Krystal and Saagar discuss former model accuses Trump of groping, John Kelly says Trump is fascist, Nate Silver says Trump will win, Axelrod calls out Kamala word salad.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
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Speaker 3 (00:15):
That is possible.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
If you like what we're all about, it just means
the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for
everybody today.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
What do we have, christ Pal, Indeed we do.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Dave Wagel is going to be here in studio. He
is just back from Wisconsin. He was hitting some doors
there talking to actual voters about how they're thinking about
this election. We're going to talk to him about that,
the gender gap, the new Trump Epstein groping allegations, and
how much that plays or doesn't play into this election.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
So that'll be interesting.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
We're also taking a look at new comments from John Kelly,
who was Trump's chief of staff, saying that Trump was
a fascist, also saying that he thought.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
That Hitler did some good things and wanted.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Hitler's generals to his generals be more like Hitler's generals.
Kamala Harris really leaning into this as the campaign is
in its wanning days, so a lot to get into there.
Kamala also had a CNN town hall last night, so
we pulled some of those sort of highlights and low
lights and interesting moments from that to break down for
you as well. There's another thing we wanted to take
(01:17):
a look at here, which is both the substantive issue
of housing affordability and also how that may really be
impacting the vote, especially in Sun belt states and perhaps
in particular in the state of Nevada, something that we've
been wanting to tackle for a while, and obviously we've
been talking about housing here for quite a while on
how this was a sleeper issue it seems to be
playing out in terms of the election right now. Also
(01:40):
wanted to take a moment to focus on the former
CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch who has now been charged
with sex trafficking. The allegations are horrifying, They are quite stunning.
I mean, obviously this was and is an iconic American brand,
especially like when I was growing up, when soccer was
growing up as well. So I'm going to dig in
to that, we also have some updates for you. Out
(02:03):
of the Middle East is really propaganda about a Lebanese
hospital debunked live by BBC. Quite interesting there, and Sager
is taking a look at how we should think about
our votes. I'm looking forward to that one.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
How to vote, but not it's an instruction guide on
how to vote.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
You're not like telling people who to vote for.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
That's exactly I would never pray tell people how to
vote for to help people evaluate exactly right, which I
think is helpful. As Crystal said, we're going to get
to Dave Wygel before we get to that. Thank you
so much for our premium subscribers, everybody who's been taking advantage.
We will reveal our exclusive maps and predictions here for everybody.
Just twelve days to go until that election. How many
shows is that for shows until the presidential elections.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
We'll think about it that way.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
If you want to take advantage, you can go ahead
Breakingpoints dot Com become a premium subscriber. Let's get to
Dave Wygel. Joining us now is Dave Weigel. It's semaphorrescritch
to see you, man.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
It's good to see you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Absolutely so let's break down a little bit of a
media and a Trump accuser story kind of broke out
yesterday started off with a lot of speculation from Mark
Halprin over at Worldwide News his substack, and he said
that there was a story floating out there that if
it came out, it would end Trump's campaign. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 6 (03:09):
These last two weeks are going to be filled with
things like this. And I can tell you with that
going into detail, that I've been pitched a story about
Donald Trump now for about a week that if true,
would end his campaign, and there's all sorts of things
like that flying around.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
I'm not the only one who's been pitched it if true.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Was going to end the campaign.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
People said, wow, it must be really some of there's
all these rumors flying around out there day. I'm sure
he saw. And then finally it came out. And I'm
not going to diminish per se, but like you know,
it's certainly not campaign ending in.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Mind for Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah, let's put this up there on the screen. This
was a Stacy Williams.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
She is a ex model and a former associate of
Jeffrey Epstein. She says that Donald Trump quote Groape mean
what felt like a twisted game with Epstein. This was
back in nineteen ninety two at a Christmas party, she says,
after being introduced to him by Epstein in a Trump
tower or elevator. So, I guess there's a couple of
things we wanted to talk to you about. First of all,
both the details of the story this alleged like would
(04:07):
it end his campaign? Just news wise? I checked of
the morning newsletters. I think it was only Politico Morning
Playbook that even linked out to the story in the bottom.
So it doesn't seem to be taking all that seriously.
So what's your perspective here?
Speaker 5 (04:21):
He didn't in the campaign yet.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Yeah, Yeah, still waiting.
Speaker 7 (04:26):
Yeah, I don't think I've been pitched the thing that
help he's talking about.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
I saw Tom BEBVAM talked about it too.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
Yes, all of us who've been out there talking to
vout talking to voters. I was in Wisconsin this last week.
It's hard for us to imagine a story that would
qualify it like this because Trump, this is this is
the oldest news in the campaign. Trump Trump can survive
all sorts of things because there's a heuristic for his
voters and the voters who moved to him in the
last year or two years, that whatever he does wrong,
(04:55):
whatever his personal failings, look at his record, it doesn't matter.
And and this is something that was true when Bill
Clinton was running for reelection in different ways. I'm not
trying to be too glib and compare them, but voters
have set up in their mind things were good enough
when he was president to spit all that scandal. I
cannot pay attention to it. Would this work if he
was if he was a random guy running for Senate,
(05:15):
probably not. Doesn't work if it's Donald Trump? Yes, So
what you can name a few things in the last
few weeks that someone running for a lower office might
have been wrecked by and they don't wreck Trump because
of that, because of that mindset voters have.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, yeah, are we convinced like this is the story.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
He'll oh from what I asked around broadcast. Yeah, also
all this.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Like Charlie Kirk and all these like you know, pro
flitzers who said something about like an aide fake. So
I don't anyway, I don't know, but yeah, I agree
with the analysis.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
You've both offered.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Let me play devil's advocate, which is.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
The Harris campaign really seems to be banking on the
sort of like moderate female character, Yeah, like Nicky Hayley
type voter. And at the same time, Trump's approval ratings
are a little bit higher than they were last time around,
and certainly they were in twenty sixteen. So I think
part of that is people have kind of memory hold
some of the most salacious allegations, some of his most
(06:11):
silacious and horrifying acts, and so this again brings up like,
this is a guy who's been seriously accused of this
type of behavior, sexual assault, groping, et.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
You throw in there at Jeffrey Epstein connect this former
model alleges that they were very close friends, Donald Trump
and Jeffrey Epstein, and it does sort of potentially exacerbate
that gender divide, which is what the Harris campaign is
really banking on, being able to get enough women on
their side between Trump's behavior and the issue of abortion
to be able to put them over the top.
Speaker 7 (06:43):
Yeah, you can go too far and make some voters
think that he's being put upon, that he's being falsely accused.
The idea of the AI video that would be smart.
I think to fight a video that's damaging and claimant say.
I was at the Post when Amy Gardner, my colleague,
got the audio of Trump pressuring Brad Raft, and immediately
saw people try to spin.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
That out of consistence.
Speaker 7 (07:02):
You can have something rock solid and people will say
it's not true. But that's what they're trying to do, right,
freezing people's minds before they vote. Do you really want
to go through all of this for four years? You're
really going to go for all of it with a
seventy or eight year old president with somebody in the wings.
If he's damaged, would Jadvans take over? They do want
to throw not in the way that a confident campaign
that's going to win and it feels like it feels
(07:23):
like it's locked up.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
Not in that way.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
They are trying to draw attention to think you saw
this with the Vice President yesterday putting out a statement
on this Jeffrey Goldberg Atlantic article that is not an
article that forty eight percent of the country is going
to take seriously. They have a mechanism by now which
they don't take it seriously, But that is what they're
trying to do. And I saw some of that Wisconsin.
They are getting some Republican endorsements, people who were even
(07:47):
on the fence or voted for Trump in twenty twenty.
They are getting that with the argument that, look, whatever
her faults, do you really want to put up with
this sky again? Is that compelling? It has papered over
some of her issues and it's a lot. Maybe it's
allowed her. Maybe she she'd be doing better, she she
had more of this to appeal to those Republicans without
specifically saying yes, I'm going to give up on not
(08:09):
restoring remain in Mexico or yes I'm going to I'm
going to forever give up on a thing that me
and Biden did. She's not going that far. The replacement is,
look at this crazy stuff that you don't want with Trump.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
You brought up Wisconsin trying to scribe our Yeah, yeah,
you just spent a long time there. Yeah. So, and
we were talking a little bit behind the scenes about
all of the Trump ads against common Yeah, so what
do the Kamma ads against Trump look like? Are they
equally as inundating and argues it the character argument, because
that's what they're.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Closing on, that's what they've decided.
Speaker 7 (08:35):
So interestingly, they're not response ads, which is what you
see in a lot of races. I'm being attacked with
three different ads on something negative, in this case government
funded sex surgeries for prisoners right not to really get
the entire issue, but there are three ads on that,
and the campaign's not putting out ads saying no, I
didn't or here's why I did that. It's putting out
ads one about her economic agenda too, about kind of
(08:59):
January sixth, Trump's character, and that is after twenty twenty two.
You can't tell Democrats that people don't care about this
told nobody cares and then it was decisive in a
lot of suburbs. But they are They're letting a lot
of attacks go by or to connect on her on
that record. They really are not doing a lot, and
you've seen it. It's been the hardest question for her
to answer interviews is where she would where Biden got
(09:19):
something wrong, where she would change from Biden.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
She's not doing that with the advertising.
Speaker 7 (09:23):
She is just saying and I would actually say the
future forward, pack especially the super Pac very economic focus message.
So you do hear if you're watching TV, you're watching
Packers game. I guess it's got lucky because very exciting
one on Sunday, you do see, okay, she'd have this
kind of tax cut for me. I don't know how
sticky it was, because I went out with people canvassing too,
(09:44):
and you were finding voters who's at this point still
didn't know what her economic plan was, still didn't know
exactly how she'd restore row. But that's the strategy. It's
not let's hit back at everything Trump says. Let's just
come up with something that maybe the voter who's undecided say, well,
I'm just talking about crazy, negative stuff and she has
a plan. That's the impression they want people to leave,
not that she's fighting back on everything.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I mean, I feel like, in a sense, the Liz
Cheney tour is an effort to fight back against because
what is that the you know, transgender surgery. At Yes,
it's about the issue, but it's also about like, she
is this liberal San Franciscan who doesn't connect with American values.
And to me, the effort with the Liz Cheney tour,
which I have a million issues with I've talked about before,
(10:27):
but anyway, the effort with that is to be like,
look at these modern Republicans who are super comfy with me.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
So I can't be that.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Crazy if Liz Cheney is willing to, you know, hang
out with me and endorse me and go and do
those town halls, et cetera. So in a way, I
feel like that's her effort to blunt the core of
that attack, which is like, you're too liberal to represent
all of America.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
That's how it felt.
Speaker 7 (10:49):
I went to one of those events in the in
the Milwaukee suburbs, and you did meet I met there
people who've been Republican up till twenty twenty and then
and then bailed.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
But that's what I mean.
Speaker 7 (10:58):
She wasn't saying here's a promise you can take home.
She was offered a couple of chances. She was better
at a couple of the other Cheney events. Hey, my
neighbors worried about something that you did in your past.
She didn't say what she would do differently. She didn't
even mention I'd put a Republican in the cabinet. I
think maybe because the Trump campaign has fed this idea
that she'd put chaining in a national security position, which
(11:18):
Democrats say they would not do. But you got her
on stage. Yeah, not a good topic to bring up
at that moment, but she's not. That is what's different.
Whereas Trump, whether you think it's credible or not, Trump
will just promise something. Trump will say, yes, I'm going
to get this thing that the culinary union wanted, this
tax cut.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
I'm going to do it. Don't ask me how I'm
gonna do it. I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 7 (11:36):
And Democrats are so much more cautious just generally. There's
the Trump campaign takes a lot of risks, puts out
a lot of ideas that might be hard to implement.
It knows that I think Republicans won't say how you
pay for that, because that's.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Not how they run. They want him to win.
Speaker 7 (11:50):
And her campaign is much more cautious in saying no,
we will make some hard break, which is this lego less.
Chaney tour was a little more confounding because they were
getting a hit on one end for having Cheney campaign
aid pack, this Arab American pro Trump pack was running
ads in Michigan and I only saw photos I've been
Michigan yet that are just pictures of Cheney and and
(12:10):
hers together in Arab American neighborhoods. What is the are
they getting the gain on the other side by saying,
and Liz Cheney will validate Harris, don't worry about X issue.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
It's not the issue.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
It's just it's just democracy. I'm not it sounds too
plus eight, but it really is just the democracy issue
as opposed to the Hey, she's learned her lesson on immigration.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
Hey, she's learned her lesson on crime.
Speaker 7 (12:32):
Some of the ads do say that, but they're really
not delivering the stuff that somebody really on the fence
might might say, Oh, I'm confident I'm not going to
see ten million border crossers if she's president. That hasn't
happened yet.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
So I saw Nate Silver make a point which is
contrary to this whole is change. He said, look, guys,
at the end of the day, I think that these
people are already called Harris voters when you don't need
to go after them. And that's I mean, intuitively kind
of accepts my bias towards the issue. But while you
were there, were they already Harris voters? Like what are
these people genuinely undecided? Like how do we square that question?
Speaker 7 (13:06):
They were they felt odd about voting for a Democrat,
but they just couldn't bring this sullt to vote for Trump.
They probably were Harris voters because she's and you see
this now that now that the polling, I think there
are a couple of errors with the screens or a
couple of pickups with the voter screens, registered versus likely.
She is doing better in a lot of places with
the people more likely voters. And those are the guys
(13:27):
who were Republican twenty years ago, the women who were
the women who voted for Mitt Romney, who always vote,
who vote in school board elections, They have been fishing
in that pond while Trump goes for the less. I mean,
this is what the Trump Rogan interviews is about. Absolutely,
very obviously, there are people who hate politics, don't trust politicians.
I'm going to introduce myself and hey, maybe the registered,
maybe they'll turn out. This campaign is no, there is
(13:49):
an electorate. We've we know how to win this electorate
in twenty twenty barely. If we get ninety five percent
of that vote out, then we win. That is the theory.
It's much it's much more rebuilding than addition.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I want to ask you a little bit more about that,
But I'm also curious about your time going out with canvassers.
What type of doors were you hitting? Were they like
persuasion or were these you know, we got to get
you to turn out. And was there any particular issue
that was really being brought up again and again at
the doors.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
These were It was a mix of so.
Speaker 7 (14:16):
With Democrats, I did with Republicans in Arizona, mostly people
who were registered but hadn't turned their ballot in yet,
and they had they were they just needed the kick,
but they were going to vote for Trump. With Democrats,
I was with mostly Democratic household, some people who they
think voted Democratic because there's no party registration in the state,
and it was I need the people who were on
(14:37):
the fence needed clarity about what she was going to
do about the economy and prices, needed clarity.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
About her abortions.
Speaker 7 (14:43):
One stuck with me and in one part of kind
of central Wisconsin, a woman who just she was pro choice,
but she wasn't sure what Harris is actually going to do,
which is amazing they didn't break through how much time
they spent on it. I don't want to overestimate that
one thing, but I did put it into my data
base of voters are busy and not paying attention to
every promise they make.
Speaker 5 (15:03):
She's not repeated enough.
Speaker 7 (15:05):
I was not seeing I was not seeing huge shifts
from this. I remember going in twenty sixteen, and every
Democrat had this experience, including the ones I was canvassing with,
of going to what was a Obama neighborhood and finding
Trump voters, and that wasn't happening. It was These are
the voters who voted against Scott Walker in Wisconsin. These
are the voters who were, you know, gett able for
Ron Johnson but might have been voted for the governor Evers.
(15:29):
It's the margin of maybe five percent of the electorate
they were going for as opposed to Big Surprise. If
somebody wants to show me the big surprises, take me
to it. But they were, in this context going to
central Wisconsin white voters who were undecided. Democrats admit they're
not going to get the twenty twenty margin with black
men in Milwaukee. That is baked into the assumption that
(15:52):
these voters, who are pretty reliable and turn out but
have a couple of questions about what her agenda is,
they're easier to get than the black voters in Milwaukee
who are just done with politics and here more hear
nothing that they did that was that was good.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
They haven't given up.
Speaker 7 (16:08):
There are groups focused on that effort, but they're assuming
they're going to underperform.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
The interesting secondary things sometimes is a seneate conversation, what
did you see there that was interesting?
Speaker 7 (16:16):
Oh, it is a competitive race with Baldwin the advantage
and she's she sanator Baldwin Tamy. Baldwyn going for a
third term has been winning because she's getting five to
seven percent of Trump voters and Harris is getting two
percent That Delta Republicans are.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Trying to shrink.
Speaker 7 (16:32):
So the ad part of it, what do you see
a lot is a sort of anti corruption, clean hands,
rich guy argument, which you see a lot in campaigns.
