Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 3: Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 3: What do we have, Crystal.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do a lot of interesting things that are
Speaker 1: happening this morning. We have new polls and it's the
Speaker 1: New York Times SIENA poll of several battleground states. So
Speaker 1: this is a really important and very closely watch one
Speaker 1: because this is considered a highly rated poster. We also
Speaker 1: have some interesting polls from other sources as well. Break
Speaker 1: all of that down for you about the current state
Speaker 1: of the race. Meanwhile, Trump is really flailing. He bought
Speaker 1: into this whole AI crowd sized conspiracy theory. He's still
Speaker 1: holding on to his former opponent Joe Biden just can't
Speaker 1: let it go. Will bring you some of the highlights
Speaker 1: and low lights from that. Kamala has launched a very
Speaker 1: hawkish immigration ad, so we'll take a look at that
Speaker 1: and what that says about her campaign, her posture, the
Speaker 1: way she has changed over the years, et cetera. Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan sort of endorsed RFK Junior and chaos from the
Speaker 1: Trump Magaarl freaked out, ensued.
Speaker 4: Again, Trump flailing.
Speaker 1: Trump actually responded to it anyway, we'll show you all
Speaker 1: of that. Meanwhile, in some very very frightening and quite
Speaker 1: dire news, Ukraine has actually invaded Russia. It's gotten very
Speaker 1: little attention in terms of the news media, very little
Speaker 1: attention in terms of, you know, asking these various candidates
Speaker 1: what they think about that and where we're going from here.
Speaker 1: So we'll take a look at that. Israel is still
Speaker 1: awaiting what Aron's response to Israel's latest provocation may be.
Speaker 1: There are some developments in terms of potential ceasefire. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Israel continues to slaughter innocent civilians, the latest strike coming
Speaker 1: with US bombs on a school where displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
Speaker 4: But his emails.
Speaker 1: Trump campaign emails were hacked, potentially by Iran ken Klippenstein
Speaker 1: is going to join us to talk about what we
Speaker 1: could learn there, how the press may handle it, and whether,
Speaker 1: in fact, what are the indications of whether this was
Speaker 1: actually Iran or not. So a lot going on there.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, it is.
Speaker 2: However, eighty five days until election day, I think I'm
Speaker 2: going to continue this streak about the countdown clock and
Speaker 2: next week is going to be the DNC, So we're
Speaker 2: going to be on the ground in Chicago, the whole team.
Speaker 3: We've got special coverage planned. Premium subscribers.
Speaker 2: You guys are gonna get a lot of benefits from that,
Speaker 2: so Breakingpoints dot Com you want to take advantage. Of course,
Speaker 2: you also get early access and all that to the show.
Speaker 2: So if you can support us Breakingpoints dot Com with that,
Speaker 2: Let's get to the polls.
Speaker 3: We have a million and they're actually quite relevant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, as I was saying New York Times, Siana, this
Speaker 1: is considered, you know, a top tier poll. Everyone watches
Speaker 1: it really closely. And they pulled three battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and that old Blue Wall States. Let's go and put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. They show a pretty similar
Speaker 1: picture in all three, which is Kamala Harris leading Donald
Speaker 1: Trump by a margin of fifty to forty six. If
Speaker 1: you dig into this poll and the other questions they asked,
Speaker 1: it's actually quite interesting. So put the next piece up
Speaker 1: on the screen. They ask people about whether or not
Speaker 1: these candidates have certain traits so on has a clear
Speaker 1: vision for the country. You have Kamala at fifty three
Speaker 1: and you have Trump outperforming her there at sixty. However,
Speaker 1: on the other traits, Kamala outperforms Trump, so has the
Speaker 1: temperament to be an effective president. Kalum's at fifty four,
Speaker 1: Trump's forty five is honest, Kamala fifty two, Trump forty
Speaker 1: one is intelligent, sixty five to Trump's fifty six will
Speaker 1: bring about the right kind of change. Kamala fifty Trump
Speaker 1: forty seven.
Speaker 4: Saga.
Speaker 1: That last one I think is in some ways the
Speaker 1: most important metric of where this race is, and it
Speaker 1: really demonstrates how dramatically it has shifted with the change
Speaker 1: of candidate. You know, Joe Biden, obviously, as the current president,
Speaker 1: was very much status quo choice, and when questions were
Speaker 1: asked like that of him and Trump, Trump was vastly
Speaker 1: outpacing him. Now with a new change at the top
Speaker 1: of the ticket, Kamala narrowly outpacing him on the idea
Speaker 1: of being the change candidate and bringing about the right
Speaker 1: type of change. Just one last piece and I'll get
Speaker 1: your reaction to overall what this poll had to say.
Speaker 1: They also tested the presidential and vice presidential picks favorability
Speaker 1: across these battle ground states. It's gotten put Pennsylvania there
Speaker 1: up on the screen so you can see, because I
Speaker 1: think this is another really important indicator, and this is
Speaker 1: pretty representative of what the net favorables were across each
Speaker 1: of these blue wall battleground states. Tim Walls very popular,
Speaker 1: plus eleven percent on net favorables. You still have a
Speaker 1: good chunk though, who don't know who he is and
Speaker 1: are sort of waiting to decide what they think about him.
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris has dramatically spiked in terms of her favorability.
Speaker 1: She is now above water in these battleground states. She's
Speaker 1: plus two percent. In Pennsylvania. Trump he actually has also
Speaker 1: seen a spike in favorability. He's at minus three. He's
Speaker 1: not as high as Common, but this actually represents the
Speaker 1: peak of where he has been in recent times as well,
Speaker 1: which in some ways is a bad sign for him,
Speaker 1: Sager if he's at the peak of his favorability and
Speaker 1: he's still losing, and then jd Vance down at minus eleven,
Speaker 1: has taken on a good bit of water since his launch. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, this was fairly consistent picture across each
Speaker 1: of these states. And I do think that this is
Speaker 1: kind of a really very important indicator. Is regardless of
Speaker 1: you know, where they're positioning themselves on the issues, et cetera.
Speaker 1: You have one ticket that's broadly popular and one ticket
Speaker 1: that's broadly unpopular. At the Trump campaign obviously looking to
Speaker 1: try to.
Speaker 3: Shift that ground, you're trying to shape it around.
Speaker 2: I should remind I mean plus two is one of
Speaker 2: those where I would would rather be in Tim Wall's
Speaker 2: territory if I were Kamala Harris. And we should remember
Speaker 2: the Democrats, even with roughly a plus two percent popular
Speaker 2: voter advantage, can still lose in the electoral College. What
Speaker 2: stuck out to me about New York Times Sienna was
Speaker 2: actually coming to the previous polls where if we saw
Speaker 2: Biden was down in Pennsylvania by three points there, So
Speaker 2: the swing of Biden to herrit is pretty unbelievable. It's
Speaker 2: almost eight points. Keep in mind margin of error and
Speaker 2: all of that. But I think the movement whenever we
Speaker 2: look at where the Joe Biden numbers were in Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: and previous New York Times standup polls that I was
Speaker 2: just looking at across the battleground states and generally compared
Speaker 2: to now, is we're looking at almost eight to ten
Speaker 2: points roughly for Joe from Joe Biden's numbers to Kamala Harris. Nonetheless,
Speaker 2: that's a very very big problem for Donald Trump because
Speaker 2: it does show, and this is my previous hypothesis, that
Speaker 2: he has roughly a forty six or forty seven percent ceiling,
Speaker 2: and that's always been the issue for him, is that
Speaker 2: where RFK Junior potentially could be bringing some voats away
Speaker 2: from Joe Biden, or Joe Biden having very very low
Speaker 2: enthusiasm and a variety of other factors, that he could
Speaker 2: win with a forty seven to forty eight percent and
Speaker 2: perhaps even some disaffected bringing over to fifty one. But
Speaker 2: if you're getting an outright majority, that is a big problem. Remember,
Speaker 2: we're in a We're in an election where a net
Speaker 2: swing of only one hundred thousand votes is going to
Speaker 2: move the entire thing. That's why looking at this movement
Speaker 2: is dangerous territory for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I think that piece about her obtaining an outright majority
Speaker 1: is important one because back in twenty sixteen, even though
Speaker 1: Hillary was consistently polling ahead of Donald Trump, oftentimes she
Speaker 1: was still under fifty percent, and so it was a
Speaker 1: warning sign of okay. But once people fully decide and
Speaker 1: you know, they move off of whatever third party candidates
Speaker 1: they claim they're going to support, et cetera, how is
Speaker 1: this going to work out? And you know, that's how
Speaker 1: Trump was able to narrowly eke out the electoral college
Speaker 1: victory over Hillary Clinton. So here when you see Kamala
Speaker 1: at fifty percent in all of these battleground states and
Speaker 1: not all that many people saying that they're undecided, obviously
Speaker 1: that's got to be a concern for the Trump campaign.
Speaker 1: Of course, all the caveats in the world, These same
Speaker 1: similar polls showed Joe Biden with quite a substantial lead
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty at this time he won, right, so
Speaker 1: you know, he did enough to get over the finish line,
Speaker 1: but they definitely undercounted Trump's support. They undercounted Trump support
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. In twenty twenty two it went the
Speaker 1: other direction. But then again Trump wasn't on the ballot,
Speaker 1: So that's always important to keep in mind.
Speaker 4: But part of why.
Speaker 1: This New York Times Siana pole is so significant, as
Speaker 1: Zager was alluding to some of their polling that came
Speaker 1: out while Joe Biden was still in the race, was
Speaker 1: part of the more compelling argument of why he needed
Speaker 1: to go because when even a poll, because he was
Speaker 1: doing the whole pole denial thing that now the Trump
Speaker 1: team is adopted of, Oh, our poll shows something different.
Speaker 1: We don't buy these fake polls. We don't think that
Speaker 1: they're correct. That's not what our data is showing, etc.
Speaker 3: Etc.
Speaker 1: But it was pretty hard to deny, you know, this
Speaker 1: particular polster because of their track record and how much
Speaker 1: they're respected in terms of their numbers. So a lot
Speaker 1: that's interesting there. And one other thing before we move
Speaker 1: on to some interesting numbers about who people trust on
Speaker 1: the economy. I think it was Nate Silver that made
Speaker 1: this point. You know, generic Democrat does well against Trump,
Speaker 1: does well against the Republican Party in particular in general,
Speaker 1: and always has and Kamala is not exactly a generic Democrat.
Speaker 1: She's obviously been in the public eye, people have a
Speaker 1: lot of feelings about her, et cetera. But she is
Speaker 1: really trying to occupy that space of generic democrat, and
Speaker 1: you know, that's the way the ticket is trying to
Speaker 1: shape and position themselves. And listen, that's actually pretty formidable
Speaker 1: against the Republican Party, especially Kada like Trump, who remains
Speaker 1: broadly and you know, his favorability has gone up as
Speaker 1: well post assassination attempt, et cetera, et cetera, but in general,
Speaker 1: he is underwater in terms of popularity problem.
Speaker 2: And this is where you know, both media and Kamala
Speaker 2: inability or unwillingness to sit for long form interviews, to
Speaker 2: even put herself in a public and adversarial eye, and
Speaker 2: only doing rallies, basically adopting the same strategy of Joe
Speaker 2: Biden and not being in any sense like challenged. That's
Speaker 2: where and then you get an incredible media environment. You
Speaker 2: put those two things together and you're in the perfect
Speaker 2: position you want to be as generic as possible.
Speaker 3: She's disavowed every public.
Speaker 2: Policy position that she's ever had, and it's like everybody
Speaker 2: is like, oh, I don't even know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Let's let's talk about something else from several years ago.
Speaker 2: But we will get to that. This is perhaps that's
Speaker 2: the biggest problem I've seen yet for Trump was put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. Keep in mind this
Speaker 2: is just one, but movement is important. This is from
Speaker 2: the ft Financial Times, Michigan Ross Pole. They say voters
Speaker 2: who trust Harris significantly more with the economy than Biden,
Speaker 2: and it actually has Kamala Harris edging out Donald Trump
Speaker 2: in his trust on the economy. You could see for
Speaker 2: those who are watching, where you had Joe Biden significantly
Speaker 2: underwater on Donald Trump, where Harris has actually climbed. And
Speaker 2: more importantly is that the neither figure has dropped dramatically
Speaker 2: from July to August. So I always bring this up
Speaker 2: because back in twenty twenty, one of the best indicators
Speaker 2: of Trump's support was not the top line polls. It
Speaker 2: was not polling averages, it was trust on the economy.
Speaker 2: Is something that Trump campaign would very often point out
Speaker 2: to me. I'd be like, hey, you know, it says
Speaker 2: you're down by fifteen points or whatever Wisconsin. They're like, listen,
Speaker 2: the economy figure is traditionally much more trusted, and it's
Speaker 2: one that we are really relying on. And I think
Speaker 2: they ended up being correct because they only lost by
Speaker 2: somewhat sixty thousand votes or whatever. That was far more
Speaker 2: predict because it was genuinely more fifty to fifty back
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty in the midst of COVID you know
Speaker 2: Mania well now today, where they had a spread of
Speaker 2: almost eleven, twelve, fifteen in some cases, if we look
Speaker 2: on average, if we if this is perhaps an indicator,
Speaker 2: maybe they're not tied. Maybe he's only up by two,
Speaker 2: maybe three. That's still way worse than being up by ten, fifteen, twenty.
Speaker 1: On the economy, it's basically a dune ball, and he
Speaker 1: cannot afford that, and he kind of needs to have
Speaker 1: an edge there because there are a lot of other
Speaker 1: traits about him that people do not prefer, so you
Speaker 1: have to have a big lean on the economy to
Speaker 1: make up for that. And you know, it's actually quite
Speaker 1: fascinating to see the way that this has played out.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden did her the biggest favor in the world,
Speaker 1: number one by naming his economic program Bidenomics. So it's
Speaker 1: like very closely associated with.
Speaker 4: Him and not with her.
Speaker 1: Also by totally sidelining her, I mean, she's been basically
Speaker 1: invisible as a vice president, so she it appears, got
Speaker 1: all the benefits of having the trappings and the station
Speaker 1: of the audio of the office and enabling people to
Speaker 1: envision her in that commander in chief role. However, because
Speaker 1: she was sidelined, people aren't blaming her for whatever things
Speaker 1: that they didn't like about the Biden administration. The other
Speaker 1: thing I would say is, you know, Biden's favorability rating
Speaker 1: has come up to since he decided to drop on
Speaker 1: of the race, So much of what was weighing down
Speaker 1: this ticket and now is really clear was just about
Speaker 1: this guy being really, really old, and that was you know,
Speaker 1: that's an entirely legitimate concern and perspective. Apparently even the
Speaker 1: President himself came to agree with that assessment. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that people believe she will do better on
Speaker 1: the economy, they are not tying her to whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: the most unpopular positions of this administration or performance of
Speaker 1: this administration was they feel like she represents more of
Speaker 1: a positive change than Donald Trump, even though she is,
Speaker 1: you know, part of the administration right now, these are
Speaker 1: all extraordinary things that I would not necessarily have predicted.
Speaker 4: But also Soger, I.
Speaker 1: Mean the Trump campaign, they're going to try to change that.
Speaker 1: You know, their whole mission is going to be at
Speaker 1: least of their paid communications. Donald Trump doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be capable of doing a very effective job of pushing
Speaker 1: this message. But the paid communications will be very much
Speaker 1: about tying her to the less popular parts of this administration.
Speaker 1: You know, I think immigration is probably the strongest hit
Speaker 1: on her, the whole border zar thing. There was some
Speaker 1: testing will show you in a little bit from Democratic
Speaker 1: group about which attacks were the most salient. That was
Speaker 1: the most difficult one for her to be able to parry,
Speaker 1: which is why she's already putting out some immigration stuff.
Speaker 4: Like I said, we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: In a minute, but right now they've got some work
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 4: And the other thing is time is really short.
Speaker 3: Yes, eight five days, what's a long time.
Speaker 1: While Trump is out here flailing around and still wishing
Speaker 1: it was Joe Biden indulging in like insane conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: the Harris Walls team is, you know, been much more
Speaker 1: focused and on message. They're defining themselves, they're defining jd
Speaker 1: Vance and Donald Trump, and they're headed into a convention
Speaker 1: where most of the time time the party comes down
Speaker 1: of the convention with a bump.
Speaker 4: Then you're into Labor Day and you're in the final sprint.
Speaker 1: So there isn't that much time for Trump and Dvance
Speaker 1: to change the ground of this fight and be able
Speaker 1: to redefine what right now is a racistlipping away.
Speaker 2: For that Trump is really Trump has really lost his edge,
Speaker 2: and I think, I mean, look, we can empathize at
Speaker 2: a certain point, at a human level. It's probably dizzy.
