Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 2: Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody to day.
Speaker 1: What do we have krysal Indeed, we do a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting things to talk about today. So first of all,
Speaker 1: we have our own exclusive breaking news. We had the
Speaker 1: folks over at Jail Partners ask people how they would
Speaker 1: describe Kamala Harris and separately JD Vance in a word
Speaker 1: and we have those word clouds for you.
Speaker 3: They're very interesting. Yes, they are some surprises there, so
Speaker 3: we'll go through it.
Speaker 1: We've got broken down by age and partisan affiliation and gender,
Speaker 1: which was maybe the most interesting breakdown. Soccer are also
Speaker 1: going to be looking at the gender divide in America
Speaker 1: and his model wague. Today, of course, everyone is talking
Speaker 1: about Trump's appearance at the Nationalisation of Black Journalists. We're
Speaker 1: going to show you all of the wildest moments and
Speaker 1: dig in also on what appears to be a new
Speaker 1: explicit strategy of the Trump campaign to talk about Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris's biracial identity and how she has talked about that
Speaker 1: over the years. So we'll get into all of that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure Saba and I may have different thoughts on
Speaker 1: that one, So I've got a.
Speaker 2: Lot of thoughts. Trump is only saying what I've always said.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Yes, you're not running for president of the United States,
Speaker 1: So anyway, we'll save that for that Black We're also
Speaker 1: taking a look at much more serious news about what
Speaker 1: appears to be an incredibly dangerous and fraught situation in
Speaker 1: the Middle East after multiple assassinations conducted by Israel, Aaran
Speaker 1: already protecting that they are going to retally the US
Speaker 1: already saying, hey, we're going to get involved too, We're
Speaker 1: going to have Israel's back.
Speaker 3: So extremely dangerous.
Speaker 1: Moment in the Middle East, and also appears to have
Speaker 1: completely derailed any possibility of continuancies fire talks, So we'll
Speaker 1: dig into that in all of what that means. We're
Speaker 1: also taking a look again at Kamala's VP choice, who
Speaker 1: it is likely.
Speaker 3: To be and all.
Speaker 1: So now we'll surprise now one those who are opposed
Speaker 1: to Joshapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania being smeared as anti
Speaker 1: semits by The Atlantic also no surprise, so we'll bring
Speaker 1: you all of that. We've got Matt Stoler joining us
Speaker 1: to talk about what indications Kamala is giving with regards
Speaker 1: to corporate power and also the extraordinary public billionaire campaign
Speaker 1: to pressure her to ditch Lena Kahan. So of course
Speaker 1: Matts Dollar the perfect person to dig into all of that.
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned before, Saber with a fantastic monologue
Speaker 1: here at the end of the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Well, I haven't listened to you I have.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it. Thank you to everybody. We have
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Speaker 2: we're going to be doing there, and we have some great,
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Speaker 2: is appreciated. At this time, we were able to commission
Speaker 2: these word clouds. We can have the flexibility, and it's
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Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you guys so much.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, the flood of subscriptions and viewers
Speaker 1: that we got enabled us to have the content that
Speaker 1: we're about to show you right now, so thank you
Speaker 1: so much for making that possible.
Speaker 3: All right, let's get to it. As I mentioned before.
Speaker 1: We asked our friends over at Jail Partners to go
Speaker 1: out into the field and ask voters in a word
Speaker 1: what do they think about Kamala Harris and what do
Speaker 1: they think about Jade Vance? When Kamala picks her VP choice,
Speaker 1: we should do one for them, as of course, that
Speaker 1: is yet, so we can't do that as of yet.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put for all voters the Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris word cloud up on the screen, and we do
Speaker 1: have it broken down as well. But this is you know,
Speaker 1: if you take everybody that was captured in the sample,
Speaker 1: what are the biggest words and descriptors.
Speaker 3: That jump out?
Speaker 1: Number one not a good sign for her, incompetent. Close behind, however,
Speaker 1: is a positive word strong. And then you have probably
Speaker 1: in third place there it looks like you've got liberal,
Speaker 1: which is something certainly that you know they consider to
Speaker 1: be a vulnerability and the Trump campaign considers to be
Speaker 1: a vulnerability. Also, you have fairly high up there, which
Speaker 1: I think will be relevant when we talk about the
Speaker 1: nab J block fake some other things. You've got terrible,
Speaker 1: you've got leader, you've got smart, you've got awesome, intelligent, unqualified, powerful, unfavorable.
Speaker 1: One of the things saga that jumped out at me
Speaker 1: as a positive for her is nowhere in this word
Speaker 1: cloud is the word Biden or Joe at least not
Speaker 1: that I saw looking at it. And you know, for her,
Speaker 1: that's probably her biggest liability is just being tied to
Speaker 1: what was a very unpopular administration.
Speaker 2: She hasn't said Biden's name, so she began running. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think maybe when she's at the White House, somebody
Speaker 2: took notes. She said Donald Trump's name I think fourteen
Speaker 2: times in one of her recent rallies, Joe Biden's name
Speaker 2: was not said. Once. We just got officially our DNC
Speaker 2: speaking schedule. Joe Biden is on day one, aka the
Speaker 2: day that nobody gives.
Speaker 3: A shit the arms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's like, that's Joe Biden day.
Speaker 1: Let's give him his due, but I mean, really too much.
Speaker 2: It's crazy Biden is for day one. You know, it's
Speaker 2: on day two. Bill Clinton, who was president in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two, the year that I was born, he will
Speaker 2: be speaking, so will Barack Obama, then the vice president,
Speaker 2: and then Kamala Harris. So if that doesn't tell you
Speaker 2: everything that you need to know about who's most popular,
Speaker 2: I think in order of that, but hey, let's give
Speaker 2: him the credit. Word's due. Whenever the man is gone,
Speaker 2: you know, put him out to pasture, and let's not
Speaker 2: even say his name anymore, which is basically the strategy.
Speaker 2: I think it is smart. There's also a couple of
Speaker 2: other things, if we want to go to the next
Speaker 2: one where we can dig in a little bit. That
Speaker 2: incompetent word, if we see, is very prominent, the biggest
Speaker 2: one amongst Republicans, but more critically here is independence. So
Speaker 2: we see a couple of things where last time around,
Speaker 2: when we had our word clouds with Biden, old was
Speaker 2: the number one across.
Speaker 3: All everybody Democrats.
Speaker 2: Right, But the advantage that you have here is that
Speaker 2: amongst Democrats you have strong, honest, you have smart, you
Speaker 2: have competent president leader, positive, freedom, determined, charismatic fresh. So
Speaker 2: what does that tell us high levels of democratic enthusiasm? Now,
Speaker 2: even amongst independence, you see some where if you look
Speaker 2: above the incompetent, you have incompetent fake, terrible, literal, horrible, unqualified,
Speaker 2: all right, ridiculous. But beneath that, what do we see strong, nice, awesome, intelligent, smart,
Speaker 2: powerful leaders. So independence genuinely are I think relatively split
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty, although incompetent still remains I think the
Speaker 2: most potent attack I think incompetent and fake, as you said,
Speaker 2: which we'll get to with the NABJ attacks are the
Speaker 2: ones that are really going to be dialed in. And this,
Speaker 2: you know, look free advice to the Trump campaign. They
Speaker 2: keep trying to say too liberal, too liberal, too liberal.
Speaker 2: You don't see that anywhere really near the top I
Speaker 2: think of independence. It is actually a Republican attack. If
Speaker 2: you see there amongst Republicans they say incompetent, liberal, stupid, fake, bad, terrible, unfavorable.
Speaker 2: That is where you see that attack resonate. So one
Speaker 2: of the things, and what we haven't gotten to JD
Speaker 2: yet that I would kind of urge people to do
Speaker 2: is look at the language with resonates between both the
Speaker 2: base and with the independent voters to try and win
Speaker 2: people over. Obviously, no Democrats going to come over and
Speaker 2: vote for Trump now at this point, especially what eight
Speaker 2: nine years into the Trump era, but you know, with
Speaker 2: a very tiny limited amount of independent voters, remember there's
Speaker 2: not very many these days who are up for grabs.
Speaker 2: Those are the people that you're playing with, and you
Speaker 2: want to find an attack that kind of skewers the two,
Speaker 2: and that triangulating on that is very difficult.
Speaker 1: I actually think there are more swing voters than we
Speaker 1: really give people credit.
Speaker 2: You might be right, only because my calculus is twenty
Speaker 2: two funny where Biden and Trump everybodys made up their mind.
Speaker 2: A lot of people don't know anything about Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2: You know a lot of people, Let's be honest. They
Speaker 2: most people in this country cannot even name the vice
Speaker 2: president's name. So then Democrats are like, oh, this is awesome,
Speaker 2: but a lot of independence and actually even jd Vance,
Speaker 2: I mean, you and I cover politics for a living.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows Jadi Vance is. But you know I won't
Speaker 2: give it away just yet. Just wait and see what
Speaker 2: the number one word is for most people, like I
Speaker 2: don't know who this guy is, right period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there may be more swing voters than
Speaker 1: is typically given credit, just because for two reasons. Number one,
Speaker 1: you see the fact that in the Senate races you
Speaker 1: have Democrats outperforming, like you have more people who are
Speaker 1: saying I'm going to vote split ticket, and that's an
Speaker 1: indication that they are up for grabs. And also just
Speaker 1: by how much this race has moved since Biden dropped,
Speaker 1: and you know, I mean how much it moved after
Speaker 1: his completely failed debate performance. People were like, oh, I
Speaker 1: can't do this, and then how much it has shifted
Speaker 1: again getting Kamala Harris into the race. It shows you
Speaker 1: people are not just like partisan automatons. They are evaluating
Speaker 1: the circumstances in front of them to some extent, and
Speaker 1: so you know, there is more wiggle room there than
Speaker 1: I think I have even commonly thought over the past
Speaker 1: number of years.
Speaker 3: And I think you're right, Soger.
Speaker 1: It was easy to have that perception when it was
Speaker 1: Joe Biden and Donald Trump because they were such known
Speaker 1: quantities that you know, people were locked into their views
Speaker 1: of these particular men, even as they may be a
Speaker 1: little less like partisan, like hard part I just vote
Speaker 1: for D or I'll just vote for R no matter what.
Speaker 1: There may be more people who are open to shifting
Speaker 1: back and forth. In any case, I think your comment
Speaker 1: with regard to the partisan breakdown with Kamala is the
Speaker 1: most important one. She has consolidated the democratic base that
Speaker 1: is the source of.
Speaker 3: A lot of her momentum in the polls.
Speaker 1: Now she has improved among independence according to the polling crosstads,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So she is picking up ground there, But
Speaker 1: where her strength has really come in is reconsolidating that
Speaker 1: democratic base, reconstituting that sort of like Obama style coalition,
Speaker 1: getting young people to back you strongly, getting people color
Speaker 1: to back you strongly, etc.
Speaker 3: It looks more like what you would.
Speaker 1: Expect the traditional democratic coal to reflect. And the you know,
Speaker 1: uniformity of the like positive reviews for Kamala among Democrats
Speaker 1: is indicative of that. Now let's go ahead and put
Speaker 1: up the gender divide here, which is really interesting, really interesting.
Speaker 1: So when you ask women about Kamala, top two are
Speaker 1: smart and strong. Now incompetent also shows up there, but
Speaker 1: many more positives here. So you've got leader, strong, smart, intelligent, honest.
Speaker 1: You also have in smaller print here incompetent. But still
Speaker 1: you know, one of the major charges unfavorable, unqualified. Those
Speaker 1: are some of the negatives that some women had about her.
Speaker 1: But you flip to the male. First of all, it's
Speaker 1: funny that woman is one of the words that pops up,
Speaker 1: but the number one is liberal and incompetent. Those are
Speaker 1: appear to be like roughly the same size there, so
Speaker 1: roughly coming in at the same level.
Speaker 2: You do have some.
Speaker 1: Positives here, you have strong, you have awesome, you have leader,
Speaker 1: and you also have terrible, you have idiot, you have bad.
Speaker 1: So you know, you can even just jumping off the
Speaker 1: page that you hear some of the gender divide, which
Speaker 1: I do think is going to be a central dynamic
Speaker 1: in this race.
Speaker 3: Moving into the fall.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, I mean I'm doing my home monologue on this.
Speaker 2: My monogue is more about gen Z men and women.
Speaker 2: But this has long time been a major divide in
Speaker 2: US politics. I also think, but this is part of
Speaker 2: my thing is if we're in an election, and this
Speaker 2: is an election where I think that the female vote
Speaker 2: has probably never mattered more than ever before because of
Speaker 2: the high level of enthusiasm, I'll show people in my
Speaker 2: monologue the split between gen Z women and men on abortion.
Speaker 2: It's almost like a forty point swing in terms of salience,
Speaker 2: just in terms of what people think is important or not.
Speaker 2: So you may be pro life or pro choice, but
Speaker 2: you're like whatever, you know, I mean, I count myself
Speaker 2: on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's very logical. Yes, yes, one group,
Speaker 3: but much more directly.
Speaker 2: In the past.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this is not to put anybody down, just to
Speaker 2: say if I was a Democrat, I would want the
Speaker 2: female vote because there's a lot of women out there
Speaker 2: who are probably we're voting at higher levels than ever before.
Speaker 2: And in a game of margins where Trump won the
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen election, let's say, what was it sixty thousand
Speaker 2: votes across four states. Yeah, the margin of loss was
Speaker 2: roughly eighty thousand votes, again across four states. I mean,
Speaker 2: every single vote matters. So if you have a highly
Speaker 2: dedicated coalition, people who are been proven records of coming
Speaker 2: out to vote, I mean in politics, that's as good
Speaker 2: as goals as you can ever get. So, like I said,
Speaker 2: I want if I'm a Democrat, you need a woman
Speaker 2: at the top of the ticket. Forget all this you know, sexism, nonsense.
Speaker 2: The question then is can you still win white men
Speaker 2: at that same category? As it comes back to our
Speaker 2: I believe our Tuesday panel. I pulled the numbers from
Speaker 2: Pew Research. Trump won twenty sixteen the white male vote
Speaker 2: by thirty points, won it only by seventeen points. That
Speaker 2: thirteen point swing is exactly why Joe Biden is the
Speaker 2: president today. The only category of a demographic that actually
Speaker 2: switched in the direction of Joe Biden, and that Trump
Speaker 2: didn't win. But there's so many white people in the country.
Speaker 2: I think seventy percent of the electorate is white. And
Speaker 2: when we think about that, we know then the sheer
Speaker 2: numbers here for both Kama and Trump. Triangulating and thinking
Speaker 2: about how to balance, you know, the women category and
Speaker 2: men together is going to be very difficult. So I
Speaker 2: could actually see it kind of going both ways. But
Speaker 2: that chart just shows to me how different messaging and
Speaker 2: how it's hitting. Just remember you know this a bit.
Speaker 2: Not only are we all divided by many other things,
Speaker 2: gender is another major one as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the incompetent thing is a problem for her.
Speaker 1: It's a big problem for her, and you know, they
Speaker 1: need to figure out how I knew she's She's always
Speaker 1: been very cautious politician. She doesn't like to go into
Speaker 1: unfriendly spaces. She is uncomfortable even in more friendly spaces.
Speaker 1: She has always her staff has always kept her very
Speaker 1: sort of coseted and been very careful about who they
Speaker 1: put her ound to. And we know why because she's
Speaker 1: had multiple instances when she's been really caught off guard
Speaker 1: and very flat footed, and it has not gone well
Speaker 1: for her when she has been caught on the back foot.
Speaker 1: So they need to figure out a way to alleviate
Speaker 1: those concerns of incompetence, because what does that speak to, Like,
Speaker 1: we don't really think that you're ready to be president
Speaker 1: of the United States. And there's a reason why people
Speaker 1: think that, you know her, her presidential campaign did not
Speaker 1: go well, and part of why it didn't go well
Speaker 1: was because of her incompetence in managing it.
Speaker 3: So they need to that is a key vulnerability.
