Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent.
Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints.
Speaker 5: Crystal.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for taking Ryan's place while he
Speaker 4: enjoys a nice vacation this week, a hard earned vacation
Speaker 4: this week.
Speaker 5: It's great to have you here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's my pleasure. I'm excited about the show we
Speaker 1: have planned. We've actually decided to do this what we're
Speaker 1: affectionately calling the Karens for Counterpoints panel, So we're bringing
Speaker 1: in some conservative ladies. It was actually my idea. I
Speaker 1: don't why I decided that I wanted to be out
Speaker 1: numbered on the show today, but bringing some conservative ladies
Speaker 1: to tackle some questions about you know, Jade Vance and
Speaker 1: how Republicans should be playing abortion. I also want to
Speaker 1: get there weigh in on who Kamala Harris's VP pick
Speaker 1: might be should be who they're sort of most worried
Speaker 1: about being on the ticket, So that should be really
Speaker 1: fun looking.
Speaker 3: Forward to that.
Speaker 1: Lots of other news though, Middle East once again on
Speaker 1: the brink of chaos. We've had two major assassinations by
Speaker 1: Israel in the span of twelve hours. Doctor Tree de
Speaker 1: Parsi is going to join us to break down what
Speaker 1: this could mean and where we could be heading, and
Speaker 1: the answers are frankly terrifying. Also got new polls to
Speaker 1: dig into Project twenty twenty five in disarray, So lots
Speaker 1: to tackle this morning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, and producer Griffin has been kind enough to
Speaker 4: put this element a one for us to share.
Speaker 5: Some folks remember.
Speaker 4: Some folks remember I left the Federalists a couple of
Speaker 4: months ago and joined Unheard, and the goal all along
Speaker 4: was to launch a new show called Undercurrents, and it's up,
Speaker 4: and so a lot of people have been asking, like,
Speaker 4: what's the best way to support it? And I just
Speaker 4: first of all blows me away that people even ask that.
Speaker 4: But the best way to support it is to go
Speaker 4: to Undercurrents dot tv and you can grab a subscription there.
Speaker 4: You get the whole show premium features with Q and
Speaker 4: a extra segments. Gotta get you on, Crystal, that'll be
Speaker 4: a lot of fun, Crystal, Ryan Saga, a whole gang.
Speaker 4: Gotta get everyone on. But you know, it's just been
Speaker 4: a blast so far. The YouTube channel is undercurrent, so
Speaker 4: you can just go there find it.
Speaker 5: You can subscribe.
Speaker 4: That's the most helpful thing if you subscribe and watch
Speaker 4: the videos. So it's very very exciting. Never wanted my
Speaker 4: own show, but it's very cool to.
Speaker 3: Have one, Crystal, it wanted you apparently.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy for you, Emily, because you really are
Speaker 1: an independent thinker and it seems like you've landed in
Speaker 1: the perfect place to just be able to say what
Speaker 1: you want to say, have on the guests you want
Speaker 1: to have on the show. Is fantastic, So congrats to
Speaker 1: you and everybody go and support Emily over it Unheard.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I appreciate that so much.
Speaker 6: Crystal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Unheard is awesome, just super super independent and people
Speaker 4: with all kinds of different viewpoint so it's a great
Speaker 4: place to be. Thanks everyone for the support. Let's get
Speaker 4: to the show, because man, the new polls on the
Speaker 4: general election, which now is Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: continue to roll in. Let's go ahead and play this
Speaker 4: clip of Kamala Harris.
Speaker 5: This was last night.
Speaker 4: She's sort of talking about we're getting some previews where
Speaker 4: the messaging is going here.
Speaker 7: So the momentum in this race is shifting, and there
Speaker 7: are signs that Donald Trump is feeling it.
Speaker 3: You may have noticed.
Speaker 7: So last week you may have seen he pulled out
Speaker 7: of the debate in September he had previously agreed to.
Speaker 8: So so here's the thing.
Speaker 3: Here's the funny thing about that.
Speaker 8: Here's the funny thing about that.
Speaker 7: Oh, he won't debate, but he and his running mate,
Speaker 7: she seemed to have a lot to say about me.
Speaker 7: And by the way, don't you find some of their
Speaker 7: stuff to just be plain weird? Well, Donald, I do
Speaker 7: hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage, because,
Speaker 7: as the saying goes, if you've got something to.
Speaker 4: Say, she's feeling herself.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, a lot of slagger there.
Speaker 1: Vibe shipped from when it was Biden head of the
Speaker 1: ticket is like off the charts. There was Megan thee
Speaker 1: Stallion was there. They were dancing and not like us.
Speaker 1: You know, people were going crazy the whole place was
Speaker 1: filled up. You know, she's able to capably read a
Speaker 1: teleprompter with energy and mentality.
Speaker 5: She can get to just the one sence.
Speaker 1: It's amazing and she really does benefit like I want
Speaker 1: to say, like I do think on the stump off
Speaker 1: a teleprompter at these rallies. She is genuinely good. She's
Speaker 1: better than adequate. She's genuinely good. She hasn't had to
Speaker 1: do any of the things yet that have been difficult
Speaker 1: for her in the past, the tough interviews where she
Speaker 1: gets knocked off balance, or not even really tough interviews
Speaker 1: where she gets knocked off balance, but just interviews where
Speaker 1: she gets knocked off balance, the debate performances that were
Speaker 1: an issue for her last time. But Democrats have totally
Speaker 1: closed the enthusiasm gap. It seems crazy now that there
Speaker 1: was anyone who was arguing to keep Joe Biden at
Speaker 1: the top of the ticket.
Speaker 3: And so she's got a real momentum that.
Speaker 1: Is reflected not just in this you know, enthusiastic crowd
Speaker 1: down in Georgia, but also by the poles that are
Speaker 1: coming out which are starting to show her being not
Speaker 1: just where Biden was pre debate, but actually exceeding his
Speaker 1: performance even kind of at his peak quote unquote peak
Speaker 1: in this race. We can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: These poles that we have of the battleground states. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to say this is morning consult. They are
Speaker 1: not a highly rated polster, so you should always take
Speaker 1: any poles with a grain of salt. But it's important
Speaker 1: to notice the shift in this pole from where they
Speaker 1: were with Biden to now where they are with Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: So you now have Harris plus two in Arizona. Biden
Speaker 1: in this same pole never led in Arizona. You have
Speaker 1: Georgia at a tie. Biden never in Georgia, got it
Speaker 1: to a tie again in the same pole.
Speaker 3: Michigan. This one's a little hard to believe.
Speaker 1: Plus eleven for Harris. Let's take that with a lot
Speaker 1: of grains of salt, but same movement, same direction as
Speaker 1: the other states. Nevada Harris plus one, Wisconsin Harris plus two,
Speaker 1: and then you've got Pennsylvania Trump plus four, and North
Speaker 1: Carolina Trump plus two. Pennsylvania may be very relevant when
Speaker 1: we start talking.
Speaker 3: About the deepsteaks.
Speaker 1: There seem to be some indicators she may be moving
Speaker 1: in the direction of Joshapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, much
Speaker 1: to my chagrin.
Speaker 3: But we'll save that for later.
Speaker 1: But you know, Emily, what's your reaction to kind of
Speaker 1: where the state of the races, where the energy is
Speaker 1: and if this trend is sustainable for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4: You know, Kamala Harris Brand and I talked about this
Speaker 4: last week, had that incredible campaign launch back in twenty
Speaker 4: nineteen in Oakland, and so much momentum, so much coverage
Speaker 4: from the media, really friendly coverage from the media. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of energy momentum behind her campaign. Can she
Speaker 4: lead like actually as a leader an organization that a
Speaker 4: campaign is, I think is a major question. There have
Speaker 4: been huge concerns with her, her sister's leadership of her campaign,
Speaker 4: Maya Harris leadership of her campaign.
Speaker 5: She has a lot of eternal her in her office.
Speaker 4: That's the scuttle butt is that she's a pretty hard
Speaker 4: person to work for, which can mean good things. It
Speaker 4: can mean bad things too, especially when you have highest
Speaker 4: turnover rates in your Senate office then your vice presidential office.
Speaker 4: This is something that has dogged her in recent years,
Speaker 4: no question about it. But what you noted with this
Speaker 4: Morning consolet poll is important because it's a shift from
Speaker 4: where the numbers were with Biden. So these the sample
Speaker 4: size looks really small to me, but it's still the
Speaker 4: numbers with Biden versus the numbers with Harris. There's a
Speaker 4: very notable difference in some of these states, and it's
Speaker 4: going to be reflected on some of these other poles
Speaker 4: that we see as well. So I don't think that,
Speaker 4: you know, Kamala Harris is going to have the same
Speaker 4: A lot of people are using the word honeymoon. I
Speaker 4: don't think that's going to follow her into November, although
Speaker 4: you can expect some of the same. Like you remember
Speaker 4: why the Clinton campaign shows the Javit Center for their
Speaker 4: h They expected.
Speaker 1: Yeah theamily, Yes in the universe.
Speaker 4: That that's going to happen again, no matter what, no
Speaker 4: matter how poorly this campaign goes for Kamala Harris, They're
Speaker 4: again going to start to set up this feeling of
Speaker 4: destiny and history. And so I think some of this
Speaker 4: theater will follow her into November, and this sort of
Speaker 4: momentum will follow no matter what.
Speaker 5: Just because of that.
Speaker 4: At the same time, I feel like you probably agree
Speaker 4: with me in this. I just think this is going
Speaker 4: to This race is never going to have anyone pulling
Speaker 4: away from the other. It is always going to be
Speaker 4: extremely extremely close. Most of the national averages, the polling
Speaker 4: averages are probably going to be within a couple points
Speaker 4: the entire last leg of this race.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it gets the question, Okay, well, how
Speaker 1: reflective of these are these polls of actual reality? Because
Speaker 1: while she's outperforming how Biden has been doing in this
Speaker 1: election cycle in terms of the polling. In the last
Speaker 1: election cycle in twenty twenty, at this point, Biden was
Speaker 1: up by like nine points. These poles were showing a
Speaker 1: blowout for Biden last time around. Now you won, wasn't
Speaker 1: any kind of a blowout though, if you look how
Speaker 1: close and how narrow it was in the key battleground states.
Speaker 1: So that's another question whether these poles are actually reflective
Speaker 1: of reality. Let's just put a couple more data points,
Speaker 1: new data points we have up on the screen. We've
Speaker 1: got a what is this Susquehanna pole out of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and it shows Kamala Harris up by four points. That
Speaker 1: is actually the within their margin of error. Their margin
Speaker 1: of error is four points, So that's interesting. Also interesting,
Speaker 1: was the breakdown in the New York Times Ciena Pole
Speaker 1: of where she is gaining specifically. Now this also put
Speaker 1: us up on the screen. This also really really take
Speaker 1: with a lot of grains of salt, because anytime you
Speaker 1: get into these demographic subsamples, it's even less accurate than
Speaker 1: the pole top line, just because you're dealing with smaller
Speaker 1: slices and smaller sample sizes in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: the number of people who are eighteen to twenty nine,
Speaker 1: the number of people who are in the Midwest, or
Speaker 1: white college, white non college, whatever. But it shows significant
Speaker 1: improvement among young voters, hispanics, and independence. Interestingly, one of
Speaker 1: the she falls back with there are only two groups
Speaker 1: on here. I believe that her performance deteriorates over where
Speaker 1: Joe Biden was. One of them is elderly people, people
Speaker 1: sixty five plus. That kind of tracks because Biden had
Speaker 1: a like unusual strength with that group. That was where
Speaker 1: he was doing the best even as everything else was
Speaker 1: falling off. The other one is with black voters, which
Speaker 1: you know, it's not consistent with what we see in
Speaker 1: other polls. That's why I say take it with a
Speaker 1: grain assault, but it is also very counter to the
Speaker 1: narrative and the identity politics expectations that have been set
Speaker 1: by the media.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and again that happened in twenty sixteen too, and
Speaker 4: then we had this whole backlash against women who voted
Speaker 4: for Trump, which was a good chunk of the female
Speaker 4: electorate United States. And so I kind of wonder how
Speaker 4: many lessons are going to truly have been internalized and
Speaker 4: will inform decisions that the Harris campaign makes.
Speaker 5: Down the line.
Speaker 4: An open question because they should be careful with some
Speaker 4: of this. When you're telling people that it's just it's history,
Speaker 4: you have to do this for history, there can be
Speaker 4: backlash to that.
Speaker 5: One thing.
Speaker 4: I know, I wanted to note in that Susquehanna poll,
Speaker 4: Crystal is the the three percent?
Speaker 5: What was it or no?
Speaker 4: I think it was at seven percent for RFK Junior.
Speaker 4: That's a I mean, talk about momentum. Does look like
Speaker 4: the RFK Junior campaign in a lot of different polls
Speaker 4: just after Biden dropped out of the race. I know
Speaker 4: we talked about this at the time, but it just
Speaker 4: a lot of people who were in the RFK Junior camp,
Speaker 4: in the Jill Stein camp, were saying, we just wanted
Speaker 4: like a sentient Democrat to vote for it. That doesn't mean,
Speaker 4: you know, seven percent is still significant. I think he
Speaker 4: probably will pull significant margins in certain states, and there's
Speaker 4: still time for him to you know, bounce back and
Speaker 4: be a ross perrot.
Speaker 5: But right now that's that's not where this race is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the air is really going out of the tires
Speaker 1: in that campaign, and Biden dropping out was really a
Speaker 1: blow to it because the core promise of that campaign is, like,
Speaker 1: the core appeal is like, don't you hate those two dudes.
Speaker 1: I'm an alternative here, i am my last name's Kennedy.
Speaker 1: I'm different than them, I'm difficult to code partisan ideologically.
Speaker 1: That was like the core premise of the campaign. So
Speaker 1: when you lose Biden, it also has become much more
Speaker 1: clear that RFK Junior is now taking more quote unquote
Speaker 1: from Trump than he is from the Democratic side, because
Speaker 1: those disaffected Democrats who were just like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this guy is too old, I can't possibly vote for
Speaker 1: him again, they're coming back into the fold with Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: you know the things that you were talking about before, Emily,
Speaker 1: with regard to Kamlain, her poor track record of managing
Speaker 1: an office, managing a campaign, et cetera.
Speaker 3: You know, in some ways, this.
Speaker 1: Is almost like the best possible situation for her because
Speaker 1: she didn't have to build.
Speaker 3: A campaign organization.
