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Madison Square Garbage · Politix

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SPEAKER_02: It would have been a story if he'd phoned up in August and been like,
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SPEAKER_02: hey,
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SPEAKER_02: man,
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SPEAKER_02: we're not going to do a presidential endorsement this year.
0:08
SPEAKER_02: But for it to be the explanation on October 28th.
0:12
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's just like the editorial page editor had already written the endorsement.
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SPEAKER_02: So like clearly nobody told him about this pivot in strategic direction.
0:23
SPEAKER_02: Jeff Bezos was aware that the Post was in the business of endorsing presidential candidates.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: He didn't just buy the paper last week.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: This week, Matt and I will talk about how the 2024 election is closing.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: And it's actually mostly happy news for once,
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SPEAKER_01: or at least for the first time since the Trump-Harris debate.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Republicans are in disarray after Trump hosted a hate-filled campaign event at
0:56
SPEAKER_01: Madison Square Garden,
0:58
SPEAKER_01: evoking the infamous Nazi rally there back in 1939.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: Democrats, meanwhile, are expressing confidence for the first time, basically all cycle.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: And resistance liberals are standing up to billionaires who are trying to curry
1:12
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1:27
SPEAKER_00: Hey, everyone.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: This week,
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SPEAKER_01: we'll talk about Donald Trump's disastrous rally at Madison Square Garden,
1:36
SPEAKER_01: the fallout at the Washington Post after Jeff Bezos put the kibosh on the paper's
1:41
SPEAKER_01: plan to endorse Kamala Harris,
1:43
SPEAKER_01: and then promising signs for Democrats ahead of Election Day.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: But I wanted to start by asking politics listeners a small favor.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: So here's the favor.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: If you see Brian Schatz,
1:56
SPEAKER_01: the very good senator from Hawaii,
1:58
SPEAKER_01: doing any podcast media between now and the election,
2:02
SPEAKER_01: please drop us a line so that we can recruit and finance a primary opponent against
2:06
SPEAKER_01: him whenever he's up in cycle again.
2:09
SPEAKER_02: How mysterious.
2:10
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: Speaking of islands, there's a giant floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: So Trump, as I'm sure you've heard, did a rally at Madison Square Garden.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: He had a number of speakers at the rally.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: who said a wide range of incendiary things,
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SPEAKER_02: more or less par for the course,
2:40
SPEAKER_02: I would say,
2:41
SPEAKER_02: in terms of Trump and incendiary things and rallies.
2:45
SPEAKER_02: But there was one particular stand-up routine which featured a...
2:50
SPEAKER_02: a bit about Hispanics having a lot of children and then pivoted to a joke about how
3:00
SPEAKER_02: there is actually a giant island of garbage floating in the ocean and it's called
3:05
SPEAKER_02: Puerto Rico.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: Hilarious stuff.
3:10
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you could see in the room that like, it just like, it's factually true.
3:15
SPEAKER_02: Like the joke did not land.
3:17
SPEAKER_02: Like it didn't,
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SPEAKER_02: It didn't work.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's what you saw.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: I think that what you see is that Republicans,
3:25
SPEAKER_01: conservatives,
3:25
SPEAKER_01: MAGA people have in their – understand in their heads that what they laugh about in
3:30
SPEAKER_01: private can get them in trouble in public and that the recognition there was that
3:35
SPEAKER_01: this was going to create problems for them,
3:37
SPEAKER_01: not that they don't think it's funny to describe Puerto Ricans as garbage.
3:41
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
3:42
SPEAKER_02: But I mean they weren't laughing.
3:45
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
3:45
SPEAKER_02: Like this was not like a big hit routine.
3:48
SPEAKER_02: This was apparently material that he'd workshopped at an actual comedy club a couple days earlier.
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SPEAKER_02: And the joke didn't go down that well there.
3:55
SPEAKER_02: Because I actually think from a pure comedy standpoint,
4:00
SPEAKER_02: I think that not that many Americans actually consumed any articles about the
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SPEAKER_02: garbage disposal issues that they are having on the island of Puerto Rico.
4:10
SPEAKER_02: That is the like...
4:11
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: That's a pretext they're using to say, this isn't racist.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: We're just talking about municipal difficulties.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean, whether it's racist or not, but it's like what the joke is.
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SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
4:21
SPEAKER_02: It's not out there.
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SPEAKER_02: It scans to the vast majority of people as just being a dick about Puerto Rico.
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SPEAKER_02: And there was an immediate...
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SPEAKER_02: Quite ferocious backlash from both Puerto Rican celebrity sort of community,
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SPEAKER_02: Bad Bunny in particular,
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SPEAKER_02: but also Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez.
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SPEAKER_02: Ricky Martin.
4:49
SPEAKER_02: Ricky Martin.
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SPEAKER_02: There's also a number of influential Puerto Rican people in Puerto Rico.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: politics.
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SPEAKER_02: AOC and Richie Torres in the Bronx are often at odds on Gaza issues or cryptocurrency,
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SPEAKER_02: but unite in a barbecue of pride.
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SPEAKER_02: A wider range of Latino Democrats went after it.
5:11
SPEAKER_02: And also I think what's telling,
5:13
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: I heard a bunch of people being like,
5:14
SPEAKER_02: why is this the thing that broke through?
