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Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints.
Crystal.
Thank you so much for taking Ryan's place while he enjoys a nice vacation this week, a hard earned vacation this week.
It's great to have you here.
Yeah, it's my pleasure. I'm excited about the show we have planned. We've actually decided to do this what we're affectionately calling the Karens for Counterpoints panel, So we're bringing in some conservative ladies. It was actually my idea. I don't why I decided that I wanted to be out numbered on the show today, but bringing some conservative ladies to tackle some questions about you know, Jade Vance and
how Republicans should be playing abortion. I also want to get there weigh in on who Kamala Harris's VP pick might be should be who they're sort of most worried about being on the ticket, So that should be really fun looking.
Forward to that.
Lots of other news though, Middle East once again on the brink of chaos. We've had two major assassinations by Israel in the span of twelve hours. Doctor Tree de Parsi is going to join us to break down what this could mean and where we could be heading, and the answers are frankly terrifying. Also got new polls to dig into Project twenty twenty five in disarray, So lots to tackle this morning.
Yeah, absolutely, and producer Griffin has been kind enough to put this element a one for us to share.
Some folks remember.
Some folks remember I left the Federalists a couple of months ago and joined Unheard, and the goal all along was to launch a new show called Undercurrents, and it's up, and so a lot of people have been asking, like, what's the best way to support it? And I just first of all blows me away that people even ask that. But the best way to support it is to go to Undercurrents dot tv and you can grab a subscription there. You get the whole show premium features with Q and
a extra segments. Gotta get you on, Crystal, that'll be a lot of fun, Crystal, Ryan Saga, a whole gang. Gotta get everyone on. But you know, it's just been a blast so far. The YouTube channel is undercurrent, so you can just go there find it.
You can subscribe.
That's the most helpful thing if you subscribe and watch the videos. So it's very very exciting. Never wanted my own show, but it's very cool to.
Have one, Crystal, it wanted you apparently.
I'm so happy for you, Emily, because you really are an independent thinker and it seems like you've landed in the perfect place to just be able to say what you want to say, have on the guests you want to have on the show. Is fantastic, So congrats to you and everybody go and support Emily over it Unheard.
Thank you. I appreciate that so much.
Crystal.
Yeah, Unheard is awesome, just super super independent and people with all kinds of different viewpoint so it's a great place to be. Thanks everyone for the support. Let's get to the show, because man, the new polls on the general election, which now is Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris continue to roll in. Let's go ahead and play this clip of Kamala Harris.
This was last night.
She's sort of talking about we're getting some previews where the messaging is going here.
So the momentum in this race is shifting, and there are signs that Donald Trump is feeling it.
You may have noticed.
So last week you may have seen he pulled out of the debate in September he had previously agreed to.
So so here's the thing.
Here's the funny thing about that.
Here's the funny thing about that.
Oh, he won't debate, but he and his running mate, she seemed to have a lot to say about me. And by the way, don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird? Well, Donald, I do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage, because, as the saying goes, if you've got something to.
Say, she's feeling herself.
Oh yeah, a lot of slagger there.
Vibe shipped from when it was Biden head of the ticket is like off the charts. There was Megan thee Stallion was there. They were dancing and not like us. You know, people were going crazy the whole place was filled up. You know, she's able to capably read a teleprompter with energy and mentality.
She can get to just the one sence.
It's amazing and she really does benefit like I want to say, like I do think on the stump off a teleprompter at these rallies. She is genuinely good. She's
better than adequate. She's genuinely good. She hasn't had to do any of the things yet that have been difficult for her in the past, the tough interviews where she gets knocked off balance, or not even really tough interviews where she gets knocked off balance, but just interviews where she gets knocked off balance, the debate performances that were an issue for her last time. But Democrats have totally
closed the enthusiasm gap. It seems crazy now that there was anyone who was arguing to keep Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.
And so she's got a real momentum that.
