11/21/24: End Of MSNBC, Cenk Wrecks Lichtman Keys, Rand Slams Trump Military Deportations, Junk Food Industry Vs RFK, AOC Vs Mace On Trans Bathroom Debate

report there. The ICC has now officially issued arrest warrants for both Babing net Yahoo and Yo of Goalt. So we'll bring you those details. There's also some significant developments on the domestic front with regard to Israel policy in the Senate led by Bernie Sanders, So give you those details as well. My friend Torri is going to be here.

He has some very interesting reporting from inside the Kamala Harris campaign where basically the campaign chair, like the person who's running the campaign, doesn't really like Kamala Harris and was sort of like sabotaging her from within, which is not a great thing when you're trying to win the presidency. So she was a Biden loyalist, General Malle Dillon. She was one of the people who was always like sort of smearing Kamala to the press behind the scenes, trying

to undercut her. And so you have to stick with Biden because this lady's terrible and she's not electable. And then she ends up in charge of the campaign. So when you wonder why the staff never prepared Kamala, not that it's not also on Kamala to be prepared for this question of like how are you different from Biden

or what would you do differently? They didn't want her to separate from Biden because they're like Biden Biden people so he got some really interesting behind the scenes details there. I'm taking a look at Nancy Mace and her whole interest in the bathroom at the Capital facility, and also how Democrats can better respond to some of these questions about transgender issues. So a lot to say on that one as well.

to here. You know, We've got a lot of plans in terms of this is one of the only big Internet shows, maybe the only big Internet show that's.

struggling postcomlawst loss. You know, their whole sort of thing. The world has just been dramatically undercut. You also had the whole incident with Joe and Nika going down to mar A Lago. You and Ryan reported on the fact that even just an hour later, their audience were basically like, screw you, We're done here.

a bunch of people. In order to get you know, to compete with Fox News, they would have to be in primetime getting a couple million people at least each hour, and that's not happening because they started, you know, marketing themselves to a sliver of the public, which is you know, the best analogy I use is it's Stephen Colbert versus Johnny Carson, right, like you just everyone has more choice now, So if you can corner one demo, you can do

really well. But that means you have to keep them in the bubble because they don't want the content outside the bubble. It's comfort food. Fine, it's not how I like to get my news. But if you want to break the comfort food bubble, you're gonna lose your audience.

lost trust then, but it was compelling. People are tuning in to Rachel Mattow every night to know, like, Okay, what's the next shoe that's going to drop, what's the next piece of evidence that we're going to get in this grand conspiracy that they were spinning. And so even though, like I said, it was not accurate, it did make for great television and they created, you know, a bit of a liberal juggernaut and were out pacing CNN a lot of times because they were willing to lean into that.

You know, this time around, there is no grand conspiracy.

That whole notion has just been completely obliterated. So you know, one of the big problems they're going to face is now without having NBC News there to assist them in any sort of news gathering, and they don't really have their own news gathering operation.

It's like, what are you smoking, Nicole Wallace? I mean, probably nothing, that's the sad part. She doesn't smoke anything to be delusional, true, but I mean Fox, it's a lot of comfort food, yes, But even when you were on MSNBC, they had voices in that were from different perspectives because they knew that disagreement was good for TV.

CNN is starting to try and do this again. They really minimized it during the Trump years, but MSNBC has really become an echo chamber of like Feds agreeing with centrist Democrats about policies, just like nodding sagely.

into this liberal branding. It wasn't intentional from the executives at the top, but Keith Olberman during the Iraq War days, you know, was very He copied some of the model of like sports newscasts, you know, and some of that like that energy chuckerty and yeah, and he really you know, captured a moment and so his ratings really blow up.

They lean into that. Rachel Maddow comes down of you know that she was regular guests on that show, she comes out on that she and then so they just sort of lean into, Okay, this is working for us, or we're just going to keep going down this path.

And I think the other big mistake that they made is in that twenty sixteen Democratic primary fight, rather than being the venue where these things are really battled out and where you really have both sides of that Hillary versus Birdie divide represented, instead of that, they overtly sided

with Hillary and the Democratic establishment. And you know, they wanted to keep their access and that was important to them and their business model, and ultimately MSNBC, in the grand scheme of comcasts, is like a little blip on their bottom line, so they don't even care that much about the ratings, and you know, Hillary is more acceptable

and more comfortable for them. Were prestigious to be aligned with these forces in the Democratic Party that have power, but in the in the in doing that, they also shut themselves off from not just the half of the country that isn't Democratic, but they also shut them off themselves off from the part of the party that was like young and rising and energetic, and made themselves adversarial to you know, that wing of the party as well.

So now you're slicing down your potential audience even further.

come from the Bernie Sanders left. It came directly from the Hillary Clinton campaign trying to blunt the Bernie Sanders movement and using these this you know, very academic language and these niche identity issues as a way to smear Bernie and his movement as being sexist and racist and is not being truly progressive because all they care about

are these broad based class economic issues. And you know, that was effective in a sense, It was effective enough that Bernie felt the need to respond to some of that in twenty twenty. But yeah, that's the the identity issues have often been used, and certainly were used at MSNBC as a way to virtue signal as if you were on the left, virtue signal as if you were progressive, while maintaining all of your corporate goodies for the darna

class and increasingly affluent base. It's funny people were having this identity politics debate online and Matt Iglesias pointed out, not the biggest Matagalasis fan, but he's correct about this. He's like, well, one way then identity politics was quite salient is that Biden picked Kamala Harris because of you know, pressure from Jim Clyburn and you know, sort of promises that he had made on the campaign trail about diversity.

So he ends up picking this vice presidential candidate who had no demonstrated track record of electoral success and had in fact been rejected in the Democratic primary. And you know, I pointed out, yeah, that's true, but take note of where that came from. That didn't come from the left

of the party. That came from Joe Biden and the centrist So now in the you know post mortems to then turn around and try to blame the Bernie Sanders left for the identity politics that you all invented and used and weabinized against the Bernie Sanders left.

but also to just ramp up. And so you get a lot of people, a lot of different channels together and so whatever that endedy is going to be, there'll probably be a lot of cable channels and to be in a much better position.

large teams, production teams, you know, huge overhead costs. That business model just doesn't really work anymore, you know, as your rating slide, and then more importantly, as cable companies start to ask themselves like is this really worth it for me to be paying you the cable carriage rate? That is what they really depend on in terms of

their budget. So yeah, they're they're in for it because now effectively they're basically in the same business set we are, and try to figure it out with this giant behemoth and all this overhead and all these overpaid like celebrity hosts that no one really cares about or wants to hear from, and so it's going to be difficult for them. Put let's put some of the specifics up here on the screen about what the concerns are internally and how

this was all delivered. So, they said, the prospect of being separated from NBC News raised news has raised alarms among journalists at the company because MSNBC and CNBC routinely share reportage contributors and war and because much of MSNBC's daytime schedules filled with correspondents who are affiliated with the more traditional NBC News, not the opinion programs that are MSNBC's most watch properties. Let's put the next piece up

on the screen. They say that they could also have to consider changing their name and familiar markings, so they may not be able to hold on to that NBC part of the MSNBC or CNBC name. Let's go and put the next piece up on the screen. So they describe the new company as a quote well funded startup. These people said indicated they would have a presence in Manhattan, but noted that executives were not certain at present where the corporation would be based.

his show in just a bit. Yeah, Like, they don't have the will to lean into what people actually really want other than a pretty small slice of the public that wants to eat up whatever Nicole Wallace they're serving day in, day out. But that's not a lot of people. It definitely exists, but it's not a lot of people.

