesn't even own any stocks, bonds,
Speaker 1: real estate, crypto investments of any kind outside of his
Speaker 1: state pensions. He's never had a book deal, He's never
Speaker 1: done a paid speaking gig. It's actually unbelievable and diametrically
Speaker 1: opposed to the current makeup of the Democratic Party. But
Speaker 1: Wall's most clearly shadowed the typical Democratic Party mold by
Speaker 1: actually being interested in delivering policy wins for working people
Speaker 1: around simply having power for the sake of having power.
Speaker 1: As he said last year, quote, you don't win elections
Speaker 1: to bank political capital. You win elections to burn political
Speaker 1: capital and improve lives. Can you think of an ideology
Speaker 1: more foreign to a national Democratic party obsessed with finding
Speaker 1: excuses for inaction than this stated commitment to taking the
Speaker 1: reins and throwing your weight around. The list of policy
Speaker 1: accomplishments Walls pushed through with a one vote majority is
Speaker 1: quite astounding. Kle has been touting this record for a
Speaker 1: while now. It includes universal free school meals, working class
Speaker 1: tax rebates, free college for anyone earning under eighty K,
Speaker 1: twelve weeks paid family and sick leave on unions. He
Speaker 1: instituted sectoral bargaining for nursing home workers, ban noncompete clauses,
Speaker 1: and ban captive audience meetings. And this is really just
Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg. The Minnesota Democrat Farm Labor
Speaker 1: Party called.
Speaker 4: It the LSG agenda. Let's fucking go.
Speaker 1: Walls's house record, while overall more centristy, includes some real
Speaker 1: gems too.
Speaker 4: We actually stood up to Obama on TPP fast track authority.
Speaker 1: He appears to be sort of instinctively anti warr opposed
Speaker 1: both the Iraq War and the bombing of Syria. But
Speaker 1: it's not just Walls's break from the typical dem mold
Speaker 1: of virtue, signaling and inaction that matters, both electorally and substantively.
Speaker 1: This agenda puts pretend pro family populace like JD Vance
Speaker 1: and the supposedly newly pro worker GOP in quite a bind.
Speaker 1: Asa Bamari wrote and a Peace warning Republicans about Walls's
Speaker 1: populous strength based on his rock solid pro family record,
Speaker 1: of achievement.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 1: It's the sort of legislation that self proclaimed pro family
Speaker 1: Republicans have too long resisted, even as they have lamented
Speaker 1: declining marriage and birth rates. There's a reason these types
Speaker 1: of Republicans resist simple and popular agenda items. It's because
Speaker 1: child tax credit, family paid family leave, and the like.
Speaker 1: They're all coded as liberal. The only real consistent Republican
Speaker 1: ideology is worshiping Trump and owning the Libs. That's why Vance,
Speaker 1: for example, can't just say he supports family leave or
Speaker 1: a child tax credit and studies got a pure edgy
Speaker 1: by ostentatiously offending a large group of people a la
Speaker 1: childless cat ladies. Or he's got to advocate for some
Speaker 1: bizarre and constitutional hair brain scheme like letting parents cast
Speaker 1: more votes than non parents. Trump, for his part, doesn't
Speaker 1: even really pretend to care about any of this. In
Speaker 1: other words, Democrats are finally showing up to play in
Speaker 1: the battle for what comes after neoliberalism, and Republicans, outflanked
Speaker 1: now on populism, find themselves flailing around talking about tampons,
Speaker 1: definitely trying to recreate some swift boat magic from two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, hurling around accusations about anti Semitic microaggressions
Speaker 1: and inventing Olympic gender controversies, which, yes, to both voters,
Speaker 1: that all seems pretty weird. With another candidate and another time,
Speaker 1: Wallas's record as the vice presidential pick might be as
Speaker 1: important as that bucket of warm piss. But this is
Speaker 1: not a normal time, and Kamala is not a normal candidate.