Speaker 1: She just had to you know, they just had to
Speaker 1: change the name on the headquarters on the Biden HQ.
Speaker 1: She's taking over all the same staff. They've hit the
Speaker 1: ground running. I mean, I think anybody has to acknowledge
Speaker 1: it's been an impressive rollout. Yes, aided by the media,
Speaker 1: no doubt about it, but it's been a very impressive,
Speaker 1: lightning fast rollout. You can see her favorability skyrocketing in
Speaker 1: ways that are completely insane, and she's got a really
Speaker 1: truncated timeframe, like there's not that long a period of
Speaker 1: time for her to be out in the public eye
Speaker 1: and remind people of why she you know, fail down
Speaker 1: of the twenty twenty primary, of why the Biden administration
Speaker 1: hid her after that disastrous lester Hold interview, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So the conditions are truly ideal for her,
Speaker 1: and I've come to see the frame of the election
Speaker 1: and part of why she's catching on so quickly and
Speaker 1: really you know, searching in the polls. The point now
Speaker 1: to exceed Biden's performance, even at his peak, is because
Speaker 1: I do think this is a change election, and as
Speaker 1: counterintuitive as it seems, with her being the sitting vice president,
Speaker 1: she feels right now like the change candidate Trump feels like.
Speaker 1: And she's got that line of like, we're not going back,
Speaker 1: which feeds into that idea of like the change candidate,
Speaker 1: you know, we're moving forward, We're going to do something different.
Speaker 3: In terms of the all important vibes, she.
Speaker 1: Does feel like she's the new fresh face and the
Speaker 1: change candidate in an election where I think voters are
Speaker 1: looking for something different, So that can change. I'm sure
Speaker 1: Trump is going to make his own play. You know,
Speaker 1: these things are not static. Your opponent is going to respond.
Speaker 1: I do think the Republicans have been caught kind of
Speaker 1: flat footed in terms of how they wanted to deal
Speaker 1: with her and how they want to frame her. But
Speaker 1: those things are all going to shift, and we got
Speaker 1: a long way to go still till November.
Speaker 5: No question about it, No question about it.
Speaker 4: Nate Silver throwing some cold water on some of the
Speaker 4: just some of the honeymoon, We'll say, just always fun
Speaker 4: to watch, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let's put this up on the screen from
Speaker 1: Nate Silver. So this is the overall polling average, which
Speaker 1: has them very close, Donald Trump at forty four point
Speaker 1: five Kamala Harris at forty four point one. However, his
Speaker 1: model has Trump significantly favored. So you know, Nate runs
Speaker 1: these simulations and it's like, okay, what percent of the
Speaker 1: time does Trump win in my electoral simulation and get
Speaker 1: to two seventy and what percentage of the time does
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris win? And it was like, you know, sixty
Speaker 1: forty effectively in favor of Trump. Now, interestingly, he has
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris narrowly favored to win the popular vote.
Speaker 3: But because she has.
Speaker 1: Now remade the sort of you know, modern historic Obama
Speaker 1: sort of coalition of the Democratic Party, it puts Democrats
Speaker 1: back at a significant disadvantage in.
Speaker 3: Terms of electoral college.
Speaker 1: Whereas Biden, because of his strength with like old white people,
Speaker 1: had kind of erased that dynasic just fact, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to be just very in us reality. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he had sort of erased that dynamic. It's back in
Speaker 1: play now with Kamala Harris reconstituting that like Obama style coalition.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a huge point.
Speaker 4: She's going to have the ads that are going to
Speaker 4: run in Pennsylvania about her being on tape saying banning fracking.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's no CNN fact check or New York
Speaker 4: Times fact check or whatever in the world that can
Speaker 4: make that go away. It's her on tape, and it
Speaker 4: will be running constantly to Pencil of Ania voters. So
Speaker 4: those are going to be really difficult spots for Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris to find.
Speaker 5: Appeal and build.
Speaker 4: Obama campaigned very differently than Hillary Clinton, especially in two
Speaker 4: thousand and eight when he was in those states. And
Speaker 4: I don't mean Clinton in two thousand and eight, because
Speaker 4: Hillary Clinton also campaigned very differently in the two thousand
Speaker 4: and seven two thousand and eight time frame when she
Speaker 4: was in the primary. But I don't know that Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris can pull that off. She at one point, you know,
Speaker 4: tried to push back on identity politics and kind of
Speaker 4: quickly discarded that and realized it would be more fruitful
Speaker 4: for her to lean totally into it.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I just I have a hard time, Crystal seeing her
Speaker 4: pulling off the successfully pulling off the right kind of
Speaker 4: Democratic Party messaging in those states. But obviously that's why
Speaker 4: she's looking for some looking at some of the VP
Speaker 4: candidates that we know she's looking at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think the biggest knock on Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: and there was some reporting to suggest that, you know,
Speaker 1: in the sort of testing of her weaknesses done by
Speaker 1: the Biden team, this is what they came up with.
Speaker 1: It's not that she's radical left to liberal blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: which is what Republicans.
Speaker 3: Are really leaning into an addition to a lot of
Speaker 3: other stuff.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of like the core of the official
Speaker 1: campaign messaging, and she's too radical. The real knock on
Speaker 1: her is that she's nothing, That she's all over the place,
Speaker 1: that she's wherever it's convenient to be in the moment.
Speaker 1: And so you mentioned the fracking band, Like now she
Speaker 1: says she doesn't support that she was from Outicare for
Speaker 1: All she already had rejected, you know, moved on from
Speaker 1: that even during her own campaign back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: That's to me the real weak spot for Kamala Harris. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe you parlay that into an advantage where people feel,
Speaker 1: like they did with Obama, they sort of see whatever
Speaker 1: they want to see in her and baby you can
Speaker 1: maintain that illusion through November. But she doesn't have certainly
Speaker 1: the political skill of an Obama. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: any doubt about that. And unlike Obama, she has a
Speaker 1: much longer track record in the public record. Obama was
Speaker 1: so relatively new in Washington that it enabled this ability
Speaker 1: to project on him whatever it is that you wanted
Speaker 1: him to be. So she doesn't have quite that same
Speaker 1: luxury because of how long she you know, in the Senate,
Speaker 1: as an ag as you know, a presidential candidate, in
Speaker 1: the Biden administration, et cetera. Some of those things have
Speaker 1: to stick to you somewhere along the.
Speaker 4: Line, speaking of attacks that Democrats really want to stick
Speaker 4: to Republicans at least, should we move on to Project
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five, Crystal.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: This is like you got to do your conservative explainer
Speaker 1: for me of what the hell's going on here?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's funny because the media has constructed
Speaker 4: this amazing myth of Project twenty twenty five. That is,
Speaker 4: you know, Donald Trump himself recently said that there's some
Speaker 4: fine points in it, and someone did he say, absolutely
Speaker 4: ridiculous points in.
Speaker 5: It that he doesn't agree with. That at all.
Speaker 4: But basically, the Heritage Foundation is the premier think tank
Speaker 4: conservative think tank in DC. It is the biggest and
Speaker 4: most influential think tank on the right, and they've put
Speaker 4: out what's called their Mandate for Leadership since the ninete
Speaker 4: teen eighties, and it's like a nine hundred page book.
Speaker 4: The Cycle Project twenty twenty five is what they know
Speaker 4: relabeled it because they also coupled it this year, which
Speaker 4: the part that you know, if I were sitting back
Speaker 4: and going to describe anything as a vast right wing conspiracy,
Speaker 4: they did couple it with this personnel recruitment search that
Speaker 4: a lot of conservative groups started doing and actually realized
Speaker 4: they had to start doing during the Trump administration. When
Speaker 4: you know, it's no secret the conservative movement has wanted
Speaker 4: to like gut the administrative state literally for decades. The
Speaker 4: Heritage Foundation itself attacked Ronald Reagan for not abolishing the
Speaker 4: Department of Education in the middle of the eighties. So
Speaker 4: you know, they think they have a real shot at
Speaker 4: achieving some of this stuff with Trump, and some of
Speaker 4: it is going to be extremely unpopular with the American people.
Speaker 4: Democrats realized that and sort of took what was fairly commonplace.
Speaker 4: I mean, Heritage Foundation had been handing these books out.
Speaker 5: They still are. They were at NATCON recently.
Speaker 4: They had stacks of these big nine hundred page Project
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five Mandate for leadership books, just kind of
Speaker 4: handing them out. They weren't trying to be secretive about
Speaker 4: at all. In fact, they were trying to get these
Speaker 4: books in everyone's hands.
Speaker 5: The other if you're gonna say.
Speaker 4: There's a vast right wing conspiracy element of this is
Speaker 4: they teased a one hundred and eighty day plan for
Speaker 4: the first one hundred and eighty days of any Republican
Speaker 4: president who were to win in twenty twenty four. For
Speaker 4: a while, there were a lot of people in circles
Speaker 4: here in d C, Conservative circles in DC, Heritage circles
Speaker 4: in DC who wanted that person to be around DeSantis.
Speaker 4: It wasn't just about Donald Trump. So that's my basic
Speaker 4: because there has been to borrow a phrase, disinformation surrounding it.
Speaker 4: Some of it is fine because it's partisan attacks from
Speaker 4: Democrats that are being constructed to win an election, which
Speaker 4: is a totally normal thing that both sides do. Then
Speaker 4: when it gets kind of parroted by the media, I
Speaker 4: think is where that's confusing, but it's fairly standard stuff.
Speaker 4: At the same time, fairly standard for a conservative movement
Speaker 4: group like the Heritage Foundation is not going to be
Speaker 4: appealing on a mass scale. So that's my basic rundown
Speaker 4: before we jump into the news of what happened yesterday.
Speaker 1: Crystal, Yeah, go ahead and break down the news, and
Speaker 1: then I can give my view of Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is similar to years but different in some respects.
Speaker 5: Right, Okay, So I'm excited about that.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 4: Project twenty twenty five has become a huge lightning rod
Speaker 4: because Democrats, and I think smartly have realized they can
Speaker 4: pin this on Republicans running everywhere. They can create this
Speaker 4: myth of Project twenty twenty five and hanging around the
Speaker 4: next of Republican candidates Donald Trump. Trump threw cold water
Speaker 4: on that right away. He was basically which is which
Speaker 4: was shocking because the Heritage Foundation definitely felt like they
Speaker 4: had done this with veterans of a prior Trump administration
Speaker 4: and people who would be staffing at Trump administration, probably
Speaker 4: saying people would be staffing you know, potentially Desanta's administration
Speaker 4: or any of these Republicans they felt like they were
Speaker 4: in good shape. So what happened yesterday, all of this
Speaker 4: really came to a head. Let's go ahead and put
Speaker 4: b one up on the screen. So Roger Stellenberger at
Speaker 4: The Daily Beast first reported that Paul Dan's, one of
Speaker 4: the top guys at Project twenty twenty five, was leaving,
Speaker 4: and Stallenberger said, this meant that, you know, Project twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five looked like it was about to shut down.
Speaker 4: The Heritage Foundation then came out and said, no, Paul
Speaker 4: is leaving because our timeline was always that we wrap
Speaker 4: these mandates for leaderships up after the election. And Kevin Roberts,
Speaker 4: the president of the Heritage Foundation, said Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: You know, we're extremely grateful to him and everyone's work
Speaker 4: on Project twenty twenty five and dedication to staving in America.
Speaker 4: Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policy
Speaker 4: makers of all levels federal, state, and local will continue
Speaker 4: so that the kind of mandate for leadership policy blueprint
Speaker 4: part of Project twenty twenty five shutting down. But this
Speaker 4: like online portal where you can submit yourself to potentially
Speaker 4: work in a future Trump administration or Republican administration in general,
Speaker 4: the real state and local level still up and running.
Speaker 4: And again, like Chris, to the point where there is
Speaker 4: something that's you know, sort of weird about it or
Speaker 4: vast write when conspiracy about it, that's the part that
Speaker 4: I think probably a lot of people would look to.
Speaker 4: So let's put B two up on the screen. This
Speaker 4: all started rolling down the hill yesterday. Susie Wilds and
Speaker 4: Chris los Nvita, they're the head of the Trump campaign.
Speaker 5: They took a victory lap.
Speaker 4: They didn't even like they didn't have to say a
Speaker 4: word about Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 5: They didn't have to do anything about it.
Speaker 4: But they said reports of Project twenty twenty five's demise
Speaker 4: would be greatly welcome and should serve as noticed to
Speaker 4: anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with
Speaker 4: President Trump and his campaign, it will not end well
Speaker 4: for you. That is just like so Trumpian in tone
Speaker 4: and everything like that. So let's also move to well
Speaker 4: before we do that, Crystal, this is B three. This
Speaker 4: is you suggested this Vox article on explaining Project twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five, which at one point there are more people
Speaker 4: googling Project twenty twenty five than Taylor Swift in the
Speaker 4: last couple of months. That was a real thing because
Speaker 4: it's been in so many ads. It's been you know,
Speaker 4: I've had like random people who don't follow politics that
Speaker 4: closely asking me like, Hey, what's the deal with Project
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five?
Speaker 5: Should I be worried about it?
Speaker 4: Blah blah blah, And yeah, my response would be its
Speaker 4: pretty standard conservative movement stuff with some new right stuff
Speaker 4: thrown in. For the better and the worse if you're
Speaker 4: trying to sell it to the American public. For the better,
Speaker 4: there's some interesting stuff on labor. For the worse, it
Speaker 4: goes in some interesting directions on social issues. But as
Speaker 4: you've kind of looked into this, what do you make
Speaker 4: of Project twenty twenty five?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think it's terrifying in the same
Speaker 1: way that like ideological conservative government is terrifying to me
Speaker 1: and frankly to a lot of Americans who are reading
Speaker 1: this and are like, holy shit, that's what you guys
Speaker 1: want to do here. Some of the language is jarring, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's this line that says pornography should be outlawed,
Speaker 1: the people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned
Speaker 1: cators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed
Speaker 1: as registered sex offenders, and telecoms and tech firms that
Speaker 1: facilitate it spread should be shuddered.
Speaker 5: So imagine Donald Trump doing that.
Speaker 3: No, of course not.
Speaker 1: But this is I mean, there's a reason why he
Speaker 1: has gone to great lengths to try to, you know,
Speaker 1: distance himself from this and say I have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with this. It's also interesting too because he never
Speaker 1: nams specifically what his problem with it is. It's just
Speaker 1: like some of it's fine and some of it is terrible. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: well tell me which parts are terrible? Which parts do
Speaker 1: you disagree with? About two thirds of the authors come
Speaker 1: from the Trump administration. There were one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: different Trump administration officials who were involved in drafting it.