Speaker 1: That they really need to deal with if they're going
Speaker 1: to persuade indepenant voters and the American people in general
Speaker 1: who have never seen you know, a we'll say biracial Now,
Speaker 1: given the conversation today woman president, that she's ready for
Speaker 1: the job.
Speaker 3: I think the.
Speaker 1: Part of how Obama was able to become, you know,
Speaker 1: this historic figure was because the perception was that his
Speaker 1: campaign was a freakin' well oiled machine, which it was
Speaker 1: and it was, and people thought, Okay, if you can
Speaker 1: do this, like, of course, it's not the same as
Speaker 1: running the country, but it is a very complex undertaking
Speaker 1: and you rose to the occasion. Now, Kamlin does have
Speaker 1: an advantage in that she did have to build this
Speaker 1: organization it's all there in a box for her. So
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps that's an advantage for her. Perhaps she
Speaker 1: since Biden has basically like disappeared and is basically not
Speaker 1: really even president anymore, maybe you know, her stepping were
Speaker 1: fully into that role in terms of the public perception,
Speaker 1: maybe that helps her beat the incompetent charge. But I
Speaker 1: do think that is a really key and core weakness
Speaker 1: for her, And I guess the other thing I would
Speaker 1: say is perhaps her VP pick can help give people
Speaker 1: some comfort, because that was the other key for Obama too,
Speaker 1: was he brought in Joe Biden, who's this you know,
Speaker 1: moderate white dude who people were like, all right, that
Speaker 1: guy can see in a position of power, and that
Speaker 1: also helped to give people comfort about the overall ticket.
Speaker 2: Very smart I put out yesterday, I said there is
Speaker 2: no chance commic could survive a real eighteen month run
Speaker 2: for Potus. Her primary run fell apart through interviews, multip debates,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But now she's only got a duck and
Speaker 2: hide for ninety seven days. At tweeted this yesterday, So
Speaker 2: ninety six days today and friendly spaces commit to a
Speaker 2: single debate. That's a major structural problem. For ours. I
Speaker 2: still believe that it is such a massive advantage for
Speaker 2: her to basically just be annoyed to be given the
Speaker 2: campaign in a box. You have a campaign manager, you've
Speaker 2: got unbelievable about some money, you got baked in coalition,
Speaker 2: who's ready, fired up, ready to go, as someone might say,
Speaker 2: against Donald Trump, and just don't really sit down for
Speaker 2: any crazy interviews.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I think that's an abhorrent and terrible thing. She should
Speaker 2: do at least two debates. I hope that she would
Speaker 2: do three, especially given you know how late she entered
Speaker 2: into the race. She hasn't yet done a critical interview.
Speaker 2: I believe Joe Biden only dropped out of the race
Speaker 2: eleven days ago. I mean, that's plenty of time. We
Speaker 2: need one of those one. I would even take, you
Speaker 2: know what, take a friendly interviewer. I don't care, you
Speaker 2: know even that if this nab nabj event, you know,
Speaker 2: it's probably the friendliest media environment that she was gonna get.
Speaker 2: Just go, just take you have to answer questions, sit
Speaker 2: down with Stephanopoulos, Chuck Todd, whatever, any of these people.
Speaker 2: Are they going to challenge you a ton? No? Not really,
Speaker 2: But even Lester Holt, I mean, he asked her the
Speaker 2: most basic question of all the time. He's like, so,
Speaker 2: have you been to the border? She said, we have
Speaker 2: been to the border. He's like, but you haven't been literally,
Speaker 2: She's like, but we have been to the border. And
Speaker 2: I'm still trying to decipher.
Speaker 3: He and then what we haven't gone yet?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like okay, yeah, right, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, but that's the thing, is that that Kamala will emerge.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, So far it's been nothing but positive for her. Right,
Speaker 1: She's doing rally, She's doing a great job. She's not
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. Right, She's got this fresh appearance. She feels
Speaker 1: like the new kid on the block, even though that
Speaker 1: seems preposterous. She's you know, some what is she close
Speaker 1: to thirty years younger than Donald Trump?
Speaker 2: I think she's fifty nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's fifty nine. She looks fantastic for age.
Speaker 1: By the way, everybody's doing the comparison with her and
Speaker 1: Tim Wallace, the same age, and he looks like he's
Speaker 1: like forty years older than her. He blames it on
Speaker 1: the high school kids anyway. Yeah, so she's gonna have
Speaker 1: to take some risks, and she's going to have to
Speaker 1: show that she has that she's improved, you know, she
Speaker 1: if she does appearances where those same vulnerabilities come up,
Speaker 1: those concerns about whether or not this is really a
Speaker 1: person you can see his commander in chief, whether this
Speaker 1: is a person who was really up to the job,
Speaker 1: those are going to become central. And I think in
Speaker 1: a sense they already are central. So that's to me
Speaker 1: a real warning sign for her. Let's go and take it.
Speaker 1: This was amusing to me to take a look at
Speaker 1: the age group breakdown for Kamala Harris. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: know this also won't really surprise you, although it is
Speaker 1: kind of a reversal of where things were under Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: which is why I say, you know, I think I
Speaker 1: do think these things are more fluid than perhaps we've
Speaker 1: given credit for young people really like Kamala Harris. The
Speaker 1: number one thing is strong. Then you get awesome, optimistic, lucky,
Speaker 1: that's a funny one, nice, brave, smart. Also, if you
Speaker 1: look on the left side of the graphic, there in
Speaker 1: relatively small print but still abusing, is brat charismatic, independent, leader, empowering, honest, cool,
Speaker 1: very few there are a few up here, but very few.
Speaker 3: Negative descriptors.
Speaker 1: Among the young demographic, you've got bad, dishonest, incompetent also
Speaker 1: shows up, but the overwhelming majority of the words are positive,
Speaker 1: and you know, certainly the largest descriptors for that group
Speaker 1: are pop. If you go to the other end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum sixty five plus, this was an area where
Speaker 1: Joe Biden had some strength. This was like the group
Speaker 1: that was holding up the best for him over everybody.
Speaker 1: And the two words here that jump out in very
Speaker 1: large print are liberal and incompetent. Now, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: me and perhaps this is where the battleground really is.
Speaker 1: In those you know, thirty to forty nine and also
Speaker 1: the fifty to sixty four, there isn't one descriptor that
Speaker 1: really dominates. It's sort of like, you know, people are
Speaker 1: a little all over the place and the juries kind
Speaker 1: of still out. There wasn't just one thing that people
Speaker 1: thought of when Kamala Harris was put to them. You see,
Speaker 1: under thirty to forty nine, you get awesome, powerful, you
Speaker 1: also get terrible, you get liberal, you get bad.
Speaker 3: You get smart, you get strong.
Speaker 1: Fifty to sixty four, you see incompetent is probably the
Speaker 1: largest one there, but it doesn't jump out nearly as
Speaker 1: much as in the sixty five plus fake, I think
Speaker 1: is another real vulnerability for her smart leader weak woman,
Speaker 1: horrible liberal strong. So again those age demographic it's a
Speaker 1: little less clear the verdict on Kamala Harris as among
Speaker 1: the youngest and the oldest demographics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the incompetent one is. Look considering if
Speaker 2: we know the voting rates, what is a fifty percent
Speaker 2: of Gen Z vote or eighteen year olds to twenty
Speaker 2: nine year olds vote, but it's like eighty percent. The
Speaker 2: higher up you go, especially about sixty five and eighty,
Speaker 2: incompetent just looks like the best bet, especially when we consider, yeah,
Speaker 2: across all the groups, so the age group, especially with
Speaker 2: old people. And then let's also think about the demographics
Speaker 2: of the key swing states. There's a new battleground poll
Speaker 2: we were both looking at. What was it this morning
Speaker 2: that showed her actually up a little bit in Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: but tiede in Michigan and tiede in Wisconsin. And though
Speaker 2: that's really where I would be worried, that is a
Speaker 2: disproportionately white, older state population wise, the dynamic sun belt
Speaker 2: of Atlanta and all that might actually show you you know,
Speaker 2: Georgia could possibly be in play under Kama, which was
Speaker 2: very unexpected. Arizona, though the polling did not look particularly good.
Speaker 2: Nevada as well, another very very dynast state where things
Speaker 2: are very fluid and up for grabs in a way
Speaker 2: that they weren't last time around.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If I think about the various demographics and who you
Speaker 2: really need to triangulate on, I'm going for the old
Speaker 2: white people in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: It looks like the Harris campaign is trying to put
Speaker 1: North Carolina in play. Yes, that's right, And it looks
Speaker 1: like the Trump campaign is concerned that North Carolina could.
Speaker 2: Be in North Carolina's a very dynamic state, is a
Speaker 2: massive in population. Raleigh and Charlotte are two of the
Speaker 2: biggest booming cities for young people, I believe under the
Speaker 2: age of thirty, highest job market for college graduates, low
Speaker 2: cost of living, decent weather. You know to what previous
Speaker 2: North Carolo Tier two city, not really a state that
Speaker 2: it wasn't like Austin. Let's say that four years ago.
Speaker 2: But right, all the data that I've seen that's come
Speaker 2: out in the last six months, I'm like, man, North
Speaker 2: Carolina is booming. So you know when you have new
Speaker 2: people coming in. That's especially we're young. That makes it
Speaker 2: more of a backgrounds.
Speaker 1: Liberal retirees love them some Asheville, North Carolina, okay and.
Speaker 2: Not so great.
Speaker 1: It's a lovely, lovely sort of like hippie crunchy town
Speaker 1: in the foothills of the mountains there. So in any case,
Speaker 1: you had the reason I say that it looks like
Speaker 1: Harris is trying to put it on the map, and
Speaker 1: it looks like the Trump campaign is a little.
Speaker 3: Concerned about it is because both.
Speaker 1: Of them are going up on the air with significant
Speaker 1: adviys in the state of North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Now, sometimes campaigns do that.
Speaker 1: As just like sort of a what is the word,
Speaker 1: like a fate, A headfake, I guess is the right term,
Speaker 1: because they want their opponent to think they got to
Speaker 1: spend money there and sort of draw them into a
Speaker 1: contest when they're not really trying to put it in play.
Speaker 1: That could be some of what's going on here. But
Speaker 1: I looked back Joe Biden only lost it, but I
Speaker 1: think like one point eight percentage points, so it's not
Speaker 1: like it was a blowout. And when you consider what
Speaker 1: the different coalitions look like, Obama won North Carolina. And
Speaker 1: so if they're saying, hey, we're putting the Obama coalition
Speaker 1: back together, maybe this state is in play for us
Speaker 1: in a way that it wasn't for Joe Biden. It's
Speaker 1: not the craziest idea in the world. And I think
Speaker 1: the overall picture for Kamala, I mean, it's obvious at
Speaker 1: this point she's outperforming Joe Biden wildly, and not just
Speaker 1: his post debate performance. She's also outperforming where he was
Speaker 1: at his back during this race, but not during twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: He was way up at this point in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: So we also have to be clear about that she
Speaker 1: has way more pods to two seventy than he did.
Speaker 1: He really was narrowed down to like, all right, you
Speaker 1: got to go all in on the like old white
Speaker 1: people in the rust Belt, and she because her coalition
Speaker 1: is different there's it really does expand the map and
Speaker 1: potentially put a state like North Carolina in player at
Speaker 1: least forced the Trump campaign to have to think about
Speaker 1: a stately looking at.
Speaker 2: The lit dada. Obama won it in eight forty nine
Speaker 2: point seven to McCain's forty nine point three, lost it
Speaker 2: in two thousand and twelve, with Romney at fifty point
Speaker 2: six and forty eight. So actually it's been relatively in
Speaker 2: play and tight close, almost like Georgia esque numbers where yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a sleeper swing state, but Obama won in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, people thought it was kind of
Speaker 2: a flash in the pan. But yeah, last time around,
Speaker 2: and like I just said, you got all these young
Speaker 2: people who are moving into the state, Charlotte economy and
Speaker 2: all that is boomy. You got the democratic governor. You know,
Speaker 2: these are all like signs of decent funda metals for
Speaker 2: if there were a flip, could it could be this
Speaker 2: time around?
Speaker 3: So it's not crazy to think.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go ahead and move on to the
Speaker 1: JD Vance word clouds. And these were also really interesting.
Speaker 1: All right, put the first one up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is the overall When you ask voters in general, right, left, center, old, young, everything,
Speaker 1: the number one word that jumps out unknown, number two, unsure,
Speaker 1: number three, weird, You get conservative, bad, idiot. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think this shows some Uh it's a positive for
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign in that they still have a chance
Speaker 1: to define him, like he hasn't been fully defined. But
Speaker 1: I also say it's the real best for them, because
Speaker 1: Democrats are aggressively working to define him right now, and
Speaker 1: Republicans will show you that. I mean, we'll show you
Speaker 1: this with the the Trump comments at the NABJ. They
Speaker 1: aren't really doing much to defend him at this point
Speaker 1: and to def find him in a different way than
Speaker 1: what Democrats are trying to do. So it's both like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's an opportunity for the Republicans, but it's
Speaker 1: also a risk because you could get into a situation
Speaker 1: like Obama with Romney back in twenty twelve, where he
Speaker 1: came out so early and so aggressively defined Mitt Romney
Speaker 1: and that caricature was close enough to reality that it's
Speaker 1: stuck that there was nothing they could do to change
Speaker 1: the public perception of Mitt Romney.
Speaker 3: Is this like, you know, plutocratic elite.
Speaker 1: So Democrats very much want that word reared to be
Speaker 1: the number one thing you think of with JD.
Speaker 3: Vance and they're not there yet.
Speaker 1: And we'll show you this will be really clear when
Speaker 1: we get to like the partisan breakdown, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: there isn't an alternative Republican descriptor that is popping out
Speaker 1: here at all.
Speaker 2: I agree, it's an issue for JD And the main
Speaker 2: problem is what do we all know about Donald Trump?
Speaker 2: If you ever upstage him, he will cut your legs
Speaker 2: out from underneath you. So yeah, Jadi is not really
Speaker 2: in a position to be defending himself.
Speaker 3: It's not set up to.
Speaker 2: He doesn't need like it would be the worst. The
Speaker 2: worst possible thing for him would not be to combat
Speaker 2: Kamala Harrison weird. It would be to become the main
Speaker 2: storyline and to upstage Donald Trump. And if he started,
Speaker 2: you know, giving high profile interviews and aggressively trying to
Speaker 2: go back against this, then Trump would be furious to
Speaker 2: him and be like, who does this guy think he is?
Speaker 2: I mean, he already saw underccurrence of that with the
Speaker 2: Nabj answer, which we will.
Speaker 1: Get to agree, because I think most of the storylines
Speaker 1: about the Trump campaign over the past two weeks have
Speaker 1: been about Jah, which.
Speaker 2: Drives Trump crazy because I actually saw somebody say this,
Speaker 2: somebody who was close to Trump. They're like, Trump would
Speaker 2: not pick a running mate at all if he was
Speaker 2: not legally required to, because the eightes having anybody else
Speaker 2: to share his spotlight, anybody else on his name. That's
Speaker 2: something that we know well about him. So let's put
Speaker 2: this up there on the A two B. Please the
Speaker 2: JD vans across the categories. So the Democrats have very
Speaker 2: clearly won the weird war, although you know, unknown is
Speaker 2: still the number two word that Democrats associate. So it's
Speaker 2: one of those where clearly amongst Democrats has reached high staliens.
Speaker 2: When you look though at Independence, you see unknown, unsure, smart, idiot, bad, fake, IDK,
Speaker 2: I personally like IDK. And then amongst Republicans, unknown is
Speaker 2: the second largest word, and conservative, from.
Speaker 1: Which conservative is just like, I mean, it's that's fine,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's not like. That was my point about
Speaker 1: there's not an alternative competing vision of who JD Vance
Speaker 1: is that's really breaking through. I mean, when Trump has
Speaker 1: tried to defend him, he's talked about like, oh well,
Speaker 1: he loves the family, and he's talked about always really
Speaker 1: in touch with the working man. You don't see any
Speaker 1: of that in here, none of it.
