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Can Tim Walz Out-Debate JD Vance? · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Trump says he'll end shoplifting in America with, quote,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: one really violent day. Tim Walz and J.D. Vance head
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: into Tuesday night's VP debate with the race stuck in
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: a dead heat. And the raging Cajun himself, James Carville,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: stops by to talk about the state of the race
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and the new documentary about his career in Democratic politics.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: But first, as you all know, the death toll from
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Hurricane Helene is now north of 100. There is unbelievable
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: devastation across the southeastern states. And as we're recording this,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: thousands of people in western North Carolina are still stranded
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: without power, water. The normal response to a disaster like
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: this from political leaders would be to pledge support, send relief,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: figure out how to immediately help people in need. That's
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: what President Biden is doing. That's what Vice President Harris
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: did when she spoke at FEMA headquarters in D.C. on Monday.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Here's a clip.
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: To everyone who has been impacted by this storm and
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: to all of those of you who are rightly feeling
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: overwhelmed by the destruction and the loss, our nation is
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: with you. And President Biden and I and all of
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: the folks behind me are with you. We will continue
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: to do everything we can to help you recover and
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: to help you rebuild, no matter how long it takes.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: Over the past 24 hours, I have spoken with Governor
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: Kemp of Georgia, Governor Cooper of North Carolina, and many
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: local officials. I have shared with them that we will
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: do everything in our power to help communities respond and recover.
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: And I've shared with them that I plan to be
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: on the ground as soon as possible, but as soon
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: as possible without disrupting any emergency response operations, because that
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: must be the highest priority in the first order of business.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: So the Republican nominee for president taking a slightly different path,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: even though local officials, as the VP just mentioned, have
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: asked both campaigns to temporarily stay away from the affected
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: areas so that resources aren't diverted from the emergency response.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Trump went to Georgia on Monday to, quote, deliver supplies
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: after he falsely accused the Biden administration and Democratic Governor
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Roy Cooper of, quote, going out of their way to
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: not help people in Republican areas. Trump also said that
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has, quote, been having a very
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: hard time getting the president on the phone. which was
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a little weird when Governor Kemp then said, you just
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: spoke to the president on Sunday. How shocked were you
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: guys that Trump decided to play politics here? And by
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: play politics, I mean, tell the most easily refuted lies.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: I was not surprised at all.
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: It is like, I was trying to like, you know,
• 3:08
  Speaker 5: Trump like moves your baseline because he's so fucking crazy.
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: And I was like trying to remember like, well, things
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: have happened before. And I remember when 2004, I was
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: an intern for the Kerry campaign. There happened to have
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: been four hurricanes that hit Florida in that cycle. And
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: I went back and looked at what happened after that.
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: And there were headlines about how there would be politics.
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: But both the Kerry campaign and the Bush campaign were
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: very clear, like we're not playing politics with this. They
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: both talked about how privately people were worried about what
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: the implications would be. Bush got to go be as
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: the AP referred to him. comforter in chief. John Kerry
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: waited a few days because he was listening to local authorities.
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: And then he went down there to talk to people
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: and meet with people. Bill Nelson was a Democratic senator
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: from Florida, toured with him saying, we wanted John Kerry
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: to come because if he becomes president, we want to
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: understand the damage here. Kerry went to great lengths to
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: say this is a bipartisan moment. And so what you
• 3:57
  Speaker 5: have is two politicians trying to make the most of
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: it politically, if we're being honest, right? It's okay to
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: be cynical about some aspect of this, but understanding what
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: they were supposed to do to like at least model
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: being somewhat apolitical. And like Trump just obliterates that instantly,
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: both by going, despite even the nonpartisan mayor of that
• 4:16
  Speaker 5: town saying we would have liked for him to come
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: on another fucking day, give us a few days to
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: figure out what we can, what we have to do
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: to dig out of this, but also then make up conspiracies,
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: show up in a Make America Great Again hat, have
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: a little wall of bricks built around him to make it,
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: it's like a disaster photo app and it's gross.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: Remember, there also was an expectation back in the day
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: that candidates would even pull down attack ads or political
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: ads generally. I mean, there used to be so much
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: care and thought put into these things, and now he
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: just makes stuff up. Trump also said that no one
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: expected a hurricane like this because it's after hurricane seasons.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: Absolutely not. We're dead square in the middle of hurricane season.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: Everyone expected this to happen. It is only Trump, too.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, we remember just in 2012, right, after Hurricane Sandy,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: and Barack Obama goes and gives Chris Christie a big hug, which,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: you know, hurt Chris Christie's career in the Trump era.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Worst talk he's ever gotten.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Governor Kemp, Republican governor, Democratic governor Roy Cooper, Joe Biden,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, they're all working together. They're all helping each
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: other out. Then there's Donald Trump out there just lying.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And here's the problem, too, because the hurricane has disrupted
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: power and Wi-Fi service out in Western North Carolina. There's
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: sort of like a lack of local news coverage. There's
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: garbage Twitter accounts on the right. And even some on
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the far left, they're just spreading absolute lies, craziness about
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: like Biden not helping. Meanwhile, there's like hundreds and hundreds
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: of FEMA responders there helping out. The federal government's doing
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: like the federal government signed an emergency declaration. that like
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: before the hurricane even hit, just so that resources would
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: be freed up.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's just crazy. There's some sequencing to this too.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: And that's why in these times of crisis, the governors
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: and the president have to work together because the governor
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: makes a request and then the White House has to
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: grant it. And that unlocks certain authorities. And in this case,
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: I think Biden could have gotten either an emergency declaration
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: request or a major disaster declaration request, which unlocks even
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: more federal government resources. And he did the major disaster declaration.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: So Biden literally is doing everything he can in real time. Yeah.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: It's just, it's completely made up. Even for Trump, these
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: things used to be based on like a hint of, oh,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: did he, was he a little slow on something? Did he,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: there was just nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. Yeah.
• 6:36
  Speaker 5: And there is sort of like a bottom up, top
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: down thing. Cause like there's a conspiratorial mindset that has
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: taken hold on the right that is spread on social media.
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: And I noticed it like as the storm was unfolding,
• 6:47
  Speaker 5: there were already people on social media saying, Where's the
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: federal government? They haven't responded. They're abandoning this region. And
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: you realize like, OK, so that is the mindset that
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: Trump is sort of, I think, like part of what
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: led him to be successful and also what he feeds.
• 7:01
  Speaker 5: And then he's just ready to come right on top
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: and to like sort of feed that worst impulse.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think of Harris's response so far
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and what she should do? Obviously, it happens a lot
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: in these situations that the local officials tell politicians not
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: to come right away, but then the politicians don't want
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: to be accused of looking like they don't care. So
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: they want to go.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think she's doing everything she should
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: be doing. She got briefed by the head of FEMA.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: She's talked to Roy Cooper. She went to FEMA today.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: I think in terms of the visit, I would just
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: be in constant contact with Roy Cooper's office in North
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Carolina and figure out the earliest possible time that doesn't
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: impede relief operations. And you don't have to go to
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: downtown Asheville. You could go to a county over where
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: FEMA is staging relief operations and go there and talk
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: to people, hear directly from folks affected. But I think
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: showing up is really, really important. I think the more
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: complicated political question is going to be, do you go
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: with Joe Biden? Do you go separately? Navigating that is
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: going to be hard. But I also think, you know,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: if I were the Harris campaign, I would consider finding
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: a bunch of really good local relief organizations and then
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: sending an email to my list fundraising for them. And
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: then saying to my field staff in Western North Carolina, like,
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: all right, for the next two weeks, we're not doing
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: campaign stuff. You're putting on a Harris wall shirt and
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: you're going and doing whatever relief is happening, sandbagging, cleaning up.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: helping people get food, like whatever it takes, just be
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: in the community representing the Harris-Walls campaign, but do what
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: it takes to help those people. I think that would
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: be pretty impactful.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you go, I thought about that too, Tommy.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: I think she goes with Biden. Like, I think she
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: should go with Biden. It's like, he said he was
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: going to go Thursday, Friday. They're president, vice president.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: And there's two visits if you don't go with him too.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's why. And like, you know, she's not
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: afraid of being, like they've done events together since she's
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: been the nominee. And it's like, it's not a political rally.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: So I think she's fine.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: You said your name is Joe?
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 8:50
  Speaker 6: Right, yeah.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Who's this guy?
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: It's Bidin. I've never heard it said.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: I wonder if Trump keeps this up or even now
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: that he's already attacked them for it. Like, do you
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: at some point take a shot at Trump for doing this.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Not in a way that's like, now I'm going to
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: go after you, but just sort of like, look, we're
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: trying to work with Republicans, Democrats. We're trying to focus
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: on this. And, you know, a disaster just hit people
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: in red areas and blue areas. And we're trying to
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: help everyone that we can. And we don't need Donald
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Trump exploiting people's suffering and trying to divide us so
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: he can pick up a few votes. Like, we're tired
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: of this shit kind of thing. And I don't know
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: if maybe walsh does that tomorrow night in the debate
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: i don't know if harris does it like next week
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: sometime i mean you don't want to do it right
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: now but like i kind of think you've got to
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: call out his game at some point if you want
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: it to get traction and to like really stop it
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: from happening or at least stop it from affecting.