And so yeah, I mean, you can be a well funded startup and you can figure some of this stuff out if you're smart enough to and if you're actually if you have the political stomach for quote unquote platforming all of these debates. But that's the question for them.

has to say at all. Well, Splitzer monologue, large production overhead, like you know, they have other revenue streams still, So this is yeah and the other thing. So let me show you this club, because to me, it just demonstrates. This is Mike Barnacle who was weighing in on this poll that came out about how many people now, oh my god, get their news from social media and from YouTube and other, you know, other places other than cable

news and newspapers. And what's evident to me in this conversation is that they really have never thought about this, Like they don't get it at all. It's like a foreign world to them that they've never had to grapple with it for the first time. They're like, holy shit, I got to wrap my head around what is going on over here.

life now. This is representative of something larger that's going on and not just like a niche online bubble sentiment. And that's why this election you flip into being the podcast election. How successful that strategy was ultimately for the Trump campaign. I think it's the exact wrong time to

learn that lesson. If anything, at this point you should be saying, you know, there actually is more going on there than I really thought so, but he's got to protect himself and believe that the people who are in his role it about home calling him are the ones who really get have their finger on the pulse of what's going on out there. Yeah, it's amazing, Yeah, incredible. All right, let's take a listen to Mike Barnacle and how he was grappling with us.

make one point effectively. And so yeah, some of what's happening is TikTok and YouTube shorts like these very short snip is that some of what's happening or you know, people on Twitter or whatever, but also some of what's happening is actually really long form and the medium enables you to do whatever. Now, I have personally become very disenchanted with alternative media because I think a lot of it is slop, propaganda junk has in some ways worse

incentives than mainstream media spaces. So I'm not going to act like this is all but it's all great that like there's a transition intependent media, because I think there's a lot of problems there as well. But it's striking to me how little they have interacted with or thought

about this world. And part of it, especially on the MSNBC democratic side, part of it is that the left alternative media ecosystem all sprung up around Bernie Sanders and since they have total like contempt and disgust for that movement and think that it's like a bunch of irrelevant,

you know, like useful idiots for Trump or whatever. Since they have total contempt for that part of the party, they've always just you know, overlooked it, dismissed it, thought it was unimportant, And now suddenly the check is coming do and they're realizing like, oh shit, this is the world we live in and I have no idea what to do about that.

they get to know TV personalities, whatever else. But everybody wants way more authenticity now, meaning like if you want to put Mark Barnicle in front of people dan in day out, it's probably going to have to talk about what happens sometimes because in like YouTube, TikTok Instagram world, people just want to trust more than anything. Like they'll listen to a socialist tell them the news, right, they just want to trust the person like they want to

hear that. Here's what I'm saying, Here's what I believe. I trust that you're smart enough to make your own mind up about whether it's true. Yeah, and that's not the model that they operate on, and it's not clear to me. I mean, we see this at other corporations that just you know, one place I think continues to not quite get it. Probably get in trouble for saying this, But the Hill like still doesn't quite understand what to do with rising, right, because they don't understand.

absolutely dedicated to. They're central to making never Trump Republicans, which basically only exist in cable news green rooms, central to the Democratic Party strategy. They're central to helping Joe Biden hold on to power long after he should.

Even after that debate, they're still out there running cover for him, trying to keep him in, and then ultimately, you know, being part of blocking any sort of a democratic process so that Democrats could have chosen a candidate who may have been better equipped to go up against Donald Trump, like They're at the scene of every major Democratic Party crime over the past let's say decade, and so for them to still think that their news reporting

and their commentary and whatever helped people to understand the world during this time period, I mean that's why they're ultimately that's why their viewers have just completely fled because not only did you not help me understand the world, but also you've just exposed yourselves as being just complete liars, where you said the things that you thought we wanted to hear when it was for you about the threat of Trump, and someone who thinks Trump is genuinely a threat,

I think that by going down tomorrow Lago and just instantly bending the knee like that, they also undercut the seriousness of the threat for those of us who are saying that, because it makes it look like all of us are just out here like saying what we think people want to hear. So in any case, I think you know, they've they've in a lot of ways made

their own bed, and I think they're in. I do not think we will once we will ever again see Joe and Mika have the level of power and influence that they did during the Biden administration or previous Democratic administrations, but especially during the Biden administration and during the first Trump administration, Like I think that era is completely over.

how Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Report shaped Republicans. Yeah, shaped conservatives. Just these media, these media outlets, these formats, they shape the way Republicans acted and behaved. And you were just making this point about never Trump Republicans driving messaging in the Democratic Party partially has a response to the content on MSNBC. But does that sort of I mean, did Comcast see part of the benefit of keeping MSNBC around is having a little bit of sway on the left?

really hurt Comcasts that much. On the other hand, I think that's a big part of the reason why they ultimately made the decision they did in twenty sixteen to be all in on the Hillary establishment side of the party, because that's also the part that you know, the executives are comfy with, and that's the part they wanted to ascend and ultimately since MSNBC for them was mostly sort of like a prestige play, like you said, having Cachet

being a voice in the room whatever. You know, even if the ratings and the energy were on the side of the Birding movement, and they could have done better from a business perspective, I think they could have if they had leaned into that or at least had those

voices present at all on the network. They didn't really care that much about the revenue because it was so insignificant to the overall corporate bottom line that they would rather just try to elevate the part of the party that was most comfortable for them and their class interests. So to me, that was the biggest significance of having

the large like Comcast brand. On the one hand, you would think the fact that they don't have to care that much about small changes in revenue, etc. Would be a benefit, but it actually ended up being you know, a detriment in terms of having a you know, a robust discussion within the Democratic part and hosting all of those voices and being able to continue to serve some of the younger parts of the Democratic Party that were

more interested in this left populist direction. I do think that it's possible if Kamala wins, because this is kind of like a prestige play for them. I do think it's possible. I Kamala wins, they don't actually make this move, yeah, because then they you know, they continue to have access.

You know, it's not a problem for them in terms of like, you know, with the Trump administration coming in now, Comcast has to worry about their own corporate needs with regards to its administration and MSNBC out there with host saying Trump is hitler and he's a fascist and all of these things like that. Can become a problem for the larger corporate entity in terms of avoiding you know, regulatory backlash and the government being weaponized against them, which obviously

Trump is willing to do. So I don't think the timing here is an accident. And you know, I suspect if Kamala will never know, but I suspect if Kamala had won, they may not have made this move because the prestige place still would have made sense for them in the grid scheme of like their corporate goals.

So this was hilarious. Jank Euger went on Piers Morgan. Actually, my heavy Kyle was on there as well during this show, but married.

the keys always know it is true. Like in this election, almost all of the people who had been at all reliable in the past, like all of them got a rite sales or is now retired, which we didn't talk about. Who put out the Iowa poll that had Comelon winning by three and would she end up in that state loser by thirteen? Yeah, So you know, just a little sixteen point miss.

If people have an accurate sense of what their neighbors are going to do, maybe that ends up helping you understand what's going on. And they're better than traditional polling methods.

can put this up on the screen. So Wally Shahid, who was involved with the Uncommitted movement, which ultimately you'll recall, like you know, Wally and others they backed Kamala, one of people like we're very clear eyed about the threat

of Trump and all those things. She tweets him and says, I probably won't be able to stop the shod in Florida when Shawhead gets deported FAFO, which is f around and find out so this supposed like liberal, you know, humanitarian type figure who was opposed presumably to the Trump mass deportation policies the second that things don't work out

her way. First of all, rather than ever blaming the Democratic Party for any fault on their part, she singles out this Muslim man and is excited, expressing her glee that he could be deported under a Trump administration. And she doesn't stop there either, Emily, So let's put this up on the screen. This one was to me in.

women for ours? What am I missing? And to me, it's so noteworthy here that, of course the demographic group first of all, like doing this whole like demographic slicing. I obviously I think is girls. Put that aside. But the demographic grip that actually voted for Trump the most was white men, and somehow they.

