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.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.
Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: Good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points. I am not
Speaker 4: Sager and Jedty, at least not that I'm aware of, Crystal.
Speaker 3: You can confirm it firmed that check correct, Not Soccer
Speaker 3: and Jeddy.
Speaker 4: But he's often joined some weddings. He's a great wedding guest.
Speaker 1: At that age where like apparently literally everyone he knows
Speaker 1: is getting married.
Speaker 3: So he had two different weddings this weekend.
Speaker 5: Within like thirty six hours.
Speaker 1: Crazy logistics to pull it off. So anyway, godspeed to Sager.
Speaker 1: Hopefully the airline gods are blessing him as we speak.
Speaker 1: We have so much to get you in the show.
Speaker 1: I know I always say that, but it really is true.
Speaker 3: Today.
Speaker 1: We have so many guests and so many important stories
Speaker 1: as you guys probably already know Hassan Estralla dead in
Speaker 1: an Israeli airstrike. Treta Parsi is going to join us
Speaker 1: to break down what all of that means and the
Speaker 1: consequences may be. We've got the VP debate tomorrow. We're
Speaker 1: going to be live streaming here with Emily Ryan and
Speaker 1: soccer Shelby Talcott is going to join us to preview
Speaker 1: what JD Vance's debate prep strategy has been. Specifically, our
Speaker 1: election analyst Logan Phillips is going to be here with
Speaker 1: a polling update to tell us what his model is
Speaker 1: saying about where the odds stand for November. Hurricane Helen
Speaker 1: caused just devastating damage, Biblical destruction they're describing it as
Speaker 1: throughout from the Florida Panhandle up through Appalachia. Also spawned
Speaker 1: a lot of conspiracy theories. So we're going to look
Speaker 1: at the horror and what needs to be done there,
Speaker 1: but also take a look at some of the more
Speaker 1: deranged takes that we saw on of this hurricane. We
Speaker 1: also have a Cornell student who is going to join
Speaker 1: us who is set to be deported over his pro
Speaker 1: Palestinian activism. And Emily was on with as de Client
Speaker 1: over the New York Times, over with the fake news media.
Speaker 3: How did that go?
Speaker 5: It was fun.
Speaker 4: We had a little conversation about Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: So I think we have a clip of that and
Speaker 4: we can talk about it here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, all right.
Speaker 1: So Hezela has now confirmed that their leader, now former leader,
Speaker 1: Hassan Nosraala, was in fact killed in Israeli airstrike near
Speaker 1: in Beirut. Let's go and put this up on the
Speaker 1: screen with some of the details from CNN. Israel and
Speaker 1: HESBLA both confirmed that on Friday. Ryan actually did a
Speaker 1: fantastic breaking news segment with Mueen Rabani at a time
Speaker 1: when we weren't certain, but they did that segment as
Speaker 1: if because it looked very strongly like this was possible,
Speaker 1: that killing Israel, That killing by Israel of Nostralla marks
Speaker 1: a significant escalation, they say, in the conflict between Israel
Speaker 1: and HESBLA, which has intensified in recent weeks. The same strike,
Speaker 1: in addition to taking out in Nosraula and quite a
Speaker 1: number of other individuals we don't have an exact death
Speaker 1: count yet, also took out a senior member of Iran's
Speaker 1: powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. So you know, to call
Speaker 1: it a significant development is an incredible understatement. We have
Speaker 1: some of the images of the bombings that have been occurring,
Speaker 1: not just this particular bombing that took out Nosralla, but
Speaker 1: Israel has ramped up the bombing of southern Bay Route
Speaker 1: and southern Lebanon in general. We can put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen so you can see some of the images.
Speaker 1: This verse is actually a mom who was recording her
Speaker 1: child doing cute kid things and then looks out the
Speaker 1: window and this is the scene of destruction. This is
Speaker 1: the aftermath of that bombing that killed Nostralla. The indications
Speaker 1: I've seen is that they use some of those two
Speaker 1: thousand pound bunker buster bombs based on this huge crater
Speaker 1: and footprint, based on these sorts of images that you
Speaker 1: can see.
Speaker 5: This is VB.
Speaker 1: Netanyahu in the US at the UN giving the go
Speaker 1: ahead for this strike, the government of Israel releasing this image,
Speaker 1: so obviously quite significant.
Speaker 3: These are some of the Lebanese.
Speaker 1: People who have been displaced now by this now new
Speaker 1: military offensive and escalation here by Israel. And these are
Speaker 1: some of the additional bombings. Because this is you know,
Speaker 1: continued past Friday. These are some of the bombings that
Speaker 1: have continued in Lebanon. And we also know that in
Speaker 1: addition to this, they have bombed, begun.
Speaker 3: Bombing Yemen as well.
Speaker 1: I'll speak to that in a moment, but only just
Speaker 1: you know, to get your reaction here off the top.
Speaker 1: What do you see as the significance of this and
Speaker 1: where things go from here?
Speaker 4: Well, and obviously, what Israel wants to do is create
Speaker 4: a buffer zone between northern Israel and southern Lebanon. They say,
Speaker 4: reports say at least that they're hoping that it would
Speaker 4: be twenty miles something like that, And so what you
Speaker 4: would need to do in order to achieve that is
Speaker 4: going to look like a lot more of what.
Speaker 5: We're seeing on the screen right now.
Speaker 4: And they want to has both started obviously bombing on
Speaker 4: October eighth, and that's where I think it's like sixty
Speaker 4: thousand in Israelis who are in northern Israel have been
Speaker 4: living elsewhere since. And so what Israel wants to do
Speaker 4: is bring that everyone who's been displaced back to northern Israel.
Speaker 4: And in order to do that, they're trying to create
Speaker 4: like a twenty mile buffer zone. So again, it's just
Speaker 4: we're going to see a lot more of this to come.
Speaker 4: There's no other way to put it.
Speaker 1: Let's put a four, guys, let's skip ahead to a
Speaker 1: four and put this up on the screen. This is
Speaker 1: something that in Israeli official said to NBC. They said,
Speaker 1: we decided to kill Nsuala after concluding he will not
Speaker 1: agree to any solution that is not tied to ending
Speaker 1: the war in Gaza. And I think that, first of all,
Speaker 1: it's an extraordinary statement and you know, reveals a lot
Speaker 1: that isn't exactly hidden about the Israeli government mentality, the
Speaker 1: reason that Hasbillah has been engaged in this you can't
Speaker 1: even really call it tit for tat because it's continued
Speaker 1: to be, you know, quite one sided in terms of
Speaker 1: the Israeli fire, Israeli's firing farm more rockets. But this
Speaker 1: tit for tat exchange with Israel was all tied to
Speaker 1: Israel's onslaught in Gaza. And so you know, this statement
Speaker 1: is basically an admission that Hesla was willing to come
Speaker 1: to terms, and we saw that when there was a
Speaker 1: temporary ceasefire, has stopped firing rockets, and they were willing
Speaker 1: to do that, but only if it was tied to
Speaker 1: an end to the assault on Gaza, and since they were,
Speaker 1: you know, unwilling to bend on that standard. In Ustrala
Speaker 1: in particular was unwilling to bend on that standard. This
Speaker 1: Israeli official saying we thought we had to take him out.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the decision also Emily to assassinate
Speaker 1: Ismail Hania, who was the head of HAMAS and the
Speaker 1: chief negotiator who actually, in the context of HAMAS was
Speaker 1: much more open to this sort of you know, negotiated
Speaker 1: ceasefire to end the Israelian slot in that territory in Gaza.
Speaker 1: And so when you assassinate him, which happened in Tehran,
Speaker 1: which was all an extraordity of provocation towards I Ran,
Speaker 1: that means that now the top negotiator for Hamas is Yeah, yeah, son,
Speaker 1: it'spin Wah, who is far more hawkish, who's seen as
Speaker 1: being the mastermind behind the October seventh attacks. You obviously
Speaker 1: won't come as any surprise to those who are watching
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 3: It's been quite clear for a while that VB.
Speaker 1: Natanyahu is not interested in a permanent ceasefire, does not
Speaker 1: see that as a goal and has systematically gone about
Speaker 1: trying to make sure that there is no possibility of
Speaker 1: that lasting ceasefire on the table.
Speaker 3: And then, you know, the other.
Speaker 1: Thing to say about this, quite obviously, is now you
Speaker 1: have another provocation towards Iran. There have been multiple efforts
Speaker 1: to try to draw them in more broadly to the conflict,
Speaker 1: and you have an incredibly weak US government that while
Speaker 1: they'll say, oh, we think only diplomacy is the answer,
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know they back up Israel
Speaker 1: no matter what they do, even at a cost of
Speaker 1: many civilian lives.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: Very different for example, if you want to compare to
Speaker 1: the very targeted operation that we used to kill Osama
Speaker 1: bin La, very different approach here in terms of the
Speaker 1: civilian civilian deaths and civilian infrastructure that has been destroyed
Speaker 1: already in this exchange. And so it puts US, also
Speaker 1: because of our week leadership, on the brink of a
Speaker 1: terrifying escalation, terrifying broader war, and terrifying involvement of US
Speaker 1: soldiers more directly, especially as we already have forty thousand
Speaker 1: soldiers at least in the region.
Speaker 4: The big question also, obviously is for what is accomplished here,
Speaker 4: and there has been a lot of sort of hawkish
Speaker 4: people over the last couple of days posting these fairly
Speaker 4: stunning images of everyone in the Hesbaalah chain of command
Speaker 4: who has been taken out by Israel.
Speaker 5: Recently, Jared Kushner tweeted.
Speaker 4: Something like Israel has killed more of people, more of
Speaker 4: the people on America's most wanted list in the last
Speaker 4: two days than America has in twenty years, and that's
Speaker 4: been a huge line. What's interesting, though, is that reports
Speaker 4: about the reconstitution of Hamas, for example, just since in
Speaker 4: Jabal Yeah and other places in Israel, just since some
Speaker 4: of the intense bombing late last year and early this year,
Speaker 4: you didn't have to wonder. I mean, we're not going
Speaker 4: to be talking about the hooties.
Speaker 5: We're going to be talking about what comes out of
Speaker 5: all of this.
Speaker 4: People in Hesbola right now are recognizing Estralla as a
Speaker 4: quote sacred martyr. This doesn't This may have a really
Speaker 4: powerful effect on the chain of command, but we don't
Speaker 4: know how significantly this actually wipes out the power of Hesbola.
Speaker 4: How big of a set back this actually is for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there seems to have been I think Ryan spoke
Speaker 1: and you spoke about this previously. You know, Iran, after
Speaker 1: Ismail honey Out was assassinated in their capital on the
Speaker 1: eve of their presence inauguration, there was this expectation that
Speaker 1: Iran will respond, right because I mean, you could imagine
Speaker 1: if it was US and some you know, foreign dignitary
Speaker 1: was in our capital and that's the way they see him,
Speaker 1: you know, and he was assassinated under our nose before
Speaker 1: Joe Biden was inaugurator, so Donald Trump was inaugurator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can imagine how we would respond, and they didn't.
Speaker 3: Because they had this sense of.
Speaker 1: What Israel wants, what our adversary wants us to do,
Speaker 1: is to respond in an aggressive manner. And I think
Speaker 1: it's been you know, a lot the same with hesbla
Speaker 1: of they recognize that the game BBI was playing was
Speaker 1: to try to draw them in to a massive escalation,
Speaker 1: and so the sense was like, why give our adversaries
Speaker 1: what they want. But at this point you're at a
Speaker 1: position where it's like Israel is not gonna They're not
Speaker 1: gonna stop, So you either just sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: lay down and accept their dominance, or you escalate on
Speaker 1: your own, you know, behalf or respond in some way
Speaker 1: that leads further up that chain of escalation. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of where we set right now. I saw a
Speaker 1: thread from Arnaul Bertrand, who we've had on the show before,
Speaker 1: that I thought was really interesting and something for everybody
Speaker 1: to contemplate, like take out if you can, of your
Speaker 1: mind who these specific plays are, and just think about
Speaker 1: the moment that we sit at right now in global history,
Speaker 1: which is we're at a pivot point where the post
Speaker 1: World War two international order, led by the soul superpower
Speaker 1: of the US is either dead or dying. And we're
Speaker 1: burthing right now. What we're doing, what we're engaged in,
Speaker 1: what we're allowing, what we're seeing, what's being accepted, those
Speaker 1: are the things that are going to set the terms
Speaker 1: of this next era. So right now, the terms of
Speaker 1: the next era looks like, you know, indiscriminately bombing hospitals, schools,
Speaker 1: refugee camps, taking out a thousand civilians to assassinate one adversary.
Speaker 1: Those are the sorts of things right now. Those are
Speaker 1: the precedents that are being set for what this new
Speaker 1: era could look like. It also looks like in an
Speaker 1: era where you know, you can just decide, Okay, I
Speaker 1: want a buffer zone in Lebanon, so I'm just going
Speaker 1: to take it. Right, i want a buffer zone in Gaza,
Speaker 1: so I'm just going to take it. Or you could
Speaker 1: look at the Russian you know, invasion of Ukraine.
Speaker 3: They just wanted to take.
Speaker 6: It like that.
Speaker 1: Those are the sort of precedents that are being laid
Speaker 1: down right now that have broader reach. And that's not
Speaker 1: to undermine like the specifics for the horror for the
Speaker 1: human beings who are involved right now, but have broader
Speaker 1: reach even than just this conflict in this moment. And
Speaker 1: you know, that's part of why a lot of times
Speaker 1: people ask like, oh, well, why do you care so
Speaker 1: much about this one thing? I think his threat helped
Speaker 1: to explain in a way I haven't been able to fully.
Speaker 3: Elucidate why it feels like this is such a pivot.
Speaker 1: Point and why it matters so much when you do
Speaker 1: have the world sort of declining superpower tacitly agreeing and
Speaker 1: then affirmatively shipping the arms to create a new order
Speaker 1: in which it's not like we have fully lived up
Speaker 1: to the World War II commitments of civilians being off
Speaker 1: limits and you know, territorial integrity, et cetera. But where
Speaker 1: those things are completely swept away and it's just the
Speaker 1: sort of law of the jungle might mix right, you
Speaker 1: can do whatever the hell you want as long as.
Speaker 3: You've got the guns and the weapons to accomplish it.