• 9:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah the election i i think that's right i think
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: like like sort of stepping back like just she should
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: just be modeling responsibility yeah and in You're not saying otherwise,
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: but like she should be modeling responsibility. And what that
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: looks like is not like Trump is want to seem
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: responsible and look responsible. So he's being irresponsible. He cares
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: what it looks like, not what it is. And she
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: should just do the opposite. And I think if she's
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: asked a question about why she waited or something like that,
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: I think it's like, I don't know if you like
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: go out of your way to do it, but you
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: respond and say, There are people that want to use
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: this to exploit a tragedy for political gain. There are
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: people that are thinking only about how it affects themselves.
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: I'm not going to do that.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: We're here.
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: We're all Democrats, Republicans. We're all here together trying to rebuild.
• 10:30
  Speaker 5: And like, I think she can take a shot at
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: him that way.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I think great.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Just as you know, just telling the truth.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it gets annoying for sure for President Biden,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: people in the government, too, because it's like you model responsibility.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: And then because no one ever pays attention to anything
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: who's who's not affected by something that like you're. your
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: model of responsibility just goes unnoticed.
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: Well, this is why I think sometimes too, it's about
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: to be October when the final sprint before this election,
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: so it's not the time to step back and wonder,
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: how did we get here? But we lay at the
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: feet of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, of any responsible elected figure,
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: all the sins of the media environment and the crassness
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: of our opponents. And it's like, no, yeah, sometimes now
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: because of how social media works, a politician doing everything,
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: like Joe Biden responding exactly the way he should still
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: doesn't stop a Republican leader from North Carolina or from
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: one of these states saying, where's Joe Biden? He didn't
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: issue the response when he did exactly as he should
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: have done in response to a request from the government.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Or do you hear that reporter? He got a shouted
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: question at the White House after he talked about everything
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the federal government was doing. The reporter's like, why weren't
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: you here commanding the response over the weekend? Biden was like,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: I was on the phone for two hours yesterday, like
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: commanding the response.
• 11:44
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: So you want something to look like, you want the
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: wall of bricks assembled by an advanced staffer. You want
• 11:50
  Speaker 5: the throwing of the chicken nuggets. Like you want that.
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: That's what you think. You want something that looks like that.
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: You want better TV.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: You want the performance of empathy. Are we going to
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: bomb the hurricane? What are we talking about? You pre-position
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: a bunch of assets and you make sure FEMA's on
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: top of it. Like you need a competent team. That's
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: what Joe Biden has put in place. Like people also
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: make the comparison to Bush and Hurricane Katrina and the
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: like Air Force One photo op over New Orleans, which
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: was obviously very bad, but also came on the heels
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: of a 29 day vacation in Crawford, Texas. That's part
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: of why it was so bad. And then on top
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: of that, like the FEMA administrator was a clown who
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: would run the Arabian Horse Federation. Remember Brownie and the
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: state local response was terrible. And so he was blamed
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: for like the most important thing that Joe Biden and
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Kamala Harris can do is make sure that people get
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: the help they need.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, and that is also the most important political move, too.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: It's the right thing to do, but it's also the
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: right politics. We should note that if Trump had his way,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the federal government would be shut down right now.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: Very good point.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: He did not succeed in his attempt to get Republicans
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: to shut down the government. Biden signed the continuing resolution,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: so it'll be funded through the election. And as a
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: lot of Democrats have been pointing out, Project 2025 calls
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: for breaking up and privatizing big parts of the National
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Weather Service eliminating small business disaster loans, and raising the
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: threshold for disaster declarations. Is there a policy case for
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Harris to make here, or is that too much?
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: I don't think you do it right now, but I
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: do think as we talk about this in the next
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: couple of weeks, I think referring to all of that,
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: but also stepping back and saying local officials are saying
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: they're not only just going to have to rebuild, they're
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: going to have to rebuild with an eye towards being
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: ready for future storms that are even more severe because
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: climate change is having such an obvious impact and reminding
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: people of the stakes around climate and the fact that
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: like the investments that like the money to rebuild, the
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: money to invest in infrastructure, like Donald Trump.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Promised he would do it.
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: It was Joe Biden that delivered on these things, whether
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: it's through the infrastructure bill or through the Inflation Reduction Act.
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: I feel like those are all points to me.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think there's two points I'd make.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: One is that like events like this are why you
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: need a federal government. It's the only entity in the
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: world that has enough resources to like surge assets to
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: a place like Asheville in the near term and then
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: rebuild in the long term. And then I also think
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: it's appropriate to talk about how Project 2025 wants to
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: take the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and the
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: National Weather Service and fundamentally change them. They want to
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: privatize the weather service and commercialize it. And really, the
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: goal here is you have a bunch of anti-climate change
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: ideologues who don't want any government data going towards making
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: the case that climate change is real and man-made and
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: they want to distort it. So you're going to end
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: up with some natural gas lobbyists in charge of the
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: National Weather Service or something. Telling people that is probably worthwhile.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: They don't like our.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Satellites pointed down. They're like, oh, it's mission creep. Point
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: it up.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Miami's underwater today, everyone. But wow, it just must have
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: been a freak storm.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: And great day for kayak rentals.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Also, So it's funny because you have Project 2025, which
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: is like the brainchild of these like extreme right-wing activists
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: who just don't want government at all, right? Like they
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: don't think the federal government has a role. Then you
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: have Donald Trump and his view on these things is
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: you use the federal government to help the people that
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you like and who like you.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: The Republicans.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: And you screw over the people who don't support you.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: So everything is politicized. The government is politicized. Government power
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: is politicized, right? And so- Sure enough, like, Trump, who's, like,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: yelling right now about how, you know, Joe Biden is
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: calling Governor Kemp or whatever. After Hurricane Matthew in 2017
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: hit North Carolina, the Trump administration denied 99% of the
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: aid requested by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper for North Carolina.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: One of the last times North Carolina had a big
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: disaster hit, Trump said, no thanks, all set.
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: But we all, like, have amnesia, but, like, there was
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: this sort of, like, sickening reality after the, after the
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: pandemic began where Gavin Newsom and, and Andrew Cuomo had
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: to like praise the dear leader because they wanted to
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: make sure they were getting the resources they needed in
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: the middle of an emergency. And they knew that the
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: actual stakes, actual empathy for what people were going through
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: was immaterial.
• 16:14
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: That is something, that's something to look forward to with
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: the second Trump term.
• 16:18
  Speaker 6: Absolutely.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Disaster hits and you better hope that you're, you live
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: in a red, red state.
• 16:22
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: What's that? No atheists in a foxhole, no libertarians in
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: a disaster relief zone.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: That's, There you go. We're a bumper sticker.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: No Heritage Foundation staffers. We'll keep going. You got it.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: You got it. Before we move on to other subjects,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: we wanted to let you know that if you want
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: to help folks affected by the storm and the flooding,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: you can go to votesaveamerica.com slash Helene. Your donation will
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: go to some organizations that are helping on the ground
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: right now, and they're going to keep updating those orgs
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: as needed. Over the weekend, while the storm was hitting
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the southeast, Trump was campaigning in the Midwest where he
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: gave a speech that even he described as dark. Boy,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: was it.
• 17:08
  Speaker 6: Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.
• 17:13
  Speaker 6: She was born that way.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: You got to do what you got to do.
• 17:20
  Speaker 6: You got to get these people back where they came from.
• 17:22
  Speaker 6: You have no choice. You're going to lose your culture.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: You're going to lose your country. We win and when
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: we win.
• 17:29
  Speaker 6: We're going to prosecute people that cheat on this election.
• 17:35
  Speaker 6: And if we can, we'll go back to the last one, too. Oh,
• 17:38
  Speaker 6: there's a fly.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, I wonder where the fly came from.
• 17:43
  Speaker 6: See, two years ago, I wouldn't have had a fly
• 17:46
  Speaker 6: up here. The shelves, they literally, the people walk in,
• 17:49
  Speaker 6: they just take everything they want. They walk out of
• 17:51
  Speaker 6: the store. What the hell is going on?
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: They have to be taught.
• 17:55
  Speaker 6: Now, if you had one really violent day, like one
• 17:58
  Speaker 6: rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will
• 18:02
  Speaker 6: get out and it will end immediately. End immediately.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: End immediately. So, uh, love it. You said that, you know,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: what he was suggesting with the, uh, one violent day thing.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Did he, did he think the purge was a documentary?
