Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 1: Good morning everyone. I can't be as loud as Sager,
Speaker 1: but we are loudly internally, Crystal wishing him the best
Speaker 1: honeymoon ever. He's off to Japan at this very moment,
Speaker 1: so we miss him.
Speaker 2: Yeah absolutely. I would love to go to Japan, but
Speaker 2: I would not love the trip and the jat lag, so.
Speaker 1: Not interested in thank you, but it is.
Speaker 4: I'm ready for that level of travel suffering.
Speaker 1: So everyone's in for Girl shows for the next what
Speaker 1: three shows until Thanksgiving? Right? Yeah, that's great, So get
Speaker 1: ready for four hour long shows.
Speaker 2: That's right, because Emily and I when we get together,
Speaker 2: do the longest shows ever for whatever reason. Look at
Speaker 2: the clock, we'relyps yep indeed. But there is a lot
Speaker 2: to talk about this morning, lots of interesting stories actually,
Speaker 2: so it's official now Comcast is spitting off MSNBC. There's
Speaker 2: a bit of a freak out happening over there at
Speaker 2: the network. So obviously for me as a former MSNBC person,
Speaker 2: it's very the tables have turned.
Speaker 4: One might say, I'm excited for that segment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got a lot a lot to say there,
Speaker 2: so we'll get into that. Also, we have some a
Speaker 2: look at some interesting ways that liberals are coping with
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris's loss, O bringing about as well new details
Speaker 2: about Elon and Vivek's plans. And Emily and I are
Speaker 2: going to talk about whether or not Trump is sort
Speaker 2: of overreaching and over reading I guess his mandate that
Speaker 2: he received in this election. The Jump Food Lobby is
Speaker 2: gearing up to do battle with RFK Junior. An interesting
Speaker 2: report there. The ICC has now officially issued arrest warrants
Speaker 2: for both Babing net Yahoo and Yo of Goalt. So
Speaker 2: we'll bring you those details. There's also some significant developments
Speaker 2: on the domestic front with regard to Israel policy in
Speaker 2: the Senate led by Bernie Sanders, So give you those
Speaker 2: details as well. My friend Torri is going to be here.
Speaker 2: He has some very interesting reporting from inside the Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris campaign where basically the campaign chair, like the person
Speaker 2: who's running the campaign, doesn't really like Kamala Harris and
Speaker 2: was sort of like sabotaging her from within, which is
Speaker 2: not a great thing when you're trying to win the presidency.
Speaker 2: So she was a Biden loyalist, General Malle Dillon. She
Speaker 2: was one of the people who was always like sort
Speaker 2: of smearing Kamala to the press behind the scenes, trying
Speaker 2: to undercut her. And so you have to stick with
Speaker 2: Biden because this lady's terrible and she's not electable. And
Speaker 2: then she ends up in charge of the campaign. So
Speaker 2: when you wonder why the staff never prepared Kamala, not
Speaker 2: that it's not also on Kamala to be prepared for
Speaker 2: this question of like how are you different from Biden
Speaker 2: or what would you do differently? They didn't want her
Speaker 2: to separate from Biden because they're like Biden Biden people
Speaker 2: so he got some really interesting behind the scenes details there.
Speaker 2: I'm taking a look at Nancy Mace and her whole
Speaker 2: interest in the bathroom at the Capital facility, and also
Speaker 2: how Democrats can better respond to some of these questions
Speaker 2: about transgender issues. So a lot to say on that
Speaker 2: one as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, and Crystal, I am wondering who we could ask
Speaker 1: about MSNBC. Who do we know that might have some
Speaker 1: connectivity there into MSNBC. I think maybe you have thoughts
Speaker 1: on everything that's going.
Speaker 2: Down a little bit a little bit, yes, so we'll
Speaker 2: go ahead and get into that before we do. Though, Guys,
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Speaker 4: Here in DC.
Speaker 2: So we're kind of uniquely positioned to as politicians wake
Speaker 2: up to the fact that actually, like alternative media is
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Speaker 1: And that is just a perfect transition to the segment. Actually,
Speaker 1: that is true, the ripest time to support independent media
Speaker 1: is so important to help the political class kind of
Speaker 1: wake up to what's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. So let's go and put the
Speaker 2: official news up on the screen here. So Comcast has
Speaker 2: decided and officially announced that they are going to spin
Speaker 2: off a number of their cable channels. So it's not
Speaker 2: just MSMBC, but this is a huge deal because they're
Speaker 2: keeping the NBC News brand under Comcast. The spinoff, though
Speaker 2: will include MSNBC. Raises all kinds of questions about the
Speaker 2: future of that network, which of course is really really
Speaker 2: struggling postcomlawst loss. You know, their whole sort of thing.
Speaker 2: The world has just been dramatically undercut. You also had
Speaker 2: the whole incident with Joe and Nika going down to
Speaker 2: mar A Lago. You and Ryan reported on the fact
Speaker 2: that even just an hour later, their audience were basically like,
Speaker 2: screw you, We're done here.
Speaker 1: Who could blame them?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Who could blame them?
Speaker 2: When two weeks earlier you got Joe saying Trump is
Speaker 2: hitler and then hey, we're making nice with him, We're restarting,
Speaker 2: restarting negotiations, restarting communications recent Yeah, so you know, they're
Speaker 2: really in the wilderness. And I think the fact that
Speaker 2: you have this spinoff coming right now, you know, it
Speaker 2: genuinely raises questions about whether or not this network is
Speaker 2: even going to be able to survive into the future.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, MSNBC is one of the most interesting places
Speaker 1: in media right now because they're an old brand and
Speaker 1: old traditional media property cable. Old in the sense of
Speaker 1: like several decades cood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, early two thousands. I guess they launched maybe in
Speaker 2: the late nineties, nineties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just listened to a podcast about it. It
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting, oddly enough. But Microsoft NBC, of that's right,
Speaker 1: because why not why not just merge corporations and news
Speaker 1: gathering organizations?
Speaker 2: But what could go wrong?
Speaker 1: It seems Fine's what's interesting about it though, is that
Speaker 1: it's developed a really niche audience, but it's still trying
Speaker 1: to do kind of monoculture, you know, big picture reach
Speaker 1: a bunch of people. In order to get you know,
Speaker 1: to compete with Fox News, they would have to be
Speaker 1: in primetime getting a couple million people at least each hour,
Speaker 1: and that's not happening because they started, you know, marketing
Speaker 1: themselves to a sliver of the public, which is you know,
Speaker 1: the best analogy I use is it's Stephen Colbert versus
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson, right, like you just everyone has more choice now,
Speaker 1: So if you can corner one demo, you can do
Speaker 1: really well. But that means you have to keep them
Speaker 1: in the bubble because they don't want the content outside
Speaker 1: the bubble. It's comfort food. Fine, it's not how I
Speaker 1: like to get my news. But if you want to
Speaker 1: break the comfort food bubble, you're gonna lose your audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, last time around, after Trump won in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: you know, after the initial shock, MSNBC really dug in
Speaker 2: on the whole like Russia Gate drama, and it was compelling, right,
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of it was completely falsom phony
Speaker 2: and a lie that they were selling their audience and
Speaker 2: straining them along. You might think the audience would have
Speaker 2: lost trust then, but it was compelling. People are tuning
Speaker 2: in to Rachel Mattow every night to know, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: what's the next shoe that's going to drop, what's the
Speaker 2: next piece of evidence that we're going to get in
Speaker 2: this grand conspiracy that they were spinning. And so even though,
Speaker 2: like I said, it was not accurate, it did make
Speaker 2: for great television and they created, you know, a bit
Speaker 2: of a liberal juggernaut and were out pacing CNN a
Speaker 2: lot of times because they were willing to lean into that.
Speaker 2: You know, this time around, there is no grand conspiracy.
Speaker 4: Trump is no longer a one off.
Speaker 2: He just won. And the direction that MSNBC has pushed
Speaker 2: the party in which has been not just to you know,
Speaker 2: resist Trump, but to also even more aggressively in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, resist the Like Bernie Left within the
Speaker 2: partymbraced the Nicole Wallace's the Liz Cheney's of the world
Speaker 2: like Morning Joe was the beating heart of that embrace
Speaker 2: of the never Trump movement as being central to the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party and central to the strategy of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: That whole notion has just been completely obliterated. So you know,
Speaker 2: one of the big problems they're going to face is
Speaker 2: now without having NBC News there to assist them in
Speaker 2: any sort of news gathering, and they don't really have
Speaker 2: their own news gathering operation.
Speaker 1: She's NBC right, right, So.
Speaker 2: Then they're just in the like hot takes business, you know,
Speaker 2: like we are. We have Ryan doing real journalism and
Speaker 2: you're doing real journalism.
Speaker 1: You never talks about it, right, that's the difference, Like
Speaker 1: we're fundamentally honest about it and we say we're coming
Speaker 1: from positions of bias. And Nicole Wallace will still I
Speaker 1: heard her the other day talking about how objectively X
Speaker 1: Y and Z is disinformation. She was talking about it
Speaker 1: with somebody hilarious. I forget exactly who it was. I
Speaker 1: think it was someone from Media Matters, and she was
Speaker 1: talking about how objectively this one fact is totally wrong.
Speaker 1: It's like, what are you smoking, Nicole Wallace? I mean,
Speaker 1: probably nothing, that's the sad part. She doesn't smoke anything
Speaker 1: to be delusional, true, but I mean Fox, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of comfort food, yes, But even when you were
Speaker 1: on MSNBC, they had voices in that were from different
Speaker 1: perspectives because they knew that disagreement was good for TV.
Speaker 1: CNN is starting to try and do this again. They
Speaker 1: really minimized it during the Trump years, but MSNBC has
Speaker 1: really become an echo chamber of like Feds agreeing with
Speaker 1: centrist Democrats about policies, just like nodding sagely.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. So just to give you a
Speaker 2: little bit of like the history of MSNBC, which I'm
Speaker 2: curious what podcast you listen to, because I want to.
Speaker 2: I'm curious what they had to say as well. But
Speaker 2: you know, it started off as just to try to
Speaker 2: be like a rival to CNN and just kind of
Speaker 2: like straight news, right, and then they kind of stumbled
Speaker 2: into this liberal branding. It wasn't intentional from the executives
Speaker 2: at the top, but Keith Olberman during the Iraq War days,
Speaker 2: you know, was very He copied some of the model
Speaker 2: of like sports newscasts, you know, and some of that
Speaker 2: like that energy chuckerty and yeah, and he really you know,
Speaker 2: captured a moment and so his ratings really blow up.
Speaker 2: They lean into that. Rachel Maddow comes down of you
Speaker 2: know that she was regular guests on that show, she
Speaker 2: comes out on that she and then so they just
Speaker 2: sort of lean into, Okay, this is working for us,
Speaker 2: or we're just going to keep going down this path.
Speaker 2: And I think the other big mistake that they made
Speaker 2: is in that twenty sixteen Democratic primary fight, rather than
Speaker 2: being the venue where these things are really battled out
Speaker 2: and where you really have both sides of that Hillary
Speaker 2: versus Birdie divide represented, instead of that, they overtly sided
Speaker 2: with Hillary and the Democratic establishment. And you know, they
Speaker 2: wanted to keep their access and that was important to
Speaker 2: them and their business model, and ultimately MSNBC, in the
Speaker 2: grand scheme of comcasts, is like a little blip on
Speaker 2: their bottom line, so they don't even care that much
Speaker 2: about the ratings, and you know, Hillary is more acceptable
Speaker 2: and more comfortable for them. Were prestigious to be aligned
Speaker 2: with these forces in the Democratic Party that have power,
Speaker 2: but in the in the in doing that, they also
Speaker 2: shut themselves off from not just the half of the
Speaker 2: country that isn't Democratic, but they also shut them off
Speaker 2: themselves off from the part of the party that was
Speaker 2: like young and rising and energetic, and made themselves adversarial
Speaker 2: to you know, that wing of the party as well.
Speaker 2: So now you're slicing down your potential audience even further.
Speaker 1: And so well, by the way, playing into the identity
Speaker 1: politics game with Joy read and a surprising obviously and
Speaker 1: like from the perspective of a genuine leftist like you were, Ryan,
Speaker 1: that they're using that as their sort of fig leaf
Speaker 1: to promote like corporatism. Of course that's what happened. Happened,
Speaker 1: but they went all in on the sort of cultural
Speaker 1: like progressive.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, that's that's correct. And people who watch
Speaker 2: the show or have read Ryan's book, because he really,
Speaker 2: you know, literally wrote the book on this, will recall
Speaker 2: that the identity politics direction of the Democratic Party didn't
Speaker 2: come from the Bernie Sanders left. It came directly from
Speaker 2: the Hillary Clinton campaign trying to blunt the Bernie Sanders
Speaker 2: movement and using these this you know, very academic language
Speaker 2: and these niche identity issues as a way to smear
Speaker 2: Bernie and his movement as being sexist and racist and
Speaker 2: is not being truly progressive because all they care about
Speaker 2: are these broad based class economic issues. And you know,
Speaker 2: that was effective in a sense, It was effective enough
Speaker 2: that Bernie felt the need to respond to some of
Speaker 2: that in twenty twenty. But yeah, that's the the identity
Speaker 2: issues have often been used, and certainly were used at
Speaker 2: MSNBC as a way to virtue signal as if you
Speaker 2: were on the left, virtue signal as if you were progressive,
Speaker 2: while maintaining all of your corporate goodies for the darna
Speaker 2: class and increasingly affluent base. It's funny people were having
Speaker 2: this identity politics debate online and Matt Iglesias pointed out,
Speaker 2: not the biggest Matagalasis fan, but he's correct about this.
Speaker 2: He's like, well, one way then identity politics was quite
Speaker 2: salient is that Biden picked Kamala Harris because of you know,
Speaker 2: pressure from Jim Clyburn and you know, sort of promises
Speaker 2: that he had made on the campaign trail about diversity.
Speaker 2: So he ends up picking this vice presidential candidate who
Speaker 2: had no demonstrated track record of electoral success and had
Speaker 2: in fact been rejected in the Democratic primary. And you know,
Speaker 2: I pointed out, yeah, that's true, but take note of
Speaker 2: where that came from. That didn't come from the left
Speaker 2: of the party. That came from Joe Biden and the
Speaker 2: centrist So now in the you know post mortems to
Speaker 2: then turn around and try to blame the Bernie Sanders
Speaker 2: left for the identity politics that you all invented and
Speaker 2: used and weabinized against the Bernie Sanders left.
Speaker 4: Is just like, it's not too perfect. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 4: it too perfect.
Speaker 2: So, as I mentioned before, Joe and Mika, they're the
Speaker 2: you know, beating heart of the never Trump embraced the
Speaker 2: Liz Cheney mode of the Democratic Party, and they had
Speaker 2: a little bit of gallows humor on the show of
Speaker 2: what this Comcast MSNBC spinoff might mean for them. Let's
Speaker 2: take a listen to that.
Speaker 7: Our parent company, NBC Universal, plans to spin off it's
Speaker 7: cable TV networks. That's according to the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 7: and people familiar with the situation. The company will separate
Speaker 7: off entertainment and news channels, including MSNBC, CNBC USA, Oxygen E,
Speaker 7: Sci Fi, and the Golf Channel, so it's spinning on.
Speaker 7: The new cable venture will reportedly have an ownership structure
Speaker 7: that mirrors Comcasts.
Speaker 8: I mean, I could be completely wrong. We could all
Speaker 8: be fired a year from that. Well, it has happens.
Speaker 8: You never know what's going to happen Tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Art.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: But in this case, though, Willie, what they're doing is
Speaker 8: what other media firms are doing. You spin off the
Speaker 8: cable channels which seven years ago were making a ton
Speaker 8: of money. Now they've got to figure out how to
Speaker 8: make them profitable. Disney, which by the way, huge media news.
Speaker 8: Disney figured out now how to make streaming profitable. Peacock
Speaker 8: had an extraordinary success in the Olympics.
Speaker 5: So they're talking about spinning this off.
Speaker 8: Comcast still owns I think Brian Roberts still owns a.
Speaker 5: Third of that.
Speaker 8: And because Comcasts didn't jump into the bidding war like
Speaker 8: everybody else throwing stupid money at streaming services and then
Speaker 8: watch it up, Comcast has a ton of cash. So
Speaker 8: now they spin this off and they're in a position
Speaker 8: to what do you all say, to to get a
Speaker 8: lot of to get a lot of vilidate and consolidate,
Speaker 8: but also to just ramp up. And so you get
Speaker 8: a lot of people, a lot of different channels together
Speaker 8: and so whatever that endedy is going to be, there'll
Speaker 8: probably be a lot of cable channels and to be
Speaker 8: in a much better position.
Speaker 9: Yeah, this is to keep these networks like this network
Speaker 9: healthy and to keep Comcasts thriving the way it is,
Speaker 9: and this is just the way it's going.
Speaker 10: People are cutting the cord right there.
Speaker 9: The cables subscribers are down across the board. This is
Speaker 9: something Bob Iger talked about last year doing.
Speaker 1: Crystal Willie Geist is an NBC News employee. That's true.
Speaker 1: Throwing that question to him was dangerous.
Speaker 2: True. Yeah, no, that is a great point. And you know,
Speaker 2: one of the things that these people are going to
Speaker 2: have to reckon with is like their business model where
Speaker 2: Joe and Mika are making millions a year. You know,
Speaker 2: they've got a bunch of highly paid talent, they have
Speaker 2: large teams, production teams, you know, huge overhead costs. That
Speaker 2: business model just doesn't really work anymore, you know, as
Speaker 2: your rating slide, and then more importantly, as cable companies
Speaker 2: start to ask themselves like is this really worth it
Speaker 2: for me to be paying you the cable carriage rate?
Speaker 2: That is what they really depend on in terms of
Speaker 2: their budget. So yeah, they're they're in for it because
Speaker 2: now effectively they're basically in the same business set we are,
Speaker 2: and try to figure it out with this giant behemoth
Speaker 2: and all this overhead and all these overpaid like celebrity
Speaker 2: hosts that no one really cares about or wants to
Speaker 2: hear from, and so it's going to be difficult for them.
Speaker 2: Put let's put some of the specifics up here on
Speaker 2: the screen about what the concerns are internally and how
Speaker 2: this was all delivered. So, they said, the prospect of
Speaker 2: being separated from NBC News raised news has raised alarms
Speaker 2: among journalists at the company because MSNBC and CNBC routinely
Speaker 2: share reportage contributors and war and because much of MSNBC's
Speaker 2: daytime schedules filled with correspondents who are affiliated with the
Speaker 2: more traditional NBC News, not the opinion programs that are
Speaker 2: MSNBC's most watch properties. Let's put the next piece up
Speaker 2: on the screen. They say that they could also have
Speaker 2: to consider changing their name and familiar markings, so they
Speaker 2: may not be able to hold on to that NBC
Speaker 2: part of the MSNBC or CNBC name. Let's go and
Speaker 2: put the next piece up on the screen. So they
Speaker 2: describe the new company as a quote well funded startup.
