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But enough with that, Let's get to the show. All right, Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. Tagger, How you doing.
It's great to see you, man. People live for the pound. It's great to see you. It's great not to have to shout my own intro. I'm just here for the ride.
So Emily is out doing some reporting. She'll actually be back for the Friday show. We're going to interview Ezra clined for that one. That should be fascinating today. Often when you look at the kind of rundown along the bottom of the show, can't really necessarily tell what we're going to talk about today. You definitely can. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both making the rounds. We're going to
talk about that. Voting is starting literally already started in some stage Georgia setting smashing records, and I think that and we'll talk about why that is. I think it's because Trump is now telling people you also need to vote early. So before it was half half the country was voting early. How everybody is now everybody is they're they're smashing those records.
Uh.
We got a lot of a lot of updates when it comes to the Israel Palestine Lemanine situation that we will get to, including some news that's breaking just this morning about potential US plans for a quote unquote day after and then of course we got to talk about Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris's ghostwriter, we should say, getting busted with plagiarism, which is much more a media story than it is anything else. That's exactly right. Yeah, none of us really care. I actually I didn't particularly.
I mean, you know, it's it's like embarrassing, but it's one of those where the media reaction to it was interesting. You're actually the person who flagged it wasn't me, and that's why I wanted to talk about it with you.
So yeah, it's gonna be exciting. Take advantage by the way.
Breakingpoints dot com you can become a premium subscriber, you get that FRI show early. That's what some of us live for over here, especially Ezra Clin. I'm excited to see.
What you guys do with it, so that'll be fun.
All right, Let's get to Kamala Harris. As you said, she was on Charlemagne the Breakfast Club yesterday and I listened to the entire thing. I tortured myself as at five pms. I wasn't too happy about it, but it is what it is. You got to dig what you do for the people. And there were a couple of interesting moments that came out of it. First is, and
you haven't even gotten a chance to react Ryan. This whole Obama situation where he's lecturing, hectoring brothers, remember his words, not mine, insane in my opinion, being like, I want to speak to the brothers out there, like y'all are just making up all these excuses, but really you just hate women, and you're like, well, maybe there's something else.
The extra awkward part, and we'll get it. The extra awkward part. He's addressing a small room of mostly young black men who have taken it upon themselves, who come out to a that's political. They're at a campaign, so he's not even talking to them. I know it's all for the camp. They're all supportive of of Harris, so he's using them to speak past they're like props. Yeah, it's it's disgusting.
But Kamala was asked a little bit about that by Charlemagne. At the very least he did speak up a little bit about it. But her response tells you a little bit. So let's take a listen.
I do want to say President Obama was out there last week waving his finger at black men. Are Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton going wave their finger at white women? Winn Bill Clinton and Joe Biden going wave they finger at white men? Because fifty two percent of white women voted for Trump in twenty sixteen, fifty five percent voted for Trump in twenty twenty, they all voted against their own interests. When their finger waving gonna start at them.
Well, thank you for highlighting that. I do have the support of over two hundred Republicans who worked for various administrations, including everyone going back to Ronald Reagan to the Bushes, to John McCain and Romney, and including Liz Channing. I'm very proud to have her support, and I believe that they who many of them who may have voted for Trump before, are supporting me because they know the stakes are so high in terms of our very democracy and rule of law.
And so the finger wagon should start today.
Atomar Well, I think what is happening is that we are all working on reminding people of what is at stake, and that is very important.
So quite a little bit of a dodge there.
She was also asked by She was asked by Charlotte Mane at one point she was like, were you upset that Obama did that? Because it seemed like your whole blackmail reaction was a result. She's like, Oh, I'm not upset. I'm not upset at all. But she will not touch it with a tender polly. It seems right, but it does seem clear. And this is one of those questions has Obama lost it or not?
Because I don't know. Kristaline were talking about it yesterday.
I wonder what you think while he was president, you know, nobody would even dare call him out for Base to be hectoring and lecturing people, especially black people, to come out and vote for him, it was just too taboo. But now that he's not the president, he's actually doing it on behalf of somebody else. Maybe it's just a little bit grosser because it's not even about him anymore. It's about telling them what to do and go do something else. So she is trying to sidestep that very carefully,
which is smart in my opinion. But why is it then that Obama feels the license to just freestyle and do all this stuff with basically I mean, and I just can't help think that it's not helpful, especially with the media reaction to it, and for a lot of people who are If you're a.
Young black guy and you're twenty.
Two years old, bro, you were like sixteen when Obama was president. It's been a long time, you know that. You know your parents might remember him fondly. But for you, like you were a child during yes we can and all that, you were literally a child, you don't remember any of that. If anything, you've had a experience since then, So why would you want to listen to him?
And in case Charlemagne's dig there was a little bit too subtle for some people, Like what he was saying there was that it is unfair and ridiculous to put this onus on black men in a way that you do not with white men and white women.
Right well, with any racial women person owes their vote to anybody because of their race.
He's right. So what he's saying there is like, Okay, Obama's out there finger wagging black men, why are we forgetting the fact that white women need the finger wag, like if the way to get and it's absurd, Like his question is absurd, and it's deliberately absurd. And in the absurdity, you see the problem with Obama's finger wagging, because nobody thinks that white women are all of a sudden going to start voting completely enmassed for Democrats if you just wag your finger at them and tell them
that they're wrong for the way that they're voting. Certainly not the case for white men. And so what Charlomagne is saying there is what is it about your relationship to black men that makes you think that that is actually going to work? Like let alone having those thoughts in the beginning, but like your goal is to win votes, yeah, and that's not going to work. So what on earth are you thinking here? Uh? Obama though, is he just he's Obama?
He feels like Anina Turnery would say that, like he's a deity to some people.
Yeah, he really is. And you know, two thousand and eight, he didn't he didn't have to do any finger wagging what he had to do. And people forget this history is proved to the black community that he could win. Yes, like his numbers before Iowa.
I remember South Carolina was pro Hillary up until after he won Iowa.
And what and i and he really benefited from I think a lot of people in the country not really
understanding Iowa's like internal politics. And also so it's a caucus system, which means that the most liberal people are coming out and people on the East and West coast don't realize that Des Moines has a bunch of hipsters and coffee shops and liberals and like organics, you know, organic food and whole foods and whatever, and so there is actually there are a bunch of white people who are happy to vote for Barack Obama out in Iowa.
They thought it was you know, a bunch of corn fed, you know, white farmers with you know, cornstalk sticking out of their mouth or whatever. The stereotype is they have in their minds of who Iowa voters were, so when they saw that person in their mind voting for Obama, they're like, oh, he can win, now I will support him. Right, But it was never a you will support me because I'm black. That never would have worked for him.
Yeah, he earned it and he actually tried to work for it. But now that he's been president and they've turned him into a god, now things are a little bit different now. While with Kamala there was another Look Charlemagne, I'll just say this, it's clearly like he is like an MSNBC liberal.
That's his version of the world that kept coming through.
We'd be like, why don't liberals make the point that Republicans are bad? He's like, why don't people understand that? And I'm almost like, well, I think we tried Charle. You know, it's like people don't always agree with them. But there was sometimes he would poke through with some good stuff. So we had two kind of challenging questions. One was on him challenging her. He's like, why do you seem so scripted all the time? So here's what she had to say.
Now, you know, one thing they've been saying.
A lot of your press heres get criticized, you know, folks that you come off as very scripted. They say you like to stick to your talking points, and some media says you have.
That would be called discipline. Oh okay.
Some people say you have an inability to fearlessly say who you are and what you believe. I know that's not true. But what do you say to that criticism? And is it fair for S and L to make fun of it?
Hasn't Maya Rudolph and wonderful?
Yes?
I think I have nothing but admiration for the comedy, and I think it's it's important to be able to laugh at yourself and each other in the spirit of obviously comedy, and not belittling people as my opponent would do.
But what do you say to people who say you stay on the talking points?
I would say you're welcome. I mean, listen, Here's the thing. I love having conversations, which is why I'm so happy to be with you this afternoon. And the reality is that there are certain things that must be repeated to ensure that I have everyone know what I stand for and the issues that I think are at stake in this election, and so it requires repetition. You know, some people say that until someone has heard the same thing at least three times, it just doesn't stay with you.
So repetition is important.
So what do we all think?
That's how she's trying to turn being scripted into a superpower. I kind of disagree with her. Just tell me what you think. I don't think it's that she's too scripted. It's that when she's off script, she clearly has not thought about literally anything at all, and then reverts back to safe territory kind of like she did right there.
Right, So she has a script and she deploys it in different scenarios, no matter what the questioning. Yeah, exactly that, that's what it is for me. But what did you take away? It's right, So I think scripted. I think that's an interesting point. Scripted, it's okay, fine, you got your you've got your talking points, you've got your answer.
Trump for eight years, I can basically predict what he's going to say on a wide variety of topics.
I think what people actually want is more scripts. Like there's like three scripts and so, but there are dozens of questions that people have. But what she does is all the questions on this issue get funneled into this script, and all the ones here are this one, and all the ones here are that are that script, and so then you never actually get an get an answer. That SNL you know, has made fun of her for that with you know, one of the one of the ways they did that was she was in a game show
and they asked her. They asked her a question and she answered, I grew up in a middle class family, yes exactly, which is which is not answering the question, and it is a script. So yeah, but she's also correct that, you know, to politics and discipline is a thing.