5:17
SPEAKER_02: But like Rick Scott, who has a lot of Puerto Rican constituents in Florida and who is a
5:26
SPEAKER_02: He's like not super vulnerable this cycle,
5:29
SPEAKER_02: but he has the political instincts of a guy who won three very close elections in a row.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: And he like immediately threw this dude under the bus.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: Well, and also you've seen – like you don't even see Trump out there defending it.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: Like Trump has said nothing.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: J.D.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: Vance has been like,
5:46
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
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SPEAKER_01: maybe the joke was like a little bad,
5:48
SPEAKER_01: but like I'm tired of having to apologize for jokes.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: But like Donald Trump Jr.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: retweeted something about how liberals are humorless basically.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: But like –
5:58
SPEAKER_01: There's been,
5:59
SPEAKER_01: they have not responded like they think that all they need to do is muscle through
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SPEAKER_01: and pretend like this was okay and liberals are overreacting.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: Like they're mostly reacting like they get that they fucked up.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: And like it has led to,
6:12
SPEAKER_01: it is dovetailed with this other reporting that I think by Caputo at the Bulwark,
6:19
SPEAKER_01: but maybe I have that wrong.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: That like all of these remarks, not just this comedian and his bad jokes, but like multiple,
6:28
SPEAKER_01: offensive, bigoted, whatever, scripts went through the campaign for vetting.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: And they actually cut a specific line that somebody had written.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: I think it was the comedian.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: He was going to call Kamala Harris a cunt.
6:43
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: And they cut it.
6:45
SPEAKER_02: So that was part of his pitch and they cut it.
6:47
SPEAKER_02: But Elon Musk launched a web video saying,
6:52
SPEAKER_02: where the teaser is Kamala Harris,
6:55
SPEAKER_02: it was like,
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SPEAKER_02: we can't afford a C word in the White House and it's Harris.
6:59
SPEAKER_02: Then if you watch the video,
7:00
SPEAKER_02: the joke,
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SPEAKER_02: I don't know that this is a joke,
7:03
SPEAKER_02: but like the joke is that the C word is communist.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:07
SPEAKER_02: So clearly somewhere in Trump world, they're like, let's call Kamala Harris a cunt.
7:14
SPEAKER_02: and puerto rico an island of garbage uh was the strategy and the c word strategy
7:20
SPEAKER_02: got nixed and they they went with garbage island puerto rico um which a fascinating
7:27
SPEAKER_02: subplot of right-wing politics over the past 10 years i would say has been
7:34
SPEAKER_02: narrowcast identity politics for stand-up comedians
7:39
SPEAKER_02: Um,
7:39
SPEAKER_02: standup comedy,
7:40
SPEAKER_02: like very frequently,
7:41
SPEAKER_02: I think like,
7:42
SPEAKER_02: like a low effort standup comedy,
7:45
SPEAKER_02: it just does like race and gender stereotypes as jokes.
7:49
SPEAKER_02: Uh,
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SPEAKER_02: there's this,
7:50
SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: old Simpsons bit of like sitcom writers making fun of standup comedians where a
7:57
SPEAKER_02: guy's doing a routine.
7:58
SPEAKER_02: It's just like black guys drive like this, white guys drive like this.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: Right.
8:02
SPEAKER_02: Um, and yeah,
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SPEAKER_02: the rising tide of,
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SPEAKER_02: of political correctness has caused standups as a class to come under more
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SPEAKER_02: criticism for this style of,
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SPEAKER_02: uh,
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SPEAKER_02: humor that frankly,
8:14
SPEAKER_02: um,
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SPEAKER_02: this is like my most woke issue is that,
8:18
SPEAKER_02: um,
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SPEAKER_02: racist standup comedy is bad,
8:21
SPEAKER_02: um,
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SPEAKER_02: and,
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SPEAKER_02: and stupid.
8:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but it, it is clearly like genuinely bothered like a lot of comedians, um,
8:29
SPEAKER_02: Dave Chappelle went really far with this,
8:32
SPEAKER_02: but I saw a Chris Rock show last year where the whole bit,
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SPEAKER_02: essentially,
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SPEAKER_02: is Chris Rock complaining about how he can't do race jokes anymore.
8:45
SPEAKER_02: And a big part of Joe Rogan emerging as a
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SPEAKER_02: semi-political influencer is,
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SPEAKER_02: like,
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SPEAKER_02: he's deeply invested in the stand-up comedy world and thinks this is annoying.
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SPEAKER_02: And Rogan specifically recommended this guy who did the catastrophic Garbage Island
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SPEAKER_02: joke because,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: it's,
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SPEAKER_02: like,
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SPEAKER_02: both true that,
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SPEAKER_02: like,
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SPEAKER_02: liberal politics is annoying to stand-up comedians,
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SPEAKER_02: but also...
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SPEAKER_02: stand-up comedians have always been saying stuff that you would not say at a political rally.
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SPEAKER_01: But now stand-up comedians, as you suggest, are making routines out of how annoyed they are.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: Including Rogan, who had, like, a Netflix or whatever special that bombed because it's not funny anymore.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: Like, just tell good jokes about stuff.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: Like...
9:34
SPEAKER_02: But also it's just like, it's not good politics, right?
9:37
SPEAKER_02: Like whether or not there was ever a time when everybody would like yuck it up at
9:42
SPEAKER_02: this kind of joke,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
9:45
SPEAKER_02: three drinks in at a comedy club,
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SPEAKER_02: like Ronald Reagan was not doing these bits.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: as his political speeches.
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SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
9:55
SPEAKER_02: That doesn't make sense.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: You're trying to make people like you when you're getting votes.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: And,
10:01
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:02
SPEAKER_01: Democrats might be the humorless scolds in general these days in the Trump era or whatever,
10:07
SPEAKER_01: but they understand that not just because it's not funny,
10:12
SPEAKER_01: but because it's not smart,
10:14
SPEAKER_01: that it would be a mistake to be like,
10:17
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump is fixated on the Haitians in Ohio,
10:20
SPEAKER_01: but who cares about Ohio anyway,
10:22
SPEAKER_01: because everyone there is going to be dead from a drug overdose.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: It's just like, they could hire a comedian to go tell it like crack wise like that.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: And what would happen is they would lose elections even worse in like that part of
10:35
SPEAKER_01: the country than they already do.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: And Trump has been trying to
10:43
SPEAKER_01: paper over this aspect of his character and the fact that he finds stuff like this
10:47
SPEAKER_01: funny so that he can do a little bit better with Latino voters and black voters.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: And it seemed at least until this past weekend, like that might've been working.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: Um,
10:59
SPEAKER_01: but now that's kind of up in the air in part because this went,
11:04
SPEAKER_01: this broke through so heavily that like,
11:07
SPEAKER_01: Democrats who understood how offensive this would be to Democrats
11:14
SPEAKER_01: Puerto Rican voters, Puerto Ricans are American citizens, were like, get into WhatsApp.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: If you're in a WhatsApp group with a lot of Puerto Rican Americans, show them this clip.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: Let them know what they really think of you.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: And Republicans are acting like they think that that is going to work.
11:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that they, so soon after Sunday, have any data to suggest that this is
11:38
SPEAKER_01: hurting them, but there's a lot of anecdotes that it's hurting them.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: I read one about a Latino voter in Georgia who went to her polling place to see if
11:49
SPEAKER_01: she could change her vote after she saw the Puerto Rican thing.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
11:53
SPEAKER_01: you can't do that,
11:54
SPEAKER_01: but if she was so offended that that's what her instinct was,
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SPEAKER_01: and there are other people like that,
12:00
SPEAKER_01: they are going to vote differently than they might have thought they were going to vote.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: They're going to tell their family members that they should vote
12:06
SPEAKER_01: at least not for Trump.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: And it's going to have some impact,
12:11
SPEAKER_01: like whether it's enough to deny Trump victory or not is kind of like,
12:16
SPEAKER_01: we'll never have an answer to that most likely,
12:18
SPEAKER_01: but like,
12:20
SPEAKER_01: The Republican leadership in Puerto Rico is telling Donald Trump to condemn it.
12:26
SPEAKER_02: I think three pieces of relevant background here that differentiate this from some
12:32
SPEAKER_02: other Trump controversies.
12:35
SPEAKER_02: One is that Trump has put a lot of weight into – a big investment into winning over –
12:45
SPEAKER_02: a larger share of the Latino vote than he got in 2020 or in 2016.
12:51
SPEAKER_02: You know, there's been a big investment of the Trump campaigns.
12:54
SPEAKER_02: It's important to their strategy.
12:58
SPEAKER_02: The other thing is that
13:00
SPEAKER_02: This is a weakly attached electorate to Trump.
13:06
SPEAKER_02: Trump in 2016 got the lowest Hispanic vote share of anyone as long as we have records.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: And he was tracking for 2024 to do better than Bush in 2004.
13:20
SPEAKER_02: We're talking about a really large swing across the entirety of the Trump domain.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: These are people who are not the MAGA base, actual marginally attached members of Trump's coalition.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: The third thing is that the voters he's done
13:41
SPEAKER_02: best with in this regard are the people who pay the least attention to politics,
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SPEAKER_02: the lowest levels of political awareness,
13:48
SPEAKER_02: lowest levels of political news consumption.
13:51
SPEAKER_02: And so we're maybe not reading some of our takes over the years about why they shouldn't vote for Trump.
14:00
SPEAKER_02: So a sudden surge of information coming in through the side channel, right, through the
14:08
SPEAKER_02: celebrities' Instagram posts and friends and family texting,
14:14
SPEAKER_02: things like that,
14:15
SPEAKER_02: is the kind of thing that can generate
14:20
SPEAKER_02: potentially large shifts.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: It's not that many people,
14:25
SPEAKER_02: but there does happen to be a relatively large Puerto Rican population in Pennsylvania,
14:30
SPEAKER_02: which is an important state.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: And in Florida,
14:33
SPEAKER_01: where even if the state itself is not contested,
14:37
SPEAKER_01: like Harris probably won't win,
14:39
SPEAKER_01: there are districts there that are closer and there's a Senate race that
14:45
SPEAKER_01: Probably won't go for Democrats,
14:46
SPEAKER_01: but like,
14:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:47
SPEAKER_01: a one or two point shift is enough to make Scott rightly nervous.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: Like he, I get why he, he was one of the people who condemned this like most immediately.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I also thought it was interesting, Maria, um,
15:00
SPEAKER_02: Maria Salazar,
15:02
SPEAKER_02: who reps South Florida and I think has a lot of Puerto Rican constituents,
15:09
SPEAKER_02: she's Cuban herself,
15:11
SPEAKER_02: I believe,
15:12
SPEAKER_02: did a kind of speedy denunciation of this.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, there's just clearly a lot of, I don't think...
15:20
SPEAKER_02: data-backed but intuition-backed concern among Republicans who have large numbers
15:27
SPEAKER_02: of Puerto Rican constituents that this is really bad.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's not just... It's somewhere between, right?
15:32
SPEAKER_01: Like, they might not have data, but, like...
15:36
SPEAKER_01: If people like Jennifer Lopez, who had not really been- Yes, yes, yes.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: I just mean it was too fast.
15:43
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
15:44
SPEAKER_02: But just the instinct of Salazar,
15:47
SPEAKER_02: of Rick Scott,
15:47
SPEAKER_02: of the Republican Party of Puerto Rico was like not to bandwagon with J.D.
15:55
SPEAKER_02: Vance like-
15:56
SPEAKER_02: You know, we've got to have, you know, you know, can't you take a joke, man?
16:01
SPEAKER_02: But was to be like, no, like I'm going to perform indignation.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Right.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: And J.D.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: Vance,
16:06
SPEAKER_01: like if to go back to like the the bad Ohio joke that I ad libbed a minute ago,
16:11
SPEAKER_01: like if if if some Democrat hosted some comedian who told a joke like that,
16:16
SPEAKER_01: like J.D.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: Vance would be the first Republican out the door.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: I would go further than that, right?
16:22
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
16:22
SPEAKER_02: if an MSNBC guest had said during the cats and dogs thing,
16:28
SPEAKER_02: like,
16:29
SPEAKER_02: the whole idea of refugees wrecking Ohio doesn't make sense to me.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: That state's a giant island of garbage.
16:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:37
SPEAKER_02: Like, with no involvement by anybody in the Democratic Party at all.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: Like, J.D.
16:41
SPEAKER_02: Vance would have gone nuclear.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: And there would have been, like, 97 Fox segments about it.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: But, like, they love that kind of thing.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: And there's always been a little bit of an asymmetry about going negative.
16:56
SPEAKER_02: But I think just part of the difference here is that
17:01
SPEAKER_02: You know, if Trump will be like, Baltimore is a shithole or something, right?
17:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's done lots of similar things over the years.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: The difference is that Latinos are now the constituency he's courting, right?
17:19
SPEAKER_02: Republicans go negative all the time on the Democratic base.
17:24
SPEAKER_02: I actually want to probe this a little bit.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: I want to probe this a little bit.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so just like –
17:31
SPEAKER_01: As a backdrop,
17:32
SPEAKER_01: it is not uncommon for Republican presidential candidates at the very end of
17:37
SPEAKER_01: campaigns to leave the swing states and go to blue states and put on rallies there.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: And they do it as a sort of psyop, right?
17:47
SPEAKER_01: Like they are trying to get voters and journalists and Democrats wondering,
17:53
SPEAKER_01: like,
17:53
SPEAKER_01: are they running stronger than our data suggests or than we have any reason to
17:58
SPEAKER_01: think that they are?
18:00
SPEAKER_01: And that's why like George W.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: Bush and Dick Cheney went to like California and Hawaii at the end of – I forget
18:07
SPEAKER_01: which election it was,
18:09
2000,
18:09
2004.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: So if Donald Trump had gone to New York to do a rally and had not –
18:13
SPEAKER_01: made it intentionally,
18:15
SPEAKER_01: like echo the Nazi Madison Square Garden rally in 1939,
18:20
SPEAKER_01: that would have been consistent with like long run Republican practice.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he did it this way.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: And so we were all primed to think there's probably going to be a lot of racism going on at this rally.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: And then there was, and now it has broken through.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: But my questions to you are, I have like three.
18:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: One is like, why did the line about Puerto Rico specifically break through?
18:43
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not the case that he's only trying to mend fences with Latino voters
18:48
SPEAKER_01: and grow his vote share among them.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: He's trying to do the same thing with black voters.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: And the same comedian made a fucking watermelon joke about black voters.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: And for whatever reason, it hasn't.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: had that kind of like it didn't take off in the same way okay so that's one
19:03
SPEAKER_01: question why that line in particular the second thing i'm wondering about it is
19:08
SPEAKER_01: like why did this thing matter at all whether it was the anti-black joke the
19:15
SPEAKER_01: anti-hispanic joke the the comments about jews and palestinians that were there
19:21
SPEAKER_01: like i feel like for most of this campaign
19:24
SPEAKER_01: the idea that democrats were going to win it on uh on on republican racism as
19:30
SPEAKER_01: opposed to dobbs democracy um and health care where like it just it just has not
19:37
SPEAKER_01: factored in the way it did in 2016 or even in 2020 after charlottesville right but
19:41
SPEAKER_01: but suddenly it's back and it's breaking through better than any of those things or
19:45
SPEAKER_01: more more at least more acutely um
19:49
SPEAKER_01: And then third,
19:50
SPEAKER_01: given all that,
19:51
SPEAKER_01: and we can put a pin in this part for later maybe,
19:54
SPEAKER_01: but I see some very smart Democrats,
19:57
SPEAKER_01: including Pete Buttigieg,
20:00
SPEAKER_01: even after all this,
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Republicans running scared,
20:03
SPEAKER_01: they're divided.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: They're saying, hey, this is bait.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: Don't take the bait.
20:08
SPEAKER_01: Focus on abortion.
20:08
SPEAKER_01: Focus on healthcare.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: Focus on democracy.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: And like, I agree, those are good issues for Democrats.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: And if the election was closing on those instead of this, I wouldn't be alarmed or anything like that.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: But like-
20:22
SPEAKER_01: Here,
20:22
SPEAKER_01: I realize it's sort of conflicting with a year's worth of conventional wisdom or
20:26
SPEAKER_01: intuition that Trump was – like playing the race card against Trump was not a good idea.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: But it seems like for whatever reason, it's worked or it's had an effect now.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: So why –
20:41
SPEAKER_01: take your foot off the gas.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: But,
20:43
SPEAKER_01: but like really those first two things,
20:44
SPEAKER_01: like why did,
20:45
SPEAKER_01: why the Puerto Rican thing and not the other things?
20:48
SPEAKER_01: Why, why race at all?
20:50
SPEAKER_01: Like I thought that,
20:50
SPEAKER_01: I thought that that was like,
20:52
SPEAKER_01: we are not going to make this a referendum on Trump and race was baked in
20:56
SPEAKER_01: essentially across the country.
20:57
SPEAKER_02: I mean, to some extent, right.
20:58
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
20:59
SPEAKER_02: there's no substitute for like,
21:04
SPEAKER_02: you know,
21:05
SPEAKER_02: I don't,
21:05
SPEAKER_02: you know,
21:06
SPEAKER_02: all history hinges on one man,
21:08
SPEAKER_02: but like,
21:10
SPEAKER_02: Bad Bunny seemed like he was just sincerely really upset and offended by this.
21:15
SPEAKER_02: And like surprised.
21:16
SPEAKER_02: Was he the first one that he got the, he got the, okay.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: And he apparently like, not, from my understanding, like not orchestrated with the Harris campaign.
21:25
SPEAKER_02: He's not like a political celebrity who, you know, he's, he's not active.
21:31
SPEAKER_02: And like he, he was mad.