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: So, so I, I, here's what I thought what he
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: was in his adult brain. He's sort of, he's pulling
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: back old things he used to say, but not as
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: clearly as he was able to say before. And what I,
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: what I think he's talking about is something that you
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: would hear like from, from a, from a New Yorker
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: like this would be something like, you know why there's
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: no homeless people in front of Tiffany's or, you know,
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: what restaurants used to do back in the day. If
• 18:36
  Speaker 5: somebody tried to steal from them, they would, they would
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: have somebody go out and beat the everloving shit out
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: of them. And then that person would tell all their friends,
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: you don't have to worry about it anymore. That's why
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: there's no homeless people over here. That's what you used
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: to have. The mob used to have dirty cut, whatever
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: it is. And you would dispatch these people and they
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: would rough somebody up and they would get the word out. That's, that's,
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: that is what he's talking about there. That's sort of
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: in his mind. He's referencing that kind of way. People
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: would talk about, uh, uh, uh, crime that like, you
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: could fix this by beating somebody up and then they'll
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: tell all their friends.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: You know, the times wrote this up and, uh, Just
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: sort of stunning to read it in a straight news story,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: but it said, Trump has in the past urged law
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: enforcement to be rougher when making arrests and called for
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: the summary execution of shoplifters.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Like, yeah, that is true. That is what he has
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: said before.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: And then the roughing up suspects thing was in a
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: speech to police in 2017.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: He also wants universal stop and frisk. He wants to
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: deny police. funding for local police departments that do not
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: implement universal stop and frisk.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: I think he genuinely believes that extreme government violence is
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: a way to prevent crime. Because he also, on the
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: international stage, he talks about Rodrigo Duterte all the time,
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: the former president of the Philippines, whose quote-unquote war on
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: drugs was basically just massacring people, innocent, guilty, didn't matter,
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: thousands of them. And he would praise him all the time, publicly, privately,
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: in phone calls. And this is just what he thinks
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: is what you should do.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: He has proposed the death penalty for drug dealers. Like,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: just he wants to execute drug dealers, which is what
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Duterte did. Now, do you think of any of what
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: we just heard from Trump? in that clip is moving
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: any voters? Should Harris respond to any of it? What
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: do you guys think?
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: I don't think so. I mean, the most egregious thing
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: in there was Trump referring to Kamala Harris as mentally disabled,
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: which is like disgusting and offensive, but I don't think
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: you want to make it about you. So I don't know.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: I didn't hear anything there that I would jump on.
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I just like, I think you got to just
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: put it in the bucket of like Trump's out here
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: spewing all this nonsense and all this craziness and all
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: this division and all this meanness and all this cruelty.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Remember why he's doing all this.
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: He's doing this because he's distracting from the fact that
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: he has an incredibly unpopular agenda.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: He wants to cut taxes for corporations.
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: He wants to do a mass deportation that would disrupt
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: our economy and cause a second Great Depression. He wants
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: to overturn abortion rights even in blue states. This is
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: what Donald Trump is promising. So don't let the noise
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: and don't let the bullshit and don't let the crazy
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: ramblings fool you. He's very dangerous and these are the
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: things he's going to do.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: I would like to watch a group of undecided voters
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: or persuadable voters who aren't sure watching Trump talk about
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the one violent day, the one rough hour, the shooting
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: shoplifters executing. I get that Republicans and Trump have an
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: advantage on crime and we don't want to play on
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: their territory. I just think that that kind of stuff
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: is so extreme and has to do with what Trump
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: wants to do in a second term and not like
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: you said, Tommy, like the names he's calling Kamala Harris.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't talk about that or anything like that, but
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think this is, I think if
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: you were, if you were convincing someone who was going
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: into the voting booth that day, that was like a
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: friend of yours who was wavering, you'd be like, Hey,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: this guy's talking about fucking executing people who were arrested for, uh,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: dealing drugs or people who are suspected of shoplifting. He
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: wants them to shoot. Like, I think that's a fair
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: data point.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: I think most people would watch that and think he
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: doesn't really mean that. He's just kidding around. He's talking.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: I think I unfortunately think.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Even if you did it with the clips of shoot
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the shoplifters, execute the drug dealers, all that kind of stuff.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think, I think shoot the shoplifters and
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: execute the drug dealers are just different categories. I think
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: some people might be like, yeah, maybe you think about
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: death penalty for some drug dealers. I don't think, I
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: think they would think he was not serious about shooting shoplifters.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: And I think broadly people have way more harsh views
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: on crime than I'm, probably personally that we're personally comfortable with.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: And I don't know, I just don't know that I'd
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: highlight it.
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah. I, as I just don't even, I like, I
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: feel so like unmoored at this point. Like we're at,
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: we're saying shit like this. We're, we're stuck at 48,
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: 48 of this tiny group of people. Is this the
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: thing that finally gets them to understand why Trump is
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: so dangerous?
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: I really don't feel like I, I know anymore.
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: Like, are there a group of people that are leaning
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: towards Trump that could be pilled toward Kamala, not because
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: of something that Kamala does, but because of something at
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: long last that Trump says.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Maybe you're right, I don't know.
• 23:04
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: I was talking to some of our pollsters at Focus Group,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: folks we know, and they said, especially young people and
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: young black and brown men, like hearing about universal stop
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: and frisk, it's like incredibly unpopular. And that's just police.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: That's a terrible policy.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: That's literally just police stopping and frisking you. That's not
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: shooting suspected shoplifters. So I actually, I totally agree that
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: in general, probably the views of crime at this table
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: versus like the public's views of crimes are quite different.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: But I think that this is so extreme that it
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: would be, I don't know if it moves people, but
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: it's very unpopular.
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: I think if you're talking about pulling out certain parts
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: of this, that would be like, like in the, would
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: appeal to like a certain segment of, of young people
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: that seem open to Trump.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Uh, like sure.
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: Like that makes a lot of sense to me, but
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: on the whole, on the main, like I feel like
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: we are back into a couple of cycles of Trump's
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: crazy in a thousand different fucking directions.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: And I like worry about the 2016 effect of like.
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: He's saying, oh, he's saying we didn't used to have
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: flies as if immigrants brought all the flies. He's saying
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: crazy shit about crime again. Wait, he's making his drug
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: dealer point again. And like, what was that? He called
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: her mentally disabled. And like, I feel like I'm in
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: a bit of a time warp.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but no, I mean, I think that you want
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: to be on the economy. You want to be on abortion.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: The only other category of Trump stuff that I sometimes
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: think we should push a little harder on is the
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: using government for violence. And whether it's the mass deportations-
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: whether it's the shooting the shoplifters, this stuff is just
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: in a category of like, even like libertarian leaning Republicans,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: like you're going to use the federal government to like,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: when the looting starts, the shooting starts, right?