It seems she's going through it.

supposed to be universal values that you hold. And Rachel is not the only one that I've seen out there doing this, but she's one of the most prominent ones to just be out and out like I can't wait for you to get to be to be deported, which is just outrageously disgusting. So anyway, those are some of the things that are going on over in the.

five percent. Trump is, of course, claiming that his popular vote margin is a mandate and his electoral college margin combined is a mandate for him and his administration as they prepare to come into office in January, Crystal, and you know, listen, he won. Most people didn't expect him to win. Many people didn't expect him to win. He still has a popular vote margin. He was successful in

the battleground states. I do think, as much as the left was wrong about this election, that the right finds itself in a very precarious position as well, because almost fifty percent of the country voted for Kamala Harris, who was a terrible, truly terrible candidate. I think Alan Lickman not entirely wrong that some giant chunk of the country would have voted for Joe Biden because they are so either they're so genuinely afraid of Donald Trump or they

hate Donald Trump so much. This is not like the vibe shift. I think a lot of people are now seeing it as it's significant. There's no doubt about it. I don't think Donald Trump is wrong at all to be taking a victory lap. I do think Republicans should realize that it isn't as though the country has suddenly embraced Donald Trump warmly and brought him in and said we love you, Grandpa, like please guide us to a better future.

they weren't able to pull it off. And so, you know, Trump seems to be a bit of a unique figure. You had huge numbers of voters who voted only for Trump and then just left the rest of the ballot bank. Which was a phenomenon that Democrats saw with Obama, which ended up being a little bit of a canary in the coal mine for their own parties problems because Obama famously, while he's very good at getting himself re elected, he

was very poor at expanding the Democratic Party. In fact, the Democratic Party was really destroyed in rural areas under the Obama administration. They end up you know, losing the House, losing the Senate and then ultimately handing the presidency over to Donald Trump. So that was a warning sign for them that like, Okay, you've got this one figure that can really drive up turnout, and people, you know, give him this sort of like unique and special status that

doesn't necessarily translate to the rest of the party. So the other thing that I think, Emily is that while Trump was saying a lot of you know, the more extreme in my view, things that he's going to do in the administration, that the R and C they're holding up signs the same mass deportation now and certainly you know, characters like Matt Gates and RFK Junior and whatever, like, no one would be surprised that they're in this orbit, etc. I also think and Trump said things like i will

be your retribution. I'm going to suspend the Constitution. I'll be a dictator on day one. So it's not like

he wasn't saying these things. But I know among a lot of Wall Street people, I think among a lot of people in general, they felt like, well, it's just Trump and he doesn't really mean these things, because you know, we saw him in action before and he didn't do like the craziest things that he claimed he was going to do, so they were able to the fact that he's like, really dishonest and just makes a lot of

stuff up all the time. Ended up being a benefit because they could pick and choose which parts of what he was saying they liked and the parts that they didn't like because he's not serious about that peace and now, at least in the early phases of the administration, it is very much my sense that he was serious about all the things that he was saying, including you know,

we're going to talk about Elon and Vivek. I know it's been sort of floated that this is like a make work project that they're put on but to massively slash government spending and social safety net programs and all of these things. I don't think that's really true, because the administration also appears to be looking at what powers they have to unilaterally make these sorts of cuts without Congress. So I think they're serious about that. Our friend Jeff

Stein has done a lot of reporting on that. He also we had him on early this earlier this week to talk about they're also looking at how they can use you know, existing code and doesn't require Congress to implement a massive increase in tariffs potentially across the board. So I think he's serious about that too. And you know, that's very likely to lead to inflation, a lot of like economic chaos in terms of the markets and all those sorts of things. So I think, you know, those

things should be taken seriously. And we've certainly seen what the personnel choices with regard to immigration that you know, the mass deportation plans, Trump reiterating that he wants to use the military and declare a national emergency to engage in mass deportation. Like I think that was that was true as well. So the Trump people seem to have had this feeling that like and this mandate for a truly like revolutionary type government like Reagan in eighty four.

And I think there's some part of the populace that voted for that and wants to see that. And I think there's some part that was just like, you know, like prices were lower and let and there were fewer wars under the Trump administration. I'd like to get back to that, and didn't actually sign up for like Matt Gates and all of like the whole program that is now being put into place, or.

and smaller. I think it's very significant that Donald Trump won the popular vote, especially after all of the law fair I think it's very significant after that he won the popular vote after January sixth, like all of these things do absolutely kunt like it's not. I think there is a vibe shift of foot. There is like a cultural shift of foot. I don't think that this is obviously mathematically plainly, this is not a Ronald Reagan nineteen

eighty four type of mandate. And if you look at Florida in particular, Florida had two very interesting amendments that voters were deciding, Amendment three and Amendment four. They had to get to the sixty percent threshold right in order to pass. So this is weed and abortion. Enshrining these

into the constitution of the state and recreational weed. And what's really interesting about this is most of the headlines have been, Okay, these amendments failed, well, they failed barely so in a state where you had these pretty dramatic shifts among different demographics towards Trump, Trump handily, Republicans are doing great, Rick Scott wins. All of that happens, you also almost have voters. I mean it was really really close on abortion and shining it into constitution.

of the vulnerabilities. But those vulnerabilities are still there, and Democrats have a lot to work with if they can rebrand. It's obviously a very very big if.

And the opponents to this constitutional amendment ran ads saying, this is going to codify into the constitution a right for transgender girls to play in girl sports leagues, and it's going to codify a right for undocumented immigrants to get drivers' licenses. Like they you know, they did the whole list of like the you know, conservative like the scariest things imaginable that can happen. I thought the trans

piece was especially important. It was approved overwhelmingly. It was you know, not even close, so it was like, you know, two thirds to one third effectively, even with that sort of messaging being run. And at the same time, New York is the state in the country that moved the most to Trump, eleven and a half points that it

shifted towards Trump. So you know, I just would like, it's easy to project on the population that, Okay, well they must have wanted like Matt Gates's ag then if they voted for Trump, and they must have wanted Vivek to come in and slash two trillion dollars from the budget and elon and like get rid of you know, every social safety net program. You can imagine, because that's what we were broadcasting, we were going to do in advance. But I don't like, I don't think it's accurate to imagine.

And if there had been a few different decisions made on the Democratic side, you can easily imagine them being able to win. And then the projection as, oh, this is this massive rejection of trump Ism whatever. You know, it's still very much a fifty to fifty country. So what I would say is for the Democratic Party, the trends are death right. If that Latino realignment continues to happen, if the working class realignment continues to happen, then they're

in like permanent minority status territory. But those trends are far from settled at this point exactly. And Donald Trump is truly this sort of like uniquely charismatic political figure that you know, could be like Obama, where Obama is able to put together this coalition that actually included a lot of white working class voters that other Democrats are just not ever able to put back together again, that's

also a future possibility. So a couple of the things we wanted to share with you guys, so we could put B two up on the screen. This is I want to take a note here. So this is the approval ratings for these various Trump nominees after people have been read some like negative things about them.

of them underwater. RFK Junior minus eight, Lee Zelden, who's been put up for EPA minus fifteen, Chelsea Gabbard minus seventeen, Hegseth minus nineteen and no surprise, Gates coming in the worst here at minus twenty eight. So, you know, not exactly like a clear man for any of these appointments.