Speaker 2: These people said indicated they would have a presence in Manhattan,
Speaker 2: but noted that executives were not certain at present where
Speaker 2: the corporation would be based.
Speaker 1: That is brutal a well funded startup, and that really
Speaker 1: is I mean, it's not a bad place to begin,
Speaker 1: by the way, because imagine if they understood new media.
Speaker 1: CNN actually does some big numbers on YouTube. Imagine if
Speaker 1: they understood new media and figured out what they could do.
Speaker 1: We're about to talk about what Piers Morgan does on
Speaker 1: his show in just a bit. Yeah, Like, they don't
Speaker 1: have the will to lean into what people actually really
Speaker 1: want other than a pretty small slice of the public
Speaker 1: that wants to eat up whatever Nicole Wallace they're serving
Speaker 1: day in, day out. But that's not a lot of people.
Speaker 1: It definitely exists, but it's not a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I mean, you can be a well
Speaker 1: funded startup and you can figure some of this stuff
Speaker 1: out if you're smart enough to and if you're actually
Speaker 1: if you have the political stomach for quote unquote platforming
Speaker 1: all of these debates. But that's the question for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and the other thing is, you know, CNN
Speaker 2: doesn't have to live and die just by like their
Speaker 2: YouTube revenue stream, because again, the numbers would not work out.
Speaker 2: Even as they get good numbers on YouTube, the numbers
Speaker 2: would not work out to support, you know, multimillion dollar
Speaker 2: salaries for their hosts who don't really drive views in particular,
Speaker 2: like no one really cares how much what Wolf Flizzer
Speaker 2: has to say at all. Well, Splitzer monologue, large production overhead,
Speaker 2: like you know, they have other revenue streams still, So
Speaker 2: this is yeah and the other thing. So let me
Speaker 2: show you this club, because to me, it just demonstrates.
Speaker 2: This is Mike Barnacle who was weighing in on this
Speaker 2: poll that came out about how many people now, oh
Speaker 2: my god, get their news from social media and from
Speaker 2: YouTube and other, you know, other places other than cable
Speaker 2: news and newspapers. And what's evident to me in this
Speaker 2: conversation is that they really have never thought about this,
Speaker 2: Like they don't get it at all. It's like a
Speaker 2: foreign world to them that they've never had to grapple
Speaker 2: with it for the first time. They're like, holy shit,
Speaker 2: I got to wrap my head around what is going
Speaker 2: on over here.
Speaker 1: And just before we tossed to it, Yeah, Ryan and
Speaker 1: I talked yesterday about Joe Scarborough coming back from his
Speaker 1: announcement that Meka and he had gone to Amoral ago
Speaker 1: the next day and saying for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, I have seen how out of touch social
Speaker 1: media is with reality. And it's like, Bro, you have
Speaker 1: been covering the news for how many years, and just
Speaker 1: now because it affected you, you noticed that there's a
Speaker 1: disconnect between social media and the outside world.
Speaker 2: But to me, it's actually the exactly wrong time to
Speaker 2: learn that lesson, because to me, one of the big
Speaker 2: parts of this election was like, oh, actually, social media
Speaker 2: does bear a lot of resemblance to the real world.
Speaker 2: That there's been a flip now where it used to
Speaker 2: be able to say, oh, what's happening on Twitter is
Speaker 2: not real life, Like what's happening in these spaces and
Speaker 2: not real life? It's like, no, actually, this is real
Speaker 2: life now. This is representative of something larger that's going
Speaker 2: on and not just like a niche online bubble sentiment.
Speaker 2: And that's why this election you flip into being the
Speaker 2: podcast election. How successful that strategy was ultimately for the
Speaker 2: Trump campaign. I think it's the exact wrong time to
Speaker 2: learn that lesson. If anything, at this point you should
Speaker 2: be saying, you know, there actually is more going on
Speaker 2: there than I really thought so, but he's got to
Speaker 2: protect himself and believe that the people who are in
Speaker 2: his role it about home calling him are the ones
Speaker 2: who really get have their finger on the pulse of
Speaker 2: what's going on out there. Yeah, it's amazing, Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 2: All right, let's take a listen to Mike Barnacle and
Speaker 2: how he was grappling with us.
Speaker 8: And Mike, that's the challenge you grew up in a
Speaker 8: newsroom like Jean drow up in a newsroom. I mean,
Speaker 8: that's a lot of challenge. That's a challenge for a
Speaker 8: lot of mainstream media sources. Do they make themselves relevant again?
Speaker 8: To here twenty percent of adults who actually get influencers
Speaker 8: on social media.
Speaker 5: I don't know how.
Speaker 8: Maybe somebody who makes baskets and while they're making baskets
Speaker 8: say look up and say vote for Canada Acts.
Speaker 11: I don't know how they make themselves we make ourselves
Speaker 11: relevant again because we can't compete with twenty second snippets
Speaker 11: on an iPhone walking up corcles, getting your entire news
Speaker 11: digest of the day in less than a minute on
Speaker 11: your phone as you're walking into the crowd with coffee in.
Speaker 5: One hand on your phone and the other. I don't
Speaker 5: know how how we catch up to that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So Gene Robinson, do you agree with Mike because
Speaker 8: I find this hard to believe that younger voters would
Speaker 8: be more interested in getting and entertaining twenty news twenty
Speaker 8: second news snippet than watching a cable news show for
Speaker 8: four hours from six a years. It seems like an
Speaker 8: easy choice to us here, what is.
Speaker 10: Wrong with these people? Exactly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that segment says so much. First of all,
Speaker 2: the example that Joe gives of, like somebody's like, we've
Speaker 2: in baskets and then they look up and they're like,
Speaker 2: vote Canada. Have you literally ever been on YouTube? Have
Speaker 2: you ever listened to a podcast?
Speaker 1: Have you?
Speaker 2: Where have you been? And then Mike Barnacle like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, they're just consuming these twenty second snippets. And
Speaker 2: the thing that's funny to me coming out of the
Speaker 2: cable news world and into this world is I had
Speaker 2: the exact opposite experience of like, oh, in cable news,
Speaker 2: you have these truncated segments where you get maybe like
Speaker 2: five minutes in an interview if you're gonna do we
Speaker 2: used to do monologues at the cycle. They had to
Speaker 2: be three minutes long. I was lucky if I could
Speaker 2: make one point effectively. And so yeah, some of what's
Speaker 2: happening is TikTok and YouTube shorts like these very short
Speaker 2: snip is that some of what's happening or you know,
Speaker 2: people on Twitter or whatever, but also some of what's
Speaker 2: happening is actually really long form and the medium enables
Speaker 2: you to do whatever. Now, I have personally become very
Speaker 2: disenchanted with alternative media because I think a lot of
Speaker 2: it is slop, propaganda junk has in some ways worse
Speaker 2: incentives than mainstream media spaces. So I'm not going to
Speaker 2: act like this is all but it's all great that
Speaker 2: like there's a transition intependent media, because I think there's
Speaker 2: a lot of problems there as well. But it's striking
Speaker 2: to me how little they have interacted with or thought
Speaker 2: about this world. And part of it, especially on the
Speaker 2: MSNBC democratic side, part of it is that the left
Speaker 2: alternative media ecosystem all sprung up around Bernie Sanders and
Speaker 2: since they have total like contempt and disgust for that
Speaker 2: movement and think that it's like a bunch of irrelevant,
Speaker 2: you know, like useful idiots for Trump or whatever. Since
Speaker 2: they have total contempt for that part of the party,
Speaker 2: they've always just you know, overlooked it, dismissed it, thought
Speaker 2: it was unimportant, And now suddenly the check is coming
Speaker 2: do and they're realizing like, oh shit, this is the
Speaker 2: world we live in and I have no idea what
Speaker 2: to do about that.
Speaker 1: Well, they're also demanding that you take seriously people like
Speaker 1: Mike Barnacle, who's a serial plagiarists. He had to resign
Speaker 1: from the Boston Globe over massive plagiarism scandal. He was
Speaker 1: plagiarizing George Carlin. He was lying then about plagiarizing things.
Speaker 1: It's just like you are putting these people in front
Speaker 1: of us and nobody in this new media atmosphere. I mean,
Speaker 1: baby boomers are still kind of okay with that, like
Speaker 1: they get to know TV personalities, whatever else. But everybody
Speaker 1: wants way more authenticity now, meaning like if you want
Speaker 1: to put Mark Barnicle in front of people dan in
Speaker 1: day out, it's probably going to have to talk about
Speaker 1: what happens sometimes because in like YouTube, TikTok Instagram world,
Speaker 1: people just want to trust more than anything. Like they'll
Speaker 1: listen to a socialist tell them the news, right, they
Speaker 1: just want to trust the person like they want to
Speaker 1: hear that. Here's what I'm saying, Here's what I believe.
Speaker 1: I trust that you're smart enough to make your own
Speaker 1: mind up about whether it's true. Yeah, and that's not
Speaker 1: the model that they operate on, and it's not clear
Speaker 1: to me. I mean, we see this at other corporations
Speaker 1: that just you know, one place I think continues to
Speaker 1: not quite get it. Probably get in trouble for saying this,
Speaker 1: But the Hill like still doesn't quite understand what to
Speaker 1: do with rising, right, because they don't understand.
Speaker 2: They're a mess, right, But.
Speaker 1: They don't understand what you have to do in new media.
Speaker 1: They don't understand how different it is and can't quite
Speaker 1: figure it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean with regard to Morning Joe too, their
Speaker 2: self seriousness and Mike Barnacle acting like, oh, their news protection,
Speaker 2: their four hour cable news show, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: no one is watching Morning Joe for four frickin hours.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I.
Speaker 1: Think some of the boomers are some retirees like posting
Speaker 1: up with five cups.
Speaker 2: Don't do that.
Speaker 4: Joe Biden probably watches it.
Speaker 1: Critical Biden demo, but.
Speaker 2: That you know, it serves my point, which is that
Speaker 2: probably no group of media figures has been more complicit
Speaker 2: in the destruction of the Democratic Party and thorough abandonment
Speaker 2: of the working class than Joe Amica. You know, if
Speaker 2: you think about it, how integral they were in terms of,
Speaker 2: you know, bashing the left populist movement that organically sprung up,
Speaker 2: which was a much better response to trump Ism than
Speaker 2: the you know, rotting husk of neoliberalism that they were
Speaker 2: absolutely dedicated to. They're central to making never Trump Republicans,
Speaker 2: which basically only exist in cable news green rooms, central
Speaker 2: to the Democratic Party strategy. They're central to helping Joe
Speaker 2: Biden hold on to power long after he should.
Speaker 4: I mean, they cozy up to Joe Biden. They were
Speaker 4: the Biden.
Speaker 2: Whispers, I mean just told, embedded in this administration which
Speaker 2: is devastatingly unpopular and in which obviously Joe Biden should
Speaker 2: never have been running for a second term to begin with.
Speaker 2: Even after that debate, they're still out there running cover
Speaker 2: for him, trying to keep him in, and then ultimately,
Speaker 2: you know, being part of blocking any sort of a
Speaker 2: democratic process so that Democrats could have chosen a candidate
Speaker 2: who may have been better equipped to go up against
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, like They're at the scene of every major
Speaker 2: Democratic Party crime over the past let's say decade, and
Speaker 2: so for them to still think that their news reporting
Speaker 2: and their commentary and whatever helped people to understand the
Speaker 2: world during this time period, I mean that's why they're
Speaker 2: ultimately that's why their viewers have just completely fled because
Speaker 2: not only did you not help me understand the world,
Speaker 2: but also you've just exposed yourselves as being just complete liars,
Speaker 2: where you said the things that you thought we wanted
Speaker 2: to hear when it was for you about the threat
Speaker 2: of Trump, and someone who thinks Trump is genuinely a threat,
Speaker 2: I think that by going down tomorrow Lago and just
Speaker 2: instantly bending the knee like that, they also undercut the
Speaker 2: seriousness of the threat for those of us who are
Speaker 2: saying that, because it makes it look like all of
Speaker 2: us are just out here like saying what we think
Speaker 2: people want to hear. So in any case, I think
Speaker 2: you know, they've they've in a lot of ways made
Speaker 2: their own bed, and I think they're in. I do
Speaker 2: not think we will once we will ever again see
Speaker 2: Joe and Mika have the level of power and influence
Speaker 2: that they did during the Biden administration or previous Democratic administrations,
Speaker 2: but especially during the Biden administration and during the first
Speaker 2: Trump administration, Like I think that era is completely over.
Speaker 1: Two final questions. One, is part of the benefit or
Speaker 1: was part of the benefit of having MSNBC as a
Speaker 1: Comcast property, the access that you get by running a
Speaker 1: news channel, Like I'm genuinely curious. I don't. I have
Speaker 1: no idea whether or not that's true, But just do
Speaker 1: you have like important people circling in and out they
Speaker 1: have to be somewhat responsive. I mean, obviously they already
Speaker 1: have NBC News, but you get a little bit more
Speaker 1: leverage over Democrats. That's my second question, Like I saw
Speaker 1: how Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Report shaped Republicans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: shaped conservatives. Just these media, these media outlets, these formats,
Speaker 1: they shape the way Republicans acted and behaved. And you
Speaker 1: were just making this point about never Trump Republicans driving
Speaker 1: messaging in the Democratic Party partially has a response to
Speaker 1: the content on MSNBC. But does that sort of I mean,
Speaker 1: did Comcast see part of the benefit of keeping MSNBC
Speaker 1: around is having a little bit of sway on the left?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I think, And this is because, like I said,
Speaker 2: and this NBC in the grand scheme of Comcast is
Speaker 2: like a gnat on their ass, right, like it's nothing.
Speaker 2: And in some ways that's a positive for the network
Speaker 2: because then like even if revenue jobs like it doesn't
Speaker 2: really hurt Comcasts that much. On the other hand, I
Speaker 2: think that's a big part of the reason why they
Speaker 2: ultimately made the decision they did in twenty sixteen to
Speaker 2: be all in on the Hillary establishment side of the party,
Speaker 2: because that's also the part that you know, the executives
Speaker 2: are comfy with, and that's the part they wanted to
Speaker 2: ascend and ultimately since MSNBC for them was mostly sort
Speaker 2: of like a prestige play, like you said, having Cachet
Speaker 2: being a voice in the room whatever. You know, even
Speaker 2: if the ratings and the energy were on the side
Speaker 2: of the Birding movement, and they could have done better
Speaker 2: from a business perspective, I think they could have if
Speaker 2: they had leaned into that or at least had those
Speaker 2: voices present at all on the network. They didn't really
Speaker 2: care that much about the revenue because it was so
Speaker 2: insignificant to the overall corporate bottom line that they would
Speaker 2: rather just try to elevate the part of the party
Speaker 2: that was most comfortable for them and their class interests.
Speaker 2: So to me, that was the biggest significance of having
Speaker 2: the large like Comcast brand. On the one hand, you
Speaker 2: would think the fact that they don't have to care
Speaker 2: that much about small changes in revenue, etc. Would be
Speaker 2: a benefit, but it actually ended up being you know,
Speaker 2: a detriment in terms of having a you know, a
Speaker 2: robust discussion within the Democratic part and hosting all of
Speaker 2: those voices and being able to continue to serve some
Speaker 2: of the younger parts of the Democratic Party that were
Speaker 2: more interested in this left populist direction. I do think
Speaker 2: that it's possible if Kamala wins, because this is kind
Speaker 2: of like a prestige play for them. I do think
Speaker 2: it's possible. I Kamala wins, they don't actually make this move, yeah,
Speaker 2: because then they you know, they continue to have access.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not a problem for them in terms
Speaker 2: of like, you know, with the Trump administration coming in now,
Speaker 2: Comcast has to worry about their own corporate needs with
Speaker 2: regards to its administration and MSNBC out there with host saying
Speaker 2: Trump is hitler and he's a fascist and all of
Speaker 2: these things like that. Can become a problem for the
Speaker 2: larger corporate entity in terms of avoiding you know, regulatory
Speaker 2: backlash and the government being weaponized against them, which obviously
Speaker 2: Trump is willing to do. So I don't think the
Speaker 2: timing here is an accident. And you know, I suspect
Speaker 2: if Kamala will never know, but I suspect if Kamala
Speaker 2: had won, they may not have made this move because
Speaker 2: the prestige place still would have made sense for them
Speaker 2: in the grid scheme of like their corporate goals.
Speaker 1: And priorities, say, pharma advertising gets banned from television. If
Speaker 1: RFK juniors confirmed.
Speaker 2: I'll believe that when I see a girl SAME's it happens.
Speaker 1: Goodbye to cable news. True, you can't sell Boniva on
Speaker 1: MSNBC ANDELS.
Speaker 2: Anymore across the board, I mean all of these networks
Speaker 2: and that and that is important to point out too,
Speaker 2: is like Fox obviously is a larger audience, partly because
Speaker 2: conservatives don't feel like they have representation in other mainstream places.
Speaker 4: So it was like, Okay, this will be a.
Speaker 2: Magnet for all conservatives, whereas liberals feel like they've got
Speaker 2: all kinds of places where they can go and get
Speaker 2: their News.
Speaker 1: Well, and a lot of duns watch Fox too because
Speaker 1: they put Buddha Judge on, Like they have a higher
Speaker 1: proportion of Democrats watching them, and that any of the
Speaker 1: other networks have Republicans watching them.
Speaker 2: Yeah so, but all of these networks are facing at decline. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like all of them are on very stages of this
Speaker 2: same level of decay. But MSNBC, it's going to be
Speaker 2: interesting to see what happens and if they're able to
Speaker 2: hold on at all. But they are not going to
Speaker 2: be the force that they were previously, and that to
Speaker 2: me is a really really positive actual development. All right,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and talk some about various liberal coping mechanisms.
Speaker 2: So this was hilarious. Jank Euger went on Piers Morgan. Actually,
Speaker 2: my heavy Kyle was on there as well during this show,
Speaker 2: but married.
Speaker 4: Really at my wedding la.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Jank went on and had a heated exchange with
Speaker 2: Alan Lichtman, famous for his keys which did not turn
Speaker 2: out to be accurate in this particular election, and the uh,
Speaker 2: the result is pretty hilarious. So let's take aism look.
Speaker 12: I debated Professor Lickman before I told him his theories
Speaker 12: about the keys were absurd.
Speaker 10: I was right. He was wrong. I said he'd lose
Speaker 10: his keys.
Speaker 13: Wrong, and that's a cheap shot. And I won't stand
Speaker 13: for who won should not be watched me?
Speaker 14: Who want to make.
Speaker 13: You make denial? I read your own followers comments and
Speaker 13: they all trashed you, every one of them, and supported me.