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I was trying to articulate just a second ago,
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: and I don't feel like I was, I'm like struggling
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: to do it. But like, I do think that there's
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: a way to kind of, I think we like have
• 24:46
  Speaker 5: to get, I think that that kind of gets sorted
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: into like the Trump chaos thing. extremism bucket. And then
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: there's like the Trump economy bucket. And I do think
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: there's like a way to put them together. And they
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: were not being clear enough with people about, I talked
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: about this with Tim actually, because we were talking about
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: Trump's economic speech, which was kind of glossed over because
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: of all the crazy shit he said, but inside of
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: it wasn't actual economic speech. And you look at what
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: he's promising and like, it could cause a depression. It
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: could cause a massive, massive, massive recession. And like, we
• 25:14
  Speaker 5: should like, that's if in the reverse, that's what Donald
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: Trump would be saying. Why aren't we saying that? Like
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: Donald Trump's chaos, Donald Trump is going to When he
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: left office, he left the country with a recession. He
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: is promising through tariffs and mass deportations, not only terror
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: for millions of people, but an economic calamity. If you
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: want to prevent a massive economic crash caused by Donald
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: Trump's chaos, mismanagement and extremism, like to protect the economy,
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: you have to vote for Kamala Harris. And there's some
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: way to kind of put those things together.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: The tariff thing is, I've been an advocate for going
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: hard at the tariffs for a while now. It is
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: hard for people who lived through a first Trump term,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I think, to imagine like, well, why didn't he do
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: this crazy tariff thing in the first term? And what's
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: his motivation for doing it in a second term? You're
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: going to be like, I don't know. He's kind of
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: fucking crazy. That's like the only explanation.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: It is wild.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: And he also totally misrepresents what a tariff is. Although
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: there's some recent Pew polling on immigration that found 56%
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: of registered voters support mass deportations, including 27% of Harris supporters.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: So it just shows you how far people have moved
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: on immigration and why Trump is only talking about it.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: The other thing that's interesting from Pew on crime is
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: they test people's feelings on crime and whether crime rates
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: are going up or down. And in 23 of the
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: last 27 polls, I think that's right, people thought that
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: crime was going up even when it was going down.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: So there's clearly just like so much fear of crime,
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: mostly from the media perspective. that it distorts views. And
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: I'm just not sure how it kind of cuts.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Well, I definitely think you can't try to tell people,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: much like the economy, you can't tell people that crime
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: is going down if they don't feel that crime is
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: going down. I think that's a mistake. So it seems
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: like some of this crap from Trump was a reaction
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to Harris going to the border on Friday, which Dan
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and I previewed a bit on Friday's show. How do
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: you guys think she did? with that event.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: The coverage looked good. I mean, I think any opportunity
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: to drive the message that there was this border security bill,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: a bipartisan group of lawmakers wanted to pass it and
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: Trump tanked it because he wanted to run the issue.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: I think that's just like a great message. I also
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: thought it let her highlight her work in California going
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: after drug cartels and drug traffickers, which I bet you
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: zero percent of voters know about if you were just
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: to sort of ask them in sort of an open setting.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: She has gained back some ground on immigration as compared
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: to where Biden was, but she's still losing pretty badly
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: on the issue. And that similar, that same pupil last
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: month found that 56% of registered voters are extremely or
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: very concerned about the number of immigrants entering the country illegally,
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: including 27% of her supporters. So the same numbers as
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: mass deportation. And so, you know, I think what I
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: take from all of this is that her campaign has
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: decided that she needs to look like she thinks the
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: border is a crisis and the immediate priority. And we're
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: going to solve that first. And then you move to
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: like a broader, more holistic conversation about immigration policy. And
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: this visit was a piece of it. I think the
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: one criticism you can make is like, maybe do this
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: six months ago, a year ago, you do it a
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: couple of times. So it doesn't get called just a
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: stunt as the Chiron on Fox news said, as we
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: were walking in, but it's worth doing.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: I just remembered, I can't remember if it was a,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Sarah Longwell focus group or one of those cable focus
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: groups after the debate or something, but there was an
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: undecided voter or some swing voter who was like, and
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I heard that she, uh, when she was
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: in California, she prosecuted some of these gangs, these, and
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I was like, someone knows about this.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: Get that woman on TV.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Like that is great. That's a mission accomplished there. That's one. Yeah.
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: I watched, I went just, I was like, what does
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: this look like if you're in Phoenix or something? And like, what,
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: what is like the border coverage look like? And The
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: images are great.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: It's her walking with like police in front of the wall.
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: It's very kind of like law enforcement kind of border
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: security I think they're like the remarks were great all
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: that was great But you just sort of see the
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: challenge of trying to like make a dent or like
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: it sort of will get to the polling Which is
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: like how challenging this media environment is because if you
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: watch a local affiliate its images of her at the
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: border Then they go to a Trump surrogate who's basically
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: saying like she was the border czar who failed She
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: hasn't been here since she was an elected which is
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: a false accusation Uh, and then they say, all right, well,
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: let's cut to Kamala Harris's remarks on the border. It
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: happened to be the part of the speech where she
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: was doing acknowledgements. So they cut from a Trump aide
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: going like, she's never done a thing for the border.
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: And then it's her just applauding and like pointing at people.
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: And you're just like, man, it just gets to Tommy's
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: point about like doing this It's like you just, it's reps.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: It's going again.
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: It's like doing then going and doing interviews with these
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: affiliates to talk about it more. It's just, you have
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: to hit it over and over and over again.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Also, if you are making a speech about a policy
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: that your supporters and your voters are excited about, they're
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: going to spread the message and they're going to help
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: you spread that message, which is tough to do in
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: this media environment. If you are going to play defense
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: on border security, which is what she's doing, and look,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of undecided swing voters are saying like,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure about her on the border, right? I'm
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: not sure about her on immigration. And it's along with
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: the economy. Those are the two things holding a lot
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: of these voters back. But it's just like... you're not
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: going to get a bunch of your supporters to go
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: and be like, look at her on the border. It
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: was so exciting. She was really tough on border security. Like,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: it's just a hard thing to get out there.
• 30:25
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: It's like you're trying to like, you're trying to beat
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: him on temperament and extremism. You're trying to beat him
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: on abortion. You try to fight to a draw on
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: the economy and you're trying to like mitigate your losses
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: on immigration. Like to Tommy's point about why mass deportation
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: polls so well, there's no conversation about whether or not
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: there should be a mass deportation.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: It's people saying, well, yeah, I do agree that there's
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: a huge problem at the border.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: Or the impact of it.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Or the impact about it.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: You show people videos of federal agents raiding offices and homes.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I think they're not as excited about it.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: But then what happens is Donald Trump's out there saying,
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: this is what we need. This is how we'll solve
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: the problem. Correctly, the Harris campaign is saying, let's talk
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: about border security. Let's talk about Trump killing the bill.
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: Let's talk about a better immigration system, and then there's
• 31:09
  Speaker 5: no actual debate about this heinous and terrible policy.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: As you said, Lovett, we keep getting more polls. They
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: keep showing that the race is more tied than the
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: last polls. That's possible. New York Times-Siena, once again, Saturday morning,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: we all get up and more New York Times-Siena polls.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Harris leads 49-47 in Wisconsin, 48-47 in Michigan. There was
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: a Fox News poll out on Friday that had Harris
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: up two in Pennsylvania, but tied among likely voters, blah, blah, blah.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: It's all the same. Are we just stuck here till
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: election day? Is this what's going to happen?
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, in my dark moments, I wonder if we
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: spend years of our lives and billions of dollars on
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: campaigns and in the end, what really matters is like
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: the meta media narrative at the last week or two.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: The last week, yeah.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: You know, and like the late deciders and where they break.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: It's made me worry, Tommy, to that point that like
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: the Trump people know this because that's how they won
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: in 16 and they're just like waiting to just throw
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: some kind of shit at the wall in the last
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: two weeks.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Come on, Jim Comey.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: What are you up to? They don't have to, they
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: don't have to, he doesn't have to have a kernel
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: of truth to it. They're just going to like throw
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: shit at the wall.
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I will say like, even if what you're saying
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: is true, let's, that, the campaigns create the space for that,
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: that like final two weeks to unfold. I also like,
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: I just, I think we don't know that. Like, I
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: think it's very possible that the race is frozen and
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: like the very, like no campaign is perfect, but like
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: Kamala Harris is like doing what she.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Is supposed to do.
• 32:33
  Speaker 5: What like her, like she has very smart people around her.
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: They are running an enthusiastic campaign. They're doing everything they're
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: supposed to do. Trump is selling fucking watches and careening
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: through disaster sites, launching and they're tied. And then the
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: question is like, Is that a genuine, like, I think there's,
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: the race could be genuinely tied and this politics is
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: all going through like the information mandolin and like ending.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Up as shredded on the bottom. That's possible.
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: It's also possible that these polls are accurate, but it's
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: just very hard to measure the like shifts between leaners,
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: shifts in enthusiasm, tiny shifts amongst undecided voters that even
• 33:07
  Speaker 5: if the polls are creating an accurate picture of what's happening,
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: they're not able to measure these subtle and qualitative differences,
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: which you do see in focus groups, right? There is
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: a difference in the focus groups. between how they talked
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: about Biden versus Trump versus how they talk about Harris
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: versus Trump. And that would just be hard to measure.
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: The other is that all of this polling, we may
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: discover after this election that the ways in which they
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: were trying to correct for errors after 2016 and 2020
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: created totally weird results because those were weird elections between
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. between Joe Biden and Donald
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: Trump during a pandemic and now this election where we
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: finally have a candidate a lot of people are enthusiastic about.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Finally, a normal election.
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: Well, it's like between a vice president.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: The answer is who knows.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: The answer is who knows. But we just won't know
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: till after.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: I know. I'm saying that was a joke. In my
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: dark moments, I think that. Obviously, registering voters matters. GOTV matters.
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: But ultimately, we're talking about 10% of the population. It's
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: undecided and trying to convince them. And it's just, it sucks.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: And again, I think people, you hear undecided and you
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: think that those people are all torn between the two candidates.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: And they're just checked out.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: They're just checked out. A lot of them are checked out. And,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I just, Alex Wagner did a focus group
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: of Michigan voters last week. And just hearing some of them,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: it's so funny because you can tell the difference between
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: the voters who've been paying attention to this race and
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: they talk about the convention speech or Trump did this.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: And then the other ones are just like, I haven't
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: looked enough about Kamala Harris. I know she's a new candidate.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: I got to check it out. I do remember I
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: had more money in my pocket when Trump was president,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: but I don't know. He seems kind of crazy. I mean,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: you just hear the same shit and they're going to,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: they are going to tune in those last couple of weeks.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: I don't like these Michigan numbers.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Or people are going to, you know, knock on their
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: doors and, or the campaign's going to be on the ground.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: You're going to have an organizer. They're going to hear
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: from a volunteer. And again, one conversation is not going
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: to do it, but they're going to start thinking, okay,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I got some new information from that person. That's interesting.