Speaker 3: Actually.
Speaker 2: Instead, what you see is it's like smart, IDK, cool, uncertain, unpredictable.
Speaker 2: These are amongst Republicans unfamiliar. Clearly people don't know anything
Speaker 2: about him. That actually kind of explains to why Hillbilly
Speaker 2: elergy is skyrocketed to the top of the bestseller list,
Speaker 2: and He'llbilly Elogy in the movie. I think it's downloaded
Speaker 2: movie on Netflix, which people like who is who is
Speaker 2: this guy? Which again is a great reminder. I bet
Speaker 2: you ninety percent of the people who traditionally watched the
Speaker 2: show know is but we're going to never forget. Most
Speaker 2: Americans do not pay attention at all to politics. I
Speaker 2: do think JD is in a very difficult position. The
Speaker 2: weird thing is one that Democrats and the media are
Speaker 2: repeating over and over again, and Republicans don't want to
Speaker 2: be in a position of defending their vice president because
Speaker 2: if they are, it would be seen as upstaging Donald
Speaker 2: Trump vance himself. I mean, look, when you're the vice president,
Speaker 2: I've been reading his speeches. I'll just say this, I've
Speaker 2: known of his speeches and listened to them for a while.
Speaker 2: This is not how he would traditionally speak. I'll just
Speaker 2: put it that way. It is clear to me. What
Speaker 2: do you mean by it's just it's so cookie cutter,
Speaker 2: very very basic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like it feels very uncomfortable for me.
Speaker 2: It just looks like first grade reading level. And look,
Speaker 2: probably the right strategy, right. I mean, if we think
Speaker 2: about that, even the New York Time is only written
Speaker 2: for a fifth grade reading level or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 2: it just does It doesn't come across what I think
Speaker 2: are the strengths and all that he has. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, like, that's what it means to be
Speaker 2: vice president. You're signing up as a number two man.
Speaker 2: You say whatever they tell you to say. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: so you know, I don't know him. I do think
Speaker 2: they're in a tough position just because again, his team
Speaker 2: his team, and his job is to not make problems
Speaker 2: for Trump, right, And let's be honest, it was a
Speaker 2: problem for Trump. There's nothing Trump hates more than having
Speaker 2: somebody who he doesn't even like. For in Trump's mind,
Speaker 2: he can deal with anything as long as it's about him.
Speaker 2: But whenever it's about others, it's like, oh, he'll throw
Speaker 2: you under the bus instant, and he did yesterday. I mean,
Speaker 2: it is certain. I mean the answer was weird because
Speaker 2: he both defended him and then he was like, look,
Speaker 2: this whole thing is moving because eat me.
Speaker 3: But you know what was funny.
Speaker 1: I did counterpoints with Emily yesterday and we did the
Speaker 1: Conservative League Candeline, I want to watch.
Speaker 3: Some of it. And when I asked them about.
Speaker 1: Dad, that's a very similar answer, especially from an as
Speaker 1: she was like, I don't really think vice president matters.
Speaker 1: And so it's felt to me like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to draw too much from that, but it felt to
Speaker 1: me that that was kind of like the cope that
Speaker 1: had gone out among Republicans of like, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: all this is all irrelevant. Vice presidents don't really matter,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that's really true. I know that
Speaker 1: that's what a political scientist some will argue that when
Speaker 1: you think about the vice presidential picks over the past
Speaker 1: number of cycles, I think that they made a difference.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Mike Pence made a difference for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: I think Sarah Palin was a problem.
Speaker 1: Was initially very additive for John McCain when she first
Speaker 1: came out, and she had tons of charisma and people like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this could be a problem for Democrats.
Speaker 1: And then she sort of crashed and burned and became
Speaker 1: a liability for him and showed a lack of seriousness
Speaker 1: and a willingness to kind of like take risks with
Speaker 1: the country future that was, you know, that doomed him ultimately.
Speaker 1: I think Biden was important for Obama as that kind
Speaker 1: of validator. Like we discussed, I think this vice presidential
Speaker 1: pick for Kamala is going to be really important. And
Speaker 1: the thing with Jadie Vance, I do think you could
Speaker 1: argue for Trump because he's such a singular figure that
Speaker 1: it is less consequential than like Kamala's pick. I think
Speaker 1: that's completely fair to argue. But when Democrats want to
Speaker 1: put the whole ticket in the like fringe, extreme weird bucket,
Speaker 1: and you add a guy on the ticket who you
Speaker 1: know is being labeled as that, and the label's kind
Speaker 1: of sticking. And on the two issues that Trumps knows
Speaker 1: himself that he has an issue on, which is abortion
Speaker 1: in Project twenty twenty five, and JD brings baggage the
Speaker 1: ticket on both it. You know, there were other choices.
Speaker 1: Glenn Youngkin was sitting out there ready for the taken
Speaker 1: to put Virginia in the in.
Speaker 3: Play, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it's not that I think JD. Vance is
Speaker 1: going to like sink the ticket, but I think he
Speaker 1: makes it easier for Democrats to make the case about
Speaker 1: the ticket they want to make and frame it through
Speaker 1: the prism that they want to frame it.
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily disagree. I think a lot of it
Speaker 2: is marginal, and that's why it's like did it matter?
Speaker 2: Did not matter? I think Sarah Palin probably did matter.
Speaker 2: But it's like, what was more impactful to two thousand
Speaker 2: and financial crisis or Sarah Palin? It's like, Okay, well
Speaker 2: I think we know the answer, you know here with Donald.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's the only no, And I agree, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look, these are all multifaceted, multifactorial. There's so many confounding variables,
Speaker 2: octobers to press. You know, you can never if anything,
Speaker 2: the narrative is probably more important here. Yeah, I really
Speaker 2: think I think if JD was running on his own,
Speaker 2: he'd be in a much better position because you can
Speaker 2: actually fight back kind of on your own terms. But
Speaker 2: when you're hams strung as the number two man to
Speaker 2: one of the most sensitive like candidates in modern probably
Speaker 2: ever in modern history, who you know is sensitive to that?
Speaker 2: I O, all presidents are sensitive about their number two
Speaker 2: showing them. But but this is like dialed up to ten.
Speaker 2: I mean, you basically just have to do whatever his
Speaker 2: people tell you. To do. Yeah, I think that's a problem.
Speaker 2: Can we put gender please up on the screen because
Speaker 2: that also, you know, kind of underscores to me the
Speaker 2: issue here too. If we're talking here about women candidates,
Speaker 2: I mean unknown. And this is also where I would
Speaker 2: say the weird thing belies it. I mean, look, he's
Speaker 2: a recent Catholic convert and he believes very strongly in
Speaker 2: being pro life. That's just all. Look, if you know,
Speaker 2: I use my personal level, I know him, but if
Speaker 2: I were running against him, that's all I would talk
Speaker 2: about that period. I mean, he's said it literally on camera.
Speaker 2: That's kind of the things you have to do whenever
Speaker 2: you're running for a Republican race and you're going and
Speaker 2: I think he won the Susan band en List for example,
Speaker 2: endorsement in his race. Just play that on a loop.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's one where it's very very easy to
Speaker 2: drive that home. And to make it clear. Now, to
Speaker 2: be fair, every single person on Trump's list, save for
Speaker 2: Glenn Youngkin, was actually adamantly pro life. This is also
Speaker 2: too where when we think about the context of the
Speaker 2: vice presidential pick. The vice presidential pick for JD was
Speaker 2: made in the context of Joe Biden's staying in this race,
Speaker 2: and this is one where he was relatively confident, not
Speaker 2: only about his victory, but he was concerned about a
Speaker 2: secondary on the ticket who was going to be loyal
Speaker 2: to him and loyal to his agenda at the very least.
Speaker 2: That was important to his advisors and the people who
Speaker 2: are picking him. Where he didn't know he was going
Speaker 2: to be in a knife fight, you know, on abortion. Now,
Speaker 2: would he have picked JD. Still, it's certainly possible, I think,
Speaker 2: maybe even likely, considering what Trump you know, considers important.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think we'd be lying to say his
Speaker 2: calculus would have been a little bit different if he
Speaker 2: didn't know that Kamala was going to be in the race.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean if Trump could keep the number
Speaker 1: one descriptor of J. JD Vance at unknown, I think
Speaker 1: you'd be happy with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the worst. We've had worse things.
Speaker 1: That's not realistic. Right, He's going to get defined and
Speaker 1: known to the American public between now and November, and
Speaker 1: so h Trump better defend him because the Democrats are
Speaker 1: certainly not going to lay off in how they're aggressively
Speaker 1: seeking to define him. And what was interesting to me
Speaker 1: actually about this gender divide is that there wasn't a
Speaker 1: big one.
Speaker 3: Men are more likely.
Speaker 1: To say conservative, but all like both genders say in here, unknown, unsure, unknown, unsure,
Speaker 1: and then weird.
Speaker 3: So it was interesting to me. Actually, I was expecting
Speaker 3: more of.
Speaker 1: A gender divide in terms of the descriptors among men
Speaker 1: and women and we that doesn't jump out at you
Speaker 1: right here. I guess perhaps a positive is you don't
Speaker 1: see like abortion on here anywhere or extreme. It may
Speaker 1: be in there, but not as like one of the
Speaker 1: main descriptors. But I think the weird thing is, I
Speaker 1: think it's a problem. I think it's very trumpy and
Speaker 1: type of descriptor that you know, it's impossible to refute, right,
Speaker 1: And the more you refute it, you try to refute
Speaker 1: it directly, the more you kind of play into the
Speaker 1: the imprint of the word and you it's very hard
Speaker 1: to beat the charges.
Speaker 3: I would That's what I would say if.
Speaker 2: I were them, I would not even utter the word weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the more you say it, the more it
Speaker 1: just imprints the people's minds.
Speaker 2: Like I read this weird you know speech Frunt that
Speaker 2: he gave last night in Arizona. I was long asleep
Speaker 2: by the time he delivered those remarks. But I read
Speaker 2: it this morning and it was Kamala's fake commos independent,
Speaker 2: Commo's liberal. I was like, okay, yeah, that's basically what
Speaker 2: I would say. But at the same time, like I said,
Speaker 2: when you run for number two, a lot of people
Speaker 2: don't really care you know, what you have to say
Speaker 2: or who you are. I'm basically with you, I don't
Speaker 2: really I think unknown is probably the best you can
Speaker 2: really hope for, you know, at this time, especially because
Speaker 2: he cannot make an affirmative case for himself because that
Speaker 2: would upstage him to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: It's not an enviable it's the.
Speaker 2: Worst position that you could possibly be in. All right,
Speaker 2: let's age.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's put age up on the screen. We can
Speaker 1: take a look at this one. The breakdown here, this
Speaker 1: was amusing to me. Eighteen to twenty nine. Instead of unknown,
Speaker 1: it's IDK. You've got weird, is the it jumps out
Speaker 1: the most. In the youngest demographic, In the oldest demographic,
Speaker 1: you've got conservative.
Speaker 3: Bad idiot unknown. But really, the thing you know that
Speaker 3: is consistent across the board is unknown and unsure.
Speaker 2: I don't know what he is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that's like I said, I think
Speaker 1: it's a real risk for the Trump campaign because the
Speaker 1: longer it remains is unknown.
Speaker 3: The war of an.
Speaker 1: Opportunity you have for Democrats to define who he is
Speaker 1: for you. But it also means that the negative perceptions
Speaker 1: of him have not completely like taken hold in a
Speaker 1: you know, unmovable way amongst the public. There's still a
Speaker 1: possibility to define him in a way that would be
Speaker 1: positive for the ticket rather than negative.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, Former President Donald Trump made an appearance at
Speaker 2: the NABJ, the National Association of Black Journalist event, and
Speaker 2: let's just say, was fiery. It was astonishing. The circumstances
Speaker 2: itself were absolutely crazy. Trump was held off the stage
Speaker 2: waiting for some thirty four minutes to go on because
Speaker 2: there were microphone issues. The microphone issues then manifested themselves
Speaker 2: during the interview. During the interview, they were talking past
Speaker 2: each other. Trump itself was facing a jeering crowd. Many
Speaker 2: people there were very upset that even appeared in the
Speaker 2: first place, and it went off the rails from the
Speaker 2: very very first answer. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6: I want to start by addressing the elephant in the room, sir.
Speaker 6: A lot of people did not think it.
Speaker 2: Was appropriate for you to be here today.
Speaker 6: You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals,
Speaker 6: from Nicki Haley to former President Barack Obama, saying that
Speaker 6: they were not born in the United States, which is
Speaker 6: not true. You have told four congressmen women of color
Speaker 6: who were American citizens to go back.
Speaker 2: To where they came from.
Speaker 3: You have used words like animal and.
Speaker 6: Rabbit to describe black district attorneys. You've attacked black journalists,
Speaker 6: calling them a loser, saying the question that they ask
Speaker 6: are quote stupid and racist. You've had dinner with a
Speaker 6: white supremacist at.
Speaker 2: Your marologue resort.
Speaker 6: So my question, sir, now that you are asking black
Speaker 6: supporters to vote for you, why should black voters trust
Speaker 6: you after you have used language like that.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I don't think I've ever been
Speaker 4: asked a question so in such a horrible manner.
Speaker 7: A first question you don't.
Speaker 8: Even say, hello, how are you?
Speaker 9: Are you?
Speaker 7: With ABC?
Speaker 4: I was invited here, and I was told my opponent,
Speaker 4: whether it was Biden or Kamala, I was told my
Speaker 4: opponent was going to be here. It turned out my
Speaker 4: opponent isn't here. You invited me under false pretense. And
Speaker 4: then you said you can't do it with zoom. Well
Speaker 4: you know where's zoom. She's going to do it with zoom,
Speaker 4: and she's not coming. And then you are half an
Speaker 4: hour la. Just so we understand, I have too much respect.
Speaker 10: For you to be late.
Speaker 4: They couldn't get their equipment working or something.
Speaker 2: I would like. I think it's a very super second.
Speaker 7: I have answered the question.
Speaker 4: I have been the best president for the black population
Speaker 4: since Abraham Lincoln, better.
Speaker 3: Than President Johnson.
Speaker 2: He's notign the building rights.
Speaker 4: Ask you to start off a question and answer period,
Speaker 4: especially when you're thirty five minutes late because you couldn't
Speaker 4: get your equipment to work in such a hostile manner,
Speaker 4: I think it's a disgrace.
Speaker 2: All right, Chrystal, that is a vintage twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I'm checking the calendar because
Speaker 1: he's back twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: He is back, folks the ear. What was it like
Speaker 2: being nice and all that? It only lasted for a
Speaker 2: couple of days. This is as Trump as Trump has
Speaker 2: been in quite a long time. On the campaign trail there,
Speaker 2: But I mean, I guess the only thing that we
Speaker 2: could say at here at least here with the question
Speaker 2: is about Kamala Harris, because she was originally said that
Speaker 2: she couldn't make it, and then apparently like he was
Speaker 2: talking there about zoom, so she It's weird been trying
Speaker 2: to figure out is this lady going to speak of
Speaker 2: this event or not?
Speaker 3: Well, it's very it's.
Speaker 1: Very confused what unfolded in the you know, lead up
Speaker 1: to this. Apparently the best I can figure out is
Speaker 1: she had said, Hey, I'm not going to come, but
Speaker 1: I can do this by via zoom, right, and they
Speaker 1: were like, no, zoom. And then once they announced that
Speaker 1: they were going to interview Trump, and there was this huge,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, stupid back journalist, your journalist. He's the
Speaker 1: former and potential future president, like, of course you should
Speaker 1: interview him. And in my opinion, like what happened here
Speaker 1: is very revealing and it is something that the American
Speaker 1: public should see, however they feel about it, Okay. So,
Speaker 1: in any case, they got a massive backlash over quote
Speaker 1: unquote platforming Trump. They had board members who were resigning,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so I think in an effort to
Speaker 1: try to clean things up, then it looks like they
Speaker 1: went back to and again this is this is the
Speaker 1: best I can figure out from the reporting that's out there.