Hubby is personally very wealthy CEO of a bank and
is run he and Pacts have run several ads pointing
out that Baldwin has a girlfriend in finance and is
because they're not married, has not revealed her her girlfriend's finances.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
Who knows what that means? Question?
Speaker 7 (16:55):
And I asked, Hubby, are their votes she's taken? You
think are connected to her girl and in finance and
Democrats think that this is about reminding people that Baldwin
is gay. She's been elected as an op gate for
twenty some years, but they that has been the effort
to say, this is a corrupt Democrat who you can't
(17:18):
trust to deliver for you. If you're a Trump voter,
she's that's the reason you should bail on her. Maybe
vote on her twice, but bail now. But also very close.
I didn't see again in evidence of twenty sixteen style
massive shift somewhere, and even in the third district where
Republicans flipped it last less cycle and Trump won it,
they're very competitive. I was at with a Democrat the
(17:39):
Already we're seeing people who you'd think could be Republican,
rural voters very far from a city like a high vs.
Twenty minutes away, pretty happy with the Democrat because they
think Trump and the Republican incumbent were too rude and
they were too anti immigrants. So there's still the Wisconsin mix.
It just has really not their states were you know,
one hundred thousand people moved in and changed the alchemy
(18:00):
of the electorate. That's not happened to Wisconsin. It's very
frozen for twice.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Question important blue Wall dynamic is that they have not
had the same knit migration. They don't have a flute
like as an economy, so it's actually a little bit
more frozen in time, which is very much to Harris's benefit.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, last question for you, what do you make of
the podcast strategy because I'm just a little skeptical because
I've seen these candidates who have really leaned into like
new meat. I mean, that's very self serving. I would
love if we're very powerful, right, But you know, the
Vake Ramaswami was a podcast candidate. We saw how I
worked for him, Ronda Santis was like a podcast candidate,
(18:34):
Andrew Yang Toulci Gabbard and they generate a lot of
online enthusiasm and then they get like one percent in
the polls. So do you think that there's you know,
a significant group that is persuadable that's going to turn
out to vote, Like, do you think that this is
a fruitful strategy really for either campaign in large numbers?
Speaker 7 (18:52):
Yeah, I'm less confident about the second part that somebody
is going to listen to this on their commute or
their drive and say, well, I was totally unengaged before
and now I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. Yeah,
that unless as a strategy of getting of getting the
campaign's daily message out and finding in the news cycle.
I think it's it's this was the cycle where it
changed over just the the benefits. What are going to
(19:13):
be the benefits of a Trump podcast appearance again Rogan
coming up versus the benefits of the Harrison town hall.
What is she trying to do in her media appearances.
It's it's not not make mistakes and look confident.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Uh, the Rogan.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
Appearances, podcast appearances, that's part of that's that's built in
unless unless you're really tanking, you're in a in a
setting where people see you as as more human, you
deal with questions that are not got that are not gotcha's,
or not trying to pin you down on something. And
I think I think it's been if it's been effective.
Her most effective interviews have usually been those the podcasts.
Are they finding brand new people? No, But I think
(19:47):
they're trying to do different things. Trump is trying to
reassure people, uh, and and look likable and again fit
every problem you have with them in the in this
in this box. That that that's that has a bumper
stick here. Uh, I'll take more t more mean tweets
and cheap gas right now, That is every Trump message
with her. It is how do people look at her
and say, yeah, she can go toe toe with Putin?
Speaker 5 (20:07):
I really do think.
Speaker 7 (20:08):
And even at the DNC, which some people didn't like
the emphasis on defense and military, the reason they do
that is because she one is a woman and two
is not like a swaggering Hillary Clinton type does She's
not somebody who has been in a decision decision room
and may and people think, and you hear this anecdotally,
you'll hear where cause voters who say I'm not sure
(20:30):
how she'd handle a crisis, She's still tried to do that.
So that's what her interviews are about, not bump mop up,
messing up a question do that. Podcasts probably less useful
for that, And she does need to show that she
can say I can and I think this is why
Fox in the long run was good for her. And
though people want to be a disaster, oh, she could
handle that. She talked over him, she didn't let herself
get interrupted. Really, that atmospheric I heard more about from
(20:52):
voters than anything said.
Speaker 8 (20:53):
In the interview.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
That is such a good point.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Dave always read to talk to you man, and we'll
see you soon and hopefully thank you.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
So, as we just discussed.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
With Dave Weigel, there's being a lot here made of
Kamala and her attack on Donald Trump in the closing
days is all about character. So that has really come
into focus with some more recent allegations by General Kelly,
former Trump chief of staff. Kamala Harris took advantage of
that at a town hall yesterday. We're going to show
you more of the town hall later in the show.
What we wanted to start with this part. Specifically, she
(21:23):
says Donald Trump is quote a fascist. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 8 (21:26):
We know that is why Mike Pence is not running
with him again, why the job was empty. And then
today we learned that John Kelly, a four star Marine
general who is his longest serving chief of staff, gave
an interview recently in the last two weeks of this election,
talking about how dangerous Donald Trump is. And I think
(21:49):
one has to think about why would someone who served
with him, who is not political, a four star Marine general,
why is he telling the American people now? And frankly,
I think of it as he's just putting out a
nine to one to one call to the American people.
Understand what could happen if Donald Trump were back in
(22:10):
the White House. And this time we must take very seriously.
Those folks who knew him best and who were career
people are not going to be there to hold him back.
Speaker 9 (22:24):
You've quoted General Millie calling Donald Trump a fascist. You
yourself have not used that word to describe him. Let
me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump is
a fascist?
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yes? I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
All right, So all of this comes back from to
General Kelly, who was the chief of staff, longest serving
chief of staff under Donald Trump. A lot of these
comments came to light in an Atlantic article with Jeffrey Goldberg.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
I will reserve some of the problems.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
With that article for a little bit later, and at
least just play the audio from General Kelly himself. This
was audio that he is allowed to be released from
the New York Times talking about this alleged incident.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 10 (22:58):
She would a world once that you know, the Hitler
did some good things too, And of course, if you
know history, again, I think he's lacking in that.
Speaker 11 (23:09):
But if you know what his you know, Hitler was
all about Uh, you'd be pretty hard to make an.
Speaker 12 (23:14):
Argument that he did anything good.
Speaker 13 (23:16):
So what would you What would you say when he
said to you that Hitler did a lot of good things?
Speaker 12 (23:20):
Well, I tell him that, I said, you know, if
you first of all, you should never say that.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
But if you knew what.
Speaker 12 (23:27):
History Hitler was all about, from the beginning to the end, Uh,
everything he did was in support of his racist fascist
uh life, you know, you know philosophy, so that nothing
he did you could argue was good. It was certainly
not done for the right reason. And but he would
(23:53):
occasionally say that.
Speaker 13 (23:54):
What would he say when you would lay that out
to him?
Speaker 12 (23:58):
He just, you know, end of the conversation. Usually, certainly
the farmer president is in the far right area. Certainly
an authoritarian.
Speaker 11 (24:12):
Admires people who are dictators. If he has said that,
so he certainly falls into the into the general definition
of fascists for sure.
Speaker 7 (24:28):
If he was left to his own devices, would he
be a dictator if he didn't have people around him.
Speaker 13 (24:33):
Oh, I think I think you'd.
Speaker 12 (24:35):
Love to be. Uh, I think he'd love to be
just like he was in business. He could tell people
to do things and they would do it, and not
really bother too much about whether, uh what the legalities were.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
And what all right? So there you go.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Would we want to react to this Crystal before we
play this? She made a big moment about this is
a press conference yesterday at the Vice Essential Residents. We
were on pins. We're like, oh, what is it? It
could be something big. She's she's going to come out,
she's doing a press conference. She was never does a
press conference. Didn't end up any taking any questions. It
was only like, you know, maybe a few minutes recounting
these comments. But what we seem to take away is
(25:14):
that because that article had come out from the Atlantic,
there was not as much media coverage I think as
the Democrats would have liked about it. So she was
trying to force the conversation both with I think the
fascist term and then also trying to get people, I
guess successfully for us to talk about it, because that
is her closing argument. Now with twelve days to go,
(25:36):
it's full on character. January sixth Dictatorship. I mean, listen,
I think it's been tried before. I don't think it's
going to work, but I'm curious what you think.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Well, it did work in twe twenty two.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I mean, yeah, but he wasn't on the ballot. So
that's what I just keep going.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
So let me just say that was on the bout.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
My own political bias is that this is not a
smart strategy. That is, my bias is to buy into
the research that Matt Carr brought us on the show
that shows that, you know, the most effect of messaging
in wist swing voters in the state of Pennsylvania is
about populist policies and progressive economics. I do have to
say I think her closing ads that Wygel reference when
we just talked to them, focused on taxes and Trump
(26:13):
being for the billionaires.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
I do think that that is an effective pitch.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And so my political bias is to look at this
and go listen, people who think this through think Trump
is a fascist in my opinion, Accurately, they are already
in your camp. You're not really persuading anyone. But you know,
I have to say, like I was wrong in twenty
twenty two, so I do have some humility about my
own assessments.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
So let me talk about the political strategy a.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Little bit, and then you know, we can also talk
a little bit about the substance. Here on the political strategy,
Weigel mentioned something that hadn't really occurred to me, which
is that it's her, you know, doing this big press
conference yesterday at the vice presidential residence, her plan to
do the you know, the big closing speech in the
ellipse where January sixth occurred. This is, yes, it's about
(27:02):
the message itself, but it's also about I look presidential.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
You can imagine me.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
In this role, and they feel like that is still
a question that remains for some voters who don't like
Trump but are not sure that they're ready to vote
for Kamala Harris. And that kind of landed with me
as like, oh, that's an important part of what they're
doing here. Trump is trying to go hang out with
the bros and say, look, I'm not this scary, dangerous
character that they're painting me on as here I am
(27:28):
hanging out like how scary can I really be? And
her focus in the waiting days is envision me as
president and look, we haven't ever had a female president before,
and she is has been knocked rightly at plenty of
times as kind of a lightweight. So that kind of
landed for me as part of the thinking going into
this in terms of the messaging. Their theory, which again
(27:52):
goes against my own views and instincts on these.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Things, but hey, you never know, maybe they're right. Their
theory is.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
That there exists a quote unquote shy Kamala voter who
is a kind of like that the Nicki Haley voter right,
who is a conservative woman who has voted Republican most
of her life, whose husband is likely voting for Donald Trump,
and who is in a lot of circles in her
community where everybody is basically a Republican and supporting Trump,
(28:22):
and she really can't come out publicly and say she's
supporting Kamala Harris and maybe needs a little bit of
a reminder of this is who this guy is. Remember
January sixth, look at the people who served with him,
Madis Millie, now Kelly all coming out and saying, hey,
I was in the room with this guy, like I
actually saw how he operates, and yeah, your worst fears
(28:44):
that he is actually a fascist are true.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
And by the.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Way, yes, okay, plenty of bad things did happen last
time around, but the republic did not end. But guess
what this time we're not going to be there. It's
going to be all the loyalists. They're going to use,
you know, Schedule F to dismantle the administrative state. So
whatever institutions and checks and bulwarks were inhibitors were there
(29:08):
last time are gonna be gone and it's just going
to be you know, there's a whole project, concerted project.
That's the real takeaway from Project twenty twenty five. There's
a concerted project to make sure that none of those
restraints from last time are in place. So that's their
theory of why they're leaning into this messaging because they
think number one, Kamalin needs to put herself in these
(29:31):
sort of like presidential settings and prove herself there as
this like tough, credible leader. And number two, because Trump's
approval rantings have ticked up a bit, you need to
remind people of what it was that they found most
disturbing about him last time that he held the office
and make the case that next time around he would
(29:51):
actually be worse.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Yeah, I think, you know, and I think that's the
only interpretation we can come away from. I feel so
distanced from this campaign. Usually I can fee and understand
why people are doing what they're doing back in twenty twenty,
the Biden Basement strategy. Criticized it a lot, obviously on empirical,
but it was the correct strategy.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Right, it was obvious. This one. I just don't get it.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
I mean, I understand the twenty twenty two thesis. I
understand that that coalition they really believe they can bring
it out. But in an era where Donald Trump increased
the amount of votes that he got by almost ten
million in twenty twenty, has always had a track record
of driving out these lower propensity voters and shaking up
the political establishment. Maybe there's not evidence for it, but
there's been so many polling misses and there's still so
(30:33):
many things that could happen. I mean, nobody saw the
Latino shift in Texas and elsewhere happening back in twenty twenty.
Was a shock on election night. If it was one
of the biggest shocks I experienced, I don't know. I mean,
maybe you know it's one of those where is it
really going to land? It just seems so played out,
so driven home by the media to me, I mean
I called it on Twitter the Jennifer Rubin campaign, Like,
(30:54):
to me, it really is like the apotheosis of this.
Jennifer Ruben like media critique that the media actually doesn't
talk enough about how Trump is a fascist. I saw
yesterday it was like Van Jones was like, Kamala has
to be flawless. Well, Donald Trump is lawless. And yet
you know, yeah, I know. But went on his Instagram
and he's like, it's feeling like twenty sixteen again. You
got to get out there and vote, like we're looking
(31:16):
down fascism in the barrel. And I mean the whole
country experienced two and seventeen to twenty and twenty one
when Trump was actually a president, none of that stuff happened.
Their argument as well, will be different this time around,
but people look back on those years actually quite fondly.
And then even with Trump people himself, a big criticism,
including mine, would be that he did have people like
(31:37):
General Kelly Maddison others who didn't agree with him on anything,
and who at many times actively thwarted a lot of
his better orders, like to withdraw from Afghanistan or whatever.
So I just look at it as very different from theirs.
Of course, they're not trying to win me over that coalition.
I just keep thinking, aren't these people, Harris voters already
aren't they already Democrats? Like who is being convinced by this?
(31:58):
But look, if they win by one in all the
blue Blueell states, I'll say it right here, they were right.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I mean the difference between twenty twenty and now is
that in twenty twenty eight, January sixth hadn't happened. Yeah, true,
so it was, you know, I mean, you could you
could point to like Trump did weaponize the Department of
Justice against you know, launching investigations against John Kerry and
against Komy. And it's not like there was nothing you
could point to, but there was nothing as shocking as
(32:26):
what happened on January sixth. And you know, and now
we've learned more and more details about No, he really
was serious about, for example, calling the militarian to shoot
protesters in the legs during the Black Lives Matter protest.
He really was serious about these plans to attempt to
like use the National Guard to seize ballot boxes. He
(32:47):
really did try to overturn the election using these fake
electors slates.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
We really did watch a crazed.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Mob run around the Capitol calling for his own vice
president to be hang and him sit back and you know,
allow it to happen, if not be actively like in
support of that sentiment.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
So you know, that is a significant.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Shift from where we were back in twenty twenty, which
even in twenty twenty obviously he lost, so even before
people had that incredibly jarring experience. So again, my instinct
is similar to your Sagert and it was in twenty
twenty two to be like, I don't know why you're
focused like I to me, I think this is important, right,
(33:33):
I think actually the argument is correct that you know,
all of any sort of institutional guardrail and check that
was in place that checked his worst instincts last time around,
they have made a concerted effort to dismantle those. You
also have a Supreme Court decision basically saying, hey, whatever
you do in office, basically you're immune. Like you can
do basically whatever you want. So it is a different
(33:55):
landscape in that regard that resonates with me. My instinct
is to say you should be. You were better off
when you were framing him as like weird versus this,
you know, giant threat. You're even better off when you're
leaning into bread and butter issues inflation, which we have
to say too. I mean, she has closed the gap
with him on economics, so some of what she's saying
is landing. But I just I can't be so certain
(34:17):
about it because their analysis was more right in twenty
twenty two than mine was. And I think what Wygel
points to is they've effectively already baked into the calculus,
like we're losing Arab American voters, We're just gonna try
to make it up somewhere else. We're not going to
hit our margins with black men in particular, We're also
(34:37):
going to try to make that up somewhere else. And
they're say, all right, well, where do we make that up.
The largest group of voters in the country is white people,
and white women in particular are the single largest demographic group.
So if we can pull in another couple percentage points there,
then it's enough to make it work, especially in the
blue wall states. And you know, I can't say definitively
(34:58):
that they're wrong about.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
That again extraordinarily possible.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
It just seems like such a tremendous gamble, Like I
would you know, if we're gambling and we're looking at
margins and ways to win, it just seems totally different,
both the way I would.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Do it and others.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I mean, I guess why I come back to it
in terms of why it's all baked in is we
have heard this all so many times, and by the
way I would point out, this whole Atlantic article has
some serious like issues. Let's put a six please on
the screen. Nick Ayers, who I covered at the White
House and was the deputy chief of staff while General
Kelly was also the Chief of Staff, says quote, I've
avoided commenting on interstaff leaks or rumors, but General Kelly's
(35:35):
comments regarding President Trump are two egregious to ignore. I
was with each of them more than most, and his
commentary is patently false. There is an anecdote in the
Atlantic article which is alleged that Trump didn't want to
pay for this soldier's funeral. The sister of that fallen
soldier says that is absolutely not true.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
I would The reporter who.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Was in the room during their meeting says absolutely not true.