Speaker 13: Right with your personal find out again, make whatever point
Speaker 13: you want it, don't make it.
Speaker 10: You don't know anything. You don't know. You attacked me personally,
Speaker 10: so deluded. I've only been a profession I've never been
Speaker 10: able to finish.
Speaker 13: How many books have you published?
Speaker 5: Then?
Speaker 13: No, because you're personally attacking me again, Say whatever you want,
Speaker 13: but I'm not brother. You got it wrong, you strously
Speaker 13: and stupidly wrong. So okay, all right, Can I just
Speaker 13: finish your goddamn stupid ever on this show? No, not
Speaker 13: if you're personally admitted I was wrong. I don't need
Speaker 13: you to call me stupid.
Speaker 5: Okay you.
Speaker 13: Wanted, Hey, Alan, you deserve a tall glass of shut
Speaker 13: up juice?
Speaker 14: So can you just shut up for a second and
Speaker 14: let someone who knows.
Speaker 1: When they're doing right?
Speaker 13: So I will not sit here and sell for personal
Speaker 13: attacks for blasphemy against me.
Speaker 2: You don't need to do that.
Speaker 5: You don't blast me against Jesus Christ lose her.
Speaker 2: So, you know, incredible stuff there. I personally love the
Speaker 2: Alan Lichtman like arc.
Speaker 4: I've enjoyed it very much.
Speaker 2: And jenk and I don't know if you had seen this,
Speaker 2: but before the election, actually back of Biden was still
Speaker 2: in the race because even then Lickman claimed his keys said.
Speaker 4: That Biden would win.
Speaker 2: Incredible and he and Jank had a big debate about it,
Speaker 2: and Jank would be like, okay, well, you know, he
Speaker 2: would offer some preposterous example like let's say the person
Speaker 2: like has a heart attack and is incapacitated and like
Speaker 2: wheelchair bound. That's not going to be reflected in your keys,
Speaker 2: So how can that make any sense? And he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: the keys just you know, it still works out. So anyway, oh,
Speaker 2: the keys always know it is true. Like in this election,
Speaker 2: almost all of the people who had been at all
Speaker 2: reliable in the past, like all of them got a
Speaker 2: rite sales or is now retired, which we didn't talk about.
Speaker 2: Who put out the Iowa poll that had Comelon winning
Speaker 2: by three and would she end up in that state
Speaker 2: loser by thirteen? Yeah, So you know, just a little
Speaker 2: sixteen point miss.
Speaker 1: But there was a lot of stuff like that going on.
Speaker 2: There was so Ralston, you know in Nevada has had
Speaker 2: never been wrong at the presidential level, and he got
Speaker 2: it wrong. Now, in fairness, like that race ended up
Speaker 2: being very close in the state of Nevada, so he
Speaker 2: wasn't that far off, and he did say that it
Speaker 2: would be really close. But still this was someone that
Speaker 2: like you know, had a perfect track record. Lichtman for
Speaker 2: all of his whatever he called Trump in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: he was one of the only people that.
Speaker 1: Did so bold move.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you know, now going forward, like they've all
Speaker 2: been wiped off the map there, you know, like all
Speaker 2: anything that had been predictive in the past has now
Speaker 2: been completely cleared out. And I saw this was interesting
Speaker 2: to me, the polymarket whale, you know, who bet so
Speaker 2: much money on Trump that it like moved the whole
Speaker 2: average odds or whatever. He said that what he had
Speaker 2: looked at and I think commissioned his own polling of
Speaker 2: not what people said they were going to do, but
Speaker 2: what they.
Speaker 4: Thought their neighbors were going to do.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I thought that was really fascinating approach. I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously he ended up getting it right and making a
Speaker 2: lot of money, yeah, because of it. But I thought
Speaker 2: that was an interesting way of getting it. Like, you know,
Speaker 2: if I'm not able to get a representative sample of
Speaker 2: people who are Trump supporters or I don't really believe
Speaker 2: in the shy Trump supporter theory anymore. I think it's
Speaker 2: more just you can't really get the people on the phone.
Speaker 2: If people have an accurate sense of what their neighbors
Speaker 2: are going to do, maybe that ends up helping you
Speaker 2: understand what's going on. And they're better than traditional polling methods.
Speaker 1: I actually started asking that question when I was talking
Speaker 1: to voters this cycle, like do you think all of
Speaker 1: your friends are doing this? Because it's that to me
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen, if people have been asking that question,
Speaker 1: probably would have been more predictive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. So anyway, that'll be
Speaker 2: something to look at going forward as we try to
Speaker 2: make sense of the world. This one I had to
Speaker 2: I just had to get in here. So this woman
Speaker 2: is a polster and has been at times an advisor
Speaker 2: to the DNC. Rachel BETAKOFVRA. I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: seen her. She's a big like resistance liberal figure. She's
Speaker 2: kind of losing her mind online right now, and we
Speaker 2: can put this up on the screen. So Wally Shahid,
Speaker 2: who was involved with the Uncommitted movement, which ultimately you'll recall,
Speaker 2: like you know, Wally and others they backed Kamala, one
Speaker 2: of people like we're very clear eyed about the threat
Speaker 2: of Trump and all those things. She tweets him and says,
Speaker 2: I probably won't be able to stop the shod in
Speaker 2: Florida when Shawhead gets deported FAFO, which is f around
Speaker 2: and find out so this supposed like liberal, you know,
Speaker 2: humanitarian type figure who was opposed presumably to the Trump
Speaker 2: mass deportation policies the second that things don't work out
Speaker 2: her way. First of all, rather than ever blaming the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party for any fault on their part, she singles
Speaker 2: out this Muslim man and is excited, expressing her glee
Speaker 2: that he could be deported under a Trump administration. And
Speaker 2: she doesn't stop there either, Emily, So let's put this
Speaker 2: up on the screen. This one was to me in.
Speaker 4: A way even more wild.
Speaker 2: So she says, here's a full list of people I'll
Speaker 2: be shot in freuding over when the trump check comes toe.
Speaker 2: By the way, I saw someone on Twitter say it
Speaker 2: was like appropriate that she resorted to German anyway, the
Speaker 2: climate nuts who attack cultural artifacts, hut down traffic, the
Speaker 2: pro hamas people, working class people who just voted themselves
Speaker 2: back to pedantry, Blacks for Trump, McConnell R's latinos for ours,
Speaker 2: women for ours? What am I missing? And to me,
Speaker 2: it's so noteworthy here that, of course the demographic group
Speaker 2: first of all, like doing this whole like demographic slicing.
Speaker 2: I obviously I think is girls. Put that aside. But
Speaker 2: the demographic grip that actually voted for Trump the most
Speaker 2: was white men, and somehow they.
Speaker 4: Escape her ire.
Speaker 2: It's just these various like minority demographics that didn't obey
Speaker 2: her commands and the way she thought they were supposed
Speaker 2: to act.
Speaker 1: In the world, voted themselves back to peasantry.
Speaker 2: They're the ones that she's excited to be for them
Speaker 2: to be deported and you know, put back into peasantry
Speaker 2: and sent to camps or whatever. And it's like, lady,
Speaker 2: how are you different from the people you claim to oppose?
Speaker 2: Like you are cheerleading the ugliest possible imaginable things here
Speaker 2: and doing it publicly and apparently unrepentantly. Now, producer Griffin says,
Speaker 2: she's now deleted these tweets. Incredible, like days later, has
Speaker 2: now deleted the tweets. But she's going she's gone through it.
Speaker 2: It seems she's going through it.
Speaker 1: I'm reading her author bio on the random House website
Speaker 1: and she's It says she worked with Democratic Party candidates
Speaker 1: and organizations to implement negative partisanship strategy in the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two midterms. So obviously Crystal she knows exactly what
Speaker 1: she's talking about. It's funny because she's a political scientist
Speaker 1: like she I believe that she's actually a professor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's a Virginian. I've met her before.
Speaker 1: Amazing that this is the science of politics, is just
Speaker 1: telling people that they voted themselves back to peasantry because
Speaker 1: you are an academic and you know better than these
Speaker 1: voters who thought about this decision and made up their
Speaker 1: own minds, because they are humans with equal worth and
Speaker 1: dignity to you, Rachel.
Speaker 2: And that's I mean, it's the voter blaming. And it's
Speaker 2: also just like you know, if you oppose a policy
Speaker 2: that I consider to be cruel and inhumane. It's not
Speaker 2: supposed to be subject to like what that person's political
Speaker 2: views and voting patterns happen to be. Like, those are
Speaker 2: supposed to be universal values that you hold. And Rachel
Speaker 2: is not the only one that I've seen out there
Speaker 2: doing this, but she's one of the most prominent ones
Speaker 2: to just be out and out like I can't wait
Speaker 2: for you to get to be to be deported, which
Speaker 2: is just outrageously disgusting. So anyway, those are some of
Speaker 2: the things that are going on over in the.
Speaker 1: Liberal everything's going well. And actually, Crystal, what we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about is some of the things that are
Speaker 1: going on in the Republican world. Right now, let's pivot
Speaker 1: to B one. We can put B one up on
Speaker 1: the screen because votes are still being counted, and Dave
Speaker 1: Wasserman noted on ACCE yesterday he's a new cook political
Speaker 1: Over one hundred and fifty four million votes now counted,
Speaker 1: Trump's popular vote lead is down to one point sixty
Speaker 1: five percent. Trump is, of course, claiming that his popular
Speaker 1: vote margin is a mandate and his electoral college margin
Speaker 1: combined is a mandate for him and his administration as
Speaker 1: they prepare to come into office in January, Crystal, and
Speaker 1: you know, listen, he won. Most people didn't expect him
Speaker 1: to win. Many people didn't expect him to win. He
Speaker 1: still has a popular vote margin. He was successful in
Speaker 1: the battleground states. I do think, as much as the
Speaker 1: left was wrong about this election, that the right finds
Speaker 1: itself in a very precarious position as well, because almost
Speaker 1: fifty percent of the country voted for Kamala Harris, who
Speaker 1: was a terrible, truly terrible candidate. I think Alan Lickman
Speaker 1: not entirely wrong that some giant chunk of the country
Speaker 1: would have voted for Joe Biden because they are so
Speaker 1: either they're so genuinely afraid of Donald Trump or they
Speaker 1: hate Donald Trump so much. This is not like the
Speaker 1: vibe shift. I think a lot of people are now
Speaker 1: seeing it as it's significant. There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: I don't think Donald Trump is wrong at all to
Speaker 1: be taking a victory lap. I do think Republicans should
Speaker 1: realize that it isn't as though the country has suddenly
Speaker 1: embraced Donald Trump warmly and brought him in and said
Speaker 1: we love you, Grandpa, like please guide us to a
Speaker 1: better future.
Speaker 2: Well, and in some ways The trouble is even more
Speaker 2: clear down ballot because in most of the swing state
Speaker 2: Senate races they lost. I mean, they were able to
Speaker 2: very narrowly pick up Pennsylvania and then obviously they won Montana,
Speaker 2: where actually Dohn Tuster outperformed more than almost any other Democrat.
Speaker 2: I think he outperform Kamala by thirteen points. But in
Speaker 2: Montana that's odd enough. They picked up West Virginia their
Speaker 2: obvious one, but when you're talking about you know, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada,
Speaker 2: they weren't able to pull it off. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: Trump seems to be a bit of a unique figure.
Speaker 2: You had huge numbers of voters who voted only for
Speaker 2: Trump and then just left the rest of the ballot bank.
Speaker 2: Which was a phenomenon that Democrats saw with Obama, which
Speaker 2: ended up being a little bit of a canary in
Speaker 2: the coal mine for their own parties problems because Obama famously,
Speaker 2: while he's very good at getting himself re elected, he
Speaker 2: was very poor at expanding the Democratic Party. In fact,
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party was really destroyed in rural areas under
Speaker 2: the Obama administration. They end up you know, losing the House,
Speaker 2: losing the Senate and then ultimately handing the presidency over
Speaker 2: to Donald Trump. So that was a warning sign for
Speaker 2: them that like, Okay, you've got this one figure that
Speaker 2: can really drive up turnout, and people, you know, give
Speaker 2: him this sort of like unique and special status that
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily translate to the rest of the party. So
Speaker 2: the other thing that I think, Emily is that while
Speaker 2: Trump was saying a lot of you know, the more
Speaker 2: extreme in my view, things that he's going to do
Speaker 2: in the administration, that the R and C they're holding
Speaker 2: up signs the same mass deportation now and certainly you know,
Speaker 2: characters like Matt Gates and RFK Junior and whatever, like,
Speaker 2: no one would be surprised that they're in this orbit, etc.
Speaker 2: I also think and Trump said things like i will
Speaker 2: be your retribution. I'm going to suspend the Constitution. I'll
Speaker 2: be a dictator on day one. So it's not like
Speaker 2: he wasn't saying these things. But I know among a
Speaker 2: lot of Wall Street people, I think among a lot
Speaker 2: of people in general, they felt like, well, it's just
Speaker 2: Trump and he doesn't really mean these things, because you know,
Speaker 2: we saw him in action before and he didn't do
Speaker 2: like the craziest things that he claimed he was going
Speaker 2: to do, so they were able to the fact that
Speaker 2: he's like, really dishonest and just makes a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff up all the time. Ended up being a benefit
Speaker 2: because they could pick and choose which parts of what
Speaker 2: he was saying they liked and the parts that they
Speaker 2: didn't like because he's not serious about that peace and now,
Speaker 2: at least in the early phases of the administration, it
Speaker 2: is very much my sense that he was serious about
Speaker 2: all the things that he was saying, including you know,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about Elon and Vivek. I know
Speaker 2: it's been sort of floated that this is like a
Speaker 2: make work project that they're put on but to massively
Speaker 2: slash government spending and social safety net programs and all
Speaker 2: of these things. I don't think that's really true, because
Speaker 2: the administration also appears to be looking at what powers
Speaker 2: they have to unilaterally make these sorts of cuts without Congress.
Speaker 2: So I think they're serious about that. Our friend Jeff
Speaker 2: Stein has done a lot of reporting on that. He
Speaker 2: also we had him on early this earlier this week
Speaker 2: to talk about they're also looking at how they can
Speaker 2: use you know, existing code and doesn't require Congress to
Speaker 2: implement a massive increase in tariffs potentially across the board.
Speaker 2: So I think he's serious about that too. And you know,
Speaker 2: that's very likely to lead to inflation, a lot of
Speaker 2: like economic chaos in terms of the markets and all
Speaker 2: those sorts of things. So I think, you know, those
Speaker 2: things should be taken seriously. And we've certainly seen what
Speaker 2: the personnel choices with regard to immigration that you know,
Speaker 2: the mass deportation plans, Trump reiterating that he wants to
Speaker 2: use the military and declare a national emergency to engage
Speaker 2: in mass deportation. Like I think that was that was
Speaker 2: true as well. So the Trump people seem to have
Speaker 2: had this feeling that like and this mandate for a
Speaker 2: truly like revolutionary type government like Reagan in eighty four.
Speaker 2: And I think there's some part of the populace that
Speaker 2: voted for that and wants to see that. And I
Speaker 2: think there's some part that was just like, you know,
Speaker 2: like prices were lower and let and there were fewer
Speaker 2: wars under the Trump administration. I'd like to get back
Speaker 2: to that, and didn't actually sign up for like Matt
Speaker 2: Gates and all of like the whole program that is
Speaker 2: now being put into place, or.
Speaker 1: They were willing to risk that in order to prevent
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris from becoming president, which is interesting. It doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean they support it, though, it means that they
Speaker 1: might vote it out four years later or in the midterms.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I think the election was really close.
Speaker 1: The popular result, the popular vote continues to get smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller. I think it's very significant that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: won the popular vote, especially after all of the law
Speaker 1: fair I think it's very significant after that he won
Speaker 1: the popular vote after January sixth, like all of these
Speaker 1: things do absolutely kunt like it's not. I think there
Speaker 1: is a vibe shift of foot. There is like a
Speaker 1: cultural shift of foot. I don't think that this is
Speaker 1: obviously mathematically plainly, this is not a Ronald Reagan nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four type of mandate. And if you look at
Speaker 1: Florida in particular, Florida had two very interesting amendments that
Speaker 1: voters were deciding, Amendment three and Amendment four. They had
Speaker 1: to get to the sixty percent threshold right in order
Speaker 1: to pass. So this is weed and abortion. Enshrining these
Speaker 1: into the constitution of the state and recreational weed. And
Speaker 1: what's really interesting about this is most of the headlines
Speaker 1: have been, Okay, these amendments failed, well, they failed barely
Speaker 1: so in a state where you had these pretty dramatic
Speaker 1: shifts among different demographics towards Trump, Trump handily, Republicans are
Speaker 1: doing great, Rick Scott wins. All of that happens, you
Speaker 1: also almost have voters. I mean it was really really
Speaker 1: close on abortion and shining it into constitution.
Speaker 5: Like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was exactly and the same thing with Weed.
Speaker 1: And think I posted this a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I said, Kamala Harris a terrible candidate when forty seven
Speaker 1: percent of the popular vote. Most American sport abortion, access,
Speaker 1: gate marriage, legal immigration, tax hikes on corporations in the rich,
Speaker 1: a robust social safety net, et cetera. Trump understood that
Speaker 1: better than most of the Republican Party and neutralized some
Speaker 1: of the vulnerabilities. But those vulnerabilities are still there, and
Speaker 1: Democrats have a lot to work with if they can rebrand.
Speaker 1: It's obviously a very very big if.
Speaker 4: That's a big if, ye.
Speaker 1: But Republicans like enjoy their victory. Sure, but man, this
Speaker 1: is I mean, the long term future of the Republican
Speaker 1: party isn't as clear cut after Trump as I think
Speaker 1: some people are interpreting it round.
Speaker 2: There's still a lot of question marks. I mean, here's
Speaker 2: another one. I mentioned this in my monologue. So in
Speaker 2: New York they passed a constitutional amendment that they call
Speaker 2: it equal Rights Amendment includes like protections for people based
Speaker 2: on their pregnancy status, so it's meant to protect people
Speaker 2: based on abortion, but they also add in their gender identity.
Speaker 2: And the opponents to this constitutional amendment ran ads saying,
Speaker 2: this is going to codify into the constitution a right
Speaker 2: for transgender girls to play in girl sports leagues, and
Speaker 2: it's going to codify a right for undocumented immigrants to
Speaker 2: get drivers' licenses. Like they you know, they did the
Speaker 2: whole list of like the you know, conservative like the
Speaker 2: scariest things imaginable that can happen. I thought the trans
Speaker 2: piece was especially important. It was approved overwhelmingly. It was
Speaker 2: you know, not even close, so it was like, you know,
Speaker 2: two thirds to one third effectively, even with that sort
Speaker 2: of messaging being run. And at the same time, New
Speaker 2: York is the state in the country that moved the
Speaker 2: most to Trump, eleven and a half points that it
Speaker 2: shifted towards Trump. So you know, I just would like,
Speaker 2: it's easy to project on the population that, Okay, well
Speaker 2: they must have wanted like Matt Gates's ag then if
Speaker 2: they voted for Trump, and they must have wanted Vivek
Speaker 2: to come in and slash two trillion dollars from the
Speaker 2: budget and elon and like get rid of you know,
Speaker 2: every social safety net program. You can imagine, because that's
Speaker 2: what we were broadcasting, we were going to do in advance.