And then this was interesting to me as well, Emily, So as we talked about on the show earlier this week, as I talked about with Sager and with Shelby Talcott, Trump has affirmed his intention to use the military to help facilitate mass deportations, which, you know, armed military officers in cities going door to door into workplaces or whatever. You know, that's quite an image and not something that we've done before here, at least not in recent times

in this country's history. And Rand Paul has come out and said that he's very much opposed to that. Let's to listen to that.

military go rounding up undocumented immigrants is really interesting. And something that's very interesting about immigration in particular is polsters use a stupid word, their most static in terms of describing public opinion on immigration, which means we all remember during the Trump administration, one of the reasons Alexandria A. Kasio Cortez was going to the border fence and weeping is that public opinion had shifted throughout the course of

the Trump administration, like people got steadily more pro immigrant because they were opposed to, at least the version of what Donald Trump was doing that the media was telling. There was funny business going on there that people in the press were reporting that what Donald Trump did had not happened under the Obama administration, or they were acting like it hadn't happened under the Obama administration. So you have to take that with a little bit of a

grain of salt. But Rand Paul just said, it's a terrible image, like he was talking about in some ways the public relations of having the military. I think he's a poster on the substance too. The public relations of it is clearly clearly going to be more dangerous than I think some people in hardcore Trump circles realize that said mass deportations actually pull well, which is surprising given how negative the media coverage of something like a mass deportations.

I think it speaks to some people just like total discussed with what they're told is okay. So yeah, mass deportations. You're asking me about that, of course, like you're saying I shouldn't be in support of this, Like I'm in support of it because they've been told over and over again this isn't a problem. You're not allowed to care

about it. So I feel like that shows up in the polling when you actually see it done, if you're actually using the military to do it instead of we already have, by the way, militarized immigration forces, we have ICE, we have CBB, like this is these agencies exist. So I mean, I think Grandpaul is offering a very useful dose of caution to the Trump administration. The incoming Trump administration.

But the other important thing you had then that was a distinction is that you had a Democratic party that was unified against that view of immigrants and against the Trump total immigration policy, and.

critique that you don't have anymore. And I've been saying the whole time that I thought it was a mistake the way that the Biden Harris people tried to handle us of being like, you know what, we're going to do the hawkish border thing too, We're going to dare Republicans to pass it, and then Kama is going around talking about like how basically she's the one who's tougher on the border.

just was looking at some polling. Immigration is one of those subjects in particular where it depends so much on how you ask the question, because people continue to have very complex views on the topic where they continue to feel immigrants are you know, a net positive for the country and our core part of like American identity, and you know, there continues to be significant support for things

like a pathway to sit citizenship. So even on this issue, where I'm not going to deny that there's been a right word shift, I certainly think there has been a right word shift that which has to do with the Democratic Party position, also does have to do with the fact that there has been an increase in immigrant crossings under the Biden administration. But even there, it's not as clear cut as it is sometimes portrayed and depends a

lot on how things are presented. And yeah, people may you know, when you just say, like do you want to deport people, that's very you don't actually have to see those human beings and what that looks like or military in your city, in the workplace, whatever, and what that looks like, and that you know, can create a very different sense around the policy totally.

at the same time. So yeah, I mean, I think the Biden administration's policy was really worst of all worlds, where they know they swung the pendulum way too far in one direction by their like sort of bureaucratic tweaking and asylum policy and all of that, But then on the other hand, tried to lie about it, you know what I mean, So like, instead of just saying we're doing this because people are fleeing gang violence or trafficking or whatever, instead of just owning it and saying, that's

exactly why these you know, policies that we put in place immediately after taking office, a lot of bureaucratic administrative decisions that they made in the first one hundred days. Instead of owning it and saying what they were doing, they like lied about it, acted like it wasn't happening, and still claimed that they were being tough on the border and cracking down on the way. It was like, what are you? It's the worst of both possible worlds.

And I think that's part of why public opinion where it was during the Trump years. It swung so far because Biden just had probably the worst possible policy.

these next pieces because this is important as well. We have an op ed from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami in the Wall Street Journal indicating some of their plans for what they want to do with this Department of Government Efficiency. Jeff Stein was tweeting about this. We can put this up on the screen some of the details. They say they think that SCOTIS could open the door to unilateral spending cuts, meaning that they wouldn't have to go through Congress based on what they say is the

unconstitutionality of the nineteen seventy four budget law. He says that could be an absolutely massive pivotal fight. I think that is correct, And you know, the basic idea here is that they argue, yes, Congress has to authorize spending,

but you're not then required to spend it. So if the executive wants to come in and basically say, like we're going to slash all of these agencies and social safety net programs, like, we can unilaterally do that because we aren't obligated to actually spend the funds that Congress has authorized and appropriated. Let's put the next piece up on the screen. Also from Jeff summarizing this op ed, so he says, they gave us our first DOGE roadmap.

As I understand the key steps. Number one put DOGE people at each US agency, then use advanced technology potentially AI to have them identify thousands of regulations to cut across government. Number two, give Trump a list of thousands of regulations to cut and have him approve their elimination. Number three identify the minimum number of employees necessary to maintain each agency's core function, which should be lower. Ones two is complete. For example, Musk oversaw about eighty percent

reduction in x headcount. Number four cut the federal employees. Number five cut programs where Congress's specific spending authorization has lapsed. That includes things like VA health Care, NASA, and many anti poverty programs. Number six approve a temporary suspension of payments amid large scale audits. Don't really know what that means. Number seven assert POTUS authority to stop spending with out congressional approval by challenging that budget law we were talking

about before. All seems to be without Congress. And then go and fight whatever you need to in the courts. And this is another thing where I think when people see this, a lot of people's natural instinct will be like, Okay,

that sounds great, like government efficiency, like musk is you know. Personally, I think must like the idea of having the richest man in the world having who is, by the way, the I think largest Pentagon contractor are one of the largest Pentagon contractors in charge of just like, hey, do what you want, and by the way, has a bunch of legal issues with the federal government because of labor alleged labor violations and environmental violations and all kinds of

other things. Now he gets to go in and be like those regulations that I was running foul of, no problem. Let me make sure I'm getting my taxpayer goodies are coming to me. But my competitors or maybe I down like you know, and just the general thrust of if you are a plutocrat, the weaker the government is, the better it is for you, because that's the only entity that can really check you and your impulses and the things that you want to do as the self appointed master of the universe.

of what this looks like, it's another thing. Because the budget is basically defense, which you know, Musk is going to continue to get his contracts, so I'm and Trump has always increased the defense budget. I would be shocked if he did any different this administration. So it's defense, and then if you're not cutting defense, then everyth else

is basically like Social Security and medicare. The other items in the budget are comparatively like, relatively trivial, So if you're making massive cuts, you are almost inherently cutting those programs which are extremely popular and extremely important to the public.

of the party as possible, it's what they were ultimately voting on. Lost by one vote, and it's because Republicans got really spooked by the reality of how voters would react when things changed. Would they be able to actually implement a change that was better than what they'd been saying they were going to repeal and replace? Does the replace part of that? You can repeal regulations and I think a lot obviously I support a lot of that,

but how do voters react to it? It's a pretty pretty serious question that nineteen seventy four budget law in policy circles that has just electrified the nerds like going crazy over what you actually because it's really consequential. Yeah, the president can just I mean, if they operate on that, and I'm sure it would be a lawsuit no matter what. But if they start operating on that principle, there's so much that they can do. And that's partially because there's

so much administrative bloat. I mean, that is definitely part of it. But at the same time, the way that some of this happens, you know, they're going to have to make sure that there's an off ramp, and that is what seems less certain that they want to do that like for some of these programs, that there will actually be a way for people to adjust that isn't shocking and then translates into political losses.

the Trump administration did last time around. Emily, you've been taking a look at this, Yeah, I.