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: I do think that because the race has been so
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: static and because it's so close, like It's hard to
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: know the difference between are there just a group of
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: people that are very hard to persuade or are they
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: being persuaded and it's just not showing up in the numbers.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: And we just don't know. It's very hard to measure.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Let's give them a little hot war in Lebanon. Close
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: this thing out. Close strong. Some more chaos and death
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: and destruction overseas. Maybe shovel some cash over there.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Can't you fix that? That's supposed to be your other podcast.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: Rhodes is working on it.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Rhodes is working on it.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: He's doing his thing.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing my job. I know.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: I know the joke and I was going to do
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: it too.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: We didn't. Nope. There is one more quote-unquote big moment
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: left on the calendar. Tuesday night's VP debate, J.D. Vance
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: and Tim Walls will meet on stage at CBS Studios
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: in New York at 9 p.m.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Eastern.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Like the Harris-Trump debate, it'll be 90 minutes with no audience.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Unlike the Harris-Trump debate, both candidates' mics will be on
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: the entire time. The moderators are Nora O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: We know that Pete Buttigieg has been playing Vance in
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Walls' debate prep sessions yesterday. in that Minnesota Congressman Tom
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Emmer has been playing Walls in Vance's sessions. The Walls
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: team has been trying to set expectations with leaks about
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Walls being nervous and not a great debater. The RNC
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: did a preview call about the debate and teased that
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Vance will call Walls Traitor Tim for allegedly abandoning his
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: National Guard unit when they went to Iraq. So is
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: it going to be Traitor Tampon Tim or Tampon Traitor Tim?
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Are they going to just drop tampon?
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: Oh, good question.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: It's tough.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, traitor. So great. I should look great. That's good.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: They should do that.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: What a prick.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: How are you guys feeling about the expectation setting? Do
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: you buy the expectation setting? Do you not? What do
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: I'm a little nervous. I watched some of Tim Walls'
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: Minnesota public radio debate from last year against Scott Jensen.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Barnburner?
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: I heard of Scott Jensen. It wasn't great.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: He seemed pretty nervous.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: He was a little gruff. Got a little defensive. The
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: answers weren't always totally smooth or coherent. And so, you know,
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: he's probably doing exponentially more prep this time than last time. But,
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: you know, the stakes couldn't are a lot higher. And
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: Tim Walls hasn't been doing any interviews. Like the lack
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: of reps could make him rusty. He's also, he's now
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: defending Kamala Harris's record, something he learned about for the
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: first time two months ago. Like think about how complicated
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: that is. You're not, you're not like defending your own
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: legislative record or time as governor, which, you know, inside
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: and out, you're talking about this person you, you barely
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: knew three months ago, as opposed to JD Vance, who's
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: been doing fucking mop up duty for Donald Trump for
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: four years publicly while attacking him privately. And so I
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: like JD, again, he's been out there, he's doing press conferences,
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: he's doing hostile interviews. They're not always good. He's not
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: always helping the cause, but he's got a lot of
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: reps and he's an obnoxious, like slippery little shit who
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: is kind of good at this stuff.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: I think a Socratic forum is a good forum for
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: JD Vance. JD Vance is better in one-on-one interviews that
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: are contentious with like a national news reporter than he
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: is on the stump or talking to someone trying to
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: sell him a donut. He's better in He's better in
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: the green room. He's better in like well-lit environments. He's
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: a green room creature. And I do worry about that.
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: What I was thinking about this debate was actually the
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: John Edwards.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know why it's 2004 for me right now.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: I don't know what came out of the fucking time capsule.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Do you support the surge?
• 38:09
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: So the reason I was thinking about.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you about the last time I remember
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: a disaster relief situation in politics.
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: 2004.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: I do. Well, so this is a coincidence.
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: But the reason I was thinking about 2004 is because-
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: So Dick Cheney had this reputation of being this political
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: Darth Vader, and John Edwards was this charming lawyer. And
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: then they had this debate where they kind of folksied
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: it up and had a really kind of mild-mannered good time.
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: And I think it redounded to Dick Cheney's benefit because
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: John Edwards made Dick Cheney seem like a normal person.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: In that debate.
• 38:43
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: And the only thing I remember from it is him
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: kind of really awkwardly being like your daughter, who is
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: a lesbian.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: That was a weird moment.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: What are you doing, John?
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: But like John, but Dick Cheney came out well out
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: of that debate. And I was a little worried about that. Like, like,
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: you know, Tim Waltz is going to kind of like
• 38:57
  Speaker 5: end up in this sort of folks each conversation with J.D.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Vance and J.D.
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: Vance comes away looking vaguely normal because he's in conversation
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: with a normal guy. That was my concern. But the
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: fact that they're previewing this traitor thing, I think that's
• 39:07
  Speaker 5: fucking great.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: The more J.D.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: Vance is coming after Tim Walz, and Tim Walz can
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: just be like, I'm proud of my service to my country.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about Donald Trump. Let's talk about Kamala Harris.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: I think the better.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: And I think that would be a pretty stupid strategy.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: Real waste of time.
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: J.D.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Vance, which makes me think it's a head fake, but
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: who knows? I do. I buy the spin from the
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Walls camp. Someone in the CNN piece about this recalls
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Walls saying, I think at a fundraiser, as teachers, we're
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: trained to answer the question and we train our students
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: to answer the questions. That's not how this goes. Barack Obama,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: also a teacher, felt the same way. He was not
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: always great at debates. Kamala Harris was a prosecutor. That's
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: like this debates are more her style, like the way
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: that you prepare for trial, you know? Um, so I do,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: I worry a little bit, you know, about, about walls,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: but I don't know, maybe he's practiced a bunch and
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: maybe Pete really. gave it to him good, and now
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: he's all ready.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: And then had the debate prep.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Okay. Jesus Christ.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Tom thought it. As long as Tommy thought it. I
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: can see that Tommy thought it.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: I don't have the permission structure. I also was texting
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: with some people on the Walls team, like, are you
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: ready to dominate? And they're like, you know, not quite
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: how we're feeling, but we're making progress. So they're playing
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: things down publicly and privately.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: And then there's a piece, did you guys read the
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: piece in the New York Times about J.D. Vance and
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: his past debates? That was like an expectations... Razor? Yeah.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: It's like the Walls campaign placed it, but it was
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: basically all about how J.D. Vance was made for debates,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: just like what you said. And apparently in Hillbilly Elegy,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: he talked about how he, in the Marines, he did
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: media relations for the Marines.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a combat correspondent.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: The experience taught me a valuable lesson that I could
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: do it. I could work 20-hour days when I had to.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: I could speak clearly and confidently with a TV camera
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: shoved in my face. So this is a guy who's
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: been practicing doing this for a long time. And you're right. Like,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I think interacting with humans, sort of tough, but like
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: a debate stage.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: White nationalist podcasts, great preparation for a debate.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: And I think the smarter strategy for J.D. Vance than
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: the traitor Tim stuff would be to run the play
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump was supposed to run at the Harris-Trump
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: debate and forget about Tim Walz and make Tim Walz
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: answer for, like... Kamala Harris and all of the unpopular
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: parts of the Biden-Harris record and her stuff. That's what
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: I bet he'll do.
• 41:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: What's confusing, though, about J.D. Vance is he seems smart
• 41:27
  Speaker 5: enough to know that, and then he goes on social
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: media and starts bickering.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: With reporters all day. So there's an angel and devil
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: on his shoulder. And they're both assholes. Fucking worst angel
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: you'd ever fucking meet.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: He's such a weirdo.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: You could see him getting triggered by Nora and Margaret, too,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: because they're just shouting questions at him, and he already
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: has an antagonistic relationship with every reporter, and so I
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: could see him.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he got real mad at Dana Bash.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Yep, I could see that, too. If you were Walls,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: would you go after him for the shitty things he said,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: or would you keep it all about Trump?
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: I was thinking about this over the weekend. And I
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: think the one place I would kind of go after
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: JD Vance repeatedly is be like, JD, I was a
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: teacher for many years. I had a lot of students
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: like you, like kids who were in a hurry to
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: make a name for themselves and be someone. And they
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: were willing to say and do anything to get there.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: Like that's how you end up being the attack dog
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: for a guy who doesn't care about working people who
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: in 2020, you.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Said had failed to deliver as president in a DM.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: That's a good one.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: And now you're running around the country, you know, telling
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: lies and trying to divide the country. And then you
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: try to like create this narrative around JD that becomes
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: a motive for everything he says and kind of undercuts
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: him and sort of gets at his lack of qualifications
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: for the jobs. Maybe you slip in a couple of
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: lines about how old Trump is, but yeah, no, I
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: don't think you're going after the greatest oppo hits. Like
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: maybe you're mentioning some of the top ones like childless
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: cat ladies or lying about migrants in, in Ohio and,
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, most of this is going to
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: be just the Trump show and making him defend Trump.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Couldn't agree more, though. That's a great strategy to have
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: like one motivation for J.D. Vance and his career and
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: to just like keep coming back to that, right? Which
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: is just trying to do anything to get more power.