Speaker 1: Then I think they go back to comm and say,
Speaker 1: oh wait, actually we can do the zoom. And by
Speaker 1: that point like she's made other plans or whatever. And
Speaker 1: so anyway, that was all a mess. And then there
Speaker 1: were technical difficulties, which as someone listen, nothing is more frustrating.
Speaker 1: It's not there for like the journalists fault I had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with like setting up the mics and whatever.
Speaker 1: But you have to remember, this is he's not as
Speaker 1: old as Biden, but this is also a cranky old man.
Speaker 3: So I think that he came in.
Speaker 1: There already loaded for bear, already with an idea of
Speaker 1: I'm gonna drop a bomb on this place, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna cause the whole country to talk about what it
Speaker 1: is that I have to say.
Speaker 3: And by the way, the.
Speaker 1: Major comments that everybody's sharing here about Comma's identity, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do a whole separate part on that, because it's
Speaker 1: quite clear now that was part of like an intentional
Speaker 1: campaign strategy.
Speaker 3: So we're going to separate that out.
Speaker 1: But I think you know, he already was like I'm
Speaker 1: going in there with this plan and then when he
Speaker 1: had to wait for thirty and so frustrated, then it's
Speaker 1: just off the rails from the beginning. I mean to her, listen, overall,
Speaker 1: I didn't think that these that this trio, they were
Speaker 1: kind of at odds with each other. The questions that
Speaker 1: I would want to ask, we're not asked. You know,
Speaker 1: about economics and you know, the things that really impact
Speaker 1: people's lives. But let's be clear that first question, Like
Speaker 1: she had to ask that first question and for him
Speaker 1: maybe soy, so thin skinned about you know, this had
Speaker 1: been controversial for the group. She had to ask that
Speaker 1: first question, and he just you know, completely off the reat.
Speaker 3: Just from the beginning.
Speaker 2: It was very Megan Kelly asked, He's like, you've killed women,
Speaker 2: So what do you think he's going to say. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's gonna be like, you know what, You're right, I'm
Speaker 2: a freaking racist. It's just like so dumb. But look,
Speaker 2: this is the other thing.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's like, like I said, I think
Speaker 1: she has to ask that question, given like the concerns
Speaker 1: of the group that she's representing and the controversy going
Speaker 1: into it. You know, I don't it's unreasonable to expect
Speaker 1: that you're just going to get like a softball out
Speaker 1: the gate.
Speaker 3: You have a limited amount of time with him.
Speaker 1: He's the four he's a you know, very consequential figure,
Speaker 1: potential future president. You know, the notion that he should
Speaker 1: just be handed a softball as a first question.
Speaker 3: Is for possible.
Speaker 2: Oh I don't think it should be a softball. I
Speaker 2: mean the last part is you think you're the most
Speaker 2: consequential president since Abraham Lincoln for black people? How could
Speaker 2: you possibly say that in good faith? Maybe let's get
Speaker 2: into that. But again, and also on a professional level,
Speaker 2: you and I prepare very stringently for interviews. It's very
Speaker 2: clear these three ladies like didn't talk to each other
Speaker 2: about who is going to ask what because they're always
Speaker 2: talking across. And so it's funny because afterwards all these
Speaker 2: journalists were like, oh my god, they did such a
Speaker 2: good job. I was like, I thought that was a
Speaker 2: freaking disaster, and whoever put that thing together, you should
Speaker 2: be humiliated. We have higher standards here on a YouTube show. Now,
Speaker 2: there was a consequential and interesting answer here where Harris
Speaker 2: Faulkner over at Fox News pressed Trump on the JD
Speaker 2: Vance Childless cat Lady comments and you could see here
Speaker 2: in real time he both moves from defense to listen,
Speaker 2: vice president. It doesn't even matter at all. Let's take
Speaker 2: a listen.
Speaker 11: And that's why this decision is important this time bad
Speaker 11: things happen. You've said it twice when you look at
Speaker 11: jd Vance. Is he ready on day one? Does ready
Speaker 11: on day one if he have to be.
Speaker 4: I've always had great respect for him and for the
Speaker 4: other candidates too, But I will say this, and I
Speaker 4: think this is well documented. Historically, the vice president in
Speaker 4: terms of the election does not have any impact. I
Speaker 4: mean virtually no impact. You have two or three days
Speaker 4: where there's a lot of commotion as to who, like
Speaker 4: you're having it on the Democrat side, who it's going
Speaker 4: to be, and then that dies down and it's all
Speaker 4: about the presidential pick. Virtually never has it mattered. Maybe
Speaker 4: lived in Johnson matter for different reasons of what we're
Speaker 4: talking about, not for vote reasons, but for political reasons,
Speaker 4: other political reasons. But historically the choice of a vice
Speaker 4: president makes no difference.
Speaker 3: Is interesting. What's up the LBJ thing is interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't actually catch that the first time I listened,
Speaker 1: because he's what he's saying is that because JFK was assassinated,
Speaker 1: that's why he ends up being consequential.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, so I was the because Trump has previously
Speaker 2: praised Roger Stone, you know, he's their friends, Roger whole
Speaker 2: book about how LBJ is actually the one who killed JFK.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, did he mean it in
Speaker 2: terms of LVJ was a party of the Association. That's
Speaker 2: kind of immediately where my man went to. I was like,
Speaker 2: is he implying that LBJ was part of a conspiracy
Speaker 2: to assassinate JFK. Look, I don't know. It was definitely.
Speaker 3: You read a lot of things.
Speaker 2: One of them. What's funny though, is that you know,
Speaker 2: if you actually know the history, he is right. One
Speaker 2: of the things that was very president of the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty convention is that people were very upset, which the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party at that time was totally split between the
Speaker 2: Southern conservatives and like the Massachusetts Northeast liberals, Massachusetts and
Speaker 2: Midwestern liberals all supported civil rights. Obviously the southern the
Speaker 2: States didn't, and they weren't going to back anybody who
Speaker 2: was a number two on the ticket unless it was
Speaker 2: somebody who was anti civil rights in their head. They
Speaker 2: believed that Johnson, who had kind of bamboozled them his
Speaker 2: entire life was against civil rights and was a Southern ally,
Speaker 2: and so his adding to the ticket was actually very
Speaker 2: very consequential for at least bringing over some of the
Speaker 2: Democratic senators and then trying to push back against the
Speaker 2: George Wallace rising. Segregation is South sentiment in the South.
Speaker 2: So I think he unintentionally was correct about why LBJ.
Speaker 2: I actually do think it's probably the most consequential vice
Speaker 2: president will pick, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's doesn't fair.
Speaker 2: Fair because of what Also, he basically stole the state
Speaker 2: of Texas for JFK whenever it came to the elections.
Speaker 1: Facts true, But obviously the bigger takeaway here is he
Speaker 1: gets asked a very direct question, is JD Vance ready
Speaker 1: on day one? And he does not say yes, no, ye,
Speaker 1: Like that's such a gimme. That is such a gimmy,
Speaker 1: Like even if you don't believe it, of course you
Speaker 1: say yes, he picks this vice president.
Speaker 3: Because you believe they're ready on day one.
Speaker 1: And he dodges the question, and then he goes on
Speaker 1: to say he says something that all I have respect for,
Speaker 1: I respect for a lot of people, and then he
Speaker 1: goes on to say, Josh barretweeted like it's very clear,
Speaker 1: this is what his advisors are telling him when he's
Speaker 1: freaking out about the pick himself and vice president doesn't
Speaker 1: matter anyway, So whatever, who cares whether he's good or
Speaker 1: bad already on day one.
Speaker 2: Trump is never going to know. I think in Trump's mind,
Speaker 2: he's like ready on day one. At me, I'm ready
Speaker 2: on day one. I'm here, I'm ready to go. Anything
Speaker 2: that could possibly, you know, upstage him cause problems for him.
Speaker 2: And you know, look at Project twenty twenty five, I mean,
Speaker 2: the most slavishly devoted people to Donald Trump, and the
Speaker 2: moment they caused an issue for him, He's like, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna cut you loose. I'm never going to talk to
Speaker 2: you or see you again, and declare war on you.
Speaker 2: This is part of his mo.
Speaker 1: This is as close as you will get to confirmation
Speaker 1: that Trump does regret his choice right here. Being unwilling
Speaker 1: to say, like, really a single positive thing about Jadie Vance.
Speaker 1: Being unwilling to say that your vice presidential pick is
Speaker 1: ready on day one is really something. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: for him to go on this tangent about like well,
Speaker 1: who cares about him and he.
Speaker 3: Doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2: See. I read it as that's what he would say
Speaker 2: about anybody who he had picked. I'm not sure he
Speaker 2: would have said that necessarily about Doug Burgham or any
Speaker 2: of these other folks, because if Bergham was the nominee. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I get it, he codes more.
Speaker 1: He has actually said more positive things about Doug Burghram.
Speaker 1: I think at this point that he has about.
Speaker 2: Jadvan straight out of Central Casting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he also he did a whole thing about Doug
Speaker 1: burg that was interesting where he's like, you know.
Speaker 3: He's he's a little too nice.
Speaker 1: He doesn't doesn't realize sometimes a little controversy is a
Speaker 1: good thing.
Speaker 3: Something like that.
Speaker 2: This is what I mean with this man, It's like
Speaker 2: you can never win, Okay. So I don't know if
Speaker 2: I was going to it that way, I would just say
Speaker 2: with Trump, anytime that you're causing even an inkling of
Speaker 2: an issue for him, he's going to immediately knuq you
Speaker 2: and throw you under the bus and remind you kind
Speaker 2: of of your place.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, as Ady Van's you are on your own
Speaker 3: very clearly.
Speaker 2: That's I think that's always been and I think anybody
Speaker 2: who's going into that job should have been very clear
Speaker 2: eyed that loyalty only goes one way in that relationship.
Speaker 2: Let's put this up here on the screen from April Ryan,
Speaker 2: So she reported kind of what you were saying, Crystal. Yeah,
Speaker 2: about the NABJ. They shut down a conversation for a
Speaker 2: virtual town hall because apparently Harris said that she needed
Speaker 2: to be in Chicago in or. They said that she
Speaker 2: needed to be in Chicago in person only. Then after
Speaker 2: they began to ask her to consider it. Then yesterday
Speaker 2: afternoon they moved on after being told no about being
Speaker 2: in person. Then they came back and they asked for
Speaker 2: a VP surrogate like Megan the Stallion, Oprah or barackab Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to interview Trump and then after that we're
Speaker 2: going to ask Magan the Stallion's opinions. Okay, I mean
Speaker 2: Oprah maybe whatever Obama. Obama was the only one. Hey,
Speaker 2: mister president, did you did you ask Joe Biden to
Speaker 2: drop out of the race? Asked no question, yes or
Speaker 2: no question? And he's going to try it. I mean
Speaker 2: that's actually newsworthy and interesting. Yeah, I would take that.
Speaker 1: But oh, Megan even like endorsed in my race yet
Speaker 1: I don't know, Megan is Stallion's hilarious but anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so basically, according to April Ryan, what happened is
Speaker 1: Kama said she could do virtual.
Speaker 3: They were like, no, we.
Speaker 1: Want you in person. She said no to in person,
Speaker 1: and you had this freak out about Trump and then
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, maybe we can't do you know, virtual whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so that's that's the backstorre. It was definitely all went.
Speaker 2: I think it was a mistake of Kamala and not
Speaker 2: to clear schedule and actually try and get it done,
Speaker 2: because the optics of it are ridiculous. It's like, why
Speaker 2: is Trump in the midst of obviously a very hostile
Speaker 2: environment where people were like weeping and jeering, you know,
Speaker 2: in the back and gasping, you know, all of these people,
Speaker 2: and why didn't she show up or at least, you know,
Speaker 2: try to make it work. I get the people are busy,
Speaker 2: but also, look, politicians are a lot less busy than
Speaker 2: you would think. Sometimes they can.
Speaker 3: Do and they want to make something happen to happen.
Speaker 3: I do think.
Speaker 2: Listen, you have a private plane, it go takes off
Speaker 2: thirty minutes late.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know it's consistent with she is.
Speaker 1: She's afraid of these kind of settings because while it
Speaker 1: would be a friendlier audience for her, you know, you
Speaker 1: got Harris Faulkner up on the stage exactly, and she's
Speaker 1: not gonna They're gonna feel, especially after doing a tough
Speaker 1: interview with Trump, they're going to feel like they need
Speaker 1: to show balance with Kamala and not just do a
Speaker 1: softball interview with Kamala. And you know, she she is
Speaker 1: nervous about those settings, and she has reason to be
Speaker 1: nervous about those hettings because in the past it hasn't
Speaker 1: gone that well for her. So I think you're right
Speaker 1: about if it went well for her, then it was
Speaker 1: a missed opportunity for her to get out there. And
Speaker 1: obviously this became like the big story of the day
Speaker 1: and she becomes a side show to it. But if
Speaker 1: it didn't go well for her, then it was the
Speaker 1: right call to skip it.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, this is the issue. Strategically, I would
Speaker 2: do the exact same thing if I were her. I'm
Speaker 2: going to look at my record and say, I'm terrible
Speaker 2: at management and I'm bad at interviews. You know what,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do interviews Apparently what she had
Speaker 2: pushed for was this was another report about some friendly
Speaker 2: fireside chat, and to their credit, they're like, no, you
Speaker 2: have to do interview. And that's the thing about Rachel Scott. Look,
Speaker 2: I don't think she did a particularly good job here
Speaker 2: in this interview, but I have seen her get yelled
Speaker 2: at by Nancy Pelosi. And you know, look, any Democrat
Speaker 2: screaming at you in the hallway, that actually is important,
Speaker 2: you know, if you were willing to sit there and
Speaker 2: take it a little bit and actually ask a challenging question.
Speaker 2: So I don't have any doubt that both her and
Speaker 2: Harris Faulkner would have pushed her at least a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean there are serious questions to be
Speaker 2: asked here. Did you know that Joe Biden was old?
Speaker 2: At what point did Joe Biden tell you he was
Speaker 2: going to run for president? These are ones where if
Speaker 2: you don't ask that, you are a joke as a journalist.
Speaker 1: Well and also really critically, and we're you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to Matt Stole her about what we
Speaker 1: think she might do as president.
Speaker 3: Believe I don't know, right, we don't know.
Speaker 1: And she's already this week, she's changed her position on
Speaker 1: a number of issues.
Speaker 2: Racking medicare for all, What am I missing the border? Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's one more. God, No, that's that's that's changed. That
Speaker 2: one's there's another one that's out there.
Speaker 1: You know, she's in a tough spot to reconcile who
Speaker 1: she wants to be now in this context versus who
Speaker 1: she's been in the past or what she's run on.
Speaker 1: And there are difficult questions obviously out there for the
Speaker 1: taking that you would be irresponsible as a journalist not
Speaker 1: to ask. And I do think that these journalists would
Speaker 1: have asked her some of those questions. And so yes,
Speaker 1: it's not a surprised to me that she didn't want
Speaker 1: to be there in person, that she you know, after
Speaker 1: the they were like okay, you can do zoom. It
Speaker 1: was like, I'm busy because these are the types of
Speaker 1: situations that she typically does want to avoid. That does
Speaker 1: That doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 2: So, by the way, in terms of the verdict, we
Speaker 2: have still not yet come down on whether she's going
Speaker 2: to appear or not. A llegedly say there were seven
Speaker 2: month September she might do it, but that's a month
Speaker 2: from now. That's not fair, you know, it's it should
Speaker 2: be now like the immediate days. It's only been eleven
Speaker 2: days since Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Like
Speaker 2: you've not done a major interview. You have to how
Speaker 2: many rallies has she done. It's not fair to the
Speaker 2: American public. But I could sit here and cry all day.
Speaker 2: It's not going to matter.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, at the end of the day, she's actually
Speaker 2: making the right call. I wouldn't say a damn word.