Speaker 4: I actually think that's what's fascinating about this entire post
Speaker 4: October seventh conflict. And it was a huge through line
Speaker 4: of the pre October seventh conflict as well. But it's
Speaker 4: the countries that were the thought leaders in the post
Speaker 4: World War two order, the people who were It's always
Speaker 4: been the case, I mean since the last one hundred years,
Speaker 4: the people who were saying what we're going to do
Speaker 4: now is different. We are not going to have more dresdens.
Speaker 4: We are not going to have more We are going
Speaker 4: to protect civilians. And the countries who have wielded international
Speaker 4: law as a sort of realist tool, as a nationalist tool,
Speaker 4: as a tool of power, rather than as a sort
Speaker 4: of moral standard. You have this like unevenness in countries
Speaker 4: like the United States, where a lot of people in
Speaker 4: public polling look at what's happened since October seventh and
Speaker 4: are like really disgusted by what Hamas did, and they're
Speaker 4: really disgusted by the Israeli response. Yeah, people want to
Speaker 4: live up to something better. It's just the government of
Speaker 4: the United States will invoke international law when it's putin
Speaker 4: and then sort of dance around it and say, well,
Speaker 4: it's not really legitimate in this case when it's in
Speaker 4: Israel and it's this, it's Israel challenges the United States
Speaker 4: fundamentally to whether our leaders actually believe what they wield
Speaker 4: as a tool against other countries.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean even just the you know, the booby trapping
Speaker 1: of walkie talkies and pagers right and causing them to
Speaker 1: this is this is an infiltration of the civilian supply chain.
Speaker 1: And not only were there some civilians who were among
Speaker 1: those who had these booby trapped devices, but it's definitionally
Speaker 1: indiscriminate when you cause these things to explode when people
Speaker 1: are at the market at home with their kids holding it.
Speaker 1: And this was not just like accepted, This was celebrated,
Speaker 1: and I thought it. I found it quite no worthy
Speaker 1: that Leon Pinetto's former director of the CIA, etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and not normally someone I make common cause with, sounded
Speaker 1: an alarm about that. And said, effectively, we're opening Pandora's
Speaker 1: box here, and by any definition, this is terrorism. And
Speaker 1: so again, those are the sorts of precedents that are
Speaker 1: being set right now. As this wasn't just accepted, this
Speaker 1: was celebrated by effectively the entire US political elite, whether
Speaker 1: it be Democrats or Republicans, with a just a small
Speaker 1: handful of much derided exceptions. So you know, we are
Speaker 1: authoring right now. We're authoring the world that we're all
Speaker 1: going to have to live in. And that's that's part
Speaker 1: of why, you know, I find what's happening so troubling
Speaker 1: and so horrifying. I want to go back to the
Speaker 1: very latest. I saw a headline this morning that we're
Speaker 1: all preparing. So far these have all been air strikes.
Speaker 1: There's an expectation in Israel has announced that they're likely
Speaker 1: to go forward with a full ground invasion in Lebanon.
Speaker 1: I saw this morning that they had special operations teams
Speaker 1: going sort of like a reconnaissance intelligence gathering missions to
Speaker 1: lay the groundwork for that very likely ground invasion. We also,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned before, are seeing now Israel striking sites
Speaker 1: in Yemen as well. We can put a three up
Speaker 1: on the screen. The latest reporting about this, Israel's military
Speaker 1: say they launched a series of air raids on Hoo.
Speaker 1: They targets in Yemen, further hiding fears of wider regional conflict.
Speaker 1: I would say we're already at that further regional conflict.
Speaker 1: Military said dozens of aircraft, including fighter jets, attack power
Speaker 1: plants and seaport facilities at the ras Issa and Hodeeda ports.
Speaker 1: The attack killed at least four people, one port worker
Speaker 1: and three electric engineers, according to the local TV, citing
Speaker 1: health authorities. Ryan actually indicated how data I didn't realize
Speaker 1: this is one of the key ports that's been used
Speaker 1: for humanitarian aid into Yemen. Yemen, of course suffering brutally
Speaker 1: under a blockade and a famine that was devastating to
Speaker 1: the population there in Israel's also right now blockading Lebanon
Speaker 1: in certain key ways and seizing and Gaza in the
Speaker 1: West Bank. I pulled this clip from Al Jazier just
Speaker 1: explaining the importance of these particular targets.
Speaker 3: Let's go ahead and take a listen.
Speaker 7: Help us understand the significance of Hodada. This is a
Speaker 7: this is really a key entry point for humanitarian aid
Speaker 7: to a country that has been suffering from malnutrition starvation.
Speaker 7: The United Nations has warned a famine in several areas.
Speaker 7: What does it mean for Hadada to be bombed?
Speaker 8: I believe this is the main goal of the Israeli
Speaker 8: regime is to put a pressure on the many people. Board,
Speaker 8: as you say, is one of the most economic or
Speaker 8: economic city for Yemen. And to target dot Board it
Speaker 8: means that Israeli want or trying to close it and
Speaker 8: as well target in those power stations. I this means
Speaker 8: it will effect only the many civilians because Israeli they
Speaker 8: know that they cannot actually target the military installation or
Speaker 8: actually stop or preventing Yemeny from targeting Israel because they
Speaker 8: know that Saudi for example, they have conducted more than
Speaker 8: two hundred and fifty thousand a strike. They couldn't stop
Speaker 8: the Many army and as well hundreds of attack by
Speaker 8: the United States and the UK in the last several months.
Speaker 3: They could not to stop.
Speaker 8: That's why I believe they will continue targeting civilian infrastructure
Speaker 8: that effect actually all Yemeni is. But as well, I
Speaker 8: want to mention that Muhammad abd Salam, the spoke person
Speaker 8: of Antsaru Lah also known the He said that those
Speaker 8: attack actually will not stop or prevent or obstruct Yemeny
Speaker 8: from attacking design the state of Israel, or from Kiebin
Speaker 8: or continuing to support the bioble of Libanon and as
Speaker 8: well the biople of Parast.
Speaker 1: So for more on this, we've got doctor Treue to
Speaker 1: Parsi standing by to help us understand where things go
Speaker 1: from here.
Speaker 3: So let's go and get to that.
Speaker 1: Joining us now to talk more about the American political
Speaker 1: response and the global political response to the latest out
Speaker 1: in Middle East is doctor Tree to Parsi with the
Speaker 1: Quincy Institute.
Speaker 3: Always great to see, sir.
Speaker 1: Likewise, so the response that we've gotten from the Biden
Speaker 1: administration is to the killing of Nostraula and the escalation
Speaker 1: with regard to Israel and Lebanon is incredibly predictable. We've
Speaker 1: seen this many times before. We can put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen A seven. Biden says he's very upset.
Speaker 1: Biden told Confidence Confidence in New York this week he
Speaker 1: was livid at Nannaho did not believe the Israeli leader
Speaker 1: wanted to reach peace.
Speaker 3: Oh really, you don't.
Speaker 1: He was frustrated about how often Nanyahoo had humiliated, blinkoln
Speaker 1: and the President himself. I mean, what can we even
Speaker 1: say about these reports at this point, doctor Parci.
Speaker 9: I don't think we've ever seen a strategy of being
Speaker 9: politically pathetic being seen as a winning political strategy in
Speaker 9: an election season. But that seems to exactly you what
Speaker 9: the administration is doing. Bottom line is Biden has not
Speaker 9: been trying to stop this because while he says that
Speaker 9: he's trying to stop it, while he says that he
Speaker 9: wants to avoid an escalation, he has been providing Israel
Speaker 9: with the weapons, with the money, with the political protection,
Speaker 9: with the diplomatic protection to be able to do exactly
Speaker 9: what Biden says that he does not want to see
Speaker 9: Israel doing. So you can't really claim that you're trying
Speaker 9: to prevent someone from doing something while you are simultaneously
Speaker 9: providing him or her with the means to do it.
Speaker 9: And at this point, the credibility of the United States
Speaker 9: is you know, it shatters because after having said that
Speaker 9: they've been working night and day, around the clock to
Speaker 9: secure a ceasefire and have absolutely nothing to show for
Speaker 9: it except a couple of weeks about how frustrated they are.
Speaker 9: It is the Biden administration itself that has revealed its weakness.
Speaker 4: Well, let's talk about you were in New York last
Speaker 4: week as people from all over the world are gathering
Speaker 4: for the United Nations General Assembly, and Biden's pasture on
Speaker 4: this doesn't just obviously affect him domestically facts the United
Speaker 4: States diplomatically, geopolitically. So what were you able to pick
Speaker 4: up on, even from just what you've seen over the
Speaker 4: last few days, about how Biden's handling of Netanyahu ordering
Speaker 4: the strike from his hotel room at in New York
Speaker 4: City when names there for the UN General Assembly? How
Speaker 4: has that do you think affected the United States? And
Speaker 4: just in the last few days.
Speaker 9: I think one of the things there were many important
Speaker 9: things that we're seeing at the UN in the last
Speaker 9: couple of days. One is the degree to which Israel
Speaker 9: is completely isolated outside of the West, but also within
Speaker 9: the European Union itself, in which numerous European leaders came
Speaker 9: out with very very strong statements. Now, I know, of course,
Speaker 9: the strong statements is not necessarily what changes the course
Speaker 9: of history, but it is important to note that this
Speaker 9: isolation is the outcome of Israel's own actions and it's
Speaker 9: complete disregard for international law. So yes, Israel has won
Speaker 9: numerous military victories in the past, it has nevertheless led
Speaker 9: to this situation with October seventh, in which Israel, according
Speaker 9: to itself, cannot live in peace with its neighbors. So
Speaker 9: just winning military victories clearly is not the pathway alone
Speaker 9: to be able to reach a piece and security for
Speaker 9: the long term for Israel. But that lesson seems to
Speaker 9: have been completely lost. And the other thing I think
Speaker 9: that is really crucial is to see the moral plunge
Speaker 9: on the Western side, because take a look at how
Speaker 9: the United States reacted under the Bush Junior administration when
Speaker 9: the Israelis assassinated Shechef Yasin, who was the former head
Speaker 9: of Hamas in two thousand and four. Seven people were killed,
Speaker 9: civilians were killed in that strike, and the United States
Speaker 9: at the time heavily criticized and even condemned the Israeli strike.
Speaker 9: Today you have a situation in which in Australia is
Speaker 9: killed with several hundred others alongside him, civilians, and there
Speaker 9: is not a word about that coming from the Biden newittration.
Speaker 9: The Bush Junior administration seems to have a stronger moral
Speaker 9: fiber in this sense than what the BIDE administration does.
Speaker 9: This is noted on the international team because simultaneously while
Speaker 9: this is taking place, the BID demonstration is talking a
Speaker 9: big game about the rules based international order, talking about
Speaker 9: the importance of defending Ukraine, because otherwise, what good is
Speaker 9: international law if superpowers can break them? So that the hypocrisy,
Speaker 9: the double standards are just so blatant, it was a
Speaker 9: very depressed atmosphere at the UN because when the United
Speaker 9: States behaves like this, with this level of hypocrisy, with
Speaker 9: this level of double standards, it paves the way for
Speaker 9: everyone else to do so as well, and that will
Speaker 9: bring about a much more anarchic and chaotic situation internationally
Speaker 9: than we have seen in the past.
Speaker 1: What do you think are the likely possible outcomes next?
Speaker 1: Where does the world go from here? What do you
Speaker 1: see as the most likely scenarios?
Speaker 9: Well, I think that in the immediate term is of
Speaker 9: course be determined with what Israel decides to do. In
Speaker 9: terms of a land invasion of Lebanon that seems extremely likely.
Speaker 9: Israelis believe that they have Hazbolah in a very dire situation,
Speaker 9: which is true, and instead of allowing Hisbola the time
Speaker 9: to regroup, rebalance itself. Israel feels that it needs to
Speaker 9: go in right now. The problem, of course, is that
Speaker 9: if Israel does this, it will very likely at some
Speaker 9: point lead to situation in which the Iranians will conclude
Speaker 9: that Israel is not going to stop at Israel in Lebanon.
Speaker 9: It will continue, it will go on all the way
Speaker 9: to try to rebalance the situation in the region by
Speaker 9: also significantly degrading Iran. If the Iranian has come to
Speaker 9: that conclusion, then the rational response from their standpoint likely
Speaker 9: will be to act sooner rather than later, and then
Speaker 9: we will have the very large regional war that Biden
Speaker 9: claims that he he's been trying to prevent for the
Speaker 9: last eleven months.
Speaker 4: You know, we heard, obviously Natanyahu talk about how the
Speaker 4: goal of the post October seventh conflict would be to
Speaker 4: eliminate Hamas, and as you just mentioned, this has clearly
Speaker 4: been a significant blow to Hesbola just in the last
Speaker 4: couple of weeks.
Speaker 5: How significant has it.
Speaker 4: Been, because I think there's still an open question about
Speaker 4: how significant, how significantly Hamas has been damaged of the
Speaker 4: course of the last year. Krystal and I were talking
Speaker 4: earlier about reconstitution of Hamas and areas like Chipalia. What
Speaker 4: do you make of how significant how significant this is
Speaker 4: to Hesbola in the near term and in the long term.
Speaker 9: I think in some ways the blow to Hezbela may
Speaker 9: actually have been worse than the blow to Hamas because
Speaker 9: of the fact that Israelis managed to crack the communications
Speaker 9: system of Hezebola. That makes it much more difficult for
Speaker 9: them to be able to regroup. They also clearly know
Speaker 9: that there are plenty of Israeli intelligence assets inside of
Speaker 9: Hisbela itself, They've not been able to identify them or
Speaker 9: roote them out. That also makes it very difficult for
Speaker 9: them to be able to regroup. So that is a
Speaker 9: blow that Hezbola has suffered that is not a military blow.
Speaker 9: It's an intelligence blow that is not necessarily the same
Speaker 9: as Hamas has suffered. At the end of the day,
Speaker 9: sinwar is still there after eleven months, and the Hamas
Speaker 9: operatives have been using non electronic communications systems for quite
Speaker 9: some time, precisely because of the awareness of how dangerous
Speaker 9: it would be for them. It Israell managed to crack it.