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I do think using the new stuff about the 2020,
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: like even after Donald Trump's presidency, you were saying these things,
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: which is new and he'll feel obligated to respond.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: And his response is pretty bad.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we've, do we cover this on
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: this show? I think just so everyone knows what we're
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: talking about. There was a Washington Post story about this,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: that J.D. Vance was direct messaging on Twitter with someone
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: where he said in 2020 that Trump, quote, thoroughly failed
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: to deliver on economic populism. And so pretty damning. One
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: of the more damning J.D. Vance quotes.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: Even more damning. That line was followed by a parenthetical
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: accepting a disjointed China policy.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Who says accepting?
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: J.D.
• 43:54
  Speaker 6: Vance.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: Go back to Yale.
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I do think that's pretty damning. And his defense
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: is like, I was saying how establishment Republicans let him down,
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: which is sort of embarrassing.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, buddy.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: But he'll feel obligated because he'll know Trump is watching.
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: Oh, God, yeah.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: And so he'll have to respond. He'll have to respond.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: The only, if I was Walls, I would look for,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's one opportunity, but other opportunities to drive
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: a wedge between Trump and Vance with either different positions
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: they've had or remember when Vance fucked up by saying
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump would veto a national abortion ban. Trump said,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: I never told him that.
• 44:29
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Like I would I would look for him or him
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: on that.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: And know that Trump's watching and try to get make
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: him be a supplicant for Trump and just embarrass himself. Like,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: I think that's a.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: Real audience of one situation for for J.D.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: What's a win for walls look like?
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: It's like a relentless message about Trump being in this
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: for himself and not working people and then just getting J.D.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: on defense.
• 44:51
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: I think a draw is a win. Do no harm.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: And, yeah, and just saying how great Kamala is and
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: her record and her, you know, her plans and everything
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: like that. I mean, because, again, she, I would say
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the only missed opportunity, not really missed because she didn't
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: have the time, but in the last debate, she didn't
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: get to talk as much about her plans, her policies,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: her values, stuff like that. She did, but I think
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: that Walls could probably do that for her even better
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: because he's essentially a surrogate for her and not just
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: her bragging.
• 45:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 45:20
  Speaker 5: She went back to like aspirations and ambitions, but she
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: didn't go back to the details that much.
• 45:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: I think, I think you'll know, I think a win
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: will be a debate in which it felt like Tim
• 45:28
  Speaker 5: Waltz was kind of putting JD advanced.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: It's very similar. It's sort of a mirror image of Trump.
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: Like JD Vance is going to be a smarter, more
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: sophisticated kind of bulldozer coming at him, but like kind
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: of being able to put that aside and letting him
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: get himself riled up while talking to the camera and
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: like kind of, he comes away kind of seeming kind
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: of nonplussed.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Is that the right way of using nonplussed?
• 45:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah, sure. Hmm.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: And, And Vance seems rattled, seems angry.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: How much is this going to matter? You think the
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: whole race is going to be upended if Wallace does
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: bad or does well?
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: I wonder, what's the worst VP debate performance?
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: It's a good question.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, Sarah Palin even did fine, right?
• 46:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: They're usually non-events.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: No one cares.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: It is weird that it could be the last big
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: event before voting, but no one will remember it by
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: the time they're actually on election day.
• 46:16
  Speaker 6: No.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: You know, it could cost a few news cycles to
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: one side or the other, but maybe a, maybe a,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't even know.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: If the debate between Harris and Trump didn't seem to
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: move anything.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. I know.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: I know. Right.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: Like, I don't know.
• 46:29
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: Well, this is going to be the thing.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: This will be the, yeah, no, I don't know. When
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: we come back from the break, you're going to hear
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: my conversation with the one and only James Carville. Two
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: quick things before we do that. For tonight's VP debate,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: we're going to be hosting a subscriber live chat starting
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific on our Discord server.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: You'll be able to watch the debate live, chat with
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: fellow Crooked listeners, and vent about J.D. Vance's awfulness in
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: real time. Not a friend of the pod yet? Sign
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: up now at crooked.com slash friends. We'll be doing our
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: own recap show after the debate ends, but also make
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: sure you're subscribed to our daily news pod, What A Day.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: You'll wake up with a 20-minute overview of the highs
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: and lows of the Walls-Vance showdown. Best of all, Tommy's
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: going to be joining Jane Koston for the episode.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, can't wait. Nice. It's very fun. It's a
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: tradition like any other. Me going on WADA after debates.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: There you go. When we come back, James Carville. Joining
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: us in studio today, he's the subject of a new
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: CNN documentary coming out this weekend called Carville, Winning is
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Everything Stupid. The legendary Democratic strategist who inspired a generation
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: of hacks like me to get into politics. James Carville. James,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: welcome to the pod.
• 47:45
  Speaker 6: Well, thank you. Excited to be here. Always good to
• 47:50
  Speaker 6: have a conversation.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: With another hack.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 47:52
  Speaker 6: That's right.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: So since Kamala Harris became the nominee, we've had a convention,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: a debate, millions in ads, saturated media coverage, and basically
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: nonstop polling that shows a race that is essentially tied
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: with five weeks to go. I know the last few
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: elections have been pretty close, so this isn't unusual. I
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: can't remember a race where the polling has been this
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: tight for this long. What do you think is going on?
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: Well, first of all, in this century, the only candidate
• 48:24
  Speaker 6: that woke up election morning knowing they were going to
• 48:27
  Speaker 6: win was the Obama 2008.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: We were still a little nervous. But you kind of knew.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: It was a good lead, yeah.
• 48:34
  Speaker 6: But everything else, you might have thought you were in
• 48:37
  Speaker 6: a little better shape, but you didn't know.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 48:39
  Speaker 6: You certainly didn't know in 2012. I mean, Romney was
• 48:41
  Speaker 6: actually shocked at his loss. I mean, it was like
• 48:43
  Speaker 6: he went there thinking he was going to win. Yeah.
• 48:46
  Speaker 6: So it's not unusual. And what I will say, they're
• 48:50
  Speaker 6: usually breaking in. So if there's seven swing states, the
• 48:55
  Speaker 6: most unlikely result is they break 4-3. They're going to break.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Altogether.
• 49:01
  Speaker 6: More likely than not. My instinct, but it's nothing but instinct,
• 49:06
  Speaker 6: is Kentucky Windage, that it'll break Harris's way. But that's
• 49:12
  Speaker 6: only instinct. There's no evidence to support that.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Were you surprised at how fast the party came together?
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: around her candidacy and how fast her favorability ratings went up?
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: No.
• 49:30
  Speaker 6: I think it was clear that people just wanted something different.
• 49:34
  Speaker 6: It was like, well, 72% wanted something different. 60% of
• 49:36
  Speaker 6: the Democrats did. And, you know, the analogy I would
• 49:43
  Speaker 6: use is that if you have an infected wisdom tooth
• 49:47
  Speaker 6: and they pull it, you feel great. You don't feel
• 49:50
  Speaker 6: any better than you would have felt if you didn't
• 49:52
  Speaker 6: have the wisdom tooth. The fact that the wisdom tooth
• 49:54
  Speaker 6: is gone, you're like, gee, I'm on top of the
• 49:56
  Speaker 6: world now. And I think you had some of that effect.
• 50:00
  Speaker 6: It was 1245 Central Time, almost a minute. when I
• 50:09
  Speaker 6: got the first text. I was listening to political radio.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: I forgot what it was.
• 50:18
  Speaker 6: At 1.45 Central, you knew that they'd already called us,
• 50:24
  Speaker 6: that there was no appetite for anything else. Yeah.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Were you worried at all? Because I know you were
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: initially concerned that it would appear either she was anointed
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: by the party or or even another Democratic nominee were nominated.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: And look, she did earn the nomination, but there was
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: no other challengers for 24 hours.
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, Simon, if President Biden would have dropped
• 50:46
  Speaker 6: out on June the 58th, there might have been a
• 50:48
  Speaker 6: lot of... One of the things that I do believe
• 50:52
  Speaker 6: that the level of talent in the current Democratic Party
• 50:57
  Speaker 6: is the highest level of talent I've seen in a
• 50:59
  Speaker 6: political party in my lifetime. I mean, if you look
• 51:02
  Speaker 6: at the potential presidential candidates we had, they're all, like,
• 51:07
  Speaker 6: really world-class talent.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:09
  Speaker 6: And Harris has kind of proved herself to be a
• 51:13
  Speaker 6: lot better than people thought. The other thing that I
• 51:18
  Speaker 6: would have people tell me that, you know, she's gotten
• 51:21
  Speaker 6: a lot better. I'd like people to work at the
• 51:23
  Speaker 6: White House. She's become more confident. She has better staff work.