Speaker 1: As you said, I'm sure all the people who are
Speaker 1: involved in fact, I'm curious your view of like their
Speaker 1: reaction to the Trump you know, trashing it and all
Speaker 1: of that, because I'm sure they fell. Oh, we're part
Speaker 1: of the team. We're doing the work that's going to
Speaker 1: help this next administration. We're going to be in line
Speaker 1: for jobs. He's claiming he's not going to take anyone
Speaker 1: on who was affiliated with Project twenty twenty five at all.
Speaker 1: So shockingly, I actually think the Democrats did a good
Speaker 1: job of messaging on this, because I never would have
Speaker 1: expected it to gain the popular attraction that it did.
Speaker 1: And I think part of it is just that the
Speaker 1: name Project twenty twenty five sounds really ominous and vast
Speaker 1: right wing conspiracy ish.
Speaker 3: So there's that.
Speaker 1: But the other problem for the Trump people is, like
Speaker 1: you know, with the jd Vance pick. The dude just
Speaker 1: wrote the foreword for the book of the Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five dude, and he said in that we have
Speaker 1: we could put B five up on the screen. He
Speaker 1: said literally in that forward. The Heritage Foundation isn't some
Speaker 1: random outpost on Capitol Hill. It is and has been
Speaker 1: the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 3: To Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: So that also hampers their ability to say, oh, we
Speaker 1: hate this, we want nothing to do with it. Okay,
Speaker 1: well why did you pick someone who was so closely
Speaker 1: affiliated with it for your ticket? And you know, we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about this with with the lady, And I'm
Speaker 1: curious their view and your view as well.
Speaker 3: But the two issues.
Speaker 1: Where the Trump campaign really feels like they have a
Speaker 1: problem are abortion and Project twenty twenty five, and Vance
Speaker 1: brings massive baggage to the ticket on both of those issues.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I don't disagree with that, although I wonder
Speaker 4: to what extent this will throw will make it really
Speaker 4: hard to keep using the Project twenty twenty five attack.
Speaker 4: I don't know, actually, because to the point about what
Speaker 4: Vance wrote in that forward, Heritage was taking money from
Speaker 4: defense contractors and big tech companies up until Kevin Roberts
Speaker 4: took over, and Kevin Roberts is very much an ideological
Speaker 4: fellow traveler of Vance. I talked to him about this recently,
Speaker 4: and that's where the Heritage Foundation felt like, of course,
Speaker 4: this is a worthwhile endeavor that if we want any
Speaker 4: future Republican president to have a shot at enacting real
Speaker 4: conservative priority without being undermined by people who work in
Speaker 4: A great example would be like the EPA. And that's
Speaker 4: a great example of why some of this would be
Speaker 4: terrifying to someone on the left, Crystal like they want
Speaker 4: to be able to make huge sweeping changes at the EPA.
Speaker 4: I would love huge sweeping changes at the Department of Education,
Speaker 4: that would probably be terrifying to you and Ryan, and
Speaker 4: it's hard to do that if you don't have the personnel,
Speaker 4: which was a huge problem in the Trump administration. It
Speaker 4: would be a problem in any administration just because there aren't.
Speaker 4: There are a lot of people that want to do that,
Speaker 4: and we can get into why and all of that.
Speaker 4: But I do wonder about the future of these attacks,
Speaker 4: because let's play this is a crazy story. Let's play
Speaker 4: this next clip of JD Vance. Really, I just can't
Speaker 4: emphasize enough how important the sentiment that he's expressing in
Speaker 4: this clip is. Because it is it has come to
Speaker 4: be widely adopted by people on the right, many of
Speaker 4: him Soccer, and I know this is very much what
Speaker 4: they see is the most important sentiment to bring to
Speaker 4: the table in American politics from a conservative perspective. Now,
Speaker 4: So this is JD Vance in twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 4: it was posted by the Kamala Harris campaign Rapid Response
Speaker 4: account on Twitter.
Speaker 10: I think the thing that we have to take away
Speaker 10: from the last ten years is that we really need
Speaker 10: to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise
Speaker 10: of power. I was talking about this with someone earlier
Speaker 10: today where you remember there was some threat that Congression
Speaker 10: or Senate Republicans made, if you get rid of the filibuster,
Speaker 10: we're going to do X, Y and Z, And you
Speaker 10: actually look at it, it's like, oh, this is this
Speaker 10: is not that interesting, Like we're going to like delve
Speaker 10: it on our promise life that we've made, right, you know,
Speaker 10: you know this is this is the threat. If you
Speaker 10: get rid of the filibuster, we're going to do this
Speaker 10: stuff like they're talking about expanding the Supreme Court, they're
Speaker 10: talking about adding you know, to senators from heavily democratic places.
Speaker 8: You get rid of the filmbuster will actually deliver it, do.
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 5: We don't want to do.
Speaker 10: So I think, I mean, look, I am a cynic
Speaker 10: about this and maybe even a little bit of a pessimist,
Speaker 10: but I think the challenge confronting American conservatives is that
Speaker 10: we have lost every major powerful institution in the country
Speaker 10: except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course
Speaker 10: are weaker now than they've ever been. We've lost big business,
Speaker 10: we've lost finance, we've lost the culture, we've lost the academy.
Speaker 10: And if we're going to actually really affect real change
Speaker 10: in the country. It will require us completely replacing the
Speaker 10: existing ruling class with another ruling class.
Speaker 4: So Crystal, the reason Jade Vance's head is cut off
Speaker 4: in that video is because I filmed it.
Speaker 3: I actually filmed.
Speaker 5: That video because conspiracy, Yeah, of course.
Speaker 4: But you know that was on Federal Stradio Hour twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one summer of twenty twenty one. Jadevance was on
Speaker 4: as a guest that's been dominant.
Speaker 5: In Chris bud.
Speaker 4: I'm scrolling Twitter the other day and see this video
Speaker 4: and I'm like, oh, someone pulled it, and then I
Speaker 4: looked at the account and I was like, that's the
Speaker 4: Kamala Harris campaign. They used that clip to say, clip
Speaker 4: to say, Jadvance endorse twenty twenty five Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: What's really in that clip is Jdvance actually not. You know,
Speaker 4: it's long before Project twenty twenty five got even was
Speaker 4: an idea. But what he's endorsing is the underlying sentiment
Speaker 4: of Project twenty twenty five, which is that the right
Speaker 4: needs to seize the reins of administrative power.
Speaker 5: And that is something that is very real, very real.
Speaker 1: Right, And so I think that clip gets into why
Speaker 1: jd Vance is struggling as a national candidate, and why
Speaker 1: his favorability rating has you know, really tanked and he
Speaker 1: was already the least favorable VP nominee in history, and
Speaker 1: all this stuff because that language and that sort of
Speaker 1: posture as a renegade revolutionary wanting to overthrow the administrative
Speaker 1: state and all this even like very specific, fake niche
Speaker 1: right wing online language plays very well in.
Speaker 3: That circle played.
Speaker 1: I'm sure people loved what he had to say there,
Speaker 1: but when you put it out to general public, people
Speaker 1: are like, this sounds extreme, fringe weird. You might say,
Speaker 1: you know, this sounds scary, and then again, when you
Speaker 1: have the dude, you know, writing the foreword for the
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five author's book, makes it very difficult
Speaker 1: to get your fingerprints off of what they have planned.
Speaker 1: So this has been my sort of take on Evans,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk to the ladies later about this as well.
Speaker 1: But you know, in order in particular to overcome the
Speaker 1: misgivings people had about him from saying things like Trump
Speaker 1: maybe America's Hitler, for example, he really leaned into this
Speaker 1: right wing online influencer vernacular and posture, which served him
Speaker 1: well in terms of gaining clout and gaining like a
Speaker 1: national purchase in that subculture, but is very off putting
Speaker 1: to your average normy voter who you need to win
Speaker 1: over in order to win a general election. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I am very much of the view that Vance was
Speaker 1: a tremendous mistake from the Trump campaign. I think Trump
Speaker 1: has to think he's a tremendous mistake at this point
Speaker 1: because of all the baggage that he brings the table
Speaker 1: and how little additive in terms of electoral benefit he
Speaker 1: brings the table. If you wanted him to be involved
Speaker 1: with governance, you could have made him chief of staff, right,
Speaker 1: You didn't have to have him with you on the ticket,
Speaker 1: because the biggest danger for Republicans is that just like
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, they have this with and the
Speaker 1: sense of extremism and like they're you know, not in
Speaker 1: touch with the median voter in the country, and putting
Speaker 1: Vance on the ticket makes it much easier for Democrats
Speaker 1: to make that case and create that impression.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I don't disagree with that.
Speaker 4: I mean that talk about power like actually makes me
Speaker 4: uncomfortable and I have a lot of disagreements with it.
Speaker 4: But it's very commonplace in conservative circles here in DC,
Speaker 4: no doubt about it, although I still think Trump's number
Speaker 4: one goal in picking Vance was just to avoid picking
Speaker 4: a Pence. And you don't get a lot of options
Speaker 4: for people who are high profiled, successful enough that would
Speaker 4: certify the new.
Speaker 5: Electors on January sixth.
Speaker 4: So by Trump's standards, I guess it's probably still a success,
Speaker 4: but we'll see how or whether Jad Devince is a
Speaker 4: drag on the ticket. Ultimately, huge news, huge news out
Speaker 4: of the Middle East, just in the last several hours, Crystal,
Speaker 4: we continue to get developments, So let's move on to
Speaker 4: that segment.
Speaker 1: It appears that Israel has conducted two major assassinations in
Speaker 1: the region with potential consequences that are hard to wrap
Speaker 1: your head around. The first was Fuad Shugar, he is
Speaker 1: the most senior military commander in Hesbola.
Speaker 3: That assassination occurred in Beirut.
Speaker 1: And the second was Ismael Haniah, assassinated in Tehran in Iran.
Speaker 1: There for the inauguration of the new Iranian president, and
Speaker 1: he is the top political leader of Hamas. Joining us
Speaker 1: to break down the context of this and the potential consequences,
Speaker 1: where we could be headed as doctor Tree to Parsi,
Speaker 1: he of course is with the Quincy Institute for Responsible
Speaker 1: state Craft.
Speaker 3: Great disease.
Speaker 6: Good to be with you again.
Speaker 1: So what is your initial reaction to these astounding events.
Speaker 11: Well, I think we have to assume that this is
Speaker 11: done by his role, given the track record of is
Speaker 11: we doing these type of things, particularly mindful of the
Speaker 11: attack that you also mentioned against the Hezbola commander. So
Speaker 11: if we assume that, we have to ask ourselves what
Speaker 11: the objective is here Beyond obviously the desire.
Speaker 6: To take out Hania. They could have taken out.
Speaker 11: Any at any moments he was living in Katat, They
Speaker 11: knew exactly where he was. The fact that they took
Speaker 11: him out while he was in Tehran on the day
Speaker 11: of the inauguration of the Iranian president, I think is
Speaker 11: designed to send a couple of messages. One of those
Speaker 11: messages is of course, that they are trying to undermine
Speaker 11: any opportunity that posess Kon's election would bring about for
Speaker 11: renewed US ivon diplomacy, something the Israelis have opposed since
Speaker 11: the mid nineteen nineties. Secondly, is to send a clear
Speaker 11: signal to both Yvon and the different groups that Yvon
Speaker 11: is supporting from his bullag to the Hutis, to Iraqi militias,
Speaker 11: that they're not safe, they're not even safe in Yvon,
Speaker 11: and that that Yvon actually cannot protect them. This is deeply,
Speaker 11: deeply embarrassing for Van, of course, particularly particularly if it
Speaker 11: turns out that some of the reporting that is coming
Speaker 11: out now is true, which is that he was actually
Speaker 11: in or very near the presidential compound when he was assassinated.
Speaker 11: And then you have to ask yourself, So, if these
Speaker 11: Raelis are doing something that they know is deeply embarrassing
Speaker 11: to the Yvonians, they're clearly doing it because they know
Speaker 11: that that will maximize the likelihood that Yvon will respond,
Speaker 11: and that will been as a result and of course
Speaker 11: trigger and escalatory spiral, and escalatory spiral that seems to
Speaker 11: have been in the mind of Nataniel when he ordered this. If,
Speaker 11: of course it is Israel, but I think it's safe
Speaker 11: to assume that it is.
Speaker 4: That's what I wanted to ask about next. How what
Speaker 4: do you expect in terms of the Iranian response? What
Speaker 4: could we be saying, what could we be seeing in
Speaker 4: the days ahead, in hours ahead, actually potentially from Iran
Speaker 4: as a plots its response to what happened just in
Speaker 4: the last twelve or so hours.
Speaker 11: So I think contrary to the image or the image
Speaker 11: that has been presented of the Ivani leadership in Washington,
Speaker 11: I think it's quite clear that the Ivani leadership tends
Speaker 11: to actually be rather cautious and very calculating act.
Speaker 6: That's part of the reason why it's.
Speaker 11: Become such a potent foe of Israel and the United States.
Speaker 11: And we saw that in the response that Vanyas gave
Speaker 11: when the Israelis attacked Ivanian embassy in the Mascus to
Speaker 11: the consular compound of it. It was a very measured
Speaker 11: response to make sure that it inflict the damage on Israel,
Speaker 11: but not so much to the Israel would have strong
Speaker 11: grounds for further escalation, and it seems to have had
Speaker 11: some coordination with.
Speaker 6: The Bide administration this time around.
Speaker 11: However, I think it is much more difficult to count
Speaker 11: on that type of a response, that type of a
Speaker 11: calibrated response that is designed to strike back but without escalating,
Speaker 11: for that actually to be able to succeed, for a
Speaker 11: variety of reasons. First of all, this was an attack
Speaker 11: against Hamas Hezbolah and Iran within the span of twelve hours.
Speaker 11: This likely means that the response would be a coordinated
Speaker 11: response with Iran and several of these different actors, which then,
Speaker 11: of course would be different from what we saw in April.
Speaker 11: Those other actors do not have the same discipline, nor
Speaker 11: do they have necessarily the same objectives in terms of
Speaker 11: we've seen clear tensions between the Hutis wanting to escalate
Speaker 11: much more and the Iranians holding them back. So I
Speaker 11: do fear that this has created a very very explosive situation.
Speaker 11: Levannians are likely going to respond together with some of
Speaker 11: these other actors, and I think the Nataniel government knew
Speaker 11: exactly what they did, given the fact that we are
Speaker 11: now in.