Speaker 2: But I don't like, I don't think it's accurate to imagine.
Speaker 2: And if there had been a few different decisions made
Speaker 2: on the Democratic side, you can easily imagine them being
Speaker 2: able to win. And then the projection as, oh, this
Speaker 2: is this massive rejection of trump Ism whatever. You know,
Speaker 2: it's still very much a fifty to fifty country. So
Speaker 2: what I would say is for the Democratic Party, the
Speaker 2: trends are death right. If that Latino realignment continues to happen,
Speaker 2: if the working class realignment continues to happen, then they're
Speaker 2: in like permanent minority status territory. But those trends are
Speaker 2: far from settled at this point exactly. And Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is truly this sort of like uniquely charismatic political figure
Speaker 2: that you know, could be like Obama, where Obama is
Speaker 2: able to put together this coalition that actually included a
Speaker 2: lot of white working class voters that other Democrats are
Speaker 2: just not ever able to put back together again, that's
Speaker 2: also a future possibility. So a couple of the things
Speaker 2: we wanted to share with you guys, so we could
Speaker 2: put B two up on the screen. This is I
Speaker 2: want to take a note here. So this is the
Speaker 2: approval ratings for these various Trump nominees after people have
Speaker 2: been read some like negative things about them.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're right, it's a progressive firm, right.
Speaker 2: It's a progressive firm. And this is like, okay, once
Speaker 2: we tell you a little bit about RFK Junior, how
Speaker 2: do you feel about them now? But all of these
Speaker 2: attacks against these people, like they are very salient in
Speaker 2: the media right now, and so it's not crazy to
Speaker 2: imagine that people are taking in some of the negative
Speaker 2: commentary about each of these individuals and they've got all
Speaker 2: of them underwater. RFK Junior minus eight, Lee Zelden, who's
Speaker 2: been put up for EPA minus fifteen, Chelsea Gabbard minus seventeen,
Speaker 2: Hegseth minus nineteen and no surprise, Gates coming in the
Speaker 2: worst here at minus twenty eight. So, you know, not
Speaker 2: exactly like a clear man for any of these appointments.
Speaker 2: And then this was interesting to me as well, Emily,
Speaker 2: So as we talked about on the show earlier this week,
Speaker 2: as I talked about with Sager and with Shelby Talcott,
Speaker 2: Trump has affirmed his intention to use the military to
Speaker 2: help facilitate mass deportations, which, you know, armed military officers
Speaker 2: in cities going door to door into workplaces or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, that's quite an image and not something that
Speaker 2: we've done before here, at least not in recent times
Speaker 2: in this country's history. And Rand Paul has come out
Speaker 2: and said that he's very much opposed to that. Let's
Speaker 2: to listen to that.
Speaker 15: I think what I would do if I were in
Speaker 15: charge of the immigration situation, would to be the first to.
Speaker 5: Go after those who have committed crimes.
Speaker 15: You know, the big news right before the election was
Speaker 15: that there were fifteen thousand people in our country who
Speaker 15: have committed murder. There are about thirteen thousand that have
Speaker 15: committed sex crimes, violent sex crimes.
Speaker 5: That's twenty eight thousand people.
Speaker 15: Why don't we start with that twenty eight thousand, why
Speaker 15: don't we put out at all points bulletin and when
Speaker 15: we have them removed, I think we.
Speaker 5: Start there will be fine.
Speaker 15: I'm not in favor of sending the army in uniforms
Speaker 15: into our.
Speaker 5: Cities to collect people.
Speaker 15: I think it's a terrible image and that's not what
Speaker 15: we use our military for.
Speaker 5: We never have, and it's actually been.
Speaker 15: Illegal for over one hundred years to bring the army
Speaker 15: into our cities. Army and our military are trained to
Speaker 15: shoot the enemy. They're not trained to get a warrant
Speaker 15: to do what they're doing. The police have a difficult job,
Speaker 15: but the people removing people from our country need to
Speaker 15: be a police enforcement domestic agency.
Speaker 5: Not the military.
Speaker 15: As I'm all for remain in Mexico, I will not
Speaker 15: support an emergency to put the army into our cities.
Speaker 5: I think that's a huge mistake.
Speaker 2: What did you make of that from Rin Paul? I
Speaker 2: thought it was, you know, I mean, at this point,
Speaker 2: with Trump with such a lock in the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: for him to remain principled in this regard I thought
Speaker 2: was really not worthy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I agree with that, and libertarians obviously
Speaker 1: tend to be more pro immigration and even pro like
Speaker 1: just open borders in general, like explicitly borders. There should
Speaker 1: not be borders. And Rand Paul saying he wants to
Speaker 1: combine remain in Mexico with this opposition to having the
Speaker 1: military go rounding up undocumented immigrants is really interesting. And
Speaker 1: something that's very interesting about immigration in particular is polsters
Speaker 1: use a stupid word, their most static in terms of
Speaker 1: describing public opinion on immigration, which means we all remember
Speaker 1: during the Trump administration, one of the reasons Alexandria A.
Speaker 1: Kasio Cortez was going to the border fence and weeping
Speaker 1: is that public opinion had shifted throughout the course of
Speaker 1: the Trump administration, like people got steadily more pro immigrant
Speaker 1: because they were opposed to, at least the version of
Speaker 1: what Donald Trump was doing that the media was telling.
Speaker 1: There was funny business going on there that people in
Speaker 1: the press were reporting that what Donald Trump did had
Speaker 1: not happened under the Obama administration, or they were acting
Speaker 1: like it hadn't happened under the Obama administration. So you
Speaker 1: have to take that with a little bit of a
Speaker 1: grain of salt. But Rand Paul just said, it's a
Speaker 1: terrible image, like he was talking about in some ways
Speaker 1: the public relations of having the military. I think he's
Speaker 1: a poster on the substance too. The public relations of
Speaker 1: it is clearly clearly going to be more dangerous than
Speaker 1: I think some people in hardcore Trump circles realize that
Speaker 1: said mass deportations actually pull well, which is surprising given
Speaker 1: how negative the media coverage of something like a mass deportations.
Speaker 1: I think it speaks to some people just like total
Speaker 1: discussed with what they're told is okay. So yeah, mass deportations.
Speaker 1: You're asking me about that, of course, like you're saying
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be in support of this, Like I'm in
Speaker 1: support of it because they've been told over and over
Speaker 1: again this isn't a problem. You're not allowed to care
Speaker 1: about it. So I feel like that shows up in
Speaker 1: the polling when you actually see it done, if you're
Speaker 1: actually using the military to do it instead of we
Speaker 1: already have, by the way, militarized immigration forces, we have ICE,
Speaker 1: we have CBB, like this is these agencies exist. So
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Grandpaul is offering a very useful
Speaker 1: dose of caution to the Trump administration. The incoming Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's exactly right, because I mean, we
Speaker 2: all remember those images from the first Trump administration of
Speaker 2: children who are crying and being you know, sort of
Speaker 2: mocked by border patrol agents, and it was truly horrifying.
Speaker 2: Like I think people were really shocked and horrified by that.
Speaker 2: And to your point, the support for increasing immigration into
Speaker 2: the country reached like modern heights in opposition to that.
Speaker 2: But the other important thing you had then that was
Speaker 2: a distinction is that you had a Democratic party that
Speaker 2: was unified against that view of immigrants and against the
Speaker 2: Trump total immigration policy, and.
Speaker 1: You did well in the midterms.
Speaker 2: That's right, and Biden won on a very like pro
Speaker 2: immigrant and oppositional to the Trump immigration policy. That was
Speaker 2: the message that he ran on. You guys will remember
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty primary and them speaking their high school
Speaker 2: Spanish or whatever. And so you had this unified democratic
Speaker 2: critique that you don't have anymore. And I've been saying
Speaker 2: the whole time that I thought it was a mistake
Speaker 2: the way that the Biden Harris people tried to handle
Speaker 2: us of being like, you know what, we're going to
Speaker 2: do the hawkish border thing too, We're going to dare
Speaker 2: Republicans to pass it, and then Kama is going around
Speaker 2: talking about like how basically she's the one who's tougher
Speaker 2: on the border.
Speaker 4: No one is going to believe that.
Speaker 2: But you will help to foment more like right word
Speaker 2: shift in terms of people's views on immigration, because if
Speaker 2: you a lot of people who are partisans just like
Speaker 2: get their cues from the party, and if you have
Speaker 2: both major parties like basically immigrants are bad and they
Speaker 2: should all just be shipped down on mass and know,
Speaker 2: we shouldn't have a pathway to citizenship, Yeah, the public
Speaker 2: is going to shift to the rights of I do
Speaker 2: want to say though, that even in that context, I
Speaker 2: just was looking at some polling. Immigration is one of
Speaker 2: those subjects in particular where it depends so much on
Speaker 2: how you ask the question, because people continue to have
Speaker 2: very complex views on the topic where they continue to
Speaker 2: feel immigrants are you know, a net positive for the
Speaker 2: country and our core part of like American identity, and
Speaker 2: you know, there continues to be significant support for things
Speaker 2: like a pathway to sit citizenship. So even on this issue,
Speaker 2: where I'm not going to deny that there's been a
Speaker 2: right word shift, I certainly think there has been a
Speaker 2: right word shift that which has to do with the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party position, also does have to do with the
Speaker 2: fact that there has been an increase in immigrant crossings
Speaker 2: under the Biden administration. But even there, it's not as
Speaker 2: clear cut as it is sometimes portrayed and depends a
Speaker 2: lot on how things are presented. And yeah, people may
Speaker 2: you know, when you just say, like do you want
Speaker 2: to deport people, that's very you don't actually have to
Speaker 2: see those human beings and what that looks like or
Speaker 2: military in your city, in the workplace, whatever, and what
Speaker 2: that looks like, and that you know, can create a
Speaker 2: very different sense around the policy totally.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people who are very pro
Speaker 1: immigration voted for Donald Trump because they're also very pro
Speaker 1: quote unquote law and order. Like people see those two
Speaker 1: things as not being mutually exclusive. That's why you're seeing
Speaker 1: him making gains, for example, with Hispanic voters, because people
Speaker 1: can hold two of those complicated beings in their head
Speaker 1: at the same time. So yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the Biden administration's policy was really worst of all worlds,
Speaker 1: where they know they swung the pendulum way too far
Speaker 1: in one direction by their like sort of bureaucratic tweaking
Speaker 1: and asylum policy and all of that, But then on
Speaker 1: the other hand, tried to lie about it, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, So like, instead of just saying we're
Speaker 1: doing this because people are fleeing gang violence or trafficking
Speaker 1: or whatever, instead of just owning it and saying, that's
Speaker 1: exactly why these you know, policies that we put in
Speaker 1: place immediately after taking office, a lot of bureaucratic administrative
Speaker 1: decisions that they made in the first one hundred days.
Speaker 1: Instead of owning it and saying what they were doing,
Speaker 1: they like lied about it, acted like it wasn't happening,
Speaker 1: and still claimed that they were being tough on the
Speaker 1: border and cracking down on the way. It was like,
Speaker 1: what are you? It's the worst of both possible worlds.
Speaker 1: And I think that's part of why public opinion where
Speaker 1: it was during the Trump years. It swung so far
Speaker 1: because Biden just had probably the worst possible policy.
Speaker 2: Ryan also always points out that they also continued like
Speaker 2: the push, like the sanctions regimes that helped them push
Speaker 2: people and you know, the incredible chaos in Haiti that
Speaker 2: we are always complicit in. The sanctions on Cuba, sanctions
Speaker 2: on Venezuela, like this is a major part of the
Speaker 2: migrant crisis as well. So let me just get to
Speaker 2: these next pieces because this is important as well. We
Speaker 2: have an op ed from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami
Speaker 2: in the Wall Street Journal indicating some of their plans
Speaker 2: for what they want to do with this Department of
Speaker 2: Government Efficiency. Jeff Stein was tweeting about this. We can
Speaker 2: put this up on the screen some of the details.
Speaker 2: They say they think that SCOTIS could open the door
Speaker 2: to unilateral spending cuts, meaning that they wouldn't have to
Speaker 2: go through Congress based on what they say is the
Speaker 2: unconstitutionality of the nineteen seventy four budget law. He says
Speaker 2: that could be an absolutely massive pivotal fight. I think
Speaker 2: that is correct, And you know, the basic idea here
Speaker 2: is that they argue, yes, Congress has to authorize spending,
Speaker 2: but you're not then required to spend it. So if
Speaker 2: the executive wants to come in and basically say, like
Speaker 2: we're going to slash all of these agencies and social
Speaker 2: safety net programs, like, we can unilaterally do that because
Speaker 2: we aren't obligated to actually spend the funds that Congress
Speaker 2: has authorized and appropriated. Let's put the next piece up
Speaker 2: on the screen. Also from Jeff summarizing this op ed,
Speaker 2: so he says, they gave us our first DOGE roadmap.
Speaker 2: As I understand the key steps. Number one put DOGE
Speaker 2: people at each US agency, then use advanced technology potentially
Speaker 2: AI to have them identify thousands of regulations to cut
Speaker 2: across government. Number two, give Trump a list of thousands
Speaker 2: of regulations to cut and have him approve their elimination.
Speaker 2: Number three identify the minimum number of employees necessary to
Speaker 2: maintain each agency's core function, which should be lower. Ones
Speaker 2: two is complete. For example, Musk oversaw about eighty percent
Speaker 2: reduction in x headcount. Number four cut the federal employees.
Speaker 2: Number five cut programs where Congress's specific spending authorization has lapsed.
Speaker 2: That includes things like VA health Care, NASA, and many
Speaker 2: anti poverty programs. Number six approve a temporary suspension of
Speaker 2: payments amid large scale audits. Don't really know what that means.
Speaker 2: Number seven assert POTUS authority to stop spending with out
Speaker 2: congressional approval by challenging that budget law we were talking
Speaker 2: about before. All seems to be without Congress. And then
Speaker 2: go and fight whatever you need to in the courts.
Speaker 2: And this is another thing where I think when people
Speaker 2: see this, a lot of people's natural instinct will be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: that sounds great, like government efficiency, like musk is you know. Personally,
Speaker 2: I think must like the idea of having the richest
Speaker 2: man in the world having who is, by the way,
Speaker 2: the I think largest Pentagon contractor are one of the
Speaker 2: largest Pentagon contractors in charge of just like, hey, do
Speaker 2: what you want, and by the way, has a bunch
Speaker 2: of legal issues with the federal government because of labor
Speaker 2: alleged labor violations and environmental violations and all kinds of
Speaker 2: other things. Now he gets to go in and be
Speaker 2: like those regulations that I was running foul of, no problem.
Speaker 2: Let me make sure I'm getting my taxpayer goodies are
Speaker 2: coming to me. But my competitors or maybe I down
Speaker 2: like you know, and just the general thrust of if
Speaker 2: you are a plutocrat, the weaker the government is, the
Speaker 2: better it is for you, because that's the only entity
Speaker 2: that can really check you and your impulses and the
Speaker 2: things that you want to do as the self appointed
Speaker 2: master of the universe.
Speaker 4: That's my view.
Speaker 2: But I think a lot of people look at this
Speaker 2: and like government efficiency sounds good, yep. But again, like
Speaker 2: with the deportation, then when it's like that means that
Speaker 2: Social Security is getting cut, or payments aren't going out,
Speaker 2: or via healthcare stops, or you know, various other important
Speaker 2: social safety net programs, or school funding gets cut, whatever
Speaker 2: it is. When you actually get down to the specifics
Speaker 2: of what this looks like, it's another thing. Because the
Speaker 2: budget is basically defense, which you know, Musk is going
Speaker 2: to continue to get his contracts, so I'm and Trump
Speaker 2: has always increased the defense budget. I would be shocked
Speaker 2: if he did any different this administration. So it's defense,
Speaker 2: and then if you're not cutting defense, then everyth else
Speaker 2: is basically like Social Security and medicare. The other items
Speaker 2: in the budget are comparatively like, relatively trivial, So if
Speaker 2: you're making massive cuts, you are almost inherently cutting those
Speaker 2: programs which are extremely popular and extremely important to the public.
Speaker 1: The political viability of doing this was experienced by the
Speaker 1: Republican Party when Donald Trump was first elected, and they
Speaker 1: had campaigned for nearly a decade on repeal and replace Obamacare,
Speaker 1: repeal and replace, repeal and replace and then when the
Speaker 1: reality hit them, and senators including John McCain, who said
Speaker 1: he would repeal and replace, ultimately voted down the legislation
Speaker 1: that had been I mean, if there was a repeal
Speaker 1: and replace bill that could be as friendly to most
Speaker 1: of the party as possible, it's what they were ultimately
Speaker 1: voting on. Lost by one vote, and it's because Republicans
Speaker 1: got really spooked by the reality of how voters would
Speaker 1: react when things changed. Would they be able to actually
Speaker 1: implement a change that was better than what they'd been
Speaker 1: saying they were going to repeal and replace? Does the
Speaker 1: replace part of that? You can repeal regulations and I
Speaker 1: think a lot obviously I support a lot of that,
Speaker 1: but how do voters react to it? It's a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty serious question that nineteen seventy four budget law in
Speaker 1: policy circles that has just electrified the nerds like going
Speaker 1: crazy over what you actually because it's really consequential. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the president can just I mean, if they operate on that,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it would be a lawsuit no matter what.
Speaker 1: But if they start operating on that principle, there's so
Speaker 1: much that they can do. And that's partially because there's
Speaker 1: so much administrative bloat. I mean, that is definitely part
Speaker 1: of it. But at the same time, the way that
Speaker 1: some of this happens, you know, they're going to have
Speaker 1: to make sure that there's an off ramp, and that
Speaker 1: is what seems less certain that they want to do
Speaker 1: that like for some of these programs, that there will
Speaker 1: actually be a way for people to adjust that isn't
Speaker 1: shocking and then translates into political losses.