• 51:27
  Speaker 6: I think they brought Lorraine in. So I'm... I'm gratified
• 51:32
  Speaker 6: I didn't, you know, if I saw her 2000 presidential campaign, whoo, man,
• 51:37
  Speaker 6: I think stunk. But she's grown.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: She has. She really has. It feels like Trump and
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Kamala are in a battle for voters' attention, which is
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: increasingly harder to come by these days, the state of
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: the media. I think it's one big reason that the
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: Harris folks really want a second debate. So far, Trump's
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: not giving it to them. What do you think her
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: campaign can do to break through in these last few weeks?
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Any creative ideas to grab people's attention?
• 52:03
  Speaker 6: The answer is yes.
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 52:05
  Speaker 6: First of all, what they do is they do big
• 52:08
  Speaker 6: events very well. The vice president will roll out. You
• 52:12
  Speaker 6: could say maybe they're going to sit at the picture bureau.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 52:14
  Speaker 6: But it was very well done. The convention, you couldn't
• 52:18
  Speaker 6: walk away from there and not say it's one of
• 52:20
  Speaker 6: the better conventions you ever had. You certainly couldn't walk
• 52:24
  Speaker 6: away from the debate and not say that they did
• 52:27
  Speaker 6: a real good job in the Preparing her. I knew
• 52:29
  Speaker 6: some of the people that were in prep, but I
• 52:31
  Speaker 6: really was very confident she was going to do well.
• 52:34
  Speaker 6: What is less certain is how aggressive they are day
• 52:39
  Speaker 6: to day and how they don't take a story and
• 52:43
  Speaker 6: kick it. So Trump says, I don't like to pay
• 52:46
  Speaker 6: people a minimum wage. I just don't pay them. I mean, overtime. Overtime.
• 52:51
  Speaker 6: And Project 2025 has this overtime provision. I wish they
• 52:56
  Speaker 6: would be kicking the crap out of this all day.
• 52:59
  Speaker 6: I wish they were like flooding TV. Like, come on,
• 53:03
  Speaker 6: people work overtime. They want to get paid. You know,
• 53:07
  Speaker 6: hourly workers, overtime is everything to them. So I thought
• 53:13
  Speaker 6: that they could kick that a lot harder. And what
• 53:16
  Speaker 6: I hope that they do coming down the stretch is
• 53:19
  Speaker 6: push a story every day. And a lot of it is...
• 53:26
  Speaker 6: The stuff they're proposing on taxes, people don't like. The
• 53:30
  Speaker 6: other one they should be just kicking the crap out
• 53:32
  Speaker 6: of is the tariff stuff. You see me down four
• 53:36
  Speaker 6: in Iowa. That's understandable. Agrarian people can't stand tariffs. They
• 53:40
  Speaker 6: have a terrible– industrial people, some are naive enough to
• 53:47
  Speaker 6: think they're going to do some good. I think they
• 53:51
  Speaker 6: should be pushing the Peterson Institute. Which, okay, I don't
• 53:56
  Speaker 6: know what it is, we know, but all credible people
• 54:00
  Speaker 6: say this is going to be a $ 2, 500, $ 3, 000 owned
• 54:02
  Speaker 6: every family. I wish they would push that harder. Yeah.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: It seems like, I mean, this has been a problem
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: for years now, but Trump gives you so many different
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: targets every day because he says a bunch of crazy
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: shit all the time. She has the added challenge of
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: voters saying, well, I want to know more about her.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: I want to know what she's going to do as president.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: but then you've got Trump up there saying, he's talking
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: about the tariffs, he's talking about mass deportations, political prosecutions.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: He just talked about going after shoplifting by letting police
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: do whatever they want for one rough hour. How do
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: you think she should balance talking about herself and talking
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: about him? How do you handle that?
• 54:38
  Speaker 6: So I think that if she ran hard, if they
• 54:42
  Speaker 6: pushed the tariff stuff, people would find out something about her.
• 54:46
  Speaker 6: I think if they pushed the overtime stuff, If they
• 54:50
  Speaker 6: push something simple that everybody is for, but they just
• 54:53
  Speaker 6: don't do, the minimum wage. It's time to give America
• 54:56
  Speaker 6: a raise. Everybody else in the world has gotten a raise,
• 54:59
  Speaker 6: but America's.
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: Not got a raise.
• 55:02
  Speaker 6: And I read a New York Times story. It's so predictable.
• 55:06
  Speaker 6: She did the interview with, I guess, Stephanie Ruhl. And,
• 55:09
  Speaker 6: of course, it's that same pissy thing. Well, she really
• 55:11
  Speaker 6: didn't say anything. There was a lack of specificity hidden
• 55:16
  Speaker 6: in the story. was the fact that she'd put out
• 55:20
  Speaker 6: an 81-page economic plan.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: Like, why didn't—so we had, in 92, we had an
• 55:28
  Speaker 6: 85-page economic plan. No one ever read a word of it,
• 55:31
  Speaker 6: including me. But there's actually— well, she lacks specifics. She's not
• 55:36
  Speaker 6: talking about the issues in any depth. It's just this
• 55:40
  Speaker 6: bromides and— well, actually— She does have an 81-page economic plan.
• 55:46
  Speaker 6: There's no danger that I'm going to read it. But
• 55:49
  Speaker 6: I think if people knew that, if they said, check
• 55:54
  Speaker 6: out the 81-page economic plan. On page 32, she says,
• 55:58
  Speaker 6: we need to increase the minimum wage to $ 12. 85 an hour.
• 56:03
  Speaker 6: Pretty good. Or we need to raise taxes on people
• 56:07
  Speaker 6: who make over $ 400, 000 and put it in a first-time
• 56:10
  Speaker 6: homebuyer mortgage relief fund to help young people buy houses.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:15
  Speaker 6: Anything like that, you know, is going to be massively popular.
• 56:19
  Speaker 6: It pointed out, but the New York Times is never
• 56:21
  Speaker 6: going to say that she has economic specificity.
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 56:25
  Speaker 6: Because you just, you always say that no matter what.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: And when she does interviews too, she can answer questions
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: by saying, oh, if you want to know more, I
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: have this whole book out there. And by the way,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: here's what Trump wants to do.
• 56:39
  Speaker 6: Yeah. So there are, I do think they can be
• 56:47
  Speaker 6: more aggressive. I think they can fight for the news cycle.
• 56:53
  Speaker 6: And I think that, you know, you don't get to
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: back where one day you get a bunch of good
• 56:57
  Speaker 6: stories and you poll that night and you say, well, shit,
• 56:59
  Speaker 6: we didn't move. You got to keep building stuff up.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: So polling shows a big gender gap, including and especially
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: between young women and young men, white men, Hispanic men,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: even black men. it's been like the big demographic debate
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: of 2024. Do you think this is a dynamic that
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: is specific to Trump and the current version of the
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party, or is it bigger than that? How do
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: you think about it?
• 57:26
  Speaker 6: Well, I've been pretty outspoken. We don't do as well,
• 57:30
  Speaker 6: near as well with males as I think you can do.
• 57:34
  Speaker 6: And John, you know that every election brings about a
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: fashionable demographic, NASCAR dads, soccer moms, women of color. I
• 57:45
  Speaker 6: think that the demographic in this cycle with the most
• 57:49
  Speaker 6: elasticity is in, they'll get in trouble saying this in
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: some quarters, but our college educated white males. I think
• 57:58
  Speaker 6: we have a lot of ups, but why do I
• 58:00
  Speaker 6: say that? First of all, they tend to be more pro-choice.
• 58:05
  Speaker 6: than non-college white males. I'm sorry, but we have mothers, wives, children, friends.
• 58:16
  Speaker 6: So much of this has become that abortion is a
• 58:21
  Speaker 6: women's issue. It's actually somewhat of a male issue too.
• 58:26
  Speaker 6: And the other reason I think that there's upside is
• 58:30
  Speaker 6: because of obvious reasons, They're more invested in the stock market.
• 58:34
  Speaker 6: They have more to lose. So I do think we
• 58:38
  Speaker 6: have some, we can't do any better than we're doing
• 58:41
  Speaker 6: in post-bachelor white women. But we certainly can do better
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: with younger black males. That's a problem that I think,
• 58:51
  Speaker 6: to a large extent, our cultures help create that. But
• 58:56
  Speaker 6: I think the trendy demographic are college white males.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: And what do you think is the best way to
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: lock down college white males?
• 59:07
  Speaker 6: Keep talking about abortion.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Keep talking.