Is reflected not just in this you know, enthusiastic crowd down in Georgia, but also by the poles that are coming out which are starting to show her being not just where Biden was pre debate, but actually exceeding his performance even kind of at his peak quote unquote peak in this race. We can put this up on the screen. These poles that we have of the battleground states. Now, I want to say this is morning consult. They are not a highly rated polster, so you should always take
any poles with a grain of salt. But it's important to notice the shift in this pole from where they were with Biden to now where they are with Kamala Harris. So you now have Harris plus two in Arizona. Biden in this same pole never led in Arizona. You have Georgia at a tie. Biden never in Georgia, got it to a tie again in the same pole.
Michigan. This one's a little hard to believe.
Plus eleven for Harris. Let's take that with a lot of grains of salt, but same movement, same direction as the other states. Nevada Harris plus one, Wisconsin Harris plus two, and then you've got Pennsylvania Trump plus four, and North Carolina Trump plus two. Pennsylvania may be very relevant when we start talking.
About the deepsteaks.
There seem to be some indicators she may be moving in the direction of Joshapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, much to my chagrin.
But we'll save that for later.
But you know, Emily, what's your reaction to kind of where the state of the races, where the energy is and if this trend is sustainable for Kamala Harris.
You know, Kamala Harris Brand and I talked about this last week, had that incredible campaign launch back in twenty nineteen in Oakland, and so much momentum, so much coverage from the media, really friendly coverage from the media. There's a lot of energy momentum behind her campaign. Can she lead like actually as a leader an organization that a
campaign is, I think is a major question. There have been huge concerns with her, her sister's leadership of her campaign, Maya Harris leadership of her campaign.
She has a lot of eternal her in her office.
That's the scuttle butt is that she's a pretty hard person to work for, which can mean good things. It can mean bad things too, especially when you have highest turnover rates in your Senate office then your vice presidential office. This is something that has dogged her in recent years, no question about it. But what you noted with this Morning consolet poll is important because it's a shift from
where the numbers were with Biden. So these the sample size looks really small to me, but it's still the numbers with Biden versus the numbers with Harris. There's a very notable difference in some of these states, and it's going to be reflected on some of these other poles that we see as well. So I don't think that, you know, Kamala Harris is going to have the same A lot of people are using the word honeymoon. I don't think that's going to follow her into November, although
you can expect some of the same. Like you remember why the Clinton campaign shows the Javit Center for their h They expected.
Yeah theamily, Yes in the universe.
That that's going to happen again, no matter what, no matter how poorly this campaign goes for Kamala Harris, They're again going to start to set up this feeling of destiny and history. And so I think some of this theater will follow her into November, and this sort of momentum will follow no matter what.
Just because of that.
At the same time, I feel like you probably agree with me in this. I just think this is going to This race is never going to have anyone pulling away from the other. It is always going to be extremely extremely close. Most of the national averages, the polling averages are probably going to be within a couple points the entire last leg of this race.
Yeah, and then it gets the question, Okay, well, how reflective of these are these polls of actual reality? Because while she's outperforming how Biden has been doing in this election cycle in terms of the polling. In the last election cycle in twenty twenty, at this point, Biden was up by like nine points. These poles were showing a blowout for Biden last time around. Now you won, wasn't any kind of a blowout though, if you look how close and how narrow it was in the key battleground states.
So that's another question whether these poles are actually reflective of reality. Let's just put a couple more data points, new data points we have up on the screen. We've got a what is this Susquehanna pole out of Pennsylvania, and it shows Kamala Harris up by four points. That is actually the within their margin of error. Their margin of error is four points, So that's interesting. Also interesting, was the breakdown in the New York Times Ciena Pole
of where she is gaining specifically. Now this also put us up on the screen. This also really really take with a lot of grains of salt, because anytime you get into these demographic subsamples, it's even less accurate than the pole top line, just because you're dealing with smaller slices and smaller sample sizes in terms of you know, the number of people who are eighteen to twenty nine, the number of people who are in the Midwest, or
white college, white non college, whatever. But it shows significant improvement among young voters, hispanics, and independence. Interestingly, one of the she falls back with there are only two groups on here. I believe that her performance deteriorates over where Joe Biden was. One of them is elderly people, people sixty five plus. That kind of tracks because Biden had a like unusual strength with that group. That was where he was doing the best even as everything else was
falling off. The other one is with black voters, which you know, it's not consistent with what we see in other polls. That's why I say take it with a grain assault, but it is also very counter to the narrative and the identity politics expectations that have been set by the media.