21:33
SPEAKER_02: He today put up an eight minute,
21:36
SPEAKER_02: video that like if you watch it is i would say like actually terrible political
21:41
SPEAKER_02: persuasion content you know but like it but like it's real it's just like it's way
21:45
SPEAKER_02: too long like the message is really murky but he's just like a proud puerto rican
21:50
SPEAKER_02: guy who's like not very political and like got really upset about this
21:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
21:56
SPEAKER_01: John Leguizamo I saw today was like,
21:59
SPEAKER_01: if you're like a Latino voter and you're voting for Trump,
22:03
SPEAKER_01: like don't come talk to me because we're not okay.
22:05
SPEAKER_02: Right, right, right.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: They're pissed.
22:07
SPEAKER_02: You know-
22:10
SPEAKER_02: I don't think that there is that reservoir of untapped African-American discourse.
22:20
SPEAKER_02: Beyonce did a concert for Kamala Harris,
22:24
SPEAKER_02: but Jay-Z and Beyonce have been active Democrats for a decade now.
22:31
SPEAKER_02: Even Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris, that's better than her not endorsing Kamala Harris.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: But again, her political opinions weren't a secret.
22:42
SPEAKER_02: If something like that had come out of nowhere-
22:45
SPEAKER_02: it would have been a huge deal.
22:47
SPEAKER_02: But there wasn't anyone like that.
22:49
SPEAKER_02: Now, it could have been that a prominent African-American Trump supporter was like, F this.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: But they just like, they weren't.
23:00
SPEAKER_02: And I think Trump's dalliances with anti-Semitism
23:04
SPEAKER_02: actually make this point most clearly of all.
23:07
SPEAKER_02: There's like 80 bajillion Jewish people in the media, as I'm sure we've noticed.
23:13
SPEAKER_02: Many of us have, in fact, raised these complaints against Donald Trump, but it's all liberals, right?
23:19
SPEAKER_02: There's also a bunch of
23:21
SPEAKER_02: conservative Jews who have a completely different construction of like what antisemitism consists of.
23:29
SPEAKER_02: If Trump ever says something that causes Barry Weiss to be like, what the fuck?
23:35
SPEAKER_02: and to put WTF content on free press,
23:40
SPEAKER_02: and Bari Weiss-like center-right Jews are like,
23:44
SPEAKER_02: I'm upset,
23:45
SPEAKER_02: that would be a huge problem for Donald Trump.
23:48
SPEAKER_02: But the mere fact that Trump says anti-Semitic stuff,
23:52
SPEAKER_02: or is like,
23:52
SPEAKER_02: I love Adolf Hitler,
23:54
SPEAKER_02: doesn't force Bari to have that
23:57
SPEAKER_02: reaction, right?
23:58
SPEAKER_02: She would need to have it.
23:59
SPEAKER_02: And liberal Jews pounding the table and being like,
24:02
SPEAKER_02: we're really mad about Trump doesn't change it,
24:05
SPEAKER_02: right?
24:06
SPEAKER_02: And just what happened here, again, the archbishop of San Juan denounced this, right?
24:15
SPEAKER_02: And Catholic archbishops
24:19
SPEAKER_02: are usually not that engaged in partisan politics.
24:22
SPEAKER_02: And when they are engaged,
24:23
SPEAKER_02: it's almost always on the Republican side because of abortion and school vouchers.
24:30
SPEAKER_02: And so it's like,
24:32
SPEAKER_02: You know,
24:33
SPEAKER_02: they could...
24:34
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
24:36
SPEAKER_02: some Puerto Rican Catholic Iglesias is like talking to the archbishop and being like,
24:41
SPEAKER_02: guys,
24:41
SPEAKER_02: like,
24:42
SPEAKER_02: we just need some fucking message discipline here.
24:44
SPEAKER_02: Just shut the fuck up and yell at Trump in two weeks from now, right?
24:47
SPEAKER_02: But it's like, that's what breaks the dam, I think, is like, they just went and did it, right?
24:53
SPEAKER_02: Like, if...
24:55
SPEAKER_02: Ralph Reed at any time could be like, you know what?
24:57
SPEAKER_02: Donald Trump is a terrible Christian and that would be a huge deal.
25:01
SPEAKER_02: But like he, he chooses not to do that.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: I like,
25:04
SPEAKER_01: it's interesting because you know,
25:05
SPEAKER_01: the,
25:06
SPEAKER_01: the breakdown partisan breakdown in the Jewish community in the U S and the Latino
25:11
SPEAKER_01: community in the U S is kind of similar,
25:13
SPEAKER_01: right?
25:13
SPEAKER_01: Like it's like 65, 35, uh, for Democrats, but in the black community, it's much more democratic.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, and, and,
25:23
SPEAKER_01: That means,
25:24
SPEAKER_01: I think,
25:25
SPEAKER_01: in essence,
25:25
SPEAKER_01: that there just aren't,
25:29
SPEAKER_01: there isn't a big sub-community of prominent pro-Trump black Republicans who might
25:39
SPEAKER_01: end up
25:40
SPEAKER_01: being pulled back, right?
25:41
SPEAKER_02: Well, because they're very committed, right?
25:43
SPEAKER_02: Like you are deliberately swimming against the time.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: You're talking about Byron Donalds and Tim Scott, right?
25:47
SPEAKER_01: And you're not talking about like,
25:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:50
SPEAKER_01: like a musician or a movie star or whatever who's like- And like Tim Scott knows
25:55
SPEAKER_02: that like all his cousins and friends around the way and the other people in the
25:59
SPEAKER_02: black church think Republicans are racist.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: That's a new information to Tim Scott.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: But if somebody prominent in black America who had been basically quiet about politics- Mm-hmm.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: Had said,
26:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:10
SPEAKER_01: I had been thinking that,
26:13
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:14
SPEAKER_01: giving Trump a second look,
26:15
SPEAKER_01: that like the antipathy to him among black leaders in the United States was overblown,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: but now I'm done with him.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: Like that would have more effect than-
26:27
SPEAKER_01: Barack Obama or Beyonce or whatever, like reiterating all the reasons they don't like Donald Trump.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: Like they've been saying them all along.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: And even though this was like a new and particularly offensive event that Trump hosted,
26:41
SPEAKER_01: they're not opening anyone's eyes.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: Everyone already knows where they stand and like,
26:46
SPEAKER_01: They're not able to say, like, I liked Trump till this, right?