sort of being president. This is truly like the most powerful position he could find himself in here. So Lee was looking into the freak out that's happening and the effort to mobilize lobbyists starting to talk about advertising on a new media platforms, which is absolutely hilarious, like totally Joe Rogan is literally listed in the Fong story like you guys want to Bobby for what pepsi on Joe Rogan Show.

but but some others certainly. And yeah, that's the way that you buy influence, because if you're getting a giant paycheck from freedo lay or whatever, and then how critical are you ultimately going to be? So you know, they know that these people can be bought in the same way that the mainstream outlets can be bought as well, and in a lot of senses, not just I mean,

it's very clear. The connection is actually more direct because if you do work at a CNN or an MSNBC, you're not the one as a host who's talking to the advertisers. You're not the one doing the ad reads, whereas in many instances in these alternative media spaces, like

you're talking directly to these corporate sponsors. This is why we don't do any of this here, and why it's really important that we not do any of this here so that there's not even the appearance of potential corruption with regard to these you know, food companies or anything else that you might be shilling. And then not only are you talking directly to them, you're the one doing

the ad read for whatever it is. So you know, I think it is an intelligent influence pedaling strategy and we'll probably see some success.

them actually voting him. Through the second part of it, we just talked about Joe Rogan and independent podcasts. They call for shifting advertising budgets of major snack producers and processed foods. Don't just fund legacy media in the Beltwait press. Thirdly, they go with appropriations, and they note that congressional voices, according to Lee, can block RFK from implementing any of his policy goals by freezing funding for the FDA or HHS.

Similar strategies were used previously to force regulators to count frozen pizza as a vegetable ethic. Actual, Yeah, classic, many such cases, as Donald Trump would say, not entirely unusual at all, but obviously a very very core part of their ability to thwart what Bobby Kennedy Junior wants to do if he is confirmed as Secretary of HHS. And to your point, Crystal, it's interesting because his agenda is a patchwork of deregulate and hyper regulategulate milk, deregulate all

of these different like it's not just raw milk. He wants to deregulate different types of foods that he thinks are overregulated, and some of it is you get this like patchwork. This is the most disgusting part about our system. We were talking about, Elon, this patchwork that we're different. Loopholes have been carved out by special interests over time. So what we regulate what we don't regulate, especially in food and drugs, is so so inconsistent because we've just

been oh you want this in this bill. Sure, oh you want this in this bill, Like just concessions made over the course of decades that make absolutely no sense. So he wants to do a little extra regulating, a little less regulating, and it's like, where does that drive

with the Vivec and Elon. I think that's probably the most interesting tension in the entire Trump administration because they're all close, Like that's a group of people, Elon, Viveke and RFK Junior that have become a serious like that would say tightly nit part of the Trump coalition. And so I'm pretty curious just to in practice, in practice, when Elon and Vivek start making these recommendations to deregulate. Yeah, where does RFK junior fault if he's confirmed? And that is a very big if.

DA and the NIH. And you know, I'm the first to be critical of the revolving door and the corruption between those agencies and the businesses that they're supposed to regulate. But if you want to actually have food and drug regulation and you know, be able to go and do inspections and these things which are important. Mean, we just had this huge lost lifesteria outbreak at Boar's Head and Jaddi Coli and McDonald like, it's important that you have

as regulatory bodies. I think it's much more likely that you're going to get the libertarian like stripping away the regulations, getting rid of the employees, you know, letting people do what they want with ram hilk, which again, okay, fine if you want to, then you are those other pieces of adding in new regulations and keeping things out of the food supply and having a body that's able to go and do those inspections and make sure that that's

actually happening, because that also would some of that at least would would require acts of Congress as well, And as Lee indicates in this piece, I mean as whatever Republicans want to say publicly, like they are getting tons of money from big food and big AG and they're not going to want to give that up lightly. In fact, we could put C four up on the screen here.

Guys like Chuck Grassley, who obviously senator from Iowa. Corn very famously very important there, and the government's subsidizes corn production. That's why if you go in the grocery store, like most of the center aisles are just different ways that you can combine corn into different food items. He says he wants to meet with RFK junior. However, he says, I may have to spend a lot of time educating him about agriculture, and I am willing to do that,

so grassly skeptical. A bunch of rural farm state Republicans who are very much like I said on the take floor with Big agg and with you know, big food, are going to be pretty skeptical of making any big changes. That doesn't mean that they won't necessarily vote to confirm RFK, but then if he actually wants to come to them to do anything, that is a whole other can of worms.

the greater conservative world. This first started with cultural issues that became very disillusioned with the Chamber of Commerce in corporate America and now have no relationships with those prior supporters, donors, allies, and have sincerely come around on the question of food and drugs. But when I asked the source, like, are there enough people to even go into the government and give him staff, person was like, no, there's a lot of appetite, but there's not a lot of actual and

power that genuinely believes. And we can put this this is C three, I think up on the screen. This is some polling. We can put this up on the screen. Voters disapproves, disapprove of recess appointments. They disagree with Trump nomine's controversial statements, and some of that is related to Robert F. Kennedy Junior. This is voters disagree with various statements made by HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Junior.

And if you're looking here at some of the like most this really is crystal some of the most controversial stuff that RFK Junior has said that's being pulled here.

actually going to happen. This is why I think putting him at AJHS is honestly terrifying, because while he is skeptical of anything that is mainstream science, including Settle signed like the measles and the polio vaccines were a great benefit to society, and to suggest otherwise, I think is

deeply damaging. And to have someone in a piece of position of power who believes that is quite scary and yeah, to be an AIDS truther in this like that's that is so frightening to me and potentially damaging that you could have someone like that in a position of power. You know, this crazy thing is that about like COVID

nineteen was ethnically targeted. The new one that I like is that he had a conspiracy that actually was the Trump administration that developed COVID nineteen as like a bioweapon.

still very much so. And that's where it's like, I was curious why I asked this person, you know, and this is a person is a longtime Capitol Hill senior staffer, like does this exist even in like professional Republican circles, like A people who are comfortable with the anti corporatism of RFK Junior, and then B who are willing to sort of put up with some of that. No, like that just is not like the middle of that. Then diagram is not big enough that you get people who

are comfortable, you know, potentially being in a position. And this is RFK Junior. Also, he has to make his decision about what he would prioritize if he's confirmed, and as he's having conversations with senators, they're going to ask him about every single one of those. So he has to decide, you know, you are in this fantasy position that you've dreamed of being in for decades. Do you touch vaccines? Do you touch It's hard to see how he wouldn't, but do you touch aids? Like, what do

you actually do on those topics? Good luck figuring that one out.

part in terms of the food and drug systems. But then it's like, Okay, well, do you want to you know, do you want to nationalize some of these pharmaceutical companies. Do you want to do like what they do in California of having state produced insulin that can compete at least to you know, provide lower costs. Like, he's not interested in any of those sorts of things. So I find the his comments about corporate power, skepticism of corporate power to not be backed up with policy that would

actually challenge corporate power. So in any case, we'll see how all of this goes. But you know, many of the things that he believes in and he supports are you know, effectively a rollback of some of the most important advances in modern medicine that have helped to eradicate measles, have helped to eradicate polio, And you know, we could face another pandemic, we could face another situation where this becomes incredibly important and have someone who is skeptical certainly

of corporate profit motives. Great, but who is so credulous when it comes to any sort of like insane crackpot theory floated by Rando's on Facebook or whatever, is to me very frightening.

to their existing power. In four years. I genuinely like, if you're worried about RFK Junior, I think he'll be more powerful than people fully understand because of the regulatory control that you have as a cabinet head. But I think even then you just in four years, I don't know how much you can metaphorically grenade all of this. So we will see crystal. Speaking of metaphorical grenades, Bernie Sanders lobbed one on the floor of the Senate just yesterday.

my opinion. That is what the law says, mana President, According to the United Nations, according to much of the international community, according to virtually every humanitarian organization on the ground in Gaza, Israel is clearly in violation of these laws. Under these circumstances, it is illegal for the United States government to provide Israel with more offensive weapons.