Speaker 9: Having said that, I do also want to say another thing,
Speaker 9: there's stories going out there about how this was a
Speaker 9: major intelligence school for Israel and this is why they
Speaker 9: managed to get Hisboela. The hesbela leader, without a doubt
Speaker 9: is well has for some significant intelligence cool including the
Speaker 9: Pager bombings. What is not being said, however, is that
Speaker 9: they actually already had two or three opportunities to take
Speaker 9: out an Ustralla back in two thousand and six and
Speaker 9: they failed. They bomb but he survived. The difference this
Speaker 9: time around is that they dropped eighty five bombs two
Speaker 9: thousand pound bombs. It is not an improved communications or
Speaker 9: intelligence operation. They knew in the past where he was,
Speaker 9: but they were not given the leadway the caste blanche
Speaker 9: from the United States to drop eighty five two thousand
Speaker 9: pound bombs on a residential neighborhood to kill everyone there,
Speaker 9: including Australia.
Speaker 1: That's the difference, Doctor Parcy, I also wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about the treatment of the American citizens who are
Speaker 1: in the region. We can put a six up on
Speaker 1: the screen so you know quickly after October seventh, the
Speaker 1: State Department began booking charter flights for Americans who wanted
Speaker 1: to leave Israel and that contrasts quite significantly with the
Speaker 1: treatment here where the State Department has said, Hey, if
Speaker 1: you want to leave Lebanon, where you might get bombed
Speaker 1: with you know us supplied two thousand pound bunk or
Speaker 1: buster bombs, book, you're on flight and good luck. And
Speaker 1: obviously many of these flights are being canceled. They cost
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of dollars, etc. So just an extraordinary
Speaker 1: discrepancy between our treatment of our own citizens based on
Speaker 1: whether they are in Israel versus in Lebanon.
Speaker 9: Absolutely, and this is coming out a time in which
Speaker 9: the Harris campaign knows very well that it needs to
Speaker 9: do some outreach, build some bridges to the Arab and
Speaker 9: Muslim communities, and it seems, at least in the last
Speaker 9: couple of weeks, but they have done absolutely nothing, And
Speaker 9: in fact, even the most simplest of things making sure
Speaker 9: that American citizens are finding a way to get out
Speaker 9: of a war zone seems to be a bridge too
Speaker 9: far for them to do, despite the very crucial impact
Speaker 9: they could have on the elections. This is putting us
Speaker 9: truly at a loss. I was speaking to a diplomat
Speaker 9: from a South American country last night who also has
Speaker 9: a large number of citizens in Lebanon, and they're doing
Speaker 9: everything they can right now to make sure that all
Speaker 9: of them can get out safely. And they were stunned
Speaker 9: as well to see how little is done on the
Speaker 9: American side, even though the American number of citizens in Lebanon,
Speaker 9: I think dwarf staff of this South American country.
Speaker 4: And who's running that Biden administration policy, I think that's
Speaker 4: always a question worth asking as we are in this
Speaker 4: ongoing constitutional crisis where the president himself appears to be
Speaker 4: incapable of fully managing the jobs the.
Speaker 5: Job, So is that the reason?
Speaker 4: I think that's relevant because it speaks to what could
Speaker 4: happen in a potential Harris administration. So do you have
Speaker 4: thoughts on that, doctor Parson?
Speaker 9: And just how I wish I had a Yeah, I
Speaker 9: wish I had a good answer to you on that question.
Speaker 9: It has been increasingly mysterious over the last couple of months,
Speaker 9: I would say, particularly given some of the incomprehensible decisions,
Speaker 9: and it goes back all the way to what we saw.
Speaker 9: For instance, in December two thousand and twenty three, on
Speaker 9: the two month anniversary of October seventh, the White House
Speaker 9: issue a statement only mentioning the Israeli victims, no word
Speaker 9: at all about the more than at the time about
Speaker 9: twenty thousand Palestinians who had been killed. How is it
Speaker 9: even possible to make an oversight of that kind, particularly
Speaker 9: mindful of the fact that only weeks earlier the administration
Speaker 9: was doing outreach to the Arab and Muslim communities because
Speaker 9: of the uncommitted vote. I actually gotten a lot of
Speaker 9: a momentum, and they recognized that they needed to do
Speaker 9: something about it, and then they issue a statement luge
Speaker 9: like that. So this is just continuous and it's just
Speaker 9: intensifying the mystery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw a clet this morning where Joe Biden
Speaker 1: was asked a reporter yelled to a question about Israel
Speaker 1: strikes in Yemen, and he seemed to misunderstand and think
Speaker 1: they were talking about literal labor strikes and started talking
Speaker 1: about collective bargaining agreements, which, listen, you know, anyone can miss.
Speaker 3: Here a question, right, but.
Speaker 1: Speaks to some deeper concerns we have about his capabilities
Speaker 1: and his ability to even understand what's happening in the region,
Speaker 1: let alone what the broader implications are for American interests
Speaker 1: at this point. Thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 1: this morning. It's always so great to hear what you
Speaker 1: have to say in your analysis of where we go
Speaker 1: from here.
Speaker 3: So thank you so much, Thank you so much for
Speaker 3: having me our pleasure.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, As mentioned before, the Vice presdential debate
Speaker 1: is tomorrow night.
Speaker 3: We are going to be live streaming. Very excited about that.
Speaker 1: Also as a reminder, we got a little discount for
Speaker 1: you guys through election and we put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen fifteen dollars off, so it's basically like you
Speaker 1: get from now to election day free and the code
Speaker 1: is BP twenty twenty four, So avail yourself of that
Speaker 1: if you can. Also a reminder, we are thirty five
Speaker 1: days until the election, which makes me feel a little
Speaker 1: stick to my stomach, I'm being honest. Has gone very
Speaker 1: very quickly, so to preview the VP debate and all
Speaker 1: of the things that are going on, we are happy
Speaker 1: to be joined in studio this morning by Shelby Talcott.
Speaker 3: She is a reporter for some of four. Great to
Speaker 3: see you, Shelby, welcome back, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, So I guess what do you think
Speaker 1: are the expectations for this debate. Jadvan's a little better
Speaker 1: known than Tim Walls. Tim Wall's a little bit lesser known.
Speaker 1: You know, certainly Donald Trump is probably the main character
Speaker 1: as always in terms of this presidential context. So what
Speaker 1: do you think are the expectations for this debate going in?
Speaker 10: I go back and forth on how important this presidential
Speaker 10: debate is, and part of me thinks it could be
Speaker 10: more important than a normal presidential debate just because it
Speaker 10: is potentially the last debate of the entire campaign, right,
Speaker 10: And also I think there's an argument to be made
Speaker 10: that could be particularly important for Donald Trump's campaign because
Speaker 10: of how the last debate went for him, But for
Speaker 10: Tim Walls, is it's really important as well because he's
Speaker 10: a lesser known figure, right, So I just I think
Speaker 10: that overall it is a more important debate than normal
Speaker 10: vice presidential debates. Both of the campaigns are sort of
Speaker 10: doing their normal expectation settings. We had a report over
Speaker 10: the weekend noting that Tim Walls was really nervous going
Speaker 10: into this presidential debate.
Speaker 3: Now, how much of.
Speaker 10: That is actual nerves versus they're trying to set the
Speaker 10: expectations pretty low? Because remember Tim Walls was the candidate
Speaker 10: who when he was being interviewed by Kamala Harris told her, Hey,
Speaker 10: I'm not really that good at debates, and so it'll
Speaker 10: be really interesting to see, I think, in particular, how
Speaker 10: he performs, because we've seen a lot less of him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when we can put B three up on the screen,
Speaker 4: that's for what we were talking about. This is an
Speaker 4: NPR look at how much VP debates actually matter. So
Speaker 4: I want to get your take on that, Shelby as well.
Speaker 4: How the campaigns, and let's particularly ask about the Vance
Speaker 4: campaign are anticipating what this could do to the shape
Speaker 4: of the race. How are they approaching that question? And
Speaker 4: I'll add to that through this lens of the weirdness
Speaker 4: subplot to the entire election, because that's been basically the
Speaker 4: fundamental kind of difference that Tim Walls is trying to
Speaker 4: produce between himself in JD.
Speaker 5: Vance. That guy's weird and that's something.
Speaker 4: That Jade Vance has battled ever since he was named
Speaker 4: the candidate. So on the Vance camp, where you've been
Speaker 4: talking to sources, what are they thinking about in terms
Speaker 4: of how that contrast may come out?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is JD.
Speaker 10: Vance, to be clear, has done a lot of interviews
Speaker 10: and press avails. I think as of a week or
Speaker 10: two ago, he had done one hundred and fifteen since
Speaker 10: becoming the vice presidential nominee. So there's an argument to
Speaker 10: be made that he is already pretty well known. He's
Speaker 10: been on adversarial networks, he's been on the friendly networks,
Speaker 10: so that has sort of helped his campaign in combating
Speaker 10: that weird image. But this is sort of the first
Speaker 10: time we're going to see them go one on one.
Speaker 10: So it is a really big opportunity for the Vance
Speaker 10: campaign to show or to push back on that narrative
Speaker 10: that he is weird, right, and that's something that I
Speaker 10: think we're.
Speaker 3: Going to see them try to do.
Speaker 10: At the same time, when you talk to Donald Trump campaign,
Speaker 10: they historically have not put too much stake in the
Speaker 10: vice presidential option. So I remember talking to his campaign
Speaker 10: several months ago before really the vice presidential talk was
Speaker 10: really brewing, and the big narrative that they felt was
Speaker 10: it's not that important. The vice presidential pick doesn't make
Speaker 10: a huge difference. Donald Trump really feels like if people
Speaker 10: are going to vote for him, they're going to vote
Speaker 10: for him. They're not going to vote for him based
Speaker 10: on who his vice presidential pick is so in that nature.
Speaker 10: I think the campaign is sort of doesn't think it's
Speaker 10: going to make a huge deff.
Speaker 3: They're relaxed about it.
Speaker 1: I mean he even said that himself at that National
Speaker 1: Association for Black Journalists event. It was like, eh, VP,
Speaker 1: they're telling me that doesn't matter anyway. Yeah, So he's
Speaker 1: even said it publicly. So we know Donald Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: really do traditional debate prep. He likes to sit in
Speaker 1: a room have people sort of throw questions. Not that
Speaker 1: he doesn't prepare, he just doesn't do it in quite
Speaker 1: the traditional way. Kamala Harris did a very traditional bait
Speaker 1: prep like hold herself up in a hotel, had someone
Speaker 1: playing the part of Trump, you know, went through that
Speaker 1: rigorous process. I know Tim Walls has Pete Bootagic is
Speaker 1: playing jd Vance, which I actually think is kind of
Speaker 1: a good choice to play that role. I could see
Speaker 1: him channeling that pretty well. How is jd Vance going
Speaker 1: about preparing for this debate?
Speaker 10: Jd Vance is different than Donald Trump, So he's sort
Speaker 10: of doing a mix of traditional debate prep while still
Speaker 10: going out on the campaign trail pretty aggressively over the
Speaker 10: past few weeks. So he is going to do a
Speaker 10: full mock debate trial in Tom Emmer, the Republican from Minnesota,
Speaker 10: has been playing Tim Walls. He's doing murder boards, which
Speaker 10: is sort of sessions who Yes, the murder boards is
Speaker 10: not show, it is. There's sessions where essentially they're focused
Speaker 10: on some of those vulnerabilities, which of course include the
Speaker 10: fact that he has said several things on the campaign
Speaker 10: trail that Donald Trump himself hasn't hasn't endorsed in terms
Speaker 10: of policies. It includes obviously, I'm sure the cats and
Speaker 10: dogs rhetoric that we have heard from jd Vance. So
Speaker 10: those are the sessions where they sort of focus in
Speaker 10: on those vulnerabilities. But at the same time, when I
Speaker 10: talked to his campaign, they've said, well, he's done so
Speaker 10: many interviews that were less concerned about those kinds of
Speaker 10: questions and more concerned about how to combat who Tim
Speaker 10: Walls is and how he's going to come up on
Speaker 10: the debate stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that does make some sense because listen,
Speaker 1: Jade Vance has been out there taking them questions and
Speaker 1: having his bar and I'm pretty shocked by how much
Speaker 1: the Hairris campaign has buried Tim Walls, who of all
Speaker 1: these candidates has the highest favorability rating, got the job
Speaker 1: primarily because he nailed it in these cable news interviews,
Speaker 1: and then they just have completely buried him, I guess
Speaker 1: out of fear that he would overshadow Kamala Harris, who
Speaker 1: is sort of famously uncomfortable in interview settings and doing very
Speaker 1: very little in terms of media.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and I think that's something that I think that
Speaker 10: maybe is a mistake we're going to see on the
Speaker 10: debate stage. Yeah, because when I talk to both of
Speaker 10: the campaigns, particularly you know, when I talked to Donald
Speaker 10: Trump's team, when I talked to Jade Vance's team, when
Speaker 10: I talked to Kamala Harris's team, that everybody agrees that reps.
Speaker 10: It's just like in sports, the more you do something,
Speaker 10: the better you are and the more you're comfortable about it.
Speaker 5: So you have JD.
Speaker 10: Vance, who has done over one hundred press avails and interviews,
Speaker 10: and then you have Tim Walls, who is I'm pretty
Speaker 10: sure he's done less than ten. And so that alone
Speaker 10: could be could be interesting to see because you know,
Speaker 10: is it a situation where Tim Walls is normally good
Speaker 10: in an interview aspect but just hasn't had the reps recently,
Speaker 10: and so he's just feeling more nervous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's entirely possible. I possible.
Speaker 4: Now, how are these campaigns preparing for the potential of
Speaker 4: fact checks?
Speaker 5: We have this tear sheet before This.
Speaker 4: Is CBS News saying actually, it's going to approach the
Speaker 4: debate more like CNN approached the first Trump Biden debate,
Speaker 4: which is allowing the candidates to fact check each other,
Speaker 4: but not interjecting like David Muhir did, sort of notorious
Speaker 4: at this point in the last presidential debate. So what
Speaker 4: are they thinking in terms of those moments? Because Vance
Speaker 4: has one of Vance's strengths is seen as actually his
Speaker 4: performance when he goes on with like Dana Bash and
Speaker 4: the CNN a hostile CNN interview.
Speaker 5: But if there's no.
Speaker 4: Sort of that was almost like a cope after the
Speaker 4: last debate. There were some legitimate complaints about there were
Speaker 4: some legitimate complaints about the moderation, but it was the
Speaker 4: big talking point coming out of the debate. Yeah, so
Speaker 4: if that's not there, almost as a foil, what are
Speaker 4: they thinking in terms of that?