Speaker 2: It's crazy for us, and we're not even running. We're
Speaker 2: not the ones who are actually in the race. You
Speaker 2: can't imagine probably what it's like to go from front
Speaker 2: runner back to twenty sixteen insurgent status. I have been
Speaker 2: watching a lot of some of the MAGA influencers, boosters
Speaker 2: and others, and the ones who are honest are like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're in a knife fight now. Now we're back to
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. We're the underdog. At this point. You have
Speaker 2: the entire media apparatus against us. You have a unified
Speaker 2: Democratic Party very much like they had under Hillary Clinton
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: You had the.
Speaker 2: Same level of the unification of really the party establishment
Speaker 2: of the Democrats from that time period, and this time
Speaker 2: we're gonna have to fight just like we did the
Speaker 2: last time. The problem is Trump is a different man
Speaker 2: from that time around. He doesn't have the same almost
Speaker 2: free wheeling nature. His campaign today is a balloon that
Speaker 2: includes the RNC, that includes donors and all these other things.
Speaker 2: He's you know, he needs to be unburdened by what
Speaker 2: has been I actually he needs to return to the
Speaker 2: scrappy staff of like ten people sitting in Trump Tower,
Speaker 2: and it turns out that that was one of the
Speaker 2: most potent political forces in modern American history. I almost
Speaker 2: think he's being weighed down by being in some ways
Speaker 2: the Republican establishment today were previously his fighting instincts of
Speaker 2: coming and beating the establishment for the GOP nomination set
Speaker 2: him up for victory in twenty sixteen. The variety of
Speaker 2: things we could talk about, both policy and just campaign
Speaker 2: as well. He doesn't have the vigor that he did.
Speaker 2: I remember watching that man chriss cross that country every
Speaker 2: single day. He you know, he almost it was shocking,
Speaker 2: you know, to even younger people how he could get
Speaker 2: like two three hours of sleep.
Speaker 3: And he would be doing all these rallies.
Speaker 2: As president, he mostly kept up that schedule, but a
Speaker 2: lot of that is diminished. And the problem is is
Speaker 2: that this dizzying like finding yourself, like you're defining who
Speaker 2: we are. You don't have time for that right now.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to waste too much right now
Speaker 2: because we are going to get to that. But put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. All the data in
Speaker 2: the world tells you and backs up what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: You know, here we have the Nevada Pole. A new
Speaker 2: poll of likely Nevada voters found Kamala with a nearly
Speaker 2: six percent lead over Donald Trump. That is the largest
Speaker 2: lead for a Democrat an anti presidential poll of Nevada's
Speaker 2: this cycle. Why is this crazy? Because Trump was up
Speaker 2: in Nevada by a couple of points. Yeah, for months,
Speaker 2: to the point where they were like, hey, we've got
Speaker 2: Nevada in the bag.
Speaker 3: Sure, it's going to be a battleground. We're going to
Speaker 3: have to spend some money.
Speaker 2: But the amount of money that I think that they
Speaker 2: previously had thought about having to allocate to Nevada. Now
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, we're in a totally different world.
Speaker 2: So your entire plan, your media plan, everything had to
Speaker 2: be torn up in the last couple of weeks. And
Speaker 2: in the interim period you have all of this incredible
Speaker 2: earn media enthusiasm for Kamala, lack of scrutiny on the record,
Speaker 2: the fact that she hasn't done these interviews is the
Speaker 2: best possible moment. The only question is this the honeymoon
Speaker 2: period or is it not? And that's it's just too
Speaker 2: soon to say, because I think the convention, the strategic
Speaker 2: advanta of that convention, of their convention happening when Joe
Speaker 2: Biden was president, of them having that bump post assassination
Speaker 2: and everything, and not having the same, you know, the
Speaker 2: same opportunity to define Kamala Harris, to have the unified
Speaker 2: media paying attention to them. I don't think I can
Speaker 2: overstate how, you know, really terrible it is for the GOP. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they had they blew their convention already, and I mean
Speaker 2: it's not their fault, of course they didn't know, but
Speaker 2: it's it's a major disadvantage.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, absolutely, and you know they clearly didn't even
Speaker 1: though they had long been saying they thought it was possible,
Speaker 1: even before the disastrous debate, etc. That they thought it
Speaker 1: was possible that they would pull Joe Bid. They clearly
Speaker 1: didn't really prepare, and Trump certainly was not really able
Speaker 1: to wrap his head around it, and he still isn't.
Speaker 4: In Nevada.
Speaker 1: You know John Ralston, who is like the political guru
Speaker 1: in Nevada. I remember previous polls come out under Biden
Speaker 1: where he's looking at us. He's going, not only are
Speaker 1: they going to lose for president, like Jackie Rosen who's
Speaker 1: running for reelection in the Senate is in trouble. There's
Speaker 1: a number of swing districts in Nevada. He's like, you
Speaker 1: just can't have this kind of presidential margin and think
Speaker 1: that you're going to be able to hang on to
Speaker 1: these seats or pick up these seats. So now with
Speaker 1: the shoe completely on the other foot, it really is
Speaker 1: remarkable to see. And then also previously, under when it
Speaker 1: was Biden, you had Republicans saying, hey, maybe we're going
Speaker 1: to put Virginia into play. Maybe we're going to put
Speaker 1: New Mexico into play. Maybe we're going to put Colorado
Speaker 1: into play. Now it's Democrats who are positioning themselves to
Speaker 1: be able to go on the offense in states that
Speaker 1: were beyond what Joe Biden was able to win in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. The most the place where they're most clearly
Speaker 1: making the play and have the best chance of success
Speaker 1: is North Carolina. Who can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So this latest poll, this is from you gov, this
Speaker 1: is an a rated polster also has it tied in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Harris forty six, Trump forty six. This is
Speaker 1: a state Biden lost, I want to say, by about
Speaker 1: one point eight percentage point, so it.
Speaker 4: Was not a lot.
Speaker 1: But it's also a state that you know, democrats ever
Speaker 1: since Obama won it in eight It's a state that
Speaker 1: Democrats can come close in but they can't really seem
Speaker 1: to get over the top. They're hoping with Harris's sort
Speaker 1: of newly reconstituted coalition that she may be able to
Speaker 1: pull off the state of North Carolina. And another thing
Speaker 1: that they've got really weighing them down there is the
Speaker 1: Republicans have a very unpopular gubernatorial nominee who in this
Speaker 1: very same poll was losing to the Democrat by ten points.
Speaker 1: Because Mark Robinson is not his name, He's said some
Speaker 1: wild things and it looks to be headed to defeat there.
Speaker 1: That can help drive down the Republican ticket overall. So
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's still you'd still bet on
Speaker 1: Republicans there. They still definitely have the edge, but now
Speaker 1: Democrats are spending money there and Republicans are having to
Speaker 1: actually protect that state when previously they were playing with
Speaker 1: Hey do we go on offense and you know, states
Speaker 1: that we didn't think we could have on the map before.
Speaker 2: For example, if we look at the Senate race, it's
Speaker 2: very similar. You know, in twenty twenty Tom Tillis everybody
Speaker 2: thought was possible of the Democrat could beat him. Cal
Speaker 2: Cunningham col also had some of his own issues. But
Speaker 2: you know Tom tell us only one by about two
Speaker 2: percent something like that. Yea, you know, one point five roughly.
Speaker 2: That's not a great margin of victory. That's not what
Speaker 2: you want to be in a traditional state. Now, remember
Speaker 2: another thing I've been continuing to try to bring up.
Speaker 2: North Carolina has significantly changed in the last four years.
Speaker 2: It has one of the most booming economies in the
Speaker 2: entire United States, second only to Arizona. They've had massive
Speaker 2: population inflow to Raleigh and to Charlotte in those urban
Speaker 2: areas they have a lot of fundamentals East Coast time banking,
Speaker 2: lots of jobs, it's a good place to live if
Speaker 2: you're under twenty five or so. They have high starting
Speaker 2: salaries relative to the other big cities. But what that
Speaker 2: means is that they will have a similar Georgia phenomenon
Speaker 2: or Austin phenomenon, where we have all of these people
Speaker 2: largely from blue states, probably highly educated or people with
Speaker 2: bachelor's degrees, who are moving in and becoming newly registered voters,
Speaker 2: and that is just enough perhaps to turn the tide
Speaker 2: when we look at only a couple of one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand votes, which are the margin of victory. And you know,
Speaker 2: things don't have to go a different Things can go
Speaker 2: a different way. If it rains, if it's nose, whatever,
Speaker 2: something could very much materialize a surprise there. Most importantly
Speaker 2: what I just brought up about Nevada, where they didn't
Speaker 2: think they would have to spend that much money in Nevada,
Speaker 2: or it's that much in North Carolina. Well, now you
Speaker 2: might have to spend millions just to win by one
Speaker 2: or two percent. That's a bad situation. Generally, let's put
Speaker 2: the final one out there. Please, on the screen. This
Speaker 2: was an Arizona pole. This was conducted after July thirty,
Speaker 2: and this show is Kamala actually leading Trump by about
Speaker 2: two point eight percent, and that is in the US
Speaker 2: Senate race. They have Diego up by eleven percent over
Speaker 2: Carrie Lake. So this is the other question. Is Carrie
Speaker 2: Lake going to be a drag on the Trump ticket?
Speaker 2: Very possible considering how unpopular she appears to be in
Speaker 2: the race in Arizona. The flip side of that for
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is that I saw a rally I believe
Speaker 2: with Comma of some twenty five thousand people in a
Speaker 2: stadium in Arizona that is astounding. Then they had to
Speaker 2: turn people away at the door. That's a bad situation.
Speaker 2: I mean that level of enthusias Arizona similar. Actually, they
Speaker 2: have doubled economic growth of North Carolina. What I was
Speaker 2: just talking about. Their inflow is massive from California and
Speaker 2: from elsewhere. Their economy is booming. And Maricopa County, as
Speaker 2: we all learn in twenty twenty, is that primes suburban
Speaker 2: white vote that Kamala and Biden are going after with
Speaker 2: everything that they've got, highly highly educated, very very like
Speaker 2: they want to come out and vote specifically on abortion,
Speaker 2: and then what did we all forget what happened in
Speaker 2: Arizona just several months ago, that whole eighteen sixty four abortion.
Speaker 3: Ban and all that nightmare.
Speaker 2: You think they you know, if you think they've forgotten that,
Speaker 2: they certainly haven't. Millions of dollars in ad spend. Is
Speaker 2: they are on abortion right now?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they have an abortion ballad initiative yes,
Speaker 1: this fall as well, which could very much help drive
Speaker 1: turnout and be you know, in a close race, could
Speaker 1: be a determining factor. I don't know if it's quite
Speaker 1: as stark as in twenty twenty two, where the Republicans
Speaker 1: nominated just a rash of candidates that were really, you know,
Speaker 1: unpalatable to a mainstream audience. But you do have in
Speaker 1: some key states, you know, Kerrie Lake weighing down the
Speaker 1: ticket in Arizona, Mark Robinson weighing down the ticket in
Speaker 1: North Carolina and also contributing to the Democratic messaging that
Speaker 1: this is a fringe ticket, this is a quote unquote
Speaker 1: weird ticket. That are you know, these are all headwinds
Speaker 1: that Republicans now have to deal with that previously they
Speaker 1: were completely sailing above. I mean I really thought with Biden,
Speaker 1: Arizona was gone, Nevada was gone. The only prayer he
Speaker 1: had after that debate, he really didn't have a prayer anywhere,
Speaker 1: but the only prayer he had was hoping to hold
Speaker 1: on to those three blue wall industrial Midwestern states Georgia, Arizona,
Speaker 1: Nevada over. And now you've got Kamala leading in polls
Speaker 1: in those states and potentially even putting North Carolina back
Speaker 1: in play, which again we haven't seen since Obama two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. So just an absolute one to eighty turn,
Speaker 1: and you know, to segue into the next piece. Trump
Speaker 1: is really struggling to deal with it because as much
Speaker 1: as listen, Joe Biden is older and way more feeble,
Speaker 1: and so when he was in the race, you sort
Speaker 1: of forgot about Trump's age. But he's also an old man,
Speaker 1: and one of the common things is, you know, when
Speaker 1: you get all you get stuck in your ways. And
Speaker 1: he had his head set on this race being a
Speaker 1: certain way and it is not that way anymore. And
Speaker 1: he's clearly having trouble letting go of his previous opponent,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, and that showed up at a recent rally.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
Speaker 3: I think crooked Joe is boy correct.
Speaker 5: It's like.
Speaker 6: You're like, all right, ready, crooked first, right, what do
Speaker 6: you like better, Crooked Joe or sleepy Joe. Crook it
Speaker 6: seems to always win. I mean, he's a crooked guy.
Speaker 6: All he had to do is think of it. If
Speaker 6: he didn't do the debate, he'd still be running. They'd
Speaker 6: be saying how great he is. He's a brilliant man,
Speaker 6: a wonderful guy. Couldn't beat me now, I mean, after
Speaker 6: the debate, he was down, way down in the polls.
Speaker 6: They didn't even want to show the polls. They said
Speaker 6: he's sucking to win. So they said, we're going to
Speaker 6: take him out and we're going to put somebody new.
Speaker 6: And this never happened to anybody before. You've spent we
Speaker 6: spent one hundred million dollars fighting crooker Joe Biden, and
Speaker 6: then all of a sudden they decided to take him
Speaker 6: out and put somebody else in. She never got one vote.
Speaker 6: She was the first loser in the primaries. You know,
Speaker 6: she ran against Joe Biden and everybody else. I think
Speaker 6: they had like sixteen people running. She never made Iowa.
Speaker 6: The first aid.
Speaker 3: I love Iowa.
Speaker 6: You know why I love it because I went at
Speaker 6: every single time with the farmers.
Speaker 7: We went it.
Speaker 8: But she never made Iowa.
Speaker 6: She was the first one to quit and now and
Speaker 6: stupid honestly, she was the nastiest to him too, and
Speaker 6: then he picked her. I couldn't believe it. And she
Speaker 6: was part of the cabal that got him out. You know,
Speaker 6: they got him out. They said, we'll do it the
Speaker 6: nice way. We'll do it the hard way, Joe. We'll
Speaker 6: use the twenty fifth Amendment and we'll call you mentally
Speaker 6: incompetent and everybody.
Speaker 3: Will believe us.
Speaker 6: And you know, what they did is a terrible thing. Actually,
Speaker 6: they forced him out. It was a coup. We had
Speaker 6: a coup. That was the first coup in the history
Speaker 6: of our country, and it was very successful. He said, okay,
Speaker 6: i'll leave. If that's what you want, I'll leave. And
Speaker 6: now he's seeing what the competition is. I hear he's
Speaker 6: going to make you comeback. At the Democrat convention.
Speaker 3: He's going to.
Speaker 6: Walk into the room and he's gonna say, I want
Speaker 6: my presidency back, I want another chance to debate Trump.
Speaker 7: I want another chance.
Speaker 1: So still still hoping, still live in the dream that
Speaker 1: maybe Joe Biden's going to come back.
Speaker 3: I think it's tough.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I said, I understand where he's coming from,
Speaker 2: but I just think that look, really, what I have
Speaker 2: come to look at is where twenty sixteen Trump calls
Speaker 2: the mood of the country correctly, and that is perhaps
Speaker 2: his single biggest political insight. Hillary and everybody is running
Speaker 2: on optimism all you know, trying to recapture Obama, and
Speaker 2: He's like, no American carnage.
Speaker 3: That's the message.
Speaker 2: It was a negative campaign, but negative in a way
Speaker 2: that it captured the rage of the American people. The
Speaker 2: reason that Biden narrowly edges out Trump is because he
Speaker 2: did not return to normalcy.
Speaker 3: But he's like, everything is just too crazy.
Speaker 2: Elect an old guy and I'll just sit on my
Speaker 2: hands for four years and everything will be fine. And
Speaker 2: again that's enough to bring people out. But the Trump
Speaker 2: carnage mension still resonates now Here is where I think
Speaker 2: it gets complicated, because right now we have Change is
Speaker 2: the number one thing that people want from a presidential candidate,
Speaker 2: but change from what and that means many different things
Speaker 2: to different people. One of the things that Tim Wulas
Speaker 2: has impressed me on is the joyful warrior. And there's
Speaker 2: also you have Kamala embracing this generic d messaging, abandoning
Speaker 2: all of her previous positions and trying to just be
Speaker 2: as un what is it inoffensive as humanly possible, so
Speaker 2: you could project whatever you want unto her. That is
Speaker 2: actually a Trumpian strategy. Trump was all things, all people.
Speaker 2: It was his greatest political strength on top of that,
Speaker 2: and so watching the grievance from Donald Trump, I really
Speaker 2: worry for him.
Speaker 3: It misses the message.
Speaker 2: And it's actually something I don't necessarily notice whenever I
Speaker 2: see other successful Republicans or even jad Vans in many
Speaker 2: of his interviews, He's not channeling that same level of
Speaker 2: grievance both about today and then centering it around himself.