Yeah, and again that happened in twenty sixteen too, and then we had this whole backlash against women who voted for Trump, which was a good chunk of the female electorate United States. And so I kind of wonder how many lessons are going to truly have been internalized and will inform decisions that the Harris campaign makes.
Down the line.
An open question because they should be careful with some of this. When you're telling people that it's just it's history, you have to do this for history, there can be backlash to that.
One thing.
I know, I wanted to note in that Susquehanna poll, Crystal is the the three percent?
What was it or no?
I think it was at seven percent for RFK Junior. That's a I mean, talk about momentum. Does look like the RFK Junior campaign in a lot of different polls just after Biden dropped out of the race. I know we talked about this at the time, but it just a lot of people who were in the RFK Junior camp, in the Jill Stein camp, were saying, we just wanted like a sentient Democrat to vote for it. That doesn't mean,
you know, seven percent is still significant. I think he probably will pull significant margins in certain states, and there's still time for him to you know, bounce back and be a ross perrot.
But right now that's that's not where this race is.
Yeah, the air is really going out of the tires in that campaign, and Biden dropping out was really a blow to it because the core promise of that campaign is, like, the core appeal is like, don't you hate those two dudes. I'm an alternative here, i am my last name's Kennedy. I'm different than them, I'm difficult to code partisan ideologically.
That was like the core premise of the campaign. So when you lose Biden, it also has become much more clear that RFK Junior is now taking more quote unquote from Trump than he is from the Democratic side, because those disaffected Democrats who were just like, oh my god, this guy is too old, I can't possibly vote for him again, they're coming back into the fold with Kamala Harris, you know the things that you were talking about before, Emily,
with regard to Kamlain, her poor track record of managing an office, managing a campaign, et cetera.
You know, in some ways, this.
Is almost like the best possible situation for her because she didn't have to build.
A campaign organization.
She just had to you know, they just had to change the name on the headquarters on the Biden HQ. She's taking over all the same staff. They've hit the ground running. I mean, I think anybody has to acknowledge it's been an impressive rollout. Yes, aided by the media, no doubt about it, but it's been a very impressive,
lightning fast rollout. You can see her favorability skyrocketing in ways that are completely insane, and she's got a really truncated timeframe, like there's not that long a period of time for her to be out in the public eye and remind people of why she you know, fail down of the twenty twenty primary, of why the Biden administration hid her after that disastrous lester Hold interview, et cetera,
et cetera. So the conditions are truly ideal for her, and I've come to see the frame of the election and part of why she's catching on so quickly and really you know, searching in the polls. The point now to exceed Biden's performance, even at his peak, is because I do think this is a change election, and as counterintuitive as it seems, with her being the sitting vice president, she feels right now like the change candidate Trump feels like.
And she's got that line of like, we're not going back, which feeds into that idea of like the change candidate, you know, we're moving forward, We're going to do something different.
In terms of the all important vibes, she.
Does feel like she's the new fresh face and the change candidate in an election where I think voters are looking for something different, So that can change. I'm sure Trump is going to make his own play. You know, these things are not static. Your opponent is going to respond. I do think the Republicans have been caught kind of flat footed in terms of how they wanted to deal
with her and how they want to frame her. But those things are all going to shift, and we got a long way to go still till November.
No question about it, No question about it.
Nate Silver throwing some cold water on some of the just some of the honeymoon, We'll say, just always fun to watch, I guess.
Yeah, So let's put this up on the screen from Nate Silver. So this is the overall polling average, which has them very close, Donald Trump at forty four point five Kamala Harris at forty four point one. However, his model has Trump significantly favored. So you know, Nate runs these simulations and it's like, okay, what percent of the time does Trump win in my electoral simulation and get to two seventy and what percentage of the time does Kamala Harris win? And it was like, you know, sixty
forty effectively in favor of Trump. Now, interestingly, he has Kamala Harris narrowly favored to win the popular vote.
But because she has.
Now remade the sort of you know, modern historic Obama sort of coalition of the Democratic Party, it puts Democrats back at a significant disadvantage in.