Speaker 2: I would do these rallies with Megan the Stallion rile
Speaker 2: people up. She's raising two hundred million dollars one in
Speaker 2: two hundred something Americans donating to her campaign. Now you're
Speaker 2: going to get a VP pick again. Ocean of Wall
Speaker 2: Street money, you know, maybe flirt a little bit with
Speaker 2: this whole Lena Khan thing ae hundred something venture capitalists,
Speaker 2: multi billionaires signed a letter backing her. This is the
Speaker 2: best position a Democratic candidate has been in basically since Obama.
Speaker 2: And I'm what early Hillary Clinton before some of the
Speaker 2: worst parts of her were coming out.
Speaker 1: So and let's be honest, I mean, this is this
Speaker 1: is the this is the new reality. Mostly candidates don't
Speaker 1: feel the need to object themselves to anything that may
Speaker 1: even approach a hostel interview. Joe Biden certainly didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: he would go on some like wellness podcast or on
Speaker 1: you know, some totally not even a journalist like softball suit,
Speaker 1: a late night or whatever. And I do think it's
Speaker 1: I think it's wildly anti democratic. I think it's a
Speaker 1: very negative trend. And you're absolutely right. She has been
Speaker 1: brought in here at the last minute. There was no
Speaker 1: democratic process whatsoever that led to this result, and so.
Speaker 3: People deserve even more so.
Speaker 1: To have access to her hear how she handles these
Speaker 1: questions here, how she views her role and her ascension
Speaker 1: and what she would do with an extraordinary amount of power.
Speaker 1: That you know, people do deserve to hear that. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't, you know, doesn't mean that I have any
Speaker 1: hopes because if you're just looking tactically, they're playing it
Speaker 1: exactly the.
Speaker 3: Way that they should play it, and the polls reflect that.
Speaker 2: At this point, Okay, let's move on the headline, the
Speaker 2: big ones. What actually came out of this? Donald Trump asked,
Speaker 2: actually I don't even know if he was asked about this,
Speaker 2: but he.
Speaker 1: Was asked whether about the attacks on Kamala Harris as
Speaker 1: a DEI candidate, and then he gives.
Speaker 2: And then he gave this answer about her heritage. Let's
Speaker 2: take a lesson.
Speaker 4: It was always of Indian heritage, and she was only
Speaker 4: promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until
Speaker 4: a number of years ago when she happened to turn black.
Speaker 4: And now she wants to be known as black. So
Speaker 4: I don't know is she Indian or.
Speaker 2: Is she black? She is always I know.
Speaker 4: Black, college I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't
Speaker 4: because she was Indian all the way and then all
Speaker 4: of a sudden she made a turn and she went
Speaker 4: she became a black.
Speaker 3: Just to be clear, sir, I think.
Speaker 7: Somebody should look into that too.
Speaker 4: When you ask a continue in a very hostile, nasty.
Speaker 3: Tone, it's a direct question, sir.
Speaker 6: Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is a
Speaker 6: DEI higher.
Speaker 7: As somebody really does out?
Speaker 4: I mean, I really don't know, could be, could be?
Speaker 2: All right. So that was the answer, and actually clearly
Speaker 2: was part of a concerted Stratt's put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen, because immediately afterwards they put up on
Speaker 2: the big screen at a rally that Trump was incoming up. Yeah, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: California is Kamala Harris becomes first Indian American US senator. So, Christal,
Speaker 2: you may have heard rhetoric like this before, because I
Speaker 2: think I was complaining about it. I think I was
Speaker 2: on our amah and all right, I'm going to do
Speaker 2: my best to try and thread the needle here because
Speaker 2: people are very upset about this, and I think, frankly
Speaker 2: a lot of it as crocodile tears. I think that
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris is somebody who was raised very much, almost
Speaker 2: identical to me. She was raised basically by an Indian professor,
Speaker 2: South Indian specifically, and for the vast majority of her
Speaker 2: early life identified as Indian. Her mother even said that
Speaker 2: she culturally identifies as Hindu. It is clear, though, that
Speaker 2: after she attended Howard University that become being quote unquote
Speaker 2: black and black only became the identity that she began
Speaker 2: to ascribe except when politically conven So Lee Fong reported
Speaker 2: in his sub stack several days ago that she ran
Speaker 2: as quote Kamala Davy hair. Davy is her middle name.
Speaker 2: It's an Indian word as well as South Asian. In
Speaker 2: her first race in two thousand and three, but by
Speaker 2: twenty twenty was listing her in her bio only as
Speaker 2: a black woman. And this is where if we connect
Speaker 2: our word clouds, the fake moniker, the being a chameleon,
Speaker 2: the code switching, which if we're all being honest and watching,
Speaker 2: is the way that she talks in front of various
Speaker 2: different audiences I think is unambiguously true. That is kind
Speaker 2: of where I think Trump is quo trying to quote
Speaker 2: unquote triangulate here and actually amongst Indians. This has been
Speaker 2: a long time beef with Kamala Harris. Is she forgot
Speaker 2: she was Indian a long time ago?
Speaker 3: So, and just to be clear about her hair, and
Speaker 3: her dad is Jamaica.
Speaker 2: Her dad is from Jamaica or was he from Jamaica?
Speaker 2: I think he is definitely Jamaica.
Speaker 3: He is Jamaica.
Speaker 1: And I think he's, you know, an immigrant from m
Speaker 1: I think both her parents were immigrants to the.
Speaker 3: United States and they met.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, so mom is Indian, dad is Jamaican. She is biracial.
Speaker 1: At different in time, she has emphasized one part of
Speaker 1: her heritage versus another. Republicans are sharing this like clip
Speaker 1: of her with Mindy kayling like this is some big gotcha,
Speaker 1: which I actually think is sort of like counter to
Speaker 1: the narrative that like, oh now she only talks about
Speaker 1: being black?
Speaker 3: Is here she is in this clip with Mindy Kaylee.
Speaker 2: That's one time?
Speaker 3: Was the time? Am I being adiant?
Speaker 1: But in any case, I think you're one hundred percent correct.
Speaker 1: The goal here is to try to play, try to
Speaker 1: lay out a narrative of Kamala Harris as fake and
Speaker 1: as someone who in this part is very accurate, has
Speaker 1: been politically all over the place whatever has been convenient.
Speaker 1: I think that attack is pretty salient, although I have
Speaker 1: to tell you, after looking at our word clouds, I'm
Speaker 1: actually convinced that the incompetent attack is probably a more
Speaker 1: effective attack on her. But I think that like fake
Speaker 1: and doesn't believe it, I think that's more effective than
Speaker 1: that she's a radical liberal blah blah blah, as they
Speaker 1: say that about literally everybody. However, as I said before
Speaker 1: when we had the DEI debate, I think when you
Speaker 1: are the part that is constantly talking about someone's race
Speaker 1: and their gender, it is very off putting and not
Speaker 1: actually I actually think the biggest problem with these comments
Speaker 1: demographically isn't actually black people are women of color. I
Speaker 1: actually think it's white people because you know, if I
Speaker 1: go back to like Obama, white people in this country
Speaker 1: loved the idea that we were a country that would
Speaker 1: elect someone like Barack Obama, right, who had this complex
Speaker 1: biracial upbringing, who was you know, who would code switch,
Speaker 1: who was sort of like culturally ambiguous, could be different
Speaker 1: things to different groups, and you know, product of a
Speaker 1: one immigrant parent.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 1: People liked that perception of the country and they liked
Speaker 1: what it said about themselves that they could vote for
Speaker 1: a Barack Obama with that background. So, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff was tried with him. And I actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this because you're much
Speaker 1: younger than me, but you probably do because you're a
Speaker 1: political nerd.
Speaker 3: But there was an effort on the left to say,
Speaker 3: Barack Obama's not really black.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this was a whole Jesse Paxson because he's.
Speaker 1: Not the descendant of African slaves. And this was widely
Speaker 1: mocked and ridiculed in sort of laughed down in the room.
Speaker 1: And then on the right you had which Donald Trump
Speaker 1: was a part of the whole BIRTHERRIHSM thing also really
Speaker 1: didn't land and wasn't an effective attack on Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: So that's why to me, trying to make the fake
Speaker 1: phony case with Kamala but by going in on her
Speaker 1: how she's identified herself and how she has at various
Speaker 1: times talked about her identity, I think it is such
Speaker 1: a political loser. And the last thing I'll say about
Speaker 1: this ogur is I think Trump misunderstands his own appeal
Speaker 1: because part of what has led Trump to be somewhat
Speaker 1: rehabbed in the public image is the fact that he
Speaker 1: was kicked off Twitter and people can't hear as crazy
Speaker 1: shit all day long anymore. And to me, what occurred
Speaker 1: here is, and I think some of this you agree with.
Speaker 1: He wasn't in the headlines. Kamlin was in the headlines,
Speaker 1: and Jade Vance and Cat Ladies was in the headlines.
Speaker 1: He can see the numbers, he can see the race
Speaker 1: slipping away a little bit. You know, he's still probably
Speaker 1: you know, somewhat the favorite, but it's very different ballgame.
Speaker 1: And I think he got a little bit freaked down
Speaker 1: and felt like I need to pull the fire alarm
Speaker 1: and do something that is going to get the cameras
Speaker 1: on me, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. He thinks
Speaker 1: all controversy is good controversy, and I just I don't
Speaker 1: think that that's actually correct.
Speaker 2: This is where I'm just not sure. Look, I lived
Speaker 2: this is the thing. This was such a twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: moment and the media immediate reaction to it, and everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's finished, he's never gonna I'm like, guys, I lived
Speaker 2: through a cycle where what he questioned them, what was
Speaker 2: the Mexican judge. He's like, oh, he's not even a
Speaker 2: real American or something like. This was like day after day,
Speaker 2: who was the gold star father and the gold star
Speaker 2: mother on the stage family? Yeah, he attacked the con family. Right,
Speaker 2: It's one of those where listen, guys, I've seen it.
Speaker 2: I've seen this whole movie. And he won that election.
Speaker 2: So I'm just not going to sit here and pretend
Speaker 2: that this is going to be some earth shattering thing. Well,
Speaker 2: on the question of a race, now, I am. Look,
Speaker 2: I agree there are liberal white people who love the
Speaker 2: idea of voting for a black person. Now, this is
Speaker 2: also where I need to separate the politics, because on
Speaker 2: a personal level, this has always driven me nuts. And
Speaker 2: it's not just about Kama, it's people like Bobby Jindall
Speaker 2: and others who it's like, if you listened to him, Oh,
Speaker 2: he came out of nowhere and he just was born
Speaker 2: a Catholic. It's like, really, payush, is that what happened?
Speaker 2: Or maybe you know, you converted to Catholicism and now
Speaker 2: that's the only thing to even talk about with your identity.
Speaker 2: In fact, amongst Republicans, the only authentically Indian candidate who
Speaker 2: has ever run is vive Roswami, who never changed his position,
Speaker 2: never lied about his religion or made up some story.
Speaker 2: I think he's even a vegetarian, so he's more religious
Speaker 2: than I am. But my point is just that most
Speaker 2: Indians in this country, especially Republicans and others, they run
Speaker 2: away from it. Kama is also one of those people
Speaker 2: who was raised in the early times when there was
Speaker 2: only a couple hundred thousand Indians in America, and she
Speaker 2: ran away from her identity. And that drives me crazy because,
Speaker 2: like I said, she was raised like me. Her father
Speaker 2: wasn't even there around when she was being brought up
Speaker 2: in freaking Canada, like in like Winnipeg, Grant with her mother,
Speaker 2: she heavily identified, and then it's like politically, you know,
Speaker 2: it's very convenient in San Francisco, heavily Asian city. There
Speaker 2: you can be Kamma Davy Harris. But now you're just
Speaker 2: only a black woman. And I think that's gross. And
Speaker 2: that's why, like anytime somebody's time, somebody says, oh, she's
Speaker 2: Indian too, I'm like, yeah, well, she hasn't wanted to
Speaker 2: be for a long time. I do think the phony
Speaker 2: chameleon thing does hit a little bit. The reason it
Speaker 2: didn't work against Obama is Obama was authentic from the
Speaker 2: he wrote a whole book, Dreams of My Father, about
Speaker 2: his father who abandoned him, How he was half black
Speaker 2: and his father was from Kenya, How difficult and weird
Speaker 2: it was to be raised by his white grandparents in Kansas.
Speaker 2: How he came to black a culture also almost as
Speaker 2: a stranger, moving to Chicago. What was it marrying Michelle
Speaker 2: Obama and really like being what it was, knowing what
Speaker 2: it was like to be in like a black family there,
Speaker 2: and eventually coming up in black politics. Every single one
Speaker 2: of that is not only true, it's authentic, and that's
Speaker 2: why people didn't smell it as gross. With Kamala, I
Speaker 2: think that is where what people can at least project
Speaker 2: on is that fake Moniker and see somebody who has
Speaker 2: shape shifted her entire career. So I'm not so sure
Speaker 2: that it's a bad thing. And you know, look, whenever
Speaker 2: we think too about this white liberal vote and all
Speaker 2: that these people are voting for Kamala anyways, Like.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of suburban ladies out there, yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're all voting.
Speaker 2: Democratic as of abortion. I mean, it's just like, I
Speaker 2: don't think that this is really such a swing state killer.
Speaker 2: If it was, then it would have been bad in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing to me is like, first of all,
Speaker 1: I do think with some swing voters who were very
Speaker 1: concerned about voting for Biden, like it is the party
Speaker 1: that obsesses over rac and gender war is a party
Speaker 1: that is going to be losing. And right now it
Speaker 1: is the Republicans who are freaking out about her race
Speaker 1: and her gender, and we actually have her reaction. This
Speaker 1: is b seven. I actually thought she played this perfectly
Speaker 1: well because to me, what she and the Democrats should
Speaker 1: do is not to go into Hillary Clinton Pearl clutch,
Speaker 1: constant moral indignation mode. It should be to keep it moving,
Speaker 1: keep it moving. And I think she did actually a
Speaker 1: very effective job with that. Whether the media can do
Speaker 1: that or not is you know, kind of out of
Speaker 1: her control. But let's take a listen to what she
Speaker 1: had to say at the rally last night about these comments.
Speaker 1: This is B seven.
Speaker 10: We all here remember what those four years were like,
Speaker 10: and today we were given yet another reminder this afternoon,
Speaker 10: Donald Trump's at the annual meeting of the National Association
Speaker 10: of Black Journalists, and it was the same old show,
Speaker 10: the divisiveness and the disrespect. And let me just say,
Speaker 10: the American people deserve better. The American people deserve better.
Speaker 10: The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth,
Speaker 10: a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger
Speaker 10: when confronted with the facts.
Speaker 3: We deserve a leader.
Speaker 10: Who understands that our differences do not divide us. They
Speaker 10: are an essential source of our strengths. So I say
Speaker 10: to Sigma gammeuro Sorority Incorporated, is a fight for the future.
Speaker 1: So let me tell you why I think she played
Speaker 1: this one. We were joking while she was dying.
Speaker 3: It was Hillary. This is sexist and racist and how
Speaker 3: dare you? And it would have been about her.
Speaker 1: The reason this is the way to approach this is,
Speaker 1: first of all, she doesn't even go into what he said.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows like they're laughing, and she's in on the joke.
Speaker 1: She's you know, she's not flustered by she's laughing at him.
Speaker 1: And then she makes it about She says, the American
Speaker 1: people deserve that. This is the same we'll same old
Speaker 1: rush it aside, lap at him. American people deserve betterr
Speaker 1: And that's the way she needs to play this, and
Speaker 1: I think it's the most effective way because again I
Speaker 1: think the trap that Hillary felt. First of all, Hillary
Speaker 1: was already unlikable person. The crooked Hillary thing really stuck.
Speaker 1: I mean there was a lot going on there. Okay,
Speaker 1: Kamala hares right now, her favorability is actually coming up.
Speaker 3: People are liking.