Yeah, I mean I think that look discipline, as you said, she's not wrong in the whole, like if you don't repeat something, but I think part of the art, you know, to the science is you don't have to people.
Don't want to feel it.
They don't want to feel it. You took it, and she's like, oh, she's like pretending like oh, everything was all.
Good with Maya Rudolph and all that.
But the fact that even they can get to it this like hyper liberal comedy organization is taking a shot at you clearly, like that's something that the most basic analysis will lead you to The final thing that we
pulled was actually on the border. This is again where Charlotne, to his credit, actually will hit her a little bit and he's like, come on, He's like, because she was talking about the border and how she's like, I support this new border bill and all of us, and he's like, he's like, come on, you guys don't bear any responsibility for the last three years.
So she gets a little bit testy with him. Let's take a listen.
But doesn't the bidy administration have to take some blame for the border though a lot of the blame because I mean, the first three years, I'll did get a lot of things wrong with.
The boarder Charlamagne. Within hours of being inaugurated, the first bill we passed, before we did the Inflation Reduction Act, before we did the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, before we did the Safer Communities Act to deal with gun violence, first thing we dropped was a bill to fix the broken immigration system, which by the way, Trump did not fix when he was president, and you can look at every step along the way. We then tightened up the asylum
application process. We then worked with what we needed to do to secure ports of entry. We did a number of things. Congress has to act to fix the immigration system, and it has been broken for a long time. Congress has to act. But it does not help. When finally a bipartisan group got together to fix it and Donald Trump told them, hold on, don't do that because it won't it won't help me.
Come on, man, I mean, it's like, what are we doing here?
It's like the but the Democratic House passed a bill that the Republicans then didn't, and that's why things exponentially.
Exploded the work. Just be real with people.
Like the idea that this is not as a result, at least a very large part some of the delta between the Trump administration and the Biden administration is not a result of executive action is ludicrous. I mean, in some ways it was a skillful answer. Charlemagne, you know, God bless, but he's not like deeply familiar with immigration law or executive action. But at the very least he intuited something. Basically, he's like, yo, some of this is.
On you, is it not. And the reason that that was such a disingenuous answer is that they did, in fact send a bill she's misspoke and said pasted, yeah, the bill, but then she corrected herself later and said, we sent a bill down to Congress. They did January twenty, twenty twenty one. They sent down to Congress the US Citizenship Act of twenty twenty one. And people can gather from a few context clues, one being the name of the bill. It's a name, and the other being the timing.
This is four years after kids in Cages signs in every yard saying we welcome immigrants. Democrats were at the height of their support for immigrants and immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship for people who were here, and so they put this all into legislation called the Citizenship Act of twenty twenty one. There is no chance on earth that Kamala Harris to day supports that bill. And
that's why I say it's disingenuous. Yeah, that's great, cause you can't say, hey, look we tried, we did this bill that I no longer support. Yeah, it's in direct violation of that Senate bill.
And this is again one right, it's difficult when people who interview were, I mean, look.
And I wish it would have passed. And here's a problem with our system. Yeah, it would be better if you could run on a thing, win the election, and implement your agenda, and then people then vote on whether or not they liked the implementation of your agenda or not. Instead, we have this dumb system where we had elect this
guy Biden. He writes this law, sends it to Congress, and then it just the House passes it, but then it just sits there and so then then you're left with this executive action and a hair brained immigration system that falls apart that then lurches back and forth as a political football instead of saying, okay, look, Democrats like pathways to citizenship. They want a fairly open immigration system. It's got billions of for quote unquote root causes in
this bill. Like try that, let them implement it and then see what happens, and then if you don't like it, vote them out.
I think you should move to Europe. Ran This sounds like a parliamentary I agree. Yes, I know in Britain it sounds great over there, right, they're doing what they're doing very well.
I'm sure they somehow I had figured out.
I'm sure the parlor military system is directly reflective of the needs, the wants of a British working class, and it hasn't instead been a one thousand year battle between aristocracy and them.
But they did get national health care, yes, certainly did.
They also gave up their empire. They also gave up to great power status. They decided to have a single aircraft carrier and that's basically the only thing that is left between them and being just another Norway.
But you know, look, it's up to them. They decide what they wanted. I think had a little bit more to do with.
Certainly certainly did. But they had a choice too. They chose one way, and that's fine. You know, London, it's a nice place to visit and spend your American dollars. But I'll just leave it that. So let's move on. What to Donald Trump?
Trump?
Okay, so we had to put this in though this was really making the rounds on cable. Every liberal I know has seen this clip now, and I'm not really sure why it really invites I guess there's just a lot to say about it. So let's let's get into it. Basically, Trump had a rally which was supposed to be a Q and A and they think it took like five questions and then two people, it appears, collapsed and had health events. This is a side note. This always happens at political rallies that.
People not heard of water bottles. Can we all just be taking water bottles?
You know, every auration I've ever attended, every political event, people are always collapsing.
A young people think, don't bring water bottle? What you people think like it? Just bring a water bottle and stop taxing er resources. Secondary, are they making stick of service, making you dump the water out like you're going into the airport. I didn't think about that, but I don't think so.
More recently, actually they make people throw away their jewels and their vapes, which is kind of funny too. But these are all side conversations. Trump is at this rally, two people collapse. In the midst of that collapse, they stop taking questions and they play a little bit of music. But what ends up happening is like a thirty minute vibe fest where Trump just plays music and kind of vibes on the stage. He doesn't say a word, and
then it just ends just totally. And so we have the introduction to that, and then we could just show you guys what it looked like when he was just vibing on the stage, let's take a lesson.
Well, sir, do you want to play your song and then great a few people or do you want to.
Well you had said you wanted to close with a specific song. Okay, So yeah, people were watching he's just vibing. They're singing like ave Maria, and the crowd is like, what's going on here? Exactly?
Like what do we do? Somebody here? You can see how confused some people are. Guys looking straight into the camera.
Others and there there he's got his eyes are like they're just waiting for Trump.
Some people are leaving. Uh, I don't know.
My joke was is that Trump ascended to his final form, and his final form is he no longer has to speak. He's kind of like, uh so, Catholics might get mad at me for this, but if I recall, there was a time when the Pope like didn't speak in public.
Uh.
This is all from my knowledge of that HBO show at julaw so just to show but as I understand it, that Pope did not speak whenever he was in public. The mere gazed upon him was enough to see his holiness and actually to hear him speak was like, was like blasphemous. And so that's what I think is happening, is that the people who are attending to me to gaze upon his mere visage is enough to be in the presence of the emperor, like in the Chinese system of the Imperial time.
So that's that was how I took it. Is that, you know, he.
Joked, He's like I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue, but now it's like he doesn't even need to speak to entertain the masses.
That's how I took it. Uh, it would have been better if they were playing like Grateful Dead, of course it would for you. Yeah, it looked like, yeah, he'd popped a gummy and was just vibe. Yeah, just vibing on stage there. That was amazing. Yeah, yeah, I've really enjoyed this one. Yeah.
This was like I said, this is really me. The rounds people were like, as Trump lost it, like what is he doing? I honestly, I have no earthly explanation. That is my The best I can take a stab at it is that he was like, hey, I don't really feel like talking, and most of these people love me enough that they'll just hang out and they'll they'll stay. And you know what, he was kind of right, has some of them left, but a lot of them stayed.
And speaking of scripted, yeah, we dinged Kamala for being a little scripted. Trum Trump pretty scripted in his dance moves. Everybody knows Trump's dance. He's got that and then he's Day's got the punch too, right.
Yeah, I mean I'm a terrible answer, So I got it all right. So you also did an interview with Bloomberg I believe this with the Economic Club of Chicago, and there was a real clash here on tariffs in particular, probably the most viral moment from the interview.
Let's take a list.
You're also talking about twenty ten to twenty percent tariffs on the rest of the world. That is going to have a serious effect on the overall economy. And yes, you're going to find some people who were gained from individual tariffs. The overall effect could be massive.
I agree, it's going to have a massive effect. Positive effect. It's going to be a positive not a new just let me just no, no, let me committed. You are to this, and it must be hard for you to you know, spend twenty five years talking about tariffs has been negative, and then if somebody explained you that you're.
Totally wrong, it'll have a negative. It will have forty million jobs. There's a lot of jobs to rely on. There all come back million jobs.
There are forty million jobs in America that.
Rely on John Deere, great company. They announced about a year ago they're going to build big plants outside of the United States. Right, They're going to build them in youth thresh and they're also a building still, that's right, I said, if John Deere builds those plants, are not selling anything into the United States. They just announced yesterday they're probably not going to build the plants, Okay, I kept the judge.
I personally really enjoyed that.
Anytime you see like a rich British guy runs Bloomberg, this guy Wharton probably school or London School of Economics who's like just talking about how great, you know, neoliberal economic theory is, and he's just like, it must be hard for you to be wrong and have somebody explain it to you you're completely wrong.
I enjoyed it.
I also enjoyed how he went after the FED. I'm not sure if you saw missed that part. Yeah, he was like he said something along the lines of he's like, it's the greatest job in the world. You go into a room, you flip a coin and every but he treats you like your genius.