Terms of electoral college.
Whereas Biden, because of his strength with like old white people, had kind of erased that dynasic just fact, I'm not trying to be just very in us reality. Yeah, so he had sort of erased that dynamic. It's back in play now with Kamala Harris reconstituting that like Obama style coalition.
Yeah, that's a huge point.
She's going to have the ads that are going to run in Pennsylvania about her being on tape saying banning fracking. I mean, there's no CNN fact check or New York Times fact check or whatever in the world that can make that go away. It's her on tape, and it will be running constantly to Pencil of Ania voters. So those are going to be really difficult spots for Kamala Harris to find.
Appeal and build.
Obama campaigned very differently than Hillary Clinton, especially in two thousand and eight when he was in those states. And I don't mean Clinton in two thousand and eight, because Hillary Clinton also campaigned very differently in the two thousand and seven two thousand and eight time frame when she was in the primary. But I don't know that Kamala
Harris can pull that off. She at one point, you know, tried to push back on identity politics and kind of quickly discarded that and realized it would be more fruitful for her to lean totally into it.
I don't know.
I just I have a hard time, Crystal seeing her pulling off the successfully pulling off the right kind of Democratic Party messaging in those states. But obviously that's why she's looking for some looking at some of the VP candidates that we know she's looking at.
Yeah, well, I think the biggest knock on Kamala Harris and there was some reporting to suggest that, you know, in the sort of testing of her weaknesses done by the Biden team, this is what they came up with. It's not that she's radical left to liberal blah blah blah, which is what Republicans.
Are really leaning into an addition to a lot of other stuff.
But that's kind of like the core of the official campaign messaging, and she's too radical. The real knock on her is that she's nothing, That she's all over the place, that she's wherever it's convenient to be in the moment. And so you mentioned the fracking band, Like now she says she doesn't support that she was from Outicare for All she already had rejected, you know, moved on from that even during her own campaign back in twenty twenty.
That's to me the real weak spot for Kamala Harris. Now, maybe you parlay that into an advantage where people feel, like they did with Obama, they sort of see whatever they want to see in her and baby you can maintain that illusion through November. But she doesn't have certainly the political skill of an Obama. I don't think there's any doubt about that. And unlike Obama, she has a
much longer track record in the public record. Obama was so relatively new in Washington that it enabled this ability to project on him whatever it is that you wanted him to be. So she doesn't have quite that same luxury because of how long she you know, in the Senate, as an ag as you know, a presidential candidate, in the Biden administration, et cetera. Some of those things have to stick to you somewhere along the.
Line, speaking of attacks that Democrats really want to stick to Republicans at least, should we move on to Project twenty twenty five, Crystal.
Let's do it.
This is like you got to do your conservative explainer for me of what the hell's going on here?
Well, you know, it's funny because the media has constructed this amazing myth of Project twenty twenty five. That is, you know, Donald Trump himself recently said that there's some fine points in it, and someone did he say, absolutely ridiculous points in.
It that he doesn't agree with. That at all.
But basically, the Heritage Foundation is the premier think tank conservative think tank in DC. It is the biggest and most influential think tank on the right, and they've put out what's called their Mandate for Leadership since the ninete teen eighties, and it's like a nine hundred page book.
The Cycle Project twenty twenty five is what they know relabeled it because they also coupled it this year, which the part that you know, if I were sitting back and going to describe anything as a vast right wing conspiracy, they did couple it with this personnel recruitment search that a lot of conservative groups started doing and actually realized they had to start doing during the Trump administration. When you know, it's no secret the conservative movement has wanted
to like gut the administrative state literally for decades. The Heritage Foundation itself attacked Ronald Reagan for not abolishing the Department of Education in the middle of the eighties. So you know, they think they have a real shot at achieving some of this stuff with Trump, and some of it is going to be extremely unpopular with the American people. Democrats realized that and sort of took what was fairly commonplace. I mean, Heritage Foundation had been handing these books out.
They still are. They were at NATCON recently.
They had stacks of these big nine hundred page Project twenty twenty five Mandate for leadership books, just kind of handing them out. They weren't trying to be secretive about at all. In fact, they were trying to get these books in everyone's hands.