We can put this up on the screen, Jeremy Scahill tweeting out this news, and he goes on to say that the ICC said there is reasonable grounds to assert both Natanyahu and Galant engaged in quote the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, which by the way, relates directly to what Bernie Sanders was just saying there, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other even humane acts. The warrant remains classified in part to

protect witnesses. He also points out Jeremy Scahill does is, of course, Ryan's partner over at drop site. This week, the incoming Senate Majority leader John Thune called on Congress who passed bipartisan legislation sanctioning ICC prosecutors attempting to prosecute Israeli officials. So obviously this is a significant move. It's

one we've been expecting for quite some time. You know, while there is no police force that can go out internationally and go to Israel and arrest and Yahoo, there are quite a lot of countries worldwide where he will now no longer be able to travel without being in danger of arrest. And for the Israeli Psyche also to have their prime minister now arrest warrant issued for these crimes against humanity is quite significant. But just to go back to Bernie here for a moment, like I said,

this relates directly to what Bernie was saying. He's pointing out, we don't have to even look at international law, which I think we should look at international law, but you don't have to. The US has laws on the books that says you cannot supply military weapons to a country that is blocking humanitarian.

pressed them as well. They said, we don't really know, We can't really say, we didn't really assess, and it's like, well, you wrote the letter, you laid down the benchmark, and now you don't know and you can't say. But long story short, once the election was over, oh lo and behold, we're just going to keep doing what we have been doing. So let me just put this next piece up on the screen and then Emily I'll get your reaction. This is D two. So Bernie did garner some significant support.

As I said, this is far too few, but you had eighteen Democratic senators and one voting present, but eighteen who voted in support of blocking those tank rounds to Israel. They were Heinrich herono Kin, Tim Kain, Angus King, Marky Murkley Ossoff. That's an interesting one because he is Georgia swing state up for reelection in twenty and in this next election cycle, so that's interesting.

progressive on some populist questions. He also obviously has a base in Georgia, so he has to you know, I think he's genuinely kind of centrist on other things. But all that is to say he has this thumb very firmly on the pulse of like younger voters. Yeah, you've probably noticed this too, and that's one of the things boomer politicians are confounded by when they look at public opinion polling on Israel. I think they totally missed in

the election. For example, You've talked about this in your monologues, like how significantly that either depressed the youth vote, depressed youth turnout, depressed youth support for Kamala Harris, or shifted some people to Donald Trump. And we can disagree with the reasons that they would have done that, but younger Americans are just see this conflict so incredibly differently because their experiences are post nine eleven.

the struggle for liberation in Palestine. The other thing with the other question with us off is you know, is this a guy who has presidential ambition who for him this vote is also you know, laying down a marker to distinguish himself on an issue that I think is going to end up being a litmus test in the future.

wrong calculation about how the politics of this work. And they're still in this old model where they think you just have to support Israel and that it's electorally damaging not to do so. And maybe once the election is over.

I never really thought this was the case, but anyway, this was a theory, right, maybe once the election is over, then maybe Biden, Look, Yolo, you've got only probably not that much longer time on this first, but certainly not that much longer time in the White House, like you can take a Firmer line, you can actually be moral

and do the right thing. But the White House was whipping aggressively against this measure from Bernie Sanders, including saying that if you oppose these weapons, you're basically hamas classic and also in this these talking points that Huffposts was able to get their hands on they also really undercut their public messaging that they want a ceasefire and talked about how now's the time for Israel to put the

pressure on and continue fighting. So, you know, even this public posture that they were supposedly in favor of ending the fighting and seeking a ceasefire is really undercut by the way that they were whipping against this. Chuck Schumer was also involved in pressing senators to, you know, back the continuing flow of military equipment to Israel. So you know, if anything, actually, I think what we know now is that the electoral calculation they did realize that they were

couldn't just be all in for Israel. They had to at least give some rhetorical nod to restraint with regards to this conflict. And now that the election is over, Biden can go fully, you know, fully embrace his I guess, genicidal instincts here and you know, not even pretend like he wants to seas fire at this point.

F fifteen fighters. So it's very rare that you're actually forcing members of Congress to go on the record on this question. And the Biden administration, to the point you were just making, was pushing so hard precisely because of that. It's not something that they want people going the record in the middle of the war to point out, because

that's just not something we've done historically. We've bear hugged historically, and absolutely for you know, Israeli politicians, Israeli voters to see this, I think does really change things going forward.

not running for like I can't run for reelection. He allowed that to go through, and that was noteworthy. Here we have Biden administration choosing the polar opposite direction. Noteworthy speech given from the Palestinian representative really, you know, laying things out about the double standards as applied to Israel.

you know, morally superior party. And when you're on there claiming you're going to be the best for the working class or the or the middle class. Was the language that Kamala use which I prefer working class, but anyway, we'll put that aside. When you're out there claiming that you're going to deliver for people in middle class, that's

what you're going to be focused on. But what they see is that you seem to be and certainly Biden the way he talked definitely seemed to be way more focused on NATO Aucus Ukraine and you know, backing Israel lessly.

not going to say it was the only issue. I don't know that it was determinative, but it was significant that the backing of these horrors undercut the Kamala Harris campaign and you know, helped to usher back in the next Trump administration. In my view, there is no doubt in my mind, and you know, people are not wrong to be horrified by what this administration has done, and now that the election is over, their true colors are only coming out to an even greater extent than they were previously.

Kakabi sees the West Bank. For example, I don't know that Trump will be the candidate of peace.

and the Smotriches of the world. Then you know, not that this is like a great difference, but the Biden administration was like Youoev Golan, who also is a monster and was just just you know, arrest warrant out for him from the ICC as well, but he at least posture like he was interested in some sort of a peace deal. So anyway, I think that's that's likely where we are headed wild. Yeah. Indeed, very happy to be joined this morning by my great friend and independent substack

journalist Torrey. You can follow him over at his Culture Fry's substack. Right to see you, my friends.

understood there's a Frankenstein nature to this campaign. So it didn't feel right, it didn't fit right, And you've done a lot of criticism of the consulting class. Jeno melly Dylan is one of these people who has an ad buying company. So when a candidate places a television ad, Jen O'Malley Dylan or someone like her is personally enriched

by that decision. In a campaign where television add as were maybe not decisive, and Trump going on podcasts and the Bros spear the man of fear and seeming like a man of the people. Somehow, when that was working, Jeneal malle Dillon and people like her are incentivized to not notice that trend. They are being personally enriched by putting her on TV ads again and again.

see the polls, we can all see the polls. We know as a change election, one of your biggest jobs is to try to make the case for why you would be different, and you're unable to do that.

for Democrats. But even keeping on General Malley decision, General O'Malley Dillon, which is a decision Kamala harrison't seem to have to make, but went with anyway, what do you I mean, was there anyway for Kamalahirs not to hire General Mallee Dylan.

next in line and she'd be a disaster. That helps to rally the troops and circle the wagon. So there is no real democratic primary process in order to you know, either pick a candidate who's different from Kamala or even just for Kamala herself to be able to go through that process and become a better candidate as a result of it.

this air of illegitimacy hung around the campaign. If she had had to fight and won, that would have conveyed a certain legitimacy on her campaign. I know, some folks are going, she's the VP. You know, a lot of voters left and right used words like coronation, used words like who. They did not like the way that Kamala ascended to the nomination. They wanted to see some fight, and Kamala's message that democracy is under threat was undercut by the not so democratic way that she got the nomination.