Speaker 2: At the very least, it's usually grievance about something like
Speaker 2: policy related. And so for Trump, the more that it
Speaker 2: turns grievance onto him, and the more that it seems
Speaker 2: to be away from where that the change message Americans want,
Speaker 2: and it's stuff like this re litigating what he doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to understand as Americans of keep saying this have
Speaker 2: such a tremendous capacity for amnesia. People don't even remember
Speaker 2: Biden exists. They don't barely remember that the Trump got
Speaker 2: shot a month ago.
Speaker 3: A month ago.
Speaker 2: But that I mean, everyone's like, it's unfair. Okay, that's life.
Speaker 2: You have to you know, you have to go to
Speaker 2: war with the troops that you have. And I really
Speaker 2: think he's misreading the mood of the country. I also
Speaker 2: will say this, why he and Bose in Montana? Why
Speaker 2: are we in Montana? A state how many four electoral votes?
Speaker 4: There's a close Senate context.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's his job to get elected. Your job
Speaker 2: is to get elected president. Bro, you haven't done a
Speaker 2: rally in five days, and your asses on a plane
Speaker 2: to Montana? What are you doing?
Speaker 3: And she go camp out in.
Speaker 1: The Midwest And he doesn't have any other rallies for
Speaker 1: the rest of the month. For the rest of the month,
Speaker 1: he went to Montana.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 1: So at the same time, you know, he so, I
Speaker 1: think one of the clever strategies of the Democratic Party ticket,
Speaker 1: and this really is you know, this came directly from
Speaker 1: Tim Walls. I think the rather than making Trump bigger
Speaker 1: than life of the threat to democracy and restored about
Speaker 1: this like very moralizing, sort of grandiose language about him. Instead,
Speaker 1: they're sort of they're diminishing him, they're making him small,
Speaker 1: and they're rolling basically, they're rolling their eyes and laughing
Speaker 1: at him. So that's where weird is a very different
Speaker 1: frame than the threat to democracy frame. And in that contact,
Speaker 1: you know, all the things that he's doing where he's
Speaker 1: you know, this wild press conference he did last week
Speaker 1: where he's had all kinds of stuff, and the National
Speaker 1: Association of Black Journalist where he throws out the you know,
Speaker 1: race baiting stuff, and then the latest conspiracy theory that
Speaker 1: he's glomming onto. It just feels sort of pathetic, like
Speaker 1: it feels desperate if you.
Speaker 4: Can see that he's struggling.
Speaker 1: And so the I think that the rhetoric of laughing
Speaker 1: at him, not taking the bait every time, just moving
Speaker 1: on and staying focused on the message, I think has
Speaker 1: been very wise from them from a political standpoint. So
Speaker 1: just to break down this latest conspiracy, So, you know,
Speaker 1: Kamlain and Tim Wall's Democrats are elated that it's not
Speaker 1: Donald Trump at the top.
Speaker 9: Of the ticket.
Speaker 1: They are elated that they have a candidate who could
Speaker 1: read a teleprompter or ably and has some charisma on
Speaker 1: the stump and is able to just do like the
Speaker 1: basics of competent campaigning. And so they have been turning
Speaker 1: out in droves to every single rally that they've done.
Speaker 1: This is very difficult for Donald Trump specifically mentally to
Speaker 1: wrap his head around because in his head he's the big.
Speaker 4: Rally guy, right. And there have been.
Speaker 1: A and I think you know, magazine kind of their
Speaker 1: own self constructed like super online bubble where they also
Speaker 1: can't wrap their head around the fact that there's a
Speaker 1: genuine enthusiasm for the change in the ticket. So you
Speaker 1: started seeing this floating around many many accounts took this
Speaker 1: and ran with it. There's this whole theory that actually
Speaker 1: the rally cap crowds aren't real. In it all centers
Speaker 1: around this one photo of her landing. Where was this
Speaker 1: but in Nevada, I think Detroit, and there they you know,
Speaker 1: circled in on the plane and they're saying, oh, look,
Speaker 1: you can't see the reflection of the crowd and the plane.
Speaker 1: So this is all AI. This isn't real. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously this is preposterous. There were a lot of people there,
Speaker 1: a lot of people, Yes at all around there were
Speaker 1: you know, reporters from Fox News at this rally who
Speaker 1: also reported on the crowd, like, do you think that
Speaker 1: they're in the bag for the Harris Walls campaign at
Speaker 1: it's preposterous, it's really desperate, empathetic. But it's one thing
Speaker 1: when a rando on Twitter at Jody Blues is sharing
Speaker 1: this kind of content. It's another thing when the former
Speaker 1: president and current Republican nominee decides to go in on
Speaker 1: this as well. So Trump shared the exact same thing
Speaker 1: and says, has anyone noticed that Kamala cheated at the airport?
Speaker 1: There was nobody at the plane and she aied it
Speaker 1: and showed a massive crowd of so called followers, but
Speaker 1: they didn't exist, and then goes on to say, you know.
Speaker 4: She's a cheater.
Speaker 1: She had nobody waiting, that some maintenance person turned her
Speaker 1: in and exposed the fraud, etc.
Speaker 4: Etc.
Speaker 1: And he finishes by saying they're even worse at the
Speaker 1: ballot box. She should be disqualified because the creation of
Speaker 1: a fake image is election interference. Anyone who does that
Speaker 1: will cheat at anything. So rather than just repeating borders
Speaker 1: are over and over again, this is instead the line
Speaker 1: of attack on Kamala, which again just to any normal person,
Speaker 1: looks and feels preposterous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's stupid. It's just one of those where Trump.
Speaker 2: This is where Trump actually is its own worst enemy,
Speaker 2: and he's not playing four or five D chests. And
Speaker 2: there is a reason that there's not a single other
Speaker 2: elected Republican who is even doing this. He will glob
Speaker 2: onto anything we learned this during Stop the Steal, anything
Speaker 2: that you contributes to his ego. And hey, in an
Speaker 2: eighteen month race where you get to run against Kamala,
Speaker 2: I think that's fine. You know, history has proven it
Speaker 2: won't necessarily count against you. It's just a baked in
Speaker 2: part of your personality. But when we only have eighty
Speaker 2: five days until election day, is that really what we
Speaker 2: want to be spending our time on. We have no rallies,
Speaker 2: We are attacking Brian Kemp. We are you know, making
Speaker 2: ridiculous claims about false AI generated images of crowds. Also,
Speaker 2: don't take it from me, take it from Timpoole. Okay,
Speaker 2: so somebody with more credibility, I think with people from MAGA,
Speaker 2: like everybody is laughing and it is desperate. And that's
Speaker 2: where again I'm coming back to that mood of the
Speaker 2: country thing, I think he is misreading that people are
Speaker 2: not as outraged about the Biden situation as he has,
Speaker 2: perhaps some Republicans, but that's not the whole country. And
Speaker 2: that just gets to like how when message and grievance
Speaker 2: aligns with the mood, that's whenever he wins the best.
Speaker 2: Whenever it's on policy, that's whatever it can be convenient.
Speaker 2: But here is where twenty twenty two energy is coming
Speaker 2: into play, and you are actually out of step where
Speaker 2: people are. For example, I watched his entire press conference
Speaker 2: on Thursday, and he made one of the most articulous
Speaker 2: statements I've ever seen from him, and it's against wish casting.
Speaker 2: He said, I don't think abortion will be a major
Speaker 2: issue in this campaign. And it's like, I get that
Speaker 2: you wish that to be the case, but that's not
Speaker 2: how that works. Like, in fact, telling people not to
Speaker 2: worry about the number one thing that most Democrats and
Speaker 2: some swing voters are worried about seems to be the
Speaker 2: opposite of how it should be. You want to allay
Speaker 2: their concerns and then maybe talk about immigration a.
Speaker 3: Little bit more on top of that.
Speaker 2: So I'm just watching him flailing, and I think, again
Speaker 2: I empathize on a human level as to how difficult
Speaker 2: it probably is to be in that situation and dizzying.
Speaker 2: But you go, you know, like the cards are dealt
Speaker 2: the way that they are dealt, and that's just how
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you had close to ninety percent of the country
Speaker 1: that was glad Biden stepped aside for everyone's having So
Speaker 1: you know, if you think that you're and I've seen
Speaker 1: some message testing on this as well, like going back
Speaker 1: and re litigating what happened in the pressure campaign to
Speaker 1: push Biden out. No one's interested in it. They're like,
Speaker 1: onward and upward, what are you going to do for me?
Speaker 1: What's the program for the future. But he is struggling
Speaker 1: clearly to get past his sense of the injustice and
Speaker 1: unfairness that was done to him. And like you said,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can understand like they did an entire
Speaker 1: R and C assuming it was going to be Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: and then the rug gets pulled out from under them immediately.
Speaker 1: It was that weekend after the R and C, right
Speaker 1: where you know, after all of this messaging and program planning,
Speaker 1: and you're looking at the polls and you're not doing great,
Speaker 1: and this is going to be so easy, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I can really run up the score in
Speaker 1: these states that shouldn't even be on the map. And
Speaker 1: like that, it's changed, and he is clearly struggling to
Speaker 1: adjust to that reality. And it's also the shoe is
Speaker 1: now on the other foot where Democrats previously, Joe Biden
Speaker 1: specifically was in total denial about the collapse in his position,
Speaker 1: electoral position, and polling status, and his aids were helping
Speaker 1: to insulate him in the bubble and only bringing him
Speaker 1: the best numbers to allay his concerns and feed his
Speaker 1: ego because they didn't want to have to deal with
Speaker 1: his wrath if they brought him some bad news that
Speaker 1: he didn't want to hear. Well, now you have the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign doing the poll denial.
Speaker 4: Not only do you have him denying.
Speaker 1: That abortion is going to be a important issue, denying
Speaker 1: that Kamala Harris is getting significant rounds of rally crowds
Speaker 1: and has a lot of enthusiasm. They're just out and
Speaker 1: out now doing pole unskewing the pole stuff. So let's
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. Trump's campaign polster put
Speaker 1: out a new confidential memo responding to the New York
Speaker 1: Times SIANNA polling showing Harris up in Blue Wall States.
Speaker 1: He claims that they dramatically understated President Trump's support both
Speaker 1: among all registered voters and in their likely voter model.
Speaker 1: You know, Democrats, this is exactly Lee what I saw
Speaker 1: a million Democrats online engaged in when Biden was down
Speaker 1: in the polls.
Speaker 4: They'd go in and they look at.
Speaker 1: The sand Oh, they undersampled this demographic group. They oversampled
Speaker 1: that demographic group. These aren't accurate. It's literally this same
Speaker 1: pole the New York Times SATA poll. Democrats were doing
Speaker 1: this same thing with when it was Joe Biden in
Speaker 1: the race, and now that it's the same polster, it's
Speaker 1: the very same methodology. Now suddenly the Democrats are good
Speaker 1: with it. They believe it now, where it was fake
Speaker 1: news before and now they believe it. And the Republicans
Speaker 1: who were, you know, really trusted it last time when
Speaker 1: it showed Trump up, now they're the ones who are
Speaker 1: doing the unskewed the pole nonsense.
Speaker 3: Oy not good.
Speaker 2: Look, you know it's one of those where we mock
Speaker 2: it from the Democrats because it is insecurity and it's like,
Speaker 2: even if it is true, then prove it, like, actually
Speaker 2: go out, continue to draw big crowds, have energy, point
Speaker 2: to that, and then come election day, if you win,
Speaker 2: you can say ha ha, look at you, you look
Speaker 2: like an idiot.
Speaker 3: So even with these.
Speaker 2: People like, keep in mind, I don't necessarily believe any
Speaker 2: of these I'm just looking at movement I think generally
Speaker 2: indicative of something. Now, will you know how many of
Speaker 2: us have all been burned here by poles to say
Speaker 2: that we can believe one hundred percent of where things are.
Speaker 2: It's only to try and shape the way that you
Speaker 2: think trends are going. And that's perhaps the way they
Speaker 2: should look at it. If anything, it's just a better
Speaker 2: message to say, Look, if anybody gets a honeymoon period, Kamala,
Speaker 2: I'll see you on the stage on September, whatever the
Speaker 2: debate that they have agreed on, and I will humiliate
Speaker 2: you in front of the American people. I think it's
Speaker 2: a far stronger and a better message. And again, this
Speaker 2: is where Trump's insecurity really comes from, because he is
Speaker 2: the central character who is putting this stuff out. He's
Speaker 2: the one who's ordering Tony Fabricio his Polster to put
Speaker 2: that out. I don't see JD. You know, he did
Speaker 2: what five interviews or whatever with the multiple different Sunday shows.
Speaker 2: He didn't unskew the poles once because you look like
Speaker 2: an idiot whenever you do it. I don't see even
Speaker 2: the press secretaries and all of them doing this. It's Trump,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to massage his own ego. And you know, again,
Speaker 2: the more that he's going to make this thing about himself,
Speaker 2: the more that I think he will lose. Let's put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen for eats ample. This
Speaker 2: is a frankly hilarious anecdote.
Speaker 3: Yes, but it.
Speaker 2: Shows donors inside of the Trump the donors to Trump
Speaker 2: who are urging him to try and shift some of
Speaker 2: his rhetoric. This was including a roughly one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty people Quote dined in an air conditioned tent with
Speaker 2: some of Trump's wealthiest supporters, including Bill Ackman, who sat
Speaker 2: next to the former president.
Speaker 3: Some guests Trump would signal.
Speaker 2: Hoped that Trump would signal that he was recalibrating after
Speaker 2: a series of damaging mistakes.
Speaker 3: He did not.
Speaker 2: Before the dinner, answering a question that raised concerns about
Speaker 2: the upcoming election. Inside of the House. Trump said, We've
Speaker 2: got to stop the steal, reviving yet again the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty election, claiming his advisors had urged him to drop
Speaker 2: because they don't help him with swing voters. And that's
Speaker 2: the thing about him. He is his own like nope.
Speaker 2: And this is another maga thing I see all the time.
Speaker 2: Why did Trump's advisors always listen? He's a grown ass man.
Speaker 2: He could literally be my grandfather. It is on him.
Speaker 2: He is the person who is making these decisions. To me,
Speaker 2: he is just pure it. He cannot control himself. He's
Speaker 2: one of those where if he feels something strongly, especially
Speaker 2: if it impacts his own image and he appears he
Speaker 2: thinks as damaging, he will just attack, attack, attack, and
Speaker 2: he will talk about that regardless, especially if people tell
Speaker 2: him not to talk about it.
Speaker 3: In some cases, that's a political strength.
Speaker 2: Here, I think it is very proven that it is
Speaker 2: a political loser, and it's one of the things that
Speaker 2: loses him the most of ground with people who are
Speaker 2: swing voter. So that anecdote is a real insight into
Speaker 2: him and how insecure he feels now at this moment.
Speaker 2: Now he's been here before, you know, we've seen him
Speaker 2: in access, Hollywood. We've seen him Charlottesville, many of these
Speaker 2: other things, and he usually comes out both swinging and
Speaker 2: usually you know, he's found himself to wriggle his way
Speaker 2: out of a lot else. So I wouldn't put it
Speaker 2: past him. And I still think the election is basically
Speaker 2: a toss up if we look at Nate Silver and
Speaker 2: everything else. But the trend is not good right now
Speaker 2: for Donald Trump. Yeah, yeah, the trend is not good.
Speaker 1: I think also part of this is him. He constructs
Speaker 1: alternate realities for himself and for his followers. And you know,
Speaker 1: we construct an alternate reality in twenty twenty where he
Speaker 1: actually won and was wronged and he tried to overturn
Speaker 1: the results. Now I think he would try to do
Speaker 1: that again. He's trying to construct this alternate reality where
Speaker 1: this is all fake. The rally crowds are fake, the
Speaker 1: polls are fake. I'm actually up big. This is all ridiculous,
Speaker 1: so that even if when he loses, he can persuade
Speaker 1: his followers at the very least that actually this was.
Speaker 4: All wrong and you know, the election was rigged, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Et I do think he's partly laying the groundwork for
Speaker 1: that and constructing that alternate reality in which he can
Speaker 1: never lose. However, this time he's not the president. This time,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have any of the levers of power to
Speaker 1: try to eat to even attempt to effectuate some sort
Speaker 1: of you know, stop the steel type of situation. So
Speaker 1: it's yeah, as I said before, it just looks pathetic.
Speaker 1: And I can only imagine his donors, who you know,
Speaker 1: got in when he was ride and high, now watching
Speaker 1: this all sort of collapse and him being increasingly unhinged,
Speaker 1: and what they're thinking about what they've signed on for here.
Speaker 1: The other thing, as I mentioned before, is he is
Speaker 1: not really like campaigning that much. She let's put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. He plans a light campaign schedule
Speaker 1: for August. He contrasts with August twenty sixteen. Trump had
Speaker 1: twenty seven rallies in the month of August in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen in fifteen different states. He later went on to
Speaker 1: win most of those states in November. This month, Trump
Speaker 1: is held one rally in Montana, not exactly a swing state.