Speaker 2: It also comes into conflict, is a good way to
Speaker 2: say to our next piece. It also comes in conflict
Speaker 2: with what Rfk Junior claims he wants to do at AJHS,
Speaker 2: because what he wants to do would actually be to
Speaker 2: implement more regulations and you know, to ban certain substances
Speaker 2: from our foods and things of that nature, and to
Speaker 2: actually increase some of the regulatory state. And you know,
Speaker 2: that cuts not only against what Musk and the Vager
Speaker 2: task with do him, but also cuts completely against what
Speaker 2: the Trump administration did last time around. Emily, you've been
Speaker 2: taking a look at this, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, this is incredibly interesting, and we can put this
Speaker 1: Lee Fong piece up on the screen. This is C
Speaker 1: one and Lee sort of did a dive into how
Speaker 1: lobbyists in the food and drug industry in particular, are
Speaker 1: reacting to the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Junior to
Speaker 1: serve as the head of the Health and Human Services Agency,
Speaker 1: which is honestly, if you are OURFK Junior and you
Speaker 1: have spent your career working on these issues, it's a
Speaker 1: fantasy come to life. I mean, this is truly like
Speaker 1: sort of being president. This is truly like the most
Speaker 1: powerful position he could find himself in here. So Lee
Speaker 1: was looking into the freak out that's happening and the
Speaker 1: effort to mobilize lobbyists starting to talk about advertising on
Speaker 1: a new media platforms, which is absolutely hilarious, like totally
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan is literally listed in the Fong story like
Speaker 1: you guys want to Bobby for what pepsi on Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan Show.
Speaker 2: But let me say, I mean, we saw with the
Speaker 2: whole ten of Media thing that a bunch of these
Speaker 2: quote unquote independent podcasters are willing to take money from
Speaker 2: whatever and hill for whatever, because they're not really independent media.
Speaker 2: They're you know, outside of the legacy media, but they're
Speaker 2: they'll take the money. Like I think it's a smart
Speaker 2: strategy from these junk food makers like start advertising, but
Speaker 2: some others Yeah, but I mean maybe I don't know,
Speaker 2: but but some others certainly. And yeah, that's the way
Speaker 2: that you buy influence, because if you're getting a giant
Speaker 2: paycheck from freedo lay or whatever, and then how critical
Speaker 2: are you ultimately going to be? So you know, they
Speaker 2: know that these people can be bought in the same
Speaker 2: way that the mainstream outlets can be bought as well,
Speaker 2: and in a lot of senses, not just I mean,
Speaker 2: it's very clear. The connection is actually more direct because
Speaker 2: if you do work at a CNN or an MSNBC,
Speaker 2: you're not the one as a host who's talking to
Speaker 2: the advertisers. You're not the one doing the ad reads,
Speaker 2: whereas in many instances in these alternative media spaces, like
Speaker 2: you're talking directly to these corporate sponsors. This is why
Speaker 2: we don't do any of this here, and why it's
Speaker 2: really important that we not do any of this here
Speaker 2: so that there's not even the appearance of potential corruption
Speaker 2: with regard to these you know, food companies or anything
Speaker 2: else that you might be shilling. And then not only
Speaker 2: are you talking directly to them, you're the one doing
Speaker 2: the ad read for whatever it is. So you know,
Speaker 2: I think it is an intelligent influence pedaling strategy and
Speaker 2: we'll probably see some success.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I've done some small like adroids for small
Speaker 1: companies and you have to be even that you have
Speaker 1: to be really, really really careful course, because you have
Speaker 1: to like drill down and see like the it's it's
Speaker 1: especially if you don't have a corporate bureaucratic infrastructure to
Speaker 1: kind of make some of those legal decisions. You just
Speaker 1: have to be so careful. And a lot of people
Speaker 1: aren't obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people will you know, all kinds of things that
Speaker 2: are like do you really stand by this product? Yeah,
Speaker 2: or some of the financial advice stuff I mean that
Speaker 2: to me, or the supplements or whatever, like you really
Speaker 2: feel confident that this is that this works and it
Speaker 2: does what they say and it doesn't have blowback whatever.
Speaker 2: So yeah, in any case, I don't think that this
Speaker 2: is a crazy strategy. I think it will probably be
Speaker 2: pretty effective.
Speaker 1: Now if we put C two up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is more from Lee's story about the details on
Speaker 1: how the industry is trying to disrupt potentially what ourf
Speaker 1: continu to be able to do. So he starts with
Speaker 1: Senate confirmation, and he says they note that as RFK
Speaker 1: meets with senators, they will discreetly, they will ask discreetly
Speaker 1: that he trades major MAHA policy items away in or
Speaker 1: or to get fifty votes. So pressure senators to get
Speaker 1: concessions prematurely, preemptively from Bobby Kennedy Junior in exchange for
Speaker 1: them actually voting him. Through the second part of it,
Speaker 1: we just talked about Joe Rogan and independent podcasts. They
Speaker 1: call for shifting advertising budgets of major snack producers and
Speaker 1: processed foods. Don't just fund legacy media in the Beltwait press. Thirdly,
Speaker 1: they go with appropriations, and they note that congressional voices,
Speaker 1: according to Lee, can block RFK from implementing any of
Speaker 1: his policy goals by freezing funding for the FDA or HHS.
Speaker 1: Similar strategies were used previously to force regulators to count
Speaker 1: frozen pizza as a vegetable ethic. Actual, Yeah, classic, many
Speaker 1: such cases, as Donald Trump would say, not entirely unusual
Speaker 1: at all, but obviously a very very core part of
Speaker 1: their ability to thwart what Bobby Kennedy Junior wants to
Speaker 1: do if he is confirmed as Secretary of HHS. And
Speaker 1: to your point, Crystal, it's interesting because his agenda is
Speaker 1: a patchwork of deregulate and hyper regulategulate milk, deregulate all
Speaker 1: of these different like it's not just raw milk. He
Speaker 1: wants to deregulate different types of foods that he thinks
Speaker 1: are overregulated, and some of it is you get this
Speaker 1: like patchwork. This is the most disgusting part about our system.
Speaker 1: We were talking about, Elon, this patchwork that we're different.
Speaker 1: Loopholes have been carved out by special interests over time.
Speaker 1: So what we regulate what we don't regulate, especially in
Speaker 1: food and drugs, is so so inconsistent because we've just
Speaker 1: been oh you want this in this bill. Sure, oh
Speaker 1: you want this in this bill, Like just concessions made
Speaker 1: over the course of decades that make absolutely no sense.
Speaker 1: So he wants to do a little extra regulating, a
Speaker 1: little less regulating, and it's like, where does that drive
Speaker 1: with the Vivec and Elon. I think that's probably the
Speaker 1: most interesting tension in the entire Trump administration because they're
Speaker 1: all close, Like that's a group of people, Elon, Viveke
Speaker 1: and RFK Junior that have become a serious like that
Speaker 1: would say tightly nit part of the Trump coalition. And
Speaker 1: so I'm pretty curious just to in practice, in practice,
Speaker 1: when Elon and Vivek start making these recommendations to deregulate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where does RFK junior fault if he's confirmed? And that
Speaker 1: is a very big if.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think always in government, even putting Elon in
Speaker 2: this cast of characters aside, always in government it's easier
Speaker 2: to sort of tear down than it is to build.
Speaker 2: So I think RFK is much more likely to have
Speaker 2: success in like deregulating raw milk and which okay, whatever, fine,
Speaker 2: And also in you know, he wants to really like
Speaker 2: he wants to really clean house at places like that
Speaker 2: DA and the NIH. And you know, I'm the first
Speaker 2: to be critical of the revolving door and the corruption
Speaker 2: between those agencies and the businesses that they're supposed to regulate.
Speaker 2: But if you want to actually have food and drug
Speaker 2: regulation and you know, be able to go and do
Speaker 2: inspections and these things which are important. Mean, we just
Speaker 2: had this huge lost lifesteria outbreak at Boar's Head and
Speaker 2: Jaddi Coli and McDonald like, it's important that you have
Speaker 2: as regulatory bodies. I think it's much more likely that
Speaker 2: you're going to get the libertarian like stripping away the regulations,
Speaker 2: getting rid of the employees, you know, letting people do
Speaker 2: what they want with ram hilk, which again, okay, fine
Speaker 2: if you want to, then you are those other pieces
Speaker 2: of adding in new regulations and keeping things out of
Speaker 2: the food supply and having a body that's able to
Speaker 2: go and do those inspections and make sure that that's
Speaker 2: actually happening, because that also would some of that at
Speaker 2: least would would require acts of Congress as well, And
Speaker 2: as Lee indicates in this piece, I mean as whatever
Speaker 2: Republicans want to say publicly, like they are getting tons
Speaker 2: of money from big food and big AG and they're
Speaker 2: not going to want to give that up lightly. In fact,
Speaker 2: we could put C four up on the screen here.
Speaker 2: Guys like Chuck Grassley, who obviously senator from Iowa. Corn
Speaker 2: very famously very important there, and the government's subsidizes corn production.
Speaker 2: That's why if you go in the grocery store, like
Speaker 2: most of the center aisles are just different ways that
Speaker 2: you can combine corn into different food items. He says
Speaker 2: he wants to meet with RFK junior. However, he says,
Speaker 2: I may have to spend a lot of time educating
Speaker 2: him about agriculture, and I am willing to do that,
Speaker 2: so grassly skeptical. A bunch of rural farm state Republicans
Speaker 2: who are very much like I said on the take
Speaker 2: floor with Big agg and with you know, big food,
Speaker 2: are going to be pretty skeptical of making any big changes.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that they won't necessarily vote to confirm RFK,
Speaker 2: but then if he actually wants to come to them
Speaker 2: to do anything, that is a whole other can of worms.
Speaker 1: I actually asked a source about this recently, because Trump
Speaker 1: has been open on this tension. You know, he said,
Speaker 1: We're not gonna let Bobby go anywhere near the liquid
Speaker 1: natural gas. He said, like have fun, Bobby, but liquid gold.
Speaker 1: Like stay away from the liquid gold. And I asked
Speaker 1: a source whether there would be enough people to staff
Speaker 1: HHS under RFK Junior. Because what's interesting is that some
Speaker 1: even Tea Party senators like Iron Johnson have very sincerely said.
Speaker 5: We were wrong.
Speaker 1: We are changing our views on food and on drugs,
Speaker 1: and we were way too deferential to corporate interests, and
Speaker 1: like whatever anybody thinks of Ron Johnson. That man is
Speaker 1: entirely sincere about this new world view, and he's been
Speaker 1: pretty like transparent about what changed his mind and opened
Speaker 1: his eyes. And there are a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the greater conservative world. This first started with cultural issues
Speaker 1: that became very disillusioned with the Chamber of Commerce in
Speaker 1: corporate America and now have no relationships with those prior supporters, donors, allies,
Speaker 1: and have sincerely come around on the question of food
Speaker 1: and drugs. But when I asked the source, like, are
Speaker 1: there enough people to even go into the government and
Speaker 1: give him staff, person was like, no, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of appetite, but there's not a lot of actual and
Speaker 1: power that genuinely believes. And we can put this this
Speaker 1: is C three, I think up on the screen. This
Speaker 1: is some polling. We can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Voters disapproves, disapprove of recess appointments. They disagree with Trump
Speaker 1: nomine's controversial statements, and some of that is related to
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy Junior. This is voters disagree with various
Speaker 1: statements made by HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 1: And if you're looking here at some of the like
Speaker 1: most this really is crystal some of the most controversial
Speaker 1: stuff that RFK Junior has said that's being pulled here.
Speaker 2: This is I'm going to go for it. It's not controversial.
Speaker 2: Most of the stuff is batshit insane. Vaccines do not
Speaker 2: cause autism, HIV is the cause of AIDS. That suggest otherwise,
Speaker 2: you know, this is where like you know, I know,
Speaker 2: there's like some of the things RFK says about food
Speaker 2: and whatever, I'm totally on board with, even as I'm
Speaker 2: completely skeptical that any of this is actually got any
Speaker 2: of the positive things I would want to see are
Speaker 2: actually going to happen. This is why I think putting
Speaker 2: him at AJHS is honestly terrifying, because while he is
Speaker 2: skeptical of anything that is mainstream science, including Settle signed
Speaker 2: like the measles and the polio vaccines were a great
Speaker 2: benefit to society, and to suggest otherwise, I think is
Speaker 2: deeply damaging. And to have someone in a piece of
Speaker 2: position of power who believes that is quite scary and yeah,
Speaker 2: to be an AIDS truther in this like that's that
Speaker 2: is so frightening to me and potentially damaging that you
Speaker 2: could have someone like that in a position of power.
Speaker 2: You know, this crazy thing is that about like COVID
Speaker 2: nineteen was ethnically targeted. The new one that I like
Speaker 2: is that he had a conspiracy that actually was the
Speaker 2: Trump administration that developed COVID nineteen as like a bioweapon.
Speaker 1: Excellent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that audio just came out. The chemicals in
Speaker 2: the drinking water are transing the kids. Like, this is
Speaker 2: where it's online and the kids and the kids. This
Speaker 2: is where the online bubble is a real bubble because
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly people do not believe these things and you know,
Speaker 2: do not support them whatsoever. But if you, you know,
Speaker 2: if you go online and say, hey, you know what,
Speaker 2: vaccines actually are good and have been good for humanity,
Speaker 2: you will get instantly dogfiled.
Speaker 1: To the point where we were having the conversation we
Speaker 1: were having earlier about social media is in some ways
Speaker 1: totally overlapping it is real life. And then in other
Speaker 1: ways it is disproportionately a platform for echo chamber stuff too,
Speaker 1: still very much so. And that's where it's like, I
Speaker 1: was curious why I asked this person, you know, and
Speaker 1: this is a person is a longtime Capitol Hill senior staffer,
Speaker 1: like does this exist even in like professional Republican circles,
Speaker 1: like A people who are comfortable with the anti corporatism
Speaker 1: of RFK Junior, and then B who are willing to
Speaker 1: sort of put up with some of that. No, like
Speaker 1: that just is not like the middle of that. Then
Speaker 1: diagram is not big enough that you get people who
Speaker 1: are comfortable, you know, potentially being in a position. And
Speaker 1: this is RFK Junior. Also, he has to make his
Speaker 1: decision about what he would prioritize if he's confirmed, and
Speaker 1: as he's having conversations with senators, they're going to ask
Speaker 1: him about every single one of those. So he has
Speaker 1: to decide, you know, you are in this fantasy position
Speaker 1: that you've dreamed of being in for decades. Do you
Speaker 1: touch vaccines? Do you touch It's hard to see how
Speaker 1: he wouldn't, but do you touch aids? Like, what do
Speaker 1: you actually do on those topics? Good luck figuring that
Speaker 1: one out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And my experience in interviewing him is that even
Speaker 2: as he talks about corporate power, he is actually much
Speaker 2: more of a libertarian at this point, which is why
Speaker 2: you know, something like universal healthcare was never something that
Speaker 2: he embraced, at least not in this campaign. Maybe he
Speaker 2: did in past iterations, but you know when I asked
Speaker 2: him about that, he was oppositional. When you know, he'll
Speaker 2: talk about corporate green how this is such a bad
Speaker 2: part in terms of the food and drug systems. But
Speaker 2: then it's like, Okay, well, do you want to you know,
Speaker 2: do you want to nationalize some of these pharmaceutical companies.
Speaker 2: Do you want to do like what they do in
Speaker 2: California of having state produced insulin that can compete at
Speaker 2: least to you know, provide lower costs. Like, he's not
Speaker 2: interested in any of those sorts of things. So I
Speaker 2: find the his comments about corporate power, skepticism of corporate
Speaker 2: power to not be backed up with policy that would
Speaker 2: actually challenge corporate power. So in any case, we'll see
Speaker 2: how all of this goes. But you know, many of
Speaker 2: the things that he believes in and he supports are
Speaker 2: you know, effectively a rollback of some of the most
Speaker 2: important advances in modern medicine that have helped to eradicate measles,
Speaker 2: have helped to eradicate polio, And you know, we could
Speaker 2: face another pandemic, we could face another situation where this
Speaker 2: becomes incredibly important and have someone who is skeptical certainly
Speaker 2: of corporate profit motives. Great, but who is so credulous
Speaker 2: when it comes to any sort of like insane crackpot
Speaker 2: theory floated by Rando's on Facebook or whatever, is to
Speaker 2: me very frightening.
Speaker 1: My position on this is basically like we all know
Speaker 1: that HHS and the revolving door situation with food and
Speaker 1: drug is a complete mess and disaster, or same thing
Speaker 1: with FDA, same thing with NIH like these are obviously
Speaker 1: obviously agencies that desperately need to be uprooted. I don't
Speaker 1: know how much anyone could do in terms of doubling
Speaker 1: down on their existing power or being a metaphorical grenade
Speaker 1: to their existing power. In four years. I genuinely like,
Speaker 1: if you're worried about RFK Junior, I think he'll be
Speaker 1: more powerful than people fully understand because of the regulatory
Speaker 1: control that you have as a cabinet head. But I
Speaker 1: think even then you just in four years, I don't
Speaker 1: know how much you can metaphorically grenade all of this.
Speaker 1: So we will see crystal. Speaking of metaphorical grenades, Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders lobbed one on the floor of the Senate just yesterday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right, so Bernie Sanders offered in I
Speaker 2: know it's a resolution, I'm not sure what the technical
Speaker 2: term is for it, but he basically offer an opportunity
Speaker 2: for people to vote against continuing to fund this Israeli
Speaker 2: onslaught in Gaza, and he was able to garner more
Speaker 2: support than we've ever seen for such a measure. Still
Speaker 2: far too few senators ultimately voting for it. But let's
Speaker 2: take a listen to Bernie Sanders on the Senate floor
Speaker 2: right now making the case.
Speaker 6: The Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act
Speaker 6: are very clear. The United States cannot provide weapons to
Speaker 6: countries that violate internaturally recognized human rights or block US
Speaker 6: humanitarian aid. Let me repeat that, because that is the
Speaker 6: essence of this entire debate, not complicated. The United States
Speaker 6: government cannot provide weaponapons to countries that violate internationally recognize
Speaker 6: human rights or block US humanitarian aid. That is not
Speaker 6: my opinion. That is what the law says, mana President,
Speaker 6: According to the United Nations, according to much of the
Speaker 6: international community, according to virtually every humanitarian organization on the
Speaker 6: ground in Gaza, Israel is clearly in violation of these laws.
Speaker 6: Under these circumstances, it is illegal for the United States
Speaker 6: government to provide Israel with more offensive weapons.
Speaker 2: So that speech and this vote came just before the
Speaker 2: International Criminal Court has now officially issued arrest warrants for
Speaker 2: both bb NA, Yahoo and for former Defense Minister Joav Gallant.