Speaker 10: I think Tim Wallas's campaign wants to focus more on
Speaker 10: Donald Trump's policy, So despite this being a vice presidential debate,
Speaker 10: he's going to be really honing in on the Donald
Speaker 10: Trump policy aspect of it. When you talk to jd
Speaker 10: Vance's team again, they go back to the fact that
Speaker 10: he has done so many of these interviews, and they
Speaker 10: sound pretty confident that he's going to be able to
Speaker 10: sort of push back on and sort of self fact
Speaker 10: check despite the fact that the moderators might not.
Speaker 3: He's good in those moments.
Speaker 10: I think he's had the p he's been with Dana Bash,
Speaker 10: he's been on MSNBC, and so they're less concerned and
Speaker 10: have sort of been prepping a little bit less on
Speaker 10: that side of things, just because he's done it so.
Speaker 3: Much over the past few months.
Speaker 1: How do you think he handles abortion, because this was
Speaker 1: one of the big missteps. He gets asked, predictably in
Speaker 1: a Sunday News show interview about whether Donald Trump would
Speaker 1: veto a national abortion ban, and sort of under pressure,
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, I think he would. And then Trump
Speaker 1: gets asked about it in the debate and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: Jad said that, but to be honest, we hadn't talked
Speaker 1: about it, so sort of indicating like, no, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: veto that as far as I know, this tension of
Speaker 1: what the campaign's actual position is remains unresolved.
Speaker 3: So how does JD.
Speaker 1: Man's handle situation like that, where you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of unclear what exactly he's supposed to be repping for
Speaker 1: his boss?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think we got a preview of how he's
Speaker 10: going to handle those kinds of questions. A few weeks later,
Speaker 10: he was asked on Meet the Press about that moment
Speaker 10: on the debate stage from Donald Trump, and he said, well,
Speaker 10: I've learned my lesson about getting ahead of Donald Trump,
Speaker 10: so I do anticipate if there's a question to that effect,
Speaker 10: that's going to be.
Speaker 3: Learned my lesson.
Speaker 10: But at the same time, during that same interview, he
Speaker 10: also seemed to get ahead of Donald Trump on on
Speaker 10: health insurance. I started talking about how Donald Trump's plan
Speaker 10: includes separating people.
Speaker 3: Into high risk pools, and I asked.
Speaker 10: The campaign if that was their policy, and they declined
Speaker 10: to directly answer whether that was their policy. So I
Speaker 10: think the problem the risk of that JD. Vance has
Speaker 10: on Tuesday Night is that historically, you know, when I
Speaker 10: talk to people on the Hill who have covered him,
Speaker 10: he likes chatting he's a little bit nerdy. He likes
Speaker 10: chatting about policy, he likes to riff off of policy.
Speaker 10: And I don't know if it's he doesn't understand that
Speaker 10: his words are hold more meaning now, or if these
Speaker 10: are truly Donald Trump's policy plans and he just hasn't.
Speaker 3: Rolled them out yet.
Speaker 10: But there's a risk I think that he gets too
Speaker 10: by down in policy and we end up hearing more
Speaker 10: of these situations where jd. Vance previews a policy that
Speaker 10: Donald Trump is.
Speaker 3: Not yet endorsed.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter though,
Speaker 1: because I mean it's not like I don't get the
Speaker 1: sense Trump is like mad at him for that stuff. No,
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, in a lot of ways we're living with
Speaker 1: this is like a post policy type of campaign. So
Speaker 1: the specifics of donal I mean, Donald Trump got away
Speaker 1: at the debate with saying like, oh, I've got a
Speaker 1: concept of a plan on health healthcare, which how many
Speaker 1: years do we spend litigating the in and ounce of healthcare?
Speaker 3: And so even if jd.
Speaker 1: Vance is just like make it up on the fly
Speaker 1: what Donald Trump's policy is, because even Donald Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: know what Donald Trump's policy is, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 3: Sadly, I'm not sure it really matters.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I do think overall, on both sides of the spectrum,
Speaker 10: this is a very policy like presidential campaign and Donald Trump,
Speaker 10: to be clear, despite jd Vance getting ahead of him
Speaker 10: on some of these things, he really likes Jadie Vance.
Speaker 10: He sees him on TV, he sees him go on
Speaker 10: these adversarial networks. He likes his personality, he likes how
Speaker 10: he pushes back.
Speaker 3: His beard apparently.
Speaker 10: And so that's the ultimate thing is if Donald Trump
Speaker 10: doesn't care that jd Vance potentially gets ahead of him
Speaker 10: on things, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 4: Well, so can we just do my last question for you,
Speaker 4: Shelby is a vibe check, Like you're talking to people
Speaker 4: in these circles VP debate. As we just talked about
Speaker 4: thirty five days left until the election, there was just
Speaker 4: a near assassination attempt a couple of weeks ago. So
Speaker 4: in the Vance camp at least, what the morale. How
Speaker 4: are the vibes.
Speaker 10: I think the vibes are pretty good from jd Vance's camp. Now,
Speaker 10: you know, when I talk to people on the campaign,
Speaker 10: whether it's jd Vance's team or Donald Trump's team, which
Speaker 10: is essentially one and the same at this point, there
Speaker 10: are certainly nerves in terms of depending on who you
Speaker 10: ask on how they're doing, they'll give different answers. Some
Speaker 10: people say it's fifty to fifty. Some people are convinced
Speaker 10: Donald Trump is going to win. Some people are really
Speaker 10: frustrated about the dynamics of the campaign overall.
Speaker 5: But JD.
Speaker 10: Vance's team is sort of full ahead. They're pretty focused.
Speaker 10: They're pretty confident in him as a vice presidential candidate,
Speaker 10: and they know that he goes out there and he
Speaker 10: can do these interviews and he performs pretty well. He's
Speaker 10: certainly had some hiccups right the weeks of dog and
Speaker 10: cat rhetoric and comments was not something they wanted to
Speaker 10: deal with, but they wanted.
Speaker 3: To deal with it.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump didn't seem afraid of dealing with that, since
Speaker 1: he's the one who blew it up nationally on the
Speaker 1: debate stage self.
Speaker 10: Because they're advisors, his team sort of has quietly said,
Speaker 10: you know, well, I don't know why we're talking about this,
Speaker 10: but at the end of the day, I think there's
Speaker 10: a lot of confidence internally in JD. Vance's policy experience,
Speaker 10: and he is somebody who prepares a lot, and so
Speaker 10: I feel like they're feeling more confident than some of
Speaker 10: Donald Trump's advisors were for his presidential debate.
Speaker 1: How do they explain how unpopular he is if they're
Speaker 1: happy with him, because and then you know, also in
Speaker 1: the converse, like publicans really hate two Walls, they think
Speaker 1: he's such a disaster. He's the most popular guy in
Speaker 1: the ticket, So what is their understanding of that?
Speaker 3: I think they The.
Speaker 10: Argument I've heard from a few folks has been a, well,
Speaker 10: Tim Walls hasn't been out there, so Americans just don't
Speaker 10: really know him. So he's sort of been sheltered in
Speaker 10: this cocoon that jd. Vance hasn't because Jadie Vance has
Speaker 10: gone out and taken the tough questions, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 10: But I think the other argument is I think they
Speaker 10: just don't really care necessarily because they.
Speaker 1: Want him to be the attack dog they want them.
Speaker 1: They don't mind him being a bit of a villain.
Speaker 5: They want him to be the attack dog.
Speaker 10: They don't mind that he's seen as the bad guy.
Speaker 10: And that's again why I think this vice presidential could
Speaker 10: potentially be important for him, because if people come out
Speaker 10: and see him in a different light than what the
Speaker 10: Kamala Harris campaign has been putting out.
Speaker 3: It could help him.
Speaker 4: I'm not super surprised that the vibes are good in
Speaker 4: the vans campus, so I feel like, if anything, they're
Speaker 4: kind of rubbing their hands together with Tim Walls, expecting
Speaker 4: that JD will be able to actually have someone he
Speaker 4: can start talking to about like the late term abortions.
Speaker 4: He can flip that question going to they see it
Speaker 4: this way transgender issues. They can flip the question on
Speaker 4: him because Tim Walls has that and Jadvance That's how
Speaker 4: Jada Vanscer sees his strength on the campaign trills being
Speaker 4: able to like flip the media narrative. So I bet
Speaker 4: they're actually like kind of looking to lean into that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 10: We have heard less expectation settings from Jade Vance's team
Speaker 10: compared to Tim Walls's team, and I think that's notable
Speaker 10: because typically in a presidential debate, both of the campaigns
Speaker 10: are really doing expectation setting. I mean, Donald Trump historically
Speaker 10: likes to set the bar extremely low for his opponents,
Speaker 10: but his advisors will sort of expectation set for him. Yeah,
Speaker 10: but we're not really hearing as much of the expectation
Speaker 10: setting from Vance's team, and I think that's because they're
Speaker 10: pretty confident they know what jd Vance is good at,
Speaker 10: and a lot of what Jada Vance is naturally good
Speaker 10: at is things that he's going to.
Speaker 3: Have to do on the debate.
Speaker 1: He's not going to just crumble, There's no doubt about it. Now,
Speaker 1: whether people like him at the end of it, I
Speaker 1: think is a very different question. Yeah, but you're not
Speaker 1: going to, you know, catch him off guard where he's
Speaker 1: just stuttering and stumbling and doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: You're not going to bait him in the really easy
Speaker 1: way that they did with Donald Trump, which was just
Speaker 1: embarrassing at the end of the day. So I think
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. Shelby, thank you. It's
Speaker 1: so great to have insights from you. We appreciate you
Speaker 1: coming in.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me. Yeah, our pleasure. All right.
Speaker 1: So, heading into that vice presidential debate, we didn't wanted
Speaker 1: to do a quick check on where the polls stand
Speaker 1: and who's at what chances in terms of November and
Speaker 1: the ultimate result here. So we are turning once again
Speaker 1: to Logan Phillips of a race to the White House.
Speaker 3: Great to Caesar, great to see you too.
Speaker 1: So we got some interesting news last week about this
Speaker 1: one congressional district in Nebraska that we covered here, and
Speaker 1: this is significant because it counts for one electoral vote.
Speaker 1: There was a push to make Nebraska winner take all
Speaker 1: like most states are. That push failed, so now they's
Speaker 1: still going to be allocating electoral College votes by district.
Speaker 1: And we got a couple of relatively high quality polls
Speaker 1: in about how that district is leaning. We can put
Speaker 1: c two up on the screen here and get us sense.
Speaker 1: This is the CNN poll. It shows Harris plus eleven
Speaker 1: in Nebraska's second congressional district. Biden won it by just
Speaker 1: six in twenty twenty. Aaron Blake of Pines helps explain
Speaker 1: why the Trump campaign was so keen to change down
Speaker 1: Nebraska awards its electoral votes. What do you make there
Speaker 1: was another poll that showed, you know, a similarly significant
Speaker 1: margin for Harris in this congressional district. Logan, what do
Speaker 1: you make of where things stand there right now and
Speaker 1: why it matters?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I fully buy it.
Speaker 11: I mean, we had another poll that was plus nine,
Speaker 11: another one that was plus fifteen, and these are three
Speaker 11: top pollsters, and so this is really surprising because this
Speaker 11: was very close in twenty or pretty close in twenty twenty,
Speaker 11: so there was a chance for Donald Trump to win it.
Speaker 11: But he might have messed up by focusing so hard
Speaker 11: on changing the rules fifty days before the election. I
Speaker 11: think he struck a nerve with the voters in any
Speaker 11: two because this is how they have political relevancy, the
Speaker 11: moment that happens, politicians just skipping Obraska from that point. Yeah,
Speaker 11: and you know, it was a five point race there
Speaker 11: and then overnight Harris's lead expanded to you know, over
Speaker 11: ten points in my polling average, and so seeing that
Speaker 11: anywhere else, so I think it's a direct reaction to it.
Speaker 4: And interesting, Moss, can you tell us about any too basically,
Speaker 4: like why that might be, what types of voters might
Speaker 4: have been animated by what happened? It's I believe it's
Speaker 4: in the Omahai area.
Speaker 11: Right, Yeah, Yeah, Well I think as along the same
Speaker 11: lines of when people were concerned in New Hampshire that maybe,
Speaker 11: although it didn't really come to play, that moving the
Speaker 11: primary data around in New Hampshire might annoy the voters there. Yeah,
Speaker 11: this is so specific to that place's relevancy that even
Speaker 11: though it's a lot less political, I think than New Hampshire,
Speaker 11: which is probably the most political of any of the states.
Speaker 11: It still is going to matter. And you know, if
Speaker 11: it really annoys five percent of voters that might be
Speaker 11: in play, that's a game changer. And so the reason
Speaker 11: why this one district matters it probably doesn't seem like
Speaker 11: much because hey, you need two seventy to win. There's
Speaker 11: five hundred and thirty eight where I focus so much
Speaker 11: on one. Well, the way the math has worked out
Speaker 11: for this decade because every year, every ten years they decide,
Speaker 11: you know, how many electoral votes will be for each
Speaker 11: state based off population. This time around, if Harris wins
Speaker 11: the state she's expected to, and she wins Michigan, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 11: and Wisconsin with Nebraska second, that gets her exactly the
Speaker 11: two seventy.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is so crazy, which shows you why they
Speaker 1: were trying to change this, but also it is understandable.
Speaker 1: You know, it also exposes the absurdity of the electoral
Speaker 1: college system that, like, you know, if you aren't one
Speaker 1: of those swing areas, politicians literally don't care whether you
Speaker 1: exist or not. So it makes sense that they wanted
Speaker 1: to try to hold on to their political relevance here.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get your sense of this New York
Speaker 1: Times Siena polling that we have. Let's go and put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. They did some polling of
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and Michigan in particular, and they found a very
Speaker 1: tight race Kamala Harris up forty nine to forty seven
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, just forty eight to forty seven in Michigan.
Speaker 1: This is another one of those poles that had a
Speaker 1: large gap in Nebraska. No surprise, Trump leading in the
Speaker 1: state of Ohio there as well. They pulled Ohio in
Speaker 1: the context of also pulling the very competitive Ohio Senate
Speaker 1: race there, but at least in the context of this poll,
Speaker 1: this shows some tightening in those quote unquote blue wall states.
Speaker 1: Is that consistent with what we're seeing across the board?