The other if you're gonna say.
There's a vast right wing conspiracy element of this is they teased a one hundred and eighty day plan for the first one hundred and eighty days of any Republican president who were to win in twenty twenty four. For a while, there were a lot of people in circles here in d C, Conservative circles in DC, Heritage circles in DC who wanted that person to be around DeSantis. It wasn't just about Donald Trump. So that's my basic because there has been to borrow a phrase, disinformation surrounding it.
Some of it is fine because it's partisan attacks from Democrats that are being constructed to win an election, which is a totally normal thing that both sides do. Then when it gets kind of parroted by the media, I think is where that's confusing, but it's fairly standard stuff. At the same time, fairly standard for a conservative movement group like the Heritage Foundation is not going to be
appealing on a mass scale. So that's my basic rundown before we jump into the news of what happened yesterday.
Crystal, Yeah, go ahead and break down the news, and then I can give my view of Project twenty twenty five, which is similar to years but different in some respects.
Right, Okay, So I'm excited about that.
Now.
Project twenty twenty five has become a huge lightning rod because Democrats, and I think smartly have realized they can pin this on Republicans running everywhere. They can create this myth of Project twenty twenty five and hanging around the next of Republican candidates Donald Trump. Trump threw cold water
on that right away. He was basically which is which was shocking because the Heritage Foundation definitely felt like they had done this with veterans of a prior Trump administration and people who would be staffing at Trump administration, probably saying people would be staffing you know, potentially Desanta's administration or any of these Republicans they felt like they were in good shape. So what happened yesterday, all of this really came to a head. Let's go ahead and put
b one up on the screen. So Roger Stellenberger at The Daily Beast first reported that Paul Dan's, one of the top guys at Project twenty twenty five, was leaving, and Stallenberger said, this meant that, you know, Project twenty twenty five looked like it was about to shut down. The Heritage Foundation then came out and said, no, Paul is leaving because our timeline was always that we wrap
these mandates for leaderships up after the election. And Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, said Project twenty twenty five. You know, we're extremely grateful to him and everyone's work on Project twenty twenty five and dedication to staving in America. Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policy makers of all levels federal, state, and local will continue so that the kind of mandate for leadership policy blueprint
part of Project twenty twenty five shutting down. But this like online portal where you can submit yourself to potentially work in a future Trump administration or Republican administration in general, the real state and local level still up and running. And again, like Chris, to the point where there is something that's you know, sort of weird about it or vast write when conspiracy about it, that's the part that I think probably a lot of people would look to.
So let's put B two up on the screen. This all started rolling down the hill yesterday. Susie Wilds and Chris los Nvita, they're the head of the Trump campaign.
They took a victory lap.
They didn't even like they didn't have to say a word about Project twenty twenty five.
They didn't have to do anything about it.
But they said reports of Project twenty twenty five's demise would be greatly welcome and should serve as noticed to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign, it will not end well for you. That is just like so Trumpian in tone and everything like that. So let's also move to well
before we do that, Crystal, this is B three. This is you suggested this Vox article on explaining Project twenty twenty five, which at one point there are more people googling Project twenty twenty five than Taylor Swift in the last couple of months. That was a real thing because it's been in so many ads. It's been you know, I've had like random people who don't follow politics that closely asking me like, Hey, what's the deal with Project twenty twenty five?
Should I be worried about it?
Blah blah blah, And yeah, my response would be its pretty standard conservative movement stuff with some new right stuff thrown in. For the better and the worse if you're trying to sell it to the American public. For the better, there's some interesting stuff on labor. For the worse, it goes in some interesting directions on social issues. But as you've kind of looked into this, what do you make of Project twenty twenty five?
Well, I mean, I think it's terrifying in the same way that like ideological conservative government is terrifying to me and frankly to a lot of Americans who are reading this and are like, holy shit, that's what you guys
want to do here. Some of the language is jarring, right, Like there's this line that says pornography should be outlawed, the people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned cators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders, and telecoms and tech firms that facilitate it spread should be shuddered.
So imagine Donald Trump doing that.