It's totally right. He's absolutely correct.
And there's so much like dressing around this, around tariffs and about oh economists say x y H. When's the last time economists were correct about literally anything or the forecast? And if you study economics in school, that's the first to tell you, like, hey, look at all these models and look how they actually work out in practice. Doesn't take a genius to see it. So this actually, look,
you know, just a little history thing. This takes you really back to some like og fights in American history around like this about silver, the roles William and Jennings Bryan, like, you know, people at one time had massive feelings about you know, hard money and gold, the gold standard and silver and the famous Sprian speech but mankind will not be crucified on a cross of gold and what that meant for monetary policy and farmers and so there's some
of that coming back. But even on tariffs. I mean, it's interesting because for him, He's not even making the Kamala argument about well, we're gonna have some tar to tariffs. He's like, no, tariffs in general.
Are all bad.
And that is where you know, Trump politically intuited in twenty sixteen that that was a position both that he thought was overwhelmingly popular, but that you could you could implement without subscribing to neoliberal economic theory and taking a very different, almost honestly like a mercantilist view of economicis which I really appreciate because that's my thing.
But yeah, and the fights now over the fed are really the exact same ones that people were having over silver in the nineteenth century. Sager knows this, most of the audience probably doesn't, but what he meant by crucifying across the gold was that the gold standard was keeping the money supply too low, and the silver bugs wanted to add silver to the currency, and they said that will that will put more currency in the economy, and it will allow for economic growth. They didn't win, but
then it's such The history is so funny. Huge discoveries of silver in the West flooded a whole bunch of silver into the economy and economists will say like, actually that discovery of silver like increased the monetary supply, was like going increased the m one and it did the right thing, So it was like it was like the nature flipped going on nature but genocide. Yeah, there is a poster somewhere in the studio.
I'd have to go find it of William Jennings Bryan from his Cross of Gold speech, like a cartoon from the eighteen nineties that I picked up in an antique store because it is such an important point. And actually, I mean, if you want to talk to you about like third party and stuff, like, he's one of the most successful outsiders to ever get in. He became the Secretary of State under Woodrow Well. He was a Titanic figure in an American Bran was a Democratic nominee for like four times exactly.
The Populist party basically folded in a deal with the Democrats that if you accept our agenda, will go away and endorse Democrats.
Yeah, he was an interesting dude, very much. So people should go and read some books about him. We also should get to the next part here with Trump, where this is where look, he gives and he takes and so I'll give you a good answer on tariffs, you'll give you kind of crazy answer about Google.
Let's take a lesson.
Justice Department is thinking about breaking up alphabet because Google likes to be known.
Now should Google be breaken up?
I just haven't gotten over something the Justice Department did yesterday where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes, and the Justice Department sued them that they should be allowed to put those bad votes and illegal votes back in and let the people vote. So I haven't I haven't gotten I haven't gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that. They can't even believe it.
The question is about Google, President Trump.
Yeah, look, Google's got a lot of power. They're very bad to me, very very bad to me. I mean I can speak from that standpoint, all right.
I can speak from that standpoint. It's so perfect. Yeah, that is his frame, Yeah, of how he feels about anything. Well, we'll speak. How have they treated me? Okay? Google? Yeah, I don't like them, like.
I mean, like, I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. You know, sometimes he gets those answers and you're like, what are you even talking about.
Dude, he calls it the weave. We'll see, we'll see if people are going to take that. By the way, I'm curious where you are on that on his tariff answer, obviously at least obvious from my perspective, Flat tariffs, even on things that we cannot make here, are silly. Well, right, like Crystal and I have had this spike before. I mean, it depends. And are you saying which is substitute? Let's say mangoes. It's again, it's the same type of thing.
Well, well, first of all, Mexican mangoes are terrible, and people should try any So that's just for you know, just at a very basic level. Most Americans have never had at the taste of a real mango. But second to that, mango is really good.
There are they? Okay, well, it's.
Probably still of the Mexican variety. There's a whole shoe on this. Anyways, this is all again secondary. The point, first of all, is that you can't even institute a bank. The tariff Congress would have to do it, and it's not going to happen. You would literally need some sort of smooth holly. So to me, this is very much like Trump. Seriously, literally, we had a whole debate about it yesterday. You can go and watch that if you want to irl.
What does it look like.
Well, it looks a lot like it did last time, which is the Commerce Department and Section I forget exactly the exact provision of law allows for national security declarations on certain goods, specifically farming and field implements.
Yeah, but remember this.
The tariffs that under the Biden administration are specifically done under the same executive authority the Trump used last time. Trump basically pushed as much as he could last time. In terms of goods. It was a lot of it was metals, a lot of it was steel, both with Brazil, Korea, Japan, China. I expect a ramp up of that from last time around. The truth is is that Congress, even Republicans, is full
of neoliberals and the corporate lobby. I mean, I can't tell you guys from behind the scenes, the amount of corporate exceptions that these people try and lobby for is insane.
They're like, oh please, it's just so impossible for me to buy this part from anywhere else.
And it's like really was like, well, but it would cost twenty cents more or something like, yeah, but that one's in Pittsburgh and you want to buy it from Shanghai.
So you know, you don't see a little bit of a problem here.
I don't think it's reality that you could actually impose some sort of blanket tariff. But at the same time, like listen drastic times sometimes like that's what you need to see. I am in general, Like I called Trump a mercantilist. People should go and look at that definition.
Here's another one. You want to google autarchy, the idea of economic self sufficiency fundamentally, like that's what he is talking about, and he's trying to get to I don't even believe a blanket tariff would go into place, and even if it did, again, like if you look at a lot of the imports and consumption of the overall US economy, quite a bit of the stuff that we import, not only could it be made here with some limited exceptions, but a lot of it is just like cheap crap
that people don't even necessarily need. Now, it's easy for me to say from here, people, I'll be fully admit it will raise the price. Absolutely, it's true. Trump's response is we would also be taking in a significant amount. He had an idea last time around, like with soybean farmers, and basically because we took in hundreds of billions from soybeans, was to cut checks to a lot of the people
who worked in the industry. I think it's perfectly fine in terms of the distribution, you know, in order to offset some of this. So it's a worthy conversation. Is that I would much rather have this debate than the other one, which is should we have.
Tariffs or not? I'll put it that way.
Trump also, at the same time, this has been some strange behavior that's happened. So of course he canceled on sixty minutes. I mean that one makes sense, sixty minutes and him got into a whole tiff last time. But he also canceled on Joe over at CNBC, which is surprising because that guy is actually very pro Trump, and he got really salty about it. So here's what he had to say.
Trump canceled and he was going to come on, so and I said, when you come on, we'll be able to say you came And I didn't talk to him personally, but I.
Said, so yeah, I mean he canceled on CNBC. I was frankly kind of surprised by that. I don't know about you, Ryan, that he didn't go on CNBC, because it's exactly like the Bloomberg interview that he was doing previously at the Economic Club, where he likes to go on and spar with the Wall Street guys and all that. That one's a much more targeted thing. So for his cancelors,
people were saying he was scared of it. I'm not necessarily sure there might be some personal beef or something behind the scenes, but at the least I was like, huh, that's kind of interesting.
Why did he cancel it? Yeah? Yeah, I mean if he can do the Bloomberg thing and argue that you can do the exact same thing there, and he could even go on there and trol about Lena Khan like poke pokes the NBC, which hates Lena con almost as much as a Wall Street journal and also then poke the Harris campaign for being unwilling to stand up for Like when Kamala Harris was asked, is there anything you would do differently than the Biden administration, she said, I
can't think of a single thing. The only thing that like she hasn't really committed to is that one thing is keeping Lena Conn and John's in Canter That is a good point.
I'm not sure what Trump would say about Lena Conn. Let's say, if we're all being honest, the final thing is Trump will have a major campaign event on Sunday.
Yeah, fair enough, let's put this up there. This will be fun to watch.
Donald Trump will be visiting a McDonald's on Sunday in Pennsylvania and he will quote work the fry cooker.
This is a source familiar with the matter.
This comes up as Trump has repeatedly claimed Kamala Harris never actually worked at McDonald's. So one of my friends, Joe Simonson is actually the person who read. He put the story out where he was like, I don't think Kamala Harris. He's like, there's no evidence Kamala's ever worked at McDonald's. Kamala has been asked about this. There was an interview that she gave I forget. I think it was NBC News with Stephanie Ruhle, and she's like, I
did the fries. There's something very vague. She has not released any photos of her working at McDonald's. I mean presumably those would exist. So this is Trump trying to uh, not only stoke that, but I mean, look, I hate to say, I actually think this is the type of thing that so many people will love to watch, like this video or whatever of Trump working on the Frenker. Now, as I understand, it's that quite a dangerous job. I will not pretend I've never worked to McDonald's. I mean,
it seems scary. Right, we're talking about hot oil. There's a lot of orders that you got to get through. It's not an easy gig, you know, from what I can tell now, You've got automation, all this crazy stuff with those order things, and everything seems very regulated in terms of how you're measured how much you can do back there.
So it's not it's not the worst thing.
He could also talk about removing what is taxes on tips, not that anybody tips at McDonald's, although they should so anyway, what do you think, what do.
You get water in that? Yeah? In that grease, you're the whole thing on fire? Oh god, yeah. And it's flippery.