do in opposition of what Biden has already done. So it sort of would have rendered moot this question of how are you different, because you would have had a whole primary process playing out where people are explaining what their views are and how they do things different and what it would look like going forward.

was the most effective ad they tested. It got virtually no money behind it because of that pushback from you know, the Tony West of the world and the other corporate donors who were uncomfortable with that messaging.

a woman named Sarah McBride, who happens to be transgender. Now, Mace, to in a previous incoarronation when out of her way to explain how she supports LGBTQ rights, is at a very politically expedient change of heart, because in twenty twenty four, Republican politics cruelty pace, and none more so than cruelty

towards trans people. So Mace went on a self right as posting spree, performatively declaring herself to be the savior of women by policing the bathroom that one singular trans member of Congress might be allowed to use for her efforts at bullying. She of course earned raptures ovation from the Twitter Republican base. I'm sure the Fox News hits

are incoming. Maso is correct to send some democratic vulnerability on this issue right now, as the party enters into a round of recriminations in which the potential role of trans rights in their electoral defeat looms quite large. Now central to this dem Party debate is the effectiveness of this particular Trump campaign ad, which dominated the airwaves in battleground states.

ever ever been provided with surgical care. Also happens the law was on the books and enforced under the Trump administration as well. Second, though the ad seeks to paint Kamala as were focused on these fringe issues than on the things that will improve the lives of the vast majority. That's what makes the tagline so deviously brilliant and memorable. She's for they them, He's for you. So how effective

was this ad? And to be honest with you, you can kind of paint the data any direction that you want to. For those who claim it was really damaging, there's the simple fact that both campaigns thought it was effective. The Trump campaign, of course, put tens of millions of dollars behind it. According to The New York Times, the Harris campaign and their affiliated super packs, they had big debates internally about how and whether to respond. We'll get back

to that in a moment. In addition, a poll after the election found that swing voters were most persuaded by the message that quote Kamala Harris has focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.

On the other hand, in the states where the ad was in heavy rotation, Kamala narrowed her national gap suggested that Kamala's ad campaign focused on economic actually outperformed the Trump campaign, which heavily focused on trans issues, since her ads did help to close the gap in contrast to the overall national environment. Furthermore, a Gallup poll found that of twenty two possible issues, voters ranked transgender issues at the very bottom of all twenty two issues in terms

of importance. Now, in all of the voter interviews I've seen, for what it's worth, I actually haven't heard the issue of transgender rights mentioned a single time in either direction. In addition, at the same time that New York State moved more than eleven points towards Donald Trump, the single largest shift in the entire country. Voters at the same time overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment which would guarantee transgender equality.

Critics aggressively ran against that measure. They claimed it would enshrine in the state's constitution a right for trans girls to play sports in girls leagues and to receive transgender surgeries without parental consent. Voters didn't care, though, and they passed that initiative in a vote of sixty two to thirty eight. So I am a little skeptical of the

notion the issue was the deciding factor. But regardless, Democrats had got to figure out how they're going to respond, and right now they're kind of in a freak out mode. The Times quotes former Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell saying that Kamma's failure to respond to the Trump attack ADS was quote political malpractice. But apparently it wasn't that the Harris camp didn't want to respond, it's that none

of the responses they tested to it actually really worked. Quote. Largely, the campaign decided the best response was changing the subject. Meg Schwenzweizer, the chief analytics officer for the Harris campaign, said the Vice President's team determined its economic message was the most effective answer quote in all of our quantitative and qualitative research on this AD, our best testing responses

pivoted to the economy. She said, these responses not only neutralize the attack, but actually move people towards us because they showed voters that the vice president did care about you. You know. To be honest, I think the campaign was probably right that the best thing they could do in the moment was just try to change the s, because you can't respond to these attacks with a clever messaging strategy or targeted ad, you have to respond with a

completely different narrative and different world view. You see, the reason these attacks on transgender people have any resonance whatsoever is because they do fit into Trump's narrative, his story of the world. In that story, immigrants and cultural elites are destroying your communities, your way of life. Democrats are in league with those cultural elites who are ideologically driven by weird cultural fixations like transing your kids, letting homeless

people shoot up in your driveway. If the Democrats don't offer a different narrative to compete with that worldview, then they will end up hopelessly caught in the trap that the Republicans laid, just as the Kamala Harris campaign was.

should not enjoy equal rights. After all, if both parties are in agreement that transgender people are a real problem, then it must be the case. Right This third approach is the worst of the lot, in my opinion, is proven by the Biden Harris response to a similarly difficult and likely more potent issue of immigration. Democrats thought they were so clever embracing border hawkishness, abandoning a pathway to citizenship, and their previous defense of the character and benefit of migrants.

Comma Crode about how Trump blocked their efforts to be aggressive border hawks. This approach ultimately was a complete disaster. It only served to help shift the public right on the issue and to provide the Trumpian narrative that immigrants were bad and a massive problem for the country. More credence, capitulation, and acceptance of right wing narratives only fuels those narratives.

The only way on of this trap is to offer for a broad counter narrative that is more compelling than the Trumpian story of the world, because it is not, in fact immigrants and cultural elites who are screwing you. It's economic elites. It's the plutocrats who rigged the political system,

bought the media, hogged all of the economic gains. Those plutocrats and their political puppets love to use wedge issues on vulnerable groups like migrants and trans people to break the working class apart, because a unified working class is their greatest nightmare. And that is exactly what Trump Nancy mace elon musk at all. That's what they're up to now. To my great shock, a Democratic representative, Jim McGovern actually did a solid job of articulating this message.

the rich get richer and everyone else gets screwed. My friends on the other side, they want to blame trans people. Guess what. Trans people aren't the ones raising people's grocery prices big corporations are. They want to blame immigrants. And here's the deal. Immigrants aren't the ones denying health insurance claims, mister speaker. It's the billion dollar insurance companies that do that on a daily basis, and they want to blame woke this and woke that. What's woke about thinking special

interests should not be able to buy tax breaks. What's woke about telling Chevron and Exxon that they can't dump toxic chemicals into our air and water? What's woke about thinking it's wrong to give tax breaks to billionaires while the rest of us get screwed. It is time for us to get serious about fixing this country and making

sure it works for everyone. And instead, we have bs bills that allow the new administration to go after any group who disagrees with the government and shut them down so my friends on the other side can keep doing whatever the hell this is. Good luck with that.

actually handed Mace's provocations pretty well. She flipped the script on the claim that Mace was protecting women and girls and also pointed out on Nancy Mace was clearly just shamelessly grifting for fundraising dollars.

who assists and who's doing what. And so the idea that Nancy Mace wants little girls and women to drop trout in front of who an investigator, who would that be in order because she wants to suspect and point fingers at who she thinks is trans is disgusting. It is disgusting, and frankly, all it does is allow these Republicans to go around and bully any woman who isn't wearing a skirt because they think she might not look

woman enough. People have a right to express themselves, to dress how they want and to be who they are. And if a woman doesn't look woman enough to a Republican, they want to be able to inspect her genitals to use a bathroom. It's disgusting and everybody, no matter how you feel on this issue, should reject it completely.