Speaker 1: Her war and bort She's good in these settings and
Speaker 1: she has a natural ease to her that Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: has literally never had. But the trap Hillary fell into
Speaker 1: was they would just go into constant pearl clutching, moral indignation,
Speaker 1: fretting about our children or watching whatever, and people people
Speaker 1: found it irritating. Was like, Okay, we get it. This
Speaker 1: guy's maniac. Move on, like, move on, move on, move on.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, I think that the Hairs campaign seems
Speaker 1: to have internalized those lessons, and so if they're the
Speaker 1: ones out there talking about, you know, things that people
Speaker 1: actually care about, and the Trump campaign is obsessing over
Speaker 1: when she said she was Indian and when she said
Speaker 1: she was black, and that she's a woman and is
Speaker 1: she a dei hihed and whatever?
Speaker 3: People are going to be like, who cares?
Speaker 1: Who cares whether she's black or Indian or biracial?
Speaker 3: And when she said what to whom, etc.
Speaker 1: You kind of are actually distracting from the core message
Speaker 1: you want to have about this is someone who's phony,
Speaker 1: who you know on the issues, is changing her position,
Speaker 1: and you make it exclusively about her race and gender
Speaker 1: versus that broader conversation.
Speaker 2: If they can connect the two, I still think it
Speaker 2: could be potent. I think the door's out. We need
Speaker 2: to see I want to wait a little bit longer
Speaker 2: and see how it goes. But I hate to say it,
Speaker 2: I agree because one of the things that you're hoping
Speaker 2: for when you're Trump is the freak out is been about.
Speaker 2: Dare you, mister Trump? You are a racist, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: never heard that one before. So with the media reaction,
Speaker 2: they responded very predictably, But I actually thought that was
Speaker 2: a relatively measured response. That's basically how I would have
Speaker 2: played it the start play, you know, going forward, and
Speaker 2: if anything, maybe it shows Democrats have learned something which
Speaker 2: is constantly concerned. Trolling about our children watching just doesn't work.
Speaker 2: It's a completely failed strategy. So she had some confidence there. Again, though,
Speaker 2: we need to see this woman in an interview. I desperately,
Speaker 2: desperately need to see her on I don't even care
Speaker 2: about this, I need to see you know, like, why
Speaker 2: did you reverse five of your seven positions that you
Speaker 2: ran on when you were a president in the span
Speaker 2: of the eleven days since you've been running for president? Yeah,
Speaker 2: because that would be ten times more powerful than any
Speaker 2: of the stuff that we're even talking about here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 3: Yep, I agree with all of that.
Speaker 1: So, as Emily and I covered with doctor t to
Speaker 1: Parsi yesterday, there have been an extraordinary series of events
Speaker 1: in the Middle East over the course of a very
Speaker 1: short period of time. Israel first assassinated a top Hesbola
Speaker 1: commander in Beirut, in the capital of Lebanon, and then
Speaker 1: they it appears, assassinated Ismail Hania, who was in Tehran,
Speaker 1: so in the Iranian capital, and he was the political
Speaker 1: head of Hamas Ron of course, threatening retaliation. You can
Speaker 1: only imagine what we would do if there was an
Speaker 1: assassination in Washington.
Speaker 6: D C.
Speaker 3: How we would respond.
Speaker 1: And we are also dealing with the fallout of those
Speaker 1: ceasefire negotiations because Hania was one of the key figures
Speaker 1: in Hamas who was actually pushing for a deal against
Speaker 1: Yaya Sinoir and some of the other more hardline Hamas members.
Speaker 1: So Israel has effectively assassinated the top negotiator in those
Speaker 1: ceasfire negotiations. Secretary State Tony Blincoln was asked about exactly
Speaker 1: what this will mean going forward for the negotiations.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen, Henya was involved in ceasefire talks
Speaker 3: in Gaza.
Speaker 2: What impact is his death going to have?
Speaker 12: Well, of course I've seen the reports, and what I
Speaker 12: can tell you is this first, this is something we
Speaker 12: were not aware of or involved in. It's very hard
Speaker 12: to speculate, and I've learned over many years never to
Speaker 12: speculate on the impact one event may have on something else.
Speaker 12: So I can't tell you.
Speaker 1: So Sagara interested for your reaction. I mean a couple
Speaker 1: things that are noteworthy there. Obviously he's claimed, Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know what this will mean, Like, obviously this is
Speaker 1: going to be a problem, and it's entirely consistent with
Speaker 1: the track record of Bibi Netna, who doing everything he
Speaker 1: can to blow up these negotiations at literally every point.
Speaker 1: So let's put that aside. The other thing he claims
Speaker 1: there is that the US had no idea. That may
Speaker 1: be true, I don't know, but it also may not
Speaker 1: be true because remember Bibi Netanya, who was in town
Speaker 1: last week, there were these were both very sophisticated, so
Speaker 1: raise a lot of questions, Hey, was the CIA involved
Speaker 1: in helping to plan this? I can tell you people
Speaker 1: in the region are very skeptical that the US had
Speaker 1: no idea, had nothing to do with this.
Speaker 2: I well, I'm not sure which, you know, is more
Speaker 2: terrifying that we knew or that we didn't know. If
Speaker 2: we did know and then we were lying about it
Speaker 2: and then yet still bearing the costs, or if we
Speaker 2: didn't know and then that were somebody who's backing to
Speaker 2: the hilt. So in a certain sense, it doesn't really
Speaker 2: matter you know which one it was, because we're going
Speaker 2: to bear the brunt of that no matter what. That
Speaker 2: was very evident with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin being
Speaker 2: asked about this, Let's take a list.
Speaker 9: If Israel is attacked, we certainly will help defend Israel.
Speaker 9: You see, you saw us do that in April. You
Speaker 9: can expect to see us do that again. But we
Speaker 9: we don't want to see any of that happen. We're
Speaker 9: going to work hard to make sure that that you know,
Speaker 9: we're doing things to help take the temperature down and
Speaker 9: address issues through diplomatic means.
Speaker 2: You're in and out folks, whether you like it or not. Right, that's,
Speaker 2: you know, one of those things. People were like, what
Speaker 2: are you not saying these shouldn't have been killed? I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: let's just say this. It's kind of a statement. Right,
Speaker 2: he's been sitting in Katar, So if you want to
Speaker 2: kill him, why didn't you kill him in Kuitar? Why
Speaker 2: didn't If he's on a plane, why didn't you blow
Speaker 2: the planet?
Speaker 3: This guy?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think killing somebody in the what was
Speaker 2: it the presidential complex on the first day of the
Speaker 2: reign of the Iranian president. That was a very coordinated statement,
Speaker 2: you know by the Israelis just to the level of
Speaker 2: penetration they have, their technology, the lack of Iranian missile defense.
Speaker 2: There's a whole host of military things. But politically it's
Speaker 2: a you know, it's like a hey, we know, we're
Speaker 2: not afraid of you. And in a certain sense, like
Speaker 2: shouldn't be right because America is the one that is
Speaker 2: now underwriting all of this. Now, if they had to
Speaker 2: stand on their own, it'd be a whole other story,
Speaker 2: wasn't it, Because what did didn't you and Ryan cover this?
Speaker 2: I mean, Hasbola missiles penetrated the Iron Dome? Are we
Speaker 2: all just going to ignore that that was like two
Speaker 2: weeks ago? And here this attack that just happened where
Speaker 2: twelve people were killed. I don't know, it could be
Speaker 2: as well whatever regardless, something went wrong, I think, and
Speaker 2: that should kind of shake people in Israel to their core.
Speaker 2: But they don't seem to be afraid because they think
Speaker 2: America is going to bail them out, and increasingly that
Speaker 2: it just seems like the correct assumption and now ears
Speaker 2: who is running this country. Is it Blincoln? Is it
Speaker 2: you know, Lloyd Austin. Who's making the security guarantees? Is
Speaker 2: Joe Biden? Even on the phone here? One of the
Speaker 2: things we've learned electorally is Joe Biden when called people
Speaker 2: back Sean Faine apparently requested a phone call with him,
Speaker 2: Biden didn't call him. Yeah, are you calling beebe Like,
Speaker 2: who's running this stuff? Next? It's terrian plastic question.
Speaker 3: That is a fantastic and very legitimate question.
Speaker 1: We haven't heard a peep anything Joe Biden about any
Speaker 1: of this, not that that would really allay the concerns.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear about who is really running things behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. I mean, unfortunately, I think Biden mostly has
Speaker 1: been running the Israel policy, which is part of why
Speaker 1: it has been so utterly dreadful and destructive both to
Speaker 1: the US, to Israel, and most first and foremost to Palestinians.
Speaker 3: You know, this type.
Speaker 1: Of potentially escalatory spiral and true chaos and true breakout
Speaker 1: of a massive regional war has been is so predictable
Speaker 1: and has been completely predictable from the beginning and was
Speaker 1: a key part of why we've been people like us
Speaker 1: have been pushing for a seaspire for so long, because
Speaker 1: the longer the conflict goes on, the more you have
Speaker 1: a risk of exactly this type of dangerous chaos unfolding.
Speaker 1: So it is unconscionable to me that our secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense comes right out and of course, of course we'll.
Speaker 3: Join the hostilities.
Speaker 1: Of course we'll have Israel's back, because make no mistake
Speaker 1: about it, Aron is already saying they're gonna retaliate Hezela.
Speaker 1: To your point, Sager, this is a formidable foe they have.
Speaker 1: Jeremy Scahill over at drop Site News we used this
Speaker 1: in the show yesterday. He interviewed a top scholar of
Speaker 1: Hesbela who has studied them and their methods and their
Speaker 1: tactics and who they are, and how many fighters they have.
Speaker 1: They have somewhere around one hundred thousand fighters, very different
Speaker 1: from Hamas. They have very sophisticated weaponry, and he says
Speaker 1: if they entered a full scale war Israel versus Hesbla,
Speaker 1: it could be so devastating that it could lead to
Speaker 1: this is his words, the unraveling of the Israeli states.
Speaker 3: Oh question, So I mean, I'm not saying that's what
Speaker 3: would happen.
Speaker 1: I asked, I asked doctor Parci about this, and he
Speaker 1: said to say, is that I'm not saying that's what
Speaker 1: would happen, but many analysts and scholars believe that is
Speaker 1: the level of destruction that we're talking about that would
Speaker 1: be on the table. Let's put this next piece up
Speaker 1: on the screen. From the Financial Times headline here assassinated
Speaker 1: the arch enemies of Israel killed in twin strikes. It
Speaker 1: also is not lost on me that these dual assassinations
Speaker 1: come as Israel was facing a massive domestic political crisis,
Speaker 1: which we covered here on the show earlier this week,
Speaker 1: members of the Kanesset joining up with right wing militia
Speaker 1: mob to storm two separate Israeli bases because they were
Speaker 1: upset about soldiers being prosecuted for the gang rape of Palestinians.
Speaker 1: Are literally rioting to protect soldier's right to gang rate
Speaker 1: Palestinian detainees that were being held there. So this was
Speaker 1: a moment of massive political crisis for bb Net Yahoo.
Speaker 1: You can bet that all political factions in the country
Speaker 1: are united behind the efficacy and the execution of these
Speaker 1: two assassinations. And then the other way it serves boebe
Speaker 1: is it once again drags us in and expands and
Speaker 1: extends the conflict, kills the ceasefire negotiations, as I said,
Speaker 1: which he has never wanted to go forward with.
Speaker 3: And just to back up what I was saying about.
Speaker 1: That from the Financial Times, the piece we just had
Speaker 1: up on the screen, they write, honea is killing risks
Speaker 1: the failure of the already stalled indirect negotiations between Israel
Speaker 1: and Hamas.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: He was one of the ones pushing for a deal
Speaker 1: and compromise, and because of his stature, he was able
Speaker 1: to speak to the guys in Gaza in a more
Speaker 1: convincing way than other guys. According to an Arab diplomat,
Speaker 1: while there were others from Hamas involved in the negotiations,
Speaker 1: you've lost a big voice who was influential and could
Speaker 1: have a strong say internally within Hama and was for
Speaker 1: a deal. The Katari Prime minister also said that the
Speaker 1: killing would endanger the talks quote how can mediation succeed
Speaker 1: when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side.
Speaker 1: So doctor Parcy's analysis saga was that part of the
Speaker 1: motivation here too, maybe to try to box in a
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, where there's a question mark about how she
Speaker 1: would approach this conflict and whether it could be different
Speaker 1: from Joe Biden. But if you drag us into some
Speaker 1: freaking regional war, then she is stuck, stuck pursuing the
Speaker 1: same failed strategy of a Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: Well it would be smart, That's exactly what I would do.
Speaker 2: You know, he box them in, and then she's already uttered.
Speaker 2: The shibbolith of American politics Israel.
Speaker 3: Right to defend itself.
Speaker 2: Yes, something must something you must repeat over and over
Speaker 2: and over again. To become president. You have to say
Speaker 2: it three times and turn around. And that's what makes
Speaker 2: you American president. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: C six please. This is the terrifying stuff that's happening
Speaker 2: again with no president on the watch. The Department of
Speaker 2: State has now raised its Lebanon travel advice to quote
Speaker 2: do not travel, recommending that US citizens en roll to
Speaker 2: receive alert. You also have multiple domestic airlines here in
Speaker 2: the United States canceling their flights to Israel, as evidenced
Speaker 2: by the fact that they are afraid of Hezbolah rockets.
Speaker 2: So all of the ingredients for a massive conflagration, Are
Speaker 2: there no. Basically, Biden is asleep at the wheel. This
Speaker 2: might be bee one of the most dangerous times in
Speaker 2: the international system because America is bogged down in Ukraine
Speaker 2: just people. You know, it doesn't even make the news
Speaker 2: that we just shipped a bunch of F sixteens to
Speaker 2: Ukraine yesterday with advanced weaponry which takes forever to manufacture
Speaker 2: here in America. It's cool, you know, if we go
Speaker 2: to shortage, it'll be all right. We have thirty five
Speaker 2: hundred troops in Iraq and Syria, some who have already
Speaker 2: been attacked as a result of this. Very recently. America
Speaker 2: actually had an air striking I Rock just two days ago,
Speaker 2: trying to take down somebody before they launched an attack
Speaker 2: on US soldiers. We got this Iran Israel situation. Secretary
Speaker 2: of Defense says we're ready to roll. So we got
Speaker 2: two front war basically on the brink right now. Who
Speaker 2: knows what the hell is going on in East Asia?
Speaker 2: Could be good, you.
Speaker 3: Know, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And the last thing that I'll say, you can put
Speaker 1: C four up on the screen in terms of the
Speaker 1: likely Iranian response. This is from the uh This is
Speaker 1: from the political Sorry, this is from Supreme Leader company.
Speaker 1: Following this bitter tragic event which has taken place within
Speaker 1: the borders of the Islamic Republic, it is our duty
Speaker 1: to take revenge. And as we speak, I just saw
Speaker 1: a Reuter's report that Iran and their proxies are meeting
Speaker 1: to discuss retaliation. Representatives of Iran's Palestinian allies Hamas and
Speaker 1: the Islamic Jitti had as well as Yemen's Tehran Bakhuthi movement,
Speaker 1: Lebano's Hedspula and Iraqi resistance groups are all attending this
Speaker 1: meeting in Tehran. So we're all watching and waiting to
Speaker 1: see what happens next. But make no mistake, this is
Speaker 1: a very dangerous situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that president it was his very first day
Speaker 2: on the job. So what do you What do all
Speaker 2: presidents do Whenever something happens in your hometown. You have
Speaker 2: to appear shows to strength. It doesn't take a genius
Speaker 2: like they have politics, just like we have politics. Yes,
Speaker 2: I understand it's a dictatorship, et cetera. Still a big
Speaker 2: ass country with a big population, and you still have
Speaker 2: to manage and think about you know what the populace
Speaker 2: is thinking and how to maintain your grip on power.