26:50
SPEAKER_01: And then get people thinking, oh, maybe I should reconsider.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: They're like, I've hated Trump all along because he does shit like this.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: And the undecided people have not been persuaded by that thus far.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: All right.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: I think that that makes sense.
27:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to buy this sort of like demographic slash like,
27:12
SPEAKER_01: validator theory of why.
27:13
SPEAKER_02: There's just what's like a little wrong with Pete doing this whole like,
27:16
SPEAKER_02: like I sort of like structurally agree with Pete's analysis of the,
27:21
SPEAKER_02: of the situation,
27:22
SPEAKER_02: but just like,
27:24
SPEAKER_02: And like,
27:25
SPEAKER_02: we don't,
27:26
SPEAKER_02: honestly don't need the like gay white secretary of transportation from Indiana to
27:31
SPEAKER_02: like really weigh in on Puerto Rican identity.
27:34
SPEAKER_02: It's just that like, they're cooking here, you know?
27:37
SPEAKER_02: And if he happens to have some Puerto Rico relevant angle,
27:42
SPEAKER_02: now,
27:42
SPEAKER_02: you know what the Harris campaign was doing,
27:45
SPEAKER_02: right?
27:46
SPEAKER_02: With this material is creating some content that bridges Trump's,
27:53
SPEAKER_02: these remarks with like Harris's plan for Puerto Rico, right?
27:58
SPEAKER_02: Just to like, which I think is smart.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that's the like,
28:04
SPEAKER_02: validated move here, right?
28:07
SPEAKER_02: Which is that,
28:08
SPEAKER_02: like,
28:09
SPEAKER_02: you don't need to be the 15th person who tells a Puerto Rican person,
28:13
SPEAKER_02: hey,
28:14
SPEAKER_02: this offensive shit went down.
28:16
SPEAKER_02: What you want to do is,
28:17
SPEAKER_02: like,
28:17
SPEAKER_02: now that they're paying attention to politics and listening to you,
28:20
SPEAKER_02: is tell them something new.
28:23
SPEAKER_02: Probably almost nobody
28:25
SPEAKER_02: of any ethnic background has ever read or heard anything about Kamala Harris's plan for Puerto Rico.
28:31
SPEAKER_02: It's the kind of diligent,
28:33
SPEAKER_02: you know,
28:34
SPEAKER_02: sort of like Lisa Simpson shit that Democrats pull,
28:37
SPEAKER_02: that she has a plan for Puerto Rico.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: But it like happened to be relevant, right?
28:42
SPEAKER_02: And suddenly these things are going on.
28:43
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, she's trying to get these celebrities to like
28:49
SPEAKER_02: share her, right?
28:50
SPEAKER_02: There's just like a cascade of interest,
28:55
SPEAKER_02: which I think is different from like,
28:57
SPEAKER_02: okay,
28:57
SPEAKER_02: well,
28:57
SPEAKER_02: we need to change the subject to abortion.
29:00
SPEAKER_02: Because abortion,
29:01
SPEAKER_02: while a great issue for Democrats,
29:03
SPEAKER_02: is probably actually not a great issue with marginal Latino voters.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: Right.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: Right?
29:10
SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, if you...
29:12
SPEAKER_02: Think about it, right?
29:13
SPEAKER_02: It's actually the opposite, right?
29:15
SPEAKER_02: Part of why Trump has been able to make gains with communities of color is that the
29:20
SPEAKER_02: Democratic message has been so abortion-focused.
29:23
SPEAKER_02: which has never been, like, that's never the line that a Democrat would take to the Black church, right?
29:30
SPEAKER_02: Or to, like, an SEIU union hall meeting, right?
29:36
SPEAKER_02: It's a message for white people because the Democratic Party performs better than
29:42
SPEAKER_02: abortion with Black and Latino voters.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I think that's, like, a little bit of a...
29:50
SPEAKER_01: If you're going to try to pivot off of the Madison Square Garden controversy to
30:01
SPEAKER_01: make the people who are suddenly engaged in rethinking things focus on broader
30:07
SPEAKER_01: areas of democratic strength.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: like totally changing the topic to healthcare or abortion seems like, why are you changing?
30:14
SPEAKER_01: Like that's, they are pleading with you.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: Change the topic so that we don't have to keep it.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: But like, you know, there has been an ongoing conversation.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: Like the backdrop for the Madison Square Garden thing is like Trump's chief of
30:28
SPEAKER_01: staff and his joint chief's chairman say he's a fascist,
30:32
SPEAKER_01: right?
30:33
SPEAKER_01: And then he like hosts this rally that echoes the,
30:39
SPEAKER_01: A famous fascist rally.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: And then the content at that rally is like the only Americans that count are white Americans.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Like Stephen Miller had this like repugnant line about how America is for Americans and Americans only.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: Like as if- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: As if his fucking-
30:57
SPEAKER_01: like family escaping the Nazis were Americans before America took, I hate him.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: But, but like, there's your way to make not just Puerto Rican voters, but like Cuban voters.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: And like, well, right.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
31:12
SPEAKER_01: this is the,
31:13
SPEAKER_01: this is the strong man type that you and your community have been afraid of and
31:19
SPEAKER_01: like voting Republican for,
31:20
SPEAKER_01: for,
31:21
SPEAKER_01: for,
31:21
SPEAKER_01: for decades.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: But now,
31:24
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know, the fox is in the hen house.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: What are you going to do?
31:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: And,
31:28
SPEAKER_02: you know,
31:29
SPEAKER_02: I think if you see like Alex Padilla's message on this,
31:33
SPEAKER_02: Ruben Gallego's message on this,
31:34
SPEAKER_02: you know,
31:35
SPEAKER_02: you have Mexican-American Democrats trying to,
31:39
SPEAKER_02: you know,
31:39
SPEAKER_02: raise a linked fate concern.
31:42
SPEAKER_02: All the most racist stuff I've ever heard about Puerto Ricans has been said by Cubans.
31:47
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, you never know 100% how this stuff is going to unfold.
31:53
SPEAKER_02: play on a practical level.
31:54
SPEAKER_02: Here's the one thing that I will say, where I'm back in peatland.
32:00
SPEAKER_02: To me,
32:02
SPEAKER_02: one of the craziest things to ever happen in American life is that Donald Trump and
32:07
SPEAKER_02: his political aides decided that they should use the slogan,
32:13
SPEAKER_02: America first,
32:15
SPEAKER_02: that is known to students of history exclusively.
32:20
SPEAKER_02: as the slogan of a prominent pro-Nazi organization.
32:25
SPEAKER_02: I would simply not do that.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: To me, the first time I heard that, I was like, oh man, like Donald Trump is really stupid and ignorant.
32:35
SPEAKER_02: And he just like,
32:38
SPEAKER_02: Because it is a neat turn of phrase, right?
32:41
SPEAKER_02: There's a reason the German-American Bund came up with that line.
32:46
SPEAKER_02: It's a good line, but it's just a Nazi line.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: That's what it means.
32:51
SPEAKER_02: There's old Dr. Seuss cartoons where America First has a beard and the beard is a swastika.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:58
SPEAKER_02: That's what that is.
32:59
SPEAKER_02: And to me,
33:00
SPEAKER_02: the revelation over the course of the 2016 campaign that this wasn't an accident,
33:05
SPEAKER_02: this wasn't a political naive blundering around,
33:08
SPEAKER_02: but that Stephen Miller,
33:09
SPEAKER_02: a Jewish guy from California,
33:11
SPEAKER_02: just fucking loves the idea of toying with Nazi imagery,
33:16
SPEAKER_02: it really upsets me.
33:19
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
33:20
SPEAKER_02: But I do think that holding the America First rally at Madison Square Garden, that that was bait.
33:28
SPEAKER_02: That, like, Trump's people love it.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: When kind of like smart book learning libs do this semiotic investigation and like
33:38
SPEAKER_02: prove to ourselves time and time again that Trump keeps toying with Nazi symbolism.
33:45
SPEAKER_02: And I think that when the testers come back,
33:47
SPEAKER_02: you know,
33:48
SPEAKER_02: when the future forward flight radar memo that got covered in the New York Times,
33:53
SPEAKER_02: a Doppler memo,
33:54
SPEAKER_02: sorry.
33:55
SPEAKER_02: Memo writers out there, two different memos, came out saying that the fascism stuff isn't persuasive.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: I think that's what's not persuasive.
34:04
SPEAKER_02: It's persuasive to me.
34:07
SPEAKER_02: But the thing that actually occurred at Madison Square Garden wasn't just content
34:13
SPEAKER_02: that was reminiscent of the German-American bun,
34:16
SPEAKER_02: blah,
34:16
SPEAKER_02: blah,
34:17
SPEAKER_02: blah,
34:17
SPEAKER_02: blah,
34:17
SPEAKER_02: blah,
34:17
SPEAKER_02: blah,
34:18
SPEAKER_02: but just sharply worded,
34:20
SPEAKER_02: direct poke at Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans to –
34:26
SPEAKER_02: a lot of people is like so much more meaningful than this kind of like symbolic kind of thing.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: And like,
34:33
SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
34:34
SPEAKER_02: I wish more people were like attuned to like the meta narratives and larger controversy.
34:41
SPEAKER_02: One last thing on this is that like what I've heard about
34:44
SPEAKER_02: cats and dogs, cats and, you know, they're eating the dogs.
34:47
SPEAKER_02: What about the geese?
34:49
SPEAKER_02: Is that that stuff did not, was not persuasive for Trump.
34:53
SPEAKER_02: You know,
34:54
SPEAKER_02: people were not like impressed by Donald Trump making stuff up about people eating cats,
34:59
SPEAKER_02: but it also didn't really move voters away from Trump,
35:02
SPEAKER_02: right?
35:03
SPEAKER_02: It was just a kind of a...
35:04
SPEAKER_02: But that apparently it hurt Trump like pretty badly with Haitian Americans who just
35:12
SPEAKER_02: don't happen to live any place that's electorally relevant.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: But like Rick Scott also denounced that because he has Haitian constituents and
35:21
SPEAKER_02: he's like super,
35:22
SPEAKER_02: he's very right wing on policy,
35:24
SPEAKER_02: but he's like really attentive to this kind of like non-policy stuff.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: Because he wins elections by half a percent.
35:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and covers his bases.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: And that to me is like a similar thing.
35:33
SPEAKER_02: Like I found that like disgusting and appalling, but I was already not going to vote for Trump.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: The people who moved were just like literally Haitians.
35:41
SPEAKER_02: We're like, what the fuck?
35:42
SPEAKER_02: Why are you being an asshole about Haitians?
35:44
SPEAKER_01: So,
35:45
SPEAKER_01: so I mean,
35:47
SPEAKER_01: you would need to,
35:48
SPEAKER_01: you might be able to detect it after the election in whatever the returns from Ohio say,
35:54
SPEAKER_01: or like from Springfield in particular,
35:57
SPEAKER_01: maybe.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: But like,
35:59
SPEAKER_01: This basic point you're making dovetails with something that we talk about here a lot,
36:04
SPEAKER_01: which is,
36:06
SPEAKER_01: look,
36:06
SPEAKER_01: I agree that if Donald Trump,
36:08
SPEAKER_01: because Stephen Miller's a troll,
36:10
SPEAKER_01: had been like,
36:10
SPEAKER_01: let's hold a rally at Madison Square Garden and we're going to bait all the libs
36:14
SPEAKER_01: into calling us Nazis.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: But then the rally is going to be about the border issue.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: without a bunch of blood and soil bullshit, and it's going to be about inflation.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: And yes, we're going to use Trump's signature terms of abuse about Democrats and blah, blah, blah.