Now all these people have certainly an incentive, right, But
Nick ayris it was like some never Trump Mike Pence
type guy who I covered at the White House and
eventually left. He has not in any way some sort
of like Maga warriors. So when the guy says this,
to lie like, I tend to believe it. At the
end of the day, only General Kelly and Donald Trump
(36:15):
actually know what was allegedly said in some private conversation.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
You can make up your own mind. Can I ask
you that?
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Like we weren't there. I was like, it is just
like he said he said. He said, does it strike
you as now landish? Though that Trump could say like,
it's to me, it's not that crazy or unimaginable given
some of the things he said in public, that he
could have said something like this, and so you know,
it doesn't like blow my mind to imagine him being like,
(36:43):
you know, I want some generals like the German generals.
That sounds very much like something Trump'll say.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
It doesn't that kind of lose when he's like what
even listen to Kelly said, He's like, I want somebody
who takes orders. It's like, well, I mean, for example,
let's think about what maybe the context like maybe when
Trump was like, hey, you need to withdraw from Syria
and James Madison the Pentagon hide the number of troops
in Syria and don't withdraw and execute a lawful order, Like, well,
which side would you rather have the per person who
actually obeys the commander in chief or not?
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Like that? That's what I mean.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
But why you got to go to Hitler's generals?
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Okay, the point is about I mean, by the way, you.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Know, I've been trying to avoid the discussion. But you know,
what's his name? Kelly brought up? He's like, oh, did
you mean Bismarck's generals. Did you mean the Kaiser's generals
or do you mean Hitler's generals. There is a discussion
to be had about who the best generals were between Bismarck,
Kaiser and Hitler or whatever. Don't forget Heinz Gudarien was
never prosecuted by the Nuremberg trials. He was the chief
of staff of the Wehrmacht under Hitler. So all I'm
(37:36):
saying is that if you actually look at so called
like the context of I'm trying to issue orders or whatever, Yeah,
don't you want a general officer who does obey like
the whatever the order, a lawful order at least from
the president.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Probably, so you also would like Hitler's generals.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
No, I didn't say I would like Hitler's generals. But
I'm saying it's a stupid What I'm saying, is this
a stupid and contrite way of being like, oh, it's
it is evidence so that he would like pursue a
holocaust or some sort of like ridiculous and the most
smearing way. We have to be adult in the way
that we can talk about that conversation.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
And so, like what I just pointed.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Out with the Seria thing is a perfect example of
why I liked schedule AFT. I'm like, yeah, it's good,
get them out of there. They're actively subvert the commander
in chief. Bigger than Trump too. This is a Biden problem.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
This isn't everybody problem.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
The last time we discussed this, you know, you said
you had some you thought Trump would be basically a
dictator if he got I don't want to put work
that's I said.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Trump would pursue many of the most outlandish things if
he could. But I have enough faith in American institutions
that that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
So to me, the issue with that analysis to me
is that you can't, on the one hand, say like, oh,
the institution's held last time, and he was held in
check bye by the way some people like Kelly and Mattis,
et cetera, and Millie, But also I want none of
those people in this administration, and I want them to
just destroy, actively destroy the institutions that did keep him
(39:00):
in check last time. And also it also leaves out
the fact that the landscape is different since you have
the Supreme Court decision that basically says you're immune for acts.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
That you take in office.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
So to me, that's kind of trying to have it
both ways of saying, yeah, well, the institutions held last time,
but also I don't want those institutions around this time
to hold them in check.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Very easy to explain in terms of what is it,
Like what did you reference, like shoot people in the
lag or whatever. Yeah, that's not going to happen, even
under so called Schedule F. But the example I gave of, hey,
you need to withdraw from Syria and then they fake
the numbers is specifically in the Pentagon and then give
them false information to the Commander in chief and don't
carry out that order.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
I think that needs to go. That's what I'm talking about.
Why I don't think that those are actually mutually exclusive.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Why are you so confident that if you so. Last time,
when you know, when Trump was like, why can't the
military just come in and shoot shoot protesters in the
legs or something that was you know what he said,
would I?
Speaker 4 (39:53):
I believe that he.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Said that you had Milli in place to be like,
you can't do that, right, And the whole goal of
the you know Project twenty twenty five and many of
the most organized conservative efforts in the meantime is to
make sure that you don't have someone like Millie in
place who can say like, no, we're not doing that,
that you have quote unquote loyalists, like that's Trump's number
(40:17):
one goal. You see it already, you know, in the
choice of like jd Vance as vice president. The number
one goal is to make sure that the people who
are in place this time will do whatever he says,
whether it is appropriate, lawful, moral, or not. And so
that's why I don't think you can have so much
confidence that like, if he you know, wants to go
(40:37):
in that direction next time, you're going to have someone
in place who's going to be like, no, you can't
do that. And you know the context of John Kelly,
the quotes that we played for you, the audio we
played for you. That was in an interview with the
New York Times. He apparently, you know, this reporter had
been trying to get him on the record for a
really long time, and he didn't want to do it,
didn't want to do it, didn't want to do it.
And then what he says triggered him to come out
(40:59):
now is Trump's repeated comments about using the military against
the enemy within and for him, a bright red line,
which it should be for all of us, in my opinion,
in American public life, is turning the military against civilian populations.
So when you know what he tried to do last time,
when you know what he's saying publicly, when people who
(41:20):
know him way better than we do and have been
around him and seeing him in action way more than
we have, when all of them are saying this like it's,
you know, whether you want to use the F word
fascist or not, like this guy is want to be
dictator and really could be very dangerous next time around.
I just I can't hand wave that away given what
(41:40):
we've seen him already do at this point.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Again, I understand, but it just substantively seems very different
to me than I mean. Okay, let's say the theoretical
chain of command. For you need to go shoot people
on American streets, you would need the general to carry
it out. You would need to pass it down to
the National Guard, and the individual soldiers would actually carry
carry that out. Call me crazy, too optimistic, don't think
it's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
We did see protesters quite viciously attacked out front of
the White House during the Black Lives Matter.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
By the decent police, not on the order of the
President or the National Guard.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
It was.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
It was the National Guard. There were federal law enforcement
officers there. It was right outside.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Done by it. It was done.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
You're forgetting it was done in the service of enabling
that bizarre Trump photo off with the Bible. So that
was done at Trump's behest, and that it was.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
At a time. Yes, I know plenty of the protests
were violent.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
It was at a time they were completely peaceful, and
you know they were viciously attacked. So I don't again,
I just to say it's impossible, I can't imagine it happening, etcetera, etcetera.
I given what we've already seen, I just I just
don't have that book.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
I mean, And that's fine. People can vote the way
that they want.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
There's a big difference to me between DC cops and
local cops tear gassing some people to get them out
of a square or whatever. So Trump can take a
photo op and literally trying to shoot people and occupy
the country. Like, if you believe that, then, frankly, I
have my whole voting GUYE today, go vote for Kamala.
If you don't believe that, and you think it'll work
its way out in the way that I laid out
in terms of the President's going to issue an order
(43:11):
and we're going to actually see the deep state or
whatever maybe come to heal and execute these orders, and
you should vote for Trump or vote you know, it's
up to you. But my point is that it seems
very clear that there's obviously like an Overton window within
what we're talking about here, and that this idea of
literally shooting people or enemy from within camps of US
(43:32):
citizens is not going to happen.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
If you believe it's going to happen, then don't vote
for him.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
I really don't know what to tell you. Like, that's
the argument that I think is very clear. I think
that's how the government should work. Specifically, both within the
bounds and then also you know, disobeying so called unlawful orders.
What I saw when uncover the White House is the
General McMaster, General Kelly, and General Madis willfully undercut the
President of the United States and tried it every turn
(43:56):
not to execute his foreign policy. My criticism of Trump
actually would be that you such a fool that you
allowed them to do so for two years, and that
you didn't use the full force of your office to say,
who were you? Get out of here. The guy comes in,
he says, I want to withdraw from Afghanistan. McMaster's like, no,
you need to surge in Afghanistan. And Trump signs that off.
So that's my criticism of Trump. But that's not the
criticism that media and Kelly and all these other people were.
(44:19):
It's very much like, oh, you need to trust me,
you know, because I was some four star general, and
you know that's another thing, these four star generals like, well,
you think they're the greatest people in the world.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
I covered the Pentagon. There's some of the biggest liars
out there.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Go look at the way that they all talked about Afghanistan,
Like why will you trust exactly what everything these people say,
this isn't even about General Kelly per Se, But it's
like anytime some general on CNN or whatever is like
talking about his past service and how we're supposed to
revere them. I just can't help but think the Afghanistan
papers and I read about him, every single commander of
(44:50):
that are of the US forces in Afghanistan lied to
the American people. So what credibility do you have with me?
So I guess it just comes down to like what
you really think is going to have and within this
specific situation, and also whether you find these people as
eminently credible and you want them to run the country
for me, absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
I don't want these people around.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
What do you make though of the fact that so
many of the people who you know, who supported, I
mean voted for Trump last time, who were lifelong Republicans,
who were you know, as comfortable enough with his leadership
that they were willing to serve in his administration, that
they all have very similar things to say.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
I make of it exactly what I just said. I
think that their neo institution or their deep institutionalists, that
they have a committed internationalist worldview, having covered and even
been in off the record conversations with General Kelly, with
General Madison, all these other people. They they saw their
role as very specific, we need to protect the republic
from Donald Trump. I don't think that these people should
be quote unquote protecting a democratic elected leader from any
(45:49):
or the republic quote unquote from a democratic elected representative
they like. For example, Mattis saw his entire role as
stopping Trump's blunt America first instincts and don't forget resigned
over what over the ceial withdrawal order that eventually came
to a head. General Kelly, same thing, General McMaster, same thing.
They saw their.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Role as Mikes. So what's up.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
How about Mike?
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Well, Mike Pen's a different story. And actually, I think
that criticism is pretty legitimate. I mean, I've never sat
here made some stop.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
That's the thing, is what they are saying is honestly
very similar to what Mike Pence is saying. And you know,
I would have put a lot more stock in the
argument you're making prior to January sixth. And you know,
we were very lucky that at that time there were
still a few people to tell Donald Trump no that
(46:38):
it wasn't even you know, worse than it ended up being,
and it was.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
It was a horrifying day.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
It was it was bad, Like the attempt to steal
an election was really bad. So I just can't be
so blase at this point of like, oh, you know,
I don't want anyone around who is an institutionalist. I
want Donald Trump to be able to exercise his most
unchecked impulses this time. I just can't, Like, I just
can't at this point.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
I get where coming from. I laid out in a
January six position.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
He didn't change her what the January analysis.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
At all, of course, But what happened then was the
result of the democratic process.
Speaker 12 (47:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Well, well, let's look at the current landscape of January
sixth and whether it can happen again.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
The Electoral Count Act has passed.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
The Vice President can no longer have any ambiguity on
certifying the election. Five out of the seven swing states
are ruled by Democrats, which would require certification under the
Electoral Count Acts.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
So that's not going to happen.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
Number Three, Rudy Giuliani and all of the other legal
associates who helped Trump do this are literally bankrupt. Rudy
was ordered yesterday to turn his Mercedes over to the
Department of Justice. Jenna Ellis had to plead guilty, Sidney
Powell had to plead guilty. They're all completely bankrupts. What's
his name, John Eastman has basically been run out of town.
I believe he's either been disbarred or not. I forget
(47:50):
Rudy's been disbarred. Every person who's been connected to that
has suffered massively at the hands of state, and Trump
himself is under federal indictment and it's not like he
didn't pay a price for So do I think it's
going to happen again, No, I absolutely don't.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
That was This is a case.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Of genuinely institutions coming together, I think in a totally
legitimate way of trying to constrain the universe where anything
like this could happen. So that's what I would say.
I'm not that worried about that playing out like this again.
If you want to say, an extraordinary circumstance of something different, okay,
maybe you know Again, I think within the gut bounds
of the system, people have really learned their lesson from
January sixth, And if they haven't, then I think they're
(48:25):
going to pay a big price for it. So that
would be my response on a lot of that, Like
just mechanically, a lot of the things that happened last
time cannot happen again. And if they want to see
in state court and lose every single case like they
did last time around, be my guest, I guess you
know you want to waste some legal fees.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Fine, it just feels like you're talking about, you know, Okay,
the exact set of circumstances that led to the exact
situation of January sixth have you know, have been somewhat mitigated, so.
Speaker 4 (48:52):
We don't have anything to worry about.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
And when I think about that, about the events of
January six and stop the steal in all of that,
it's less about Okay, Can that exact sequence of events
happen again?
Speaker 4 (49:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Probably not because he's not president right now, so that
makes things that, you know, makes things different right there.
But can is that indicative of the type of thing
that he can foment when he's at his worst?
Speaker 4 (49:19):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (49:19):
And is that indicative of you know, when you put
that together with what the people many people who are
in his administration, including his own vice president who stood
by him through everything up into the very end, what
they say about his worst impulses. You know, I think
that that is I think that is very troubling and
should be taken seriously. And then, you know, the last
(49:42):
thing I'll say that we can move on to to
Cammalist town Hall and take a look at what she's
saying in her closing closing pitch and also some of
the latest polls. But the last thing I'll say is also,
you do have a different landscape now with the Supreme
Court really saying like you have carbe blanche and so
even that theoretical institutional chet of you know, the highest
court in the land is now effectively gone. So if
(50:04):
you're taking that away, you're taking away any of the
people who were like, you know, institutionalists who were writing
memos to him saying, you know, like Don McGahn writing
memos to him saying was you cannot just turn the
Department of Justice into your own like like toy to
prosecute your political enemies. You just literally can't do that.
You take those people out of the picture. And you know,
(50:28):
I think it is I think it is a dangerous
situation and one that people should take into consideration.
Speaker 4 (50:34):
Now, I'm not telling.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
People how they have to vote, or that this has
to be their number one issue, et cetera. But you know,
a factor in the people who were in the room
with him, who saw how he operates and how he thinks,
and to take into consideration what we've seen happen and
his own public comments. You know, I don't think it's
like dranged, dur insane. Oh to take those things very
seriously given what we've seen at the time.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
I don't think is dranger insane. People can make up
their minds themselves.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
All right, let's go to the town hall, like you said,
And before we get to that, we're going to start
with a little bit of polling. There was a fun
analysis here by Nate Silver. Let's put this up there
on the screen. Silver writes in a new column, quote,
here's what my gut says about the election. But don't
trust anyone's gut, even mine. And actually, if you read
the column, Crystal, he basically says, if you asked me
(51:22):
to trust my gut, I've been vacuuming so much media
and looking at so much disparate data that I think
that Donald Trump is going to win. But that's exactly
why you shouldn't even trust my gut. I mean, I
don't know, what do you think the fact that he
says his gut thinks that Trump is going to win,
it means something to me. I don't actually take seriously
his whole don't trust my gut. Sean Trendy over at RCP,
(51:44):
somebody who was a real canary ahead of the twenty
sixteen election.
Speaker 3 (51:47):
So I've always trusted what he has to say. He
actually said the same thing.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
He's like, Yeah, if you asked me to put my
chips on something, I would put it on Trump. And
he's like, but the smarter move, if I was at
the table, would be to get all my chips and
walk away, and for what the outcome would be. So
I can't totally handwave it away. And there are signs,
you know, there are signs everywhere. Harry Enton, for example,
over at CNN talking about independence and some of the
movement away from Kamala Harris, Let's take.
Speaker 14 (52:11):
A listen center of the electorate.
Speaker 15 (52:13):
You go last time around, Joe Biden won these voters
by eleven points. You look at September of twenty twenty four,
a month ago, Kamala Harris was up five points among independents.
You look now, though, look at this, she's only up
by two points among a key block center of the electorate,
down nine points where from Biden was at the end
of the twenty twenty campaign. Of course, this is a
(52:33):
national picture. This is a national picture. What is going
on in those key battleground states Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the
Great Lakes, that blue wall, right, Joe Biden last time
around one and by five points over Donald Trump. Look
at where we are today. This is the type of
movement Donald Trump likes to see in the center of
the electorate. Up by a point now, of course that's
(52:53):
well with than any margin of arra right. But again,
it's the movement. It's the trends, mister Verman, that we're
looking at.
Speaker 14 (53:00):
And when you.