Speaker 6: A laying ducked period of the Biden administration.
Speaker 11: Biden has proven himself unwilling and incapable of putting any
Speaker 11: pressure on Israel in the past, except in that instance
Speaker 11: when it came to the Syrian striking against Syria.
Speaker 6: But this time around, perhaps you will.
Speaker 11: Not even have that, and as a result, the risk
Speaker 11: of a further escalation that drags the US into it
Speaker 11: is much much higher than it was.
Speaker 3: People Doctor Parsi.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you wrote on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: your initial reaction to these assassinations was that this may
Speaker 1: be an attempt by bib Ntnyahu to box Kamala harris In.
Speaker 1: You know, it's still an open question whether she really
Speaker 1: wants to move away from the Biden policy with regard
Speaker 1: to Israel, but that's certainly a possibility, an ongoing possibility,
Speaker 1: and so layout for us your logic of how this
Speaker 1: could box Kamala hair In and ybb Netnia who would
Speaker 1: want to do that?
Speaker 11: Well, first on the issue is as to whether she
Speaker 11: is moving away from Bida's pause or I think you
Speaker 11: quite right. We don't know quite yet, but I think
Speaker 11: we can point to the fact that both the body
Speaker 11: language and on a rhetorical level, there is a shift,
Speaker 11: and it's a rather important shift. Any substantive shift will
Speaker 11: have to be preceded by.
Speaker 6: Such a rhetorical shift.
Speaker 11: Now doesn't mean that the rhetorical shift automatically will lead
Speaker 11: to it, but if we were to see a substantive shift,
Speaker 11: this is one of the first steps that we would see.
Speaker 11: But more importantly, how does N'taiano preceive this given the
Speaker 11: fact that he will not.
Speaker 6: Take any chances.
Speaker 11: I assume that based on the conversation he had with
Speaker 11: Kamala Harris, what she said publicly, the body language, et cetera,
Speaker 11: he would be quite unlikely to calculate that Harris is
Speaker 11: not going to try to shift away, not just rhetorically
Speaker 11: but on substance, away from where Biden is man, which
Speaker 11: incidentally is not terribly hard.
Speaker 6: I mean, bar is very very low right. So given
Speaker 6: that what.
Speaker 11: Does he do now before she actually potentially becomes president,
Speaker 11: of course, is all assuming that she would win, I
Speaker 11: think one of the things that he would want to
Speaker 11: do is to box her in, create a crisis that
Speaker 11: forces her into the same type of a beer hug
Speaker 11: that by then voluntarily chose to adopt after October seventh,
Speaker 11: and by that crisis also take away the opportunity for
Speaker 11: her to have the initiative. She's going to be forced
Speaker 11: to react rather to be able to come in as president.
Speaker 11: If she wins, of course, with a new policy and
Speaker 11: a new initiative, she will only be able to respond
Speaker 11: to him and the crisis that he has created, rather
Speaker 11: than actually being able to come in and decide, you know,
Speaker 11: essentially sends strong signals to Israel or what she would
Speaker 11: like them to do instead she's going to be responding.
Speaker 4: And you know, there's already been some speculation about the
Speaker 4: potential for if is confirmed as an Israeli much obviously
Speaker 4: appears to be what does that mean for how it
Speaker 4: could backfire potentially if there is a Harris administration, if
Speaker 4: there is UH you know, going forward, it does look
Speaker 4: like this is something that the US and their relationship
Speaker 4: or our relationship with Iran. You know, there's there's a
Speaker 4: total this is a new situation. This kind of upends
Speaker 4: the diplomacy efforts as meager as they were. So is
Speaker 4: there any chance that it backfires on Netsa Yahu?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: And there are a million different ways that could happen.
Speaker 4: But even just if there is UH, you know, an
Speaker 4: escalation and the US is even more UH or even
Speaker 4: you know less, the public, the public in the United
Speaker 4: States is even less supportive of Netsya who's war effort.
Speaker 4: That puts politicians in a different situation too.
Speaker 11: I think you're absolutely right, and I think on a
Speaker 11: strategic level, in the long run, we have seen a
Speaker 11: lot of these different stunts by Netannan backfiring when it
Speaker 11: comes to his long term interest tactically enable to gain
Speaker 11: some things, but in the long term, it has backfired.
Speaker 11: Even the attack on April one against the Consulate of
Speaker 11: Ivan in Damascus, I think backfired because it also forced
Speaker 11: Biden to finally actually put some red lines in front
Speaker 11: of Nathaniel, something that he clearly had not done when
Speaker 11: it comes to Nathaniel who slaughter in Gaza. But nevertheless,
Speaker 11: in the short rum, I think it's going to unfortunately
Speaker 11: have similar impacts as we've seen before. But I think
Speaker 11: one of the things that is happening right now is
Speaker 11: that it's becoming increasingly clear to an increasing number of
Speaker 11: Americans who don't want to see the United States go
Speaker 11: into more wars in the Middle who don't want to
Speaker 11: see the United States get dragged into wars, whether in
Speaker 11: the Middle East or elsewhere our tire of these forever wars,
Speaker 11: that the one country that is most likely and most
Speaker 11: intent on dragging the US into such a war is Israel.
Speaker 6: It's not just you know what is happening in Europe,
Speaker 6: et cetera.
Speaker 11: And I think this is also starting to become more
Speaker 11: clear on the conservative side, where I think support for
Speaker 11: Israel perhaps has been a little bit more reflexive than
Speaker 11: he has been.
Speaker 6: On the Democratic side, for the last ten.
Speaker 11: Years, so there is a big shift amongst the American populists.
Speaker 11: And I think if this leads to a large escalation
Speaker 11: and the American bodybacks come home from this war, then
Speaker 11: I think tactically, perhaps it had helped nathaniawe just wants
Speaker 11: to prolong his reign as prime minister.
Speaker 6: Strategically, I think it will be very bad for.
Speaker 1: Visual last question I have for you, doctor Parci Control room,
Speaker 1: if you could put the final element I believe we
Speaker 1: have at labeled C four up on the screen.
Speaker 3: This was Jeremy.
Speaker 1: Scahill over at drop Site News interviewed a scholar of
Speaker 1: Hebola amal Sad and, as this was before the assassination
Speaker 1: of Ismail Haniya, asked what a war with Hesbola could
Speaker 1: look like, and in part he said, listen, we're talking
Speaker 1: here about a much more sophisticated military organization, well over
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand fighters, well over that number, over one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand missiles and rockets. He went on
Speaker 1: to say, from all the information I've been gas, it
Speaker 1: would actually lead to the unraveling of the Israeli state.
Speaker 1: We're not talking here about just a defeat for Israel
Speaker 1: like in two thousand and six, it would be the
Speaker 1: sort of defeat that would actually lead to its demise.
Speaker 1: I'd love for you to react to that if you
Speaker 1: agree with that assessment and lay out for us in
Speaker 1: a little bit starker detail the escalatory spiral and where
Speaker 1: it could lead and what it could mean for the
Speaker 1: US in particular.
Speaker 11: Wells, as was said in that interview, more than one
Speaker 11: hundred thousand fighters, we're talking about more than one hundred
Speaker 11: fifty thousand projectiles. We know that Israel's air defenses are
Speaker 11: not as impenetratable as many thought them to be, mindful
Speaker 11: of the fact that Ivani has managed to gets nine
Speaker 11: ballistic missiles through, as well as a much more sophisticated
Speaker 11: technological base.
Speaker 6: For that fighting force.
Speaker 11: Given all of that, and particularly if it then also
Speaker 11: means that the utes yvonne Ibaqi militias and others will
Speaker 11: be involved, it is no longer a question as to
Speaker 11: whether militarily where the balance ends up. It's whether a
Speaker 11: state like Israel can sustain such a conflict. And I
Speaker 11: think already seeing ten months into the war in Gaza
Speaker 11: in which the Israelis are not suffering militarily but nevertheless
Speaker 11: they're failing strategically and even tactically. How that has created
Speaker 11: very very strong raptures within Israeli society. We've seen how
Speaker 11: the right wing there and very hardline elements have gotten
Speaker 11: more and more leeway, to the point of what we
Speaker 11: saw just in the last couple of days in which
Speaker 11: they were attacking prisons in order to be able to
Speaker 11: release Israeli soldiers that had been arrested because of the
Speaker 11: torture that they had conducted against Pastinian prisoners. And now
Speaker 11: they have been released once again they won. We've seen
Speaker 11: how that country's gone more and more in a very
Speaker 11: very radical direction. Such a radical direction almost invites self implosion.
Speaker 11: This is at least part of the narrative exists out
Speaker 11: in the Middle East, part of the reason why they
Speaker 11: think that such a military confrontation with Israel, even if
Speaker 11: it is lost militarily, strategically, nevertheless, it will lead to
Speaker 11: the collapse of Israel. Whether it's true or not, it's
Speaker 11: really impossible to say, but they're clearly are signs and
Speaker 11: support of.
Speaker 6: That analysis given what is happening in Israel today.
Speaker 1: Doctor Parsi, is always so great to have your insights
Speaker 1: and especially on such a consequential day.
Speaker 3: So thank you so much, my pleasure, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: All right, you may be looking at your screen and wondering, Wow,
Speaker 4: there are four wonderful women here.
Speaker 5: Why who is doing this to us? Just kidding.
Speaker 4: We are joined by Rachel Beauvard of the Conservative Partnership
Speaker 4: Institute and an Estepman of the Independent Women's Forum. We
Speaker 4: have a huge panel that we are going to get into.
Speaker 4: I think there might be some fighting, we'll see, but
Speaker 4: before we do, we want to make sure we mentioned
Speaker 4: this amazing special.
Speaker 5: I know you guys have.
Speaker 4: Heard this, but BP free one that's the promo code
Speaker 4: for this thirty day free trial that is happening right
Speaker 4: now at BreakingPoint dot com. We got an amazing flood
Speaker 4: of subscribers after yesterday's show. You get the whole show together,
Speaker 4: packaged nicely in your inbox in the morning. It's a
Speaker 4: great way to start the day. Of course, I'm biased,
Speaker 4: but I love watching Crystal and Sager all put together
Speaker 4: perfectly as a premium subscriber myself.
Speaker 5: So BP free one.
Speaker 4: If you just want to try it out see what
Speaker 4: it's like, you can go to breakingpoints dot com log
Speaker 4: in Huge News cycle huge few months ahead of us
Speaker 4: with the election and then what happens after the election.
Speaker 4: So we will be there for all of that and
Speaker 4: you can try it free at BP free one promo
Speaker 4: code at breakingpoints dot com. All right, so we are
Speaker 4: again joined by the lovely and As Stepman of the
Speaker 4: Independent Women's Forum and the lovely Rachel Bouvard of the
Speaker 4: Conservative Partnership Institute, both on the right, and we are
Speaker 4: going to get into big topics. Obviously cat ladies. We
Speaker 4: couldn't have these two on without talking about cat ladies.
Speaker 4: Will we'll get into that. We want to start that.
Speaker 4: We can put E two up on the screen. Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris is on a swing state tour. She's looking at
Speaker 4: potential vice presidential candidates from Tim Waltz to Josh Shapiro.
Speaker 4: I kind of feel like Shapiro has the lead on this.
Speaker 4: We're going to get in a lot of social issue
Speaker 4: questions later with the panel, but let's just start. I
Speaker 4: want to toss this to you, Rachel, with Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: trying to put together the Obama coalition in some of
Speaker 4: these states, where she said things like straight up she
Speaker 4: wants to ban fracking. That's going to be all over
Speaker 4: the air waves in Pennsylvania from now unto election day,
Speaker 4: as we said earlier in the show.
Speaker 5: So is there anything she can do?
Speaker 4: Is there any vice presidential candidate that could really be
Speaker 4: an advantage give her an advantage in some of those states?
Speaker 4: I know you've worked on actually how the right can
Speaker 4: start to both of you and as a Rachel both
Speaker 4: worked on how the right can start to make a
Speaker 4: sustainable coalition out of the gains that made with the
Speaker 4: Obama coalition. So what do you make of how Harris
Speaker 4: could potentially do that?
Speaker 8: I think you're probably right that Josh Shapiro I think
Speaker 8: balances the ticket in that regard. I think he seems
Speaker 8: a little bit more moderate. He talks, I think, more
Speaker 8: to the moderate faction of the Democratic Party. But I
Speaker 8: also think that you have you know, I wouldn't sleep
Speaker 8: on someone like Mark Kelly, who I think has made
Speaker 8: his career in that sort of moderate vein. He also
Speaker 8: has a lot of political architecture behind him, right you know,
Speaker 8: he and his wife have built a pretty massive fundraising
Speaker 8: and policy advocacy group on gun control. He brings that
Speaker 8: to the ticket. I also think he speaks, you know,
Speaker 8: well to these voters. He can balance Kamala Harris's progressivism
Speaker 8: a little bit, you know, by swinging to the middle.
Speaker 8: He's made his whole career that way. He's like the
Speaker 8: least inoffensive Democrat in the Senate, and I think that's
Speaker 8: by design. So I think he brings that you know,
Speaker 8: and then you have people you know. Reportedly, she's also
Speaker 8: considering people like Andy Basheer, who's governor of Kentucky, who
Speaker 8: I think has proven his political medal by surviving in
Speaker 8: that state and moderating where necessary. But he's interesting to
Speaker 8: me watching him sort of take on the JD. Vance
Speaker 8: hillbilly esque persona, saying things like, oh well, he ain't
Speaker 8: from here, Like you have a little bit of an
Speaker 8: authenticity issue. I think with Bashir that rivals that of
Speaker 8: Kamala Harris when you think about the fact that, yes,
Speaker 8: Andy Basheer, you are from Kentucky, but not everyone can
Speaker 8: have their first job out of law school be handed
Speaker 8: to him from his daddy's law firm. So I do
Speaker 8: think there's, you know, a little bit of a trihard
Speaker 8: element there. But you know, she's got I think some
Speaker 8: interesting picks, and I think what's going to be challenging
Speaker 8: is when Obama was president, you had very much of
Speaker 8: a different dynamic now than I think you have an
Speaker 8: a Democratic party today, which is you have a progressivism
Speaker 8: ascendant to some extent. There's a definitely, you know, Joe
Speaker 8: Biden has shown that, and I think wetting those two,
Speaker 8: that those sort of moderate faction and the progressive wing
Speaker 8: is going to be more difficult now than it was
Speaker 8: for Obama. And I don't know that you blend them
Speaker 8: as easily. Frankly.