Speaker 11: Ever, so slight tightening outstaying across the board since the debate,
Speaker 11: and that kind of makes sense because you have high
Speaker 11: points and low points for candidates and since to adjust
Speaker 11: a little more to the middle. I just think you
Speaker 11: don't know how to be a pet of because I
Speaker 11: said this last time it was on New York Times.
Speaker 11: Is a great polster, but they've consistently, with the one
Speaker 11: exception of the last PA Michigan poll been missing or
Speaker 11: not missing, but it's been a few points to the
Speaker 11: right of other pollsters. Yeah, so yeah, they might have
Speaker 11: it right, but chances are there going to be a
Speaker 11: little bit to the right this cycle. So having a
Speaker 11: small lead in those states when everyone else showed you
Speaker 11: with a small but slightly better lead, I think is
Speaker 11: honestly a good sign for Harris.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and what are you seeing in Michigan Because there's
Speaker 4: a lot being made in the tightening here that this
Speaker 4: could have been from the Dearborn area. This could be
Speaker 4: hemorrhaging among air of Americans, Muslim Americans around the deer
Speaker 4: Born area in Michigan, that when you have such a
Speaker 4: slim margin, it could wreck the whole state for your
Speaker 4: electorally at least, is there anything there.
Speaker 11: I think it's a valid concern. But I also think
Speaker 11: this is a bit of a narrow that the Harris
Speaker 11: campaign and the Slocking campaign are all about, because the
Speaker 11: last thing they want is their own voters in Michigan
Speaker 11: to not take it seriously. Yeah, and hey, Slocking will
Speaker 11: love if National Democrats ands more in Michigan. So there's
Speaker 11: nothing wrong for Democrats. For Democrats to have that I'm
Speaker 11: concerned narrative because it gets their voters more likely to volunteer,
Speaker 11: more likely to donate. I don't receive too much of
Speaker 11: a tiny inning in Michigan relative to other states, other
Speaker 11: than a tiny post debate slippitch. You know, it's a
Speaker 11: really competitive state that she's more likely to win than
Speaker 11: the other electoral than the other swing states. But I
Speaker 11: don't think things are falling apart there, at least not
Speaker 11: what I'm seeing in the polling.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, guys, Logan is going to stick with us and
Speaker 1: reveal the latest from his forecast, the Race of the
Speaker 1: White House forecast. That's going to be available for everyone
Speaker 1: later in the week, but we're going to post that
Speaker 1: exclusively for premium subscribers right away, you know, after we
Speaker 1: record it and post and all that good stuff. If
Speaker 1: you want to become a premium subscribe, we can put
Speaker 1: the discount back up on the screen fifteen dollars off
Speaker 1: through election day just entering that code BP twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: so you can evail yourself of that discount. You can
Speaker 1: see more of space, and you can see more of
Speaker 1: soccer space looking like that is my blessing that I
Speaker 1: get to enjoy every day's here genuinely.
Speaker 3: In any case, all right, we'll post all of this.
Speaker 1: Like I said later in the week, Premium subscribers, stick around, Logan,
Speaker 1: let's go and put your model up on the screen.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 4: More video is coming in of the utter devastation that
Speaker 4: is sweeping parts of the East Coast in the aftermath
Speaker 4: of Hurricane Helene. Let's go ahead and roll some of
Speaker 4: this footage. It's really shocking and upsetting. The death toll,
Speaker 4: it should be unnoted as well, is approaching one hundred
Speaker 4: as the time that we are recording this.
Speaker 5: It's at eighty nine. Expected to grow.
Speaker 4: And if you're looking at this video on your screen,
Speaker 4: you can understand why that's expected to grow because we
Speaker 4: are seeing studying stunning levels of flooding in places like Ashville,
Speaker 4: North Carolina. It's on your screen right now. I mean,
Speaker 4: just that was a Wendy's. If you're listening to this
Speaker 4: was a Wendy's with the water almost all the way.
Speaker 5: To the roof. Incredible levels of flooding.
Speaker 4: So Crystal, you actually spent a lot of time in
Speaker 4: Asheville and in places that are being so heavily affected
Speaker 4: by this right now, it's just.
Speaker 1: This video we're watching right now too, is of a
Speaker 1: house floating down the street, and it is shocking. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not this is not actually, this
Speaker 1: isn't a coastal area. This is western North Carolina. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the Great Smoky Mountains. It's truly one of my
Speaker 1: favorite parts of the entire country. This is in now
Speaker 1: in Florida. And the way that the path this hurricane
Speaker 1: took and see mudslides onto the highways. Many of the
Speaker 1: interstates by the way leading into this area are completely
Speaker 1: blocked and closed. Here you see some of the roadway
Speaker 1: that just like you know, fell just fell apart.
Speaker 3: Here's the highway that fell apart.
Speaker 1: These are people recording from within their own homes. I
Speaker 1: believe this one, Yeah, this was a hurricane house flood
Speaker 1: victim in Tampa. This one, I believe, also is in Florida.
Speaker 1: And the track that this hurricane took. It hit the
Speaker 1: Big Bend area of Florida, and then it came up
Speaker 1: through the inland areas and dumped just massive amounts of
Speaker 1: water on areas like Asheville, North Carolina. And so you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a coastal Florida resident, You've seen hurricanes before.
Speaker 3: You evacuate, you know what to do.
Speaker 1: These are people who have never imagined that they would
Speaker 1: be hit with a hurricane like this in a way
Speaker 1: that has just been utterly devastating.
Speaker 3: I mean, the images are unimaginable.
Speaker 1: People are stuck without food, without water, without gasoline, without
Speaker 1: the ability with cell phone. Yeah, no power, no cell
Speaker 1: no Wi Fi, nothing, and so you have people who
Speaker 1: are stranded and we don't know what condition they're in.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: That's why there's a lot of fears that this death
Speaker 1: hol which is approaching one hundred, will continue to ride,
Speaker 1: because the devastation was so swift and so unexpected. Because
Speaker 1: communications have been cut off, there is effectively no ability
Speaker 1: to flee the region at this point. Because you saw
Speaker 1: some of the images of the bridges and roadways that
Speaker 1: have just utterly collapsed. Your best bet, according to what
Speaker 1: I'm reading, is to try some of these different mountain
Speaker 1: back roads to get out of the area, because the
Speaker 1: main interstate highways have all been devastated. And we could
Speaker 1: put D two up on the screen here. Some locals
Speaker 1: are describing this as biblical devastation. In these North Carolina
Speaker 1: towns that have been flooded by Helene. And from the
Speaker 1: images you can understand why let me read to you
Speaker 1: a little bit from the story, because it speaks to
Speaker 1: that you know just how unexpected it is to suffer
Speaker 1: something like this in this region. Beverly and Baxter Eller
Speaker 1: had lived in the same house in this small North
Speaker 1: Carolina hamlet for thirty seven years. Never once had it
Speaker 1: flooded in thirty seven years, never once until just before
Speaker 1: dawn on Friday, as Hurricane Helene tours through the region.
Speaker 1: The water from the raging river rose fast and faster
Speaker 1: until it reached their yard. The couple fled, not a
Speaker 1: moment too soon to huddle with neighbors inside a Baptist
Speaker 1: church up the hill. On Saturday afternoon, they returned and
Speaker 1: found their home utterly destroyed. The manager of the county
Speaker 1: that includes Asheville, North Carolina, says this is looking to
Speaker 1: be Buncomb's County's own Hurricane Katrina, and the assistant Emergency
Speaker 1: services director says, we have biblical devastation through the county.
Speaker 3: We have biblical flooding.
Speaker 1: Here put the next one up on the screen that
Speaker 1: gives the latest in terms of the death toll, at
Speaker 1: least eighty seven people killed in six different states, including
Speaker 1: at least thirty in North Carolina. The image here is
Speaker 1: a truck upside down, nose down rivers, swollen creek there,
Speaker 1: and road that had clearly been flooded at one point.
Speaker 1: And this article gets into how dificult it is to
Speaker 1: leave because multiple stretches of Interstates forty and twenty six,
Speaker 1: which are the main roadways for traveling in and out
Speaker 1: of this area, have are closed and will remain closed
Speaker 1: for god knows how long. You guys saw the devastation,
Speaker 1: how long will it take to fix and repair these roadways?
Speaker 1: And search operations and recovery operations sadly do continue.
Speaker 3: So two feet of rain unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Two feet of rain dropped on this area, and it's
Speaker 1: just it's unimaginable.
Speaker 3: It's absolutely unimaginable.
Speaker 4: So and the couple that was profiled briefly by the
Speaker 4: Washington Post, they right now, that Eller family, they don't
Speaker 4: know where their son is. They can't find their son.
Speaker 4: And in just that Washington Post article you see the
Speaker 4: accounts of people who don't know where all of their
Speaker 4: children are. There are a lot of people missing. North Carolina,
Speaker 4: Kentucky's being hit really hard.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of people.
Speaker 4: Missing, and so we're to nearly one hundred fatalities already.
Speaker 4: As you mentioned, the emergency director in the county that
Speaker 4: the Washington Post also was reporting on has invoked the
Speaker 4: quote mass fatality plan. So these numbers are going to
Speaker 4: get worse, and probably so much worse.
Speaker 5: So it's just you know, this is these areas of
Speaker 5: like Asheville, for example.
Speaker 4: People have posted is in a floodplaine, But that doesn't
Speaker 4: mean that people are used to It doesn't mean that
Speaker 4: it's obviously something that happens every year.
Speaker 5: There's such a thing as hundred your flood. So this
Speaker 5: is this level two feet of water.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not something that people's It's not the Florida coast,
Speaker 4: that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Right, And this hurricane strengthened very rapidly as it was
Speaker 1: coming over the Gulf. That strengthened from you know, tropical
Speaker 1: storm and rapidly escalated to when it came ashore it
Speaker 1: was a category for hurricane, which is of course close
Speaker 1: to the highest level, and so lots of devastation in
Speaker 1: Florida's the entire swath that it took you know, really
Speaker 1: tons of devastation, and you know, there is a sense
Speaker 1: that previous eras like I remind member being glued to
Speaker 1: the coverage of the horror and the failures of Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember some of the massive media attention
Speaker 1: on hurricanes and natural disasters of the past, and it
Speaker 1: does seem like because now we're getting hundred year floods
Speaker 1: every ten years, because the pace of these extreme weather
Speaker 1: events has escalated due to warming waters and due to
Speaker 1: climate change, it's sort of like the you know, mass
Speaker 1: shooting at the school phenomena where people just become anored
Speaker 1: and the media becomes innored and sort of you know,
Speaker 1: numb to the scale of the devastation. Because I don't
Speaker 1: think it's I don't think it's wrong to call this,
Speaker 1: you know, akin to their Katrina in terms of the
Speaker 1: level of destruction and how long it will take this
Speaker 1: area to recover based on the images that we are seeing.
Speaker 1: And yet you know, the national attention, even the political attention,
Speaker 1: like Kama Harris has still at a fund doing a
Speaker 1: fundraiser in La like nothing's like, nothing happened. I don't,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure Biden has put out some state.
Speaker 1: Has he come out and addressed the nation. Where are
Speaker 1: the plans to like fly down and be on the ground.
Speaker 1: Where are the assertions of like, I you know, whatever
Speaker 1: you need, We're going to make sure that you've got
Speaker 1: it covered. I just I don't see that level of
Speaker 1: political or media response. That doesn't mean that they're not
Speaker 1: receiving resources. You know, the governor has said there's National
Speaker 1: Guard resources and federal resources.
Speaker 3: Already on the ground there.
Speaker 1: But it does feel like we've just sort of become
Speaker 1: numb to this level of catastrophe.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's and this is where also, by the way,
Speaker 4: having a president who I mean, I continue to think
Speaker 4: of this as a constitutional crisis, A president who don't
Speaker 4: know his level of lucidity at any given moment. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it really does matter, and it really should infuriate people
Speaker 4: that this is who the leader of the United States is.
Speaker 4: When you have people missing all over, you have nearly
Speaker 4: one hundred fatalities already, the president actually does have a
Speaker 4: lot of tools as the executive in situations like this,
Speaker 4: and so I mean, it's just it's just enraging really
Speaker 4: when you think about it through that context. Now, some
Speaker 4: people may remember after Hurricane Sandy, which happened in an election.
Speaker 3: Year, Superstorm Sandy.
Speaker 4: Superstorm Sandy twenty twelve, people have those kind of indelible
Speaker 4: images of Barack Obama and Chris Christie surveying the damage together.
Speaker 5: We can put D three up on the screen.
Speaker 4: There are already conspiracy theories proliferating actually about HARP.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: HARP is reading from the University Alaska Fairbanks website.
Speaker 5: So this is like the exact language that they use
Speaker 5: to describe it.
Speaker 4: It is the High Frequency Active Oral Auroral Research Program,
Speaker 4: and they describe it as a scientific endeavor aimed at
Speaker 4: studying the properties and behaviors of the ion sphere. If
Speaker 4: you follow sort of the conspiracy world, you've definitely heard
Speaker 4: of HEART before.
Speaker 3: Had you heard of heart before?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, because it comes off.
Speaker 4: It comes up in situations like this, And so D
Speaker 4: three is on your screen.
Speaker 5: They are using HARP.
Speaker 4: This Twitter user says to ensure that Hurricane Helene devastates
Speaker 4: the largest Republican stronghold area in Florida. This hurricane will
Speaker 4: destroy holmes, displace thousands, and ensure much less participation in
Speaker 4: the presidential election in November.
Speaker 5: They will stop at nothing. So the theory there is
Speaker 5: that harp.
Speaker 4: Was being used to actually create this entire hurricane a
Speaker 4: natural disaster, to affect the vote essentially in the presidential election.
Speaker 4: That was a theory that circulated when Sandy hit before
Speaker 4: the twenty twelve elections. So this isn't entirely new, but
Speaker 4: it's there's some like people we can put we have
Speaker 4: a mashup that we can put up here. There are
Speaker 4: some people, Crystal, your favorite Twitter user actually with that.