Speaker 1: A look at her long history in the public eye
Speaker 1: leaves one fairly convinced she has no real ideology, no
Speaker 1: real core beliefs. There seems to be no commitment on
Speaker 1: which he won't ben, no principle on which she won't budge.
Speaker 1: She has sat for no interviews since Biden's dropout. She
Speaker 1: has hastily dropped previous policy commitments that she personally found
Speaker 1: to be unhelpful. She appears easily moved by whoever happens
Speaker 1: to have her ear, and now Tim Walls he's got
Speaker 1: her ear. She could have picked the Obama clone, and
Speaker 1: instead she chose FDR in a Camo hat. Now this
Speaker 1: should not trick you into thinking Kamala is herself secretly
Speaker 1: pining to be FDR. Actually it indicates something that to
Speaker 1: me is far more important. And far more exciting for
Speaker 1: the ambitious power seeking politician with no discernible ideological commitments.
Speaker 1: It is more politically expedient to seek out the modern
Speaker 1: new dealer than the technocratic neolip. Kamala reportedly did extensive
Speaker 1: pull testing before making her choice. Ruthless operators Obama and
Speaker 1: Pelosi both reportedly lined up behind Walls as well. Yes,
Speaker 1: Kamala may have enjoyed his affable demeanor and non threatening
Speaker 1: answers as opposed to the blind ambition oozing out of Shapiro,
Speaker 1: but ultimately she and her team made a hard nosed,
Speaker 1: data driven political decision, and for one of the first
Speaker 1: times ever, that calculus led to an unambiguously good and
Speaker 1: populist result. Well, personally, I can't think of anything that
Speaker 1: is more exciting as for that path to power, I
Speaker 1: got to tell you today, I think Kumlin Walls do
Speaker 1: defeat Trump advance. The vibes, as they say, are off
Speaker 1: the charts. But whether she loses or wins, Walls is
Speaker 1: now in the pole position to be the next Democratic nominee,
Speaker 1: noving Walls as opposed to Shapiro, Mark Kelly at all
Speaker 1: setting the course for the future of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: is actually quite consequential. Instead of a lawyer rerunning the
Speaker 1: Obama playbook, we've got a Midwestern populist trained in the
Speaker 1: Paul Wellstone school, so disinterested in the success of the
Speaker 1: stock market that he literally doesn't own a single security.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean the battle is one far from it. US
Speaker 1: is still aiding a genocide. The world sits on the
Speaker 1: precipice of a massive war crafts or emerging an economy
Speaker 1: that was already far too geared towards the wealthy and
Speaker 1: Wall Street goruls and billionaires. They still brazenly throw their
Speaker 1: cash around to extract political favors.
Speaker 4: All of that's still true.
Speaker 1: There is nothing inevitable about progress, but the width of
Speaker 1: possibility is in the air, and that, frankly, is far
Speaker 1: more than I was expected just a month ago. Now,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, I naively believed in the
Speaker 1: promise of hope and change, the idea one guy could
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere and be totally transformational, charting a
Speaker 1: new course for the country. Everything about that political lens
Speaker 1: was dead wrong. Obama is just Bill Clinton politics in
Speaker 1: a cool modern disguise, and I now believe that the
Speaker 1: political moment is more important than the individual personality. Walls
Speaker 1: is a sent coming on the heels of some Biden
Speaker 1: shifts towards domestic populism. Is evidence that perhaps the era
Speaker 1: has shifted, that the anti populism practiced by neoliberal technocrats
Speaker 1: is on the wane, and a new logic is on
Speaker 1: the way in that the best of the Biden administration
Speaker 1: on unions and anti trust and industrial policy wasn't a
Speaker 1: blip but a beginning, that the labor movement is coming
Speaker 1: back to life and exerting real pressure and influence, along
Speaker 1: with other left organizing like the Uncommitted Movement. So though
Speaker 1: you may find a cringe, I do find myself once
Speaker 1: again filled with hope, not for a savior, though, because
Speaker 1: what is most important about Wall isn't who he is,
Speaker 1: but a possible shift he represents. And it is because
Speaker 1: Kamala is so devoid of any And if you.