Speaker 1: I mean, what we're seeing in the polls right now is,
Speaker 1: by the way, I want to say, for the record,
Speaker 1: this panel was my idea. I wanted to be outnumbered
Speaker 1: ideologically overwhelmingly today apparently for some reason.
Speaker 3: But it's always lovely to see.
Speaker 1: You at least what the polling is showing now. Democrats
Speaker 1: are so working happy. It's not Joe Biden that everyone
Speaker 1: is more or less unified, you know. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: why you've seen RFK Junior's vote totals, you know, diminishing,
Speaker 1: and the people who were disaffected Biden voters coming back home.
Speaker 1: By and large, you have the Democratic coalition pretty unified,
Speaker 1: which is why I think, and you know, I am
Speaker 1: ideologically inclined to think this. Let's be clear that Joshapiro
Speaker 1: is actually a risky choice because of his comment and
Speaker 1: he compared pro Palaesim protesters to the KKK. This is
Speaker 1: obviously an issue that has been very fraught within the
Speaker 1: Democratic base, and so to raise the salience of that
Speaker 1: and for lack of a better phrase, to like kill
Speaker 1: the unified and excited vibes that exist right now, to me,
Speaker 1: that's a risk. You also have unions not excited about
Speaker 1: him because he's super pro chouter school. You have an
Speaker 1: issue with him, you know, allegations that he covered up
Speaker 1: sexual harassment in his office, and also a personal irritation,
Speaker 1: which is that he sounds like dollar Store Obama. So, however,
Speaker 1: and as it looks, the tea leaves are looking very
Speaker 1: much in the direction of Joshapiro. In addition to the fact,
Speaker 1: there were some new indications this morning she's picking a governor.
Speaker 3: She had said.
Speaker 1: Previously, according to reports, that she was looking for someone
Speaker 1: with quote unquote executive experience.
Speaker 3: In addition, we just.
Speaker 1: Got the list of the battleground stops that she's making
Speaker 1: next week after she announces her VP pick, and the
Speaker 1: very first one is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So as a conservative,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you make of Josh Shapiro.
Speaker 3: On the ticket.
Speaker 1: Do you think he's additive or do you think it's
Speaker 1: overstated what he can bring in terms of delivering the
Speaker 1: state of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 12: So, first of all, like to agree with you from
Speaker 12: the right, Crystal, which is that I would call it
Speaker 12: New Jersey grandparent, like New Jersey Jewish grandparents meets Obama.
Speaker 3: The accent that he's putting on.
Speaker 1: I hate it so much, I can't even tell you.
Speaker 1: There's a whole generation of Democratic politicians who are completely
Speaker 1: poisoned by the like Obama, Cadence, Pete Boodhagic, Beta O'Rourke,
Speaker 1: Josh Shapiro, Corey Booker. The list goes on and on
Speaker 1: and is like such a personal pet peeve. It's so
Speaker 1: irritating to me.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I agree, and it is that very recognizable Cadence
Speaker 12: and even some of the phrases. It's just it's it
Speaker 12: is very noticeable in terms of the ticket and balancing
Speaker 12: the ticket. There's in some way the Democratic Party, I
Speaker 12: think has some of the similar issues because of the
Speaker 12: swing states that exists, which let's from everybody you know,
Speaker 12: when we had discussions about the electoral college many years ago,
Speaker 12: was Oh, we're always going to be talking about Florida
Speaker 12: and Ohio.
Speaker 3: Well, no we're not.
Speaker 12: We're talking about you know, just a decade later, we're
Speaker 12: talking about a totally different crop of states, and the
Speaker 12: fact that those states are very different. You have a
Speaker 12: like a sun Belt group of those states, right, of
Speaker 12: those swing states plus Georgia, and then you have the
Speaker 12: rust Belt states, and those states have very different geographical interests,
Speaker 12: they have different economic interests. So I think it's really
Speaker 12: interesting if the principle on the ticket doesn't have a
Speaker 12: strong appeal in one or the other region, it's very
Speaker 12: difficult for the other person to balance it because you
Speaker 12: kind of have to pick and those between the sun
Speaker 12: Belt and the rust Belt. And like I said, they
Speaker 12: have different economic interrusts, they have their different.
Speaker 3: Cultural interests in many ways.
Speaker 12: So I think that's probably a dynamic that will continue
Speaker 12: in both parties for quite some time. That being said,
Speaker 12: I don't know. Maybe I'm just not, you know, up
Speaker 12: on the horse race enough, but I don't I sort
Speaker 12: of doubt that vice presidential picks make as much difference
Speaker 12: as people seem to think that they do in elections.
Speaker 12: I think the principles are much more important. The people
Speaker 12: running for president are much more important to people's votes.
Speaker 12: I actually think they make more, they have a higher
Speaker 12: importance after the election. So I no longer agree with
Speaker 12: John Adams that the vice presidency is a useless endeavor,
Speaker 12: especially because Congress is so sclerotic, can do so little.
Speaker 12: If you have a active vice president with an active
Speaker 12: agenda in the executive branch, they can do a lot.
Speaker 3: They can shape the agenda a lot.
Speaker 12: And the other thing, at least on their publican side,
Speaker 12: is to signal the future of the party right and
Speaker 12: so jd Vance, I think is a very clear pick
Speaker 12: on both of those post election metrics, Whereas I think
Speaker 12: you're right to say that the Democratic Party will not
Speaker 12: get a signal to its base that if Josh Shapiro
Speaker 12: is picked, that it's going in the direction that its
Speaker 12: base wants to. So I actually think those things are
Speaker 12: probably more important. And a vice presidential pick then how
Speaker 12: they're going to balance the ticket or the states or
Speaker 12: I just I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but I
Speaker 12: think that stuff is overblown. I don't think people care
Speaker 12: nearly as much about who the vice presidential pick is
Speaker 12: as as I guess political commentators, do you know.
Speaker 1: I actually and I say, actually, do go ahead, Rachel Well.
Speaker 8: I was just going to say, I think that you know,
Speaker 8: and as you're correct in the I think that the
Speaker 8: frames for the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign are
Speaker 8: slightly different on the vice presidential pick, because I do
Speaker 8: think for the most part, you know this, the dvanced
Speaker 8: pick on the right is signaling where the direction of
Speaker 8: the party is going. But I think Kamala Harris has
Speaker 8: a different set of challenges when she's picking her VP,
Speaker 8: which is that she needs a validator, right she is hindered.
Speaker 8: I think, you know, from where I sit, from a
Speaker 8: host of progressive baggage she has. She has said things
Speaker 8: that will not resonate to your point in the Ross belt.
Speaker 8: You know, I think it's going to have a hard
Speaker 8: time speaking to the moderate wing of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 8: I think she needs a VP that can speak on
Speaker 8: her behalf. I think there's also the fact that she
Speaker 8: has a hard time maybe articulating coherent thoughts in certain scenarios.
Speaker 8: I think this might be one of them, to put
Speaker 8: it gently, and so I do think it actually matters
Speaker 8: who she picks because she needs the validator, she needs
Speaker 8: someone who can speak for her to certain groups. And
Speaker 8: so I think the frame the selection crame is slightly
Speaker 8: different on the right and the left.
Speaker 1: I think some of that is fair. I actually do
Speaker 1: think the VP pick matters. Obviously, the principle matters more like,
Speaker 1: obviously people are primarily voting for the present. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you look back at Trump's pick of Vance, I
Speaker 1: think that was important for him because at that point
Speaker 1: there was still evangelical skepticism of him. In between the
Speaker 1: Vance pick and then putting out the list of the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court picks, that kind of like solidified him with
Speaker 1: a group of voters that were a little bit shaky.
Speaker 1: I also think a vice presidential pick can do harm.
Speaker 1: I think Sarah Palin did end up being harmful to
Speaker 1: John McCain and showed when he was supposed to be
Speaker 1: like the adult in the room and the you know,
Speaker 1: serious statesmen, et cetera, the fact that she didn't fit
Speaker 1: with that image and became a campaign liability in the
Speaker 1: subject of endless media stories of coverage, et cetera.
Speaker 3: I think that was a problem for him.
Speaker 1: I think Joe Biden, to your point, Rachel about being
Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, a validator or someone who
Speaker 1: was like a more comfortable pick for certain segments of society.
Speaker 1: I think Joe Biden served that role well for Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: He knew foreign policy, been in the Senate forever. He's
Speaker 1: just like comes off as this sort of like, you know,
Speaker 1: middle of the road, moderate white dude. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of similar framework that the Harris people are looking at now.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a reason everyone's been joking about, you know,
Speaker 1: the quest for the perfect like white guy to be
Speaker 1: on the ticket, to provide that level of comfort, and
Speaker 1: also with regard to the quote unquote vibes, because unfortunately
Speaker 1: that is so much of what our politics are about.
Speaker 1: Much of the chagrin if I think everybody on this
Speaker 1: panel a white dude from the Midwest, whether it's Tim
Speaker 1: Wallas who has a very progressive record, or Andy Basheer,
Speaker 1: who has actually pretty good on labor and other issues
Speaker 1: but more moderate in other regards, or whether it's Josh Shapiro,
Speaker 1: like they all come off as this just sort of
Speaker 1: mainstream pick because it's the vibes, and it's what we're
Speaker 1: used to seeing in America. It is also like the
Speaker 1: way that they communicate Tim Walls. Even though he does
Speaker 1: have this pretty impressive, from my perspective, progressive record, he
Speaker 1: still comes off as that like high school teacher, veteran
Speaker 1: you know, Minesota guide very relatable dude, even, you know,
Speaker 1: in spite of that record, and I think is very
Speaker 1: good at messaging that record to people who might be
Speaker 1: on the fence about a Kamala Harris ticket.
Speaker 5: Before we live on Wait, can I.
Speaker 3: Not even push back so much as just narrow what
Speaker 3: I'm saying?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I actually I think a better way of saying
Speaker 12: what I was going. What I tried to say earlier,
Speaker 12: is that I think it matters more for intra party
Speaker 12: dynamics than for swing voters. I have a hard time,
Speaker 12: for example, imagining the person who is comfortable with the
Speaker 12: things that Trump says and does, and is not comfortable
Speaker 12: with the things that jd Vance says and does. I
Speaker 12: actually think that that person prop only exists in the Beltway,
Speaker 12: where people have much more specific views both about policy
Speaker 12: and like about uh, you know, sort of. I guess
Speaker 12: even vibes indicate what ideological camp you're in, so I
Speaker 12: see it much more. I agree with you that and
Speaker 12: the specific example of Sarah Palin, I would say the opposite.
Speaker 12: In the beginning, Sarah Palin is the only thing that
Speaker 12: made the Republican Party excited. I think about the McCain ticket.
Speaker 12: I just think the more our politics become national, the more.
Speaker 3: Divided the country.
Speaker 12: Is, the more the more these kinds of regional politics
Speaker 12: fade out when it comes to the vice presidential pick.
Speaker 3: And it's a very.
Speaker 12: Traditional thing like actually, you know, in the nineteenth century
Speaker 12: in America, it mattered enormously how to geographically balance the ticket.
Speaker 12: I just tend to think that our politics are moving
Speaker 12: away from that, and I think there are probably some
Speaker 12: things to lament about the fact that our politics is
Speaker 12: moving away from that.
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, I think the best.
Speaker 12: Thing probably a VP pick can do is probably solidify
Speaker 12: and excite the party to the extent that the party
Speaker 12: is not excited about the main nominee in.
Speaker 3: Terms of the election. Like I said, I think vps are.
Speaker 12: Very important for the future trajectory of a party and
Speaker 12: then what happens if that party is actually elected to
Speaker 12: office in Washington, I.
Speaker 3: Think much more important than it used to be.
Speaker 12: It used to be that most useless office ever devised
Speaker 12: by Van Right, But I think that's much less true now.
Speaker 3: But in terms of the election, I think it's.
Speaker 12: Probably more important intra party and what you're saying to
Speaker 12: the people who are either going to be excited to
Speaker 12: turn out for you or not excited to turn out.
Speaker 3: Maybe do something else that day on election day.
Speaker 12: I think that's probably more where VP picks make a difference.
Speaker 4: So before we move on, I just want to we
Speaker 4: can put I'm going to go out of order here,
Speaker 4: control room.
Speaker 5: I just want to put E five up on the screen.
Speaker 5: This is Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4: A report that says Kamala Harris is going through portfolios
Speaker 4: basically of different binders full of men.
Speaker 5: Maybe this is the right way to put it. Ron women.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, cal Laire's is setting through binders full of
Speaker 4: white dudes to look for who she could pick. Now
Speaker 4: she's expected to make that decision by early August, so
Speaker 4: very very soon.
Speaker 5: Now we go to E.
Speaker 11: Four.
Speaker 4: We've mentioned Andy Basheer a couple of times, and he's
Speaker 4: been exchanging sort of romantic tweets ex posts with his wife,
Speaker 4: maybe suggesting something big is on the horizon we don't know.
Speaker 4: Could mean anything could just be normal back and forth.
Speaker 4: But you know, I think Crystal and Rachel could have
Speaker 4: maybe an interesting exchange on whether Basher A is a
Speaker 4: viable vice presidential candidate. But b I think maybe is
Speaker 4: viable as the future of the Democratic Party. Where we
Speaker 4: just left off in this conversation. So I know you
Speaker 4: guys disagree on this. I'll toss it to Rachel first.
Speaker 4: You can flesh out a little bit of what you
Speaker 4: said earlier. He has made some interesting decisions on stuff
Speaker 4: beyond you know, just sort of traditional Democratic Party left
Speaker 4: stances on labor and all that. He's one of the
Speaker 4: more interesting figures. I would say him and Waltz are
Speaker 4: interesting in the context of like realignment politics. So what
Speaker 4: do you make of Basher Rachel?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, I think he's any any governor who
Speaker 8: survives in a state that routinely sends Ran Paul and
Speaker 8: Mitch McCollums for the Senate, you know, I think is interesting.
Speaker 8: You know, you're you're building and he's built a sustainable coalition.
Speaker 8: Now he's also you know, his father was a governor.