36:32
SPEAKER_01: But we are going to avoid the tripwires that make people think that MAGA is fascist.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: And then that way,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: we're going to be able to see,
36:41
SPEAKER_01: look,
36:41
SPEAKER_01: they all just have Trump derangement syndrome,
36:44
SPEAKER_01: and they're calling us Nazis because we dared to come to New York to make our pitch.
36:50
SPEAKER_01: That might have been an effective troll.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: But the problem that Republicans have when they think we can exploit
37:00
SPEAKER_01: identity-inflected issues and get the bigger half of the country with them is that
37:08
SPEAKER_01: they always –
37:11
SPEAKER_01: They can't do the like carefully walk one side of the line thing.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: They always kick the door open for the bigots, right?
37:18
SPEAKER_01: And so like when they change the topic to trans issues,
37:24
SPEAKER_01: it often backfires because they're not talking about any kind of narrow sports
37:29
SPEAKER_01: fairness thing.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: They're being nasty to a bunch of poor kids and then a bunch of like bigots –
37:37
SPEAKER_01: flood in and flood people's mentions and put together TV ads that are just like
37:42
SPEAKER_01: weird and gross right and the same thing happens with border issues is that like
37:48
SPEAKER_01: like a lot of polling will tell them this is a strong issue for you but like when
37:54
SPEAKER_01: it becomes articulated in this like
37:58
SPEAKER_01: horribly racist way, it starts to backfire.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: And I think that like what we're seeing here with the question of like how
38:05
SPEAKER_01: effective is the like fascism stuff against Trump is that it really depends
38:14
SPEAKER_01: whether he proves the point or not.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: And invariably, he proves the point.
38:18
SPEAKER_01: And that's why it's worth keeping on the front burner, even if some message testing firm says no.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: Because then the Madison Square Garden rally happens.
38:30
SPEAKER_01: It tells a single really damning story.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: And it works as both a persuasive and turnout message.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: for the anti-Trump majority in the country.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: And there's a dynamism there that I don't think static measuring of messaging can really capture.
38:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I guess the thing I want to say, and then we should break and turn, is that
39:00
SPEAKER_02: You know,
39:01
SPEAKER_02: I think part of the,
39:01
SPEAKER_02: like,
39:01
SPEAKER_02: growing stratification of society is that the people who are comfortable with a
39:09
SPEAKER_02: certain level of abstract reasoning are,
39:14
SPEAKER_02: like,
39:15
SPEAKER_02: clenched together,
39:17
SPEAKER_02: right?
39:18
SPEAKER_02: And so,
39:18
SPEAKER_02: like,
39:18
SPEAKER_02: to me,
39:19
SPEAKER_02: it's like,
39:20
SPEAKER_02: I don't get...
39:20
SPEAKER_02: It's not just that,
39:22
SPEAKER_02: like,
39:22
SPEAKER_02: I don't get why people aren't more upset about America first,
39:25
SPEAKER_02: or,
39:25
SPEAKER_02: like,
39:26
SPEAKER_02: I don't get...
39:27
SPEAKER_02: I don't get right-wing Jews who are like, well, at least Trump fucking hates Muslims.
39:33
SPEAKER_02: Because to me, it's like, well...
39:36
SPEAKER_02: It's just like majoritarian, bigoted, authoritarian politics is coming for us sooner or later.
39:41
SPEAKER_02: I'm confused by the Haitians who would swing against Trump because of the cats and dogs thing.
39:48
SPEAKER_02: Because were you not paying attention to everything Trump had ever said?
39:51
SPEAKER_02: Because that's what's odd about persuasion.
39:55
SPEAKER_02: Persuasion can't just be like people heard this and they think it's bad.
39:59
SPEAKER_02: But people who didn't previously think Trump was bad have now changed their mind
40:05
SPEAKER_02: and they do think it's bad.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: And so I think all the people – It's also just – I think refreshing memory is important here too.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Like shithole countries was a big deal when Trump said it.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I agree with that.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: I agree with that.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: But then people kind of forgot, and now they've been reminded, and it's good.
40:20
SPEAKER_02: Yes,
40:20
SPEAKER_02: but I think that what you see across these things,
40:23
SPEAKER_02: I think with the specifically Puerto Rican mobilization,
40:26
SPEAKER_02: even though other groups were targeted,
40:28
SPEAKER_02: I think what we see with Haitians and not,
40:31
SPEAKER_02: various other kinds of things,
40:32
SPEAKER_02: is that –
40:35
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people engage in a lot of super literal, really narrow, group-centric thinking.
40:43
SPEAKER_02: Often very literal-minded.
40:45
SPEAKER_02: I think that J.D.
40:46
SPEAKER_02: Vance's hypocrisy, where like...
40:50
SPEAKER_02: Hey man, could you just take a joke?
40:51
SPEAKER_02: But then he's like, how dare the liberals look down upon it?
40:55
SPEAKER_02: That's actually very like natural and human,
40:59
SPEAKER_02: you know,
40:59
SPEAKER_02: to have just like totally split screen view of like how people are allowed to talk
41:04
SPEAKER_02: about my people versus how are people allowed to talk in general?
41:08
SPEAKER_02: Um, we shall see though, because we need to take a break and then, uh, see why, um,
41:16
SPEAKER_02: Is Trump going to win Washington, D.C.
41:18
SPEAKER_02: due to the non-endorsement?
41:22
SPEAKER_01: All right.
41:23
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41:26
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