Speaker 15 (53:00):
Flip a group from going plus five Biden to now
plus one Trump, that's the type of movement Donald Trump
loves to say. And it's a type of movement that
I think gives democrats some ageitiz use. Usually the way
independence go so goes the nation. So candidates who won
independence and elections since nineteen hundred and fifty two, look
at this one independence won the election fifteen lost the
(53:23):
election despite winning independence just three so it is possible
to lose independence and win the election. But the bottom
line is that's only happened three times. It was Nixon
in sixty eight, it was four and seventy six, and
it was carrying two thousand and four.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
There you go, and if you take a lot of it,
that data coming out, We're going to talk about it
in our next block about Nevada. Things are looking very
very good for Republicans, at the very least clearly the
movement amongst Latinos and all there is very obvious, and
for traditional blue demographics not coming out to vote or
at the very least being outnumbered pretty dramatically. So I
put all that together and I mean, it's relatively a
(53:55):
good situation for Trump, but of course, you know, a
lot can happen. And what we talked about with Dave
Wigel remains a key point. Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina
can all go Trump and calmuck. It's still with in
the election. As long as the Nebraska what is it
Nebraska one?
Speaker 3 (54:09):
Is that what it is? I've forgot whatever that Nebraska.
Speaker 4 (54:12):
Whatever, the one that's the swing district question.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Swing district as long as it goes there to go
two hundred and seventy electors, and.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
The poll that one looks like pretty much it's in
the bag for them based on what we've got, what
I've seen right now. But yeah, so if you get
that and you get the Blue Wall States, and I
do feel like based on the polling we've seen and
based on the tea leaves you can read from the
early vote, the Blue Wall States are going in a
different direction than the sun Belt state, which was hard.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
To say in PA, but in the in the rest
of them, in Michigan specifically, it does look good for them.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, and it would make some sense, right, I mean,
just given the different demographic groups, how they're shifting and
realigning the campaign's different strategies, et cetera. But you know,
if you want to understand the Kamala Harris strategy down
the stretch of like the Liz Cheney tour and the
you know, the going on Fox News and the fascism
(55:05):
democracy pitch here at the end, I think it's all
because they see those numbers with independence and they feel
they need to shore them up, and they're concerned that
people's top two. You know, the things that are holding
them back from Harris are number one, Trump's favorability creeping
up a little bit, so he doesn't seem like as
bad as he used to seem, so trying to you know,
(55:25):
remind people of like the worst parts of him. And
number two that they can't quite envision Kamala Harris in
the commander in chief role and so you know that
she's too liberal and she's a lightweight if that's the
core of the campaigns and analysis of why they think independence
(55:45):
aren't quite as firmly in her camp as they were
with Joe Biden. Like that's what is leading them to
the strategy, which again it's not a strategy I'm particularly
in love with, but that's I think the way that
they're thinking about these things.
Speaker 4 (55:58):
And so we'll see the big question.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
And you know, one of the big questions with independence
is previously a lot of times there were significant numbers
of independents who were just like basically Republicans who just
didn't really want to call themselves Republicans but then always
voted for the Republican. Now with you have a trend
of a lot of young voters who are new into
the system who don't want to identify call themselves Democrats
(56:22):
and have all kinds of issues with the Democratic Party
or Democrats, but will vote Democrat. And who are you know,
who are ultimately like you know, a lot of Bernie
type young people who are like, no, I don't really
associate with the Democratic Party. But there's no way in
hell they're voting for Republicans, especially young women.
Speaker 3 (56:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
I think that's particularly like a significant trend there, And
that was one thing we're going to talk some about
the Nevada early vote numbers, which, by the way, I
do think, look, you know, good for Republicans. I don't
think there's any like spinning that away. But one of
the things that was being pointed out is a lot
of the independents who are voting in Nevada are pretty young,
and there is this trend in American life now of
(56:58):
young people identify as independence but disproportionately voting Democrats. So anyway,
we'll see how it all shakes out. We'll see if
those people show up to vote on election day or before.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
That is a good corollary, and that is one way
where Nevada could still go blue is if the what
is it called other? I think on the ballot it's
not independent. It actually is like unidentified.
Speaker 3 (57:18):
Yeah, I think that's what it is.
Speaker 4 (57:19):
But anyway, other, let's go with that.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
Okay, let's get to the town hall. This is really
it was interesting stuff. So CNN last night was supposed
to be a debate, and previously had been one that
they had floated where Donald Trump would appear. They ended
up turning it into a town hall and there were
a couple of different areas which we thought were interesting.
First and foremost is one that Kamala has really struggled on,
(57:42):
this question of what would you do differently from Biden?
Speaker 3 (57:44):
And then also have you ever made a mistake?
Speaker 2 (57:46):
What I put in those two is the category of
like political introspection and the opportunity to clean up something
that you see with the American people. Frankly, I thought
she had a terrible answer, but you'd make up your mind.
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 9 (57:58):
I don't think i've ever heard the former president had
made a mistake. A lot of politicians don't. Is there
something you can point to in your life, political life,
or in your life in the last four years.
Speaker 14 (58:07):
That you think is a mistake? That you have learned from.
Speaker 8 (58:12):
I mean, I've made many mistakes and they range from
you know, if you've ever parented a child, you know
you make lots of mistakes too. In my role as
vice president, I mean, I've probably worked very hard at
making sure that I am well versed on issues, and
(58:38):
I think that is very important. It's a mistake not
to be well versed on an issue and feel compelled
to answer a question.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
You know, It's so funny because she struggles the most.
I feel like almost in friendly settings.
Speaker 3 (58:54):
I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (58:55):
When you know, when she sat down with Brett Barry,
you and I had a different analysis of that interview,
but you could when we shared the assessment of was
her debate performance right? She knew it was going to
be adversary, though she prepared like crazy, and the questions
none of them are like this sort of soft and squish.
She like, tell me about you, And that's when she struggles.
Is when you get the softball, like tell me about
(59:18):
a mistake you made, or tell me about you know,
something personal that requires you to be like have say
something that wasn't in the briefing book, that's when she
really struggles. And also I think in these settings that
are more friendly. I also don't think she prepares for
the same degree and comes in with the She doesn't
come in in the same mental space and with the
(59:39):
same level preparation that she does for a breadbare or
a Trump interview. So yeah, when you ask her just
to say something like normal and human, she hasn't studied
the answer and she struggles.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
The crazy part about preparation, she didn't do anything yesterday.
If you look at her schedule, she had one thing,
that three minute press conference on John Kelly.
Speaker 3 (59:57):
She took no questions. That was it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
She was at there at her house preparing for the
CNN town hall. So what were you doing when you
were preparing? It's mystifying. Another area where Cooper really caught
her was on em This was actually a fun short
circuit moment because Democrats and Kamma clearly are used to
four years of making fun of Trump on the border wall.
Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
And of being totally opposed to his border policy.
Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Of course, ever since she became the candidate, she's like, no,
I agree with the border bill, and that at the
very least contains some of Trump's border policy. So she
is short circuits halfway in between because she has the
old routine and Cooper's like, hold on, wait a second,
don't you also support a border wall? And you can
watch like the gears turning in her head. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 14 (01:00:41):
Is a border wall stupid?
Speaker 8 (01:00:43):
Well, let's talk about Donald Trump and that border wall?
So remember Donald Trump said Mexico would pay for it.
Come on, they didn't. How much of that wall did
he build?
Speaker 14 (01:00:55):
I think the.
Speaker 8 (01:00:56):
Last number I saw I was about two percent. And
then when it came time for him to do a
photo up, you know where he did it in the
part of the wall that President Obama built.
Speaker 9 (01:01:04):
But you're agreed to a bill that would ear mark
six hundred and fifty million dollars to continue building that way.
Speaker 8 (01:01:09):
I pledge that I am going to bring forward that
bipartisan bill to further strengthen and secure our border. Yes
i am, and I'm going to work across the aisle
to pass a comprehensive bill that deals with a broken
immigration system. I think Jackson's question part of it was
(01:01:31):
to acknowledge that America has always had migration, but there
needs to be a legal process for it. People have
to earn it, and that's the point that I think
is the most important point that can be made, which
is we need a president oh is grounded in common
sense and practical outcomes, like let's just fix this thing,
(01:01:54):
Let's just fix it. Why is there any ideological perspective
on the let's just fix the problem.
Speaker 9 (01:02:00):
To fix the problem, you're doing this compromise bill. It
does call for six hundred and fifty million dollars that
was ear marked under Trump to actually still go to
build the world.
Speaker 8 (01:02:08):
I'm not afraid of good ideas where they occurred.
Speaker 14 (01:02:11):
You don't think it's stupid anymore. I think what he.
Speaker 8 (01:02:14):
Did and how he did it was did not make
much sense because he actually didn't do much of anything.
I just talked about that wall, right, we just.
Speaker 9 (01:02:22):
Talked about it.
Speaker 8 (01:02:22):
He didn't actually do much of anything.
Speaker 14 (01:02:25):
But you do want to build some wall.
Speaker 8 (01:02:27):
I want to strengthen our border.
Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
See this is brutal.
Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
You know, I've been a critic of this major immigration
imagine going back to twenty sixteen and telling us that
a Democrat would flail around and stumble and not know
what to say on.
Speaker 4 (01:02:44):
What is the border wall? Good or back? Like smart?
Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
And you know, I know what they're doing is their
ideas like let's try to blunt this idea that she's
too liberal and just going to open the borders and
blah blah blah. But I just think this answer right
here simplifies why. I mean, obviously I have issues with
the morality of their new like we want to be
more hawckey, We're going to try to get to Trump's
(01:03:08):
right on immigration policy.
Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
Like I have more going to fish at.
Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
But on the this answer exemplifies why the politics of
it are.
Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
A mess too.
Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
And you know, she goes back to this tick of
when something's uncomfortable, she laughs.
Speaker 4 (01:03:23):
So we saw this in both of the last two questions,
and I do it too.
Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
She's trying to make a joke about Trump and just
try hope that Anderson is going to move away. And
to his credit, he's like, but wait a second. You
used to say the border wall is dumb. Now you're
saying you need money just before the border wall. And
she can't say anything other than like, well, the way
he did it is bad because he didn't build enough
border wall, but also not willing to go back on
(01:03:49):
me saying that the border wall was dumb and bad.
So it's just it's just a mess, and it exacerbates
the issues around She doesn't stay for anything, and she's
a bit of a lightweight. That's what kind of comes
across in this question. So yeah, again, to me, this
(01:04:10):
is example number one of why I think the way
that they have approached immigration by just totally ceding to
the Republican argument, has been a moral number one, but
political mistake because it opens you up for moments like
this which are really fundamentally unanswerable given the position they've
stayed down.
Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
I O, well, a twofold.
Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
So you either own it and then you don't start
out by reverting to your twenty sixteen talking points about
the border wall and then get called out there almost immediately,
or like you said, you don't change your position or
whatever in the first place, but when you try and
do both, you look like an idiot, and that that's.
Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
Really yeah came.
Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
I mean, if you're really going to do this pivot,
probably the best thing to do would be like, look,
you know.
Speaker 4 (01:04:49):
What I was wrong?
Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
Yeah, exactly what hers with Ben here.
Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
We saw that and we adjusted, and that's what I'm
gonna do.
Speaker 4 (01:04:55):
I'm gonna I learn I'm not.
Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
So ideological that I don't adjust for new facts and
realities and the reality is blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
Blah' where I was like, yeah, and that's a good answer.
Speaker 4 (01:05:05):
That would be a lot better.
Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
But you know, politicians, they never want to admit that
they got anything wrong. They think it makes them look
weak and bad, whereas stumbling around like this in a
completely nonsensical way just makes it look like you don't
stand for anything.
Speaker 4 (01:05:21):
And there you go, you probably don't.
Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
All right, she got a question two on high prices
and inflation from these were all, by the way, actual
unregistered voters, at least from what we can tell, they
don't seem as planted as last time.
Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
So let's take a listen.
Speaker 14 (01:05:32):
Let me just ask you about price gouging. I looked
at your plan.
Speaker 9 (01:05:36):
You talk about going after price gougers, and I'm quoting
from the plan on essential goods during emergencies or times
of crisis.
Speaker 14 (01:05:44):
I get that.
Speaker 9 (01:05:45):
How does that help though, someone like Eric with prices
that for years the grocery price has just been high.
Speaker 8 (01:05:51):
Well, first of all, Anderson, as you know, and obviously
Sann has been covering extensively what has been happening in
the state of Georgia. North Carolina, Florida. It's a real issue.
I was Attorney General of California. I was the top
law enforcement officer of the biggest state in the country.
I took this issue on because it affects a lot
of people. And I'm not going to apologize for the
(01:06:12):
fact that we need to actually deal with accountability when
these not all in fact most don't. But when companies
are taking advantage of the desperation and the need of
the American people. We saw it actually during the pandemic
as well, where because of supply chain issues there was
a reduction of supply and then they would inflate the
(01:06:34):
price of everyday necessities. Not to mention, by the way, again,
Donald Trump should be here tonight to talk with you
and answer your questions. Not he refused to come. But
understand that part of his plan is to put in
place a national sales tax of at least twenty percent
on everyday goods and necessities, and that by economist estimates
(01:06:58):
independent economists, would cost you, as the American consumer and
taxpair and additional four thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
So you know, that remains one of our better moments
now in terms of what they're closing with you hear
some of that. You're hearing a lot of the character
stuff as well. Maybe that's a media thing. I'm not
so sure, but you know, I wanted to do at
least I guess a fair presentation.
Speaker 12 (01:07:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
First, well, I think it appears that they're spending a
lot of money in swing states on ads that focus
on that.
Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
Message right there.
Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
And it also appears from the polling on who do
you trust on various economic issues that some of this
messaging has broken through. There was a Bloomberg Swing state poll.
Maybe we can add this in post guys so people
can see, But on every economic issue that they surveyed,
Kamala Harris had closed the trust gap or even surpassed
Trump as the candidate that swing state voters trust. More so,
(01:07:47):
on taxes, Kamala Harris had a little bit of an
advantage on interest rates, It was very close. On housing costs,
she had an advantage on cost of everyday goods. They
were basically tied on healthcare costs. Advantage gas prices was
the one where he had the largest gap, but even
there she had closed it significantly. So you know, I
do think some of this is breaking through I think
(01:08:08):
the relentless focus in terms of the ad dollars has worked,
and it has become an area that is less of
a vulnerability for her than it might otherwise have been.
And I think that the other question that people have is, like,
you know, they may like her plans better, they may
not have confidence that any of it is really going
to have And I think that's a general statement about
the sort of reasonable, like pragmatic nihilism that people have
(01:08:31):
about anything getting done in Washington at this point, which
is not you know, which is not illogical given the
given how there's just nothing but good luck as far
as I can see in Washington, DC. So in any case,
I do think that she deserves credit for the set
of policies.
Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
She's put together.
Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
The ads that they're running on these issues are actually
very effective, I think, and the way that she's messaged
on it has clearly done her some favors.
Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
With us, it's done a little bit favorite and she
just closed that gap on the economy critical if she
does end up squeezing it out, that's actually gonna be
a key reason.
Speaker 4 (01:09:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
Why, So, final thing I just.
Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
Wanted to show was David Axelrod just admitting some of
the unmittable previously about quote word salad city from Kamala
Harris and is after action on the town hall, Let's
take a listen.
Speaker 13 (01:09:16):
When she doesn't want to answer a question, her habit
is to kind of go to world word salad city.
And she did that on a couple of answers. One
was on Israel. Anderson asked a direct question, would you
be stronger on Israel than Trump? And there was a
seven minute answer, but none of it related to the
question he was asking.
Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
True, I mean Salid City. It was clear too.
Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
You know, other people there felt kind of uncomfortable, and
I saw Van Jones say that as well.
Speaker 3 (01:09:46):
That's where the whole like she has to be flawless.
Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
He's like almost doing a media criticism element there, but
actual Rod ran the Obama campaign and he gets it.
Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
I do think that it is fair to say Trump
is just how to He just is a unique polity.
Speaker 4 (01:10:00):
He is held to a different standard. There's no doubt
about it.
Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
You know, if a story like the one we cover
with Dave Weigel, the equivalent of that, I don't even
know what it would be with Kamala Harris came out,
it would be a big story like a close Jeffrey
Epstein associate and some sort of you know, sexual scandal,
like it would be a big media story, and because
of Trump, it's not. Trump is given all kinds of
(01:10:22):
interviews where you read his words and you're like, I
just literally don't even know what you are talking about
right now, And again, it just doesn't get the same
level of attention and scrutiny as when Kamala Harris goes
to Ward salad ditty. But I mean that's kind of
just the political reality and landscape that we live in.
(01:10:43):
He does have his own set of unique standards that
he is held to that are just different than literally
any other politician, Republican or Democratic, exist.