Speaker 1: And that is all that is planned. That's all that's
Speaker 1: on the calendar for the entire month of August. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean, he could spin up a rally, you know,
Speaker 1: and do a rally or two before the month's down.
Speaker 1: But what his campaign was telling Politico and others is
Speaker 1: basically like, now we're just gonna wait for the dums
Speaker 1: to do their convention and come out swinging after Labor Day.
Speaker 1: But again, man, you got a contens condensed timeline here.
Speaker 4: It is so much.
Speaker 1: Easier to be able to define someone who hasn't already
Speaker 1: been defined. So right now, Kamala Harris and Tim Wallas
Speaker 1: are out there finding you, defining jd Vance, defining themselves,
Speaker 1: and you're basically not really fighting back at all. And
Speaker 1: the rallies were really the lifeblood of that twenty sixteen campaign.
Speaker 4: He fed off them.
Speaker 1: It was part of what made him so strong in
Speaker 1: terms of having his finger on the pulls and his
Speaker 1: messaging because he would test stuff in real time with
Speaker 1: the crowd and get a sense of what hit and
Speaker 1: what didn't hit. So with him just you know, cocoonton
Speaker 1: mar A Lago, with his yes men and yes women
Speaker 1: around him, he's not able to get out into the
Speaker 1: world and have that real sense of how things are
Speaker 1: landing with an actual crowd.
Speaker 3: Also earned media.
Speaker 2: I mean, what one of the things that Trump was
Speaker 2: the master at is He was just everywhere.
Speaker 3: He was always on the airwaves.
Speaker 2: In fact, if everyone remembers the twenty sixteen criticism of
Speaker 2: the media is that they played too much of Donald
Speaker 2: Trump because he gave them so much to work with.
Speaker 3: Twenty seven rounds.
Speaker 2: They couldn't resist fifteen states in August of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Why because you never knew what the man was gonna say.
Speaker 2: He always made news and then not only would he
Speaker 2: do that, then he would do I remember I attended
Speaker 2: these conferences here in Washington, the Foreign Policy Conference, the America.
Speaker 3: First thing, he would turn.
Speaker 2: It into a rally, and then he would say that
Speaker 2: he was going to make a major announcement, and then
Speaker 2: he would have a campaign rally and force people to
Speaker 2: cover it. So we've had one press conference, We've had
Speaker 2: one rally in freaking Montana, which nobody cares about. Sure,
Speaker 2: it's great to get a Republican elected in Montana, but
Speaker 2: that's the Republican's job in Montana. Why is Trump acting
Speaker 2: like his midterm season flying is asked all the way
Speaker 2: to Montana again, he should be in the Midwest, he
Speaker 2: should be in Arizona, he should be in Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada,
Speaker 2: all of these different states, and that is I think
Speaker 2: the central issue.
Speaker 3: So from what I understand, that is the current plan.
Speaker 2: Now from what I hear their alleged plan Crystal is
Speaker 2: that after Labor Day they're going to dump as much
Speaker 2: money as humanly possible on the airways and listen, maybe
Speaker 2: that is enough to put them over because they're like,
Speaker 2: at that point, he'll have the bump and all of that.
Speaker 2: But I just think that the momentum and also frankly,
Speaker 2: the media environment is one that needs to be shifted
Speaker 2: and changed today. You have to get I mean, this
Speaker 2: is something JD actually I think successfully did, going over
Speaker 2: and pressing the media and be like, hey, why haven't
Speaker 2: you guys taken any questions from Kamala. She came out
Speaker 2: literally the next day and she said, I hope to
Speaker 2: have an interview scheduled within the next month.
Speaker 3: Scheduled within the next month.
Speaker 2: Great, but she's actually taken two or three questions now
Speaker 2: from the press corps.
Speaker 3: Is that good? No, we need a ton more. We
Speaker 3: need way more than that.
Speaker 2: She'd be doing multi hour scrums considering that she dropped
Speaker 2: in at the last moment, But that was enough to
Speaker 2: at least put pressure on her where she's like, all right,
Speaker 2: it's starting to look bad that I haven't done it.
Speaker 2: I need to sixteen days exactly. So Trump should be
Speaker 2: out there every single day. That was one of the
Speaker 2: genius things of his press conference that he should be
Speaker 2: doing over and over again. He said, every question, I'm
Speaker 2: here taking questions from you on anything, including where I
Speaker 2: got shot in my ear, including mif of pristone the
Speaker 2: low as they call it, a hilarious moment.
Speaker 4: At Tew points at the top.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but listen, this is over what this was over
Speaker 2: an hour long press conference. Just standing and doing that
Speaker 2: is contrast. But the media, Comma, everybody's rolling their eyes.
Speaker 2: You can't do it once. You have to do it
Speaker 2: every single day. Force the conversation. Forced the conversation. And
Speaker 2: let's say we set the media environment up so that
Speaker 2: next week when we're all at the convention, Kamma is like, well, damn,
Speaker 2: I do need to do something. I'm starting to look
Speaker 2: bad if he does thirteen press conferences now in between
Speaker 2: and rallies and he has energy and interviews and that's
Speaker 2: something though, that he's not doing. And so by dropping
Speaker 2: that and by getting the media less to contrast with
Speaker 2: Kamala actually looks okay, and that is where you know,
Speaker 2: the light campaign schedule.
Speaker 3: I don't think I could stress enough.
Speaker 2: I just think it's terrible, especially if all we hear
Speaker 2: on true social is this bullshit about ai rallies and
Speaker 2: unscrewing the polls. It's like when you have that, especially
Speaker 2: also in the absence of the lack of work, I
Speaker 2: don't think things are going well right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean right now, he's enabling Kamala and Walls
Speaker 1: to basically like vibe and mean their way to November.
Speaker 1: And you know, even when you do, even when he
Speaker 1: does a press conference, So he did this press conference,
Speaker 1: it's not like you was saying anything that was really
Speaker 1: like it was was not what his advisors would want
Speaker 1: him to say.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: But here's the other thing is I think Trump two things.
Speaker 1: Number One, I think he sort of like burned out
Speaker 1: the circuits in terms of his typical style, like we're
Speaker 1: all so used to his antics that and the news
Speaker 1: cycle moves so quickly that like this whole you know,
Speaker 1: Kamala became black thing that he did what two weeks
Speaker 1: ago that would have sparked weeks of endless hand ringing
Speaker 1: from democrats in twenty sixteen and probably in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 4: And when you're.
Speaker 1: Doing the whole like the soul of our country and
Speaker 1: democracies on the line, whatever, then that lends itself to
Speaker 1: this sort of like more sanctimonious moralizing that is just endless.
Speaker 1: When your frame is weird and pathetic, then you just
Speaker 1: sort of roll your eyes at it and move on.
Speaker 1: And so I think both, you know, the media isn't
Speaker 1: going to hang on to his attempts to grab the
Speaker 1: spotlight as much as they used to, and the Harris
Speaker 1: Walls campaign is set up much more intelligently to deal
Speaker 1: with any of his attempts to really grab the spotlight back.
Speaker 1: But you know, to the point about him not really
Speaker 1: grappling with reality, not being able to really deal with
Speaker 1: the landscape as it faces him. In that press conference,
Speaker 1: I believe the entire time he didn't say he attacked
Speaker 1: Tim Walls, he didn't say his name once, He didn't
Speaker 1: go with any of the attacks that you know, Republicans
Speaker 1: and Jadie Vance had been trying to make on Walls.
Speaker 4: Instead, he said this.
Speaker 1: Thing that actually I found completely hilarious mostly this is
Speaker 1: just an excuse to get this into the show, but
Speaker 1: also was incoherent and like barely an attack on him.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen to how he talked about Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris's choice of Tim Walls.
Speaker 6: She's a radical left person at a level that nobody's seen.
Speaker 7: She picked a.
Speaker 3: Radical left man. That is, he's got.
Speaker 6: Things done that he has positions that are just not
Speaker 6: it's not even possible to believe that they exist. He's
Speaker 6: going for things that nobody's ever even heard of. Heavy
Speaker 6: into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different.
Speaker 1: Worlds, Heavy into lots of different worlds. Doesn't name a
Speaker 1: single policy, doesn't say his name.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 1: I genuinely don't think that he could remember his name
Speaker 1: in this press conference because he didn't say it once.
Speaker 1: He just referred to him as like her radical left
Speaker 1: man or whatever.
Speaker 2: Trump is not currently sending his best, especially when JD
Speaker 2: you know, and all MAGA influencers are prosecuting the best
Speaker 2: they can on the airwaves. But this is the other
Speaker 2: thing again, they're still the number two man. The number
Speaker 2: two man can't overdo the yeah, number one man. In
Speaker 2: Trump's own works, especially world rarely matters correct, and I
Speaker 2: think that's true. Being the attack dog is great, but
Speaker 2: you're not the number one man. It's about ultimately supporting
Speaker 2: somebody above you. And what he says is by definition
Speaker 2: ten x more newsworthy than everybody else. So I think
Speaker 2: they're truly flailing This campaign strategy. I think is absolutely
Speaker 2: counter to the insurgency that he brought and energy of
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. Even in twenty twenty, he criss crossed his
Speaker 2: damn country, went everywhere. The energy was very high, and
Speaker 2: remember he very nearly won that election. So I do
Speaker 2: think there's a lot of problems in that campaign. Turning
Speaker 2: now to Kamala Harris and some of the changes that
Speaker 2: she's made in her campaign, it appears that she has
Speaker 2: fully flip flopped on immigration, and one of our own
Speaker 2: producers remarked that one of her latest ads on the
Speaker 2: border may as well come from the Republicans.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 9: Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crimes. As a
Speaker 9: border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jail
Speaker 9: gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border.
Speaker 9: As Vice president, she backed the toughest border control bill
Speaker 9: in decades, and as president, she will hire thousands more
Speaker 9: border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.
Speaker 9: Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.
Speaker 5: I'm Kamala Harris, and I approved this message.
Speaker 3: She approves the message, Crystal.
Speaker 2: This has got to be one of the biggest about
Speaker 2: faces that we have seen yet from Kamala. On the record,
Speaker 2: her campaign has disavowed now her positions. What is it
Speaker 2: on fracking, on immigration, on healthcare? Am I am I
Speaker 2: missing anything in terms of the shape.
Speaker 3: Yeah, mis vowels.
Speaker 1: Pretty much anything she said in primary that could be
Speaker 1: wrong she's run away from.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, she's not wrong that they did pursue
Speaker 1: actually quite hawkish for a bidemocratic standards policy on the
Speaker 1: border and tried to pass that bill that had a
Speaker 1: lot of the Republican wish list priorities, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: you know, as I've been saying Zager, like, I just
Speaker 1: I don't think that this is the most effective messaging
Speaker 1: because I don't think it's particularly credible. It's not credible
Speaker 1: if you're leaning this ad right here, like putting aside
Speaker 1: my views of the immorality of this direction. This ad
Speaker 1: right here just sees the ground to the Republican view
Speaker 1: of immigration, in which the only focus needs to be
Speaker 1: cracking down, in which immigration is always bad and there's
Speaker 1: nothing on the other side. We also, you know, to
Speaker 1: your point, I'll get to what I think would be
Speaker 1: more effective and what the sort of pulling of data
Speaker 1: suggests would be more effective than its just like I'll be.
Speaker 4: As tough as Donald Trumpy, if not even more.
Speaker 1: It also really does contrast with the way she used
Speaker 1: to talk about the issue not so long ago. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen to a little bit of that.
Speaker 5: To somehow suggest then an undocumented immigrant is a criminal.
Speaker 5: Being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime. I know
Speaker 5: what a crime looks like. An undocumented immigrant is not
Speaker 5: a criminal. An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal, and
Speaker 5: an undocumented immigrant is not when we talk about the
Speaker 5: immigration debate, I think there is no question that there
Speaker 5: are powerful forces, including this president, that are attempting to
Speaker 5: vilify immigrants because they were born in another country and
Speaker 5: suggests that they are therefore any different in terms of
Speaker 5: their fundamental values or beliefs or priorities. And I think
Speaker 5: all of us as Americans should be insulted by that suggestion,
Speaker 5: knowing that all of us are just a few generations,
Speaker 5: if not one generation away from immigrants who arrived in
Speaker 5: this country.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, come on, yeah, it's a total about
Speaker 1: faith in terms of how she's prying.
Speaker 2: And the reason it bog bugs me is that you know,
Speaker 2: when you don't sit for an interview, even to Jake
Speaker 2: Tapper or somebody like that, can roll back his own
Speaker 2: tape and be like, what are we doing here? Like
Speaker 2: you really are going to sit here credibly and make
Speaker 2: this case. We have gone from kop Mala to what
Speaker 2: criminal justice kamala to back to kop Mala, and it's like.
Speaker 3: Who are you?
Speaker 2: And this is where at least some people in the
Speaker 2: Trump field have begun to found their footing. So JD
Speaker 2: had a potent attack in one of his interviews over
Speaker 2: the weekend where he's like, this woman believes nothing. She's
Speaker 2: a scripted machine. She is somebody who is completely a
Speaker 2: flip flopper. And I thought back to two thousand and
Speaker 2: four and one of some of the flip flopped attack
Speaker 2: on John Kerrey, and think back to what those splice
Speaker 2: ads used to look like back then. Keep in mind
Speaker 2: that was on security. But the reason why I think
Speaker 2: is potent here is immigration is the number one swing issue,
Speaker 2: where's the biggest golf between the two. And it's similar
Speaker 2: actually how the Democrats should be hitting Donald Trump, Like
Speaker 2: he claims that abortion is not going to be a
Speaker 2: big issue or any of that. It's like, tell if
Speaker 2: I were them, I would say tell that to the
Speaker 2: women who were literally unable to get an abortion or
Speaker 2: don't even know, can't have any choice, you know, before
Speaker 2: they even find out that they're pregnant. So you want
Speaker 2: to be able to hit the golf issue where the
Speaker 2: biggest issue divides you and your opponent. So that is
Speaker 2: where I think the Trump people are going to try
Speaker 2: and focus. But as you also correctly said, I think
Speaker 2: there is something just so deeply phony about this which
Speaker 2: hits to her character where you have no credibility, we
Speaker 2: don't trust you. You said something very different previously, and
Speaker 2: now you know, because of polling or whatever, you've decided
Speaker 2: to disavow this. And if we do see swings or
Speaker 2: more potent attacks come on Comma, it will come from
Speaker 2: this type of direction, I think.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, we all know why she's doing it
Speaker 1: because if you pull on the issues, this is the
Speaker 1: issue where she has the greatest vulnerability. And you know,
Speaker 1: the democratic instinct is, rather than make an alternative case
Speaker 1: that actually reflects you know, the vision is. Democrats have
Speaker 1: expressed it, including Kamala Harris over the past number of years,
Speaker 1: just to see the ground say you know, we're going
Speaker 1: to be just as tough. And again, I don't think
Speaker 1: that that is the most effective way to go about it.
Speaker 4: But let's put this pulling up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is from a democratic group that was testing a
Speaker 1: bunch of different a bunch of different messaging and potential
Speaker 1: attacks on Kamala Harris, and the one that was the
Speaker 1: most damaging was on immigration. The message they tested specifically
Speaker 1: was Vice President Harris has been an absolute disaster on immigration,
Speaker 1: is by so called borders are She has turned our
Speaker 1: southern border into a sieve, allowing countless legal immigrants, criminals,
Speaker 1: and drug traffickers to flood into our country, hurt incompetence,
Speaker 1: and open border policies have jeopardized American security and overwhelmed
Speaker 1: our southern border. So that was the most potent hit
Speaker 1: on her that they and they test an economic message
Speaker 1: they tested like something like the anti family message. They
Speaker 1: tested these she's not really black message that wanted to
Speaker 1: do particularly well. But note what the most effective rebuttal
Speaker 1: is here. The number one most effective rebuttal that they
Speaker 1: tested was as a daughter of immigrants, Vice President Harris
Speaker 1: understands that people who want to come to the US
Speaker 1: should do so the legal way like her parents did,
Speaker 1: and that we need a system that creates better legal
Speaker 1: pathways for people to immigrate the right way. Vice President
Speaker 1: Harris understands our nation strength comes from immigrants, and we
Speaker 1: welcome people from all over the world to pursue freedom
Speaker 1: and opportunity here. Vice President Harris will pursue responsible, humane
Speaker 1: immigration policies that welcome, not threaten those seeking a better life.
Speaker 1: So combined Sager the idea of like, Okay, people should
Speaker 1: be coming here legally. Vice President Harris's parents came here legally,
Speaker 1: both of them, and people should come here legally, but
Speaker 1: we also need a system that allows for that, and
Speaker 1: right now that's not possible, and it's a completely trasting
Speaker 1: vision rather than just seating Republicans like we got to
Speaker 1: be tough on the border, got to be tough on
Speaker 1: the border, got to be tough.