Speaker 1: Turn yeahbody everybody's favorite ties or anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, something is off about the reporting of this hurricane,
Speaker 4: he posted. And then I mean the fact that it
Speaker 4: just popped up on the radar out of nowhere. Another
Speaker 4: person replied, I think it's weird. It hasn't been hyped
Speaker 4: up for days in advance like storms in the past,
Speaker 4: no water wall coverage, and all of a sudden it's
Speaker 4: here and it's serious. F so, and then the other meme,
Speaker 4: I don't mean to harp on it, but I don't
Speaker 4: trust the government. And I think the other thing about
Speaker 4: that meme, to your point, Crystal, is that harp is
Speaker 4: really familiar in some of these conservative circles to the
Speaker 4: point where you can slap it on a meme. I
Speaker 4: shouldn't say conservatives these conspiracy circles because it tends to
Speaker 4: be it can be like fringe left and fringe right
Speaker 4: because it is like a very advanced and kind of
Speaker 4: like science fiction program. But we have a lot of
Speaker 4: things that are like straight out of science fiction in
Speaker 4: this world these days. So that's already happening. And what's
Speaker 4: interesting is I think the media question is interesting.
Speaker 5: The media not spotlighting.
Speaker 4: This to the degree that it should be seems like
Speaker 4: it's fomenting some people to be like, wait, this is
Speaker 4: this is so weird. And actually the story is that
Speaker 4: journalists just don't know people in Appalachia. I just don't
Speaker 4: know people in North Carolina and Kentucky, and I don't
Speaker 4: understand probably how severe it is if they're producers in
Speaker 4: New York City. I mean, I think that's probably the
Speaker 4: best explanation for what it is.
Speaker 1: I think that's definitely a part of it. There's no
Speaker 1: doubt if this happened in New York City, the coverage
Speaker 1: would be different like Sandy, by the way, like Sandy,
Speaker 1: and but in addition, because like Florida, for example, right now,
Speaker 1: like their property insurance with their homeowners insurance market is
Speaker 1: just basically completely collapse and fallen apart because of the
Speaker 1: number of billion dollar plus extreme weather events that happen now.
Speaker 1: So it's also a frequency issue where it's like another hurricane,
Speaker 1: big deal, we get those all the time out you know,
Speaker 1: another like devastating only once in a hundred years thing
Speaker 1: that happens now every year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's important, we'll cover it a little bit.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, it loses the shock value when
Speaker 1: it happens over and over and over again. So I
Speaker 1: think it's those two things combined. I mean, I want
Speaker 1: to I don't want to harp on the like conspiracy.
Speaker 5: I don't want to.
Speaker 2: Do that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to harp on the conspiracy instinct. But
Speaker 1: there is something that I've been thinking about a lot
Speaker 1: here which is not as you point out, Emily, this
Speaker 1: is not a new instinct in American politics, right. The
Speaker 1: paranoid style is that I've been reading. I'm reading it
Speaker 1: because I've been thinking a lot about this is not
Speaker 1: a new instinct in American politics. I didn't even know
Speaker 1: about the Superstar and Sandy conspiracies that this was like
Speaker 1: a Democrat generated hurricane. To what convinced Chris Christie to
Speaker 1: hug Obama in the final stretch and hand the election
Speaker 1: to I didn't even know about that one. But it
Speaker 1: was interesting to watch this conspiracy develop too, because initially
Speaker 1: when it was first hitting, there are cat turt and
Speaker 1: others were sort of insinuating like, oh, this isn't even real,
Speaker 1: like I live in Florida and it was like barely
Speaker 1: anything happening. And then once it was clear that this
Speaker 1: was a horrible, devastating situation, then it shifted to oh, well,
Speaker 1: it must have been like a Soros funded Democrat hurricane,
Speaker 1: because look how it's hurting these Republican areas. But also Asheville,
Speaker 1: North Carolina is like the most liberal hippie it's so
Speaker 1: it's like the crunchiest place in all of North Carolina.
Speaker 1: So even on the merits of your own deranged conspiracy,
Speaker 1: the whole thing falls apart.
Speaker 3: But you know, there's something that happened.
Speaker 1: Like I said, this isn't new, but it does seem
Speaker 1: like there's a new level and a new acceptance of
Speaker 1: just any event that happens. It can't just be what
Speaker 1: it is on its face, like for example, it's hurricane season.
Speaker 1: News flash, like we get hurricanes during hurricane season number one,
Speaker 1: number two, because the water temperatures are warmer, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, you would expect the hurricanes to be more severe.
Speaker 1: In fact, in a lot of ways, we've kind of
Speaker 1: gotten lucky this hurricane season that there haven't been more
Speaker 1: and more frequent and more devastating storms that we've had
Speaker 1: to contend with. Everything has to be somehow, something that
Speaker 1: the mainstream media is not telling you, some under the
Speaker 1: radar thing, some nefarious shadowy or very specific Soros Democrats,
Speaker 1: et cetera, wrongdoer. And and I do think that it
Speaker 1: escalated posts and Emily, I want to know your thoughts
Speaker 1: on this, because you knew about HARP and I didn't,
Speaker 1: so you're clearly more read in on these circles than
Speaker 1: I am. But what I've been thinking is that after Stop,
Speaker 1: this deal was really, you know, became normalized in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, and in spite of the fact that there
Speaker 1: was zero evidence that there was actual like election manipulation.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about changing votes or hiding votes or bringing
Speaker 1: in votes or whatever. I'm not talking about you know,
Speaker 1: social media companies doing a thing or Pennsylvania change in
Speaker 1: their laws. I'm talking about like out and out vote rigging.
Speaker 1: There was no evidence for that, and yet you have
Speaker 1: a majority of Republicans who are convinced by Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who holds enormous way with majority of the Republican base,
Speaker 1: to go along with that, and you have you know,
Speaker 1: whatever influencers were willing, like Cattered or whoever, to also
Speaker 1: go along with that. They became the new trusted arbiters.
Speaker 1: And so now there's no requirement of any sort of evidence.
Speaker 1: And now whatever those people say, if they could just
Speaker 1: add to it, like oh, the mainstream media doesn't want
Speaker 1: you to know, it becomes credibly believed by a really
Speaker 1: large number of people. So it's not this, you know,
Speaker 1: in a sense, I think it is a fringe, but
Speaker 1: it's also not a like minuscule number of individuals who
Speaker 1: are buying into things like, oh, the Democrats made a
Speaker 1: hurricane to help hurt people in red parts of Florida.
Speaker 5: Back in twenty twelve.
Speaker 4: One of the websites that was spreading the harp stuff
Speaker 4: about Sandy was info Worth and Alex Jones is now
Speaker 4: on tour with Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 3: I think Tucker was at the R and c rights, right.
Speaker 4: And so I mean, I think there's something to that.
Speaker 4: There's kind of a mainstreaming and part of it is
Speaker 4: because you know, there have been so many problems with
Speaker 4: media coverage. So I understand it, and I think Alex
Speaker 4: Shens is legitimately in Tucker interesting figures. But when you're
Speaker 4: at that level and you're Donald Trump, for example, and
Speaker 4: you're going into these places as a kind of cope
Speaker 4: for losing an election, or he was even saying it.
Speaker 4: HBO has a pretty good documentary out right now. I
Speaker 4: think it's called Stop the Steal. And when you look
Speaker 4: back on how Trump was talking about the election before
Speaker 4: the election even happened, at one point he said, the
Speaker 4: only way that we'll lose is if it's rigged. When
Speaker 4: you have the president of the United States saying that,
Speaker 4: it obviously gives weight and it's obviously something that gives
Speaker 4: people sort of permission.
Speaker 5: And reason to believe.
Speaker 4: If you're not somebody that's like, you're not working professionally
Speaker 4: in politics, you have a job. You don't have to, like,
Speaker 4: you can't follow politics obsessively the people who work.
Speaker 5: In the media do.
Speaker 4: When the president of the United States says something, it
Speaker 4: means something.
Speaker 5: It means that to you, it signals there must be
Speaker 5: something more to this the president is saying it.
Speaker 4: So it's easy to see why people have taken some
Speaker 4: of this stuff much more seriously. I think part of
Speaker 4: it is that we're unlike most of the country on Twitter,
Speaker 4: so we see a little bit more of it in
Speaker 4: the musk era at the same.
Speaker 3: Time, and on Facebook lately. Girl, No, I haven't.
Speaker 4: But the thing I'm gonna say is that when things
Speaker 4: seem inexplicable, like the host of Celebrity Apprentice becoming the
Speaker 4: President of the United States, yea, we turned to like scapegoats.
Speaker 4: We turned to these more conspiratorial explanations, or some people do.
Speaker 4: And that's where I think the Russia stuff came out of.
Speaker 4: Was there has to be a way to explain this
Speaker 4: because it doesn't make sense otherwise.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you have, and we'll table this for now,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure that the topic will come back to again.
Speaker 1: But you have some really genuine jarring elite institutional failures,
Speaker 1: right and lies, rock war financial collapse being the two
Speaker 1: most obvious, but I'm sure we could point to many
Speaker 1: more as well.
Speaker 3: And then you layer on top of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something inexplicable, like you know, a reality TV show
Speaker 1: star riding the top. Democrats like this breaks their brain.
Speaker 1: They can't wrap their head. It's got to be Russia.
Speaker 1: It's got to be something going on. And then because
Speaker 1: you have this break in any sort of institutional trust,
Speaker 1: it just opens up a vacuum for whoever's going to
Speaker 1: fill that in and be the one who's like, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you the truth. And Donald Trump
Speaker 1: like there is more affinity. I mean, it is a
Speaker 1: cult of personality around Donald Trump at this point, right,
Speaker 1: and for.
Speaker 4: About thirty percent of the Republican electorate, which is significant,
Speaker 4: like yeah, extremely significant.
Speaker 1: Yes, And whatever he says like evidence free evidence will
Speaker 1: like whether it has backing or not, like that's gospel.
Speaker 1: And then if, like I said, if you have these
Speaker 1: influencers surrounding him that are backing up everything that he says,
Speaker 1: they become also these like trusted ambassadors, and then whatever
Speaker 1: they say also goes. And then you have the algorithmic
Speaker 1: and monetary incentives, which are all in the direction of
Speaker 1: like you know, pushing the Soros harp dumkrat hurricane machine thing. Sure,
Speaker 1: you're going to get a lot of clicks and a
Speaker 1: lot of views if you're willing to float that, yep,
Speaker 1: and like put on some video that purports to show
Speaker 1: some sort of evidence in that direction. And so then
Speaker 1: you know, capitalism takes hold in the people's bottom line
Speaker 1: and their desire for attention and influence and whatever takes
Speaker 1: over and.
Speaker 3: There you go. That's what that's how you get where
Speaker 3: we are now.
Speaker 5: One hundred percent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been a wild I mean when we were
Speaker 4: even talking about Hofstadt or that was a book written
Speaker 4: in the mid nineteen fifties.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we sort of think of that.
Speaker 4: Some people think of that as like the archetypical like
Speaker 4: American dream period, but we think of it as at
Speaker 4: least like sort of old. But technology was crazy, like
Speaker 4: advancing at a crazy clip in the nineteen fifties, Like
Speaker 4: that was really unnerving to people. An atomic weapon had
Speaker 4: just been developed and then dropped in the span of
Speaker 4: like what twenty years, That had all transpired really quickly.
Speaker 4: So technology really unsettles people, and especially in the United States,
Speaker 4: like it just feels puts us through the wringer, and
Speaker 4: we look to new places for explanations because so much
Speaker 4: of it we are living in very odd times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's true. And then yeah, the social
Speaker 1: media part of this and the sort of the AI
Speaker 1: fueled part of this, like that definitely plays into it
Speaker 1: as well. I'm sure there are many other things we
Speaker 1: could say about it, but in any case, we have
Speaker 1: a really important guest standing by that we wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure to get into the show today. Mama Dutel
Speaker 1: is facing expulsion from Cornell, which would lead to his
Speaker 1: loss of his foreign student visa, which means he's likely
Speaker 1: to get deported all over his pro Palestign activism. We
Speaker 1: wanted to hear his side of the story. As you know,
Speaker 1: this is all this is all unfolding very quickly and
Speaker 1: very imminently, so let's go on and get to that.
Speaker 3: So we've been.
Speaker 1: Tracking here closely the censorship movement across college campuses, especially
Speaker 1: with regard to pro Palestinian activism, and today we're really
Speaker 1: fortunate to be joined by a student who is facing
Speaker 1: expulsion not only from Cornell University but ultimately from the country,
Speaker 1: because if he is expelled, he will be he will
Speaker 1: lose his student Lisa, and will ultimately be deported. Mamadou
Speaker 1: Teal is a graduate student at Cornell University and joins us.
Speaker 3: Now, great to see you, so nice to meet you.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me, good morning.
Speaker 1: Yes, of course we can put this Rolling Stone article
Speaker 1: up on the screen that explains some of what happened here.
Speaker 1: The headline Cornell grad student who attended pro Palestine protest
Speaker 1: could be forced to leave you As you told Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone that they want to make an example out of you,
Speaker 1: you feel that you were singled out for disciplinary action.
Speaker 3: Could you just tell us a little bit about how
Speaker 3: this all started?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean where do I begin?
Speaker 12: I mean, fundamentally, since last year October, we've had a
Speaker 12: sustained campaign on campus which is calling for a divestment,
Speaker 12: which is showing solidarity what's happening in Palestine at the moment,
Speaker 12: in Gaza specifically, and then the most recent iteration of
Speaker 12: this kind of I believe targeting because I become a
Speaker 12: visible person and normally key speech that there rallies, and
Speaker 12: I think people have come to associate a lot of
Speaker 12: what was happening on campus with me as an individual,
Speaker 12: even though it's a movement of more than one hundred
Speaker 12: and fifty two hundred three hundred students right who I
Speaker 12: regularly attend the protest. This most recent iteration. We had
Speaker 12: a rally last week outside of administrative building, after which
Speaker 12: the crowd went into the hotel, which is nearby to
Speaker 12: where the rally was. I spoke at the rally and
Speaker 12: I followed the crowd. The crowd went inside the hotel
Speaker 12: wherein there was a recruitment fair in which there was
Speaker 12: two weapons manufacturers present, Boeing and L three Harris. We
Speaker 12: went inside after brief encounter of the police. From my perspective,
Speaker 12: looked like the police just let the people in. I
Speaker 12: went inside and then I was inside about five minutes
Speaker 12: and then I left. When I had left, I had
Speaker 12: bumped into the Chief of Police, and he has had
Speaker 12: it out for me, my opinion, since the last semester
Speaker 12: because of the encampment stuff.
Speaker 6: Then he kind he made a funny noise at me.
Speaker 6: He walked past me.
Speaker 12: Next day, I sees an email from him that I
Speaker 12: had been referred to the Student Code of Conduct. After that,
Speaker 12: the Monday, last Monday twenty third, I've seen an email
Speaker 12: I've been temporarily suspended. I was called into a meeting
Speaker 12: and in the meeting I was told that okay, I've
Speaker 12: been temporarily suspended and I.