Speaker 3 (01:10:53):
Absolutely like again, ye Shakespeare wants
Speaker 12 (01:11:01):
Speaks
Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
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That is possible.
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If you like what we're all about, it just means
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Speaker 3 (00:20):
But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for
everybody today.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
What do we have, christ Pal, Indeed we do.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Dave Wagel is going to be here in studio. He
is just back from Wisconsin. He was hitting some doors
there talking to actual voters about how they're thinking about
this election. We're going to talk to him about that,
the gender gap, the new Trump Epstein groping allegations, and
how much that plays or doesn't play into this election.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
So that'll be interesting.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
We're also taking a look at new comments from John Kelly,
who was Trump's chief of staff, saying that Trump was
a fascist, also saying that he thought.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
That Hitler did some good things and wanted.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Hitler's generals to his generals be more like Hitler's generals.
Kamala Harris really leaning into this as the campaign is
in its wanning days, so a lot to get into there.
Kamala also had a CNN town hall last night, so
we pulled some of those sort of highlights and low
lights and interesting moments from that to break down for
you as well. There's another thing we wanted to take
(01:17):
a look at here, which is both the substantive issue
of housing affordability and also how that may really be
impacting the vote, especially in Sun belt states and perhaps
in particular in the state of Nevada, something that we've
been wanting to tackle for a while, and obviously we've
been talking about housing here for quite a while on
how this was a sleeper issue it seems to be
playing out in terms of the election right now. Also
(01:40):
wanted to take a moment to focus on the former
CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch who has now been charged
with sex trafficking. The allegations are horrifying, They are quite stunning.
I mean, obviously this was and is an iconic American brand,
especially like when I was growing up, when soccer was
growing up as well. So I'm going to dig in
to that, we also have some updates for you. Out
(02:03):
of the Middle East is really propaganda about a Lebanese
hospital debunked live by BBC. Quite interesting there, and Sager
is taking a look at how we should think about
our votes. I'm looking forward to that one.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
How to vote, but not it's an instruction guide on
how to vote.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
You're not like telling people who to vote for.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
That's exactly I would never pray tell people how to
vote for to help people evaluate exactly right, which I
think is helpful. As Crystal said, we're going to get
to Dave Wygel before we get to that. Thank you
so much for our premium subscribers, everybody who's been taking advantage.
We will reveal our exclusive maps and predictions here for everybody.
Just twelve days to go until that election. How many
shows is that for shows until the presidential elections.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
We'll think about it that way.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
If you want to take advantage, you can go ahead
Breakingpoints dot Com become a premium subscriber. Let's get to
Dave Wygel. Joining us now is Dave Weigel. It's semaphorrescritch
to see you, man.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
It's good to see you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Absolutely so let's break down a little bit of a
media and a Trump accuser story kind of broke out
yesterday started off with a lot of speculation from Mark
Halprin over at Worldwide News his substack, and he said
that there was a story floating out there that if
it came out, it would end Trump's campaign. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 6 (03:09):
These last two weeks are going to be filled with
things like this. And I can tell you with that
going into detail, that I've been pitched a story about
Donald Trump now for about a week that if true,
would end his campaign, and there's all sorts of things
like that flying around.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
I'm not the only one who's been pitched it if true.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Was going to end the campaign.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
People said, wow, it must be really some of there's
all these rumors flying around out there day. I'm sure
he saw. And then finally it came out. And I'm
not going to diminish per se, but like you know,
it's certainly not campaign ending in.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Mind for Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah, let's put this up there on the screen. This
was a Stacy Williams.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
She is a ex model and a former associate of
Jeffrey Epstein. She says that Donald Trump quote Groape mean
what felt like a twisted game with Epstein. This was
back in nineteen ninety two at a Christmas party, she says,
after being introduced to him by Epstein in a Trump
tower or elevator. So, I guess there's a couple of
things we wanted to talk to you about. First of all,
both the details of the story this alleged like would
(04:07):
it end his campaign? Just news wise? I checked of
the morning newsletters. I think it was only Politico Morning
Playbook that even linked out to the story in the bottom.
So it doesn't seem to be taking all that seriously.
So what's your perspective here?
Speaker 5 (04:21):
He didn't in the campaign yet.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Yeah, Yeah, still waiting.
Speaker 7 (04:26):
Yeah, I don't think I've been pitched the thing that
help he's talking about.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
I saw Tom BEBVAM talked about it too.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
Yes, all of us who've been out there talking to
vout talking to voters. I was in Wisconsin this last week.
It's hard for us to imagine a story that would
qualify it like this because Trump, this is this is
the oldest news in the campaign. Trump Trump can survive
all sorts of things because there's a heuristic for his
voters and the voters who moved to him in the
last year or two years, that whatever he does wrong,
(04:55):
whatever his personal failings, look at his record, it doesn't matter.
And and this is something that was true when Bill
Clinton was running for reelection in different ways. I'm not
trying to be too glib and compare them, but voters
have set up in their mind things were good enough
when he was president to spit all that scandal. I
cannot pay attention to it. Would this work if he
was if he was a random guy running for Senate,
(05:15):
probably not. Doesn't work if it's Donald Trump? Yes, So
what you can name a few things in the last
few weeks that someone running for a lower office might
have been wrecked by and they don't wreck Trump because
of that, because of that mindset voters have.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, yeah, are we convinced like this is the story.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
He'll oh from what I asked around broadcast. Yeah, also
all this.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Like Charlie Kirk and all these like you know, pro
flitzers who said something about like an aide fake. So
I don't anyway, I don't know, but yeah, I agree
with the analysis.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
You've both offered.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Let me play devil's advocate, which is.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
The Harris campaign really seems to be banking on the
sort of like moderate female character, Yeah, like Nicky Hayley
type voter. And at the same time, Trump's approval ratings
are a little bit higher than they were last time around,
and certainly they were in twenty sixteen. So I think
part of that is people have kind of memory hold
some of the most salacious allegations, some of his most
(06:11):
silacious and horrifying acts, and so this again brings up like,
this is a guy who's been seriously accused of this
type of behavior, sexual assault, groping, et.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
You throw in there at Jeffrey Epstein connect this former
model alleges that they were very close friends, Donald Trump
and Jeffrey Epstein, and it does sort of potentially exacerbate
that gender divide, which is what the Harris campaign is
really banking on, being able to get enough women on
their side between Trump's behavior and the issue of abortion
to be able to put them over the top.
Speaker 7 (06:43):
Yeah, you can go too far and make some voters
think that he's being put upon, that he's being falsely accused.
The idea of the AI video that would be smart.
I think to fight a video that's damaging and claimant say.
I was at the Post when Amy Gardner, my colleague,
got the audio of Trump pressuring Brad Raft, and immediately
saw people try to spin.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
That out of consistence.
Speaker 7 (07:02):
You can have something rock solid and people will say
it's not true. But that's what they're trying to do, right,
freezing people's minds before they vote. Do you really want
to go through all of this for four years? You're
really going to go for all of it with a
seventy or eight year old president with somebody in the wings.
If he's damaged, would Jadvans take over? They do want
to throw not in the way that a confident campaign
that's going to win and it feels like it feels
(07:23):
like it's locked up.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
Not in that way.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
They are trying to draw attention to think you saw
this with the Vice President yesterday putting out a statement
on this Jeffrey Goldberg Atlantic article that is not an
article that forty eight percent of the country is going
to take seriously. They have a mechanism by now which
they don't take it seriously, But that is what they're
trying to do. And I saw some of that Wisconsin.
They are getting some Republican endorsements, people who were even
(07:47):
on the fence or voted for Trump in twenty twenty.
They are getting that with the argument that, look, whatever
her faults, do you really want to put up with
this sky again? Is that compelling? It has papered over
some of her issues and it's a lot. Maybe it's
allowed her. Maybe she she'd be doing better, she she
had more of this to appeal to those Republicans without
specifically saying yes, I'm going to give up on not
(08:09):
restoring remain in Mexico or yes I'm going to I'm
going to forever give up on a thing that me
and Biden did. She's not going that far. The replacement is,
look at this crazy stuff that you don't want with Trump.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
You brought up Wisconsin trying to scribe our Yeah, yeah,
you just spent a long time there. Yeah. So, and
we were talking a little bit behind the scenes about
all of the Trump ads against common Yeah, so what
do the Kamma ads against Trump look like? Are they
equally as inundating and argues it the character argument, because
that's what they're.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Closing on, that's what they've decided.
Speaker 7 (08:35):
So interestingly, they're not response ads, which is what you
see in a lot of races. I'm being attacked with
three different ads on something negative, in this case government
funded sex surgeries for prisoners right not to really get
the entire issue, but there are three ads on that,
and the campaign's not putting out ads saying no, I
didn't or here's why I did that. It's putting out
ads one about her economic agenda too, about kind of
(08:59):
January sixth, Trump's character, and that is after twenty twenty two.
You can't tell Democrats that people don't care about this
told nobody cares and then it was decisive in a
lot of suburbs. But they are They're letting a lot
of attacks go by or to connect on her on
that record. They really are not doing a lot, and
you've seen it. It's been the hardest question for her
to answer interviews is where she would where Biden got
(09:19):
something wrong, where she would change from Biden.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
She's not doing that with the advertising.
Speaker 7 (09:23):
She is just saying and I would actually say the
future forward, pack especially the super Pac very economic focus message.
So you do hear if you're watching TV, you're watching
Packers game. I guess it's got lucky because very exciting
one on Sunday, you do see, okay, she'd have this
kind of tax cut for me. I don't know how
sticky it was, because I went out with people canvassing too,
(09:44):
and you were finding voters who's at this point still
didn't know what her economic plan was, still didn't know
exactly how she'd restore row. But that's the strategy. It's
not let's hit back at everything Trump says. Let's just
come up with something that maybe the voter who's undecided say, well,
I'm just talking about crazy, negative stuff and she has
a plan. That's the impression they want people to leave,
not that she's fighting back on everything.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I mean, I feel like, in a sense, the Liz
Cheney tour is an effort to fight back against because
what is that the you know, transgender surgery. At Yes,
it's about the issue, but it's also about like, she
is this liberal San Franciscan who doesn't connect with American values.
And to me, the effort with the Liz Cheney tour,
which I have a million issues with I've talked about before,
(10:27):
but anyway, the effort with that is to be like,
look at these modern Republicans who are super comfy with me.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
So I can't be that.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Crazy if Liz Cheney is willing to, you know, hang
out with me and endorse me and go and do
those town halls, et cetera. So in a way, I
feel like that's her effort to blunt the core of
that attack, which is like, you're too liberal to represent
all of America.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
That's how it felt.
Speaker 7 (10:49):
I went to one of those events in the in
the Milwaukee suburbs, and you did meet I met there
people who've been Republican up till twenty twenty and then
and then bailed.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
But that's what I mean.
Speaker 7 (10:58):
She wasn't saying here's a promise you can take home.
She was offered a couple of chances. She was better
at a couple of the other Cheney events. Hey, my
neighbors worried about something that you did in your past.
She didn't say what she would do differently. She didn't
even mention I'd put a Republican in the cabinet. I
think maybe because the Trump campaign has fed this idea
that she'd put chaining in a national security position, which
(11:18):
Democrats say they would not do. But you got her
on stage. Yeah, not a good topic to bring up
at that moment, but she's not. That is what's different.
Whereas Trump, whether you think it's credible or not, Trump
will just promise something. Trump will say, yes, I'm going
to get this thing that the culinary union wanted, this
tax cut.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
I'm going to do it. Don't ask me how I'm
gonna do it. I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 7 (11:36):
And Democrats are so much more cautious just generally. There's
the Trump campaign takes a lot of risks, puts out
a lot of ideas that might be hard to implement.
It knows that I think Republicans won't say how you
pay for that, because that's.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Not how they run. They want him to win.
Speaker 7 (11:50):
And her campaign is much more cautious in saying no,
we will make some hard break, which is this lego less.
Chaney tour was a little more confounding because they were
getting a hit on one end for having Cheney campaign
aid pack, this Arab American pro Trump pack was running
ads in Michigan and I only saw photos I've been
Michigan yet that are just pictures of Cheney and and
(12:10):
hers together in Arab American neighborhoods. What is the are
they getting the gain on the other side by saying,
and Liz Cheney will validate Harris, don't worry about X issue.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
It's not the issue.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
It's just it's just democracy. I'm not it sounds too
plus eight, but it really is just the democracy issue
as opposed to the Hey, she's learned her lesson on immigration.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
Hey, she's learned her lesson on crime.
Speaker 7 (12:32):
Some of the ads do say that, but they're really
not delivering the stuff that somebody really on the fence
might might say, Oh, I'm confident I'm not going to
see ten million border crossers if she's president. That hasn't
happened yet.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
So I saw Nate Silver make a point which is
contrary to this whole is change. He said, look, guys,
at the end of the day, I think that these
people are already called Harris voters when you don't need
to go after them. And that's I mean, intuitively kind
of accepts my bias towards the issue. But while you
were there, were they already Harris voters? Like what are
these people genuinely undecided? Like how do we square that question?
Speaker 7 (13:06):
They were they felt odd about voting for a Democrat,
but they just couldn't bring this sullt to vote for Trump.
They probably were Harris voters because she's and you see
this now that now that the polling, I think there
are a couple of errors with the screens or a
couple of pickups with the voter screens, registered versus likely.
She is doing better in a lot of places with
the people more likely voters. And those are the guys
(13:27):
who were Republican twenty years ago, the women who were
the women who voted for Mitt Romney, who always vote,
who vote in school board elections, They have been fishing
in that pond while Trump goes for the less. I mean,
this is what the Trump Rogan interviews is about. Absolutely,
very obviously, there are people who hate politics, don't trust politicians.
I'm going to introduce myself and hey, maybe the registered,
maybe they'll turn out. This campaign is no, there is
(13:49):
an electorate. We've we know how to win this electorate
in twenty twenty barely. If we get ninety five percent
of that vote out, then we win. That is the theory.
It's much it's much more rebuilding than addition.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I want to ask you a little bit more about that,
But I'm also curious about your time going out with canvassers.
What type of doors were you hitting? Were they like
persuasion or were these you know, we got to get
you to turn out. And was there any particular issue
that was really being brought up again and again at
the doors.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
These were It was a mix of so.
Speaker 7 (14:16):
With Democrats, I did with Republicans in Arizona, mostly people
who were registered but hadn't turned their ballot in yet,
and they had they were they just needed the kick,
but they were going to vote for Trump. With Democrats,
I was with mostly Democratic household, some people who they
think voted Democratic because there's no party registration in the state,
and it was I need the people who were on
(14:37):
the fence needed clarity about what she was going to
do about the economy and prices, needed clarity.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
About her abortions.
Speaker 7 (14:43):
One stuck with me and in one part of kind
of central Wisconsin, a woman who just she was pro choice,
but she wasn't sure what Harris is actually going to do,
which is amazing they didn't break through how much time
they spent on it. I don't want to overestimate that
one thing, but I did put it into my data
base of voters are busy and not paying attention to
every promise they make.
Speaker 5 (15:03):
She's not repeated enough.
Speaker 7 (15:05):
I was not seeing I was not seeing huge shifts
from this. I remember going in twenty sixteen, and every
Democrat had this experience, including the ones I was canvassing with,
of going to what was a Obama neighborhood and finding
Trump voters, and that wasn't happening. It was These are
the voters who voted against Scott Walker in Wisconsin. These
are the voters who were, you know, gett able for
Ron Johnson but might have been voted for the governor Evers.
(15:29):
It's the margin of maybe five percent of the electorate
they were going for as opposed to Big Surprise. If
somebody wants to show me the big surprises, take me
to it. But they were, in this context going to
central Wisconsin white voters who were undecided. Democrats admit they're
not going to get the twenty twenty margin with black
men in Milwaukee. That is baked into the assumption that
(15:52):
these voters, who are pretty reliable and turn out but
have a couple of questions about what her agenda is,
they're easier to get than the black voters in Milwaukee
who are just done with politics and here more hear
nothing that they did that was that was good.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
They haven't given up.
Speaker 7 (16:08):
There are groups focused on that effort, but they're assuming
they're going to underperform.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
The interesting secondary things sometimes is a seneate conversation, what
did you see there that was interesting?
Speaker 7 (16:16):
Oh, it is a competitive race with Baldwin the advantage
and she's she sanator Baldwin Tamy. Baldwyn going for a
third term has been winning because she's getting five to
seven percent of Trump voters and Harris is getting two
percent That Delta Republicans are.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Trying to shrink.
Speaker 7 (16:32):
So the ad part of it, what do you see
a lot is a sort of anti corruption, clean hands,
rich guy argument, which you see a lot in campaigns.