Speaker 3: On the border.
Speaker 1: It's an actually alternative vision and one that you know,
Speaker 1: immigration is a complicated issue in terms of the polling
Speaker 1: on it, one that quite a lot of Americans, in fact,
Speaker 1: a majority of Americans also believe in this conception of
Speaker 1: the country. So you know, I think that's a much
Speaker 1: stronger direction to go in, not only because you know,
Speaker 1: I happen to agree with the policy, but also because
Speaker 1: it doesn't open her up to these very clear charges
Speaker 1: of like, you sound completely different than you did just
Speaker 1: four years ago.
Speaker 3: You're fake. And I think that's what it comes down to.
Speaker 2: I mean, I will note, you know, the number two
Speaker 2: thing that they tested was Vice President Harris is a prosecutor.
Speaker 2: Over the course of her career, She's taken on gangs
Speaker 2: and drug smugglers, put a violent cop killer behind bars
Speaker 2: for life. She supports biparts in legislation for border patrol
Speaker 2: to the money they need. She will take border security force,
Speaker 2: putting violent gangs like MS thirteen, drug smugglers, coyotes, and
Speaker 2: human traffickers in prison. So that one, I mean obvious,
Speaker 2: that's a very popular message. I think it should be
Speaker 2: a popular message. Chie, But I think what you're correct
Speaker 2: about is not only about the testing. It's that that
Speaker 2: one is a way less fake than I'm the prosecutor
Speaker 2: who's going to throw these people in jail.
Speaker 3: It's like, no, you're not.
Speaker 2: You flooded our country with eight to ten million illegal people.
Speaker 2: Get out of here. Who do you think you are?
Speaker 2: And now you're going to tell me that you're going
Speaker 2: to take the border. Seriously, it's like you're a joke,
Speaker 2: and everybody who's voting on immigration, all of us know
Speaker 2: that you are full of shit. And that is where
Speaker 2: I don't know though, where the swing state voter will
Speaker 2: receive this message, because this gets to what we just
Speaker 2: talked about with Trump, you need actual discipline. Even with
Speaker 2: Trump on immigration, I have yet to see him actually
Speaker 2: prosecute this case in the press conference and on the airwaves.
Speaker 3: Now, look, it could be coming.
Speaker 2: Like I said, they claim that all of these ads
Speaker 2: are going to come after Labor Day, and they'll probably
Speaker 2: let these ads come out so that they can try
Speaker 2: to do the contrast. But that's a very dangerous territory
Speaker 2: thing for the Trump campaign. And broadly, you know, what
Speaker 2: we see too from Kamala is that if they can
Speaker 2: get her on immigration, which is the number one attack
Speaker 2: that bleeds through to the economy and everything else of
Speaker 2: this woman believes nothing. She's phony, and she's reading off
Speaker 2: of a poll tested script. And this is where her
Speaker 2: refusal to do interviews and her refusal also to you know,
Speaker 2: only participate in one debate, which is a disgrace. I mean,
Speaker 2: that really robs us of that chance to actually press her. Now,
Speaker 2: if I were her, I would do the same thing,
Speaker 2: you know, to be clear cynically, it's the correct move democratically,
Speaker 2: definitely not the best move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Trump, just to give the example at
Speaker 1: that press conference, you know, he's still talking about the
Speaker 1: she became black at the National Association of Black Journalists.
Speaker 1: What he came there to make that attack like that,
Speaker 1: of all the things they tested, was the weakest of
Speaker 1: anything you could say about her, and I think has
Speaker 1: a major possibility of a backlash effect when you know,
Speaker 1: I don't agree with the direction in the frame and whatever,
Speaker 1: but clearly just saying borders are a million times is
Speaker 1: way more effective, That's true, and then forces her on
Speaker 1: the back foot to have to talk about what she
Speaker 1: said before and what she says now and get the
Speaker 1: press to you know, to start pressing the campaign on that,
Speaker 1: et ceteras. And like you said, it's not like they
Speaker 1: don't respond. They have been asking Harris surrogates about the
Speaker 1: quote unquote stolen valor Timwol's thing. They after Jade Vance
Speaker 1: went and track Diurner campaign plane, and Trump was making
Speaker 1: a big deal on us. She's not doing any interviews.
Speaker 1: She felt pressure to have to do interviews, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's I don't think it's the most ideal way for
Speaker 1: her to rebut these charges. But I also don't see
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign really effectively landing the attack at this point.
Speaker 1: And I'm also just not sure of the salience of
Speaker 1: the issue because also the numbers of the border have
Speaker 1: gone down quite dramatically over the past several months. People
Speaker 1: still say the economy is overall the number one thing,
Speaker 1: and I know you'll say, like, oh, well, these things
Speaker 1: are tied together, but most of the people who are
Speaker 1: voting on immigration are Donald Trump voters to start with.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm not sure that this will be
Speaker 1: the critical issue that Republicans want it to be, and
Speaker 1: it certainly won't be if they don't do an effective
Speaker 1: job of raising the saliensge just because if.
Speaker 2: Don vers are down, doesn't mean, like I said, there
Speaker 2: are still eight to ten million new people who are
Speaker 2: here illegally. The total illegal population is probably thirty million.
Speaker 2: Now that's insane. That's almost eleven percent of this entire country.
Speaker 2: So you know, you know, it's not like new numbers
Speaker 2: aren't exactly making that horrible situation worse. And then second,
Speaker 2: you know, of course I do think that they're tied,
Speaker 2: but swing state polling tells us that the white working
Speaker 2: class voter, the people that they allegedly need to you know,
Speaker 2: win over, that is their number one issue is immigration.
Speaker 2: It's not just the economy, and in the eyes of
Speaker 2: the voters, the two are tied. So look, Arizona and
Speaker 2: Arizona obviously very very border hawkish state that we have
Speaker 2: seen from Mark Kelly and even the Democrats who are
Speaker 2: willing to be like, I'm standing up to Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: So that's where I want to see Mark Kelly. Maybe
Speaker 2: you know, someone in the press could ask him a question,
Speaker 2: be like, you criticize Joe, and so do you stand
Speaker 2: with Kamala Harris, Like which way do you think she's
Speaker 2: going to go? And then if he says, well, she's
Speaker 2: going to go in my direction, we can go to
Speaker 2: her and be like, is that true? Is that what
Speaker 2: you agree with? Because that's very different from where you
Speaker 2: were three years ago. I just come back to when
Speaker 2: you have the media like this in your pocket, it's
Speaker 2: very difficult unless the Trump people are ultra disciplined and
Speaker 2: force them to actually ask something. But if they continue
Speaker 2: this bullshit about AI, I mean, that's a gift to
Speaker 2: CNN seeing all they want to do all day at
Speaker 2: CNN and MSNBC is look at this loser Trump talking
Speaker 2: about AI, crowd photos and attacking Brian Kemp. Now, if
Speaker 2: you don't do any of that and you only talk
Speaker 2: about immigration, they got to talk about something and that's
Speaker 2: how you actually get them to respond. So the discipline
Speaker 2: and the lack of discipline from the Trump people is
Speaker 2: honestly maddening to watch whenever you see somebody like this
Speaker 2: just flip on a dime in the national public eye.
Speaker 1: And obviously Trump has always been on discipline, But to
Speaker 1: your point in previous iteration in twenty sixteen, in particular,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, he was kind of I was like
Speaker 1: all over the place, it's way too online. There wasn't
Speaker 1: really an effective messaging strategy there either and lo and behold.
Speaker 4: Even as an incumbent president, he ends up losing.
Speaker 1: But in twenty sixteen, his lack of discipline worked to
Speaker 1: his advantage because he had his finger on the pulse
Speaker 1: of something, and he just doesn't this time. I mean,
Speaker 1: the only finger on the pulse with Trump right now
Speaker 1: is just like his own sense of unfairness and grievance,
Speaker 1: which isn't At that point, there was still that sense
Speaker 1: of grievance, but it was like connected to how a
Speaker 1: broader population.
Speaker 4: Now it's just about him.
Speaker 1: It's just about like how unfair this was to him personally,
Speaker 1: and not this broader finger on the pulse message that
Speaker 1: is actually landing. And so yeah, even if they have
Speaker 1: an effective point that they can make here, which again
Speaker 1: I think it is probably the best in terms of
Speaker 1: issue focus, it is the best issue focus for them,
Speaker 1: but he is unable to drive the point on an
Speaker 1: issue that has always been one that he's been super
Speaker 1: comfortable talking about. So it's kind of wild to see
Speaker 1: him flailing even in this area.
Speaker 2: Only ever, in the words of Obama, said never underestimate
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's ability to fuck things up with Trump. I
Speaker 2: think the same logic applies. Let's move to the next
Speaker 2: part here, the Joe Rogan controversy. This also is emblematic
Speaker 2: of me of Trump and many of his online boosters,
Speaker 2: but not only making a bad strategic move, but just
Speaker 2: showing tremendous, just tremendous, Like they're coming at this from
Speaker 2: a position of such weakness where they seem to believe
Speaker 2: that Joe Rogan praising RFK Junior and allegedly endorsing him,
Speaker 2: as claimed by certain Twitter clippers incorrectly, was enough for
Speaker 2: them to turn and to begin attacking one of the
Speaker 2: most popular podcasters in the entire country. So here we
Speaker 2: have the clip that set everything off, Rogan talking about
Speaker 2: RFK Junior in a positive manner.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 10: That's just what they do. That's politics. They do it
Speaker 10: on the left, they do it on the right. They
Speaker 10: gaslight you, they manipulate you, they promote narratives. And the
Speaker 10: only one who's not doing that is Robert F. Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 3: You a fan, Yeah, I am a fan.
Speaker 10: Yeah. He's the only one that makes sense to me.
Speaker 10: He's the only one that he doesn't attack people. He
Speaker 10: attacks actions and ideas.
Speaker 3: But he's.
Speaker 10: He's much more reasonable and intelligent. I mean, the guy
Speaker 10: was an environmental attorney and cleaned up the East River.
Speaker 10: He's a legitimate guy.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's all he said. Now that was construed
Speaker 2: as a quote unquote endorsement by several people on Twitter.
Speaker 2: By the way, shall we all just take this as
Speaker 2: an evidence of when some random person you've never heard
Speaker 2: of says Joe Rogan endorses, maybe listen to the clip
Speaker 2: for yourself, and if you don't use the word endorsement,
Speaker 2: then it's probably not an endorsement. He was saying things
Speaker 2: are a positive. Rogan responds, let's put this up here.
Speaker 2: He says, for the record, this isn't an endorsement. This
Speaker 2: is me saying I like RFK Junior as a person.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate the way he discusses things with civility
Speaker 2: and intelligence.
Speaker 3: I think we could use more of that in this world.
Speaker 2: I also think Trump raising his fist and saying fight
Speaker 2: after getting shot is one of the most American fucking
Speaker 2: things of all time. I am not the guy to
Speaker 2: get political information from. If you want that from a comic,
Speaker 2: go to Dave Smith. He actually knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 2: Now this, you know, kind of not necessarily walking away
Speaker 2: from the RFK endorsement or whatever was enough for then
Speaker 2: Trump to see it.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there.
Speaker 2: Trump now says, it will be interesting to see how
Speaker 2: loudly Joe Rogan gets booed the next time that he
Speaker 2: enters the UFC.
Speaker 3: Ring MAGA twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: This is where, again Trump's pettiness is so ludicrous to
Speaker 2: anybody who even tangentially follows the UFC. It's like, are
Speaker 2: we to believe that Rogan, who quite literally is tied
Speaker 2: to the sport of UFC in its image from its infancy,
Speaker 2: and that the fans there who probably all listen to
Speaker 2: his podcast, are going to boo Joe Rogan for saying
Speaker 2: that he likes RFK Junior, or because Trump tells him to.
Speaker 2: This is where Trump overestimates his own power. Just because
Speaker 2: they cheer for you whenever you enter the octagon doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that they're going to just do or whenever you
Speaker 2: enter the stadium or whatever, does not mean that they're
Speaker 2: going to like just follow your instructions to boo him
Speaker 2: whenever he And it's just it's again, it's petty, and
Speaker 2: it's one completely from a position of weakness, and I
Speaker 2: just think it was such was so stupid for them
Speaker 2: to be engaging in.
Speaker 3: Because what happened this weekend.
Speaker 2: Trump and Shane Gillis or sorry, Rogan and Shane Gillis
Speaker 2: are making fun of Trump at their latest I think
Speaker 2: the Kill Tony show. The clip just came out where
Speaker 2: they're making fun of the situation and in Madison Square
Speaker 2: Garden in front of millions of people, and everybody was
Speaker 2: laughing at the idea.
Speaker 3: That Trump was going to be attacking Rogan. So anyway,
Speaker 3: very stupid idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I did a whole monologue. You recall
Speaker 1: it not the way that the left would only fixate
Speaker 1: on the things that Rogan would say that they really
Speaker 1: disagreed with, and when he would say things they do
Speaker 1: agree with, they would just completely ignore. And it's like,
Speaker 1: you have this very popular figure who has a lot
Speaker 1: of cloud. I mean, I understand why like a quote
Speaker 1: unquote endorsement from him matters. You remember when he endorsed Bernie.
Speaker 1: It was similar of him being like, oh, I'll proably
Speaker 1: vote for this. I wasn't like I endorse Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 1: and the Sanders camp smartly took it and ran with it,
Speaker 1: because this is a guy who has a lot of
Speaker 1: sway and cloud with his audience. So why would you
Speaker 1: want to, you know, blow this thing up massively and
Speaker 1: make it appear like he's an adversary attack him aggressively
Speaker 1: when you know he does buy and large now talk
Speaker 1: about he criticizes the Democrats way more than the Republicans.
Speaker 1: He does buy and large host a lot of conservative viewpoints.
Speaker 1: He has been very good for a lot of elements
Speaker 1: of the right and so for them to you know,
Speaker 1: turn on a dime and have the freak out that
Speaker 1: they did, it was very indicative of how insecure their feeling.
Speaker 1: And then it was also interesting to me that he
Speaker 1: felt enough pressure because he normally doesn't respond to any
Speaker 1: of the controversies, he felt enough pressure to have to
Speaker 1: come out and say, well, it was really an endorsement.
Speaker 1: And here's something cool that Donald Trump did too, by
Speaker 1: the way, So he clearly was feeling the heat from
Speaker 1: an audience that has become increasingly right leaning over time.
Speaker 1: But just to give you a sense, put B seven
Speaker 1: up on the screen of the level of meltdown from
Speaker 1: from some of this cats heard in particular.
Speaker 4: But this was there were a lot who were saying
Speaker 4: things like this. He says.
Speaker 1: So, I've never been a Joe Rogan fan, can't stand him. Yes,
Speaker 1: he has a popular podcast. I've always thought he was
Speaker 1: absolutely politically dumb. He's great at figuring things out. Two
Speaker 1: years after we do what a legend? So did it
Speaker 1: surprise me? Hand he endorsed idiot RFK Junior today. Loll No,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the same fing idiot who endorsed Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: He's the podcast equivalent of a dumb blonde joke. And
Speaker 1: this came after Catter. I don't know if we have
Speaker 1: these tweets after cat Turd. Previously had been like guess
Speaker 1: what to all of you lefty idiots out there, Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan can say whatever he wants on his podcast and
Speaker 1: you can just go cry about it. Was basically of
Speaker 1: the tweeting about it.
Speaker 2: Joe Rogan can say anything wants on this podcast. There's
Speaker 2: nothing you can do about it but cry. January thirty first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now a little bit of a change of tone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, First of all, how did cat turd become a
Speaker 2: fig figure?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, there's certain things the Catter has
Speaker 2: done this, which I'm not going to mention here on
Speaker 2: the air, but anyways.
Speaker 3: Involves a dog.
Speaker 2: That's all I'll say that people can go and look
Speaker 2: into for themselves. My only point is like, how exactly
Speaker 2: did figures like this become the so called like maga
Speaker 2: cultural taste makers. It was by you know, sniveling at
Speaker 2: the boot of Donald Trump. That's all he's done this
Speaker 2: entire time. I remember, he would attack Jeff Sessions, he
Speaker 2: would attack anybody who would come out against Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: It's like a cultish figure, and I mean probably to
Speaker 2: expected from a cat toord like individual. But the fact
Speaker 2: that he has, the fact that he has such way,
Speaker 2: such sway, I mean, he was on the Tucker Carlson Show,
Speaker 2: for God's sake, does tell us about his position, you know,
Speaker 2: in the modern GOP.
Speaker 3: And so that is the problem.
Speaker 2: And clearly, you know, attacking people like Rogan just shows
Speaker 2: Trump both on the back foot insecure for god knows
Speaker 2: what for no reason and then just making up this
Speaker 2: bs which does tell us again that the more that
Speaker 2: the pettiness is about him and the less connected it
Speaker 2: is to policy, the worst that Trump is going to perform.