Yeah, don't they get they get like burns on their hands. It looks scary, man, when you see him dunk them here like this is that's the last place you want to be actually funny. A friend of mine, I actually don't even know his name. He's an anonymous guy on Twitter. He's a polling Analyst's name is Ruben Rodriguez've talked about him here on the show. He's been suggesting previously. He's like,
Trump should go work the fry cooker at McDonald's. And so maybe somebody at the campaign is reading his tweets. He's only got twelve thousand followers, but he's a very smart guy. They called every state in the election last time around.
That's why I follow him. And assuming Kamla did work at McDonald's, because that would be just an amazing thing to make up.
That would The reason I'm like maybe she did is that's a crazy thing to make up.
That's absolutely insane, But you know, I would. The evidence against her that Trump floats around is that there was some resume that where she didn't include it. But that also is a window into kind of Trump's view of the world. That, dude, you don't put McDonald's on your resume. Its true. McDonald's is the kind of job that is
only cool once you've gotten beyond it, like it. And that's what's so much of poverty and working class life is like actually right that people love to look back on it as something that you did, but when you're in it, our country imbus it all with shame. So and people should not forget that you're not wrong and as virtue, there's absolutely nothing wrong.
We're working at McDonald's, whether you're working there for ten years or whether you're working there for a summer.
So here's what Joe wrote in his article.
He said Harris works at McDonald's, which allegedly took place at a franchise in the California Bay Area. It is a recent addition to her crafted life story. For decades, she has never mentioned it, not on the campaign trail, not in two books. It is absent from a job application from the resume that she submitted a year before college.
Third party biographers have not written about it. It is not until Harris ran for president in twenty nineteen and spoke to a labor rally in Las Vegas did she mention the job, telling the crowd that she quote was a student when I was working at McDonald's, and so it's one of those where the actual evidence for this claim has not there. There is no photo, as I said, that exists of her working at McDonald's. I guess at the same time, not a lot of people necessarily.
Want people to take a photo of her.
Well, she's at McDonald's, but Joe has done the Joe is on the leg work, and I got to say, there's a there's a decent shot.
She hasn't worked with McDonald's.
Just based on that, because why wouldn't you have talked about it in two books and the first time I'm gonna mention it is twenty nineteen. It's conceivable, don't get me wrong, But you've been a politician for this long and you've never talked about it.
I don't know. It's a little bit skeptical. At some point, you would think that that would at some point you're far enough or moved away from it that you're proud of it. Okay, it's before fo Yeah, yeah, so I'm agree with you. She's a lawyer right at that point, is a multi millionaire. She got married to Doug that say, you worked, Yeah, that's good. I'm curious. I'm very very curious. Yeah, I went the I went the long form photo Yeah,
I want the original. We're gonna have to go into the photo archives and all of this, we can look into it. So, yeah, it's amazing. Should we assign a reporter to Joe.
Even obtained a nineteen eighty seven job application that she had for a law clerk in Alameda County whenever she was like that summer afterwards, and it's like she does not She listed several jobs, including a month long clerical job at stock brokerage, but did not mention McDonald.
But see, that's the one. That's the one where I'm saying, I understand why I agree with you. That's what it's not necessarily would put the clerical one, right, Yeah, that makes sense. You're trying to show that you're like belong with these rich white shoe people, that's right.
Who would look down on somebody who worked with at McDonald's, which again, there's absolutely nothing wrong with working at McDonald's.
I met some funny people work at McDonald's. One other point, on this question about whether there's a photo of her, I was thinking about this. Yeah, So my first job was at the Washington College over on the eastern shore of Maryland. Why, I worked in the kitchen in the dining hall. Absolutely zero, Chancellor, is a photo of me doing any of that work. And none of my friends and a lot of my friends worked the same job. None of my friends ever would have thought to take
a picture. And my upbringing, I think and curious for your takings. My upbring was closer to hers in the sense that there were no self period, let alone cell phone cameras. We didn't walk around with cameras. Once in a while somebody would bring like a polaroid to us party just as a party. You absolutely would not bring up camera to work. Okay, why on earth would you.
Get what we were talking about our first job? So my first job was a liquor store. Is a cashier?
I do think there is a photo of me doing it.
This was the two thousands, Yeah, no, this was right, two two twelve probably, so there's yeah, I mean iPhone.
I think we all had iPhone fours. So there you go.
It's not say that was an interesting job, though. You learn a lot about people selling liquor here, you do.
And this was this was DC. Yeah, this is here in Washington, DC. You get rich people. I was just telling you about homeless people. The great equalizer, the liquor store. It's true.
Yeah, you see everybody from all walks of life. You certainly you learn a lot about people. People tell you their stories about what they want, why they're buying certain things. People make up a lot of stories too, where it's like, it's fine, man, I'm just telling It's like, I don't care.
Kama could actually settle this, not with a photo of her, but just talking about it for five minutes. That's right. I agree with you. So if I work one of these jobs, it is indelible. That's right. She said I did the fries. So she needs to give us something more detail. Yeah, we need more details, like like you just said, in terms of sound like we can get into it, you know, in terms.
Of like.
When Kamala does her interview here, we'll make sure. Yeah, I'll go into like you need to prove we'll bring in a real McDonald's worker. You ask her something of that only somebody who quote did the fries and McDonald's would know.
But not even that, Like I think just the experience of working in McDonald's, Like hearing her talk about it, you'd be able to tell if that was a real experience or if she was just relaying something like shit for or something.
Yeah, it was like, oh, I got to put on a crappy schedule, or I'll.
Tell you everything you need to know about the dish room and at Washington College. Yes, there you go, all right, I like it.
All right, let's go to voting. So, as you said, Ryan, there's a lot going on here. Early voting is here, but there's also some very interesting developments in those close races that we want to watch. Let's put the up there on the screen. So we got Osborne is making waves here we have this is the Counterpoints bump. Yeah, dude, you guys refers to it. So we got to give
you the credit. An internal poll, now shared with the New Jersey Hotline shows Dan Osborne at fifty percent ahead of Deb Fisher fifty percent for Osborne, forty four percent there for Fisher six percent undecided. Now, obviously that's an Osborne internal poll, but you know, they don't match us all. They pull out completely. And there have been a lot of polls recently that at the very least show it leaning away from Deb Fisher so much so that they
had her tide. In an internal poll leaked by the Senate leadership Fund, which is the major superpack that backs Republicans who are running for Senate, and now Mitch McConnell and his guys are considering having to flood the zone and spend millions of dollars actually backing her. Now keep in mind, though he's still got forty four percent, so six percent is undecided.
So it's so it could be fifty to fifty.
You have to bank on a decent amount of Republicans who are you know, not even thinking about the race in the state of Nebraska just because it's such a hard GOP state. But I mean, if we're making the bowl case for Osborne, it's not just the positions and all those, but having made abortion in such a keystone of his campaign, it's not the worst thing because that has worked in Kansas, That has worked in Kentucky, right, and a lot of these other deeply red states Ohio
as well for these referendums. So to make it on that and also the key part he's independent, he's not a Democrat, and he doesn't even say whether he would caucus with the Democrats or anything, so you really you can't project onto him a lot of this like, oh, he would be a vote for you know, Chuck Schumer or any of that. He's running really as his own man. So I'm very interested to see how he does.
And if people remember from when he did his interview here, he describes himself personally as pro life.
Yes, he's personally pro life, and he uses the phrase pro life right, which is charged and triggering to some people on the left.
Right, But who cares running into Braska? Exactly, he's exactly he's So what he's doing is he's signaling that he shares kind of the social conservative values that a lot of Nebraskans have, but he is fundamentally more libertarian and believes that it's not up to him that this is his personal opinion, that's not how he's going to legislate. And that's a seventy eighty percent position right there, Like
you're going to capture an overwhelming majority of people. What this poll and all the other polls around Dan Olsborn also show is the cost of being a Democrat, Like this stigma and the stain of the Democratic brand in
rural America is so profound. Yes, So if you look at another statewide race, Pete Ricketts leads Democrat Preston Love fifty three to thirty seven, which is that and that's how every other statewide in Nebraska is going to go when you have a standard Republican and a standard Democrat. If Dan Osborne were running as a Democrat, he's done. He wouldn't even know his name? Who? Right? Who? It's all the union leader, right, you read that led the
Kellogg strike. This guy sounds cool, but too bad. He's gonna lose by twenty points. Yes, yes, So according to the numbers here, he's basically outpolling the Democratic average by twenty points. So that's the price. So that that is the price, at least in Nebraska of being a Democrat. Having a D on your name is twenty points makes you unviable. And also everything's working out here for him in the sense that deb Fisher is like completely replaceable.
But actually, but it's it's not like he just happened to luck on a replacement level Republican. The way that the Senate is structured now makes it so it's very much like the House. You just do whatever the majority leader or the minority leader tells.
You, don't really do anything. You do a little bit of if you're actually decent in your job. You do constituent services and that's about it.
So that the days where people could you know, you have to be an incredibly talented politician at this point to break out as a senator, and Deb Fisher was just never going to be that. She's just a chamber of commerce, like uh, you know, chamber of commerce when she got in Trump, Now that Trump's the thing, and so voters in Nebraska like, all right, well this other guy sounds cooler. Yeah, I like it. Let's see, I like to shake things up. So they're still against.