Speaker 2: He's got internal you know, fights that he has to
Speaker 2: have with the IRGC who just had somebody blown up
Speaker 2: in their own headquarters. Like, it doesn't take a genius
Speaker 2: to figure out which way that the domestic politics of
Speaker 2: each country is going to push them towards. It's only
Speaker 2: ours apparently, where our domestic politics doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It's just governed by these other by Israel in particular.
Speaker 1: But no, to your point, he was elected the new
Speaker 1: Iranian president as a relative moderate, which on the one hand,
Speaker 1: you can say, okay, well maybe he'd be more interested
Speaker 1: in de escalation, and the Iranians have Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: the previous retaliation was closely calculated to show strength but
Speaker 1: hopefully not be escalatory, you know, in terms of making
Speaker 1: sure that there were no massive like civilian debts or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So, however, you also have a dynamic
Speaker 1: where you can imagine here, if someone is elected as
Speaker 1: kind of like a dove, then you got to beat
Speaker 1: the rap that you're going to be too soft in
Speaker 1: a situation like this. So in any case, we'll see
Speaker 1: how this all unfolds. At the same time, we are
Speaker 1: watching closely the veepstakes for Kamala Harris, because I do
Speaker 1: think that who she picks will be quite consequential as
Speaker 1: a validator for her potentially to help shore up some
Speaker 1: of those Midwestern former blue Wall states. And one of
Speaker 1: the top contenders who has emerged is Governor Josh Shapiro.
Speaker 1: He has come under a lot of scrutiny from people
Speaker 1: like me and others on the left because in particular
Speaker 1: of some very strident comments he made about student protesters,
Speaker 1: comparing them to the KKK.
Speaker 3: I'm going to bring you those comments.
Speaker 1: Shortly, but in addition, he also took actions to directly
Speaker 1: quash protests within the state. He also is bad on
Speaker 1: charter schools from our perspective, from a left perspective, and
Speaker 1: has earned the iyre of a lot of unions because
Speaker 1: of that. He just came out and did this whole thing,
Speaker 1: I want to slash corporate taxes, So that's also an issue,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's taken a number of positions that
Speaker 1: have caused some problems for him among the young progressive
Speaker 1: base in the Democratic Party. So there's somewhat of an
Speaker 1: organized online movement for Kamala to back Tim Walls in particular,
Speaker 1: but the Iyer is trained towards Josh Shapiro. So of course,
Speaker 1: of course, because everything now has to be framed in
Speaker 1: this way, the real issue that is being alleged here
Speaker 1: is not about those policy positions or the comments he
Speaker 1: made comparing protesters the KKK No No, the Atlantic has
Speaker 1: decided the real issue is that we're all just anti
Speaker 1: Semites because Josh Shapiro happens to be Jewish. Let's put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. We have yeaher Rosenberg, who
Speaker 1: wrote a piece for The Atlantic. He tweeted it out
Speaker 1: by saying, Josh Shapiro called Netanyahu one of the worst
Speaker 1: leaders of all time, but anti Israel activists have mobilized
Speaker 1: against him, and him alone being on the Democratic ticket.
Speaker 1: I wrote about the campaign against Shapiro and the perverse
Speaker 1: politics of Jewish identity. Can put his piece up on
Speaker 1: the screen from the Atlantic. He says, anti Israel partisans
Speaker 1: have every right to advocate against cannons to oppose their cause,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing inherently anti Semitic about doing so. But
Speaker 1: as its name implies, the Genocide Josh campaign is not
Speaker 1: about applying a single standard on Palestine to all VP contenders.
Speaker 1: It's about applying them to one person who just so
Speaker 1: happens to be the only Jew on the short list,
Speaker 1: and to make matters more absurd, to Bear's positions on
Speaker 1: Israel don't come close to fitting the epithet. It's become
Speaker 1: hard to escape the conclusion that some of the activists
Speaker 1: imposing this inquisition have a problem not just with Israel
Speaker 1: or Zionism, but with Jews, who they assume are serving
Speaker 1: a foreign power, no matter what they've actually said or done. Okay,
Speaker 1: a few things. First of all, none of the other
Speaker 1: canons on the short list made such provocative like no
Speaker 1: one else compared us to the KKK.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's start there. Number two.
Speaker 2: JB.
Speaker 3: Pritzker was talked about for VP. The left likes JB. Pritzker.
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders is like still the reigning icon of the Left.
Speaker 1: Both of these gents happen to be Jewish. So you know,
Speaker 1: the total dismissal of either the Israel concerns or any
Speaker 1: of the other policy focused concerns that the Left have
Speaker 1: is just part and parcel where it is becoming increasingly
Speaker 1: the case that someone's Jewish identity can be weaponized to
Speaker 1: silence any sort of criticism or descent that you may
Speaker 1: have on what their actual positions and policy statements have been.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, especially when you compare the comments that he
Speaker 2: made and how fastiferous they are. I think we have
Speaker 2: those comments. Why don't we take a listen.
Speaker 8: They have a responsibility to keep students safe. Students shouldn't
Speaker 8: be blocked from going to campus just because they're Jewish
Speaker 8: or learning in a classroom as supposed to being forced
Speaker 8: online because they're Jewish. It is simply unacceptable. And you
Speaker 8: know what, we have to query whether or not we
Speaker 8: would tolerate this if this were people dressed up in
Speaker 8: KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who
Speaker 8: are African American in our communities. Certainly not condoning that
Speaker 8: Jake by any stretch, But I think we have to
Speaker 8: be careful about setting any kind of double standard here
Speaker 8: on our campuses. We got to call it out for
Speaker 8: what it is, and these university leaders have to make
Speaker 8: sure there is order on their campuses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is just a classic misnomer to call everything
Speaker 2: anti Semitism and to not focus. He didn't even mention it,
Speaker 2: you know, in the story. It's just all about his identity.
Speaker 2: This is like as good as this is, as good
Speaker 2: as identity politics gets. You know, it's like you're the
Speaker 2: one using your Jewish identity to weaponize a legitimate criticism
Speaker 2: of you, but you know, apparently that's not anti Semitics. Whatever.
Speaker 2: This whole stuff, it always drives me crazy.
Speaker 1: Last thing I'll say on this is that in that
Speaker 1: Atlantic article, he makes a point that I think is
Speaker 1: an interesting point where he says, basically, you know, he
Speaker 1: could serve as exactly the opposite of what you say
Speaker 1: by being Jewish, using how his identity as like a
Speaker 1: shield for the anti Semitism claims that are already coming
Speaker 1: at Kamala Harris. You know, Kamala is married to a
Speaker 1: Jewish Man, but Trump says that he's a crappy Jew
Speaker 1: I think was the comment, and that you can't believe
Speaker 1: any Jewish person would vote for Kamala or the Democrats, etc.
Speaker 2: Etc.
Speaker 1: That he could help blunt some of that criticism and
Speaker 1: create some space for a different policy visa the Israel
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be immediately tanked as anti Semitic. I think
Speaker 1: that that is actually correct, that if he wanted to
Speaker 1: serve in that role and capacity, that is a possibility.
Speaker 1: The problem is that based on the positioning and the
Speaker 1: rhetoric so far, there's no indication that he would want
Speaker 1: to serve that role. Kamala herself is very impressionable, Like,
Speaker 1: no one is under the impression that this person has
Speaker 1: any sort of her own ideological core or principles. So
Speaker 1: that's why if you bring in a vice president who
Speaker 1: has strongly held views on this issue and is more
Speaker 1: ideologically committed in the way that Joe Biden was very
Speaker 1: ideologically committed, who isn't Jewish, by the way, then that
Speaker 1: can have have an outsize impact on the administration versus
Speaker 1: if she actually had her own independent views on the issue.
Speaker 1: So I do think that that's a legitimate point to make,
Speaker 1: that his identity could end up being an asset, sort
Speaker 1: of like a Nixon goes to China kind of a
Speaker 1: deal that it creates, you know, space, or Bill flinn
Speaker 1: Nding welfare kind of deal where it creates the space
Speaker 1: to blunt those charges of anti Semitism. I just see
Speaker 1: no indication that he actually would want to serve in
Speaker 1: that role, which is why there's such a concern. And
Speaker 1: you know, as I mentioned before, the concerns with him
Speaker 1: go beyond just Gaza. Also in terms of his policy orientation,
Speaker 1: promising corporate tax cuts, you know, being very like Obama esque,
Speaker 1: in terms of his commitment to charter schools and voucher
Speaker 1: programs and those sorts of things which have earned the
Speaker 1: ire of teachers unions in the state. And then the
Speaker 1: other potential issue for him is these allegations about a
Speaker 1: sexual harassment cover up among a close aid that were
Speaker 1: a big deal within the state of Pennsylvania. But saga,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it looks increasingly likely it's gonna
Speaker 1: be Josh Shapiro.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would, but pretty good money on it. At
Speaker 2: the same time, I think the confounding variable as the
Speaker 2: UAW did endorse Kamala Harris just two days ago, they
Speaker 2: said that their two candidates are what was it to
Speaker 2: and Andy was sheer unlikely? So could be Tim Walts,
Speaker 2: you know, certainly possible.
Speaker 3: I mean, don't get my hopes. I don't think I
Speaker 3: just so prepared for for.
Speaker 2: Defeats a genius. It's Philadelphia, it's a swing state, is
Speaker 2: a very popular gov. You know, he's more popular than
Speaker 2: Tim Waltz even in his own home states.
Speaker 1: It's the most likely tipping state. Yeah, ticking point state.
Speaker 1: He is very popular, and her launch is her like
Speaker 1: launch with her VP pick is in Philadelpha.
Speaker 2: It's literally in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: So I mean, either that's like a giant few to him,
Speaker 1: because can you imagine picking like clim walls and in
Speaker 1: Shapiro's state. But I mean, I guess crazier things have happened.
Speaker 1: Her aids are promised. I always had nothing to the
Speaker 1: schedule was already pre said. It had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with her pick. Maybe maybe not, we'll see. All right,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get to Matt's to talk about
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris and corporate power and the billionaire campaign to
Speaker 1: pressure out Lena Khan.
Speaker 3: Let's get to it.
Speaker 1: So joining us now is the aforementioned Matt Stoller, who
Speaker 1: of course works at the American Economic Liberties Project and
Speaker 1: authors the Big Substack newsletter.
Speaker 2: Great to see Zar, good Sea, many, good to see you.
Speaker 1: So there has been this ongoing situation of billionaires publicly
Speaker 1: pressuring Kamala Harris to oust Lena Khan. Of course, FDC commissioner,
Speaker 1: who has been instrumental in the anti trust direction of
Speaker 1: the Biden administration, which is your bread and butter. The
Speaker 1: most recent part of this saga that I'll start off
Speaker 1: by getting you to react to was Jake Tapper actually
Speaker 1: had one of those primary billionaires on Reed Hoffman, and
Speaker 1: to everyone's surprise, he did a good job of holding
Speaker 1: Hoffman's feet to the fire over these demands being made.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen to how that exchange went down.
Speaker 13: You and other big money donors are giving money to
Speaker 13: Vice President Harris, suggesting also that she.
Speaker 2: Replaced the head of the.
Speaker 13: FDC, which impacts policy in the economy. What do you
Speaker 13: say to somebody who watches this and says this isn't
Speaker 13: how American politics should work. Rich people getting to buy
Speaker 13: levels of influence.
Speaker 5: Well, I totally agree with not buying levels of influence.
Speaker 5: I separate my role as a donor and expert. So
Speaker 5: if you ask me as a donor, I say, I'm
Speaker 5: giving money to Kamala Harris because I think she's the
Speaker 5: best future president for the US, for business, for a
Speaker 5: bunch of other things. If you ask me as an
Speaker 5: expert about what you know kind of Lena Kahan is
Speaker 5: doing and where I think she is helping or hurting
Speaker 5: America relative to your anti merger policies, which are you know,
Speaker 5: mostly to bring litigation versus you know, really solidly grounded
Speaker 5: and kind of what's going on, what helps American business
Speaker 5: thrive here and overseas. Then I give an expert opinion,
Speaker 5: but I think donor and expert should be kept secret separate.
Speaker 5: And I've never tied the two ever in any conversation anywhere.
Speaker 13: I've ever had, right, But I mean, that world doesn't
Speaker 13: really exist where people say, Okay, now I'm talking to
Speaker 13: Reid Hoffman, the donor, and read Hoffman, the guy with
Speaker 13: political ideas I'm going to put into the other room.
Speaker 5: You know, when I speak to these things, I speak
Speaker 5: more as a venture capitalist. I never speak as a
Speaker 5: Microsoft board member.
Speaker 13: But there aren't all these There aren't like one hundred
Speaker 13: Reid Hoffman's. It's not like one of you is a
Speaker 13: donor and one of you has opinions on Lena Khan,
Speaker 13: and one of you is on the board of Microsoft,
Speaker 13: and one of you is a venture capitalist.
Speaker 2: You're you're all the same guy.
Speaker 5: Of all of Biden's appointees, JD Vance is most enthusiastic
Speaker 5: about Lena Kahan, and maybe that has some you know,
Speaker 5: swing voter implications. And maybe also you know some I've
Speaker 5: also gotten a bunch of feedback from you know, a
Speaker 5: bunch of people I deeply respect within the democratic ecosystem
Speaker 5: saying well, you know, we're much more positive than you.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, look, I love what she's done on
Speaker 5: anti competes with employees, with employees. I dislike what she's
Speaker 5: been doing on and I think it's it's it's bad
Speaker 5: for investment on on kind of anti trust and back.
Speaker 1: So, Matt, before I get your reaction, if you could
Speaker 1: just specify which identity of Matt Stoler you're going to
Speaker 1: use in order to give this response, because appairly, what
Speaker 1: did you make of this exchange and give us a
Speaker 1: little bit of like the backstory of how we got
Speaker 1: to this place of Jake Tapper asking Reid Hoffman these questions.
Speaker 14: Yeah, So the Biden administration has done, you know, is
Speaker 14: kind of mixed in a lot of ways. They've kind
Speaker 14: of continued the neoliberalism of the Democratic establishment accept in
Speaker 14: a couple of key areas industrial policy, trade and anti trust.
Speaker 14: So it's sort of taken on big corporations kind of
Speaker 14: and the main people in that there's been a couple
Speaker 14: of regulators who've been the leaders in that. Lenacon at
Speaker 14: the Federal Trade Commission is kind of the most famous one.
Speaker 14: And so you have a lot of anger from Wall
Speaker 14: Street and from Silicon Valley oligarchs about this because they
Speaker 14: want to do their consolidation of corporate power. Reid Hoffman
Speaker 14: is a leader in this area. He was a founder
Speaker 14: of LinkedIn. He is actually part of a network called
Speaker 14: the PayPal Mafia. There's a bunch of billionaires in Silicon
Speaker 14: Valley that got their start at pay Palace includes Elon
Speaker 14: Musk and Peter Thiel, and then there are some liberal ones.
Speaker 7: Reed Hoffman is the.
Speaker 14: Democrat and he is a big donor to the Democrats'
Speaker 14: longtime donor. And so what they're saying they hated Biden
Speaker 14: because Biden was preventing them from consolidating power, which is
Speaker 14: what they really wanted. And so some of them moved
Speaker 14: to Trump, and some of them sort of participated in
Speaker 14: trying to push Biden out and now trying to kind
Speaker 14: of buy Kamala Harris. And that's what ried Hoffman is doing.
Speaker 14: He gave a lot of money to Kamala Harris's super
Speaker 14: pack and they're trying to say, look, we love you.
Speaker 14: We think you're great. Push Lena Kann out, get rid
Speaker 14: of this new trade industrial policy tariff thing and anti
Speaker 14: trust thing, and we can go on and return.
Speaker 7: To the great days of Obama and Bill Clinton. And
Speaker 7: that's what this is really about.
Speaker 2: And so how successful do you think that that's be?
Speaker 2: How successful does that campaign look so far? She receptive
Speaker 2: to it. What are the leaks been, like, I know
Speaker 2: you've been highlighting some Wall Street quotes. What do they think?