Speaker 3: As we all learned in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, yes, okay, So there has been some
Speaker 1: just incredible interviews that Nancy Pelosi has been giving, just
Speaker 1: sort of casually savaging Joe Biden and his political team.
Speaker 1: In particular, she just put on a book, I think
Speaker 1: the Art of Power is what it's called that what
Speaker 1: it's called something.
Speaker 2: Like that, The Art of Power available at Costco, which recently.
Speaker 4: We put in a request for her to come on.
Speaker 3: By the way, we would love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't see it really happening, but it would
Speaker 1: be interesting anyway. So she's been doing a lot of
Speaker 1: interviews in the context of this book that's coming out,
Speaker 1: and she has just been sort of, you know, spilling
Speaker 1: the tea on what went behind went on behind the
Speaker 1: scenes during the pressure campaign. Let's take a look at
Speaker 1: this first one and what she reveals.
Speaker 11: I didn't accept a letter as anything but a letter,
Speaker 11: I mean, I mean, And another there are some people
Speaker 11: who were unhappy with the letter. Let me say some
Speaker 11: said that. Some people were un feel like I'll put
Speaker 11: in some of the else is now because it was
Speaker 11: a I don't even know. It didn't sound like Joe
Speaker 11: Biden to me. It really didn't.
Speaker 8: So, but please tell us what you told President Biden
Speaker 8: to persuade him to step aside.
Speaker 11: Well, I've never come I've never shared any conversations with
Speaker 11: a president of the United States publicly.
Speaker 8: No, it's said that he's furious at you, is he?
Speaker 11: Well, he knows that I love him very much.
Speaker 8: I understand that you don't want to own this, but
Speaker 8: it is so well reported that you were the leader
Speaker 8: of a pressure campaign.
Speaker 11: No, I wasn't a leader of any pressure's party. Well,
Speaker 11: let me say things that I didn't do. I didn't
Speaker 11: call one person. I did not call one person. I
Speaker 11: love him so much. I think he's been really a
Speaker 11: fantastic president of the United States. So I really wanted
Speaker 11: him to make a decision of a better campaign because
Speaker 11: they were not facing the fact of what was happening.
Speaker 11: Just so back then, I've never been that impressed with
Speaker 11: his political.
Speaker 5: Operation, Biden's operation.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I'm not. I mean, it just happened. They won
Speaker 11: the White House, bravo. But so my concern was, this
Speaker 11: ain't happening, and we have to make a decision for
Speaker 11: us this to happen, and the president has to make
Speaker 11: the decision for that to happen. Let me just say,
Speaker 11: I won't say necessarily I knew what I was doing
Speaker 11: at that time. I knew what I was doing in
Speaker 11: the whole thing, not just that. What was and what
Speaker 11: was that that Donald Trump would never set foot in
Speaker 11: the White House again.
Speaker 1: So a lot that's interesting there. First of all, she
Speaker 1: talks about the letter, remember the letter that Biden put
Speaker 1: out and his team, saying like, I am in the
Speaker 1: race period of an end of story in this conversation
Speaker 1: needs to stop. And then she goes on Morning Jo
Speaker 1: and says, well, waiting for him to decide, and they're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: he said he Well, we're waiting for him to decide.
Speaker 1: So she says, I just saw it as a letter,
Speaker 1: and that didn't really sound like him to me. Then
Speaker 1: she has this very mob boss like type language plausible
Speaker 1: deniability when she's getting pressed on okay, what did you do?
Speaker 4: What did you say to him?
Speaker 1: And she says, well, I can always say I didn't
Speaker 1: call one person. I was not the leader of a
Speaker 1: pressure party. I did not call even one person. And
Speaker 1: then in the second interview with The New Yorker, she
Speaker 1: has to tell you the year I've never been that
Speaker 1: impressed with his political campaign. He won the White House, Bravo,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't effectively. He wasn't grappling with reality that
Speaker 1: he was losing. He was not presenting any sort of
Speaker 1: a plan or ability to turn it around, and was
Speaker 1: in complete denial. Remember the reports from the time that
Speaker 1: she was like, get Donalin on the phone because he's
Speaker 1: not giving the straight truth about what these numbers are.
Speaker 1: He was in denial, just like Trump is now about
Speaker 1: where his poll numbers actually were and what was required.
Speaker 4: To turn it around. So very very interesting comments.
Speaker 2: For so yeah, it's absolutely fascinating and it does just
Speaker 2: tell us about what that pressure campaign look like. We also,
Speaker 2: by the way, Biden has now done more interviews than
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris since he has dropped out of the race.
Speaker 2: He sat down with a CBS news and he talked
Speaker 2: about his decision to drop out.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 12: Let's begin with your decision at your home Rohoboth Beach, Delaware,
Speaker 12: late July, with your family, and you make this historic decision.
Speaker 12: Tell me the story.
Speaker 7: Look, fools, we had showed that it was neck and
Speaker 7: neck race would have been down on the wire. But
Speaker 7: what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues and
Speaker 7: the House and Senates thought that I was going to
Speaker 7: hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if
Speaker 7: I stayed in the race, that would be the topic
Speaker 7: you be interviewing about. Why did Nancy Pelosi say? Why
Speaker 7: did some it? And and I thought it'd be a
Speaker 7: real distraction Number one. Number two. When I ran the
Speaker 7: first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president.
Speaker 7: I can't even say how old I am. It's hard
Speaker 7: for me to get out of my mouth. But things
Speaker 7: got moving so quickly it didn't happen. And the combination
Speaker 7: was that I thought was a critical issue for me.
Speaker 7: Still is not a joke, maintaining this democracy. But I
Speaker 7: thought it was important because although I it's a great
Speaker 7: honor being president, I think I'm an obligation to the
Speaker 7: country to do what I the most important thing to
Speaker 7: can do, and that is we must, we must, we
Speaker 7: must defeat Trump.
Speaker 3: So what do we see from that? Now?
Speaker 2: He claims he was a transition president, even though he
Speaker 2: denied being that transition president a mere month ago. Whenever
Speaker 2: he was still trying to remain in the race. Now
Speaker 2: it's all about, Oh, it would have been a distraction. Well,
Speaker 2: it was a distraction whenever you used to clinging to power.
Speaker 2: What ultimately forced him out was not I think it
Speaker 2: was obviously Pelosi. It was the donors, and it was
Speaker 2: everybody's just saying, not only have no path to victory,
Speaker 2: you will have no money to pursue it. So he
Speaker 2: held on to his very last gap, and let's not
Speaker 2: forget he still continues to cling to the American presidency.
Speaker 2: We have two segments we're about to get to where
Speaker 2: the US is green lighting a literal invasion of Russia
Speaker 2: and where Iran is poised to begin a possible regional
Speaker 2: and maybe even global war with US military assets that
Speaker 2: are streaming there. He has his finger on the button
Speaker 2: and the nuclear codes. It remains an enduring and terrifying position.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no doubt about it. And I think reading
Speaker 1: into what he said there a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: he says, oh, well, the media wasn't going to stop,
Speaker 1: and you would be asking me right now, what is Nancy?
Speaker 1: What about what Nancy Pelosi said? And other leaders, she
Speaker 1: and others really credibly threatened that if he didn't remember
Speaker 1: the quote, you could do this the easy way or the.
Speaker 4: Hard way right.
Speaker 1: She very credibly threatened that basically like we're not going away,
Speaker 1: We're not letting a drop. Every day until you go
Speaker 1: is going to be you haven't deal with. Pelosi came
Speaker 1: out against you, Schumer came out against you. Hakeem Jeffreys
Speaker 1: came out against you. Barack Obama came out against you,
Speaker 1: like ratcheting up the pressure up up until he was
Speaker 1: going to go. So you know, he came to the
Speaker 1: conclusion at long last that this was not a sustainable
Speaker 1: position for him. And you know Pelosi's comments though about
Speaker 1: his being unimpressed with his political team, which by the way,
Speaker 1: I think is incredibly fair, given they had way too
Speaker 1: much self confidence and arrogance about their political prowess. When
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty primary he didn't win, he had that
Speaker 1: handed to him. And then in twenty twenty in the
Speaker 1: general election, you're running against Trump who was doing all
Speaker 1: kinds of wild stuff and shooting himself in the foot
Speaker 1: every single day, and you barely eke down a victory
Speaker 1: even in what should have been really favorable circumstances. So
Speaker 1: I think Pelosi is actually right about that, but it
Speaker 1: clearly alloy those who were on Biden's political team. We
Speaker 1: had a long interview with Anita Dunn, who was one
Speaker 1: of those individuals in Politico, and she made a little
Speaker 1: like passive aggressive undercutting comment of Nancy Pelosi. She said,
Speaker 1: we can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 4: This is C three.
Speaker 1: She said, the task in front of us, this is
Speaker 1: Anita Dunn, is to win the selection, not let Donald
Speaker 1: Trump become president again, and to win the House of Representatives,
Speaker 1: which had certain leaders in twenty twenty two done a
Speaker 1: slightly better job. Maybe we would control today, but we
Speaker 1: don't clearly a shot.
Speaker 4: At Nancy Pelosi there.
Speaker 1: So that's how that's how people in DC returned fires
Speaker 1: through like bitch passive aggression.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, there's no other way to
Speaker 2: describe this entire interview as just literally bitchy. She's like, well,
Speaker 2: certain leaders and people, you know, denied us the ability
Speaker 2: to get back, and that just really kneecapped.
Speaker 3: And I mean, this woman too is a liar.
Speaker 2: She up until the day before Biden dropped out, was
Speaker 2: saying that they still had a pass to victory.
Speaker 3: Everything was fine. Loo I mean that yeah.
Speaker 2: In here, she says that if you look at the
Speaker 2: polls and what was it the poll dials, She says, oh, in.
Speaker 1: The debate, Actually, people liked the second happening.
Speaker 3: No they didn't, No, they didn't. He was actually worse.
Speaker 2: It was just weird, you know, considering how terrible it
Speaker 2: was in the beginning. His very first answer was a
Speaker 2: national humiliation, and it was just a downswing from there.
Speaker 3: You don't need a dial to tell you that.
Speaker 2: And if you do have a dial that tells you otherwise,
Speaker 2: you should fire your dial provider.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, she was part of the team that was bloy
Speaker 1: smoke up his ass and everyone else's and lying and
Speaker 1: denying the reality of his current state. Lying, I think
Speaker 1: to him, but he needs a grown man. He knows
Speaker 1: how to read a pole. But giving him only the
Speaker 1: data that painted the rosiest picture. And so you know,
Speaker 1: that's when Pelosi comes in, is like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: let me talk to Donalin, who is a top Biden
Speaker 1: aid as well about what's going on. That's when the
Speaker 1: rubber hit the road of we're going to break open
Speaker 1: this bubble that you're living in, this alternate reality in
Speaker 1: which you're doing well and in which you're winning. So
Speaker 1: you know, I did see a report. This will be
Speaker 1: something to keep an eye on that. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris is not good historically a building a political team.
Speaker 1: So the fact that she could just you know, turn
Speaker 1: on the lights and the Biden campaigns, switch over the
Speaker 1: signs and roll out and be good to go is overall,
Speaker 1: I think, a tremendous advantage for her. However, there is
Speaker 1: an awkwardness between the people like Anita Dunn who's now
Speaker 1: on the Harris team, who were Biden people up until
Speaker 1: the very bitter end, and now the new people who
Speaker 1: have been brought in, like a David Pluff who also
Speaker 1: has a very senior role and who is you know,
Speaker 1: part of Obama World. No Obama World team is very
Speaker 1: adversarial to the Biden world. So there is apparently some
Speaker 1: internal campaign tension that they're working through right now. And
Speaker 1: all of these campaigns are turf wars. You know, people
Speaker 1: are very jealous and protective over what is their sphere
Speaker 1: of influence and what is their level of power, and
Speaker 1: that's the way all of DC operates. So you can
Speaker 1: only imagine when you had this campaign structure set up
Speaker 1: for President Biden with certain advisors who have been close
Speaker 1: to him for a million years and who thought that
Speaker 1: they were locked in in their spot of power, and
Speaker 1: then oh suddenly you got David Pluff breathing down your
Speaker 1: neck and telling you what to do, and others like
Speaker 1: him as well. You can imagine how that would breed
Speaker 1: some tension and resentment. As of yet, it doesn't manifest
Speaker 1: in terms of the performance. I think anyone would have
Speaker 1: to say, just judging by the numbers and the you know,
Speaker 1: the look of the campaign and what they've been able
Speaker 1: to pull together, et cetera, that just from a pure
Speaker 1: political perspective, they've done a very effective job. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's something that is sort of brewing under the surface
Speaker 1: that could come out later as a source of problems.
Speaker 3: I totally agree with that.
Speaker 2: And look, I think that the book right now, everyone's
Speaker 2: disciplined and they're keeping it, you know, enthusiasm, all that.
Speaker 2: The twenty twenty five book on how this all came
Speaker 2: to be. I cannot wait. Mark Halpritn he'll make his
Speaker 2: grand return. He is the one he read, so he
Speaker 2: got the scoop. Remember he was the one who had
Speaker 2: the exact timeline for how it was all going to go.
Speaker 2: Is you right about that?
Speaker 3: He was totally correct? About the timeline dropout. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: all of that, and.
Speaker 1: Pelosi says she's going to write a book about it,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that'll'll be interesting.
Speaker 3: I'll have to bio.
Speaker 2: I look, I am a sucker for those inside stories
Speaker 2: for how it all came about, and I do think
Speaker 2: it was particularly insane. And if anything, no Biden book
Speaker 2: has sold well. The only one that will sell is
Speaker 2: about how we finally got him to go away forever.
Speaker 2: Let's turn to these two very troubling foreign policy situations.
Speaker 2: So we have a crazy situation right now in Ukraine
Speaker 2: media that barely even wants to report it. The United
Speaker 2: States is currently backing a full blown invasion of Russia.
Speaker 3: Let's go ahead and put this up there.
Speaker 2: On the screen. This is from the Institute for the
Speaker 2: Study of War. Of course, you want to color in
Speaker 2: and keep in mind their own bias, but this is
Speaker 2: basically the best data that we have. Russian forces have
Speaker 2: been pushed back some thirty square mile kilometers or so
Speaker 2: inside of their own territory out and again this is
Speaker 2: internationally recognized Russian territory, not territory that they have previously
Speaker 2: claimed in the Curse region of Russia. According to Russian officials.
Speaker 2: Some one hundred thousand Russian citizens have had to flee
Speaker 2: the area. They are approximately one million who are there.
Speaker 2: There are several towns that have been taken over by
Speaker 2: the Ukrainians in a so called shock offensive. Now, the
Speaker 2: reason why it's a shock is that, according to the
Speaker 2: Ukrainians and to the US narrative, this is supposed to
Speaker 2: be a war of defense from invasion. So to counter
Speaker 2: their invasion Crystal, they have decided to invade territory which
Speaker 2: they deemed Russian. Now, philosophically, I don't really have a
Speaker 2: problem with this. Of course, whenever you're in a war,
Speaker 2: you should be doing whatever you need to. The issue
Speaker 2: is not what the Ukrainians are doing. It's the fact
Speaker 2: that US NATO weaponry is being employed to literally invade Russia.
Speaker 2: And when we flip it around and we consider what
Speaker 2: it would look like here, this is not disputed territory.
Speaker 2: This is internationally recognized an invasion.
Speaker 3: And that is.
Speaker 2: Literally the justification for every dollar of the hundreds of
Speaker 2: billions that we have shipped to Ukraine is to defend
Speaker 2: against this invasion. And then just consider, can any great
Speaker 2: power nation sit there and tolerate and invasion of its
Speaker 2: own territory. If Mexico invaded even up until the city
Speaker 2: of Laredo or El Paso, would we tolerate that.
Speaker 3: No, we would bomb them back.
Speaker 2: To the Stone Age as the as the you know,
Speaker 2: the sayings go. Now, let's be fair too. This has
Speaker 2: also demonstrated the tremendous problems with the Russian military that
Speaker 2: they haven't been able to immediately push us back. Put
Speaker 2: this up there, for example on the screen The Financial
Speaker 2: Times reports Russian reinforcements have failed to push back the
Speaker 2: Ukrainian incursion.
Speaker 3: The sixth day.
Speaker 2: President Zelensky has openly acknowledged taking the war to Russian territory.
Speaker 2: And there is no doubt crystal that this is one
Speaker 2: hundred percent with the backing of the United States of America.
Speaker 2: And given Joe Biden's decline that we just talked about
Speaker 2: at length, is he even in charge here? And as
Speaker 2: Americans can we sit here and risk a literal invasion
Speaker 2: of Russia at the same time that we have billions
Speaker 2: of dollars in military assets steaming towards the Middle East,
Speaker 2: and with the Israelis openly saying Iran is going to
Speaker 2: attack us and the United States is going to have
Speaker 2: to once again spend billions to defend Israel from that attack.