Hubby is personally very wealthy CEO of a bank and
is run he and Pacts have run several ads pointing
out that Baldwin has a girlfriend in finance and is
because they're not married, has not revealed her her girlfriend's finances.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
Who knows what that means? Question?
Speaker 7 (16:55):
And I asked, Hubby, are their votes she's taken? You
think are connected to her girl and in finance and
Democrats think that this is about reminding people that Baldwin
is gay. She's been elected as an op gate for
twenty some years, but they that has been the effort
to say, this is a corrupt Democrat who you can't
(17:18):
trust to deliver for you. If you're a Trump voter,
she's that's the reason you should bail on her. Maybe
vote on her twice, but bail now. But also very close.
I didn't see again in evidence of twenty sixteen style
massive shift somewhere, and even in the third district where
Republicans flipped it last less cycle and Trump won it,
they're very competitive. I was at with a Democrat the
(17:39):
Already we're seeing people who you'd think could be Republican,
rural voters very far from a city like a high vs.
Twenty minutes away, pretty happy with the Democrat because they
think Trump and the Republican incumbent were too rude and
they were too anti immigrants. So there's still the Wisconsin mix.
It just has really not their states were you know,
one hundred thousand people moved in and changed the alchemy
(18:00):
of the electorate. That's not happened to Wisconsin. It's very
frozen for twice.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Question important blue Wall dynamic is that they have not
had the same knit migration. They don't have a flute
like as an economy, so it's actually a little bit
more frozen in time, which is very much to Harris's benefit.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, last question for you, what do you make of
the podcast strategy because I'm just a little skeptical because
I've seen these candidates who have really leaned into like
new meat. I mean, that's very self serving. I would
love if we're very powerful, right, But you know, the
Vake Ramaswami was a podcast candidate. We saw how I
worked for him, Ronda Santis was like a podcast candidate,
(18:34):
Andrew Yang Toulci Gabbard and they generate a lot of
online enthusiasm and then they get like one percent in
the polls. So do you think that there's you know,
a significant group that is persuadable that's going to turn
out to vote, Like, do you think that this is
a fruitful strategy really for either campaign in large numbers?
Speaker 7 (18:52):
Yeah, I'm less confident about the second part that somebody
is going to listen to this on their commute or
their drive and say, well, I was totally unengaged before
and now I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. Yeah,
that unless as a strategy of getting of getting the
campaign's daily message out and finding in the news cycle.
I think it's it's this was the cycle where it
changed over just the the benefits. What are going to
(19:13):
be the benefits of a Trump podcast appearance again Rogan
coming up versus the benefits of the Harrison town hall.
What is she trying to do in her media appearances.
It's it's not not make mistakes and look confident.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Uh, the Rogan.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
Appearances, podcast appearances, that's part of that's that's built in
unless unless you're really tanking, you're in a in a
setting where people see you as as more human, you
deal with questions that are not got that are not gotcha's,
or not trying to pin you down on something. And
I think I think it's been if it's been effective.
Her most effective interviews have usually been those the podcasts.
Are they finding brand new people? No, But I think
(19:47):
they're trying to do different things. Trump is trying to
reassure people, uh, and and look likable and again fit
every problem you have with them in the in this
in this box. That that that's that has a bumper
stick here. Uh, I'll take more t more mean tweets
and cheap gas right now, That is every Trump message
with her. It is how do people look at her
and say, yeah, she can go toe toe with Putin?
Speaker 5 (20:07):
I really do think.
Speaker 7 (20:08):
And even at the DNC, which some people didn't like
the emphasis on defense and military, the reason they do
that is because she one is a woman and two
is not like a swaggering Hillary Clinton type does She's
not somebody who has been in a decision decision room
and may and people think, and you hear this anecdotally,
you'll hear where cause voters who say I'm not sure
(20:30):
how she'd handle a crisis, She's still tried to do that.
So that's what her interviews are about, not bump mop up,
messing up a question do that. Podcasts probably less useful
for that, And she does need to show that she
can say I can and I think this is why
Fox in the long run was good for her. And
though people want to be a disaster, oh, she could
handle that. She talked over him, she didn't let herself
get interrupted. Really, that atmospheric I heard more about from
(20:52):
voters than anything said.
Speaker 8 (20:53):
In the interview.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
That is such a good point.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Dave always read to talk to you man, and we'll
see you soon and hopefully thank you.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
So, as we just discussed.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
With Dave Weigel, there's being a lot here made of
Kamala and her attack on Donald Trump in the closing
days is all about character. So that has really come
into focus with some more recent allegations by General Kelly,
former Trump chief of staff. Kamala Harris took advantage of
that at a town hall yesterday. We're going to show
you more of the town hall later in the show.
What we wanted to start with this part. Specifically, she
(21:23):
says Donald Trump is quote a fascist. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 8 (21:26):
We know that is why Mike Pence is not running
with him again, why the job was empty. And then
today we learned that John Kelly, a four star Marine
general who is his longest serving chief of staff, gave
an interview recently in the last two weeks of this election,
talking about how dangerous Donald Trump is. And I think
(21:49):
one has to think about why would someone who served
with him, who is not political, a four star Marine general,
why is he telling the American people now? And frankly,
I think of it as he's just putting out a
nine to one to one call to the American people.
Understand what could happen if Donald Trump were back in
(22:10):
the White House. And this time we must take very seriously.
Those folks who knew him best and who were career
people are not going to be there to hold him back.
Speaker 9 (22:24):
You've quoted General Millie calling Donald Trump a fascist. You
yourself have not used that word to describe him. Let
me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump is
a fascist?
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yes? I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
All right, So all of this comes back from to
General Kelly, who was the chief of staff, longest serving
chief of staff under Donald Trump. A lot of these
comments came to light in an Atlantic article with Jeffrey Goldberg.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
I will reserve some of the problems.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
With that article for a little bit later, and at
least just play the audio from General Kelly himself. This
was audio that he is allowed to be released from
the New York Times talking about this alleged incident.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 10 (22:58):
She would a world once that you know, the Hitler
did some good things too, And of course, if you
know history, again, I think he's lacking in that.
Speaker 11 (23:09):
But if you know what his you know, Hitler was
all about Uh, you'd be pretty hard to make an.
Speaker 12 (23:14):
Argument that he did anything good.
Speaker 13 (23:16):
So what would you What would you say when he
said to you that Hitler did a lot of good things?
Speaker 12 (23:20):
Well, I tell him that, I said, you know, if
you first of all, you should never say that.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
But if you knew what.
Speaker 12 (23:27):
History Hitler was all about, from the beginning to the end, Uh,
everything he did was in support of his racist fascist
uh life, you know, you know philosophy, so that nothing
he did you could argue was good. It was certainly
not done for the right reason. And but he would
(23:53):
occasionally say that.
Speaker 13 (23:54):
What would he say when you would lay that out
to him?
Speaker 12 (23:58):
He just, you know, end of the conversation. Usually, certainly
the farmer president is in the far right area. Certainly
an authoritarian.
Speaker 11 (24:12):
Admires people who are dictators. If he has said that,
so he certainly falls into the into the general definition
of fascists for sure.
Speaker 7 (24:28):
If he was left to his own devices, would he
be a dictator if he didn't have people around him.
Speaker 13 (24:33):
Oh, I think I think you'd.
Speaker 12 (24:35):
Love to be. Uh, I think he'd love to be
just like he was in business. He could tell people
to do things and they would do it, and not
really bother too much about whether, uh what the legalities were.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
And what all right? So there you go.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Would we want to react to this Crystal before we
play this? She made a big moment about this is
a press conference yesterday at the Vice Essential Residents. We
were on pins. We're like, oh, what is it? It
could be something big. She's she's going to come out,
she's doing a press conference. She was never does a
press conference. Didn't end up any taking any questions. It
was only like, you know, maybe a few minutes recounting
these comments. But what we seem to take away is
(25:14):
that because that article had come out from the Atlantic,
there was not as much media coverage I think as
the Democrats would have liked about it. So she was
trying to force the conversation both with I think the
fascist term and then also trying to get people, I
guess successfully for us to talk about it, because that
is her closing argument. Now with twelve days to go,
(25:36):
it's full on character. January sixth Dictatorship. I mean, listen,
I think it's been tried before. I don't think it's
going to work, but I'm curious what you think.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Well, it did work in twe twenty two.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I mean, yeah, but he wasn't on the ballot. So
that's what I just keep going.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
So let me just say that was on the bout.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
My own political bias is that this is not a
smart strategy. That is, my bias is to buy into
the research that Matt Carr brought us on the show
that shows that, you know, the most effect of messaging
in wist swing voters in the state of Pennsylvania is
about populist policies and progressive economics. I do have to
say I think her closing ads that Wygel reference when
we just talked to them, focused on taxes and Trump
(26:13):
being for the billionaires.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
I do think that that is an effective pitch.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And so my political bias is to look at this
and go listen, people who think this through think Trump
is a fascist in my opinion, Accurately, they are already
in your camp. You're not really persuading anyone. But you know,
I have to say, like I was wrong in twenty
twenty two, so I do have some humility about my
own assessments.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
So let me talk about the political strategy a.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Little bit, and then you know, we can also talk
a little bit about the substance. Here on the political strategy,
Weigel mentioned something that hadn't really occurred to me, which
is that it's her, you know, doing this big press
conference yesterday at the vice presidential residence, her plan to
do the you know, the big closing speech in the
ellipse where January sixth occurred. This is, yes, it's about
(27:02):
the message itself, but it's also about I look presidential.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
You can imagine me.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
In this role, and they feel like that is still
a question that remains for some voters who don't like
Trump but are not sure that they're ready to vote
for Kamala Harris. And that kind of landed with me
as like, oh, that's an important part of what they're
doing here. Trump is trying to go hang out with
the bros and say, look, I'm not this scary, dangerous
character that they're painting me on as here I am
(27:28):
hanging out like how scary can I really be? And
her focus in the waiting days is envision me as
president and look, we haven't ever had a female president before,
and she is has been knocked rightly at plenty of
times as kind of a lightweight. So that kind of
landed for me as part of the thinking going into
this in terms of the messaging. Their theory, which again
(27:52):
goes against my own views and instincts on these.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Things, but hey, you never know, maybe they're right. Their
theory is.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
That there exists a quote unquote shy Kamala voter who
is a kind of like that the Nicki Haley voter right,
who is a conservative woman who has voted Republican most
of her life, whose husband is likely voting for Donald Trump,
and who is in a lot of circles in her
community where everybody is basically a Republican and supporting Trump,
(28:22):
and she really can't come out publicly and say she's
supporting Kamala Harris and maybe needs a little bit of
a reminder of this is who this guy is. Remember
January sixth, look at the people who served with him,
Madis Millie, now Kelly all coming out and saying, hey,
I was in the room with this guy, like I
actually saw how he operates, and yeah, your worst fears
(28:44):
that he is actually a fascist are true.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
And by the.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Way, yes, okay, plenty of bad things did happen last
time around, but the republic did not end. But guess
what this time we're not going to be there. It's
going to be all the loyalists. They're going to use,
you know, Schedule F to dismantle the administrative state. So
whatever institutions and checks and bulwarks were inhibitors were there
(29:08):
last time are gonna be gone and it's just going
to be you know, there's a whole project, concerted project.
That's the real takeaway from Project twenty twenty five. There's
a concerted project to make sure that none of those
restraints from last time are in place. So that's their
theory of why they're leaning into this messaging because they
think number one, Kamalin needs to put herself in these
(29:31):
sort of like presidential settings and prove herself there as
this like tough, credible leader. And number two, because Trump's
approval rantings have ticked up a bit, you need to
remind people of what it was that they found most
disturbing about him last time that he held the office
and make the case that next time around he would
(29:51):
actually be worse.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Yeah, I think, you know, and I think that's the
only interpretation we can come away from. I feel so
distanced from this campaign. Usually I can fee and understand
why people are doing what they're doing back in twenty twenty,
the Biden Basement strategy. Criticized it a lot, obviously on empirical,
but it was the correct strategy.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Right, it was obvious. This one. I just don't get it.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
I mean, I understand the twenty twenty two thesis. I
understand that that coalition they really believe they can bring
it out. But in an era where Donald Trump increased
the amount of votes that he got by almost ten
million in twenty twenty, has always had a track record
of driving out these lower propensity voters and shaking up
the political establishment. Maybe there's not evidence for it, but
there's been so many polling misses and there's still so
(30:33):
many things that could happen. I mean, nobody saw the
Latino shift in Texas and elsewhere happening back in twenty twenty.
Was a shock on election night. If it was one
of the biggest shocks I experienced, I don't know. I mean,
maybe you know it's one of those where is it
really going to land? It just seems so played out,
so driven home by the media to me, I mean
I called it on Twitter the Jennifer Rubin campaign, Like,
(30:54):
to me, it really is like the apotheosis of this.
Jennifer Ruben like media critique that the media actually doesn't
talk enough about how Trump is a fascist. I saw
yesterday it was like Van Jones was like, Kamala has
to be flawless. Well, Donald Trump is lawless. And yet
you know, yeah, I know. But went on his Instagram
and he's like, it's feeling like twenty sixteen again. You
got to get out there and vote, like we're looking
(31:16):
down fascism in the barrel. And I mean the whole
country experienced two and seventeen to twenty and twenty one
when Trump was actually a president, none of that stuff happened.
Their argument as well, will be different this time around,
but people look back on those years actually quite fondly.
And then even with Trump people himself, a big criticism,
including mine, would be that he did have people like
(31:37):
General Kelly Maddison others who didn't agree with him on anything,
and who at many times actively thwarted a lot of
his better orders, like to withdraw from Afghanistan or whatever.
So I just look at it as very different from theirs.
Of course, they're not trying to win me over that coalition.
I just keep thinking, aren't these people, Harris voters already
aren't they already Democrats? Like who is being convinced by this?
(31:58):
But look, if they win by one in all the
blue Blueell states, I'll say it right here, they were right.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I mean the difference between twenty twenty and now is
that in twenty twenty eight, January sixth hadn't happened. Yeah, true,
so it was, you know, I mean, you could you
could point to like Trump did weaponize the Department of
Justice against you know, launching investigations against John Kerry and
against Komy. And it's not like there was nothing you
could point to, but there was nothing as shocking as
(32:26):
what happened on January sixth. And you know, and now
we've learned more and more details about No, he really
was serious about, for example, calling the militarian to shoot
protesters in the legs during the Black Lives Matter protest.
He really was serious about these plans to attempt to
like use the National Guard to seize ballot boxes. He
(32:47):
really did try to overturn the election using these fake
electors slates.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
We really did watch a crazed.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Mob run around the Capitol calling for his own vice
president to be hang and him sit back and you know,
allow it to happen, if not be actively like in
support of that sentiment.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
So you know, that is a significant.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Shift from where we were back in twenty twenty, which
even in twenty twenty obviously he lost, so even before
people had that incredibly jarring experience. So again, my instinct
is similar to your Sagert and it was in twenty
twenty two to be like, I don't know why you're
focused like I to me, I think this is important, right,
(33:33):
I think actually the argument is correct that you know,
all of any sort of institutional guardrail and check that
was in place that checked his worst instincts last time around,
they have made a concerted effort to dismantle those. You
also have a Supreme Court decision basically saying, hey, whatever
you do in office, basically you're immune. Like you can
do basically whatever you want. So it is a different
(33:55):
landscape in that regard that resonates with me. My instinct
is to say you should be. You were better off
when you were framing him as like weird versus this,
you know, giant threat. You're even better off when you're
leaning into bread and butter issues inflation, which we have
to say too. I mean, she has closed the gap
with him on economics, so some of what she's saying
is landing. But I just I can't be so certain
(34:17):
about it because their analysis was more right in twenty
twenty two than mine was. And I think what Wygel
points to is they've effectively already baked into the calculus,
like we're losing Arab American voters, We're just gonna try
to make it up somewhere else. We're not going to
hit our margins with black men in particular, We're also
(34:37):
going to try to make that up somewhere else. And
they're say, all right, well, where do we make that up.
The largest group of voters in the country is white people,
and white women in particular are the single largest demographic group.
So if we can pull in another couple percentage points there,
then it's enough to make it work, especially in the
blue wall states. And you know, I can't say definitively
(34:58):
that they're wrong about.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
That again extraordinarily possible.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
It just seems like such a tremendous gamble, Like I
would you know, if we're gambling and we're looking at
margins and ways to win, it just seems totally different,
both the way I would.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Do it and others.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I mean, I guess why I come back to it
in terms of why it's all baked in is we
have heard this all so many times, and by the
way I would point out, this whole Atlantic article has
some serious like issues. Let's put a six please on
the screen. Nick Ayers, who I covered at the White
House and was the deputy chief of staff while General
Kelly was also the Chief of Staff, says quote, I've
avoided commenting on interstaff leaks or rumors, but General Kelly's
(35:35):
comments regarding President Trump are two egregious to ignore. I
was with each of them more than most, and his
commentary is patently false. There is an anecdote in the
Atlantic article which is alleged that Trump didn't want to
pay for this soldier's funeral. The sister of that fallen
soldier says that is absolutely not true.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
I would The reporter who.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Was in the room during their meeting says absolutely not true.