Him, Polly say, I'll be honest, I think Deb is probably gonna win. But winning by two in Nebraska is humiliating. And so listen, you know, these things they take some time. So maybe somebody learns that and the next thing, you know, another union leader and another state tries it, and all you need is like what a terrible storm on election day? Then shockingly you win. We have a Democrat who represents a freaking state of Alaska. Right now, remember remember Doug
Jones in Alabama? That was I mean, a Democratic senator, Ali, it can happen?
Did happen in my lifetime? It wasn't that long ago, did he lose again. Yeah, but you never know, you know. Also for people curious, and I'm curious for yoursing on this, I am very confident that if it were decisive, he would caut us with Democrats, or at least he would, well you shouldn't say you shouldn't say that, but job, I think he would. But he would extract so many different pounds of flesh for Nebraska that everyone in nebrasa And I think people in Nebraska understand that he's running
against the Republican right. Who was the senator?
Is it Indiana? Who was the Democrat under Obama during the two thousand and nine?
Is that Luger? Is that what I'm thinking of? Dick Luger. Dick Luger he was Was he Missouri? Dick Luger in Missouri? All right?
Dick Luger Indiana? Yeah, he was Indiana. And I remember him in the uh NO and and Nebraska was it Ben Nelson? Nelson, that's it, right, Ben Nelson.
I remember him voting was it two thousand and nine?
Like you know, whatever that rescue plan was, and he was like, oh, I'll do it, but there's a their industry of billion dollars coming Nebraska and he got it too. It was actually what they called it, No, I don't the corn Husker kickback cornsk.
And so yeah, for mele mint in politics, this was a huge thing.
What this is what led to Republicans banning ear marks in twenty ten, because that was before the Tea Party wave. The Cornhuscar kickback became like a massive political discussion. When Republicans take control of the House, they then ban they ban ear marks, I want to say, for over a decade and it became the predominant. I think they just brought it back or somebody did or anything. But that's what the last thing legacy of what that corn Husker kickback was.
That's what I was thinking. And it got taken out because it was so it was it was so dumb. I mean, I don't care.
I remember I was reading a story once about LBJ and the Civil Rights Act and LBJ just become president and he needed some guy to like sign a discharge petition. I think the guy was from Purdue. This purdues like district in Indiana, and he said something in the long lines of it. He's like, listen, NASA, they've got a big contract. They could build it in Purdue. They could build it somewhere else too. A lot of that depends
on the signature right now. And he was like, all right, you know, and to this day they still have it.
So Mary Landrew, yeah, got it. She was Louisiana, is right. She was the senator from Louisiana. She also got bought off for her vote on the Affordable Care Act. Hers was called the Louisiana Purchase. I like it, man. Politics used to be more fun the back of the day. Southern Democrats were.
It's such an interesting like such an interesting breed that unfortunately people who watch politics they just won't even know anything about. But let's continue down this road, man, enthusiasm right now for early voting crazy, let's put this up there on the screen. What we have right now is that the Georgia early vote has shattered all records. We have some two hundred thousand votes that were cast on
the very first day in Georgia. The previous record for early voting was one hundred and twenty thousand.
I mean, that is just absolutely stunning.
So actually the total now that they've looked at it is three hundred and twenty eight thousand as of late last night. So that is one hundred and twenty three percent higher than the old record from twenty twenty, when a lot of more people were early voting. Now, for all the people out there who are like, oh, that's good for Democrats, no, Republicans have significantly changed their tune
on early voting. And in fact, you have Republican activists who are just going hardcore, beating down the door getting people. You need to go out, you need to bank your vote, We need to make sure that it's done right now. So that is partially going to explain some of those answers what we and I believe George is one of those states where the demographic data all of that is like hard to capture. I've seen some of this in Michigan too. Michigan mail in ballots are crazy, but nobody
knows who these people are exactly. But from it, what we know is that enthusiasm is still very high amongst the party faithful. The question is is that it's turnout going to come back to twenty twenty. There's really no way to know.
Impossible. How hard was it inside the Republican coalition to get Trump to be supportive of it?
I mean he's still not supportive of it. If you ask him about it, we are you still have problems with ma'am.
It's more than he's to get him to the place where well he tells people go vote early.
Yeah, well, well okay, Well what happened is is twenty twenty two. They were convinced that they were going to get a landmark victory in twenty twenty two, and then they got blown out.
And so I saw a lot of them. It's funny the language of the US.
They're like, well, if the left is going to ballot harvest, then we need to ballot harvest too. But watching them in practice, people like Charlie Kirk or Scott Pressler or all these guys, they're just they're like, Okay, this is a landscape. Let's register as many people as we can. Let's get their damn votes, and let's get them to the ballot box. Ultimately, that is the only actual way to victory, and if they do win, that will be a huge.
Part of it.
It was they get out the vote drive by a lot of these people instead of having to rely on early votes. So with Trump, he's never truly made his peace with it. But the people who know and the people really running elections and who want the Republicans to win, they have very much made their peace.
They're like, look, this is the system we have. Can't change it.
Literally, Democrats democratic governors rule five out of the seven swing states. That's a remarkable statistic. So that tells us also that you know, they have no chance at changing whatever the ground is there, you have to you have to work.
To make sure that it's redone. So it's up to you. And I think we're going to see national voter ID, you know, as soon as we have as soon as we ever get a functional Congress, it's going to pass something. Again.
I think we'll get it. And it's because Democrats are now becoming more of the upper middle class, middle class party, and Republicans are the ones who have more working class support, and so voter ID anything you do to you know, if you look at the look at the numbers when they go from registered voters to likely voters, Like throughout my entire lifetime, Democrats did better among registered voters, but worse among likely votes. Yes, that's right, because they had
more they had more working class support. Flipped in twenty eighteen, and so if you make it harder to vote, and you have more working class support, your vote share is going to go down. There you go. And so that's why Democrats fought it and Republicans support it. Now that's flipped, you're going to see all of a sudden, the principle
is going to be reversed. I like it. I can't wait until Republicans are like, well, you know what, are we sure that let them signistic That actually will be hilarious. I did see somebody was what they're going to do is make student Republicans will say student ideas don't count, like that'll be there, which, look, you know it's a state university.
It is difficult because there is a lot of like low key voter fraud that does happen where people who don't live in that voter fraud is real.
No, it's it's true. And by the way, I'm not making a stop. This is a decades long weird thing. We're at the epicenter of it in DC. Yes, so many people who have lived here for years. Yeah, we never registered to vote. They just vote back in wherever they're from Pennsylvania and they're like, well, that's it's not fair. I wouldn't be able to have my vote count if that actually, no, I don't know if that technically committed voter fraud.
I think I voted, yeah, in Texas twenty sixteen, requested a absentee ballot, but I think I qualified because I was a student who was out.
There's something about residency, Laura. But like you just said, when people work here for fifteen years, that'll keep voting and.
You're going to keep requesting mail in balance. That's where it gets difficult. Okay, let's continue with the actual polls. Just put this up there on the screen from Nate Silver.
He now has the.
Race officially fifty to fifty, Harris at fifty point one percent chance of winning, and you have Donald Trump at forty nine point seven.
So that's it. I mean, you know what else is the saying about it? Right? It got him incredible. It's like, come on, Nate Silvi, you got one job. Yeah, you're just telling us it's fifty to fifty. That doesn't help us. Well, if it is fifty to fifty, that's what he's got. I think that's what I actually think it's helpful.
It's good for me fifty where it's at, and so the real thing that has happened is the tipping point states, for example, like Pennsylvania. Right now he has Harris at a fifty three point five percent chance of winning Pennsylvania and Trump at forty six. But the thing is is that Trump has gone so much higher in the last couple of weeks. So for example, October seventh, just like a week or so ago, he had it at forty two point four percent chance of Trump and now he's
up to forty six to five. So a slew of polls in the Upper Midwest and then the assumption that Trump will overperform in those places is really what is ticking him up.
So yeah, overall in Wisconsin. And this was the huge fear of Democrats who have been following Kamala Harris's career the whole time, that Okay, there'll be an initial burst of enthusiasm, but then she will revert to her more centrist instincts and she doesn't necessarily believe anything, but if she has a gravitational pull it is it is to
the center. Yeah, and she has ditched the the one thing that the public I think liked about Biden, which is his his advisors and his rejection of kind of neoliberalism that actually implementing the things that people said they liked about Trump's populism, you know, low unemployment. Yeah, you know, they hate the inflation from twenty twenty one that has taken like since then to like rattle its way out
of out of the economy. But in general, the strong anti trust stuff, anti corporate stuff, strump pro worker agenda, and she just refused to embrace that. It's interesting.
Yeah, I really don't know what a lot of it is. At the same time, they're going hard on this Cheney co oration and instead, yeah, well let's show people that. I mean, this is so Tim Walls. He was on the campaign trail. He was bragging about it. Let's take a listen.
The only thing more amazing is we got Bernie Sanders, Dick Cheney, and Taylor Swift all in the.
Same there you go, all right, So we got Bernie Sanders, Dick Cheney, and Taylor Swift all together.
And I'm like, imagine bragging about that. But they they love it. This change love it. It's it's it's uh.
We first heard it and appears he got it from Amy Klobachar, who also made this joke previously.