tell a good story either. You also got a deliver to add credibility to your narrative frame, because if voters feel like you are actually delivering for them personally in a way that is tangible, that they can see and feel there'll be a lot more forgiving of cultural issues where inevitably there's going to be some disagreement. Bernie is

the perfect example of this approach. He was further left than common on virtually every issue, yet pretty impervious to the attack that he does not care about working class issues. He has endless credibility from his years of work, bolstered by a narrative frame in which the millionaires and billionaires use issues like trans kids in sports to divide people up and maintain their power. Andy Basheer, twice s elected Democratic governor of Kentucky, offers another really powerful example of

this approach. He defeated a Trumpian businessman back in twenty nineteen by running a populist campaign centered around defending public education amidst a mass teacher strike, fighting for union jobs, and affordable healthcare. In office, he is really delivered. He brought significant investments into the state from the auto industry in particular and high paying union jobs, and he's communicated constantly with the public about what he was up to

and why it was he was doing it. In a recent New York Times op ed, Governor Basheer wrote about how he was able to get re elected even after making some decisions and cultural issues that pulled as extremely unpopular in his conservative state. Quote. As governor, I have vetoed numerous anti LGBTQ and anti choice bills, yet I

still beat mister Trump's hand pick candidate last fall. That happened because even if some voters might have disagreed with the vetos, they knew the next day I would be announcing new jobs, opening a new health clinic, or finishing a new road that would cut twenty minutes off their commute. They knew my focus and effort was on their daily needs, and that our gains as a commonwealth would help every single one of our families. He goes on to say of his decision to veto anti trans bills, quote, I

believe all children are children of God. And whether people agree with my decision, they know why I'm making it, they know where I am coming from.

person's theoretical use of this bathroom wild stuff. It would not be hard at all for Democrats to point out the dirty game of distraction that Republicans are playing. In fact, congress Woman Electromcbride herself is doing her version of that, putting on a statement saying quote, I'm not here to fight about bathrooms. I'm here to fight for Delawareans and

to bring down costs facing families. When Democrats really prove that by ditching the big money donors and rebuilding the party as a working class party, it will be manifestly self evident to all that the Nancy Maces of the world are nothing more than shameless, self promoting enforcers of the status quo. And Emily Nancy may seizing the moment here, you know, she seeson opening you had after the election. You had a couple of Democratic Congressmen immediately come out

and be like, I oppose trans girls in sports. There's been a lot of discussion about this particular ad, and I do think Democrats are kind of caught in a bind because they don't have a narrative worldview that would retrain people from you know, Trump's got his villains and you know, cultural elites and downstream from that, transgender people

are part of that narrative. You have to offer a compelling counter narrative and back that up with credibility that you actually are fighting for working class people, You're not just doing you know, lip service to it.

exactly right. Whether a person is a man or a woman quote can be different from sex assigned at birth. Quote is determined by sex assigned at birth. It actually goes up the lower your education level is, So that's roughly approxy for income. So people who are lower socioeconomic ranks tend to be less in agreement with the sort of AOC position on sex and gender. And that's something I think is really really an obstacle because it's not that this is the number one issue people are going

to the polls and voting for. I think it's a question of trust that if you are fundamentally telling them. Andy Basheer has been the key's handled this. He's such a good example. This is Andy Bisheer year ago he said, my position this has always been clear. I've never supported

gender reassignment surgery and they don't happen in Kentucky. But he's also been willing to make the case that you just outlined, which is a path forward for Democrats because it doesn't give in to this problem of trust, which is if you are telling people that what they are seeing they're not seeing that. You know, if you're telling them that there's this like very complicated academic theory about the gender binary and fluidity, and that these sports teams

like it's it's really no different. You might be able to defend the position of having like the sports question from the left, You might be able to do that, but you can't tell people is that they're wrong to see differences between men and women. And if your position is predicated on that, I just think you lose trust

with voters. It's hard to sell industrial policy when voters are being told that they're or what voters know that you think maybe they're big at it because they're seeing what they're seeing.

Like she literally didn't say the word transgender here. There's a reason they had to pull clips from twenty twenty. So why is Trump able to get away with holding incredibly unpopular positions in certain instances and the Democrats aren't. Why is Bernie Sanders able to get away with holding this same position, if anything, being to the left of Kamala on social cultural issues and she's not. And it's because people buying large like they don't really like the

sports team. Thing is they don't really care. Even Trump said, like, no one actually brings this up to me, right because it's such a friend it applies to so few kids, like it doesn't impact your life whatever. What they do care about is the sense that you're more focused on these niche things than you are about me. And that ties into like, you know, the conversation we're having about the war two, Like you are more focused on these things.

And so if you don't have number one, the credibility where you've actually delivered for people where they can see like, oh no, no, it's preposterous to say that Bernie Sanders or Andy Basheer is more obsessed with these issues than they are with like delivering for me and my family. If you don't have that credibility, and if you also don't have the narrative frame of guys, this issue is not core to you and your family. This is just

a distraction. And you know, we're focusing on these issues that unite people that are going to deliver broadly for you know, working class people across the board, then yeah, you're going to end up in a very difficult position.

And so you know, I think that's where Democrats find themselves is they have lost all credibility that they actually are willing to stand up to the donor class, that they actually have, you know, a narrative view of the world that points fingers out a villain does not transgender people and is not immigrants. Ultimately, they haven't laid out that, the neoliberal wing of the party hasn't laid out their

critique and has lost their credibility on delivering. So then these issues where they're at odds with some of the people that are trying to win over become absolutely more significant.

have weirdly turned this. I shouldn't say weirdly, but if you had predicted this twenty years ago, and like, what the hell have turned it into a class issue by saying like, this is what the elites are trying to tell you is normal, and Republicans in a way have realized that before Democrats, which is entirely surprising because of the way shifts are happening, but like it is ultimately

the reason this resonates is from that class framework. And that's to your point, something that Democrats can use that framework like to actually wrote about it. One ndred percent agree.

And I think part of why is even though, like you know, Joe Biden's track record is very corporate friendly whatever whatever, he had this image and this credibility of being middle class Joe from Stagrim, and people felt like they could trust that he was kind of, you know, looking out for the average Joe and Jane. And so even though there's all this like stuff, you know, swirling around.

I always Wrent Elizabeth Warren with the Black Lives Matter blocks behind or all this things like the most ridiculous performative wokeness you could possibly imagine. And the Democratic primary just happened where Kamlin everybody else was saying things like what is on camera there?

let's do something different. So even though Joe Biden isn't my model of like what they should be doing in the future, right you need a much more clear cut populist class war messages that names villain purchased the donor class, like these things have to happen if Democratic Party is going to build back credibility. I even think in Joe Biden you can see a little bit of a model of how this was able to be successful in the past. And you know, I've pointed out with Bernie a bunch

of times. What I just think it's really worth reminding that Bernie's is left on these issues as you can get like, no one would question his credentials there.

recently a lot on Twitter. I don't know if you've seen it. Back from the twenty twenty primary, the New York Times put together a map of which candidates in the Democratic primary were getting the most grassroots donations from different places in the country, and the whole map was

Bernie Sanders. They had to make a separate map, taking Bernie Sanders out of the equation to show some of the detail of like okay, but these other candidates like they're a little bit out performing this or that place. That's how dominant he was. And it was obviously not high dollar donors. It was like Starbucks workers and Amazon workers and delivery drivers, like teachers were one of the

major professions that were contributing to him. So he shows proves that, you know, yes, if you pulled his views on transgender issues with the population, you would get some results that were, you know, not favorable for him. But because he had some much credibility built up in such a clear narrative of the world, no one thought that he was going to be obsessed with trans bathroom issues

once he got into the Congress. And you know, if Democrats are able, which is a big if and very unlikely to happen, but if they're able to turn it around, then Nancy Mace is putting herself in the party in a much more precarious position where it's like, oh, actually, you all are the ones that just ran thirty five

million dollars on trans issues. You're the one who put out two hundred and fifty posts in thirty six hours or whatever about this bathroom You all are the ones that are actually obsessed with these issues and won't let people just live their lives.