Now all these people have certainly an incentive, right, But
Nick ayris it was like some never Trump Mike Pence
type guy who I covered at the White House and
eventually left. He has not in any way some sort
of like Maga warriors. So when the guy says this,
to lie like, I tend to believe it. At the
end of the day, only General Kelly and Donald Trump
(36:15):
actually know what was allegedly said in some private conversation.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
You can make up your own mind. Can I ask
you that?
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Like we weren't there. I was like, it is just
like he said he said. He said, does it strike
you as now landish? Though that Trump could say like,
it's to me, it's not that crazy or unimaginable given
some of the things he said in public, that he
could have said something like this, and so you know,
it doesn't like blow my mind to imagine him being like,
(36:43):
you know, I want some generals like the German generals.
That sounds very much like something Trump'll say.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
It doesn't that kind of lose when he's like what
even listen to Kelly said, He's like, I want somebody
who takes orders. It's like, well, I mean, for example,
let's think about what maybe the context like maybe when
Trump was like, hey, you need to withdraw from Syria
and James Madison the Pentagon hide the number of troops
in Syria and don't withdraw and execute a lawful order, Like, well,
which side would you rather have the per person who
actually obeys the commander in chief or not?
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Like that? That's what I mean.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
But why you got to go to Hitler's generals?
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Okay, the point is about I mean, by the way, you.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Know, I've been trying to avoid the discussion. But you know,
what's his name? Kelly brought up? He's like, oh, did
you mean Bismarck's generals. Did you mean the Kaiser's generals
or do you mean Hitler's generals. There is a discussion
to be had about who the best generals were between Bismarck,
Kaiser and Hitler or whatever. Don't forget Heinz Gudarien was
never prosecuted by the Nuremberg trials. He was the chief
of staff of the Wehrmacht under Hitler. So all I'm
(37:36):
saying is that if you actually look at so called
like the context of I'm trying to issue orders or whatever, Yeah,
don't you want a general officer who does obey like
the whatever the order, a lawful order at least from
the president.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Probably, so you also would like Hitler's generals.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
No, I didn't say I would like Hitler's generals. But
I'm saying it's a stupid What I'm saying, is this
a stupid and contrite way of being like, oh, it's
it is evidence so that he would like pursue a
holocaust or some sort of like ridiculous and the most
smearing way. We have to be adult in the way
that we can talk about that conversation.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
And so, like what I just pointed.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Out with the Seria thing is a perfect example of
why I liked schedule AFT. I'm like, yeah, it's good,
get them out of there. They're actively subvert the commander
in chief. Bigger than Trump too. This is a Biden problem.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
This isn't everybody problem.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
The last time we discussed this, you know, you said
you had some you thought Trump would be basically a
dictator if he got I don't want to put work
that's I said.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Trump would pursue many of the most outlandish things if
he could. But I have enough faith in American institutions
that that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
So to me, the issue with that analysis to me
is that you can't, on the one hand, say like, oh,
the institution's held last time, and he was held in
check bye by the way some people like Kelly and Mattis,
et cetera, and Millie, But also I want none of
those people in this administration, and I want them to
just destroy, actively destroy the institutions that did keep him
(39:00):
in check last time. And also it also leaves out
the fact that the landscape is different since you have
the Supreme Court decision that basically says you're immune for acts.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
That you take in office.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
So to me, that's kind of trying to have it
both ways of saying, yeah, well, the institutions held last time,
but also I don't want those institutions around this time
to hold them in check.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Very easy to explain in terms of what is it,
Like what did you reference, like shoot people in the
lag or whatever. Yeah, that's not going to happen, even
under so called Schedule F. But the example I gave of, hey,
you need to withdraw from Syria and then they fake
the numbers is specifically in the Pentagon and then give
them false information to the Commander in chief and don't
carry out that order.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
I think that needs to go. That's what I'm talking about.
Why I don't think that those are actually mutually exclusive.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Why are you so confident that if you so. Last time,
when you know, when Trump was like, why can't the
military just come in and shoot shoot protesters in the
legs or something that was you know what he said,
would I?
Speaker 4 (39:53):
I believe that he.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Said that you had Milli in place to be like,
you can't do that, right, And the whole goal of
the you know Project twenty twenty five and many of
the most organized conservative efforts in the meantime is to
make sure that you don't have someone like Millie in
place who can say like, no, we're not doing that,
that you have quote unquote loyalists, like that's Trump's number
(40:17):
one goal. You see it already, you know, in the
choice of like jd Vance as vice president. The number
one goal is to make sure that the people who
are in place this time will do whatever he says,
whether it is appropriate, lawful, moral, or not. And so
that's why I don't think you can have so much
confidence that like, if he you know, wants to go
(40:37):
in that direction next time, you're going to have someone
in place who's going to be like, no, you can't
do that. And you know the context of John Kelly,
the quotes that we played for you, the audio we
played for you. That was in an interview with the
New York Times. He apparently, you know, this reporter had
been trying to get him on the record for a
really long time, and he didn't want to do it,
didn't want to do it, didn't want to do it.
And then what he says triggered him to come out
(40:59):
now is Trump's repeated comments about using the military against
the enemy within and for him, a bright red line,
which it should be for all of us, in my opinion,
in American public life, is turning the military against civilian populations.
So when you know what he tried to do last time,
when you know what he's saying publicly, when people who
(41:20):
know him way better than we do and have been
around him and seeing him in action way more than
we have, when all of them are saying this like it's,
you know, whether you want to use the F word
fascist or not, like this guy is want to be
dictator and really could be very dangerous next time around.
I just I can't hand wave that away given what
(41:40):
we've seen him already do at this point.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Again, I understand, but it just substantively seems very different
to me than I mean. Okay, let's say the theoretical
chain of command. For you need to go shoot people
on American streets, you would need the general to carry
it out. You would need to pass it down to
the National Guard, and the individual soldiers would actually carry
carry that out. Call me crazy, too optimistic, don't think
it's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
We did see protesters quite viciously attacked out front of
the White House during the Black Lives Matter.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
By the decent police, not on the order of the
President or the National Guard.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
It was.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
It was the National Guard. There were federal law enforcement
officers there. It was right outside.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Done by it. It was done.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
You're forgetting it was done in the service of enabling
that bizarre Trump photo off with the Bible. So that
was done at Trump's behest, and that it was.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
At a time. Yes, I know plenty of the protests
were violent.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
It was at a time they were completely peaceful, and
you know they were viciously attacked. So I don't again,
I just to say it's impossible, I can't imagine it happening, etcetera, etcetera.
I given what we've already seen, I just I just
don't have that book.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
I mean, And that's fine. People can vote the way
that they want.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
There's a big difference to me between DC cops and
local cops tear gassing some people to get them out
of a square or whatever. So Trump can take a
photo op and literally trying to shoot people and occupy
the country. Like, if you believe that, then, frankly, I
have my whole voting GUYE today, go vote for Kamala.
If you don't believe that, and you think it'll work
its way out in the way that I laid out
in terms of the President's going to issue an order
(43:11):
and we're going to actually see the deep state or
whatever maybe come to heal and execute these orders, and
you should vote for Trump or vote you know, it's
up to you. But my point is that it seems
very clear that there's obviously like an Overton window within
what we're talking about here, and that this idea of
literally shooting people or enemy from within camps of US
(43:32):
citizens is not going to happen.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
If you believe it's going to happen, then don't vote
for him.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
I really don't know what to tell you. Like, that's
the argument that I think is very clear. I think
that's how the government should work. Specifically, both within the
bounds and then also you know, disobeying so called unlawful orders.
What I saw when uncover the White House is the
General McMaster, General Kelly, and General Madis willfully undercut the
President of the United States and tried it every turn
(43:56):
not to execute his foreign policy. My criticism of Trump
actually would be that you such a fool that you
allowed them to do so for two years, and that
you didn't use the full force of your office to say,
who were you? Get out of here. The guy comes in,
he says, I want to withdraw from Afghanistan. McMaster's like, no,
you need to surge in Afghanistan. And Trump signs that off.
So that's my criticism of Trump. But that's not the
criticism that media and Kelly and all these other people were.
(44:19):
It's very much like, oh, you need to trust me,
you know, because I was some four star general, and
you know that's another thing, these four star generals like, well,
you think they're the greatest people in the world.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
I covered the Pentagon. There's some of the biggest liars
out there.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Go look at the way that they all talked about Afghanistan,
Like why will you trust exactly what everything these people say,
this isn't even about General Kelly per Se, But it's
like anytime some general on CNN or whatever is like
talking about his past service and how we're supposed to
revere them. I just can't help but think the Afghanistan
papers and I read about him, every single commander of
(44:50):
that are of the US forces in Afghanistan lied to
the American people. So what credibility do you have with me?
So I guess it just comes down to like what
you really think is going to have and within this
specific situation, and also whether you find these people as
eminently credible and you want them to run the country
for me, absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
I don't want these people around.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
What do you make though of the fact that so
many of the people who you know, who supported, I
mean voted for Trump last time, who were lifelong Republicans,
who were you know, as comfortable enough with his leadership
that they were willing to serve in his administration, that
they all have very similar things to say.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
I make of it exactly what I just said. I
think that their neo institution or their deep institutionalists, that
they have a committed internationalist worldview, having covered and even
been in off the record conversations with General Kelly, with
General Madison, all these other people. They they saw their
role as very specific, we need to protect the republic
from Donald Trump. I don't think that these people should
be quote unquote protecting a democratic elected leader from any
(45:49):
or the republic quote unquote from a democratic elected representative
they like. For example, Mattis saw his entire role as
stopping Trump's blunt America first instincts and don't forget resigned
over what over the ceial withdrawal order that eventually came
to a head. General Kelly, same thing, General McMaster, same thing.
They saw their.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Role as Mikes. So what's up.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
How about Mike?
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Well, Mike Pen's a different story. And actually, I think
that criticism is pretty legitimate. I mean, I've never sat
here made some stop.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
That's the thing, is what they are saying is honestly
very similar to what Mike Pence is saying. And you know,
I would have put a lot more stock in the
argument you're making prior to January sixth. And you know,
we were very lucky that at that time there were
still a few people to tell Donald Trump no that
(46:38):
it wasn't even you know, worse than it ended up being,
and it was.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
It was a horrifying day.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
It was it was bad, Like the attempt to steal
an election was really bad. So I just can't be
so blase at this point of like, oh, you know,
I don't want anyone around who is an institutionalist. I
want Donald Trump to be able to exercise his most
unchecked impulses this time. I just can't, Like, I just
can't at this point.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
I get where coming from. I laid out in a
January six position.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
He didn't change her what the January analysis.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
At all, of course, But what happened then was the
result of the democratic process.
Speaker 12 (47:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Well, well, let's look at the current landscape of January
sixth and whether it can happen again.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
The Electoral Count Act has passed.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
The Vice President can no longer have any ambiguity on
certifying the election. Five out of the seven swing states
are ruled by Democrats, which would require certification under the
Electoral Count Acts.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
So that's not going to happen.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
Number Three, Rudy Giuliani and all of the other legal
associates who helped Trump do this are literally bankrupt. Rudy
was ordered yesterday to turn his Mercedes over to the
Department of Justice. Jenna Ellis had to plead guilty, Sidney
Powell had to plead guilty. They're all completely bankrupts. What's
his name, John Eastman has basically been run out of town.
I believe he's either been disbarred or not. I forget
(47:50):
Rudy's been disbarred. Every person who's been connected to that
has suffered massively at the hands of state, and Trump
himself is under federal indictment and it's not like he
didn't pay a price for So do I think it's
going to happen again, No, I absolutely don't.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
That was This is a case.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Of genuinely institutions coming together, I think in a totally
legitimate way of trying to constrain the universe where anything
like this could happen. So that's what I would say.
I'm not that worried about that playing out like this again.
If you want to say, an extraordinary circumstance of something different, okay,
maybe you know Again, I think within the gut bounds
of the system, people have really learned their lesson from
January sixth, And if they haven't, then I think they're
(48:25):
going to pay a big price for it. So that
would be my response on a lot of that, Like
just mechanically, a lot of the things that happened last
time cannot happen again. And if they want to see
in state court and lose every single case like they
did last time around, be my guest, I guess you
know you want to waste some legal fees.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Fine, it just feels like you're talking about, you know, Okay,
the exact set of circumstances that led to the exact
situation of January sixth have you know, have been somewhat mitigated, so.
Speaker 4 (48:52):
We don't have anything to worry about.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
And when I think about that, about the events of
January six and stop the steal in all of that,
it's less about Okay, Can that exact sequence of events
happen again?
Speaker 4 (49:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Probably not because he's not president right now, so that
makes things that, you know, makes things different right there.
But can is that indicative of the type of thing
that he can foment when he's at his worst?
Speaker 4 (49:19):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (49:19):
And is that indicative of you know, when you put
that together with what the people many people who are
in his administration, including his own vice president who stood
by him through everything up into the very end, what
they say about his worst impulses. You know, I think
that that is I think that is very troubling and
should be taken seriously. And then, you know, the last
(49:42):
thing I'll say that we can move on to to
Cammalist town Hall and take a look at what she's
saying in her closing closing pitch and also some of
the latest polls. But the last thing I'll say is also,
you do have a different landscape now with the Supreme
Court really saying like you have carbe blanche and so
even that theoretical institutional chet of you know, the highest
court in the land is now effectively gone. So if
(50:04):
you're taking that away, you're taking away any of the
people who were like, you know, institutionalists who were writing
memos to him saying, you know, like Don McGahn writing
memos to him saying was you cannot just turn the
Department of Justice into your own like like toy to
prosecute your political enemies. You just literally can't do that.
You take those people out of the picture. And you know,
(50:28):
I think it is I think it is a dangerous
situation and one that people should take into consideration.
Speaker 4 (50:34):
Now, I'm not telling.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
People how they have to vote, or that this has
to be their number one issue, et cetera. But you know,
a factor in the people who were in the room
with him, who saw how he operates and how he thinks,
and to take into consideration what we've seen happen and
his own public comments. You know, I don't think it's
like dranged, dur insane. Oh to take those things very
seriously given what we've seen at the time.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
I don't think is dranger insane. People can make up
their minds themselves.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
All right, let's go to the town hall, like you said,
And before we get to that, we're going to start
with a little bit of polling. There was a fun
analysis here by Nate Silver. Let's put this up there
on the screen. Silver writes in a new column, quote,
here's what my gut says about the election. But don't
trust anyone's gut, even mine. And actually, if you read
the column, Crystal, he basically says, if you asked me
(51:22):
to trust my gut, I've been vacuuming so much media
and looking at so much disparate data that I think
that Donald Trump is going to win. But that's exactly
why you shouldn't even trust my gut. I mean, I
don't know, what do you think the fact that he
says his gut thinks that Trump is going to win,
it means something to me. I don't actually take seriously
his whole don't trust my gut. Sean Trendy over at RCP,
(51:44):
somebody who was a real canary ahead of the twenty
sixteen election.
Speaker 3 (51:47):
So I've always trusted what he has to say. He
actually said the same thing.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
He's like, Yeah, if you asked me to put my
chips on something, I would put it on Trump. And
he's like, but the smarter move, if I was at
the table, would be to get all my chips and
walk away, and for what the outcome would be. So
I can't totally handwave it away. And there are signs,
you know, there are signs everywhere. Harry Enton, for example,
over at CNN talking about independence and some of the
movement away from Kamala Harris, Let's take.
Speaker 14 (52:11):
A listen center of the electorate.
Speaker 15 (52:13):
You go last time around, Joe Biden won these voters
by eleven points. You look at September of twenty twenty four,
a month ago, Kamala Harris was up five points among independents.
You look now, though, look at this, she's only up
by two points among a key block center of the electorate,
down nine points where from Biden was at the end
of the twenty twenty campaign. Of course, this is a
(52:33):
national picture. This is a national picture. What is going
on in those key battleground states Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the
Great Lakes, that blue wall, right, Joe Biden last time
around one and by five points over Donald Trump. Look
at where we are today. This is the type of
movement Donald Trump likes to see in the center of
the electorate. Up by a point now, of course that's
(52:53):
well with than any margin of arra right. But again,
it's the movement. It's the trends, mister Verman, that we're
looking at.
Speaker 14 (53:00):
And when you.