Take a listen to that she.
Has brought with her independence and modern Republicans. Right, you saw the event with with Cheney, you know, and it's only a matter of time where we're going to see like a bush going through western Wisconsin.
I want you to picture this Bernie Sanders and Dick Cheney together holding aside. That says Brant Paul.
Okay, so that's that they like it, Ryan, They love having Dick Cheney.
I will never understand that one. I don't know. Also, there's no way Bernie Sanders is doing that, but the fact that Democrats are floating that fantasy too. I mean, he has, he has, he has, he has said like Dick Cheney's a war criminal, and I don't support being involved with dic Chane. Guess what, Bernie, you are, and
they're going to keep reminding people that you are. The Only way that this is exciting for you is if you simply believe in taking power for power's sake, because then yeah, of course, if you have everything from Dick Cheney to Bernie Sanders, then that would that would suggest in the old world that you've got everything like you're going to I mean in the Democrats old understanding of the world. You're going to win with one hundred percent of the vote then, because that's far left to far right.
What they're missing is that so many in the middle don't see themselves on that spectrum anymore. Yeah.
No, I mean, I think it's an excellent point, and it's one that is genuinely concerning for what the future of Polo. And look, it's you know, you could say it's terrifying if Trump wins, right, he's got this coalition and that he's abandoned a lot of stuff they used to run on and it'll just be pure culture.
But like, isn't it equally terrifying that it's like, oh, Dick change. And I think it's honestly, I'm scared. And for for so long, to those of us who were recoiling at Liz Cheney being embraced by the Democrats, they would say to us, look, it's just Liz Cheney. It's not Dick change. Yeah, And we would say, yeah, but Liz, lizten they have the same politics. She didn't wage the Iraq War, but she has the same politics. As they say, no, no, no,
but it's not Dick Cheney. And now it's actually Dick Cheney. Yeah, who is somehow still alive?
Right?
Okay, test out this theory on you. I think she gets secked out for sex State.
What do you think? No? No, why not? Everyone says she won't get confirmed. I don't buy it. Why wouldn't Lindsay Grahmble for Dick Chan for Liz Cheney. Of course she would. I mean they're not. Democrats have been praising her for the last like three years. She's a hero. I think she keeps saying shes gonna put her repub in her cabinet. What do you think she might? I think the reason I say no so quickly is that I refuse to believe that I live in that world, but gave it out. Do you not see it? But
I might? Yeah?
Which Democrat realistically is going to vote against Dick Change?
Change? I think Bernie sure, I think she would get confirmed. I think why she says I want to republican my cabinet.
When Kamala has asked what do you agree with on Liz Chaney, she says Ukraine. Okay, so that's flagship policy. What's the real distance between them on foreign policy?
Not very much?
I mean, you know, Kamala's in the posty Rock era. She's never had to answer or vote for the Iraq war.
So on Gaza, I mean.
Like realistically, but they semi the same policy. Kamala says, what's the last show we did?
Iran?
Kamala says, Iran is our greatest officer. That's an answer straight out of a Cheney's mouth. I mean, I'm not seeing that much distance.
You know. What they keep saying quietly to the people who are critical of this whole thing is that we have not moved to accept Liz Cheney. You know, it's the Republicans who changed, and Liz change just supports us because we defend democracy. The second that you're like, hey, you want to be Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense, Yeah, then either you have moved or you have always been a warmonger party. Look, and I think that both are true.
Both in some ways are true, but they don't want to necessarily admit that.
Yeah, I'm curious just to see how it plays out if she does win, because I mean that that would really give away everything. And like I said, I really do believe she would get confirmed. Everyone seems to think it would be a fight how they've been calling her a hero for four years. And when they say you would have a Republican in your you know, a Republican in your cabinet. I don't think she means Secretary of Transportation.
I just maybe I'm wrong. RelA Hoods still alive. I'm not sure, but Obama named Rayla Hood, a moderate Republican, as Transportation secretary.
The other thing I kept thinking about is what did Obama do whenever he comes in? Who does he keep as the SEC deaf Robert Gates? And remember how much they touted that bipartisanship. They're like, look, we've got a Republican who runs the Secretary of Defense? And then who else did he pick? Ryan Chuck Hagel, who was a
Republican senator. So the president is there for some Liz Cheney, you know type figure to be the SEC daff By the way, she could be like, oh, her father he was a SEC deaf under I think it was under Reagan.
You know, he had a long time experience. She grew up around it. So I'm just telling people the case is there. You heard it here first. I think it's going to happen. I could be totally wrong. But I see it the Yes, staffing, The best thing about a Harris administration would be the war over staffing it because that would be the that would be this, that would be the civil war that we've been seeing over the last fifteen years, Yes, playing out in miniature in just
a couple of months at drop site. We're actually going to basically we've got we're putting budgets side just just for the transit, just transition, welding on the transition in others. And it'll be interesting if it's Trump, So yeah, well it will be a fascinating dynamic either way. With Harris.
Something I keep thinking about is if the likelihood is you're gonna have a GOP Senate, so are they even going to confirm a single one of her people?
Right? I mean for reals, touch to acting people.
Legally, what would happen is that she would almost be forced to keep the Biden cabinet because they have been in uh, they've already been confirmed, and she could bring them over. That could create its own really, yeah exactly, or you could have just actings, but that's really difficult for security clearance wise and all that.
So anyway, we're getting in the weeds.
But listen, folks, you know, preview of the show for two months from now, because that's what hopefully we'll be talking about either either direction. Staffing is so interesting about who they pick and what's going to happen. All right, Ryan break Israel down force, what's going on?
The reporter who's been breaking basically all of the news from either the White House or out of the Knesset or out of news camp buacra v over at Axiosis, the receptacle for all the leaks from both sides, has a news story that is kind of reshaping the politics. There is Palise and we put his piece up here. So basically what happened is over the weekend, the US finally sent a sternly worded letter to Israel, which then it appears quite clearly that Israel then leaked to Barak Ravid.
I want to read some of this just so people can get a flavor for it. They write, the humanitarian situation for over two million civilians in Gaza is increasingly dire. This is supposed to be a private letter. Despite the July transition from combat operations to special counter terrorism operations in the Gaza Strip, multiple evacuation orders have forced one point seven million people into a narrow coastal zone from Muwassee to dary Bala. Extreme overcrowding has put these civilians
at high risk of lethal content. Humanitarian implementers report they are unable to meet essential survival needs of aid dependent civilians. Trucks carrying humanitarian commodities, including perishable goods funded by the United States, are delayed at crossing platforms. I would encourage people to go and read this entire letter. It reads like some type of left wing screed that you would find me penning somewhere, but it is just fact after
fact after fact that says that. And it says that September was the worst month on records since this assault began a year ago for humanitarian aid getting in. And we also know that October has been worse than September. The situation is completely out of control. And they highlight the plight of four hundred thousand people, so you're talking two point seven million people tucked into this little, tiny enclave.
They highlight the plight of four hundred thousand people in North Gaza, that the IDF is ordering to leave North Gaza or be considered combatants and has completely cut off from water and humanitarian aid and starving, starving them to death, and the US is saying you can't do this, like
there is no military justification for this. And these four hundred thousand people, most of them are refusing to leave, first of all, and we have some reporting on this at Dropsite people who are who do try to leave or then shot at, many of them killed. But many others are saying, we're not leaving because we have been through this rodeo. We do not believe that there is anywhere else in Gaza to go that is safe. So
we're stuck here. This is part of and we can put up this next this next tweet, which is kind of a summary from the Israeli perspective of what's been going on lately. So this letter comes at the same time. And so if you're listening to this, this is somebody who's doing a rundout, says, so a rundown of kind of the international pressure Israel is under. One Italian prime minister says that they're no longer supplying Israel with any weapons.
You know, Germany is refusing to supply weapons since March twenty twenty four. Some of this is like slightly exaggeration, but this is the way it feels from the Israeli perspective. United Kingdom canceled around thirty licenses to supply weapons for France and Spain advocate for full weapon embargo. Five Canada suspended thirty permits for arm sales, and then six is this latest. USA threatens to halt weapons supply amid its
flight admit its fight with HESWELA. Then they quote allies with Ironcloud support unquote, Israel will prevail, prevail with or without you. So on the one hand, from the left, we see this letter going to Israel as what took you so long? Is a year in You're not serious, You're not actually going to do any of this. From
Israel's perspective, they see themselves completely isolated. The left wing perspective or not the I should it's not the left wings my perspective, The question of what took you so long made up most of the press briefing, like at the well, that's the question is how real is this?
And also if you put them on deadline, that's after the election, right, because we're twenty days to the elections. So reality is you're not doing anything until exactly the election.
And it seems to be right. And what that thing is, I think it's starting to become clear. But your question is the one that everybody who read this letter immediately asked, was what took you so long? And this was also asked of Matt Miller. We can we can roll this from the State Department.
The Foreign Assistant Act says when it's made known to the President that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts directly or indirectly the transport of delivery of the United States mentor assistance. It does not have arbitrarily. So, given you are already saying humanitarian assistance is very low and putting in front of Israel a bunch of concrete measures on how to improve it, why are you waiting for another thirty days to implement the law?