Speaker 2: We can put this up on the screen, Jeremy Scahill
Speaker 2: tweeting out this news, and he goes on to say
Speaker 2: that the ICC said there is reasonable grounds to assert
Speaker 2: both Natanyahu and Galant engaged in quote the war crime
Speaker 2: of starvation as a method of warfare, which by the way,
Speaker 2: relates directly to what Bernie Sanders was just saying there,
Speaker 2: and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other
Speaker 2: even humane acts. The warrant remains classified in part to
Speaker 2: protect witnesses. He also points out Jeremy Scahill does is,
Speaker 2: of course, Ryan's partner over at drop site. This week,
Speaker 2: the incoming Senate Majority leader John Thune called on Congress
Speaker 2: who passed bipartisan legislation sanctioning ICC prosecutors attempting to prosecute
Speaker 2: Israeli officials. So obviously this is a significant move. It's
Speaker 2: one we've been expecting for quite some time. You know,
Speaker 2: while there is no police force that can go out
Speaker 2: internationally and go to Israel and arrest and Yahoo, there
Speaker 2: are quite a lot of countries worldwide where he will
Speaker 2: now no longer be able to travel without being in
Speaker 2: danger of arrest. And for the Israeli Psyche also to
Speaker 2: have their prime minister now arrest warrant issued for these
Speaker 2: crimes against humanity is quite significant. But just to go
Speaker 2: back to Bernie here for a moment, like I said,
Speaker 2: this relates directly to what Bernie was saying. He's pointing out,
Speaker 2: we don't have to even look at international law, which
Speaker 2: I think we should look at international law, but you
Speaker 2: don't have to. The US has laws on the books
Speaker 2: that says you cannot supply military weapons to a country
Speaker 2: that is blocking humanitarian.
Speaker 4: Aid law Blake he law exactly.
Speaker 2: The Biden administration before the election sent out this letter,
Speaker 2: you have thirty days time Israel to prove to us
Speaker 2: that you are not blocking humanitarian aid and to improve
Speaker 2: the situation on the ground. They laid out specific benchmarks
Speaker 2: of the number of eight trucks that they wanted to
Speaker 2: see going. We all know Israel did not meet those benchmarks.
Speaker 2: Now the State Department. Ryan pressed them, and other journalists
Speaker 2: pressed them as well. They said, we don't really know,
Speaker 2: We can't really say, we didn't really assess, and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: you wrote the letter, you laid down the benchmark, and
Speaker 2: now you don't know and you can't say. But long
Speaker 2: story short, once the election was over, oh lo and behold,
Speaker 2: we're just going to keep doing what we have been doing.
Speaker 2: So let me just put this next piece up on
Speaker 2: the screen and then Emily I'll get your reaction. This
Speaker 2: is D two. So Bernie did garner some significant support.
Speaker 2: As I said, this is far too few, but you
Speaker 2: had eighteen Democratic senators and one voting present, but eighteen
Speaker 2: who voted in support of blocking those tank rounds to Israel.
Speaker 2: They were Heinrich herono Kin, Tim Kain, Angus King, Marky
Speaker 2: Murkley Ossoff. That's an interesting one because he is Georgia
Speaker 2: swing state up for reelection in twenty and in this
Speaker 2: next election cycle, so that's interesting.
Speaker 4: Bernie.
Speaker 2: Of course, Shots Smith, Elizabeth Warren, Peter Welch, Dick Durbin,
Speaker 2: Chris fin Holland, Jean Shaheen, Luhan Warnock. Aff's obviously partner
Speaker 2: down there in Georgia and Chris Murphy and Baldwin was
Speaker 2: Baldwin was the president. Krper was a yes, then flipped
Speaker 2: to no. So again, obviously no, we're close to a majority,
Speaker 2: but we've never seen this level of resistance to continuing
Speaker 2: to fund and supply Israel, So in that way, it
Speaker 2: is noteworthy.
Speaker 1: Well, and John Osoff Ryan pointed this out on x
Speaker 1: that is the only Democrat to vote to restrict those
Speaker 1: weaponshipments to Israel from a state that Donald Trump won.
Speaker 1: He is up for reelection this coming cycle as well,
Speaker 1: and that is John Asoff, So that I do think
Speaker 1: does speak to the nature of how differently people are
Speaker 1: seeing this conflict right now. In John Ossoff, by the way,
Speaker 1: he's a very interesting figure. He's sort of far left
Speaker 1: progressive on some populist questions. He also obviously has a
Speaker 1: base in Georgia, so he has to you know, I
Speaker 1: think he's genuinely kind of centrist on other things. But
Speaker 1: all that is to say he has this thumb very
Speaker 1: firmly on the pulse of like younger voters. Yeah, you've
Speaker 1: probably noticed this too, and that's one of the things
Speaker 1: boomer politicians are confounded by when they look at public
Speaker 1: opinion polling on Israel. I think they totally missed in
Speaker 1: the election. For example, You've talked about this in your monologues,
Speaker 1: like how significantly that either depressed the youth vote, depressed
Speaker 1: youth turnout, depressed youth support for Kamala Harris, or shifted
Speaker 1: some people to Donald Trump. And we can disagree with
Speaker 1: the reasons that they would have done that, but younger
Speaker 1: Americans are just see this conflict so incredibly differently because
Speaker 1: their experiences are post nine eleven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also Black Americans tend to have a very
Speaker 2: different view of this conflict. And obviously Georgia, with a
Speaker 2: large black population, Reverend Warnut coming out of the black
Speaker 2: church tradition would be very much in touch with that
Speaker 2: and those historic connections between black civil rights movements and
Speaker 2: the struggle for liberation in Palestine. The other thing with
Speaker 2: the other question with us off is you know, is
Speaker 2: this a guy who has presidential ambition who for him
Speaker 2: this vote is also you know, laying down a marker
Speaker 2: to distinguish himself on an issue that I think is
Speaker 2: going to end up being a litmus test in the future.
Speaker 4: For this party.
Speaker 2: As I hope history reckons with the whoors that unfolded
Speaker 2: thanks to the Biden administration. And the other thing that's
Speaker 2: become really clear is we can put this up on
Speaker 2: the screen. You know, there was a bit of a
Speaker 2: question going into the election, is d three guys. There's
Speaker 2: a bit of a question heading into the election, like, oh,
Speaker 2: are the Biden Harris people just sort of doing the
Speaker 2: wrong calculation about how the politics of this work. And
Speaker 2: they're still in this old model where they think you
Speaker 2: just have to support Israel and that it's electorally damaging
Speaker 2: not to do so. And maybe once the election is over.
Speaker 2: I never really thought this was the case, but anyway,
Speaker 2: this was a theory, right, maybe once the election is over,
Speaker 2: then maybe Biden, Look, Yolo, you've got only probably not
Speaker 2: that much longer time on this first, but certainly not
Speaker 2: that much longer time in the White House, like you
Speaker 2: can take a Firmer line, you can actually be moral
Speaker 2: and do the right thing. But the White House was
Speaker 2: whipping aggressively against this measure from Bernie Sanders, including saying
Speaker 2: that if you oppose these weapons, you're basically hamas classic
Speaker 2: and also in this these talking points that Huffposts was
Speaker 2: able to get their hands on they also really undercut
Speaker 2: their public messaging that they want a ceasefire and talked
Speaker 2: about how now's the time for Israel to put the
Speaker 2: pressure on and continue fighting. So, you know, even this
Speaker 2: public posture that they were supposedly in favor of ending
Speaker 2: the fighting and seeking a ceasefire is really undercut by
Speaker 2: the way that they were whipping against this. Chuck Schumer
Speaker 2: was also involved in pressing senators to, you know, back
Speaker 2: the continuing flow of military equipment to Israel. So you know,
Speaker 2: if anything, actually, I think what we know now is
Speaker 2: that the electoral calculation they did realize that they were
Speaker 2: couldn't just be all in for Israel. They had to
Speaker 2: at least give some rhetorical nod to restraint with regards
Speaker 2: to this conflict. And now that the election is over,
Speaker 2: Biden can go fully, you know, fully embrace his I guess,
Speaker 2: genicidal instincts here and you know, not even pretend like
Speaker 2: he wants to seas fire at this point.
Speaker 1: One of the things that huff Post Piece points out
Speaker 1: is something Ryan talked about yesterday. This is really the
Speaker 1: first time that Congress has considered banning weapon shipments to Israel.
Speaker 1: So Bernie introduced these joint resolutions of disapproval, and it
Speaker 1: was basically blocking six weapon transfers, so that would be
Speaker 1: things like guided missiles, tank grounds, mortars, tactical vehicles, and
Speaker 1: F fifteen fighters. So it's very rare that you're actually
Speaker 1: forcing members of Congress to go on the record on
Speaker 1: this question. And the Biden administration, to the point you
Speaker 1: were just making, was pushing so hard precisely because of that.
Speaker 1: It's not something that they want people going the record
Speaker 1: in the middle of the war to point out, because
Speaker 1: that's just not something we've done historically. We've bear hugged historically,
Speaker 1: and absolutely for you know, Israeli politicians, Israeli voters to
Speaker 1: see this, I think does really change things going forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at the same time, you know, also to
Speaker 2: that point about how the Biden administration really feels, let's
Speaker 2: put this next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 16: D four.
Speaker 2: They just vetoed another UN Security Council resolution that demanded
Speaker 2: an immediate, unconditional permanencies fire and release unconditional release of
Speaker 2: all hostages. Fourteen voted in favor. One that's US opposed.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's a contrast with when Obama was
Speaker 2: on the way out, he actually allowed some resolution of
Speaker 2: condemnation of Israeli content I think of the Israeli occupation
Speaker 2: to go through the UN Security Council. You know, once
Speaker 2: he was already okay, you know we're done here. I'm
Speaker 2: not running for like I can't run for reelection. He
Speaker 2: allowed that to go through, and that was noteworthy. Here
Speaker 2: we have Biden administration choosing the polar opposite direction. Noteworthy
Speaker 2: speech given from the Palestinian representative really, you know, laying
Speaker 2: things out about the double standards as applied to Israel.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to a little bit of that.
Speaker 17: But then, President, the world should not go accustomed to
Speaker 17: the death of Palestinians, to seeing Palestinian children starving, to
Speaker 17: seeing mothers carrying their children from one place to another
Speaker 17: forcibly displaced. They should not get accustomed to seeing journalists
Speaker 17: killed and humanitarians killed, to see Palestinians detained, abducted, carried
Speaker 17: on trucks to go be tortured, sexually, absused, and raped.
Speaker 17: Is there a UN charter for Israel that is different
Speaker 17: from the chapter you all have.
Speaker 5: Tell us?
Speaker 17: Is there an international law for them, an international law
Speaker 17: for us? Do they have the right to kill and
Speaker 17: the only right we have is to die.
Speaker 2: And as you were saying, Emily, you know, if you
Speaker 2: ask people did they vote on foreign very few say
Speaker 2: that the foreign policy was their number one issue. But
Speaker 2: just to give you guys a little bit of a teaser,
Speaker 2: we actually been interviewing some of those Griffin's been out
Speaker 2: interviewing some of those AOC Trump voters, and I listened
Speaker 2: to the first one yesterday, and the first thing she
Speaker 2: said of why she voted for Trump and AOC is
Speaker 2: because she wanted peace yep, and.
Speaker 1: Trump was talking about that on the campaign trill. He
Speaker 1: kept saying, I'm the candidate of peace.
Speaker 2: Now I think that Trump is not the candidate of peace.
Speaker 2: But if you are trying to position yourself as the
Speaker 2: campaign that has the moral high ground, making an argument
Speaker 2: and for favor of democracy, human rights, et cetera, and
Speaker 2: voters are looking on their phones every day and seeing
Speaker 2: these horrors unfold in their name with their tax dollars,
Speaker 2: that's kind of going to undercut your position as the
Speaker 2: you know, morally superior party. And when you're on there
Speaker 2: claiming you're going to be the best for the working
Speaker 2: class or the or the middle class. Was the language
Speaker 2: that Kamala use which I prefer working class, but anyway,
Speaker 2: we'll put that aside. When you're out there claiming that
Speaker 2: you're going to deliver for people in middle class, that's
Speaker 2: what you're going to be focused on. But what they
Speaker 2: see is that you seem to be and certainly Biden
Speaker 2: the way he talked definitely seemed to be way more
Speaker 2: focused on NATO Aucus Ukraine and you know, backing Israel lessly.
Speaker 4: People rightly question whether your.
Speaker 2: Commitment to those economic issues is real, and whether your
Speaker 2: commitment to using their tax dollars actually help them rather
Speaker 2: than fuel these foreign conflicts is real. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's not things are not isolated in the way that
Speaker 2: polsters portray or that pundits portray. I think that I'm
Speaker 2: not going to say it was the only issue. I
Speaker 2: don't know that it was determinative, but it was significant
Speaker 2: that the backing of these horrors undercut the Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: campaign and you know, helped to usher back in the
Speaker 2: next Trump administration. In my view, there is no doubt
Speaker 2: in my mind, and you know, people are not wrong
Speaker 2: to be horrified by what this administration has done, and
Speaker 2: now that the election is over, their true colors are
Speaker 2: only coming out to an even greater extent than they
Speaker 2: were previously.
Speaker 1: Two points of breaking news. Ryan just posted that the
Speaker 1: State Department is canceled it's briefing today and secondly, Bankavier
Speaker 1: I'm relying on a translation that Yasher Alia is reading here,
Speaker 1: but just very recently tweeted that Israel should, as Jasher
Speaker 1: puts it, react to the news of ICC arrest warrants
Speaker 1: by annexing the occupied West Bank. Combine that with US
Speaker 1: incoming ambassador to Israel, Mike Kakab, and the way Mike
Speaker 1: Kakabi sees the West Bank. For example, I don't know
Speaker 1: that Trump will be the candidate of peace.
Speaker 2: Well, and Miriam Maddilson, who back to Trump to the
Speaker 2: twoe of some one hundred million dollars, has said this
Speaker 2: was a top priority for her, the annexation of the
Speaker 2: West Bank. So you know, Huckabee Adelson and now I
Speaker 2: would say Trump more aligned with like the Ben Gaverers
Speaker 2: and the Smotriches of the world. Then you know, not
Speaker 2: that this is like a great difference, but the Biden
Speaker 2: administration was like Youoev Golan, who also is a monster
Speaker 2: and was just just you know, arrest warrant out for
Speaker 2: him from the ICC as well, but he at least
Speaker 2: posture like he was interested in some sort of a
Speaker 2: peace deal. So anyway, I think that's that's likely where
Speaker 2: we are headed wild. Yeah. Indeed, very happy to be
Speaker 2: joined this morning by my great friend and independent substack
Speaker 2: journalist Torrey. You can follow him over at his Culture
Speaker 2: Fry's substack. Right to see you, my friends.
Speaker 10: Nice to see you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, So you did some fantastic reporting here.
Speaker 2: You can put this up on the screen about some
Speaker 2: of the internal dynamics within the Kamala Harris A campaign.
Speaker 2: And you asked the question, did Jen O'Malley Dylan, a
Speaker 2: Biden loyalist, doom Kamala's presidential bid? You say, Harris was
Speaker 2: forced to run with a Biden loyalist who stabbed her
Speaker 2: in the back. Just explain some of these dynamics that
Speaker 2: were going on behind the scenes, tore according to your reporting.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I just started calling my friends in DC at
Speaker 12: democratic high places, and people kept talking about Jen O'Malley Dylon,
Speaker 12: who was the campaign chair for Kamala Harris twenty twenty four,
Speaker 12: but in twenty twenty three, when Biden felt threatened that
Speaker 12: the party might try to push him out and replace
Speaker 12: him with Kamala, or forced him to force them to
Speaker 12: do a primary.
Speaker 10: Biden.
Speaker 18: People like gen o' mally dillon started messaging to media
Speaker 18: against Kamala.
Speaker 10: So there's these articles from twenty twenty three.
Speaker 18: Saying maybe Biden should dump Tamala as VP. Those are
Speaker 18: coming from Jen O'Malley Dylan. So the person who Kamala
Speaker 18: would later have to take on as their campaign chair
Speaker 18: because there's one hundred days left, we don't have time
Speaker 18: to look for a new person. We have a million tasks.
Speaker 18: We have to accept her. She had been messing doing
Speaker 18: it against her. Beside the fact that the entire campaign
Speaker 18: was constructed for Joe Biden, they just put a different
Speaker 18: space on it, and I think a lot of people
Speaker 18: understood there's a Frankenstein nature to this campaign. So it
Speaker 18: didn't feel right, it didn't fit right, And you've done
Speaker 18: a lot of criticism of the consulting class. Jeno melly
Speaker 18: Dylan is one of these people who has an ad
Speaker 18: buying company. So when a candidate places a television ad,
Speaker 18: Jen O'Malley Dylan or someone like her is personally enriched
Speaker 18: by that decision. In a campaign where television add as
Speaker 18: were maybe not decisive, and Trump going on podcasts and
Speaker 18: the Bros spear the man of fear and seeming like
Speaker 18: a man of the people. Somehow, when that was working,
Speaker 18: Jeneal malle Dillon and people like her are incentivized to
Speaker 18: not notice that trend. They are being personally enriched by
Speaker 18: putting her on TV ads again and again.
Speaker 10: So these are some of the reasons why people keep.
Speaker 18: Telling me Jenel Malladan was a big problem, but Kamala
Speaker 18: couldn't get away from her because the campaign did not
Speaker 18: have time.
Speaker 1: And there's reporting that there were still Biden sidens up
Speaker 1: inside Kamala Harris headquarters on election day because it just
Speaker 1: hadn't They hadn't fully like shifted. Could you talk to
Speaker 1: us a little bit about General Mallaydlan just as an operative,
Speaker 1: like who she is, where she came from, like the
Speaker 1: context about her. So I think it's sort of telling
Speaker 1: and you're right about this, I mean it's sort of
Speaker 1: telling us to what ended up happening the.
Speaker 18: Long term Biden person. She was huge in the victorious
Speaker 18: Biden campaign. She was also huge and the Disasters Better
Speaker 18: Work for President campaign. She was the Deputy White House
Speaker 18: Chief of Staff, so she isn't the real Biden person.
Speaker 18: And people talked about how Biden did not let do
Speaker 18: people in. Almost everybody around him had been around him
Speaker 18: since the seventies.
Speaker 10: Many of them shared his last name or in his family.
Speaker 18: So let somebody else do into the group, like General
Speaker 18: Mallley Dillon. She had to be really loved and trusted.
Speaker 18: So this is the person who signed up to work
Speaker 18: for Biden, who believed in Biden as far as the campaign,
Speaker 18: who felt like this is the guy. It's hard to
Speaker 18: run a campaign when the people around you didn't sign
Speaker 18: up for you and don't necessarily believe in you.
Speaker 10: And we see it. Jen's the example. A lot of
Speaker 10: people are like she.
Speaker 18: They never liked her. Jen just never was impressed by Kamala.
Speaker 10: Didn't want her to be the VP. How do you
Speaker 10: have that sort of a person who.
Speaker 18: Doesn't really believe in you truly deeply important to your campaign.