Speaker 6: Should contact the senior immigration officer.
Speaker 12: And then I was informed that I will have no
Speaker 12: grace period and I have to leave the country promptly
Speaker 12: if the suspension is upheld.
Speaker 6: And oh no, at that point, dispension was I was
Speaker 6: in place.
Speaker 12: And I think due to the pressure, due to the petition,
Speaker 12: due to the support, is you know, I'm going for
Speaker 12: an APO process now, which was not offered to me before.
Speaker 4: Okay, So that's one interesting question here is the student
Speaker 4: code of conduct.
Speaker 5: So tell us what.
Speaker 4: You're alleged to have violated in the student code of conduct.
Speaker 4: And then I think a great question for that actually
Speaker 4: would be with do you disagree with the student code
Speaker 4: of conduct, because that's a real problem at some schools.
Speaker 4: Their student codes of conduct are actually overly restrictive of expressions.
Speaker 4: So tell us your perspective on that.
Speaker 6: In this case, absolutely so.
Speaker 12: The official narrative the school saying, and the school said
Speaker 12: that people pushed past the police, people saying and the
Speaker 12: police are saying that, you know, people were scared and intimidated. Again,
Speaker 12: a lot of racialized language. Right, I didn't push you
Speaker 12: past any police officer. I can say that categorically, and
Speaker 12: I was inside for about five minutes. So what my
Speaker 12: charge seat says, you were a part of a crowd
Speaker 12: that pushed past the police, or you will let you
Speaker 12: let or you repeated chance inside the hotel, and I've
Speaker 12: just said to okay, if anything, let me see the evidence.
Speaker 12: And I've had no chance to the evidence. There's been
Speaker 12: no investigation, there's nothing afforded to me. All I've been
Speaker 12: told is that my behavior is such a danger to
Speaker 12: campus that I can't be on campus, which again I
Speaker 12: don't understand that, because I mean, my ie teacher, I
Speaker 12: used to teach a class last week, and my kids
Speaker 12: can testify, my students testify what kind of environment I
Speaker 12: created the class. And I've even heard from law professors
Speaker 12: who don't want to be who don't want to be named.
Speaker 12: I've said that when we created a student card of conduct,
Speaker 12: a temporary suspension was in place for the most egregious acts,
Speaker 12: for example, not for people just protesting on XIS in
Speaker 12: the first Amendment?
Speaker 1: Right, were there other students who were part of this
Speaker 1: protest who finished, who are facing similar but disciplinary action.
Speaker 12: So there was about one hundred and fifty students present,
Speaker 12: as far as I'm aware, for a whole week. I
Speaker 12: was the only one that was in trouble, and now
Speaker 12: I've heard I think there's three others now who have
Speaker 12: received the non academic suspension, which is again the first
Speaker 12: and foremost the American citizens. And second of all, it
Speaker 12: doesn't mean it doesn't have no implication from other other
Speaker 12: than than able to be on campus.
Speaker 6: But they can intend to all their classes still.
Speaker 4: So I want to ask about something that this writer,
Speaker 4: Steve McGuire posted on x He was talking about you,
Speaker 4: and he said, this guy.
Speaker 5: Is one of the lead protesters at Cornell.
Speaker 4: When the student government denied his group's divestment resolution, he
Speaker 4: and others vowed to repeatedly disrupt the campus, which they did.
Speaker 4: He was suspended last year too. Looks like Cornell might
Speaker 4: be done messing around. That's what McGuire posted. Can you
Speaker 4: respond to the allegation that you were vowing to repeatedly
Speaker 4: disrupt the campus and then again in that context of
Speaker 4: the student Code conduct conversation, should you be allowed to
Speaker 4: be disruptive in protest when you feel it's appropriate.
Speaker 12: I think it's very hypocritical of people like Steve McGuire
Speaker 12: and also the school itself.
Speaker 6: I'm in Africana Studies.
Speaker 12: Africana Studies was the first African and studies established in
Speaker 12: the United States of America. In nineteen sixty nine, students
Speaker 12: took arms. It was an armed takeover black by black
Speaker 12: students to demand the university to allow an Africana Studies
Speaker 12: center at Cornell, after which after that was established Cornell
Speaker 12: year in and year out, like the good old liberals
Speaker 12: always do, add nauseum, talk about the celebration of student
Speaker 12: protests on campus. They talk about, oh, how big the
Speaker 12: Vietnam protest was. They talk about how big anti impartheid
Speaker 12: movement was on Cornell's campus. They celebrate this every year
Speaker 12: because they can do that retroactively. When students exercise the
Speaker 12: same thing for something one of the biggest, one of
Speaker 12: the biggest issues in the world today, they are met
Speaker 12: with sorts of repression. But again I understand because this
Speaker 12: issue of Palestine, I keep saying to people, you cannot
Speaker 12: divorce this from Palestine. Palestine is why is the reason
Speaker 12: why we're receiving such oppressive tactics against us. So again,
Speaker 12: a protest is supposed to be disruptive, and.
Speaker 6: I understand that. Okay, people can balance the needs of
Speaker 6: other students.
Speaker 12: But again, there's been no violent behavior, there's been no
Speaker 12: threatening behavior. For maybe at most you're going to have
Speaker 12: a thirty minute inconvenience.
Speaker 1: Mama, Dear, what happens now? What does the time let
Speaker 1: line look like for you? And are they giving you
Speaker 1: any chance to at this point appeal this decision?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I have one more shot and appeal, which I
Speaker 12: filed last Friday, and I was emailed back by the
Speaker 12: provost who told me he's committed to an independent review.
Speaker 12: And he said that the student Code of Conduct doesn't
Speaker 12: give him any guidance as to or it gives him
Speaker 12: limited guidance when in regards to temporary suspensions and reviewing them.
Speaker 12: He told me he'll get back to me next week.
Speaker 12: So I'm just waiting at the moment. And just to add,
Speaker 12: Cornell signed a memorandum of agreement with our union, our
Speaker 12: Grads Worker Union and the union, and Cornell has a
Speaker 12: legally binding document that says any effects of discipline must
Speaker 12: go through bargain bargaining. And Cornell is not honoring that
Speaker 12: legally binding document right now, and it haste to get
Speaker 12: rid of me.
Speaker 3: That's a very important point.
Speaker 4: And let me just ask, like what a lot of
Speaker 4: detractors on the ride or in the sort of Zionist
Speaker 4: movement would say is if you you know, if you
Speaker 4: hate America in the West so much, then why do
Speaker 4: you want to be a student at Cornell. So I
Speaker 4: was curious how you would respond to that, Mamadu, like,
Speaker 4: what is your Why is it important for you to
Speaker 4: be to be at Cornell and to have your voice heard?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 12: I think I think regardless of my political views, again,
Speaker 12: I haven't been threatened and I haven't threatened them nobody.
Speaker 12: I should have a right to be here. I'm studying.
Speaker 12: I made my way to Cornelly by my work in
Speaker 12: my third year, plus my my CE exams for my
Speaker 12: PhD last just two weeks ago. So again, I'm an
Speaker 12: educational institution in which I have a right to be here.
Speaker 12: I worked my way to get here. If people are saying,
Speaker 12: because of your political views, you should not be in
Speaker 12: a certain place, and I think that's a very slippery
Speaker 12: slope for not just people with my views, but people
Speaker 12: with many other views.
Speaker 1: What can people do if they want to support you?
Speaker 1: And also also, do you have any regrets you know
Speaker 1: if you ultimately are supported back to or self support.
Speaker 1: I guess back to the UK, do you have any
Speaker 1: regrets about your activism? Would you do anything differently?
Speaker 12: I think people can help me by writing into the
Speaker 12: school to the provost. I know there's a petition still
Speaker 12: going around which I believe you're posting the link description.
Speaker 12: And as for regrets, then no, I think whatever happens
Speaker 12: to me, I think it's an unfortunate experience. It will
Speaker 12: mean significant harm and damage to my own life. But
Speaker 12: I also think to myself, there's nothing in comparison to
Speaker 12: what Palestinians are going through, and I can never imagine
Speaker 12: myself if I do have the fortunate experience to reach
Speaker 12: my old age, I will never imagine thinking to myself,
Speaker 12: oh I did too much for because this is just
Speaker 12: I mean, I haven't I think anyone of good moral
Speaker 12: conscience cannot see the daily images of what's happening in
Speaker 12: Palistine and not being moved, So I can never think
Speaker 12: a day will come and I say to myself, oh
Speaker 12: I think I went too hot for Palistine book.
Speaker 6: I don't regret it.
Speaker 1: Mama du Tal, thank you so much for explaining your
Speaker 1: story to reviewers this morning, and as you said, we're
Speaker 1: going to have the petition linked in the descriptions of
Speaker 1: people want to support you their hot opportunity.
Speaker 3: Thank you again, Thank you so much. It's a pleasure
Speaker 3: our own.
Speaker 1: Emily Tishinski was a guest on Ezra Klein's podcast, which
Speaker 1: I've been listening to his show a lot recently. In
Speaker 1: part I gave him a lot of credit for like
Speaker 1: being early to the hey Democrats, like you really need
Speaker 1: to move on from Joe Biden. Like you get a
Speaker 1: lot of cred in my book if you're in a
Speaker 1: mainstream space and you have that, And you get even
Speaker 1: more credit if you're willing to have Emily on. So
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about, you know, what you
Speaker 1: were booked to talk about, what your experience.
Speaker 4: Was like, Yeah, you know, I actually met producer at
Speaker 4: the National Conservatism Conference where I was talking back in
Speaker 4: June about online pornography. Oddly enough, it just started like
Speaker 4: how as one does, as one does. It was it's
Speaker 4: kind of like the conversation we were just having about conspiracy
Speaker 4: theories a couple of blocks ago, because it just it's
Speaker 4: come about really quickly and sort of a younger perspective
Speaker 4: and how that changed people's lives, modernity and all of
Speaker 4: that stuff, So as I wanted to talk about that
Speaker 4: kind of in the context of realignment stuff, so sort
Speaker 4: of where this new right national conservatism movement is to
Speaker 4: some extent rooted in discomfort with modernity and how it's
Speaker 4: actually like working, like how it's manifesting, how it plausible
Speaker 4: it is as a political movement, and how the sort
Speaker 4: of Trump of it all affects the future of the right.
Speaker 4: So we had a really interesting conversation, and honestly, I
Speaker 4: was a little unsure because not everybody is Crystal and Ryan,
Speaker 4: you know, like not everybody is you know, and you know,
Speaker 4: I remember on Kyle Crystaline Friendsly, we had a great
Speaker 4: conversation and not it's always you.
Speaker 5: Never know what you're going to get.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, but as.
Speaker 5: There's been like he's a good faith he operates in
Speaker 5: good faith.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he pushed you in a number of areas, absolutely.
Speaker 1: But it led to that, you know, that led to
Speaker 1: a really interesting exchange. There was one portion we wanted
Speaker 1: to play for you guys where he asked about Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five and like, okay, obviously Trump doesn't want
Speaker 1: to talk about this and wants to distance himself from this,
Speaker 1: but our liberals really wrong to feel like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is the plan that's laying around in the sort of
Speaker 1: like you know.
Speaker 3: Conservative Washington d date. So isn't this very aren't they?
Speaker 1: Isn't it reasonable to say this is probably a lot
Speaker 1: of what is actually going to happen?
Speaker 3: And in Trump administration, Let's take a listen at what
Speaker 3: Emily had to say.
Speaker 13: So let's ground this a little bit in Donald Trump. So,
Speaker 13: if he wins in twenty twenty four, which seems very possible,
Speaker 13: he's got to govern with some kind of coalition. And
Speaker 13: I think one of the problems he's had this year
Speaker 13: is that sort of Project twenty twenty five stepped in
Speaker 13: to try to describe what that would look like for him,
Speaker 13: and he's I think whish is they had not. But
Speaker 13: he's not identified an alternative way he would govern if
Speaker 13: it's not going to be these groups who are vetting
Speaker 13: all these people to work with him, and all these
Speaker 13: people who already did work with him, Like, who's it
Speaker 13: going to be? So when you think about a next
Speaker 13: Trump administration and when you report on it, how do
Speaker 13: you think it would differ in its coalition or its
Speaker 13: priorities than the first Trump administration.
Speaker 4: The genesis of Project twenty twenty five. And you've probably
Speaker 4: picked up on this, Azra, but even just talking to
Speaker 4: people who were involved in it journalistically, you hear them
Speaker 4: and it was this idea that Donald Trump just he's
Speaker 4: not a man of the conservative movement. He doesn't come
Speaker 4: in with the infrastructure. That was part of the reason
Speaker 4: that conservatives pushed him to pick Mike Pence. Because Mike
Speaker 4: Pence as VP knew all of the heads of the
Speaker 4: conservative movement groups, where you would tap personnel and staff from,
Speaker 4: where you would tap the white papers from. He kind
Speaker 4: of knew where to look to get people and policies.
Speaker 4: And because Trump's orbit hadn't become, you know, substantially more
Speaker 4: cohesive or policy centric, people really started to say, all right,
Speaker 4: we need something like a Project twenty twenty five. This
Speaker 4: ultimately became Project twenty twenty five because this isn't organized,
Speaker 4: and that's why a Project twenty twenty five and Heritage
Speaker 4: also have something called I think it's called like the
Speaker 4: one hundred Day Agenda that hasn't been made public yet.
Speaker 4: It's internal I've never seen it, but it's the executive
Speaker 4: orders that should be.
Speaker 5: Ready to go on day one.
Speaker 4: It was this idea that there's nothing like we're having
Speaker 4: all of these debates, but we're not putting any of
Speaker 4: it into sort of a hard agenda. A lot of
Speaker 4: Project twenty twenty five, this is something that hasn't been reported,
Speaker 4: but a lot of it is like debates internally. There's
Speaker 4: there's one policy that's outlined about a child tax credit,
Speaker 4: and then another policy that's outlined about.
Speaker 5: A child tax credit.
Speaker 4: Heels that none of this is even being facilitated, and
Speaker 4: that because Project twenty twenty five has become such a
Speaker 4: lightning rod, the ball has not moved further down the
Speaker 4: field on that question. The Trump campaign sort of haphazardly
Speaker 4: tried to put out its own agenda. Trump still is Trump, though,
Speaker 4: and goes back and forth. And this is probably the
Speaker 4: central problem of the new Right that we keep coming
Speaker 4: back to time and again, is that he doesn't have
Speaker 4: a cohesive ideology, and in a way, he's more similar
Speaker 4: to a lot of average Americans.