No, of course not.
But this is I mean, there's a reason why he has gone to great lengths to try to, you know, distance himself from this and say I have nothing to do with this. It's also interesting too because he never nams specifically what his problem with it is. It's just like some of it's fine and some of it is terrible. Well, okay, well tell me which parts are terrible? Which parts do you disagree with? About two thirds of the authors come
from the Trump administration. There were one hundred and forty different Trump administration officials who were involved in drafting it. As you said, I'm sure all the people who are involved in fact, I'm curious your view of like their reaction to the Trump you know, trashing it and all of that, because I'm sure they fell. Oh, we're part of the team. We're doing the work that's going to help this next administration. We're going to be in line
for jobs. He's claiming he's not going to take anyone on who was affiliated with Project twenty twenty five at all. So shockingly, I actually think the Democrats did a good job of messaging on this, because I never would have expected it to gain the popular attraction that it did. And I think part of it is just that the name Project twenty twenty five sounds really ominous and vast right wing conspiracy ish.
So there's that.
But the other problem for the Trump people is, like you know, with the jd Vance pick. The dude just wrote the foreword for the book of the Project twenty twenty five dude, and he said in that we have we could put B five up on the screen. He said literally in that forward. The Heritage Foundation isn't some random outpost on Capitol Hill. It is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan.
To Donald Trump.
So that also hampers their ability to say, oh, we hate this, we want nothing to do with it. Okay, well why did you pick someone who was so closely affiliated with it for your ticket? And you know, we'll talk more about this with with the lady, And I'm curious their view and your view as well.
But the two issues.
Where the Trump campaign really feels like they have a problem are abortion and Project twenty twenty five, and Vance brings massive baggage to the ticket on both of those issues.
Yeah, yeah, I don't disagree with that, although I wonder to what extent this will throw will make it really hard to keep using the Project twenty twenty five attack. I don't know, actually, because to the point about what Vance wrote in that forward, Heritage was taking money from defense contractors and big tech companies up until Kevin Roberts took over, and Kevin Roberts is very much an ideological
fellow traveler of Vance. I talked to him about this recently, and that's where the Heritage Foundation felt like, of course, this is a worthwhile endeavor that if we want any future Republican president to have a shot at enacting real conservative priority without being undermined by people who work in
A great example would be like the EPA. And that's a great example of why some of this would be terrifying to someone on the left, Crystal like they want to be able to make huge sweeping changes at the EPA. I would love huge sweeping changes at the Department of Education, that would probably be terrifying to you and Ryan, and it's hard to do that if you don't have the personnel,
which was a huge problem in the Trump administration. It would be a problem in any administration just because there aren't. There are a lot of people that want to do that, and we can get into why and all of that. But I do wonder about the future of these attacks, because let's play this is a crazy story. Let's play this next clip of JD Vance. Really, I just can't emphasize enough how important the sentiment that he's expressing in
this clip is. Because it is it has come to be widely adopted by people on the right, many of him Soccer, and I know this is very much what they see is the most important sentiment to bring to the table in American politics from a conservative perspective. Now, So this is JD Vance in twenty twenty one, and it was posted by the Kamala Harris campaign Rapid Response account on Twitter.
I think the thing that we have to take away from the last ten years is that we really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise
of power. I was talking about this with someone earlier today where you remember there was some threat that Congression or Senate Republicans made, if you get rid of the filibuster, we're going to do X, Y and Z, And you actually look at it, it's like, oh, this is this is not that interesting, Like we're going to like delve it on our promise life that we've made, right, you know,
you know this is this is the threat. If you get rid of the filibuster, we're going to do this stuff like they're talking about expanding the Supreme Court, they're talking about adding you know, to senators from heavily democratic places.
You get rid of the filmbuster will actually deliver it, do.
You know what?
We don't want to do.
So I think, I mean, look, I am a cynic about this and maybe even a little bit of a pessimist, but I think the challenge confronting American conservatives is that we have lost every major powerful institution in the country except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they've ever been. We've lost big business, we've lost finance, we've lost the culture, we've lost the academy. And if we're going to actually really affect real change
in the country. It will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class.