Speaker 2: I think it also, and you indicate this as well,
Speaker 2: could have had an impact on their inability to separate
Speaker 2: themselves from Joe Biden. Yep, And this ends up being
Speaker 2: one of the most central problems. I think everyone would
Speaker 2: acknowledge with the campaign is Kamala Harris gets asked this
Speaker 2: question on the view of what would you have done differently,
Speaker 2: and she says not a single thing. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you've got this guy who is profoundly unpopular. You can
Speaker 2: see the polls, we can all see the polls. We
Speaker 2: know as a change election, one of your biggest jobs
Speaker 2: is to try to make the case for why you
Speaker 2: would be different, and you're unable to do that.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 2: Obviously, Kamala Harris a big girl like she could have
Speaker 2: come up with that answer herself. But when you have
Speaker 2: a team around you that is so deeply loyal to
Speaker 2: Joe Biden and doesn't want to criticize him at all,
Speaker 2: then you aren't going to be supported from your staff
Speaker 2: in trying to separate yourself in the way you need
Speaker 2: to to be electorally successful.
Speaker 10: That's exactly right.
Speaker 18: The staff is the staff that loves Biden personally, that
Speaker 18: is loyal to him, that has been with him for years,
Speaker 18: is not going to counsel her to say, hey, I'm
Speaker 18: going to be different than Biden.
Speaker 10: Here's how I'm going to do it.
Speaker 18: A Kamala staff would have done that, but a Biden's
Speaker 18: staff advising Kamala is just not going to do that.
Speaker 18: And yes, a lot of people were like, she's not
Speaker 18: drawing enough of a contrast from the unpopular president. Well
Speaker 18: that then she becomes a semi incumbent where she has
Speaker 18: to run on his record, which she did not create.
Speaker 18: But then she also has to deal with what has
Speaker 18: she done the last four years?
Speaker 10: So like, which is it? She was getting the worst
Speaker 10: of it from both sides.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like and this is what I'm really
Speaker 1: curious about too. I've heard some on why Kamala Harrison
Speaker 1: decided to keep General Malley Dylan around, but it seems
Speaker 1: pretty clear at this point that's potentially the fatal error
Speaker 1: of her campaign. And I know we're going to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the lack of the primary and
Speaker 1: your position I think rightly on why that was disastrous
Speaker 1: for Democrats. But even keeping on General Malley decision, General
Speaker 1: O'Malley Dillon, which is a decision Kamala harrison't seem to
Speaker 1: have to make, but went with anyway, what do you
Speaker 1: I mean, was there anyway for Kamalahirs not to hire
Speaker 1: General Mallee Dylan.
Speaker 10: The people who I spoke to who understand.
Speaker 18: The Dems who understand campaigning were like, there was no
Speaker 18: way to move away from General Malley Dillon.
Speaker 10: We've got one hundred some days.
Speaker 18: We got to pick a VP, we got to get
Speaker 18: the messaging right, we got to get ready for the
Speaker 18: DNC A million, gigantic tasks that we generally spend.
Speaker 10: A year to two years doing. We got one hundred days.
Speaker 18: Anything that is not on fire, we gotta leave it
Speaker 18: be and just keep plowing forward. Yes, and General Malllee
Speaker 18: Dylon was too much of a part of the campaign already.
Speaker 18: She moved there to support the Biden campaign. When the
Speaker 18: switch happened, which is what they all call it, the switch,
Speaker 18: it was too late. We have to keep going. We
Speaker 18: can't replace her. They also had Stephanie Kutter, who was
Speaker 18: working communications, who founded that I buying firm with General
Speaker 18: Malley Dylan.
Speaker 10: It's a very small ancestraus group.
Speaker 18: So I don't know how far away from that sort
Speaker 18: of post Obama world she could have gotten away from
Speaker 18: because all these people David Fluff is the third big
Speaker 18: name advising the campaign.
Speaker 10: These are all Obama.
Speaker 2: People, right right, yeah, And I mean it is a
Speaker 2: difficult situation. She was put in let's put Torre's additional
Speaker 2: piece up on the screen where you talk about how
Speaker 2: the lack of a primary really was a disaster for
Speaker 2: Kamala is a disaster for the party in general. And again,
Speaker 2: you know, the general Malley Dillans of the world are
Speaker 2: kind of the scene of both crimes because they're also
Speaker 2: the ones that are leaking to the process, Like you
Speaker 2: got to just stay with Biden because Kamala would be
Speaker 2: next in line and she'd be a disaster. That helps
Speaker 2: to rally the troops and circle the wagon. So there
Speaker 2: is no real democratic primary process in order to you know,
Speaker 2: either pick a candidate who's different from Kamala or even
Speaker 2: just for Kamala herself to be able to go through
Speaker 2: that process and become a better candidate as a result
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 18: Yes, all the criticism of, oh, she's not great at interviews,
Speaker 18: she's not great at speeches, she's not great at connecting
Speaker 18: with voters, what have you, all of those things would
Speaker 18: have been strengthened if she had had time to campaign,
Speaker 18: If she'd had a year year and a half to
Speaker 18: be out in the trail, connecting with voters, talking to
Speaker 18: milli and Iowa, whatever, it would have made her better
Speaker 18: at all these things. But the other thing is that
Speaker 18: this air of illegitimacy hung around the campaign. If she
Speaker 18: had had to fight and won, that would have conveyed
Speaker 18: a certain legitimacy on her campaign. I know, some folks
Speaker 18: are going, she's the VP. You know, a lot of
Speaker 18: voters left and right used words like coronation, used words
Speaker 18: like who. They did not like the way that Kamala
Speaker 18: ascended to the nomination. They wanted to see some fight,
Speaker 18: and Kamala's message that democracy is under threat was undercut
Speaker 18: by the not so democratic way that she got the nomination.
Speaker 10: It undercut her whole argument.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, that's so true. And also if she had
Speaker 2: had to go through that process, and whether it's her
Speaker 2: that emerges or someone else, they would have been out
Speaker 2: there affirmatively making the case of what they wanted to
Speaker 2: do in opposition of what Biden has already done. So
Speaker 2: it sort of would have rendered moot this question of
Speaker 2: how are you different, because you would have had a
Speaker 2: whole primary process playing out where people are explaining what
Speaker 2: their views are and how they do things different and
Speaker 2: what it would look like going forward.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And you know, part of the thing too.
Speaker 18: People talked about Kamala's twenty twenty campaign was relatively short,
Speaker 18: so she doesn't create these deep bonds with campaign folks
Speaker 18: who are going to ride with her into the future.
Speaker 18: There weren't people from that campaign who were helping her
Speaker 18: this campaign. And other people have pointed out that Tony West,
Speaker 18: who is her brother in law I believe, yeah, who
Speaker 18: was a huge advisor to this campaign.
Speaker 10: At first, Kamala was.
Speaker 18: Saying, you know, we need to bring about prices. A
Speaker 18: lot of people were mad about the prices of ubers.
Speaker 18: Tony West was a lawyer at Uber. Please stop dissing
Speaker 18: Uber and Uber's prices. That was a great message for her.
Speaker 18: So the whole message of dealing with prices, they edged her,
Speaker 18: they pushed her away from because they were in that
Speaker 18: system being advised by people who are not helping.
Speaker 10: Her in the right way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a great point. And actually there was
Speaker 2: a lot of reporting about how influential Tony West ends
Speaker 2: up being. And that's like, you know, the one person
Speaker 2: she brings in that she feels comfortable with, and here
Speaker 2: he is this corporate lawyer who's like, you know, this
Speaker 2: price gouging stuff. I don't know about that. I don't
Speaker 2: know about that one. And so actually her super pac
Speaker 2: had tested this ad that was all about price gouging,
Speaker 2: and they said, you know, tested one hundred percent. It
Speaker 2: was the most effective ad they tested. It got virtually
Speaker 2: no money behind it because of that pushback from you know,
Speaker 2: the Tony West of the world and the other corporate
Speaker 2: donors who were uncomfortable with that messaging.
Speaker 4: So just yeah, a very.
Speaker 18: Somebody pointed out to me, and I hate to say it,
Speaker 18: but like Obama, Obama World, who else have they elected
Speaker 18: Beside Obama? They haven't gotten anybody else elected. And we
Speaker 18: can love him as a candidate and as a president,
Speaker 18: but like they haven't had any coattails. And this was
Speaker 18: another attempt to create that. And some may say like, okay,
Speaker 18: well Biden gets elected, like for sure, but like a
Speaker 18: lot of other people who the Obama world tried to
Speaker 18: push have failed.
Speaker 2: Well, and Obama World tried to shive Biden actually never
Speaker 2: had any confidence that he would succeed.
Speaker 4: So you know, there's there's a lot a lot there.
Speaker 10: Tori.
Speaker 4: Tell people where they can find you, where they can
Speaker 4: follow your work.
Speaker 10: I'm on substack. It's called culture Frize.
Speaker 2: By toure fantastic, great reporting on this and always great
Speaker 2: to see you.
Speaker 10: Nice to see you, Thank you.
Speaker 2: Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, smelling blood in the water and
Speaker 2: never wanting to miss a good opportunity for self promotion,
Speaker 2: decided to take aim at one of her newly elected colleagues,
Speaker 2: a woman named Sarah McBride, who happens to be transgender. Now, Mace,
Speaker 2: to in a previous incoarronation when out of her way
Speaker 2: to explain how she supports LGBTQ rights, is at a
Speaker 2: very politically expedient change of heart, because in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: Republican politics cruelty pace, and none more so than cruelty
Speaker 2: towards trans people. So Mace went on a self right
Speaker 2: as posting spree, performatively declaring herself to be the savior
Speaker 2: of women by policing the bathroom that one singular trans
Speaker 2: member of Congress might be allowed to use for her
Speaker 2: efforts at bullying. She of course earned raptures ovation from
Speaker 2: the Twitter Republican base. I'm sure the Fox News hits
Speaker 2: are incoming. Maso is correct to send some democratic vulnerability
Speaker 2: on this issue right now, as the party enters into
Speaker 2: a round of recriminations in which the potential role of
Speaker 2: trans rights in their electoral defeat looms quite large. Now
Speaker 2: central to this dem Party debate is the effectiveness of
Speaker 2: this particular Trump campaign ad, which dominated the airwaves in
Speaker 2: battleground states.
Speaker 16: Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners.
Speaker 5: Surgery for prisoners.
Speaker 8: For prisoners, every transgender inmate in the prison system would
Speaker 8: have access.
Speaker 16: It's hard to believe, but it's true. Even the liberal
Speaker 16: media was shocked. Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for
Speaker 16: prisoners and illegal aliens.
Speaker 5: Every transgender inmate would have access.
Speaker 16: Kamala's for they them. President Trump is for you.
Speaker 5: I'm Donald J.
Speaker 10: Trump, and I improve this message.
Speaker 2: So that ad serves several purposes at once. First, and
Speaker 2: most obviously, centers a deeply unpopular position held by Kamala.
Speaker 2: Harrison has the benefit of Kamala herself being on camera
Speaker 2: explaining her support for that fringe issue. And I do
Speaker 2: mean fringe. According to popular info, only two trans inmates
Speaker 2: have ever received surgical care, and then after long legal
Speaker 2: battles to achieve that care. No undocumented transgender immigrants have
Speaker 2: ever ever been provided with surgical care. Also happens the
Speaker 2: law was on the books and enforced under the Trump
Speaker 2: administration as well. Second, though the ad seeks to paint
Speaker 2: Kamala as were focused on these fringe issues than on
Speaker 2: the things that will improve the lives of the vast majority.
Speaker 2: That's what makes the tagline so deviously brilliant and memorable.
Speaker 2: She's for they them, He's for you. So how effective
Speaker 2: was this ad? And to be honest with you, you can
Speaker 2: kind of paint the data any direction that you want to.
Speaker 2: For those who claim it was really damaging, there's the
Speaker 2: simple fact that both campaigns thought it was effective. The
Speaker 2: Trump campaign, of course, put tens of millions of dollars
Speaker 2: behind it. According to The New York Times, the Harris
Speaker 2: campaign and their affiliated super packs, they had big debates
Speaker 2: internally about how and whether to respond. We'll get back
Speaker 2: to that in a moment. In addition, a poll after
Speaker 2: the election found that swing voters were most persuaded by
Speaker 2: the message that quote Kamala Harris has focused more on
Speaker 2: cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, in the states where the ad
Speaker 2: was in heavy rotation, Kamala narrowed her national gap suggested
Speaker 2: that Kamala's ad campaign focused on economic actually outperformed the
Speaker 2: Trump campaign, which heavily focused on trans issues, since her
Speaker 2: ads did help to close the gap in contrast to
Speaker 2: the overall national environment. Furthermore, a Gallup poll found that
Speaker 2: of twenty two possible issues, voters ranked transgender issues at
Speaker 2: the very bottom of all twenty two issues in terms
Speaker 2: of importance. Now, in all of the voter interviews I've seen,
Speaker 2: for what it's worth, I actually haven't heard the issue
Speaker 2: of transgender rights mentioned a single time in either direction.
Speaker 2: In addition, at the same time that New York State
Speaker 2: moved more than eleven points towards Donald Trump, the single
Speaker 2: largest shift in the entire country. Voters at the same
Speaker 2: time overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment which would guarantee transgender equality.
Speaker 2: Critics aggressively ran against that measure. They claimed it would
Speaker 2: enshrine in the state's constitution a right for trans girls
Speaker 2: to play sports in girls leagues and to receive transgender
Speaker 2: surgeries without parental consent. Voters didn't care, though, and they
Speaker 2: passed that initiative in a vote of sixty two to
Speaker 2: thirty eight. So I am a little skeptical of the
Speaker 2: notion the issue was the deciding factor. But regardless, Democrats
Speaker 2: had got to figure out how they're going to respond,
Speaker 2: and right now they're kind of in a freak out mode.
Speaker 2: The Times quotes former Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell
Speaker 2: saying that Kamma's failure to respond to the Trump attack
Speaker 2: ADS was quote political malpractice. But apparently it wasn't that
Speaker 2: the Harris camp didn't want to respond, it's that none
Speaker 2: of the responses they tested to it actually really worked. Quote. Largely,
Speaker 2: the campaign decided the best response was changing the subject.
Speaker 2: Meg Schwenzweizer, the chief analytics officer for the Harris campaign,
Speaker 2: said the Vice President's team determined its economic message was
Speaker 2: the most effective answer quote in all of our quantitative
Speaker 2: and qualitative research on this AD, our best testing responses
Speaker 2: pivoted to the economy. She said, these responses not only
Speaker 2: neutralize the attack, but actually move people towards us because
Speaker 2: they showed voters that the vice president did care about you.
Speaker 2: You know. To be honest, I think the campaign was
Speaker 2: probably right that the best thing they could do in
Speaker 2: the moment was just try to change the s, because
Speaker 2: you can't respond to these attacks with a clever messaging
Speaker 2: strategy or targeted ad, you have to respond with a
Speaker 2: completely different narrative and different world view. You see, the
Speaker 2: reason these attacks on transgender people have any resonance whatsoever
Speaker 2: is because they do fit into Trump's narrative, his story
Speaker 2: of the world. In that story, immigrants and cultural elites
Speaker 2: are destroying your communities, your way of life. Democrats are
Speaker 2: in league with those cultural elites who are ideologically driven
Speaker 2: by weird cultural fixations like transing your kids, letting homeless
Speaker 2: people shoot up in your driveway. If the Democrats don't
Speaker 2: offer a different narrative to compete with that worldview, then
Speaker 2: they will end up hopelessly caught in the trap that
Speaker 2: the Republicans laid, just as the Kamala Harris campaign was.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 2: If you don't respond, then you let those ugly lives
Speaker 2: spread and you let them define you with no response.
Speaker 2: If you do respond with a counter argument, then you
Speaker 2: give life to their narrative that you care more about
Speaker 2: trans girls and sports than you do about working class issues.
Speaker 2: And if you respond with capitulation by, for example, opposing
Speaker 2: transgirls in sports, then you lend credence to the Trumpian
Speaker 2: narrative that transgender issues are central and that transgender people
Speaker 2: should not enjoy equal rights. After all, if both parties
Speaker 2: are in agreement that transgender people are a real problem,
Speaker 2: then it must be the case. Right This third approach
Speaker 2: is the worst of the lot, in my opinion, is
Speaker 2: proven by the Biden Harris response to a similarly difficult
Speaker 2: and likely more potent issue of immigration. Democrats thought they
Speaker 2: were so clever embracing border hawkishness, abandoning a pathway to citizenship,
Speaker 2: and their previous defense of the character and benefit of migrants.
Speaker 2: Comma Crode about how Trump blocked their efforts to be
Speaker 2: aggressive border hawks. This approach ultimately was a complete disaster.
Speaker 2: It only served to help shift the public right on
Speaker 2: the issue and to provide the Trumpian narrative that immigrants
Speaker 2: were bad and a massive problem for the country. More credence, capitulation,
Speaker 2: and acceptance of right wing narratives only fuels those narratives.
Speaker 2: The only way on of this trap is to offer
Speaker 2: for a broad counter narrative that is more compelling than
Speaker 2: the Trumpian story of the world, because it is not,
Speaker 2: in fact immigrants and cultural elites who are screwing you.
Speaker 2: It's economic elites. It's the plutocrats who rigged the political system,
Speaker 2: bought the media, hogged all of the economic gains. Those
Speaker 2: plutocrats and their political puppets love to use wedge issues
Speaker 2: on vulnerable groups like migrants and trans people to break
Speaker 2: the working class apart, because a unified working class is
Speaker 2: their greatest nightmare. And that is exactly what Trump Nancy
Speaker 2: mace elon musk at all. That's what they're up to now.
Speaker 2: To my great shock, a Democratic representative, Jim McGovern actually
Speaker 2: did a solid job of articulating this message.
Speaker 14: The truth is that this is not what people voted for.
Speaker 14: They voted for their pocketbooks, and frankly, I don't blame them.
Speaker 14: You know who I do blame. I blame the billionaires
Speaker 14: who have rigged our country against working people and spent
Speaker 14: the last four decades squeezing every penny they could out
Speaker 14: of people. I blame the politicians, including the incoming administration,
Speaker 14: who have abandoned workers and who have done nothing while
Speaker 14: the rich get richer and everyone else gets screwed. My
Speaker 14: friends on the other side, they want to blame trans people.
Speaker 14: Guess what. Trans people aren't the ones raising people's grocery
Speaker 14: prices big corporations are. They want to blame immigrants. And
Speaker 14: here's the deal. Immigrants aren't the ones denying health insurance claims,
Speaker 14: mister speaker. It's the billion dollar insurance companies that do
Speaker 14: that on a daily basis, and they want to blame
Speaker 14: woke this and woke that. What's woke about thinking special
Speaker 14: interests should not be able to buy tax breaks. What's
Speaker 14: woke about telling Chevron and Exxon that they can't dump
Speaker 14: toxic chemicals into our air and water? What's woke about
Speaker 14: thinking it's wrong to give tax breaks to billionaires while
Speaker 14: the rest of us get screwed. It is time for
Speaker 14: us to get serious about fixing this country and making
Speaker 14: sure it works for everyone. And instead, we have bs
Speaker 14: bills that allow the new administration to go after any
Speaker 14: group who disagrees with the government and shut them down
Speaker 14: so my friends on the other side can keep doing
Speaker 14: whatever the hell this is. Good luck with that.