Speaker 2: Want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a
Speaker 2: premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: So here with the aforementioned reporting on sanctions, and also
Speaker 1: weigh in a little bit on the conversation Saga and
Speaker 1: I were just having with regards to Tim Walls is
Speaker 1: Jeff Steining.
Speaker 4: Great to see Jeff.
Speaker 3: Good to see you, sir.
Speaker 11: Thanks for having me guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, so you tweeted this. We can put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen about Tim Walls. You were
Speaker 1: taking a little glance at his economic philosophy, and he
Speaker 1: had apparently put out this idea the economy is a garden,
Speaker 1: not a jungle. When you combine this with his record
Speaker 1: in the state of Minnesota, you know, what can you
Speaker 1: say about his sort of economic view and how he
Speaker 1: might add to a potential Kamala Harris administration.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at his
Speaker 11: record as a member of the House, he was clearly
Speaker 11: aligning himself with the more moderate wing of the party.
Speaker 11: He had a vote score that was pretty centrist. But
Speaker 11: when he had the chance to implement pretty progressive legislation
Speaker 11: in Minnesota, it seems like he ran with that everyone
Speaker 11: knows by now, a creational marijuana the biggest child tax
Speaker 11: credit for low income families of any state in the country.
Speaker 11: After the Biden one fell apart all kinds of other
Speaker 11: progressive legislation that you know, they had a trifecta. There
Speaker 11: were people, you know, who were pushing it, so we
Speaker 11: had the opportunity to do it, which a lot of
Speaker 11: governors probably would do if they also had the chance.
Speaker 11: But at a minimum, we can say he did not
Speaker 11: stand in the way of progressive legislation and seems to
Speaker 11: be quite outspoken, particularly about free school lunches, which I
Speaker 11: think is an issue that Democrats see as a very
Speaker 11: effective populist policy that they can run on.
Speaker 2: So, Jeff, you have always been so good at this.
Speaker 2: What has been your experience so far trying to get
Speaker 2: some policy positions and perhaps some insight into a quote
Speaker 2: unquote day one agenda from the Harris campaign.
Speaker 11: A really good question. Yeah, in some ways, she is
Speaker 11: a bit of a tabula ross. It's a little bit
Speaker 11: like what does she actually stand for? Because in twenty
Speaker 11: twenty she sort of was aiming for the burning wing
Speaker 11: of the party, right you guys remember, like she called
Speaker 11: for banning fracking, medicare for all. I think I did
Speaker 11: a store at one point, I was like, is Kamala
Speaker 11: Harris's seven trillion dollars green new deal big enough? Like yeah,
Speaker 11: looks absurd? Yes, but you know, as a member of
Speaker 11: the Biden administration, And since then, she's kind of distanced herself.
Speaker 11: We've seen her say that she doesn't support a fracking
Speaker 11: band anymore. She's put distance between herself and the Medicare
Speaker 11: for All proposals. So what is it that she supports?
Speaker 11: And on a lot of issues she actually seems to
Speaker 11: be a bit of a cipher. We don't really know
Speaker 11: where she stands on antitrust policy, which I think you
Speaker 11: guys have done some work on industrial policy, I think
Speaker 11: is another big question mark. My sense from talking to
Speaker 11: people who have worked with her is that there's a
Speaker 11: few things that she does really care about. The things
Speaker 11: that I have heard that she feels in her bones
Speaker 11: are the care economy proposals, childcare, paid family leave, pre
Speaker 11: universal pre K. Those are things that she, you know,
Speaker 11: she's been working with the SCIU very closely for a
Speaker 11: long time and she seems to feel those those policies
Speaker 11: quite deeply. Medical debt, like reforming or canceling medical debt,
Speaker 11: and student debt are also things that have come up
Speaker 11: a lot, housing maybe to a slightly lesser extent. It's
Speaker 11: an interesting you know, I wouldn't say that she doesn't
Speaker 11: care about industrial policy or unions or infrastructure, but her
Speaker 11: you know, Biden had for thirty forty years been like
Speaker 11: you know, if like he woke them up in the
Speaker 11: middle of the night, he would have like a theory
Speaker 11: about what was wrong with the economies, like big corporations,
Speaker 11: like you know, like his desire to like be union
Speaker 11: Joe was like solidified over years, and like he had
Speaker 11: an alliance with blue collar trades men that like went
Speaker 11: back decades. He also, I think obviously had a centrist
Speaker 11: legacy on on credit cards and student debt. Right her,
Speaker 11: her policy positions are so much more unformed, but we're
Speaker 11: starting to see an emergence of like this set of
Speaker 11: issues that I think would sort of make sense to
Speaker 11: finish sort of the stuff that Biden was unable to do,
Speaker 11: the parts of the Build Back Better agenda that Mansion killed.