Speaker 15 (53:00):
Flip a group from going plus five Biden to now
plus one Trump, that's the type of movement Donald Trump
loves to say. And it's a type of movement that
I think gives democrats some ageitiz use. Usually the way
independence go so goes the nation. So candidates who won
independence and elections since nineteen hundred and fifty two, look
at this one independence won the election fifteen lost the
(53:23):
election despite winning independence just three so it is possible
to lose independence and win the election. But the bottom
line is that's only happened three times. It was Nixon
in sixty eight, it was four and seventy six, and
it was carrying two thousand and four.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
There you go, and if you take a lot of it,
that data coming out, We're going to talk about it
in our next block about Nevada. Things are looking very
very good for Republicans, at the very least clearly the
movement amongst Latinos and all there is very obvious, and
for traditional blue demographics not coming out to vote or
at the very least being outnumbered pretty dramatically. So I
put all that together and I mean, it's relatively a
(53:55):
good situation for Trump, but of course, you know, a
lot can happen. And what we talked about with Dave
Wigel remains a key point. Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina
can all go Trump and calmuck. It's still with in
the election. As long as the Nebraska what is it
Nebraska one?
Speaker 3 (54:09):
Is that what it is? I've forgot whatever that Nebraska.
Speaker 4 (54:12):
Whatever, the one that's the swing district question.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Swing district as long as it goes there to go
two hundred and seventy electors, and.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
The poll that one looks like pretty much it's in
the bag for them based on what we've got, what
I've seen right now. But yeah, so if you get
that and you get the Blue Wall States, and I
do feel like based on the polling we've seen and
based on the tea leaves you can read from the
early vote, the Blue Wall States are going in a
different direction than the sun Belt state, which was hard.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
To say in PA, but in the in the rest
of them, in Michigan specifically, it does look good for them.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, and it would make some sense, right, I mean,
just given the different demographic groups, how they're shifting and
realigning the campaign's different strategies, et cetera. But you know,
if you want to understand the Kamala Harris strategy down
the stretch of like the Liz Cheney tour and the
you know, the going on Fox News and the fascism
(55:05):
democracy pitch here at the end, I think it's all
because they see those numbers with independence and they feel
they need to shore them up, and they're concerned that
people's top two. You know, the things that are holding
them back from Harris are number one, Trump's favorability creeping
up a little bit, so he doesn't seem like as
bad as he used to seem, so trying to you know,
(55:25):
remind people of like the worst parts of him. And
number two that they can't quite envision Kamala Harris in
the commander in chief role and so you know that
she's too liberal and she's a lightweight if that's the
core of the campaigns and analysis of why they think independence
(55:45):
aren't quite as firmly in her camp as they were
with Joe Biden. Like that's what is leading them to
the strategy, which again it's not a strategy I'm particularly
in love with, but that's I think the way that
they're thinking about these things.
Speaker 4 (55:58):
And so we'll see the big question.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
And you know, one of the big questions with independence
is previously a lot of times there were significant numbers
of independents who were just like basically Republicans who just
didn't really want to call themselves Republicans but then always
voted for the Republican. Now with you have a trend
of a lot of young voters who are new into
the system who don't want to identify call themselves Democrats
(56:22):
and have all kinds of issues with the Democratic Party
or Democrats, but will vote Democrat. And who are you know,
who are ultimately like you know, a lot of Bernie
type young people who are like, no, I don't really
associate with the Democratic Party. But there's no way in
hell they're voting for Republicans, especially young women.
Speaker 3 (56:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
I think that's particularly like a significant trend there, And
that was one thing we're going to talk some about
the Nevada early vote numbers, which, by the way, I
do think, look, you know, good for Republicans. I don't
think there's any like spinning that away. But one of
the things that was being pointed out is a lot
of the independents who are voting in Nevada are pretty young,
and there is this trend in American life now of
(56:58):
young people identify as independence but disproportionately voting Democrats. So anyway,
we'll see how it all shakes out. We'll see if
those people show up to vote on election day or before.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
That is a good corollary, and that is one way
where Nevada could still go blue is if the what
is it called other? I think on the ballot it's
not independent. It actually is like unidentified.
Speaker 3 (57:18):
Yeah, I think that's what it is.
Speaker 4 (57:19):
But anyway, other, let's go with that.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
Okay, let's get to the town hall. This is really
it was interesting stuff. So CNN last night was supposed
to be a debate, and previously had been one that
they had floated where Donald Trump would appear. They ended
up turning it into a town hall and there were
a couple of different areas which we thought were interesting.
First and foremost is one that Kamala has really struggled on,
(57:42):
this question of what would you do differently from Biden?
Speaker 3 (57:44):
And then also have you ever made a mistake?
Speaker 2 (57:46):
What I put in those two is the category of
like political introspection and the opportunity to clean up something
that you see with the American people. Frankly, I thought
she had a terrible answer, but you'd make up your mind.
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 9 (57:58):
I don't think i've ever heard the former president had
made a mistake. A lot of politicians don't. Is there
something you can point to in your life, political life,
or in your life in the last four years.
Speaker 14 (58:07):
That you think is a mistake? That you have learned from.
Speaker 8 (58:12):
I mean, I've made many mistakes and they range from
you know, if you've ever parented a child, you know
you make lots of mistakes too. In my role as
vice president, I mean, I've probably worked very hard at
making sure that I am well versed on issues, and
(58:38):
I think that is very important. It's a mistake not
to be well versed on an issue and feel compelled
to answer a question.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
You know, It's so funny because she struggles the most.
I feel like almost in friendly settings.
Speaker 3 (58:54):
I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (58:55):
When you know, when she sat down with Brett Barry,
you and I had a different analysis of that interview,
but you could when we shared the assessment of was
her debate performance right? She knew it was going to
be adversary, though she prepared like crazy, and the questions
none of them are like this sort of soft and squish.
She like, tell me about you, And that's when she struggles.
Is when you get the softball, like tell me about
(59:18):
a mistake you made, or tell me about you know,
something personal that requires you to be like have say
something that wasn't in the briefing book, that's when she
really struggles. And also I think in these settings that
are more friendly. I also don't think she prepares for
the same degree and comes in with the She doesn't
come in in the same mental space and with the
(59:39):
same level preparation that she does for a breadbare or
a Trump interview. So yeah, when you ask her just
to say something like normal and human, she hasn't studied
the answer and she struggles.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
The crazy part about preparation, she didn't do anything yesterday.
If you look at her schedule, she had one thing,
that three minute press conference on John Kelly.
Speaker 3 (59:57):
She took no questions. That was it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
She was at there at her house preparing for the
CNN town hall. So what were you doing when you
were preparing? It's mystifying. Another area where Cooper really caught
her was on em This was actually a fun short
circuit moment because Democrats and Kamma clearly are used to
four years of making fun of Trump on the border wall.
Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
And of being totally opposed to his border policy.
Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Of course, ever since she became the candidate, she's like, no,
I agree with the border bill, and that at the
very least contains some of Trump's border policy. So she
is short circuits halfway in between because she has the
old routine and Cooper's like, hold on, wait a second,
don't you also support a border wall? And you can
watch like the gears turning in her head. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 14 (01:00:41):
Is a border wall stupid?
Speaker 8 (01:00:43):
Well, let's talk about Donald Trump and that border wall?
So remember Donald Trump said Mexico would pay for it.
Come on, they didn't. How much of that wall did
he build?
Speaker 14 (01:00:55):
I think the.
Speaker 8 (01:00:56):
Last number I saw I was about two percent. And
then when it came time for him to do a
photo up, you know where he did it in the
part of the wall that President Obama built.
Speaker 9 (01:01:04):
But you're agreed to a bill that would ear mark
six hundred and fifty million dollars to continue building that way.
Speaker 8 (01:01:09):
I pledge that I am going to bring forward that
bipartisan bill to further strengthen and secure our border. Yes
i am, and I'm going to work across the aisle
to pass a comprehensive bill that deals with a broken
immigration system. I think Jackson's question part of it was
(01:01:31):
to acknowledge that America has always had migration, but there
needs to be a legal process for it. People have
to earn it, and that's the point that I think
is the most important point that can be made, which
is we need a president oh is grounded in common
sense and practical outcomes, like let's just fix this thing,
(01:01:54):
Let's just fix it. Why is there any ideological perspective
on the let's just fix the problem.
Speaker 9 (01:02:00):
To fix the problem, you're doing this compromise bill. It
does call for six hundred and fifty million dollars that
was ear marked under Trump to actually still go to
build the world.
Speaker 8 (01:02:08):
I'm not afraid of good ideas where they occurred.
Speaker 14 (01:02:11):
You don't think it's stupid anymore. I think what he.
Speaker 8 (01:02:14):
Did and how he did it was did not make
much sense because he actually didn't do much of anything.
I just talked about that wall, right, we just.
Speaker 9 (01:02:22):
Talked about it.
Speaker 8 (01:02:22):
He didn't actually do much of anything.
Speaker 14 (01:02:25):
But you do want to build some wall.
Speaker 8 (01:02:27):
I want to strengthen our border.
Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
See this is brutal.
Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
You know, I've been a critic of this major immigration
imagine going back to twenty sixteen and telling us that
a Democrat would flail around and stumble and not know
what to say on.
Speaker 4 (01:02:44):
What is the border wall? Good or back? Like smart?
Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
And you know, I know what they're doing is their
ideas like let's try to blunt this idea that she's
too liberal and just going to open the borders and
blah blah blah. But I just think this answer right
here simplifies why. I mean, obviously I have issues with
the morality of their new like we want to be
more hawckey, We're going to try to get to Trump's
(01:03:08):
right on immigration policy.
Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
Like I have more going to fish at.
Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
But on the this answer exemplifies why the politics of
it are.
Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
A mess too.
Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
And you know, she goes back to this tick of
when something's uncomfortable, she laughs.
Speaker 4 (01:03:23):
So we saw this in both of the last two questions,
and I do it too.
Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
She's trying to make a joke about Trump and just
try hope that Anderson is going to move away. And
to his credit, he's like, but wait a second. You
used to say the border wall is dumb. Now you're
saying you need money just before the border wall. And
she can't say anything other than like, well, the way
he did it is bad because he didn't build enough
border wall, but also not willing to go back on
(01:03:49):
me saying that the border wall was dumb and bad.
So it's just it's just a mess, and it exacerbates
the issues around She doesn't stay for anything, and she's
a bit of a lightweight. That's what kind of comes
across in this question. So yeah, again, to me, this
(01:04:10):
is example number one of why I think the way
that they have approached immigration by just totally ceding to
the Republican argument, has been a moral number one, but
political mistake because it opens you up for moments like
this which are really fundamentally unanswerable given the position they've
stayed down.
Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
I O, well, a twofold.
Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
So you either own it and then you don't start
out by reverting to your twenty sixteen talking points about
the border wall and then get called out there almost immediately,
or like you said, you don't change your position or
whatever in the first place, but when you try and
do both, you look like an idiot, and that that's.
Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
Really yeah came.
Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
I mean, if you're really going to do this pivot,
probably the best thing to do would be like, look,
you know.
Speaker 4 (01:04:49):
What I was wrong?
Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
Yeah, exactly what hers with Ben here.
Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
We saw that and we adjusted, and that's what I'm
gonna do.
Speaker 4 (01:04:55):
I'm gonna I learn I'm not.
Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
So ideological that I don't adjust for new facts and
realities and the reality is blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
Blah' where I was like, yeah, and that's a good answer.
Speaker 4 (01:05:05):
That would be a lot better.
Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
But you know, politicians, they never want to admit that
they got anything wrong. They think it makes them look
weak and bad, whereas stumbling around like this in a
completely nonsensical way just makes it look like you don't
stand for anything.
Speaker 4 (01:05:21):
And there you go, you probably don't.
Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
All right, she got a question two on high prices
and inflation from these were all, by the way, actual
unregistered voters, at least from what we can tell, they
don't seem as planted as last time.
Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
So let's take a listen.
Speaker 14 (01:05:32):
Let me just ask you about price gouging. I looked
at your plan.
Speaker 9 (01:05:36):
You talk about going after price gougers, and I'm quoting
from the plan on essential goods during emergencies or times
of crisis.
Speaker 14 (01:05:44):
I get that.
Speaker 9 (01:05:45):
How does that help though, someone like Eric with prices
that for years the grocery price has just been high.
Speaker 8 (01:05:51):
Well, first of all, Anderson, as you know, and obviously
Sann has been covering extensively what has been happening in
the state of Georgia. North Carolina, Florida. It's a real issue.
I was Attorney General of California. I was the top
law enforcement officer of the biggest state in the country.
I took this issue on because it affects a lot
of people. And I'm not going to apologize for the
(01:06:12):
fact that we need to actually deal with accountability when
these not all in fact most don't. But when companies
are taking advantage of the desperation and the need of
the American people. We saw it actually during the pandemic
as well, where because of supply chain issues there was
a reduction of supply and then they would inflate the
(01:06:34):
price of everyday necessities. Not to mention, by the way, again,
Donald Trump should be here tonight to talk with you
and answer your questions. Not he refused to come. But
understand that part of his plan is to put in
place a national sales tax of at least twenty percent
on everyday goods and necessities, and that by economist estimates
(01:06:58):
independent economists, would cost you, as the American consumer and
taxpair and additional four thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
So you know, that remains one of our better moments
now in terms of what they're closing with you hear
some of that. You're hearing a lot of the character
stuff as well. Maybe that's a media thing. I'm not
so sure, but you know, I wanted to do at
least I guess a fair presentation.
Speaker 12 (01:07:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
First, well, I think it appears that they're spending a
lot of money in swing states on ads that focus
on that.
Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
Message right there.
Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
And it also appears from the polling on who do
you trust on various economic issues that some of this
messaging has broken through. There was a Bloomberg Swing state poll.
Maybe we can add this in post guys so people
can see, But on every economic issue that they surveyed,
Kamala Harris had closed the trust gap or even surpassed
Trump as the candidate that swing state voters trust. More so,
(01:07:47):
on taxes, Kamala Harris had a little bit of an
advantage on interest rates, It was very close. On housing costs,
she had an advantage on cost of everyday goods. They
were basically tied on healthcare costs. Advantage gas prices was
the one where he had the largest gap, but even
there she had closed it significantly. So you know, I
do think some of this is breaking through I think
(01:08:08):
the relentless focus in terms of the ad dollars has worked,
and it has become an area that is less of
a vulnerability for her than it might otherwise have been.
And I think that the other question that people have is, like,
you know, they may like her plans better, they may
not have confidence that any of it is really going
to have And I think that's a general statement about
the sort of reasonable, like pragmatic nihilism that people have
(01:08:31):
about anything getting done in Washington at this point, which
is not you know, which is not illogical given the
given how there's just nothing but good luck as far
as I can see in Washington, DC. So in any case,
I do think that she deserves credit for the set
of policies.
Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
She's put together.
Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
The ads that they're running on these issues are actually
very effective, I think, and the way that she's messaged
on it has clearly done her some favors.
Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
With us, it's done a little bit favorite and she
just closed that gap on the economy critical if she
does end up squeezing it out, that's actually gonna be
a key reason.
Speaker 4 (01:09:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
Why, So, final thing I just.
Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
Wanted to show was David Axelrod just admitting some of
the unmittable previously about quote word salad city from Kamala
Harris and is after action on the town hall, Let's
take a listen.
Speaker 13 (01:09:16):
When she doesn't want to answer a question, her habit
is to kind of go to world word salad city.
And she did that on a couple of answers. One
was on Israel. Anderson asked a direct question, would you
be stronger on Israel than Trump? And there was a
seven minute answer, but none of it related to the
question he was asking.
Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
True, I mean Salid City. It was clear too.
Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
You know, other people there felt kind of uncomfortable, and
I saw Van Jones say that as well.
Speaker 3 (01:09:46):
That's where the whole like she has to be flawless.
Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
He's like almost doing a media criticism element there, but
actual Rod ran the Obama campaign and he gets it.
Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
I do think that it is fair to say Trump
is just how to He just is a unique polity.
Speaker 4 (01:10:00):
He is held to a different standard. There's no doubt
about it.
Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
You know, if a story like the one we cover
with Dave Weigel, the equivalent of that, I don't even
know what it would be with Kamala Harris came out,
it would be a big story like a close Jeffrey
Epstein associate and some sort of you know, sexual scandal,
like it would be a big media story, and because
of Trump, it's not. Trump is given all kinds of
(01:10:22):
interviews where you read his words and you're like, I
just literally don't even know what you are talking about
right now, And again, it just doesn't get the same
level of attention and scrutiny as when Kamala Harris goes
to Ward salad ditty. But I mean that's kind of
just the political reality and landscape that we live in.
(01:10:43):
He does have his own set of unique standards that
he is held to that are just different than literally
any other politician, Republican or Democratic, exist.
Speaker 3 (01:10:53):
Absolutely like again, ye Shakespeare wants
Speaker 12 (01:11:01):
Speaks
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