Because we believe it's appropriate to give them a chance to cure the problem, and international humanitarian law does make exceptions for certain I give you an example. Dual use items is a good example. If there are the dual use items that legitimately could use could be used as a military purpose. Of course, governments are required to let those dual use items in which is not to say that they can use that exception as a blanket restriction on anything that could be used as a dual use item.
So there was a lot of talking around in circles at the press briefing, which you know, which was which combined like some stern words like yes, like right now, Israel we do believe is in violation of six to twenty II, this thing that says you can't send a military aid to a country that is blocking US humanitarian aid at the same but they say, wait, we want to give them a moment to cure this. The context for this, like you said, is okay, thirty days is
after the election. What's going to happen after the election? And I think we're starting to see that, So Control Room, Sorry, we'll skip me for now. I had a couple questions that I think are interesting but are not exactly on this particular topics. Finished this topic first, if we could
jump to D five. This is Senator Lindsay Graham talking about a quote unquote day after plan that is starting to be developed kind of absent the Palestinians between the US Israelis and some of their golf partners over there. And I think you're going to start to see this coming too focus, got it?
How's the time if you're ever going to do it to start a dialogue with Saudi Arabia about the day after, right.
But the Saudis have also been very care that what they want in return that there needs to be a viable, sovereign, independent palace then the state which the israetis recognized.
They want two things for them to recognize the state of Israel. They want a defensive agreement with the United States. Saudi Arabia and the United States would have a mutual defense agreement like we have with Japan and Australia. In other words, the United States would go to war for Saudi Arabia. That requires sixty seven votes in the US Senate Center. Blumenthal is a democract trying to get the votes. I told NBS a year and a half.
Ago that will be a heavy lift, but I will try.
But these Radis also have to want to recognize an independent palaicy in state.
They're not going to do that.
An independent sovereign nation called Palestine with security guarantees for Israel to make sure there's no future October seventh, It will be more like an emirate than it will be a democracy. NBS and NBZ at the UEE will come in and rebuild Gaza, they will reform the PA. They will create an enclave in the Palestine that can live in peace and harmony with Israel. They will stop teaching their children to kill the Jews. I deradicalized, I demoted how.
They teach it.
Yes, literally, So what's going on there? Yeah, So the key phrase there is from from Graham if you pick this up, was quote called Palestine. So this morning Barack revived had another piece and this this goes into the the the context of what we're talking about here. Basically, Ron Drmer who is UH and some top officials over at the UAE met with Anthony Blincoln and presented him with a with the proposal that you basically just heard Lindsey Graham layout. That was Lindsay Grahams was about a
week ago. This is this. This is putting it down in pay per form. And what they what they asked Lincoln to do was perhaps after the election, to present it as a US plan that the US has decided that this is the way to go forward. And the plan sidesteps the idea of Palestinian statehood because as as the report lays out, Yahoo is stridently opposed to any mention of a two state solution, that any any idea that Palestinians would get any version of statehood in this
plan is something that net Yahu rejects. Yet he is still working with the UAE on moving forward with this plan. And so that's where it goes back to Lindsey Graham's idea of quote unquote called Palestine. So what that means, basically, as he said, it would be an emirate, so it
would be something under the UAE. Is that Yes, So basically, the US, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, who knows who else would get in would get in and they'd say, okay, we are we're getting rid of a boss and we're getting rid of the because Israel wants the Israel doesn't want to even approve of the Palestine authority being involved in this, and they will create some other mechanism that
they will call independent. They will call Palestine and the UA and Saudi Arabia will offer the guarantee, the security guarantees, and then they'll be They'll they'll offer the funding. The US will fund it as well. Uh, and Israel then have to withdraw, but it will not be remotely sovereign. Uh, and it will will be the sovereign u AE. Well, the whole thing's fake. Yeah, yeah, that's the I think. I think I'm just trying to get so you're trying.
So basically the way for the way for Israel to agree to it is that it would have to have no real sovereignty, but it would have to be called sovereign.
Look, this is nation building at it's absolute worse, trying to impose. First of all, I've lived and notice what we haven't talked about, Yeah, Palasini, Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I've lived in the golf. The golf, they don't care about Palestine. Okay, now, the people, but the leaders themselves they don't care at all.
Period. They've gave up a long time ago. They wouldn't even open their mouths that they have to deal with it.
Oh absolutely, you know the actual people there who live, they definitely do. But the actual leadership they care less that. They just want to be rich, live in London. That's all they care about. But so this is like a thorny problem for them for them to if you have to consider this, to impose like the rule from the UAE onto people of whom they have like no relation to.
Both.
Yeah, they may speak the same language, that's about it. They frankly like disdain and already look down upon that's a recipe for disaster. What do you think is going to happen. You're gonna have massive insurgency, You're going to have like the funding for it. It will be like Afghanistan two point zero in terms of trying to impose this like fake form of government with allies, partners and all of this other onto for And if you were Hama, like why would you even accept that? You would just
fight against now this new and curtain. The only things that would do is bail out Israel because they're the other ones who don't want.
To be the auto and Isue won't even accept this right, which is which is well, Yeah, what's delusional about it is that they still have this idea that it's the textbooks that is that's creating like the hostility and the conflict. Every school in Gaza has been destroyed by Israel's assault on Gaza. What you're talking about textbooks? They're blowing up
all of the schools. If you talk to Palestinians live in Gaza and ask them about the textbooks, some will say, yeah, there actually is some like cringe worthy stuff in there
that should be like edited out. But the idea that the resentment is of Jewish Israelis comes from the textbooks ignores the fact that they've been getting bombed for a year and starved to death and that and pushed into an enclay where they're like infectious disease is like spreading out of control, Like the material conditions are creating the resentment.
And if you print a new textbook that is filled with propaganda about the virtues of the Israeli state, you don't even have a school left standing where you can hand that textbook out to students. Like it's so utterly divorced from the reality on the ground that you wonder, you know, when when is this going to when is
this going to actually clash? Yeah, and we really let alone the fact that you know, so many bombs have been dropped on kaza Uh that the unexploded ordinance itself will take decades to remove before you can even do the reconstruction.
What this just reeks of me is like imperial you know, agenda right, like imposing rule, drawing state line, all these things we use. Supposed guess this is some and it might actually even be worse because this is it doesn't even involve any of the people who supposedly.
Would rule over. And my guess is we will see something like this.
Absolutely I agree with you, this is a most likely outcome. But the point is is that in the twenty first century it's not going to last. As in the power the only the amount of force it would take to enforce something like this is not I mean, it is within the realm of.
Possibility for the US.
It shouldn't shouldn't be that we have no interest in doing this doesn't mean I guess that we wouldn't get locked into it, but it's it would turn into a multi decade quagmire. The current it would just be completely unsustainable.
Yeah, and they basically it would just have to shrink the population down to which was what they're ultimately trying to do. Shrink the population down to a quote unquote manageable size. I think we can if people want to see my exchanges. You are with the States right now, we can say tomorrow it's like we're running a long time. People can check out the drop side of twitter feed. Check out the dropside twitter Feed. It's there. Okay, plagiarism
set it up for us. What happened? Ryan Kamala Harris wrote a book when she was a district attorney called Smart on Crime. Yes, she had had a co author on it. I can't remember the see something. I can't even remember the guy, the guy's name or the person's name. So Chris Ruffo ran basically the book through plagiarism defection and also gave it to like the guy who's known as like the Plagiarism Hunter and an Australian guy. He found a bunch of we can put this first element
up the scround. He found, you know a ton of evidence of plagiarism. Yeah, what we'd understand is plagiarism. Like some of the most hilarious examples would come from John Jay. So John Jay College put out a press release about a program that they were doing. It's like a two or three hundred, two hundred word press release, and the guy or the person the author clearly just copied and pasted the press release, dropped it into the text and
did not put it in quotes. Sometimes. What happened in a lot of these examples there was a citation like according to John Jay cop or according to whatever, you're still supposed to rewrite the words.
Yes, that's exactly that for anybody who's ever been through a college. What's crazy to me is quote sole long passages directly from Wikipedia not only assumes the online accuracy, but copies its language quote newly, verbatim without citing a source. That's pretty bad. That's like as if any college freshman you're I wouldn't know if you get expelled over that, but like you're gonna get it. You're gonna have a problem. You're gonna have a little talking to from profess.
The other bad stuff is that they noticed that a lot of the plagiarism that the book does comes from the Wikipedia footnotes. So it's either Wikipedia itself. Yeah, and so you can just tell how you know the research is being done all right reading here, Oh, I don't want a copy from Wikipedia. Let me let me click on the foot.
Somewhat related and then right, it's anybody out there's ever had to do it. But look, it's obviously a terrible look.
And even in terms. Yeah, go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, like fundamentally, substantially, like, do either of us care that a ghost written book was plagiarized? I think we probably don't. Like we don't. We have probably such a low opinion of our politicians. Correct that.
I mean, you and I know the inside process. I know multiple politicians. I also I know the people who actually wrote their books. Those people I have a little bit of familiarity with. I literally have friends who have written politicians books. It's kind of funny.
And most politicians I don't know about. Most lots of politicians don't even read. Oh yeah, absolutely the book let alone having had a hand in actually writing it. Now it's still Kamala Harris's response, that's true. Thing, she put her name on the book, and she did not put the fear of God into the ghost writer to say, don't plagiarize any of this and get me in trouble twenty years later when I'm running for running for president. So therefore, like she is responsible, I also don't care.