Speaker 8: He's trending a little bit on you know, family dynamics
Speaker 8: in that sense that dynastic stuff always matters, I think
Speaker 8: in state politics to a great degree. You know, when
Speaker 8: you think about him vaulting to the national ticket, if
Speaker 8: we talk about vibes in our politics, my objection to
Speaker 8: him at that stage is purely aesthetic because I just
Speaker 8: think that the like he and JD. Vans trying to
Speaker 8: outheill Billy each other is going to be insufferable. And
Speaker 8: that is that I think, you know, you're already kind
Speaker 8: of seeing that. That's why I brought up that comment
Speaker 8: where he was talking about JD. Van saying, when you
Speaker 8: ain't from here, I think it's literally going to be
Speaker 8: like the War of Appalachia on the vice presidential ticket.
Speaker 8: And you know, I just that is a vibe, right,
Speaker 8: and we could be here for it, but I also
Speaker 8: think it would just be insufferable.
Speaker 1: I'm here for the War of Appalachia, No, I see.
Speaker 1: Andy Bashir is actually a fascinating character to me because
Speaker 1: I know him a little bit when I lived in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: His vibe is very much like Mini Van Dad. Really truly,
Speaker 1: that's how he comes off, and I think that has
Speaker 1: served him in terms of his political persona. He is
Speaker 1: not a particularly charismatic figure. He's sort of the anti
Speaker 1: cult of personality. And you know, the context in which
Speaker 1: he gets elected initially in Kentucky is listen, the fact
Speaker 1: he's a basher, No doubt, it makes a big difference.
Speaker 3: In Kentucky in particular.
Speaker 1: These things matter, these like historic names, since s it's
Speaker 1: a state that was democratic and is trended to the right.
Speaker 1: The Democrats who have like that his connection it helps
Speaker 1: a lot. But it also was on the back of
Speaker 1: the teacher's strike wave and the previous governor, Matt Bevin,
Speaker 1: who was himself the sort of like Trumpian businessman out
Speaker 1: of nowhere kind of a figure, he had gone after
Speaker 1: teacher pensions. It had created a massive cross partisan backlash
Speaker 1: across the entire state, and so Andy comes in on
Speaker 1: that promise. A part of why he's been so popular,
Speaker 1: he's the most popular democratic governor in the entire country,
Speaker 1: which I think is astonishing, is because he's really delivered
Speaker 1: the goods. There's been a huge amount of job creation
Speaker 1: in the state of Kentucky.
Speaker 3: He's attracted a number of large scale battery like ev battery.
Speaker 1: Plants of the state, which from a democratic perspective too,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, you delivered the jobs, their union jobs,
Speaker 1: and their green energy jobs. So that's part of why
Speaker 1: he's been so incredibly popular there. So listen, I obviously
Speaker 1: think he could be additive to a ticket, just from
Speaker 1: the sense of he's proven that he can speak to
Speaker 1: people who may otherwise be skeptical of a Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: He's had his.
Speaker 1: Eye on the ball in terms of, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the populist instincts of Kentucky as a state. Kentucky's
Speaker 1: not just like a hard right conservative state, is a
Speaker 1: little more politically interesting than that. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he'd be a decent pick, you know, electorally. I understand
Speaker 1: the appeal of Shapiro because of Pennsylvania and because he
Speaker 1: won there by freaking sixteen points. I just think, to
Speaker 1: Anez's point about keeping the positive vibes and the excitement
Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party, he could be a problem there
Speaker 1: to be. The ideal candidate is Tim Wallace, who is
Speaker 1: such an effective messenger. This will be a good transition
Speaker 1: to the JD Vance and the Weird Conversation all of that. Like,
Speaker 1: he came up with this tagline that has now rapidly
Speaker 1: been embraced by everyone in Democratic circles. You know, used
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, and you guys may disagree,
Speaker 1: but I actually think it is an effective tag in
Speaker 1: the same way that some of Trump's tags and nicknames
Speaker 1: like Crooked Hillary, et cetera, were kind of devastating and effective.
Speaker 1: So to me, that proves his bona fides not only
Speaker 1: in terms of the record that I like as or Minnesota,
Speaker 1: but in terms of how he's able to communicate about
Speaker 1: that message and frame the opposition.
Speaker 4: Crystal's right, that's a good point to move on because
Speaker 4: you will be shocked to learn that when you have
Speaker 4: four women doing a segment, sometimes you talk more than expected,
Speaker 4: and that was the case here. So let's talk about
Speaker 4: out the battle to brand Republicans as weird. I will
Speaker 4: say one thing that I think is getting missed in
Speaker 4: that conversation, because I was at the RNC and I
Speaker 4: heard Republicans talking a lot about how this was the
Speaker 4: election between crazy and normal. Someone, you know, the three
Speaker 4: of us definitely not on the right, is Terry Shilling,
Speaker 4: and he likes to say that all the time. This
Speaker 4: is an election between crazy and normal. So there's some
Speaker 4: of it happening definitely on both sides. But let's put
Speaker 4: the first element up on the screen for this block. Please,
Speaker 4: this is John Harwood saying things jd Vance has said
Speaker 4: about people without kids, childless cat ladies, childless, sociate pass lessionan,
Speaker 4: most arranged, most psychotic, radical, childless leaders, more sociopathic, driftless,
Speaker 4: childless democrats must be stopped. We also have a sot here,
Speaker 4: a clip here that we're going to roll of JD
Speaker 4: Vance and we will get everyone to respond.
Speaker 5: On the back end of this, you can go ahead
Speaker 5: and roll the next element.
Speaker 10: There's just these basic cadences of life that I think
Speaker 10: are really powerful and really really valuable when you have
Speaker 10: kids in your life, and the fact that so many people,
Speaker 10: especially in America's leadership class, just don't have that in
Speaker 10: their lives, you know, I worry that it makes people
Speaker 10: more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less,
Speaker 10: a less mentally stable. And of course you talk about
Speaker 10: going on Twitter. Final point I make is you go
Speaker 10: on Twitter, and almost always the people who are most
Speaker 10: deranged and most psychotic are people who don't.
Speaker 6: Have kids at home.
Speaker 4: So Democrats obviously feel like this is fodder to make
Speaker 4: that weird label stick to Republicans. Tim Waltz has been
Speaker 4: using it a lot. Kamala Harris now has been using
Speaker 4: it a lot as well.
Speaker 5: Now, I will.
Speaker 4: Start by saying, on the right, the three of us,
Speaker 4: I would say, as compared to the general population are
Speaker 4: politically weird, ideologically politically weird because we're involved in conservative
Speaker 4: movement circles. And jd Vance was running in those circles
Speaker 4: before he decided to run for Senate, and before he
Speaker 4: you know so, he converted to Catholicism. He worked in
Speaker 4: a super high profile job in the tech industry, converted
Speaker 4: to Catholicism, had a real ideological transformation that I think
Speaker 4: you two know as well as anyone, definitely is sincere.
Speaker 4: He was writing like three thousand word essays for the
Speaker 4: Lamp about his calism and his politics. That would be
Speaker 4: pretty difficult to totally fake. But is jd Vance? I'll
Speaker 4: start with who do I want to pick here? Let's
Speaker 4: start with you Andez because you and Rachel may disagree
Speaker 4: on this. It is jd Vance going to help Democrats?
Speaker 4: Is he really giving fodder for Democrats to make this
Speaker 4: weird label stick?
Speaker 12: Well, it depends on how he responds, And I think
Speaker 12: he should learn from the person on the top of
Speaker 12: the ticket Trump. In this regard, I don't think there's
Speaker 12: a single pick that Trump could have made where they
Speaker 12: wouldn't have gone through every statement, like the media wouldn't
Speaker 12: have gone through every statement and try to pull out
Speaker 12: some things that, especially isolated from context, sound crazy.
Speaker 3: But I don't want to.
Speaker 12: Pretend to be a political consultant or someone who works
Speaker 12: on a campaign. I've always been all the way back Emily,
Speaker 12: since I've been doing these shows with you, I've always
Speaker 12: been really clear I'm not a political consultant. I don't
Speaker 12: want to be, and he only an insane person would
Speaker 12: hire me.
Speaker 3: As a political consultant. So everything that question that is
Speaker 3: it true?
Speaker 12: Right, is the are the underlying things that jd. Vance
Speaker 12: is indicating or implying are they true?
Speaker 3: And the answer largely is yes.
Speaker 12: If we set aside the question of how this plays
Speaker 12: or who's offended by it, we see a huge gap
Speaker 12: in voting patterns between essentially married men, married women, and
Speaker 12: unmarried men in one batch that are all between slightly
Speaker 12: leaning to like you know, fifty five fifty six percent
Speaker 12: leaning Republican, and then unmarried women, which by the way,
Speaker 12: doesn't tract perfectly with child is obviously, but there is
Speaker 12: not that much pulling on this. So and the unmarried
Speaker 12: women who are sixty eight percent leaning Democrat, right, So
Speaker 12: there is a real phenomenon going on here. And then
Speaker 12: to the psychotic comment, right, whether or not again that
Speaker 12: language is inflammatory. There's all kinds of surveys now showing that,
Speaker 12: and self reported surveys that liberal Democratic women who are
Speaker 12: not married report the highest level of mental illness, like
Speaker 12: themselves report the highest level of mental illness. So he's
Speaker 12: observing something I think is real. And frankly, I would
Speaker 12: flip this around and say, we're talking about you know.
Speaker 3: We've been talking endlessly.
Speaker 12: I can't remember an election cycle that we weren't talking
Speaker 12: about the gap between male and female voters.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 12: That gap opened up in the nineteen eighties. It was
Speaker 12: not there before. It used to go the other way.
Speaker 12: So in the nineteen fifties, women voted more Republican leaning
Speaker 12: than men did, but that gap started opening up in
Speaker 12: the eighties. And I would actually argue that if you
Speaker 12: look at the underlying statistics, it's less driven by any
Speaker 12: particular messaging or issue and more driven by the fact
Speaker 12: that simply fewer and fewer people are getting.
Speaker 3: Married, and you see that.
Speaker 12: Gap explode with gen Z where you see now young
Speaker 12: men going further right and young women going further left.
Speaker 12: So I think there is something about marriage, about building
Speaker 12: families with the opposite sex right that tempers the political
Speaker 12: instincts of the two sexes.
Speaker 3: And I think we are.
Speaker 12: Probably about to see the most male centric campaign versus
Speaker 12: the most females campaign possible on the respective Republican and
Speaker 12: Democratic side. It's going to heighten that one final thing.
Speaker 12: We could just bus easily be talking about a gap
Speaker 12: on the Democratic side among male voters, because in twenty twenty,
Speaker 12: Joe Biden was able to get those numbers.
Speaker 3: Pretty close to fifty to fifty.
Speaker 12: Now Republicans still won men, but not by a huge margin.
Speaker 12: Kamala Harris is pulling at thirty nine percent with men.
Speaker 12: So we could just as easily have this conversation. We
Speaker 12: could have pulled up AOC's tweet about in cells right,
Speaker 12: and we could have this conversation about in cels and
Speaker 12: childless cat ladies and the problem that the Democratic Party
Speaker 12: has with men.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but AOC is not on the ticket. Is the
Speaker 3: thing that ques just.
Speaker 12: Thing We could have the same political conversation.
Speaker 3: But we've got votes for cows there to solve the problem.
Speaker 12: No, but okay, but the principle on the Democratic side
Speaker 12: is pulling very very poorly with men, and we might
Speaker 12: we could have the same conversation about why that might
Speaker 12: be or why some of her rhetoric might be alienating
Speaker 12: to men.
Speaker 3: So it would be you would.
Speaker 1: Be hard pressed to find, you know, a mainstream Democrat
Speaker 1: or certainly the Kamala or Joe Biden or the gents
Speaker 1: that are being considered for the ticket who have said
Speaker 1: things that are so intentionally offensive and the things that
Speaker 1: you're saying, and as I think, like, for example, I'm
Speaker 1: in favor of family you know, pro family policy. I'm
Speaker 1: in favor of a child text credit, I'm in favor
Speaker 1: of affordable childcare. I'm in favor of making it easier
Speaker 1: for people who want to have families to be able
Speaker 1: to have families. So the difference is, and Rachel, I'll
Speaker 1: get you in on this, how you talk about those things.
Speaker 1: And Matt Brunick actually made an interesting point. I think
Speaker 1: part of the problem for Jade Vance and how he
Speaker 1: messages in particular, which is very different from how Trump
Speaker 1: messages and Trump's clean up of this, he was like,
Speaker 1: he just likes families. He just likes families, not against anyone,
Speaker 1: He just likes families. But jd Vance did come up
Speaker 1: through these very like ideological and often online spaces, and
Speaker 1: the wards don't really come in those spaces. From saying
Speaker 1: things that are broadly appealing, like for example, child tax
Speaker 1: credit has seventy percent support, they come and I know
Speaker 1: this because this happens on the left too, from saying
Speaker 1: the things that are like, feel edgy, feel subversive, and
Speaker 1: so when you take those comments out of that context
Speaker 1: and you blast them out to a general election audience,
Speaker 1: suddenly you have a political messaging problem.
Speaker 3: Matt Brunning made this point.
Speaker 1: I'd love to get your response to this, Rachel, because
Speaker 1: you're deeply plugged in like in the you know, the
Speaker 1: New Right space problem. Jdvance has the same one, or
Speaker 1: in casts and similar have. They want to break with
Speaker 1: GOP economic orthodoxy, but not in a way that is
Speaker 1: so palatable that the Dems are cool with it, which
Speaker 1: requires either making the policy actually suck or framing it
Speaker 1: in some way that piques the Libs. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I get off of his comments is Like
Speaker 1: if he just goes out there and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: we should have a child tax credit, well that's not exciting,
Speaker 1: that's not edgy. But if you say, like, ah, screw
Speaker 1: these childless sociopaths and these.
Speaker 3: Deranged ladies who are destroying.
Speaker 1: The country and must be stopped at all cost, Like,
Speaker 1: then you get online tracks, you become a thing. So
Speaker 1: you know, what do you make up as comments and
Speaker 1: what do you make up that analysis?
Speaker 8: Well, I actually think it breaks down into two categories, right,
Speaker 8: I think the family formation policy and how we talk
Speaker 8: about our politics being run by you know, white liberal
Speaker 8: women without kids are two separate things. And I think,
Speaker 8: you know, he to get to an ass point about
Speaker 8: the latter point, heat is correct, Like there was a
Speaker 8: pupil a couple of days ago that came out showing
Speaker 8: that I think among Gen Z, among young millennials, people
Speaker 8: aren't having kids in greater numbers and the reason is
Speaker 8: that they just don't want them. Now. To pretend that's
Speaker 8: not going to change our politics, to pretend that's not
Speaker 8: going to change how our social culture is built, is ridiculous. Right,
Speaker 8: we have to be able to talk about that, you know,
Speaker 8: And I think that the white women for Harris that
Speaker 8: the woman who led that has kind of gone viral
Speaker 8: as a case in point of kind of what JD.