Speaker 11: You can see her sort of gearing up to make
Speaker 11: a push to finish those.
Speaker 1: Gotcha all right, Let's go and talk about your work
Speaker 1: on sanctions, which is extraordinary. I really recommend people read
Speaker 1: through this piece because I think it's so important to
Speaker 1: understand this. You say, how for US presence unleashed economic
Speaker 1: warfare across the globe, and you track the way that
Speaker 1: the US sanctions regime has widely expanded, and you also
Speaker 1: track the way that in many critical regards, it has
Speaker 1: failed to accomplish the goals, the supposed goals that were
Speaker 1: set out for.
Speaker 4: So give us the broad strokes of what you were
Speaker 4: looking at here.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it's like, as a reporter who covers the Treasury Department,
Speaker 11: I'm on their newslest serve and every week they send
Speaker 11: an email that's like new list of people who we've sanctioned, right,
Speaker 11: And it's like I was reading these emails like every
Speaker 11: it felt like almost every day in my inbox, a
Speaker 11: new group of people would be sanctioned by the US government.
Speaker 11: And it's like, what is the volume of this? Like
Speaker 11: that's with the imputus of the reporting. It's like how
Speaker 11: big is this thing? And we reported an analysis we
Speaker 11: did internally that took a lot of time to do,
Speaker 11: but we found that a third of all countries on
Speaker 11: Earth are under some form of US sanctions. And the
Speaker 11: number that really I found jaw dropping in the piece,
Speaker 11: sixty percent of all poor low incomnations are under some
Speaker 11: form of US sanctions. So we are talking about I mean,
Speaker 11: just off the top of my head, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Mali,
Speaker 11: the Democratic Republic of Congo. I could go on. I
Speaker 11: mean the number of countries Burma, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Like,
Speaker 11: this is a breathtakingly large list that I think. I'm
Speaker 11: so glad that reporting has gotten the reception it has,
Speaker 11: because I feel like the more I report on this,
Speaker 11: the more amazed I was that people were so unaware.
Speaker 11: I mean even I, as someone who covers this issue specifically,
Speaker 11: I was like, I had no idea that it was this.
Speaker 4: I know, we're sanctioning Burma.
Speaker 2: Oh that would mean yeah, I was gonna say it's
Speaker 2: actually yeah, that's it's fun, which which one you're saying
Speaker 2: it portrays it lot. What I found most interesting about
Speaker 2: it was about both the how obvious it is in
Speaker 2: many cases of a backfire or of unintended consequences, and
Speaker 2: not the Treasury Department ever factoring that into their decision making.
Speaker 2: I see this with the Russia thing all the time.
Speaker 2: As you point out, you're like, yeah, it's weakened them some.
Speaker 2: Now we've also created, though, this entire like offshore fleet
Speaker 2: of ships which just operate outside the realm of the
Speaker 2: US financial system. So can you talk about like, is
Speaker 2: there any feedback loop. Is there ever any assessment because
Speaker 2: from reading your story, it just seems like it just compounds,
Speaker 2: like we invent new sanctions and we try something else,
Speaker 2: but there's never any you know, ask of both bipartisan
Speaker 2: of does this actually work? Like is this accomplishing the
Speaker 2: goal that we set out to do?