Speaker 1: Ezra floated an idea I think after this in the
Speaker 1: podcast that I hadn't contemplated before. The assumption in liberal
Speaker 1: circles is like Trump is going to be worse this
Speaker 1: time because he's going to have a shit together basically,
Speaker 1: and so like all the craziest stuff that he wanted
Speaker 1: to do last time, but he couldn't really get his
Speaker 1: act together to do this time. They got their ducks
Speaker 1: in a row, They've got their loyalists. They're going to
Speaker 1: you know, fire the deep state.
Speaker 3: They're going to install the Trump loyalists.
Speaker 1: And if there was to be a January sixthtal event
Speaker 1: this time around, they would have the you know, the
Speaker 1: people at the State Department and wherever to actually seize
Speaker 1: the ballot boxes, et.
Speaker 3: Cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And he says, you know, but there is an alternative possibility,
Speaker 1: which is that he's actually more chaotic and less competent
Speaker 1: because now you have all of these different factions that
Speaker 1: have developed that are fighting for control of what the
Speaker 1: Trump agenda is going to be. And I was curious
Speaker 1: if you could elaborate more on your.
Speaker 3: Thoughts on that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I don't want to rule out either possibility,
Speaker 4: but I also think, and we talked about this a
Speaker 4: little bit, there are not enough people in the world,
Speaker 4: let alone sort of professional Republican political spaces, to staff
Speaker 4: an agenda like what a sort of extreme Trump agenda
Speaker 4: would look like or I should even say like an
Speaker 4: extreme conservative agenda.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because you need to fill the.
Speaker 4: So called like deep state spaces. Not only do you
Speaker 4: need to like fire everybody that's in them now, you
Speaker 4: then need to bring new people in to at least
Speaker 4: staff some of them. And the Trump administration we saw
Speaker 4: last time, this was part of Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 4: to two, they would they just had a really hard
Speaker 4: time a getting certain things past the bureaucracy, which as
Speaker 4: a conservative I look at and I'm like, that tells
Speaker 4: you the president is not ultimately in charge. Like that's
Speaker 4: a legitimate problem, and you've seen it even play out.
Speaker 4: Ryan and I have talked about this before in ways
Speaker 4: that really are shocking.
Speaker 5: From the left.
Speaker 4: If you have a left policy that the EPA doesn't
Speaker 4: want to actually fulfilled because you have a bunch of
Speaker 4: careers who have been there and have been through the
Speaker 4: revolving door with special interests in all of that stuff,
Speaker 4: I think that's a legitimate problem. But that aside, if
Speaker 4: you can't at least replace some of those people, you
Speaker 4: can't really do much because you're just going to be hampered.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, at the executive level. That's a
Speaker 4: huge question because Donald Trump learned a big lesson from
Speaker 4: his side with Mike Pence, and he thinks that Jade
Speaker 4: Vance will not be a Mike Pence if we have
Speaker 4: another January sixth, and that was part of creating these
Speaker 4: new loyalty litmus tests. And I just don't I don't
Speaker 4: know that we have the answer to that question, actually,
Speaker 4: because politicians are ultimately self interested creatures, and if Jade
Speaker 4: Vance is sort of reading the tea leaves on a
Speaker 4: potential January sixth, I don't know. I think you have
Speaker 4: to stress test. And on the other hand, though at
Speaker 4: the executive level, Donald Trump will not make the mistake,
Speaker 4: as he sees it, of putting more Mike Pences around him.
Speaker 4: But there aren't that many people in professional Republican spaces
Speaker 4: that are hardcore MAGA and they might they might be publicly,
Speaker 4: but privately they don't want to be roped into those
Speaker 4: situations because they still don't know what happens after.
Speaker 1: Trump, right, which sort of illuminates the fact that there
Speaker 1: are two types of true believers. Mike Pence was a
Speaker 1: true believer in a certain way, but not a true believer.
Speaker 1: And when it came down to it, right, So he
Speaker 1: was a true believer and I mean all the policies, like,
Speaker 1: he was on board. He was the one in the
Speaker 1: meeting when they said, tell us something great about Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: He's the first thing is that mostly is the best president,
Speaker 3: so amazing hard.
Speaker 4: You know, he hung in there with him on the
Speaker 4: election stuff, that's right, until he wouldn't certain he wouldn't
Speaker 4: do the like he wouldn't do the Claremont and State
Speaker 4: John Eastman plan.
Speaker 5: But he hung in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, until j he was willing to give credence to like,
Speaker 1: oh maybe these lawsuits, you know, maybe this was rigged
Speaker 1: and so so I mean he but he got to
Speaker 1: his breaking point. So in Trump's view, he ends up
Speaker 1: not being a true believer. He's hoping JD vance. Like
Speaker 1: I think the critical threshold for JD isn't about his
Speaker 1: policy views, of which Trump seems relatively uninterested. It's his
Speaker 1: belief that when it came down to January sixth, he
Speaker 1: would do what Mike Pence was unwilling to do.
Speaker 3: So there's two types of true believers.
Speaker 1: There's like the people who would be like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: believe in a ten percent tariff across the board, and
Speaker 1: I'm willing to make waves and piss people off and like,
Speaker 1: you know, use my agency's powers to effectuate that outcome.
Speaker 3: And that's one type of true believer.
Speaker 1: And then there's the type of true believer that will say, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: I will throw the country into a constitutional crisis based
Speaker 1: on literally nothing and you know, be okay with this
Speaker 1: violence at the.
Speaker 3: Capitol and whatever.
Speaker 1: And I think it's harder to vet for that second
Speaker 1: type totally a true believer, because I think he probably
Speaker 1: believed that Mike Pence was that second type.
Speaker 3: Of true believer right up until that day.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was reportedly pressuring him all the way
Speaker 1: up and still thinking he said, I think at his
Speaker 1: you know, infamous speech like well, let's hope Mike Pence
Speaker 1: does the right thing.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 1: So he still thought up until that moment that Mike
Speaker 1: Pence potentially was that type of just you know, throw
Speaker 1: out the constitution and do whatever I tell you to
Speaker 1: true believer.
Speaker 5: And what's interesting about JD.
Speaker 4: Vance And this is the conversation you guys have talked
Speaker 4: to him, so you've picked up on this, I'm sure,
Speaker 4: but he is like a sincere postliberal. I think one
Speaker 4: of the mistakes the left makes about jd Vance has
Speaker 4: said that he's just pro Trump for opportunistic purposes, but
Speaker 4: he really when he converted to Catholicism. He has like
Speaker 4: a multi thousand word essay on this in the Catholic
Speaker 4: publication of the Lamp. It's very fully fleshed out sincere
Speaker 4: postliberal worldview, and what postliberal in that context means is
Speaker 4: that sometimes you sort of this is a simplification, of course,
Speaker 4: but yeah, sometimes the Constitution has limits, right, sometimes there
Speaker 4: are sort of illiberal ends that are just, And so
Speaker 4: that is sincerely how belief that Janey Vance has now
Speaker 4: how that pertains to the Constitution in any sort of
Speaker 4: different context is an open question, but it does tell
Speaker 4: you that he comes from the sort of Patrick denin orbit,
Speaker 4: where the Constitution isn't the sort of sacred almost like
Speaker 4: holy text that a lot of the conservative movement thought
Speaker 4: that it was, that there are these arguments that can
Speaker 4: be made that it can sort of be stretched in
Speaker 4: emergency circumstances, et cetera. So that could mean there's a
Speaker 4: difference on January sixth between Mike Pencer jd Vance, but
Speaker 4: it also couldn't.
Speaker 5: So it's like fascinating question.
Speaker 1: I the way you articulated it, I think is not
Speaker 1: particularly different from how I view jd.
Speaker 3: Vance.
Speaker 1: I think his embrace of Trump is in that, like
Speaker 1: it's very convenient for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah that at the moment when he wants.
Speaker 1: To run for senator and has national political ambitions, suddenly he's,
Speaker 1: you know, a big Trump fan. I think that's opportunistic
Speaker 1: because of he does believe you put this more diplomatically,
Speaker 1: but in some sense he believes, like the ends justify
Speaker 1: the means, and if the means are posing up to
Speaker 1: this guy that I once said might be America's Hitler,
Speaker 1: then I'll do it. If the means are like, you know,
Speaker 1: lying about Patians eating pets in the town that I represent,
Speaker 1: I'll do that. If the means are potentially like, you know,
Speaker 1: doing what Mike Pence wouldn't do on January sixth, if
Speaker 1: it's going to help me accomplish the ends that I
Speaker 1: genuinely believe are better, superior, et cetera, yeah, I'll do
Speaker 1: that too. And so that's so in that sense, I
Speaker 1: believe I think he's a true believer about the ideological
Speaker 1: view that he holds. Do I think it's a true
Speaker 1: believer in all the like, you know how much he
Speaker 1: loves Trump now and thinks Trump's so great, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. No, because it's very was very politically convenient
Speaker 1: the way that that all went down. But do I
Speaker 1: think that he views Trump as the tool, the nearest
Speaker 1: vessel for his own ideological ambitions.
Speaker 3: Yes, I believe that, And.
Speaker 5: That was the critical distinction.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's what happened to a lot
Speaker 4: of people on the right, especially after Michael Anton, who
Speaker 4: was anonymous at the time but wrote the Flight ninety
Speaker 4: three election.
Speaker 3: I think this is October of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was the beginning of this conversion for a
Speaker 4: lot of sort of the intellectual conservative world, who said,
Speaker 4: we are in illiberal times, so we can't use liberalism
Speaker 4: as the tool to return to and this is like
Speaker 4: classical liberalism, so small l we can't use liberal means
Speaker 4: to get back to this like classical liberal utopia that
Speaker 4: we want to return to. We have to sometimes say
Speaker 4: Donald Trump may be illiberal, but Hillary Clinton is more liberal,
Speaker 4: or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris is worse because they
Speaker 4: want to do X, Y and Z, so you have.
Speaker 5: To stick with this person.
Speaker 4: The plane's going down, you have to take the risk.
Speaker 4: And Jadvance is very much in that camp, and there
Speaker 4: are a lot of sort of intellectual conservatives in that
Speaker 4: camp right now.
Speaker 5: But what that doesn't mean.
Speaker 4: Is that they make a very particular decision come another
Speaker 4: January sixth, and that's a stand in for other potential
Speaker 4: constitutional emergencies and that Donald Trump could pursue from an
Speaker 4: executive levels as president. But really there he would he
Speaker 4: on after the twenty twenty election, lacked people around him
Speaker 4: who would go through with what he wanted. I mean
Speaker 4: a lot of people actually ended up quitting have since
Speaker 4: like spilled a lot of dirt on him. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: he was left with Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and whatever
Speaker 4: the other Lynn Woold Mike Lindell and they're just jd
Speaker 4: Vance is not going to go full Sidney Powell. So
Speaker 4: who knows what happens, But it was I think it's
Speaker 4: helpful to kind of talk some of that stuff.
Speaker 5: Out because you just we don't know. There's still just
Speaker 5: so much uncertainty about what happens.
Speaker 1: Would you describe that news strain in thinking, which you
Speaker 1: know is amplified by Anton embraced by Jade Vance, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I mean, would you describe that as anti democratic? Basically, like, listen,
Speaker 1: if we have to like not be a democracy for
Speaker 1: a little while to yeah, accomplish our ends, then that's
Speaker 1: what we're going to do.
Speaker 4: Well. Anton has actually written about how we need a
Speaker 4: red Caesar, like a quote red Caesar, and so yeah,
Speaker 4: absolutely there. And Curtis Yarburn, for example, is basically like
Speaker 4: a monarchist. I don't know where JD probably wouldn't fall
Speaker 4: into that category, but that was the sort of.
Speaker 3: He's somewhere on that spectrum though.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's frustrating because like sometimes like I'll I
Speaker 4: signed the National Conservatism Statement when it came out because
Speaker 4: it was pretty boilerplate conservatism as I saw it. But
Speaker 4: at the same time this I really really really empathize
Speaker 4: with and understand postliberalism and think that it has a
Speaker 4: lot of better points than the sort of old fusionist
Speaker 4: conservative order when it comes to identifying problems. But I
Speaker 4: fundamentally am like not on board with the post liberal
Speaker 4: solutions to the problems of contemporary liberalism.
Speaker 5: And that's what's sort of frustrating sometimes.
Speaker 4: Because you get lumped in with one or the other
Speaker 4: and the people every one do you actually think it's like, well,
Speaker 4: I think these problems are real.
Speaker 5: I just think this is we don't need a red Caesar, Like,
Speaker 5: please don't tell me that we need a red caesar.
Speaker 5: So it's such a crazy time on the right. Crazy.
Speaker 1: Well, this has been very interesting, fact to you, this
Speaker 1: only I actually feel like I understand your political ideology
Speaker 1: perhaps better than I ever have. And I really recommend
Speaker 1: some people that you listen to the full episode of
Speaker 1: Emily with Ezra, because I'm at least really you know,
Speaker 1: fascinated by what Jdvans represents and what is after trump
Speaker 1: Ism and what are the rising intellectual currents on the
Speaker 1: right and what they mean for for all of us,
Speaker 1: And they dig into a lot of that. So we'll
Speaker 1: have the link in the description you guys can check
Speaker 1: all of that out. Thank you so much for hanging
Speaker 1: with us on a whirlwind day here. Reminder, we are
Speaker 1: going to do a live stream coverage of the debate.
Speaker 1: Will be here like I don't know, an hour, early
Speaker 1: hour and a half early something like that, so we
Speaker 1: can all speculate and then see whatever.
Speaker 5: Still to have a drink, maybe I don't know. I get,
Speaker 5: we'll bring you some ghosts.
Speaker 1: I don't really drink at all now, so when I
Speaker 1: even have one drink, it.
Speaker 3: Can slobby real fast. It gets slobby real fast. So anyway,
Speaker 3: we'll see if that happens.
Speaker 1: But you know, I love for us to do an
Speaker 1: hour beforehand where we can all make predictions that immediately
Speaker 1: get just like demolished in real time. So that's what
Speaker 1: we'll I'll be here doing tomorrow night, and we hope
Speaker 1: to see you guys there