Speaker 8: Evans is talking about, which is this sort of HR culture,
Speaker 8: whether you have kids or not. Right, this HR culture
Speaker 8: that's built toward policing conformity. Helen Andrews at The American
Speaker 8: Conservative talks a lot about how women in groups act
Speaker 8: about this. Right, They're different than men. Men will go
Speaker 8: out and create conflict around things. Women police conformity in
Speaker 8: very sort of passive aggressive ways. That is reflected in
Speaker 8: our politics, and I think that's kind of what he's
Speaker 8: talking about. Do you want people making policy in that
Speaker 8: vein which is totally different in many ways of how
Speaker 8: people with kids view the world. You know, people with
Speaker 8: kids tend to have a stake, more of a thought
Speaker 8: and a stake toward the future. They tend to have
Speaker 8: a little bit of a different perspective because they've got,
Speaker 8: you know, financial concerns that are completely different than people
Speaker 8: without kids. Now, going to the second point about family
Speaker 8: formation policy, Yes, the way you talk about that, I
Speaker 8: think is a challenge. And Ross Stout that had an
Speaker 8: interesting Twitter thread about this the other day. The Pro natalism.
Speaker 8: Space is inherently weird in itself, right, being able to
Speaker 8: talk about it in a way that's that you're talking
Speaker 8: about something very personal and very you know, people have
Speaker 8: unique views on it. It's a difficult thing to talk
Speaker 8: about generally, and so it can come off as weird.
Speaker 8: And I think you know, someone like JD Vance, who's
Speaker 8: an elder millennial who has grown up in a lot
Speaker 8: of you know, who came of Asia, I think in
Speaker 8: a lot of blue space. Yeah, right, saying things that
Speaker 8: are you know, edgy and come off as subversive. To
Speaker 8: your point, that's you know, if you grow up in
Speaker 8: if you come a vasional blue area, that's how you
Speaker 8: tend to talk about it. It's a very online way
Speaker 8: of speaking. He's going to have to change how he
Speaker 8: does that because I think that doesn't fly, you know,
Speaker 8: outside of these very niche Twitter spaces. So he's the
Speaker 8: foundational truth he's talking about I think is correct. But
Speaker 8: to your point, he's got a messaging problem that he's
Speaker 8: got to fix.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's got it's got basket of deplorable vibes where
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, train all this is my personal train,
Speaker 1: all of the fire you want at the people who
Speaker 1: are setting policy at you know, the financial like media. Yes,
Speaker 1: but his comments were not just about Kamala Harris, which
Speaker 1: by the wa Kamala Haris is a stepmother, which you know,
Speaker 1: for a lot of people that are looking at and going, wait,
Speaker 1: you don't count stepmoms, you don't count step dads who
Speaker 1: are you know, raising kids and doing the work as well.
Speaker 1: But in addition, it was a broad brush and so
Speaker 1: there were many people who felt themselves condemned to you know,
Speaker 1: this characterization as being less mentally stable, most deranged, most psychotic,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. And so that's to me what
Speaker 1: it has echoes of is the minute that you show
Speaker 1: contempt and judgment for like a broad swath of the country,
Speaker 1: you're going to lose, both in terms of electorally but
Speaker 1: also in terms of whatever it is that you're selling.
Speaker 1: And I don't actually think it is hard to talk
Speaker 1: about it. At least some family policy like it's a tile
Speaker 1: tax card is like seventy percent support is very popular.
Speaker 1: Things like affordable childcare, and I know we've their debates
Speaker 1: about within the right. He wasn't a big fan of
Speaker 1: the idea focusing on childcare. But the idea of making
Speaker 1: it easier for moms to be able to raise kids,
Speaker 1: for parents to be able to have families. I think
Speaker 1: those are broadly accepted and very popular.
Speaker 3: It's only when you go out of your way to.
Speaker 1: Frame it in this like aggressive, negative way that it
Speaker 1: becomes unpopular. And for me, it's a problem because I
Speaker 1: actually want those instincts and the right to be cultivated
Speaker 1: and be successful. So I'm cheering for the messaging on
Speaker 1: the right to be better and more appealing on those
Speaker 1: areas where you know there is some genuine overlap that's
Speaker 1: starting to develop.
Speaker 5: Well, this will likely be a lesson in that.
Speaker 4: Here, let me roll and as I get you to
Speaker 4: respond to this clip that we're going to roll.
Speaker 5: This is a Fox News.
Speaker 4: Compilation of people being called or of i should say,
Speaker 4: of people calling like Kamala Harris calling Republicans Trump vance weird.
Speaker 5: Let's go ahead and roll this.
Speaker 8: Well, it's just plain weird.
Speaker 9: I mean, it's not just a weird style that he brings.
Speaker 9: It's that this leads to weird policies that that is
Speaker 9: weird behavior.
Speaker 6: More extreme, more weird, more erratic.
Speaker 8: I mean, on the other side, they're just weird, the
Speaker 8: thirty two ounces of weird Donald.
Speaker 5: Trump and his weirdo running mate.
Speaker 8: And by the way, they are weird. It is bizarre,
Speaker 8: it's weird, it is weird. Jd Vance, just dumb Vance
Speaker 8: is pretty weird.
Speaker 4: So I actually want to agree with Crystal. That's I
Speaker 4: think it's very, very powerful, which is why you saw
Speaker 4: this sudden rush of it, and why you actually saw
Speaker 4: Republicans like Terry for example, at the RNC using something similar.
Speaker 5: Here is F four. This is a tear sheet. This
Speaker 5: is from the Hill.
Speaker 4: Some House Republicans are slamming Trump's VP pick quote the
Speaker 4: worst choice. I've heard that from sources. I'm sure everyone's
Speaker 4: heard that now. So I'll just with all of that said,
Speaker 4: toss it to you and as jd Vance a bad
Speaker 4: pick or not, if you could, if you were a
Speaker 4: Trump campaign advisor and you could wave a magic wand
Speaker 4: and replace him with someone else, is that the right move?
Speaker 12: First of all, I told you nobody in the right
Speaker 12: mind would give me that magic wand. But to answer
Speaker 12: the question anyway, absolutely not. Would I think he was, if.
Speaker 3: Not the best among the choices, among the best of
Speaker 3: the choices. Part of that is what I said in
Speaker 3: the first part of the.
Speaker 12: Segment that I don't really think that VP picks make
Speaker 12: that much difference seleatorially either way. And I think actually
Speaker 12: what Trump needs is a contiguliary, a competent right contingulary
Speaker 12: who's actually going to run policy through the executive branch
Speaker 12: and who's aligned with his vision which is very different
Speaker 12: than the establishment of the Republican Party. And that's what
Speaker 12: I think a lot of this is by the way
Speaker 12: the Republicans sniping at jd Vance as opposed to Democrats
Speaker 12: trying out messaging which were in an election that makes sense,
Speaker 12: is just that jd Vance has some ideas that are
Speaker 12: very very different to both domestic and on foreign policy
Speaker 12: than the party establishment.
Speaker 3: And I think that's where a lot of this comes from.
Speaker 12: In terms of whether or not weird Lands, I think
Speaker 12: it maybe did initially, and I think there is a
Speaker 12: large element of return to normalcy. I think Biden was
Speaker 12: very much able to tap into that in twenty twenty.
Speaker 12: I think it's much harder after the last three and
Speaker 12: a half years to tap into that adult in the room,
Speaker 12: you know, sort of return to normalcy energy for the
Speaker 12: Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: There is a record that the last three and a
Speaker 3: half years have not.
Speaker 12: If anything can be said about the last three and
Speaker 12: a half years, it's not that they've been normal. So
Speaker 12: I think it's it's difficult, but I think that messaging
Speaker 12: generally is quite potent. I think this is way overused,
Speaker 12: and I think it's going to end up either burning
Speaker 12: itself out or being very easy to just throw back
Speaker 12: in Democratic Democrats' faces by pointing to a lot of
Speaker 12: weird examples on the left and then finally just one
Speaker 12: sentence of what we were talking about before. In terms
Speaker 12: of like how to talk about these issues, I agree
Speaker 12: completely with what Rachel said. I thought rosst Out that
Speaker 12: the same rost Out that tweet that she's pointing to,
Speaker 12: I thought was also interesting.
Speaker 3: These are personal issues, so it's.
Speaker 12: Very difficult to talk about them without, you know, causing offense,
Speaker 12: even if you're very careful, which JD was not particularly
Speaker 12: careful in his phrasing. I also think there is an
Speaker 12: element in all of this of allowing ourselves to be
Speaker 12: ruled by the tyranny of but I'm an exception, right,
Speaker 12: we can talk about general trends in society in such
Speaker 12: a way that, like oftentimes, and this is not just
Speaker 12: on this subject. You talk about any kind of general
Speaker 12: trend in politics or in culture, and the first ten replies,
Speaker 12: whether online or frankly in person, A lot of times
Speaker 12: are but that doesn't apply to me. Well, if it
Speaker 12: doesn't apply to you, then perhaps, like we can still
Speaker 12: discuss the rule as opposed to the exception. And actually,
Speaker 12: I think this replies to so much of our discourse.
Speaker 12: We are constantly tiptoeing around the exception and therefore not
Speaker 12: discussing the rule, which I think is a deficit, not
Speaker 12: just in this conversation about how this major change in
Speaker 12: whether or not we replicate ourselves will affect our politics
Speaker 12: and civilization, but on so many issues where I guess
Speaker 12: I'm just tired of the like the chirp coming up
Speaker 12: every single time.
Speaker 3: Well, but but there's exceptions, right, That's obviously They're not
Speaker 3: a statement you can make that won't have exceptions.
Speaker 5: This is exactly why you're not a consultant, Rachel.
Speaker 1: Two quick thoughts for you for you to respond to.
Speaker 1: First of all, with regard to weird, I have to
Speaker 1: tell you I was asking myself last time. I was like,
Speaker 1: is this getting overused? But then I have to remind
Speaker 1: myself that we are weird like normal people out there.
Speaker 1: In politics, the rule is you repeat the shit out
Speaker 1: of whatever it is, you hammer it.
Speaker 3: And Trump is amazing at this right.
Speaker 1: No one understands branding and repetition better than that man,
Speaker 1: Crooked Hillary, low energy, Jeb Lil Marco. We can still
Speaker 1: say it to this day. And it wasn't because he
Speaker 1: used it once. It's because he routine over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, so that it's the first thing you
Speaker 1: associate with in your head. With regard to Jadvance, my
Speaker 1: just very quick, you know case for why he is
Speaker 1: a problem for the ticket at this point is because
Speaker 1: the two areas where the Trump campaign clearly feels vulnerability
Speaker 1: are abortion.
Speaker 3: And Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Jadi Vance has said a lot of things that Trump
Speaker 1: does not embrace on abortion, and he has authored a forward,
Speaker 1: authored a foreword for the Project twenty twenty five guy,
Speaker 1: and you know is clearly aligned with the kind of
Speaker 1: like beating.
Speaker 3: Heart of all of that.
Speaker 1: So on the two areas where Trump feels himself to
Speaker 1: be the most vulnerable, Jade Vance brings additional baggage that
Speaker 1: he has to deal with and has to defend to
Speaker 1: the ticket.
Speaker 8: So I think, you know, i'd go back to something
Speaker 8: and has says, which is well to at first, I
Speaker 8: think to the point you made, yes, I think if
Speaker 8: you're repeating something to the point where you think you're
Speaker 8: saying it too much, you're probably just breaking through. And
Speaker 8: I think that's a maximum of political campaigns that Donald Trump,
Speaker 8: to your point, has been very good that. But I
Speaker 8: think on the on the second issue, I really it
Speaker 8: goes back to this idea that whether or not jd
Speaker 8: Vance characterized it correctly, he is correct when he says that,
Speaker 8: you know, we are the divide between parties are people
Speaker 8: that want to actively control every aspect of how you
Speaker 8: raise your family, what you do, how you know, how
Speaker 8: you talk, and everybody else. And I think his sort
Speaker 8: of childless cat lady comments are a proxy for that
Speaker 8: impulse in the Democratic Party. And I think the Democrat
Speaker 8: Party can continue to say, oh, you know, jd Vance
Speaker 8: is the weird one, but there's going to be example
Speaker 8: after example after example on the left, particularly culturally, where
Speaker 8: they're going to pop up examples of crazy far left
Speaker 8: culture and say, oh, these are the people that want
Speaker 8: to tell you that, you know, jd Vance is weird
Speaker 8: and I think that divide is going to continue to
Speaker 8: present itself because again, what he's saying, you can say
Speaker 8: it was artless, you can say it was classless. But
Speaker 8: it's a proxy for this impulse on the to you know,
Speaker 8: control your speech, to control who you know, what you
Speaker 8: say at work, to control your you know, how you
Speaker 8: talk about your religious faith. These are things I do
Speaker 8: think will resonate.
Speaker 1: So but right now, if I could, just, if I could,
Speaker 1: just when you're judging people for when and how and
Speaker 1: whether they have kids, This is exactly why I think
Speaker 1: this framing is a problem for Republicans, because you're right
Speaker 1: when it's Democrats who feel like they're policing how you live,
Speaker 1: what you can say, all of those.
Speaker 3: Sorts of things.
Speaker 1: That's Americans have this knee jerk reaction against it. And
Speaker 1: I think that's why these comments are problem because they
Speaker 1: reflect a similar tendency on the right of there is
Speaker 1: one way for you to go about your life. We're
Speaker 1: going to judge you for it. Here's the program, and
Speaker 1: if you don't fit into our model, then you're a childless, sociopath,
Speaker 1: less mentally stable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker 1: that's what you're identifying, that instinct against that like controlling, judgmental,
Speaker 1: like nanny state, cancel culture, whatever type of behavior that
Speaker 1: has come at times from Democrats. That's what comes across
Speaker 1: in these comments is I'm going to police you, your life,
Speaker 1: your bedroom, your choices, etc.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I think he, in my interpretation of it, having lived
Speaker 8: in these circles, is that it's an efficient proxy way
Speaker 8: for him to talk about that widened aperture, right that
Speaker 8: you're that we're both speaking about. So I do think
Speaker 8: he has to contextualize the way he talks about it,
Speaker 8: because they're hanging him on a throwaway way of speaking
Speaker 8: about these things. I do think he has to widen
Speaker 8: that and contextualize how he talks about it if he's
Speaker 8: going to break through the caricature that they're trying to
Speaker 8: paint of him on the left. Because I do think whenever,
Speaker 8: to the point that you made earlier, whenever you speak
Speaker 8: about someone with contempt, it's dangerous, especially on the national ticket.