Speaker 11: That's such a good question. And Zaga. I mean, I
Speaker 11: think when you talk to US officials about this, they
Speaker 11: recognize that the pressure to impose sanctions, the like sort
Speaker 11: of institutional force that pushes this apparatus along is something
Speaker 11: happens anywhere in the world, and then there's there's this
Speaker 11: like force to to do something about it, and because
Speaker 11: we don't want to go to war in some cases,
Speaker 11: because the the impetus for that has has you know,
Speaker 11: I think you know, subsequent presidents have seen the dangers
Speaker 11: of going to war. We've you know, obviously there's the
Speaker 11: disasters in I Rock in Afghanistan. Following that there was
Speaker 11: a sense that this is politically that disastrous, and then
Speaker 11: simultaneously there's pressure not to do nothing, and so sanctions
Speaker 11: is like in this this this in between position that
Speaker 11: that presidents find that they can do something that's not
Speaker 11: war but then there's no evaluation after the fact, after
Speaker 11: the new cycle has moved on. And so we have
Speaker 11: a chart in the story that shows the number of
Speaker 11: sanctions that has been that are removed after they're imposed
Speaker 11: is breathtakingly small, because there isn't really any apparatus within
Speaker 11: the government evaluating whether these have worked after they've been imposed. Cuba,
Speaker 11: of course, is like the paradigmatic example of this. We've
Speaker 11: had sanctions on Cuba for over sixty years. And this
Speaker 11: is the thing where like you would talk to some
Speaker 11: you know, you talk to like a young leftist and
Speaker 11: be like, what are you thinking of? Like the Cuba
Speaker 11: sanctions are terrible? But I was astonished by the number
Speaker 11: of like senior sort of like foreign policy hawk types
Speaker 11: that I would talk to for this story who would
Speaker 11: be like like quasi supportive of like Afghanistan, you know,
Speaker 11: and they'd be like, ca, you believe we still have
Speaker 11: sanctions on Cuba, and like you're like the guy who
Speaker 11: like the caricature of the person who's like in the
Speaker 11: back office of the Pentagon, rushing pushing a more hawkish
Speaker 11: foreign policy, and even these people are like, what are
Speaker 11: we getting out of this?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 11: And so the thing with this is like the political
Speaker 11: incentives are only to go forward. No one really thinks
Speaker 11: the government for moving sanctions. Maybe sort of people in
Speaker 11: those countries would feel that way, but those aren't important
Speaker 11: domestic political constituencies where you have you know, in the
Speaker 11: case of Cuba, members of Florida of both parties are like,
Speaker 11: do not remove these sanctions or we will have a
Speaker 11: field day. And so there's there's only political downside for
Speaker 11: taking the risk of removing sanctions. And so then you
Speaker 11: just see them pile up pilot.
Speaker 1: Pilot, Yeah, because who wants to I mean, listen, with
Speaker 1: regard to Florida, it's a red state now, so maybe
Speaker 1: we could have a more sane policy, like why are
Speaker 1: we still why are we still doing this thing at
Speaker 1: this point? But to your point, it reminds me of
Speaker 1: the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Like everyone there was a huge
Speaker 1: national consensus and Trump flirted with withdrawing with that from Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, but actually doing it is messy
Speaker 1: and no one wants to be you know that guy.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing with sanctions. It's an easy political hit.
Speaker 1: You know, you can see them quing up the talking
Speaker 1: points on Fox News about you took the sanctions off.
Speaker 4: Of Iran and how could you?
Speaker 1: And these are evil people, et cetera, et cetera, so
Speaker 1: there's nothing politically to be gained from rolling them back.
Speaker 1: I'd love for you to you speak to that as well.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. But dig
Speaker 1: into the Russian sanctions regime. If I'm not incorrect, I
Speaker 1: believe this is now the most sanctioned country on Earth.