Speaker 2: Sounds like Bernie there, and I'm certainly here for it.
Speaker 2: But with this narrative frame, fighting back becomes a lot
Speaker 2: easier because voters are then primed to understand these attacks
Speaker 2: on trans people. It's just part of a distraction tactic
Speaker 2: to hog more gains up for the rich. AOC also
Speaker 2: actually handed Mace's provocations pretty well. She flipped the script
Speaker 2: on the claim that Mace was protecting women and girls
Speaker 2: and also pointed out on Nancy Mace was clearly just
Speaker 2: shamelessly grifting for fundraising dollars.
Speaker 19: What Nancy Mayce and what Speaker Johnson are doing are
Speaker 19: endangering all women and girls because if you ask them
Speaker 19: what is your plan on how to enforce this, they
Speaker 19: won't come up with an answer. And what it inevitably
Speaker 19: results in are women and girls who are primed for
Speaker 19: assault because they want because people are gonna want to
Speaker 19: check their private parts in suspecting who is trans and
Speaker 19: who assists and who's doing what. And so the idea
Speaker 19: that Nancy Mace wants little girls and women to drop
Speaker 19: trout in front of who an investigator, who would that
Speaker 19: be in order because she wants to suspect and point
Speaker 19: fingers at who she thinks is trans is disgusting. It
Speaker 19: is disgusting, and frankly, all it does is allow these
Speaker 19: Republicans to go around and bully any woman who isn't
Speaker 19: wearing a skirt because they think she might not look
Speaker 19: woman enough. People have a right to express themselves, to
Speaker 19: dress how they want and to be who they are.
Speaker 19: And if a woman doesn't look woman enough to a Republican,
Speaker 19: they want to be able to inspect her genitals to
Speaker 19: use a bathroom. It's disgusting and everybody, no matter how
Speaker 19: you feel on this issue, should reject it completely.
Speaker 2: What are they doing.
Speaker 19: They're doing this so that Nancy Mace can make a
Speaker 19: buck and send a text and fundraise off an email.
Speaker 19: They're not doing this to protect people. They're endangering women.
Speaker 19: They're endangering girls of all kinds. Everybody should reject it.
Speaker 2: It's gross. Now, this is definitely way more effective than
Speaker 2: the duck and cover or total capitulation strategies of the
Speaker 2: dumb Centrists. But until the party overall embraces a populous
Speaker 2: class war narrative, these sorts of attacks on trans people
Speaker 2: and migrants are going to have way more traction than
Speaker 2: they should. And of course it's not enough to just
Speaker 2: tell a good story either. You also got a deliver
Speaker 2: to add credibility to your narrative frame, because if voters
Speaker 2: feel like you are actually delivering for them personally in
Speaker 2: a way that is tangible, that they can see and
Speaker 2: feel there'll be a lot more forgiving of cultural issues
Speaker 2: where inevitably there's going to be some disagreement. Bernie is
Speaker 2: the perfect example of this approach. He was further left
Speaker 2: than common on virtually every issue, yet pretty impervious to
Speaker 2: the attack that he does not care about working class issues.
Speaker 2: He has endless credibility from his years of work, bolstered
Speaker 2: by a narrative frame in which the millionaires and billionaires
Speaker 2: use issues like trans kids in sports to divide people
Speaker 2: up and maintain their power. Andy Basheer, twice s elected
Speaker 2: Democratic governor of Kentucky, offers another really powerful example of
Speaker 2: this approach. He defeated a Trumpian businessman back in twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen by running a populist campaign centered around defending public
Speaker 2: education amidst a mass teacher strike, fighting for union jobs,
Speaker 2: and affordable healthcare. In office, he is really delivered. He
Speaker 2: brought significant investments into the state from the auto industry
Speaker 2: in particular and high paying union jobs, and he's communicated
Speaker 2: constantly with the public about what he was up to
Speaker 2: and why it was he was doing it. In a
Speaker 2: recent New York Times op ed, Governor Basheer wrote about
Speaker 2: how he was able to get re elected even after
Speaker 2: making some decisions and cultural issues that pulled as extremely
Speaker 2: unpopular in his conservative state. Quote. As governor, I have
Speaker 2: vetoed numerous anti LGBTQ and anti choice bills, yet I
Speaker 2: still beat mister Trump's hand pick candidate last fall. That
Speaker 2: happened because even if some voters might have disagreed with
Speaker 2: the vetos, they knew the next day I would be
Speaker 2: announcing new jobs, opening a new health clinic, or finishing
Speaker 2: a new road that would cut twenty minutes off their commute.
Speaker 2: They knew my focus and effort was on their daily needs,
Speaker 2: and that our gains as a commonwealth would help every
Speaker 2: single one of our families. He goes on to say
Speaker 2: of his decision to veto anti trans bills, quote, I
Speaker 2: believe all children are children of God. And whether people
Speaker 2: agree with my decision, they know why I'm making it,
Speaker 2: they know where I am coming from.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: Republicans, they're feeling very confident right now, but they are
Speaker 2: also in grave danger of overreach. After all, here Nancy
Speaker 2: Mace is, after just getting reelected, focusing on what happens
Speaker 2: in a single bathroom in the US capital rather than
Speaker 2: the issues that her constituents presumably sent her to Washington
Speaker 2: to fight for She literally posted about this. Now it's
Speaker 2: up to more than two hundred times about the single
Speaker 2: person's theoretical use of this bathroom wild stuff. It would
Speaker 2: not be hard at all for Democrats to point out
Speaker 2: the dirty game of distraction that Republicans are playing. In fact,
Speaker 2: congress Woman Electromcbride herself is doing her version of that,
Speaker 2: putting on a statement saying quote, I'm not here to
Speaker 2: fight about bathrooms. I'm here to fight for Delawareans and
Speaker 2: to bring down costs facing families. When Democrats really prove
Speaker 2: that by ditching the big money donors and rebuilding the
Speaker 2: party as a working class party, it will be manifestly
Speaker 2: self evident to all that the Nancy Maces of the
Speaker 2: world are nothing more than shameless, self promoting enforcers of
Speaker 2: the status quo. And Emily Nancy may seizing the moment here,
Speaker 2: you know, she seeson opening you had after the election.
Speaker 2: You had a couple of Democratic Congressmen immediately come out
Speaker 2: and be like, I oppose trans girls in sports. There's
Speaker 2: been a lot of discussion about this particular ad, and
Speaker 2: I do think Democrats are kind of caught in a
Speaker 2: bind because they don't have a narrative worldview that would
Speaker 2: retrain people from you know, Trump's got his villains and
Speaker 2: you know, cultural elites and downstream from that, transgender people
Speaker 2: are part of that narrative. You have to offer a
Speaker 2: compelling counter narrative and back that up with credibility that
Speaker 2: you actually are fighting for working class people, You're not
Speaker 2: just doing you know, lip service to it.
Speaker 1: You know, I have an interesting theory about this, and
Speaker 1: we talked. We did a whole you guys have me
Speaker 1: on KKF. We did a whole episode on this debate. Yes,
Speaker 1: like eighteen months ago something like that. But one thing
Speaker 1: I think Democrats have to reckon with is that Pew
Speaker 1: research has found the highest opposition to the question of
Speaker 1: this is the specific question that people have asked that
Speaker 1: Pugh asked. I want to make sure the wording is
Speaker 1: exactly right. Whether a person is a man or a
Speaker 1: woman quote can be different from sex assigned at birth.
Speaker 1: Quote is determined by sex assigned at birth. It actually
Speaker 1: goes up the lower your education level is, So that's
Speaker 1: roughly approxy for income. So people who are lower socioeconomic
Speaker 1: ranks tend to be less in agreement with the sort
Speaker 1: of AOC position on sex and gender. And that's something
Speaker 1: I think is really really an obstacle because it's not
Speaker 1: that this is the number one issue people are going
Speaker 1: to the polls and voting for. I think it's a
Speaker 1: question of trust that if you are fundamentally telling them.
Speaker 1: Andy Basheer has been the key's handled this. He's such
Speaker 1: a good example. This is Andy Bisheer year ago he said,
Speaker 1: my position this has always been clear. I've never supported
Speaker 1: gender reassignment surgery and they don't happen in Kentucky. But
Speaker 1: he's also been willing to make the case that you
Speaker 1: just outlined, which is a path forward for Democrats because
Speaker 1: it doesn't give in to this problem of trust, which
Speaker 1: is if you are telling people that what they are
Speaker 1: seeing they're not seeing that. You know, if you're telling
Speaker 1: them that there's this like very complicated academic theory about
Speaker 1: the gender binary and fluidity, and that these sports teams
Speaker 1: like it's it's really no different. You might be able
Speaker 1: to defend the position of having like the sports question
Speaker 1: from the left, You might be able to do that,
Speaker 1: but you can't tell people is that they're wrong to
Speaker 1: see differences between men and women. And if your position
Speaker 1: is predicated on that, I just think you lose trust
Speaker 1: with voters. It's hard to sell industrial policy when voters
Speaker 1: are being told that they're or what voters know that
Speaker 1: you think maybe they're big at it because they're seeing
Speaker 1: what they're seeing.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing, Emily, is that Trump supports all
Speaker 2: kinds of unpopular shit, like nothing is more unpopular in
Speaker 2: America than abortion band with no exceptions, and which is
Speaker 2: why he shifted what did he put on his ticket?
Speaker 2: Jade Vance who support very clearly abortion band with no
Speaker 2: restriction but had to walk it back, had to walk
Speaker 2: it back. But Kama didn't talk about any of this
Speaker 2: in her campaign, But so what did I mean? Not really?
Speaker 2: Like she literally didn't say the word transgender here. There's
Speaker 2: a reason they had to pull clips from twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: So why is Trump able to get away with holding
Speaker 2: incredibly unpopular positions in certain instances and the Democrats aren't.
Speaker 2: Why is Bernie Sanders able to get away with holding
Speaker 2: this same position, if anything, being to the left of
Speaker 2: Kamala on social cultural issues and she's not. And it's
Speaker 2: because people buying large like they don't really like the
Speaker 2: sports team. Thing is they don't really care. Even Trump said, like,
Speaker 2: no one actually brings this up to me, right because
Speaker 2: it's such a friend it applies to so few kids,
Speaker 2: like it doesn't impact your life whatever. What they do
Speaker 2: care about is the sense that you're more focused on
Speaker 2: these niche things than you are about me. And that
Speaker 2: ties into like, you know, the conversation we're having about
Speaker 2: the war two, Like you are more focused on these things.
Speaker 2: And so if you don't have number one, the credibility
Speaker 2: where you've actually delivered for people where they can see like,
Speaker 2: oh no, no, it's preposterous to say that Bernie Sanders
Speaker 2: or Andy Basheer is more obsessed with these issues than
Speaker 2: they are with like delivering for me and my family.
Speaker 2: If you don't have that credibility, and if you also
Speaker 2: don't have the narrative frame of guys, this issue is
Speaker 2: not core to you and your family. This is just
Speaker 2: a distraction. And you know, we're focusing on these issues
Speaker 2: that unite people that are going to deliver broadly for
Speaker 2: you know, working class people across the board, then yeah,
Speaker 2: you're going to end up in a very difficult position.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I think that's where Democrats find
Speaker 2: themselves is they have lost all credibility that they actually
Speaker 2: are willing to stand up to the donor class, that
Speaker 2: they actually have, you know, a narrative view of the
Speaker 2: world that points fingers out a villain does not transgender
Speaker 2: people and is not immigrants. Ultimately, they haven't laid out that,
Speaker 2: the neoliberal wing of the party hasn't laid out their
Speaker 2: critique and has lost their credibility on delivering. So then
Speaker 2: these issues where they're at odds with some of the
Speaker 2: people that are trying to win over become absolutely more significant.
Speaker 1: One thing I think is interesting in that they them
Speaker 1: add is Sam Britton and Rachel Levine and that it
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, Kama Harrison didn't have to talk about
Speaker 1: we are this administration appointed Rachel Levine and Sam Britton
Speaker 1: to these high but she didn't do that, She didn't
Speaker 1: tout it. It wasn't like her run in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: or twenty twenty. But I think people just look at
Speaker 1: that and actually, to the point you were making, Republicans
Speaker 1: have weirdly turned this. I shouldn't say weirdly, but if
Speaker 1: you had predicted this twenty years ago, and like, what
Speaker 1: the hell have turned it into a class issue by
Speaker 1: saying like, this is what the elites are trying to
Speaker 1: tell you is normal, and Republicans in a way have
Speaker 1: realized that before Democrats, which is entirely surprising because of
Speaker 1: the way shifts are happening, but like it is ultimately
Speaker 1: the reason this resonates is from that class framework. And
Speaker 1: that's to your point, something that Democrats can use that
Speaker 1: framework like to actually wrote about it. One ndred percent agree.
Speaker 2: You know, even Joe Biden is a good example because
Speaker 2: that twenty twenty campaign was way more woke than like
Speaker 2: wokeness was at its peak around like the twenty twenty danc.
Speaker 2: If you go back and look at that, you will
Speaker 2: think you're in like a fever dream of another world, right,
Speaker 2: And yet Joe Biden in that atmosphere is able to win.
Speaker 2: And I think part of why is even though, like
Speaker 2: you know, Joe Biden's track record is very corporate friendly
Speaker 2: whatever whatever, he had this image and this credibility of
Speaker 2: being middle class Joe from Stagrim, and people felt like
Speaker 2: they could trust that he was kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: looking out for the average Joe and Jane. And so
Speaker 2: even though there's all this like stuff, you know, swirling around.
Speaker 2: I always Wrent Elizabeth Warren with the Black Lives Matter
Speaker 2: blocks behind or all this things like the most ridiculous
Speaker 2: performative wokeness you could possibly imagine. And the Democratic primary
Speaker 2: just happened where Kamlin everybody else was saying things like
Speaker 2: what is on camera there?
Speaker 4: That wasn't a problem for him.
Speaker 2: He was able to win on a pro immigrant and
Speaker 2: pro trans message because there was a sense of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: but I you know, I trust this that his core
Speaker 2: priority isn't that stuff, it's it's actually delivering. And also,
Speaker 2: by the way, we're really sick of this guy, Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: who was just like a kas machine over here, and
Speaker 2: let's do something different. So even though Joe Biden isn't
Speaker 2: my model of like what they should be doing in
Speaker 2: the future, right you need a much more clear cut
Speaker 2: populist class war messages that names villain purchased the donor class,
Speaker 2: like these things have to happen if Democratic Party is
Speaker 2: going to build back credibility. I even think in Joe
Speaker 2: Biden you can see a little bit of a model
Speaker 2: of how this was able to be successful in the past.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've pointed out with Bernie a bunch
Speaker 2: of times. What I just think it's really worth reminding
Speaker 2: that Bernie's is left on these issues as you can
Speaker 2: get like, no one would question his credentials there.
Speaker 4: And who was he strongest with young men?
Speaker 2: Right the famous bros that were all smeared as being
Speaker 2: sexist and racist, blah blah blah for supporting Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 2: the bros. He was very popular with Latinos. He overperformed
Speaker 2: and famously, you know, wins Nevada And that's like dismissed
Speaker 2: as who cares about that because it's not, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not the demographic room that we've decided is going
Speaker 2: to be most consequential in this election and in general
Speaker 2: with working class people. This map has been shared around
Speaker 2: recently a lot on Twitter. I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: seen it. Back from the twenty twenty primary, the New
Speaker 2: York Times put together a map of which candidates in
Speaker 2: the Democratic primary were getting the most grassroots donations from
Speaker 2: different places in the country, and the whole map was
Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders. They had to make a separate map, taking
Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders out of the equation to show some of
Speaker 2: the detail of like okay, but these other candidates like
Speaker 2: they're a little bit out performing this or that place.
Speaker 2: That's how dominant he was. And it was obviously not
Speaker 2: high dollar donors. It was like Starbucks workers and Amazon
Speaker 2: workers and delivery drivers, like teachers were one of the
Speaker 2: major professions that were contributing to him. So he shows
Speaker 2: proves that, you know, yes, if you pulled his views
Speaker 2: on transgender issues with the population, you would get some
Speaker 2: results that were, you know, not favorable for him. But
Speaker 2: because he had some much credibility built up in such
Speaker 2: a clear narrative of the world, no one thought that
Speaker 2: he was going to be obsessed with trans bathroom issues
Speaker 2: once he got into the Congress. And you know, if
Speaker 2: Democrats are able, which is a big if and very
Speaker 2: unlikely to happen, but if they're able to turn it around,
Speaker 2: then Nancy Mace is putting herself in the party in
Speaker 2: a much more precarious position where it's like, oh, actually,
Speaker 2: you all are the ones that just ran thirty five
Speaker 2: million dollars on trans issues. You're the one who put
Speaker 2: out two hundred and fifty posts in thirty six hours
Speaker 2: or whatever about this bathroom You all are the ones
Speaker 2: that are actually obsessed with these issues and won't let
Speaker 2: people just live their lives.
Speaker 1: Just to return, very very briefly, the mo with the
Speaker 1: highest level of support for the position that sexis assigned
Speaker 1: at birth is Black Americans, Like they're just there's definitely
Speaker 1: a class disconnect, and I think that's I agree with you.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden went one black voters much more strongly in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty than Democrats did this time around. I think
Speaker 1: because he handles the issue differently.
Speaker 2: All Right, guys, well, thank you very much for watching
Speaker 2: in the show, and Emily's gonna be back next week
Speaker 2: for some great pre Thanksgiving content.
Speaker 1: Another five hour show sometime of them.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we do goofy like pre Thanksgiving, We'll do like
Speaker 2: the travel or like the cost of turkey or whatever.
Speaker 2: I'll come up with some cheesy, like morning show style
Speaker 2: content for us to do next week.
Speaker 1: Maybe we cook like we do Kathuli and Hodo with
Speaker 1: like glasses of white wine, and we make that something
Speaker 1: that like really upset Soger, like something that really really
Speaker 1: would get him going.
Speaker 2: I will have to brainstorm on that, but I like
Speaker 2: you right here. I like the vibe people have been like.
Speaker 2: I got a lot of a lot of appreciation for
Speaker 2: my various dressing up schemes on this show. Excellent Raygun
Speaker 2: and then putting on the Mega hub. People love that.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, some people really love that, Crystal.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but anyway, so it's making me lean into
Speaker 2: more of my camp side. So we will dream up
Speaker 2: something good for Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: Love it, well, it's giving, Ryan Murphy, come on you.
Speaker 2: Can all right, guys, love you. I'll have a great weekend.
Speaker 2: We'll see you back here next week.
Speaker 12: The spot
Speaker 14: Would bish