Speaker 14: Yeah, so the Wall Street murders guys and Silicon Valley
Speaker 14: oligarchs are super happy because they think that they.
Speaker 7: Own Kamala Harris and they've been giving her orders.
Speaker 14: Her advisors are people like Aaron Dunn, who's a Google
Speaker 14: lawyer at a Qualcom lawyer is actually leading the case
Speaker 14: against the government on Google's monopolization claims. And she's also
Speaker 14: helping to prep Vice President Harris for debates. And then
Speaker 14: Tony West is one of her close advisors, also her
Speaker 14: brother in law.
Speaker 7: He's the general counsel of Uber.
Speaker 14: Her niece Mina Harris worked I believe Uber and Slack
Speaker 14: and Facebook. There's, you know, this network of people that
Speaker 14: she knows and has are very close to big tech
Speaker 14: very close to Wall Street.
Speaker 7: So I think it's a pretty good chance.
Speaker 14: That she does get rid of the antitrust enforcers, that
Speaker 14: she does try to return us to a kind of
Speaker 14: neoliberal frame on trade.
Speaker 7: I mean, they think they own her.
Speaker 14: I don't think that's quite that start, but I think
Speaker 14: they have a pretty good She just kind of agrees
Speaker 14: with them, I think in a lot of ways. And
Speaker 14: so the only question is are the parts of the
Speaker 14: of the Democratic Coalition that are that want more populism?
Speaker 14: Are they going to stand up to her? They didn't
Speaker 14: stand up to Obama. Are they going to stand up
Speaker 14: to her? That's the only question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And let me let me diag into that, because
Speaker 1: it's not like Biden had some great reputation as some
Speaker 1: like opponent of Wall Street and corporate America. Right, he
Speaker 1: was famously known as the Senator from MBNA because of
Speaker 1: his coziness with the credit card company. It did all
Speaker 1: kinds of terrible things with bankruptcy law that Elizabeth Warren
Speaker 1: was fighting him about, et cetera, CEA. So how does
Speaker 1: it end up that guy who has no track record
Speaker 1: of populism really to point to in terms of his
Speaker 1: lengthy tenure in the Senate and was part of the
Speaker 1: Obama Biden administration. How does that guy end up being
Speaker 1: the guy that brings in Jonathan Canter and Lena Khan
Speaker 1: and does industrial policy, etc.
Speaker 3: Because I think part of that is the.
Speaker 1: Behind the scenes pressures, if I'm not wrong, that have
Speaker 1: been brought to bear on the Democratic Party.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I think that there's that's part of it.
Speaker 14: But I also think, you know, I did a bunch
Speaker 14: of interviews right before Biden took office, just talking to
Speaker 14: his old to his kind of his crowd. And Biden
Speaker 14: always saw himself as kind of a foreign policy guy,
Speaker 14: and he was the Senator from Delaware and he's like, look,
Speaker 14: I have to represent the credit card companies because those
Speaker 14: are my constituents. But that's the job. But he always
Speaker 14: had this kind of resentment towards elites in particularly like
Speaker 14: Ivy League elites. He hated the Silicon Valley guys. He
Speaker 14: always thought the Wall Street guys looked down on him.
Speaker 14: His people were more like the cable guys, right, and
Speaker 14: the people in the industrial parts of the economy that
Speaker 14: like make things. And there was a resentment there. Now,
Speaker 14: you wouldn't necessarily have seen it a lot in his
Speaker 14: track record. Although Steven Bryer when he was overseeing him,
Speaker 14: he was the head of Judiciary and Stephen Bryer was
Speaker 14: coming up to the Supreme Court, Biden did call him
Speaker 14: an elitist. So culturally Biden was kind of like set.
Speaker 14: He's also old and understood the world before neoliberalism, and
Speaker 14: so Biden was in some sense he had a mild
Speaker 14: streak of populism there. And then I think he saw
Speaker 14: what Trump had done and he said, look, the Democrats
Speaker 14: have to move in a different direction.
Speaker 7: Kamala Harris is just not like that.
Speaker 5: Her.
Speaker 14: While Biden's cultural people were kind of like this resentful,
Speaker 14: they had a sort of chip on their shoulder types.
Speaker 14: I think Kamala Harris is much more comfortable with the
Speaker 14: whole Obama world. Very smooth, very tech friendly, very much
Speaker 14: like very corporate. That does not say she might look
Speaker 14: at the same situations say I agree with Biden, we
Speaker 14: need to move in a more populars direction.
Speaker 7: She might say that. She's also just a lot less
Speaker 7: substantive than he is.
Speaker 14: She does not have a particularly you know, unlike Obama,
Speaker 14: unlike Biden.
Speaker 7: She just doesn't seem to care about policy for good
Speaker 7: or bad.
Speaker 14: So it's just it's a different character, and maybe she
Speaker 14: just was like, you know whatever, I don't want to
Speaker 14: pick with those with the populists. I don't know exactly
Speaker 14: what she does, what she's going to do, but everybody's
Speaker 14: surrounding her and her whole kind of you know, cultural milia.
Speaker 14: Her friends are going to are pushing, are going to
Speaker 14: push her in a really bad direction. On the other hand,
Speaker 14: she's not on in idiologue like Obama was a very
Speaker 14: strong idiolost we have to help the banks, we have
Speaker 14: the help Silicon Valley. That's how America great. And that's
Speaker 14: not what Kamala Harris thinks. So it's a little bit uncertain,
Speaker 14: but I'm not super optimistic about the direction that she's
Speaker 14: she's going.
Speaker 2: Matt.
Speaker 1: One thing that I've been thinking about, I saw someone
Speaker 1: positing this on Twitter. I want to run this by you,
Speaker 1: is that, you know, the Riet Hoffmans and other billionaires
Speaker 1: who are pushing this like ouse Lena Kahan thing, they
Speaker 1: made kind of a tactical error by making this such
Speaker 1: a like clear public litmus test from the jump, because
Speaker 1: I've seen you know, groups and senators organizing online to
Speaker 1: push back and say, you know, in labor unions, Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 1: those types saying no, no, no, Lena Khan needs to
Speaker 1: say she's doing great work, et cetera. And and so
Speaker 1: having this done publicly, like in front of everybody's eyes,
Speaker 1: has been a bit of a mistake in terms of
Speaker 1: their actual goal, because this would be the type of
Speaker 1: thing that normally would be handled better in a back
Speaker 1: room at a donor meeting, etc. And she gets pulled
Speaker 1: before there's any attempt to marshal a defense of her.
Speaker 3: I wonder what you make of that.
Speaker 7: I think that's right.
Speaker 14: I mean, a lot of unions have come out and said, look,
Speaker 14: we like what Lena Conna's doing, we want to maintain
Speaker 14: the tariffs and so on and so forth, and so
Speaker 14: that makes it a lot harder for Harris to do.
Speaker 14: If Harris did want to change direction, it would make
Speaker 14: it harder because a bunch of people have said no,
Speaker 14: we like this, and so she'd have to pick a
Speaker 14: fight to do it.
Speaker 7: So that that is certainly true.
Speaker 14: But I'd say there's another part of this, which is
Speaker 14: when a big donor comes out and says we want
Speaker 14: to get rid of tariffs, and we want to know,
Speaker 14: we want dominant corporations to do whatever we want and
Speaker 14: we own this candidate. It opens up a huge political
Speaker 14: and Kamala Harris didn't disavow it either, Like they've asked
Speaker 14: her campaign and her campaign is like, well, we have
Speaker 14: no plans to get rid of Lena Khan at this time.
Speaker 3: Not right, good, But that's not a denial, right right.
Speaker 14: And it's like that is a huge vulnerability if Trump
Speaker 14: picks up on it, because Trump, I mean, he's not
Speaker 14: running a populist campaign, right is de banning has gone
Speaker 14: and you know, talked about and talked about this a
Speaker 14: little bit, but like she's hugely vulnerable to being turned
Speaker 14: into Hillary if Trump does pick up on this stuff,
Speaker 14: because it's like crazy to be like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 14: Silicon Valley billionaires are demanding that you sell out the
Speaker 14: country and you won't take a position on that.
Speaker 7: That looks really bad.
Speaker 14: And she's really lucky that Trump is so off kilter
Speaker 14: and unable to pick up on it.
Speaker 1: But isn't he also vulnerable to the same charge. I mean,
Speaker 1: Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are all in, the other
Speaker 1: members of the PayPal Maulvi are all in for him.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk very publicly, Like while he said he was
Speaker 1: going to give forty five million and then I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that. But it's very clear
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is running Twitter for Donald Trump and the
Speaker 1: Republican Party sold benefit. So isn't he also open to
Speaker 1: those charges?
Speaker 7: I mean, be sure, like Donald Trump is open to
Speaker 7: the charge of him.
Speaker 14: That's great, but you know it's I just think it's
Speaker 14: opening up a vulnerability where she doesn't need to have one,
Speaker 14: and that is totally due to Read Hoffman. I mean,
Speaker 14: Reid Hoffman is is fostering us. You know, this is
Speaker 14: a real risk for the Democrats that Read Hoffman.
Speaker 7: Has opened up.
Speaker 14: Big donors are I don't think big donors. I mean
Speaker 14: that's what Jake Tapper said, is doesn't this look bad?
Speaker 14: Big donors are not. I don't think they should exist.
Speaker 14: But like it was a really huge I think you're right,
Speaker 14: it's a tactic Blair.
Speaker 7: It's strategic error.
Speaker 14: But it's also just really dangerous for him to do
Speaker 14: that to the Democratic Party and just make his advance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's all very well said Matt. Is
Speaker 1: always great to have your insights into these things, because
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the difficulties with Kamala Harris is,
Speaker 1: like you said, she's not an ideologue.
Speaker 3: She's been all over the place.
Speaker 1: Her rhetoric now in certain things, you know, sounds good,
Speaker 1: but you have no idea what she actually means at
Speaker 1: any given time. So trying to read those tea leaves
Speaker 1: is really important. So thank you for helping us to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: Good to see you many, Good to see you guys.
Speaker 3: All right, Zager, what are you looking at well?
Speaker 2: The central idea of tried to hammer home here on
Speaker 2: the show over the last several years is what the
Speaker 2: media tells us divides us, which is race has never
Speaker 2: actually mattered less in modern American history. It's not class either,
Speaker 2: although I wish it was. It's almost all education, whether
Speaker 2: you have a four year college degree or not. I've
Speaker 2: done many monologues now on the subject about what that means,
Speaker 2: but since it's a political show, I'll focus on how
Speaker 2: it manifests with parties. Basically, the best predictor today, especially
Speaker 2: if you're under fifty, of whether you're a Democrat or not,
Speaker 2: is whether you have a four year college degree. The
Speaker 2: higher up that you go on degrees like masters in PhD,
Speaker 2: the more you likely you are to be liberal and
Speaker 2: a Democrat. The same is true actually down the educational spectrum,
Speaker 2: from PhD to GED to those who don't finish college. Now,
Speaker 2: what's been interesting in the last few years is not
Speaker 2: pointing out that trend, since it's very obvious now, but
Speaker 2: instead to see how it has put pressure on the
Speaker 2: other major divide in US politics. Gender. Gender has always
Speaker 2: divided Americans. It's mostly true over the years that if
Speaker 2: only women voted, than Democrats would win. If only men voted,
Speaker 2: then Republicans would win. This slightly changes if you incorporate
Speaker 2: marital status and a few other factors, but something recently
Speaker 2: has changed a lot. It used to be that you
Speaker 2: could pretty reliably rely on least young men to espouse
Speaker 2: more liberal views than their older counterpoints and more aligned
Speaker 2: with gender. Now, something basically true throughout modern history. The
Speaker 2: recent educational divide, though, and especially the population of media
Speaker 2: with college educated viewpoints, has now flipped that on a dime.
Speaker 2: Seemingly overnight. Young men, it seems, for the very first
Speaker 2: time ever in modern American history, are actually becoming increasingly
Speaker 2: right wing. A New Wall Street Journal analysis of multiple
Speaker 2: different data sets finds that young men between the ages
Speaker 2: of eighteen to twenty nine are becoming astonishingly Republican, and
Speaker 2: perhaps even more importantly, are diverging significantly from young women
Speaker 2: and their peer group. For example, when Biden was still
Speaker 2: in the race, the Journal found of young men under
Speaker 2: thirty back Donald Trump by a majority, with a full
Speaker 2: fourteen point spread in the latest Wall Street r A poll.
Speaker 2: That swing is especially astonishing because just four years ago,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, Biden won young men by some fifteen points,
Speaker 2: so it constitutes a net thirty percent swing. When you
Speaker 2: dig down into the issue sets, it actually starts to
Speaker 2: get very crazy. Take quote favoring or opposing major action
Speaker 2: on climate change. For women, it's a plus sixty seven
Speaker 2: percent issue. For men, it's just plus thirty two for
Speaker 2: legal abortion. With women, it is plus fifty three for men,
Speaker 2: just plus sixteen. For student loans, it's plus forty five
Speaker 2: for women. For men plus two allowing kids to pick
Speaker 2: their gender identity women plus two. For men, it is
Speaker 2: a whopping minus thirty three for supporting task cuts. With men,
Speaker 2: it's a plus twenty three. With women. It's a minus
Speaker 2: twenty for building a border wall with Mexico, minus four
Speaker 2: for men, minus forty seven for women. So, in other words,
Speaker 2: for some pretty major issues in US politics, the spread
Speaker 2: in importance and depth of feeling for young men and
Speaker 2: women is significant. That's spread itself, and what parties are
Speaker 2: running on, namely immigration and abortion, explains why both would
Speaker 2: then trend majorly in both directions. So what does this
Speaker 2: relate to education? While I would point out to you
Speaker 2: that the student loan question, the reason there's a forty
Speaker 2: percent net difference between young men and women on student
Speaker 2: loans is it's mostly young women who are going to college.
Speaker 2: As I have covered here now for several years, many
Speaker 2: young men, at higher rates than ever before, are dropping out.
Speaker 2: Many elite colleges are now running a two to one
Speaker 2: ratio of women to men, with the trend only going
Speaker 2: in an even further polarized direction. As I've covered here
Speaker 2: a lot, whether you go to college or not, really
Speaker 2: just colors basically everything about you, what music you like,
Speaker 2: if you like to travel, what TV shows, what movies.
Speaker 2: But really, what I think the difference is is that
Speaker 2: young people also get almost all of their news online
Speaker 2: and all their entertainment, namely through social media, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok,
Speaker 2: and the main force at play. There is also algorithmic amplification.
Speaker 2: This explains why there has been a big surge in
Speaker 2: young female enthusiasm for Kamala Harris. You've got the so
Speaker 2: called coconut pill and the memes of Kamala as Bratt.
Speaker 2: They've been overwhelmingly politically inclined young women on TikTok and elsewhere. Simultaneously,
Speaker 2: if you're a young dude you watch fitness content or
Speaker 2: the UFC, what are you seeing pop up things like
Speaker 2: Jake Paul's Trump endorsement or Logan Paul's Trump interview. Trump
Speaker 2: literally walking out to a massive fanfare at the UFC
Speaker 2: and fighters who are constantly talking him up. Both are
Speaker 2: cultural institutions of men and women who are very young
Speaker 2: and are polarizing significantly. They consume very different media, they
Speaker 2: care dramatically about different issues, and in the future it
Speaker 2: could set us up for some very interesting politics, one
Speaker 2: where men and women of the very same race and
Speaker 2: probably even the very same class, begin to diverge their votes.
Speaker 2: I've spoken at length Heer about how I think the
Speaker 2: social consequences of this will likely be bad, But at
Speaker 2: this point all we can really say is that the
Speaker 2: ball is now clearly in motion and the future it
Speaker 2: will be, I guess interesting if this trend continues. So
Speaker 2: I was fascinated by this, Crystal. I actually thought that.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at break kingpoints dot com.
Speaker 2: All Right, thank you everybody for watching. We really appreciate you,
Speaker 2: and we will see you all later