Speaker 8: And I think unless he's capable of and I think
Speaker 8: he is, of explaining this impulse on the left that
Speaker 8: he's fighting against, it's going to be an issue.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go ahead and move on to another
Speaker 1: totally not fraud and difficult conversation about abortion.
Speaker 3: But really the.
Speaker 4: Best example of what we've been talking about, Crystal, in
Speaker 4: this entire conversation about you know, this is one of
Speaker 4: the best examples of where this is potentially a vulnerability
Speaker 4: for Republicans and potentially especially for the Trump Vance situation.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: So Vance in particular, I mean you voted against the
Speaker 1: IVF bill that went through the Senate. You know, he
Speaker 1: was spoken in favor of some sort of national whether
Speaker 1: it's an abortion ban or quote unquote federal response to
Speaker 1: deal with abortion tourism. He's been out there on the
Speaker 1: issue in a way that is uncomfortable for Trump and
Speaker 1: not where Trump wants to position himself. We already know
Speaker 1: Democrats are going to make this a key issue because
Speaker 1: it's been successful for them in the post Row environment,
Speaker 1: in special elections, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is just a report about how Kamala Harris plans
Speaker 1: to lean into abortion. And I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say is a much more credible and much more comfortable
Speaker 1: messenger on the issue who you know, as opposed to
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, who is himself personally Catholic and personally pro life,
Speaker 1: and I know you guys will probably object to that characterization,
Speaker 1: but that's how he would describe himself and has been
Speaker 1: on the side of pro life positions at times in
Speaker 1: his career. So he just he's not really all in
Speaker 1: on the issue, wasn't comfortable talking about it. I think
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris is genderous and asset here as well, just
Speaker 1: off the top, and as how do you think that
Speaker 1: this issue plays in the election, And also what do
Speaker 1: you make of the Trump campaign's clear moves to basically
Speaker 1: push abortion on the side, you know, take it out
Speaker 1: of the RNC platform, just say we're leaving it to
Speaker 1: the states and that's that we're not going to do
Speaker 1: anything at the federal level. Do you think that those
Speaker 1: efforts are are good and do you think that that
Speaker 1: will be successful?
Speaker 12: So, first of all, these are the problems of victory, right,
Speaker 12: because what happened when Dobbs came down is there was
Speaker 12: a very large and obvious separation between what Republican elected
Speaker 12: officials were telling their voters, their most enthusiastic voters and
Speaker 12: fundraising emails and what, first of all, what they were
Speaker 12: willing to do as a party. And second of all,
Speaker 12: there was a gap between what they were telling those
Speaker 12: voters and where the country ended up being on the issue.
Speaker 12: That's you know, more probably relevant than the first, but
Speaker 12: it split that open so before the Republican Party could
Speaker 12: comfortably use pro life rhetoric, you know, as you know,
Speaker 12: sort of all the way to the wall, as hard
Speaker 12: rhetoric as they wanted, because they had no power to
Speaker 12: do anything about the issue. And I do think this
Speaker 12: is like a and I know Rachel has many many
Speaker 12: examples of this in the Senate from her years in
Speaker 12: the Senate, right, but this is the classic sort of
Speaker 12: virtue signaling politics issue where you have politicians who were
Speaker 12: able to say things exactly because that like their bases
Speaker 12: liked exactly because they had no power and no intent
Speaker 12: of doing anything about it. And that's just very ear so.
Speaker 12: And I do think that applies to the second part
Speaker 12: of your question as well, which is how to deal
Speaker 12: with the fact that the Republican Party, the dominant position
Speaker 12: in the Republican Party base on this issue on abortion,
Speaker 12: is increasingly isolated in the country. It's a minority position, right,
Speaker 12: but it's very strongly and sincerely felt by the large
Speaker 12: part of the Republican base, right, so how to deal
Speaker 12: with that? And again, I'm not a you know, not
Speaker 12: good in answering these questions in terms of politics. I do, however,
Speaker 12: think that there is a certain insincerity that is always
Speaker 12: picked up when you just try to side step questions.
Speaker 3: And I would prefer to see Republicans.
Speaker 12: In general take this on in an honest and sincere
Speaker 12: and head on way and say simply, look, I know
Speaker 12: that a lot of people are going to disagree with me.
Speaker 3: On this issue. I myself am going to bry.
Speaker 12: The way a moderate on abortion, but I know that
Speaker 12: people a lot of people are going to be disagreeing
Speaker 12: with me on this issue. Here's why I hold the
Speaker 12: position that I, you know this, this is the difference
Speaker 12: between leadership and just you know, putting your finger in
Speaker 12: the wind and following whatever is most popular in the polls.
Speaker 12: And I think that insincerity actually does come through, and
Speaker 12: I think it makes people mistrust the rest of what
Speaker 12: you say.
Speaker 5: I think the act Perystone comment. So yeah, no.
Speaker 4: Jd Vance went on one of the Sunday shows before he
Speaker 4: was picked as VP, was obviously as a contender and
Speaker 4: kind of flip flopped on the abortion drug meth of
Speaker 4: pristone sent alarm bells across the pro life movement.
Speaker 5: And I agree with you.
Speaker 4: I think that makes people distrust you and distrust your
Speaker 4: sincerity on other issues, let alone that issue. Is there
Speaker 4: something particular you think about abortion that that's most dangerous
Speaker 4: for a jd vance to tack to adopt a Trumpey attack,
Speaker 4: I should say, now that he's on the ticket and
Speaker 4: basically has.
Speaker 3: To, Yeah, I'm really not sure.
Speaker 12: What if there's a good way for him to tack
Speaker 12: here without appearing insincere, And I think maybe the best
Speaker 12: way to talk about it would be just to be
Speaker 12: very honest and say these are my views. I know
Speaker 12: they're not held by the majority of the country. They're
Speaker 12: not even held by my running mate. They're not part
Speaker 12: of our policy agenda for the presidency. But here's why
Speaker 12: I believe what I believe. I'm going to be honest
Speaker 12: with you. I know that most of you won't agree
Speaker 12: with me. I think that's actually a more I don't
Speaker 12: know as an American voter, as a citizen, I'd rather
Speaker 12: be talked to that way, even assuming on an issue
Speaker 12: that I very much disagree with someone on than to
Speaker 12: be gas lit and sort of misled, And I just
Speaker 12: don't think it comes off very well. And I think
Speaker 12: it just makes you lose credibility on other issues when
Speaker 12: you're not honest about, you know, things where you can
Speaker 12: easily pull up, you know, five hundred clips of you
Speaker 12: saying a particular thing, right, it just comes off. I
Speaker 12: think it damages your credibility and other issues. Not to
Speaker 12: be honest and then to also be honest about the
Speaker 12: fact that you have realistic expectations about how much of
Speaker 12: those views of yours are likely to be enacted through
Speaker 12: the political process because the majority of the country disagrees
Speaker 12: with you.
Speaker 1: Rachel, as a as a social conservative, I've been really
Speaker 1: actually curious to talk to you about how you felt
Speaker 1: about these issues clearly being which I know you care
Speaker 1: a lot about, clearly being intentionally sidelined by the Republican Party.
Speaker 8: Well, I think Inez has sort of distilled this correctly.
Speaker 8: You know, this issue has been protected from politics for
Speaker 8: fifty years, right, it's been protected by judicial fiot. Neither
Speaker 8: party has had to actually engage it as a political
Speaker 8: matter in the political process, and there they become almost
Speaker 8: two separate questions at this point how in terms of
Speaker 8: the you know, the morality of the issue, which drives
Speaker 8: a lot of how Republicans feel about this. You know,
Speaker 8: I'm a pro life Catholic, so is jdie Vance. I
Speaker 8: have thoughts about how Joe Biden presents himself on this
Speaker 8: issue that I will leave to the side for this moment.
Speaker 8: But you know how we have to now engage the
Speaker 8: political process almost at a state by state level, which
Speaker 8: is the position that Donald Trump has frankly taken. And
Speaker 8: I don't think we can jump to the end and
Speaker 8: say now we have to impose our end goal on
Speaker 8: everyone without doing the work first. To and AZ's point,
Speaker 8: I don't think you can moderate on this question. If
Speaker 8: you are someone who is pro life for the very
Speaker 8: reason that you believe human life begins a conception, there's
Speaker 8: no moderating on that point. Be honest about it, but
Speaker 8: also be honest about the fact that we live in
Speaker 8: a country where these decisions are decided politically. I personally
Speaker 8: think our pro life movement on the right has to
Speaker 8: sort of read architect itself, and they aren't doing this right.
Speaker 8: They're continuing this federal push for all these federal policies
Speaker 8: when in reality, I think there's a sequencing element here.
Speaker 8: You have to go make your case, so you have
Speaker 8: to persuade people at a very granular level before you
Speaker 8: can get to where you say you want to go.
Speaker 8: They're not rebuilding themselves that way. So I think we
Speaker 8: have a real disconnect. And it's why the pro life
Speaker 8: movement keeps losing around the country because they aren't actually
Speaker 8: going and doing the work. So you know, this is
Speaker 8: a generational quest. I think it's not like suddenly Row falls,
Speaker 8: and you know it's like Roe falls, question Mark, question
Speaker 8: Mark abortion band. Like, that's not how it works. That's
Speaker 8: not how the politics of this work at all. And
Speaker 8: I think you're kind of seeing the Trump campaign grapple
Speaker 8: with that reality.
Speaker 1: Rachel, what do you think of the potency of the
Speaker 1: issue come November? Because I have to tell you I
Speaker 1: mentioned before I lived in Kentucky, we were talking about
Speaker 1: Andy Basheer. Democrats in Kentucky were getting killed on the
Speaker 1: issue of abortion for years. Right this was you know,
Speaker 1: Republicans really took control of the state. One of the
Speaker 1: key issues that they used was abortion in a state
Speaker 1: that is very religious, and so it was quite shocking
Speaker 1: to me, to see the way that Andy Basheer was
Speaker 1: able to run affirmatively on his pro choice position, and
Speaker 1: it was a tremendous asset to him.
Speaker 3: He ran and out.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you saw the young girl who was raped
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, Daniel Cameron would force her
Speaker 1: to bear her rapist baby. It was a devastating ad
Speaker 1: And to see that flip in Kentucky to me was wild.
Speaker 1: I would not have predicted that the politics on the issue,
Speaker 1: even in a state like Kentucky, would flip so quickly.
Speaker 1: The question is does it remain so silent? Clearly Donald
Speaker 1: Trump wants to, you know, push it off to the
Speaker 1: side and make other issues more of the focus, immigration
Speaker 1: in particular, or the economy and inflation as well. Do
Speaker 1: you think that that is possible for him to or
Speaker 1: does this continue to be a highly salent, salient, important issue.
Speaker 8: You know, it's it's honestly hard hard for me to say.
Speaker 8: I think it's going to be something that Trump campaign
Speaker 8: is going to have to grapple with because Democrats are
Speaker 8: going to make them. But I don't I don't think that,
Speaker 8: you know, on the right, you know, Donald Trump has
Speaker 8: already decided how he's going to handle this and people
Speaker 8: can agree or disagree with it. But what he how
Speaker 8: he's determined it is. He's you know, basically saying the
Speaker 8: tradition Republican position on this has been, you know, we
Speaker 8: are pro life. We you know, from Donald Trump's perspective,
Speaker 8: we have exceptions for rape incests in the life of
Speaker 8: the mother in our abortion policy, you know, end of story.
Speaker 8: That's how Republicans are comfortable talking about it. I think
Speaker 8: that's what you're going to continue to see from his campaign.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 8: The pro life movement, I think has a different perspective
Speaker 8: that they and they need to rebuild on this front.
Speaker 8: I don't think you're going to that is that is
Speaker 8: a year's long process. I don't think you're going to
Speaker 8: see that come out in this campaign.
Speaker 3: I do think.
Speaker 8: Democrats are going to continue to make abortion a centerpiece. However,
Speaker 8: I do think if if Democrats or I'm sorry, Donald
Speaker 8: Trump doubles down on his economic arguments, if he doubles
Speaker 8: down on you know, life being difficult for you know,
Speaker 8: middle class families, talks about open borders in that vein,
Speaker 8: I think Democrats are going to have a hard time
Speaker 8: continuing to say the only thing that matters in this
Speaker 8: you know this campaign is Donald Trump's going to make
Speaker 8: your nine year old, uh, you know, get an abortion
Speaker 8: or not get an abortion if she gets pregnant. I
Speaker 8: don't think that that resonates too far when you're dealing
Speaker 8: with kind of kitchen table issues.
Speaker 5: Well, you, guys, this is all I shouldn't say.
Speaker 6: Guys.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry you, ladies. This has been a riveting discussion.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for joining us on today's edition
Speaker 4: of Counterpoints. We appreciate your insight.
Speaker 3: Great to see you both. Thank you, ladies, Thank you
Speaker 3: for having us.
Speaker 5: Crystal.
Speaker 4: It's always so fun to have you to co host
Speaker 4: with you, and it's always so much fun to have
Speaker 4: you to bounce kind of ideas and arguments against. So
Speaker 4: appreciate you joining the show today.
Speaker 3: It was my plagure. This was a fun one. I
Speaker 3: like that we leaned into the lady power.
Speaker 5: So yes, next time we'll have all men.
Speaker 4: I guess we'll have two guys on what we'll do,
Speaker 4: like white dudes for Kamala, or we'll do like maybe
Speaker 4: we should do Maybe we should do it differently, we
Speaker 4: should do like black women for Trump.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, do that opposite?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that. That would be a little bit
Speaker 1: of a hide. I can't like wal At the top
Speaker 1: of my head think of who that would be. Will
Speaker 1: come up with it, Candice Owens? Maybe she can join
Speaker 1: us if.
Speaker 4: We can get Sager to figure that out, and we'll
Speaker 4: make it happen all right, of course, and everyone, don't
Speaker 4: forget BP. Free one over at Breakingpoints dot com for
Speaker 4: a free thirty day trial of Breaking Points Premium. We
Speaker 4: appreciate you watching. I'll be back here with Ryan next
Speaker 4: week for another edition of Counterpoints. Thanks everyone, hope you
Speaker 4: have a great rest of your week. Chris, we'll get
Speaker 4: back here with Sager tomorrow