So Crystal, the reason Jade Vance's head is cut off in that video is because I filmed it.
I actually filmed.
That video because conspiracy, Yeah, of course.
But you know that was on Federal Stradio Hour twenty twenty one summer of twenty twenty one. Jadevance was on as a guest that's been dominant.
In Chris bud.
I'm scrolling Twitter the other day and see this video and I'm like, oh, someone pulled it, and then I looked at the account and I was like, that's the Kamala Harris campaign. They used that clip to say, clip to say, Jadvance endorse twenty twenty five Project twenty twenty five. What's really in that clip is Jdvance actually not. You know, it's long before Project twenty twenty five got even was
an idea. But what he's endorsing is the underlying sentiment of Project twenty twenty five, which is that the right needs to seize the reins of administrative power.
And that is something that is very real, very real.
Right, And so I think that clip gets into why jd Vance is struggling as a national candidate, and why his favorability rating has you know, really tanked and he was already the least favorable VP nominee in history, and all this stuff because that language and that sort of posture as a renegade revolutionary wanting to overthrow the administrative state and all this even like very specific, fake niche right wing online language plays very well in.
That circle played.
I'm sure people loved what he had to say there, but when you put it out to general public, people are like, this sounds extreme, fringe weird. You might say, you know, this sounds scary, and then again, when you have the dude, you know, writing the foreword for the Project twenty twenty five author's book, makes it very difficult to get your fingerprints off of what they have planned. So this has been my sort of take on Evans, and we'll talk to the ladies later about this as well.
But you know, in order in particular to overcome the misgivings people had about him from saying things like Trump maybe America's Hitler, for example, he really leaned into this right wing online influencer vernacular and posture, which served him well in terms of gaining clout and gaining like a national purchase in that subculture, but is very off putting to your average normy voter who you need to win
over in order to win a general election. So, you know, I am very much of the view that Vance was a tremendous mistake from the Trump campaign. I think Trump has to think he's a tremendous mistake at this point because of all the baggage that he brings the table and how little additive in terms of electoral benefit he
brings the table. If you wanted him to be involved with governance, you could have made him chief of staff, right, You didn't have to have him with you on the ticket, because the biggest danger for Republicans is that just like in twenty twenty two, they have this with and the sense of extremism and like they're you know, not in touch with the median voter in the country, and putting Vance on the ticket makes it much easier for Democrats to make that case and create that impression.
Yeah. I don't disagree with that.
I mean that talk about power like actually makes me uncomfortable and I have a lot of disagreements with it. But it's very commonplace in conservative circles here in DC, no doubt about it, although I still think Trump's number one goal in picking Vance was just to avoid picking a Pence. And you don't get a lot of options for people who are high profiled, successful enough that would certify the new.
Electors on January sixth.
So by Trump's standards, I guess it's probably still a success, but we'll see how or whether Jad Devince is a drag on the ticket. Ultimately, huge news, huge news out of the Middle East, just in the last several hours, Crystal, we continue to get developments, So let's move on to that segment.
It appears that Israel has conducted two major assassinations in the region with potential consequences that are hard to wrap your head around. The first was Fuad Shugar, he is the most senior military commander in Hesbola.
That assassination occurred in Beirut.
And the second was Ismael Haniah, assassinated in Tehran in Iran. There for the inauguration of the new Iranian president, and he is the top political leader of Hamas. Joining us to break down the context of this and the potential consequences, where we could be headed as doctor Tree to Parsi, he of course is with the Quincy Institute for Responsible state Craft.
Great disease.
Good to be with you again.
So what is your initial reaction to these astounding events.
Well, I think we have to assume that this is done by his role, given the track record of is we doing these type of things, particularly mindful of the attack that you also mentioned against the Hezbola commander. So if we assume that, we have to ask ourselves what the objective is here Beyond obviously the desire.
To take out Hania. They could have taken out.