• 59:10
  Speaker 6: About freedom. And say that Trump says, the argument is,
• 59:15
  Speaker 6: is it a good economy or a bad economy? It's
• 59:19
  Speaker 6: very hard to talk people into something that they don't believe.
• 59:24
  Speaker 6: But Trump gave us a tremendous opening. He says, you
• 59:27
  Speaker 6: have nothing to lose. We're going to try everything because
• 59:31
  Speaker 6: it's all in a toilet. I don't think people look
• 59:34
  Speaker 6: at it that way. I think people say, well, yeah,
• 59:36
  Speaker 6: I got a job. I think most people, if you say, yeah,
• 59:39
  Speaker 6: I feel pretty good about the next year or year
• 59:41
  Speaker 6: and a half. You know, some people may have a
• 59:46
  Speaker 6: savings account. You know, maybe they're.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Doing a little better.
• 59:49
  Speaker 6: And so if the question is, is it good or bad?
• 59:56
  Speaker 6: That's not the question we should be asking. Do you
• 59:57
  Speaker 6: have something to lose in this? Can you do better? Yes.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 6: But if we do things like start slapping tariffs on everything,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 6: we're not going to do very well. You have something
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 6: to lose. And he keeps running these ads. What the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 6: hell you got to lose?
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Actually, a fair amount.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 6: And it's not just people like you and I that
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 6: have something to lose. A Pipefetter has something to lose.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 6: I mean, that guy, Joshi, is going down to the
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 6: union hall and got work every day.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: I know you've taken your share of shit for warning
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Democrats about identity politics and woke language and all that.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: I've always wondered about this from the perspective of Democratic politicians,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: like 99% of whom don't actually talk like that. They
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: get tagged as, you know, woke party because of activists
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: and people on social media that they have very little
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: control over. If you're a Democratic politician or working for one,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: what do you do about this issue?
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 6: Well, first of all, no one uses that language. I mean,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 6: they just don't, okay? And it started and it was
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 6: like an idea that never caught on. So there's no
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 6: chance that– I tell people and this is true. I–
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 6: you saw the film, I probably had more encounters with
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 6: black people than any Democratic consultant, just where I grew
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 6: up and where I live. And if I saw, which
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 6: I see all the time, let's just say there's three
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 6: black guys shooting a bull out in front of the supermarket.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 6: If I walked up and I said, good morning, fellas,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 6: how are things in the community of color today? What's
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 6: this jive-ass motherfucker talking about? Okay? What I was saying.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 6: And I think it was well-intentioned people They just made
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 6: a giant mistake and they tried to lead and no
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 6: one followed them. And the best thing we can do
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 6: is just move on. We don't need to go remind
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 6: NPR that no one talks like that. Everybody knows no
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 6: one talks like that anymore. There's no danger that Adam
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 6: Schiff is going to be running for Senate in California
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 6: and start talking about Latinx or something. It's just not
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 6: going to happen. There's no value in that.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: I love the documentary. It focuses on your life, your career,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: your marriage. A good chunk of it is also about
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: your very vocal push to get Biden to step aside,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: which was a bit of a lonely crusade before the debate.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: I know that you probably weren't too concerned with the
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: criticism you received during that period. There is a moment
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: in the doc where you worry aloud about becoming one
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: of those people you used to hate. the goddamn carping
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: Democratic pundits who are never satisfied. How do you think
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: about giving advice that's still pertinent and persuasive, even though
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: you're not working inside these campaigns like you used to?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 6: So you and I work in campaigns and you would
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 6: see people on television. Some bitch has no idea what
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 6: he's talking about. We're sitting there 16 hours a day
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 6: trying to, you know, crank out a schedule, trying to
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 6: get spots written and talking points pushed and you know,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 6: doing local TV hits and this asshole's popping off. And
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 6: I always, so here he says, well, yeah, that guy
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 6: is sitting there and, you know, knocking down $ 35, 000 a
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 6: speech and, you know, sitting on TV. And I've always
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 6: hated that kind of person. And that's so true that
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 6: I had become that which I had always detested. But
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 6: I just didn't, because I was old. If you see
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 6: the documentary, it's pretty clear that I'm in the midst
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 6: of the aging process. I had, like you, I had
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 6: maybe a better view, but we have an idea of
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 6: what the job entails. It's not easy. And I had
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 6: a platform. I thought it out. I talked to a
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 6: lot of people about it. thought about it myself, I
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 6: just didn't think I had any other choice. Just given
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 6: the unique circumstances, you know, maybe if you got or
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 6: somebody got really vocal, they would cut guests off from you.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 6: If you were lobbying, or you've had other campaigns you
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 6: were working on, or even if you were working on
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 6: foreign campaigns, they'd call you. the government of Nigeria and say,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 6: you know, if you don't get rid of this son
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 6: of a bitch, you're not getting something. I mean, but
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 6: there was no pressure point that could be applied to me.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 6: And I just thought I was in a unique situation.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 6: I don't blame other people. And I would have people
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 6: would say, God, I wish I could say that, but
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 6: I can't. I said, I understand. I couldn't have said
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 6: this 15 years ago.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: But you can do it now.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 6: But I can do it now.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you get asked a lot by young people
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: for advice, especially people who are interested in pursuing a
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: career in politics. I know one of the reasons you
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: really wanted to do this doc or what you hoped
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: from this doc was to get young people involved in
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: politics again. What do you say to people who ask?
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 6: Well, the origins of the doc was Susan McHugh, who
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 6: was kind of a friend. I think it was post- pandemic.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 6: And she said, you know, I was a student at
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 6: Rutgers and I saw the war room and she became
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 6: Harry Reid's chief of staff at 30 years old. And
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 6: Susan's just one of these like uber connected people. And
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 6: she said, I want to make another documentary because I
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 6: want to, and that was, that was really the kind
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 6: of origin of what started. And, you know, whatever you
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 6: call this, the profession, the business, the industry, it's taken
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: a lot of hits, you know? So a young person says,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: Everybody says it's dirty. It's all negative. It's all polarized.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 6: Everybody's in it for themselves. And guess what? That message
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 6: actually broke through. They were actually successful in convincing people
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 6: that this was a shitty business that shitty people were in.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 6: And that's just not people like you and I that
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 6: work in campaigns. It's people who every– election, Ms. Mabel,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 6: who sits there at the card table and checks off
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 6: the list. That's, you know, the person that walks the precinct,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 6: that goes into the projects, the flusher that goes to
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 6: get the votes out. It's also the local newscaster that
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 6: covers politics. It's the people that write about politics in
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 6: the entire business. And to the extent that this movie
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 6: lives beyond the cycle, which I hope it does, I
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 6: hope it gives people like, you know what? Those people
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 6: looked like they were having a pretty good time. It
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 6: didn't look like they went to work with a half
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 6: shirt on. They were particularly embarrassed by the way they
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 6: earned a living.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 6: And I think, Matt, the advantage we had was our
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 6: director actually like worked, was a gopher in the Mondale campaign,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 6: was Susan Estrich's kind of assistant in the 88 Dukakis campaign,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 6: and covered politics at Vanity Fair. So he actually had...
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 6: had some idea because most people think, what kind of
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 6: carnival barkers, you know, itinerant people, vagabonds, they move from
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 6: one place to another, you know. And I hope, you know,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 6: some young John Favreau says, you know, there's nothing wrong
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 6: with some young Susan McHugh. He says, well, shit, maybe
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 6: I want to be chief of staff to when I'm
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 6: 30 years old and be some Irish woman that went
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 6: to Rutgers.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: That's fine.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was a kid when I first saw
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: the war room. And to this day, I can still
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: remember your line that at the end, outside of a
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: person's love, the most sacred thing they can give is
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: their labor. And anytime you can combine labor and love,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: you've made a merger. Because that was the moment. That
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: was the first moment I thought about getting into politics.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: So Thank you for that.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 6: Well, thank you for that. Actually, you know, that's what
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 6: I hope we're able to do with this movie. I mean,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 6: that's my hope is that, you know, 30 years from now,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 6: somebody says, you know, I got out. of UCLA and
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 6: I got an offer, but I thought I'd maybe run
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 6: for the Sewage and Water Commission. Who would have ever
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 6: thought that one day I would be the governor of California?
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: There you go. I don't know, yeah.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: The doc is fantastic. It's called Carville, Winning is Everything Stupid.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: Directed by Matt Turnauer, premieres on CNN on Saturday, October 5th,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: and in theaters in New York, L.A., and other spots
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: across the country. James Carville, thanks for coming on Pod
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: Save America.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 6: Thank you, and thank you for your kind words about
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 6: the war room inspiring you. I hope this will inspire
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 6: somebody else. Thank you so much. Me too.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. Thanks again to James Carville
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: for coming by. We'll have our VP debate reaction show
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: in your feed tomorrow morning. Bye, everyone. If you want
• 1:09:50
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• 1:10:42
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