What I do care about is the media's response that's for thisarticularly the New York Times, which has been the worst offender response to it. So notice the headline conservative activist seizes on passages from Harris' book. So the story, well, you know you got to be the subhead too. Yeah. A report by Christopher Rufo says the Democratic presidential nominee copied five short passages for her two thousand and nine book on crime. A plagiarism expert said the lapses were
not serious. So starting with the headline, they what they focus on is what Chris Rufo is doing, which isn't the point. Who cares? Like, who cares what Chris Rufo is doing? I don't care what Chris Rufo does all day long. It only matters if he gets something right. Chris Rufo sezes on lots of things. Should it be
a headline in the New York Times? Every time Chris Rufo seizes on something absolutely insane, So it's already slanted to begin with, like either either the Time should write an artic about it or not, and if they decide to write an article about it, the article should be that you know whether or not it is their plagiarism in the book. The subhead, which you're picking up on, to me is just it's offensive. Clearly they're trying to
minimize in that subhead five short passages. So by saying five, that's already wildly wrong, Like there's a whole bunch more passages that they found. By five, they're trying to narrow it to one little thing. By short, they're trying to minimize the kind of intellectual crime committed there. And then
a plagiarism expert said the lapses were not serious. That plagiarism expert has now come under fire and has said that The New York Times only shared with them a couple of the excerpts, not all of them, and so they cannot be they should not. They're saying, look, don't use me as a shield here. Yes, what's so stupid about that.
We had a joke back in my Daily caller days about any time that we would report something, the headline would just be conservatives on X, Y and Z, and you're on. It'd be like conservative pounds on Harris plagiarism accusations. Whereas, let's say it came from like where you used to work at the Hoffington Post, they'd be like, huff Po reveals Harris plagiary right, and it's like, look, it's a
very subtle form of media like bias. But it's also a little bit ridiculous because, as you just said, Ryan, you and I work in the news business. The headline here is Harris plagiarism revealed in two thousand and nine book, and then you cite where it came from. You can even add all this bs about some plagiarism exports, just that it's not that bad. Fine, you know all of that is color and that you should be filling out
the rest of your paragraphs. But at a very basic level, it's just very telling that their news judgment is conservative activists seizes on passages from Harris book. It's like out of a meme of what the what the actual thing is. And then if you read that subhead, it says copy five short passages or two thousand and nine book, A plagiari and expert said the lapses. We're not serious. What do you take away from it? It's a conservative hip
piece and it's actually not that bad. How many people actually read the story very few, So the headline stuff had you know, in the news business, that's just kind of how it works. Is all designed to convey fundamentally a partison message and what is supposed to be a news story. That's the problem. That's media bias in a nutshell, that's how it works.
But if you read the story, even they can they continue to sort of basically play defense for for Harris. They like, they say, the passages called into question by mister Rufo on his substack platform, which is a little dig substance. Yeah, substack, Yeah, I like that. It involve about five hundred words in the approximately sixty five thousand word, two hundred page books. So what they're trying to say is like it's tiny dot, don't worry about it now, Like we're up to like a dozen or so. It's
like the five isn't even even right. Five hundred words of plagiarism is it's several pages? Like that's an action. It's like it's like a decent amount of plagiarism. And then they say then they say that she wrote the book with another author. Fair, that's that's like, that's her best defense. And in a review of the book, The Times found that none of the passages in question took the ideas or thoughts of another writer, which is considered
the most serious form of plagiarism. Instead, the sentences copy descriptions of programs or statistical information that appear elsewhere. So okay, fine, yeah, but just say that like instead of this, like this relentless kind of minimizing and defense of it, or just don't write the article. I don't understand what the why the New York Times feels like they have to write the I guess they felt like there's under so much pressure they have to write the article. Yeah, but then.
No, I agree with you, why even cover it? That's just news judgment. At that point, they had three reporters on the byline. One of them is the college and that's you know, look at structural level, it's kind of sad because you have the college and university journalist correspondent for the New York Times, who is now underplaying plagiarism.
So is that really who you want.
Covering college and university issues. This is why they shoot themselves in the foot when they try and go in some half direction and why everyone is better off, which is straight up news from these outlets.
Just report it.
But as you just said, most Democrats are just going to ignore it. It will be a talking point by Trump or jd Vance. But at the end of the day, is the election going to turn on this. No, I mean, I don't know. I mean it is like sometimes when you think about it, Biden's nineteen eighty eight campaign was sunk on plagiarism accusations from when was it his law school days or something?
No, well, well I forget it was even better. Yeah, so he was plagiarizing his stump speech, that's why, and his bio. Yes, that's why. That's why Jammy was this Neil Kinnock, the Scottish populous politician. Huh, and Biden was stole the Scottish politician's backstory. Yeah. There were a couple of times where Biden like accidentally said that his family had been like working these hill for thousands of years.
It's like, wait a minute, hold on, we're pretty sure, pretty sure that or maybe it was hundreds of years. Whatever it was, it was hilariously impossible for this irishman to talk about Scranton that way you have or delaware like you haven't been there for that long. Then it turned out that he cheated into college and lied and it was about a pattern. Yeah, but it was. It was his stump speech and his bio. If it wasn't, it's like, okay, you plagiarize how John Jay describes a program.
It's funny you plagiarize somebody else's bio and apply it to yourself. That's absolutely hilariously ridiculous. But for me, the New York Times should just take the l Times.
You didn't, Yeah, exactly, it's not an eld on a team.
You're supposed to cover their campaign. It's dumb. Her her co author screwed up. She never read the book. Rufo caught him.
Yeah, just you got them. You get to write Le's over. Yeah, just write the story and move on.
Now you extend it and and you make and you make it actually interesting to people.
Like me, yes, who are like, wait, why is it in k Why are you incapable of saying yes, this is obviously.
And then the right, which is already skeptical of The New York Times. And while we're on this, control rooms the I think it was it's d six. Oh yeah, can you pull that over, which is actually more relevant to this this block. So The Times is involved in this other uh kind of scandal here, which is a
completely manufactured scandal. So basically they ran they ran an opinion essay from sixty five doctors who had who have served time at medical facilities in Gaza, saying that they observed a pattern of the I d F sniping children in the heart and in the head, and they included three x raised cat scans that immediately sleuths on Twitter
used their armchair expertise to say, we're incorrect. The Times then reinvestigated everything that they'd been given by these doctors and put out a very strong statement that said, we have we checked the metadata. We gave these x raisins cat scans to new independent doctors. We also have photos of these children in question that match the cat scans. We are not publishing the photos because the photos are
too gruesome of these children. And also people forgot people are like a bullet hitting ahead, it would have shattered the skull all over the place. Like these are children who lived, Like that's why they're in the hospital. Like stop with your armchair.
Oh, like I can see some of this. There was some like listen, I never know. I don't know enough about bulleticks, right, bullets or any.
Of this other you know enough to get Yeah. I'm like, I don't know. Maybe I saw somebody who was like, oh it doesn't comport.
Maybe you know, doctor says this and that, and then you know I saw that and I'm like, okay, well but another doctor, a bunch of the people who signed it were like, no, this is actually a systematic thing.
I was assuming to get published in the Times, that there was at some level.
Hue of due diligence amount of facts, especially for something like this right which you know is going to ignite a firestorm.
And then they came out and they're like, no, we think it's true. And so what's what's interesting to me about this is who the Times feels compelled to respond to. Uh So, for whatever reason, they felt the need to write this weird story about the plagiarism and allegations and then write it in the way that they did. Then, when it comes to some Twitter cranks who were calling into question this article that they thoroughly vetted, they feel the need to do it like quick independence see what
you're saying, investigation always re yeah, exactly. Frozer lobby comes at them, they feel the need that they they better defend their stuff, and immediately they're out with this very thorough statement. You know what, Good for them, But I wish they would do that all the time. I see what you're saying with their infamous Screams without Words investigation that came out December twenty eighth of last year, which was alleging that they had uncovered systematic use of sexual
violence by Hamas on October seventh, extraordinary claim. Within hours, people were casting doubt on that and finding that, like people in the story, had contradicted themselves in previous ways. Within days there were articles written about that report. They didn't feel the need to respond to that at all.
It was only until months later, you know, when when the Intercept came in and did much more thorough not more thorough, but did invest our own investigation and eventually got a spokesperson for one of the kip A team on the record that then like okay, and and they gently update their piece to say, okay, this part isn't true. Just incredible. But it felt no need to respond the same way that they did to these Twitter cranks who
are doing trutherism around cat scans. So just New York Times is such a mess, it's the point, well said Ryan, all Right, thank you guys for watching, Thank you for having me. Ryan. I enjoyed being here. It was fun. Thank you guys are having a great job, and I'm not leaving this seat when Emily gets back.
And okay, hey Chrystal, I switched side. People freaked out about it. Honestly, get over yourselves. Okay, sometimes more comfortable, sometimes fun. Maybe we'll switch sides.
Again, you know, do whatever we want to round, sit where we want. Yeah, exactly. What's the point of being your own boss? We can't do it.
That's the whole point, all right, guys, I love you, appreciate you, and I will see you all tomorrow.
M