Speaker 4: And yes it's taken a hit.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's been totally painless for them, but
Speaker 1: it's also had massive, significant downsides. And I also don't
Speaker 1: think has been nearly as devastating to them as was
Speaker 1: initially anticipated.
Speaker 11: Yeah, for the story, we try to come up with
Speaker 11: a sanctioned severity index because the scale of sanctions is
Speaker 11: so hard to pinpoint. And I had experts who are like,
Speaker 11: it's wrong because of this, and experts who would say, like,
Speaker 11: your sanction severity index is wrong in the completely opposite direction,
Speaker 11: which made it hard to reconcile. But one thing people
Speaker 11: did agree about was that the volume of sanctions on
Speaker 11: Russia is I think the greatest of any country, Like
Speaker 11: we have imposed more sanctions on Russia than we have
Speaker 11: on any other country. But the number of sanctions can
Speaker 11: be a little misleading relative to their impact. So with
Speaker 11: a country like Iran and North Korea, we can say
Speaker 11: not have business with this country. We can impose a
Speaker 11: sort of breathtakingly sweeping secondary sanctions regime where we can
Speaker 11: say to European officials, you guys cannot trade with them
Speaker 11: either or we will sanction you. Right, that's like the
Speaker 11: scale of American hegemonys. It's breathtaking. But that can also
Speaker 11: just be like two sanctions. You know, you can just
Speaker 11: impose two sanctions on Iran and cut them off from
Speaker 11: the global economy, right, whereas Russia you can be like,
Speaker 11: we will not take the sanctioned step that cuts them
Speaker 11: off entirely, but we will sanction like Dimitri's like vodka
Speaker 11: shot that like has no business in the West anyway,
Speaker 11: and then like thirty suppliers of military hardware that that
Speaker 11: like are in like Eastern Russia. So it's like the
Speaker 11: US has these political incentives to keep pushing out additional sanctions.
Speaker 11: They like try to like full reporters into writing headlines
Speaker 11: that are like which I think they're actually quite good
Speaker 11: at full as strong. So but like they will put
Speaker 11: out press releases that are like like when they were
Speaker 11: there was pressure to respond to the Navolni, the Russian
Speaker 11: dissident who died in prison. There was there was a
Speaker 11: lot of pressure on the US to do something big,
Speaker 11: and they came out with this announcements. US imposes four
Speaker 11: hundred sanctions on Russian response, and like beneath the hood,
Speaker 11: like almost none of these were of of economic economically
Speaker 11: significant imps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's a good point.
Speaker 1: So I saw this with regard to Israel. We're going
Speaker 1: to sanction these yea.
Speaker 11: The West Bank settlers, three guys.
Speaker 1: And these guys are like, we don't do any business
Speaker 1: with you anyways, so whatever, we're.
Speaker 11: Just we're upset about the symbolic you know, meaning of that.
Speaker 11: But how much did that hurt is really economy? It
Speaker 11: seems quite little.
Speaker 2: Sorry, no, no, I was just thinking, so in the
Speaker 2: future was with the assessment and all that first, like
Speaker 2: why did you set out to write the story?
Speaker 3: Like what what? What even you know inspired you to
Speaker 3: do this?
Speaker 11: I think just just realizing that this is the main
Speaker 11: tool of US foreign policy and it felt so under
Speaker 11: examined or under explored. It's really tens of millions, hundreds
Speaker 11: of millions of people that are affected by this, and
Speaker 11: you look at I mean, I think one of the
Speaker 11: things that kind of accelerated my reporting was looking at
Speaker 11: the case of Venezuela. I mean, there's so many international
Speaker 11: examples to talk about here, but in the case of Venezuela,
Speaker 11: the number of people hurt by that country's economic collapse
Speaker 11: is breathtaking. I mean, they had the single biggest decline
Speaker 11: of any economy not at war in modern history, seventy
Speaker 11: one percent economic contraction. That is bigger than Ukraine in
Speaker 11: twenty twenty two, bigger than Iraq in two thousand and three,
Speaker 11: It's bigger than Zimbabwe in the last twenty years. Like,
Speaker 11: this is a catastrophe that is among the worst humanitarian
Speaker 11: disasters we've had this century. And there's a huge whose
Speaker 11: debate about the extent to which, like US sanctions exacerbated that.