Speaker 2: How can we really tolerate the risk of these two
Speaker 2: and the fact that they probably contribute. The Iranians say, hey,
Speaker 2: we got a lot of military assets tied up over there,
Speaker 2: and the Russians is saying got a lot of military's
Speaker 2: assets tied up over there.
Speaker 4: That's very true.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, you know, the media has basically lost interest
Speaker 1: in this story.
Speaker 3: There's rial coverage of it.
Speaker 1: You know, Jadie Vance and all of his many interviews
Speaker 1: he did yesterday, there was not i think one question.
Speaker 2: About He brought it up once in a print interview,
Speaker 2: but yes, to any of the media people, they didn't
Speaker 2: bring it up.
Speaker 4: They didn't bring it up, like what could be more important?
Speaker 1: We're backing the invasion of a nuclear armed superpower, and hey,
Speaker 1: how's this going to end?
Speaker 4: Where is this leading? What's your plan?
Speaker 1: You know, if you were in the White House, what
Speaker 1: would your side of the equation be?
Speaker 4: And there's zero interest in it.
Speaker 1: You know, people have lost interest in this story because
Speaker 1: it is a lot messier than it was in the
Speaker 1: early days when it was just like go Ukraine and
Speaker 1: Ukraine had Russia on the back foot. Now you're in
Speaker 1: this long, grinding war of attrition.
Speaker 4: And make no.
Speaker 1: Doubt about it, the fact that the Biden administration finally
Speaker 1: caved and sent those F sixteen fighter jets, that is
Speaker 1: a big part of the reason why they were able
Speaker 1: to make these games. You'll recall early on in this war,
Speaker 1: Biden was very resistant. He was very careful about what
Speaker 1: he sent. There was a lot of concern about potential escalation.
Speaker 1: There was, I mean, the idea in the beginning that
Speaker 1: you would send F sixteen fighter jets to enable Ukrainian
Speaker 1: invasion of Russia would have been considered insane. And yet
Speaker 1: here we are and no one's even talking about it,
Speaker 1: which is even more insane.
Speaker 2: Quite frant we have that. So let's go and put
Speaker 2: please D four up on the screen. In terms of
Speaker 2: the F sixteens, they began to arrive. Now, actually, even
Speaker 2: more troubling is not only the F sixteens and the
Speaker 2: way that they've gotten their hands on that. It's that
Speaker 2: all of the precision guided munitions are very, very difficult
Speaker 2: to manufacture here in the US. We have very limited
Speaker 2: stocks of them. And of course, what has the Biden
Speaker 2: administration done. They've decided to green light shipping those precision
Speaker 2: guided munitions for the F sixteen back to Ukraine. And
Speaker 2: so they're going to be using hot like precision guided
Speaker 2: weaponry from US stockpiles, which are difficult to manufacture when
Speaker 2: we're in the middle of two global conflagrations, which possibly
Speaker 2: and very you know, I wouldn't say likely, but possibly
Speaker 2: that the US forces could get themselves into. We also
Speaker 2: literally have Zelensky openly acknowledging this D three please where
Speaker 2: for days, And usually when the Ukrainians pull some terrorist
Speaker 2: attack or whatever in Russia, they're like, oh, what a tragedy.
Speaker 2: You know, it's crazy that somebody would do that. They're
Speaker 2: just openly saying it. In his video address that was
Speaker 2: late on Saturday, he said Ukrainian military is pushing the
Speaker 2: war onto the aggressor territory. Now again, I want to say, philosophically,
Speaker 2: I don't care about this. It is normal actually to
Speaker 2: try and hit your enemy wherever they are and to
Speaker 2: throw them off balance. But when it's America's role and
Speaker 2: we're the ones who are funding all of this, and
Speaker 2: we are the ones who experience any potential blowback, then
Speaker 2: that's a real issue. We also you know, shockingly enough, Yes,
Speaker 2: it's true, the Ukrainians can pull this off. And then
Speaker 2: this morning in the Wall Street Journal they talk about
Speaker 2: how the Ukrainian commander is begging for more troops.
Speaker 3: They have no idea what to do.
Speaker 2: They've had six days worth of success and now they're like,
Speaker 2: do we owd this territory?
Speaker 3: What do we do with this territory? Now?
Speaker 2: We have to pull stuff away from previous defensive fronts
Speaker 2: over here. Their own military leadership has no idea what
Speaker 2: to do with these gains. So, yeah, it's been a
Speaker 2: good pr stunt.
Speaker 3: Can you hold it? You know?
Speaker 2: Are are you now going to annex it into Ukraine?
Speaker 2: Are you going to I mean imagine the hypocrisy and
Speaker 2: the sheer insanity of bargaining, you know, and claiming that
Speaker 2: your territory needs to be given back to you, but
Speaker 2: then occupying internationally recognized hair toy swapping it. Now, that's
Speaker 2: a very different moral narrative, isn't it then saying well,
Speaker 2: we're just fighting back against the people who have invaded
Speaker 2: our country. Yeah, And that's the problem, you know, is
Speaker 2: that the longer this drags on, there's the moral ambiguity increases.
Speaker 2: The so called justness of their cause decreases their overall
Speaker 2: ability to even stand this without literally tens of billions
Speaker 2: of dollars a month having to flow there in Western Aid.
Speaker 2: It shows us that this cannot go on forever, and
Speaker 2: we all know how it's going to end, and so
Speaker 2: they refuse to end it. Currently we refused, frankly, to
Speaker 2: responsibly end it, and we bear the ultimate risk for
Speaker 2: anything going on.
Speaker 1: And that's the real question. I mean, this has been
Speaker 1: you know, for for Ukraine. That's been a real show
Speaker 1: of force. It has exposed, as you said, you know,
Speaker 1: world weaknesses on the Russian side that they haven't been
Speaker 1: able to repel these forces on their own territory. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians are trying to demonstrate that the entry of
Speaker 1: the F sixteen's into this conflict is a real game
Speaker 1: changer for them. They also just called up a bunch
Speaker 1: more men and are trying to constitute new battalions that
Speaker 1: they also want to use to try to bolster the
Speaker 1: manpower issues that remain a big problem for them. That
Speaker 1: ammunition issues remain a big problem for them. They're still
Speaker 1: taking on a lot of water in eastern Ukraine. The
Speaker 1: most hopeful thing you could say about this, No one
Speaker 1: really understands or.
Speaker 4: Knows what their strategy is except for them.
Speaker 1: Maybe even the US doesn't know, because they seem to
Speaker 1: keep things, a lot of things from us. The most
Speaker 1: hopeful thing you could say is, well, maybe they're trying
Speaker 1: to strengthen their hand for potential talks.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's what the play is here.
Speaker 1: And if so, okay, but let's have some indication from
Speaker 1: our leaders what we think where we think this should lead,
Speaker 1: where we think this is going. Since we are so
Speaker 1: deeply intertwined with the Ukrainian cause and with this offensive,
Speaker 1: and you know, if this is to strengthen the hand
Speaker 1: for potential talks, we need to start laying the groundwork
Speaker 1: also for what a you know, not maybe a just
Speaker 1: resolution of this outcome, but a reasonable resolution to this
Speaker 1: outcome that everyone could be angry about but ultimately live
Speaker 1: with might look like.
Speaker 4: Because when you just.
Speaker 1: Have the continuing narrative from Zelensky and from us that
Speaker 1: there's not going to be any territory lost and it's
Speaker 1: all or nothing and we're in it forever, then it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to turn around and come to the table
Speaker 1: and have talks and try to come to some sort
Speaker 1: of a Resolutional.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, very true. All right, let's get to Iran.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's a lot going on here. Obviously, you'll
Speaker 1: recall we still have we're still awaiting whatever the Iranian
Speaker 1: response is going to be to that Israeli provocation assassination
Speaker 1: on Iranian soil the day before the new president was inaugurated. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: let's put this up on the screen. This is Barack Revide,
Speaker 1: who's close both with the DC establishment and with the
Speaker 1: Israeli establishment. He says, the updated assessment of the Israeli
Speaker 1: intelligence community is that Iran has decided to attack Israel
Speaker 1: directly in retaliation for the assassination of from US political
Speaker 1: leader Ismael Hania, and may do within days, even before the.
Speaker 4: August fifteenth hostage deal talks.
Speaker 1: Per two sources, we also have some indication from the
Speaker 1: Iranian side that maybe potentially or in the other direction,
Speaker 1: Israel is really bracing for a massive offensive year, and
Speaker 1: the US, judging by the military assets that we are
Speaker 1: rushing into the region, are also bracing for a massive
Speaker 1: retaliation from Iran. Here's what Iran had to say about it,
Speaker 1: in part, it can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: They said on Saturday. They want to avoid negatively impacting
Speaker 1: Gaza ceasefire talks. This is e two guys with its
Speaker 1: anticipated retaliation. Achieving a permanent ceasefire and Gaza remains a priority,
Speaker 1: Aroun's permanent mission to the UN said in a statement.
Speaker 1: It also said any agreement accepted by Hamas would be
Speaker 1: acceptable to Iran as well. The statement condemned Hania's assassination
Speaker 1: Tehran as a quote violation of Iranian national security and sovereignty.
Speaker 1: Iran emphasized its right to self defense with stressed it
Speaker 1: hopes its response would not impede the ongoing ceasefire efforts. Now,
Speaker 1: as far as those ceasefire efforts go, Sagur don't appear
Speaker 1: to be going that well, because I mean, who has
Speaker 1: It's long been clear him and his government don't have.
Speaker 3: An interest I want it.
Speaker 1: They don't want to cease fire. They've played all these
Speaker 1: games of pretending like they're interested, but then throwing up
Speaker 1: some obstacle at the last minute. And you have new
Speaker 1: reports that maybe the Biden ministration can be a little
Speaker 1: bit tougher on them, but no indication that we're going
Speaker 1: to actually do the things we need to do, which
Speaker 1: is to say, listen, you're on your own. We're cutting
Speaker 1: off weaponshipments, et cetera. I could put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. Diplomatic sources told Haretz that it has been
Speaker 1: clarified to Netnyaho that the Biden administration is reaching the
Speaker 1: point where his behavior would result in the White House
Speaker 1: publicly accusing him of preventing the release of the hostages.
Speaker 1: Up till now, the White House has only blamed Tamas
Speaker 1: for any problems in the ceasefire talks. Now allegedly they're saying, well,
Speaker 1: we'll blame you and tomasus.
Speaker 3: Twelfth who cares at this point?
Speaker 1: And that's the thing is, like, you know, we've how
Speaker 1: many of these Oh they're upset behind the scenes, and
Speaker 1: they're being tougher and he's really going to be tough
Speaker 1: this time before.
Speaker 4: People realize that this is also all a joke.
Speaker 1: This is all nonsense posturing and BBNATANYAHUO obviously does not
Speaker 1: care what Joe Biden thinks or says of him without
Speaker 1: actually applying any real pressure using the mechanisms of power
Speaker 1: that we have. So I mean, this is all ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And then the last piece I'll put up here on
Speaker 1: get your fulsome response, sager Is Hamas has basically said, listen,
Speaker 1: we're done playing games here, like we see the game
Speaker 1: that you're playing here, of pretending to do serious negotiations
Speaker 1: and just using this to throw up new obstacles and
Speaker 1: walk away from any potential deer deal. So, in part
Speaker 1: what they said is in light of this amount of
Speaker 1: concern and responsibility towards our people and their interests, the
Speaker 1: movement calls them, the Mediators, to submit a plan to
Speaker 1: implement what they presented to the movement and approved on
Speaker 1: July second, based on Biden's vision the Security Council resolution,
Speaker 1: to oblige the occupation to do so instead of going
Speaker 1: to more rounds of negotiations or new proposals that provide
Speaker 1: cover for the occupations aggression and give it more time
Speaker 1: to perpetuate the war of genocide against our people. And
Speaker 1: remember the guy that Israel assassinated, Ismaeil Haniah was the
Speaker 1: political leader of Hamas, and in the context of Hamas,
Speaker 1: was more of a deal break maker, more of a moderate.
Speaker 1: Now you have Yaya Sinowar, who was the architect of
Speaker 1: the October seventh attacks, who is the lead voice and
Speaker 1: the lead negotiator here and he is much more hardline, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, Sirs bb Night, now who too because
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to.
Speaker 3: See spied deal. I was going to bring that up.
Speaker 2: I also, I mean, what I am just so terrified
Speaker 2: right now is that Lloyd Austin and the Israeli spoke yesterday.
Speaker 2: The USS Abraham Lincoln is accelerating right now to go
Speaker 2: to the Middle East as fast as possible. Two US
Speaker 2: missile our guy that believe guided missile destroyers are headed
Speaker 2: to the eastern Mediterranean. Hes Bulah yesterday penetrated iron Dome.
Speaker 2: There's so many things happening, it's almost too much to
Speaker 2: put in the show. But are we all going to
Speaker 2: ignore northerre in Israel, the so called incredible Iron Dome.
Speaker 2: Almost every rocket penetrated the Iron Doman was able to
Speaker 2: hit its target. A preview of what a real general
Speaker 2: war with Hesbula would look like. Iran, according to the Israelis,
Speaker 2: says that they are preparing a quote large scale attack. Now,
Speaker 2: as we all know, the Israeli military on its own
Speaker 2: is completely incapable of repelling this. It will take again Jordan,
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the UK and France
Speaker 2: all to have to step in and to shoot down
Speaker 2: all these missiles on Israel's behalf. And look, at a
Speaker 2: certain point, I don't even necessarily have a problem with that,
Speaker 2: as long as we're also trying to constrain Israeli action
Speaker 2: on the other side that would lead to it.
Speaker 4: That keeps drawing.
Speaker 1: That's the problem very intentionally.
Speaker 2: If we are lessening tension and lessening the likelihood of
Speaker 2: regional war on both sides, I have no problem. Cool,
Speaker 2: you know, let's shoot it down here and then tell
Speaker 2: Israeli Is like, hey, guys, you know you got.
Speaker 3: To cut this out.
Speaker 2: But to have it second time now in the span
Speaker 2: of justice several months, we know where the action is
Speaker 2: coming from. And I continue to say this, if Israelis
Speaker 2: did not have total confidence, we would shoot dow the
Speaker 2: stuff for them. They would never dream in a million
Speaker 2: years of blowing somebody up in the middle of Tehran
Speaker 2: like this and basically openly cheering about it. Because if Hesbola,
Speaker 2: a paramilitary organization can penetrate Iron Dome, what could Iran
Speaker 2: do to them? You know, this is where the concept
Speaker 2: of strategic balance is so important, and why when you
Speaker 2: put your hand so far on one side and then
Speaker 2: you basically take it off on the other That's what
Speaker 2: actually increases the likelihood of escalation.
Speaker 4: Well, and here's the thing too.
Speaker 1: Last time, it appears Iran basically coordinated their retaliation I
Speaker 1: mean with us.
Speaker 4: They wanted it to look big, but be capable.
Speaker 1: For us to be able to deal with it in
Speaker 1: the Israelis and Jordan at all, and for it to
Speaker 1: not really inflict much, if any damage on Israel. Is
Speaker 1: that the case this time? I mean, the Israelis may
Speaker 1: be overestimating our capabilities to deal with it.
Speaker 3: Oh, it takes one.
Speaker 1: Massive issue, that's exactly right, massive issue that they have
Speaker 1: created for themselves. And know, while this is all going on,
Speaker 1: we can have a lose sight of what is happening
Speaker 1: on the ground in Gaza, where the horror absolutely continues.
Speaker 4: Now it's worth.
Speaker 1: Remembering both with this assassination in Tehran and also the
Speaker 1: assassination in Beirut in Lebanon, Israelis were able to be
Speaker 1: really very precise, very very precise. Yet we now have
Speaker 1: another horror unfolding. We could just run this as vo guys,
Speaker 1: so I can talk over it. We have a school
Speaker 1: that was hit by the Israelis using massive munich huge
Speaker 1: bombs that just killed around one hundred people. According to
Speaker 1: reports on the ground, this was a school in Gaza
Speaker 1: City where displaced Palestinians were sheltering. And it's just an
Speaker 1: absolute horror. Now these Raelis area, we can put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. Israelis are claiming, oh, of course,
Speaker 1: what else this was Hamas was sheltering here. This was
Speaker 1: Palestinian Islamic jihad that was sheltering here. They put on
Speaker 1: a list of nineteen supposed militants that were among the dead. However,
Speaker 1: this is from a human rights organization. They went and
Speaker 1: they looked, okay, well, who are these people actually? So far,
Speaker 1: of these supposed eliminated terrorists in this school massacre, three
Speaker 1: had already been killed before, so it can't kill them
Speaker 1: twice three Another three were elderly civilians no military ties,
Speaker 1: one a school principal, deputy mayor, and a university professor.
Speaker 1: Six are absolute civilians. Some were even opposed to Hamas.
Speaker 1: And they're continuing to verify the remaining names. But let
Speaker 1: me be clear, even if even if this wasn't a
Speaker 1: why and they actually did kill nineteen militants in this strike,
Speaker 1: you cannot just bomb a school where Palestine civilians, women, children,
Speaker 1: who were the majority of the dead are sheltering. That
Speaker 1: is not acceptable. That is a war crime, even if
Speaker 1: Hamas is quote unquote using them as human shields.
Speaker 4: So this is what continues.
Speaker 1: If you look at the map soger Of, I mean,
Speaker 1: Gaza has just been decimated like that was clearly the
Speaker 1: goal to make it so there was complete anihilation, nothing
Speaker 1: to go back to, and they may have not destroyed
Speaker 1: him us, but that goal they have surely accomplished.
Speaker 3: Well internationally too.
Speaker 2: It's just one of those where again when the Biden
Speaker 2: people are like, oh, we are going to call you out,
Speaker 2: It's like, so what who cares at this point? You know,
Speaker 2: in terms of exactly it's like who in America actually
Speaker 2: would even care if they start blaming them now? You
Speaker 2: had leverage many many months ago, you decided not to
Speaker 2: use it now. And then the other very smart thing
Speaker 2: that BB is done from his own political calculus is
Speaker 2: it just keeps rationing things up a little bit. You know,
Speaker 2: everything is a step forward, step for what can I
Speaker 2: get away with here? What can I get away with here?
Speaker 2: We got he got us to spend a billion bucks
Speaker 2: in a single night to shoot down missiles before we run.
Speaker 3: Now he's going to get us to do it again.
Speaker 2: Let's hope it works, that it doesn't go even further,
Speaker 2: But what's going to happen next time? And then the
Speaker 2: more that you focus away from Gaza, the more that
Speaker 2: you change the conversation here, then it becomes about Israel's existentialism,
Speaker 2: about whether they're going to get drawn into a regional war.
Speaker 2: And the next thing, you know, US troops are the
Speaker 2: ones who are involved and who are paying the price.
Speaker 2: And that was the plan literally all along. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: you know, we have enabled a lot of this, and
Speaker 2: we are marching dangerous and dangerously close to even more embroiling.
Speaker 2: And you know, to talk about Joe Biden, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is forget age. This is the actual legacy is
Speaker 2: look at how on the brink the world is right
Speaker 2: now and how dangerous things are for America. If we
Speaker 2: had had any sort of realism at all, I mean,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't be in this situation. And you know, the
Speaker 2: entire foreign policy elite cheers it on. It's I think
Speaker 2: we're in a very dangerous situation. I mean I've been
Speaker 2: saying that for ten months and that's what people make
Speaker 2: fun of. But you know, you only have to be
Speaker 2: right once to actually acknowledge some of this happening. And
Speaker 2: even if it doesn't lead to a war, was it
Speaker 2: worth the hundreds of billions that we have spent on this,
Speaker 2: not to mention the human toll that has happened as well,
Speaker 2: And that's just now and Ukraine. Put those two things together,
Speaker 2: it's disaster.
Speaker 4: Absolutely sick.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go ahead and get to Ken Clippenstein's
Speaker 1: standing by to talk about this hacking of the Trump campaign.
Speaker 1: So apparently, as I mentioned before, the Trump campaign has
Speaker 1: been hacked. A number of news outlets received a dossier
Speaker 1: of sorts on JD. Vans that was apparently internal of
Speaker 1: the campaign when they were vetting him, looking at what
Speaker 1: his strengths and weaknesses were. There's some question there. The
Speaker 1: campaign is asserting that this was a run. Ken Clippenstein,
Speaker 1: independent journalist and author of the Ken Clippenstein's Substack that
Speaker 1: you guys should all subscribe to, is here to take
Speaker 1: a look at all of these claims and counterclaims.
Speaker 3: Great to see you, Ken, Good to see you, dude.
Speaker 3: Hey guys, good to be back.
Speaker 1: All right, So breakdown for what exactly do we know
Speaker 1: about what happened here?
Speaker 13: Really, all we know is what Microsoft has alleged, and
Speaker 13: of course they have their own internal information. And in
Speaker 13: the report posted to their website on Friday, they described
Speaker 13: a hacking attempt into a presidential campaign, but they didn't
Speaker 13: say which one. And so the author of that post,
Speaker 13: which I find is interesting, nobody really went into his background.
Speaker 13: Clint Watts. He's a former FBI special agent. I knew
Speaker 13: who he was because I've reported on him before. He's
Speaker 13: a yeah, he's a commentator on he was a commentator
Speaker 13: on MSNBC. He's been a long time commentator and expert
Speaker 13: on foreign influence efforts. And I you know, in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 13: after the twenty sixteen Russian led interference efforts into the election,
Speaker 13: then he described, sometimes in hyperbolic terms, those those efforts,
Speaker 13: calling at one point these the Russian efforts in the
Speaker 13: past several years the most effective in history, which which
Speaker 13: I thought was a little bit overstating it. And you know,
Speaker 13: I looked into that question, and you know, Rand put
Speaker 13: on an interstring report suggesting that they were not actually
Speaker 13: particularly well organized, they were not particularly effective. So you know,
Speaker 13: I don't want to I don't want to denigrate him,
Speaker 13: but you know, he's somebody who is an expert in
Speaker 13: foreign influence and that's what he tends to see. And
Speaker 13: so in the context of that Microsoft report that he authored,
Speaker 13: that's definitely concerns worth looking at. But what was astonishing
Speaker 13: to me is neither the FBI nor the Director of
Speaker 13: National Intelligence has put out a statement.
Speaker 3: On any of this.
Speaker 13: So really all we have to go on is that
Speaker 13: a vague report by Microsoft, which again has declined to
Speaker 13: identify who it was. There was a report in the
Speaker 13: Washington Post a source to an anonymous anonymous source of
Speaker 13: Ellen Nakashima's that said that it was a reference to
Speaker 13: the Trump campaign, but we don't know if that's the
Speaker 13: same thing as the as the as the leaked information.
Speaker 2: In fact, let's can we take a step back, though,
Speaker 2: and just maybe explain to people what happened is that
Speaker 2: this leaked dossier has come to reporters people are claiming
Speaker 2: it is Iran. Now, why is it unusual, like you
Speaker 2: just said, for the dn I, the FBI and others
Speaker 2: to have not offered comment with such a public story.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so in a situation like this, going back months
Speaker 13: now that DNI said we are going to prioritize declassifying
Speaker 13: and releasing information proactive to head out foreign interference efforts.
Speaker 13: And for them to, you know, several days into this
Speaker 13: not even say we're looking at it, we're going to
Speaker 13: have something for you, just no comment at all from
Speaker 13: the DNI. We have no comment from the FBI either.
Speaker 13: They're not doing very good at what they what they
Speaker 13: said that they were going to do, which was to
Speaker 13: you know, release information of the public as quickly as
Speaker 13: they can, or they don't have anything. And that essentially
Speaker 13: is the question. And I was just about to say
Speaker 13: a moment ago the New York Times yesterday David Sanger,
Speaker 13: the one of the national security correspondents, so that it's
Speaker 13: not clear if this was from a hack or a
Speaker 13: leak internal to the campaign. And I think that's a
Speaker 13: responsible way to frame this. Now, there's plenty of reason
Speaker 13: to think that it was the Iranians. I mean to
Speaker 13: think that they that they had motive rather because you know,
Speaker 13: Trump very hawkish on Iran, theatrically so at times, posting
Speaker 13: a Game of Thrones at one point spoof of him
Speaker 13: saying sanctions are coming, and of course the assassination of
Speaker 13: Castem Solamani, the reimposition of sanctions that would throw from
Speaker 13: the Iran deal. So all that to say they have
Speaker 13: the motive, but we don't yet know that they were
Speaker 13: actually the ones that carried it out. And the press
Speaker 13: reporting has been extremely irresponsible in this regard. I mean,
Speaker 13: we're coming into what could be this week in Iranian
Speaker 13: military retaliation for the assassination in Iran by Israel of
Speaker 13: the political leader of Hamas, and they're just running with
Speaker 13: this thing without any underlying proof or even evidence beyond
Speaker 13: just Microsoft's vague statement, which again did not provide any
Speaker 13: specifics to know that this was even the same event.
Speaker 1: The ironies here, obviously are very rich when you consider
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen Russian hacking and release of information from
Speaker 1: internal to the Clinton campaign and Trump, you know, going
Speaker 1: out and encouraging that Russia if you're listening, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Now the shoe is very much on the
Speaker 1: other foot, assuming it is Iran, which, as you say,
Speaker 1: it's you know, not entirely clear that it is at
Speaker 1: this point. So a Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chung said,
Speaker 1: any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications
Speaker 1: are do the bidding of America's enemies and doing exactly
Speaker 1: what they want. I mean, that sounds almost identical to
Speaker 1: the language that the Clinton campaign and their supporters used
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen to try unsuccessfully to get the
Speaker 1: media not to report on the contents of those leaks.
Speaker 13: Yeah, the ironer here seems to be appreciated by everyone
Speaker 13: except the Trump campaign. There's just no awareness at all
Speaker 13: of it. And I want to point out one interesting
Speaker 13: thing about that spokesperson. It's been reported that he was asked,
Speaker 13: have you been in touch with Microsoft? And he declined
Speaker 13: to say repeatedly to multiple outlets. So there's a lack
Speaker 13: of evidence here. And in fact, if you look at
Speaker 13: some of the subsequent reporting, they describe the campaign having
Speaker 13: been aware of a breach several weeks ago, but that
Speaker 13: internally in their discussions they didn't know who it was.
Speaker 13: So I think there's a very good chance that they
Speaker 13: just don't know and that this is a speculation.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 13: None of that is to say that at some point
Speaker 13: in the future we might find out that we wouldn't
Speaker 13: find out that it was Iran. But but what seems
Speaker 13: very clear is that they just don't know, and I
Speaker 13: haven't seen any country. I haven't seen any country reading
Speaker 13: evidence to suggest that that that their own understanding of
Speaker 13: has changed in the last several days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean looking, I was just reading as well,
Speaker 2: like you said, Even others are response. Media outlets are
Speaker 2: saying some have accused Iran, but nobody is definitively saying.
Speaker 2: The White House has not yet released a statement, which
Speaker 2: it seems likely that it would given previous positioning. Can
Speaker 2: I mean, there's been some speculation that, oh, well, if
Speaker 2: it was, they wouldn't want to acknowledge it, but that
Speaker 2: doesn't seem true to me, given how you know, how
Speaker 2: outrage they were over Russian hacks and how big a
Speaker 2: deal they have made about election threats and hacking and
Speaker 2: all of that.
Speaker 3: What's your read on the situation.
Speaker 13: I mean, this is a huge budget priority, and I've
Speaker 13: reported on the on the emergence of all of these
Speaker 13: counter disinformation kind of foreign influence offices throughout the federal government,
Speaker 13: in the Department of Defense, in the Department Homeland Secure,
Speaker 13: already within the DOJ. They have thrown so much money
Speaker 13: at this and for us to be several days into
Speaker 13: this and for them not even to say we're looking
Speaker 13: at it, we're working on something, We're gonna have something
Speaker 13: is outrageous.
Speaker 3: What are we paying these people for.
Speaker 13: They won't even come out and say we're looking at
Speaker 13: the FBI did acknowledge that they've seen the media reporting,
Speaker 13: so they know about this. It's on their radar, but
Speaker 13: they won't give us anything. And I understand in a
Speaker 13: cyber world they have of saying attribution is difficult. It's
Speaker 13: hard to know who did what. I mean, you might
Speaker 13: see that there was a breach, but it could be
Speaker 13: a party trying to look like another party. It could
Speaker 13: be you know, an independent actor. These questions are not
Speaker 13: simple technical questions, so I understand that might take time.
Speaker 13: But they have not provided any indication that they're working
Speaker 13: on it or that an answer is forthcoming, which leads
Speaker 13: me to wonder if there is one, or if the
Speaker 13: agencies are just doing a poor job of communicating and
Speaker 13: again time. That's really important to geopolitically, for them to
Speaker 13: be clear about what's.
Speaker 3: Happening with regard to Iran. I mean, the.
Speaker 13: Military's repositioning itself to prepare to protect Israel and respond
Speaker 13: to an attack. I mean, this couldn't come in a
Speaker 13: worse time geopolitically in terms of the conflict.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's been curious to me is,
Speaker 1: while we know that the hack occurred, and we even know,
Speaker 1: you know, reportedly among the hacked materials was a document
Speaker 1: that the Trump campaign confirmed was authentic that was effectively
Speaker 1: the vetting document of JD. Vance that explored his strengths, weaknesses,
Speaker 1: et cetera, as Donald Trump was considering adding him to
Speaker 1: the ticket. Yet none of these outlets that receive these
Speaker 1: materials have actually reported on the contents of the materials. Now,
Speaker 1: they did, and in my opinion, appropriately so when it
Speaker 1: was you know, twenty sixteen, and with regards to Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: because you're a journalist, you get information from all kinds
Speaker 1: of sketchy sources. If it's newsworthy, it's newsworthy. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if it was you know, hacked document or not.
Speaker 1: If it's newsworthy, you report on it. So what do
Speaker 1: you make of the fact that none of these outlets,
Speaker 1: at least last I checked, have actually reported out anything
Speaker 1: on the contents of what they received.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I've seen all these reporters falling all over themselves
Speaker 13: and say, I hope we learn the lessons of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 13: You know, with all these kind of very you know,
Speaker 13: self aggrandizing accounts of how how much we've learned, and
Speaker 13: the fact that nobody's reporting on it, that was not
Speaker 13: the lesson to learn. The lesson to learn was report
Speaker 13: on those things. I agree with you with the context
Speaker 13: of where it's coming from, if you don't know where
Speaker 13: it's coming from, if it's coming from the Russians or whatever,
Speaker 13: so that the public can make its own determination. I
Speaker 13: think what we have is a.
Speaker 3: Very kind of.
Speaker 13: Patronizing attitude on the part of the press that, oh,
Speaker 13: the public, you know, they're not mature enough to be
Speaker 13: able to handle those guys.
Speaker 3: Yes, they can just give them the explanation that there.
Speaker 13: Is you know, a possibility, maybe it's plausible, maybe it's
Speaker 13: even probable that the Ranis were behind it, and let
Speaker 13: them come to their own conclusions. And I think what
Speaker 13: this show is more than anything, is that this attempt
Speaker 13: to try to you know, collapse. You know, Trump is
Speaker 13: the favored candidate of the foreign or maybe. But the
Speaker 13: truth is all sorts of parties are angling to try
Speaker 13: to get what they want out of any election, and
Speaker 13: in the end, it I think it might be kind
Speaker 13: of a wash, and that this should encourage us to
Speaker 13: stop just you know, treating everything is, oh, who's the
Speaker 13: foreign prefer canic because the truth is, there's good reason
Speaker 13: to believe the Rane and in fact that the d
Speaker 13: n I has given indication that the Iranians would prefer
Speaker 13: Biden to be president. On the other hand, there's good
Speaker 13: evidence that the Russians prefer Trump to be president. So
Speaker 13: maybe this neurosis about worrying about every single you know,
Speaker 13: which foreign party approves of what I mean, everyone is
Speaker 13: pushing for their interests in every direction. And so I
Speaker 13: hope that I hope that this is a is a
Speaker 13: reminder to people of that.
Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more. Iran if you're listening, I will
Speaker 2: publish anything.
Speaker 3: As long as it's true. I don't care where it
Speaker 3: comes from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, true and newsworthy.
Speaker 1: Then you know we that's not it, you know, And
Speaker 1: I know they've I think the Trump campaign has said
Speaker 1: what's in the JD vans vetting document is buying large
Speaker 1: public information?
Speaker 4: Probably is, but it's still newsworthy to know.
Speaker 1: But they were assessing what they were concerned about, how
Speaker 1: they thought about they could shore up his weaknesses, how
Speaker 1: they were evaluating him, you know, versus other candidates, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Obviously that's new.
Speaker 1: That would be newsworthy if it came out about Tim
Speaker 1: Walls from the Harris campaign. Certainly, so obviously it has
Speaker 1: a news value. And I'm actually kind of surprised, given
Speaker 1: the precedent that was set back in twenty sixteen, that
Speaker 1: no one has said a word about it. And we
Speaker 1: know they've had these documents for a number of weeks,
Speaker 1: so the time is not really you know, an excuse
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. All right, Ken, thank you so much for joining man.
Speaker 3: We appreciate you.
Speaker 4: Great to see you.
Speaker 11: Ken.
Speaker 3: Thanks, guys, all right, we'll see you guys later.