Speaker 11: But the consensus among the economists I talked to is
Speaker 11: like cutting off Venezuelan economic officials from refinancing their debt
Speaker 11: on global markets, cutting off their main their their their
Speaker 11: source of ninety six percent of export revenue, which is
Speaker 11: there the pair of Vessa, which was the main the
Speaker 11: state on oil enterprise, which was like the sort of
Speaker 11: life blood of their economy. We saw malnutrition and poverty
Speaker 11: and you know, hunger and all these horrific indices increase.
Speaker 11: And if you ask, like a friend, you know, like
Speaker 11: about a rock or Afghanistan, like they'll be able to
Speaker 11: tell you, like the US like went in and like
Speaker 11: all these people died and like they know. But sanctions
Speaker 11: have operated in this sphere where because the language of
Speaker 11: economic warfare is so desiccated, is so removed from like
Speaker 11: the viscerality of guns and bloodshed, we don't see the
Speaker 11: consequences the same, even if they can be at even
Speaker 11: if the human toll can be as severe, if not
Speaker 11: more severe, if you cut off a country's access to
Speaker 11: food and medicine, it can be worse than it targeted
Speaker 11: and military strike. But because of you know, for some
Speaker 11: un understandable reasons, because of the way the media works
Speaker 11: and the way human attention works, it doesn't concentrate our
Speaker 11: attention in that sort of in that sort of way.
Speaker 3: So I know I'm rambling a little bit, but no, no, no,
Speaker 3: it's very helpful.
Speaker 1: How much is your what is your sense of how
Speaker 1: much are sanctions regimes on various countries. You mentioned Venezuela
Speaker 1: have contributed to immigration flows, and that may be true,
Speaker 1: you know, here to the US, but also in other
Speaker 1: places around the world.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so we're doing as you guys mentioned the series.
Speaker 11: And the third story in our series was about how
Speaker 11: the Department of Homeland Security had produced internal warnings under
Speaker 11: Trump that went to the Trump White House that said
Speaker 11: tighter sanctions on the Venezuelan regime risks fueling out migration
Speaker 11: in the region. So this was a risk that the
Speaker 11: Trump White House was made aware of in these classified
Speaker 11: reports that were described to us by senior administration officials.
Speaker 11: And the migration crisis out of Venezuela is a key
Speaker 11: part of the humanitarian catastrophe. More than seven million people
Speaker 11: have left Venezuela since the crisis started. That predates US
Speaker 11: sanctions in part, but was accelerated by it. We were
Speaker 11: talking about something like a don't quotent a fifth or
Speaker 11: a sixth of the country attempting to leave. Wow. And
Speaker 11: then we have this situation at the border, which was,
Speaker 11: to be fair to the Republicans, was not was not
Speaker 11: that was not caused you know, by sanctions and only
Speaker 11: spiked after Biden relaxed some Trump border policies, which the
Speaker 11: left will yell at me for saying, but is just
Speaker 11: sequentially true. True. Yeah, but there's also no doubt that
Speaker 11: that a big source of migrants that was part of
Speaker 11: the Biden border crisis was migrants from Cuba and migrants
Speaker 11: from Venezuela to two country that that had been heavily sanctioned,
Speaker 11: and as we reported, they knew that that was a
Speaker 11: risk of tighter sanctions.
Speaker 2: That's very interesting, Well, Jeff, we highly recommend people read
Speaker 2: the piece. We're gonna put the description down on the link.
Speaker 2: And we always appreciate my friend.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 11: Love being on Thank you. I love being able to
Speaker 11: like explain things at length and five seconds.
Speaker 4: We love having things explain to us.
Speaker 3: So read It's really really good. All right, We'll see
Speaker 3: you guys later