Any at any moments he was living in Katat, They knew exactly where he was. The fact that they took him out while he was in Tehran on the day of the inauguration of the Iranian president, I think is designed to send a couple of messages. One of those messages is of course, that they are trying to undermine any opportunity that posess Kon's election would bring about for renewed US ivon diplomacy, something the Israelis have opposed since
the mid nineteen nineties. Secondly, is to send a clear signal to both Yvon and the different groups that Yvon is supporting from his bullag to the Hutis, to Iraqi militias, that they're not safe, they're not even safe in Yvon,
and that that Yvon actually cannot protect them. This is deeply, deeply embarrassing for Van, of course, particularly particularly if it turns out that some of the reporting that is coming out now is true, which is that he was actually in or very near the presidential compound when he was assassinated.
And then you have to ask yourself, So, if these Raelis are doing something that they know is deeply embarrassing to the Yvonians, they're clearly doing it because they know that that will maximize the likelihood that Yvon will respond, and that will been as a result and of course trigger and escalatory spiral, and escalatory spiral that seems to have been in the mind of Nataniel when he ordered this. If, of course it is Israel, but I think it's safe to assume that it is.
That's what I wanted to ask about next. How what do you expect in terms of the Iranian response? What could we be saying, what could we be seeing in the days ahead, in hours ahead, actually potentially from Iran as a plots its response to what happened just in the last twelve or so hours.
So I think contrary to the image or the image that has been presented of the Ivani leadership in Washington, I think it's quite clear that the Ivani leadership tends to actually be rather cautious and very calculating act.
That's part of the reason why it's.
Become such a potent foe of Israel and the United States. And we saw that in the response that Vanyas gave when the Israelis attacked Ivanian embassy in the Mascus to the consular compound of it. It was a very measured response to make sure that it inflict the damage on Israel, but not so much to the Israel would have strong grounds for further escalation, and it seems to have had some coordination with.
The Bide administration this time around.
However, I think it is much more difficult to count on that type of a response, that type of a calibrated response that is designed to strike back but without escalating, for that actually to be able to succeed, for a variety of reasons. First of all, this was an attack against Hamas Hezbolah and Iran within the span of twelve hours.
This likely means that the response would be a coordinated response with Iran and several of these different actors, which then, of course would be different from what we saw in April. Those other actors do not have the same discipline, nor do they have necessarily the same objectives in terms of we've seen clear tensions between the Hutis wanting to escalate much more and the Iranians holding them back. So I do fear that this has created a very very explosive situation.
Levannians are likely going to respond together with some of these other actors, and I think the Nataniel government knew exactly what they did, given the fact that we are now in.
A laying ducked period of the Biden administration.
Biden has proven himself unwilling and incapable of putting any pressure on Israel in the past, except in that instance when it came to the Syrian striking against Syria.
But this time around, perhaps you will.
Not even have that, and as a result, the risk of a further escalation that drags the US into it is much much higher than it was.
People Doctor Parsi.
One of the things that you wrote on Twitter, and your initial reaction to these assassinations was that this may be an attempt by bib Ntnyahu to box Kamala harris In. You know, it's still an open question whether she really wants to move away from the Biden policy with regard to Israel, but that's certainly a possibility, an ongoing possibility, and so layout for us your logic of how this could box Kamala hair In and ybb Netnia who would want to do that?
Well, first on the issue is as to whether she is moving away from Bida's pause or I think you quite right. We don't know quite yet, but I think we can point to the fact that both the body language and on a rhetorical level, there is a shift, and it's a rather important shift. Any substantive shift will have to be preceded by.
Such a rhetorical shift.
Now doesn't mean that the rhetorical shift automatically will lead to it, but if we were to see a substantive shift, this is one of the first steps that we would see. But more importantly, how does N'taiano preceive this given the fact that he will not.
Take any chances.
I assume that based on the conversation he had with Kamala Harris, what she said publicly, the body language, et cetera, he would be quite unlikely to calculate that Harris is not going to try to shift away, not just rhetorically but on substance, away from where Biden is man, which incidentally is not terribly hard.
I mean, bar is very very low right. So given that what.
Does he do now before she actually potentially becomes president, of course, is all assuming that she would win, I think one of the things that he would want to do is to box her in, create a crisis that forces her into the same type of a beer hug that by then voluntarily chose to adopt after October seventh, and by that crisis also take away the opportunity for her to have the initiative. She's going to be forced to react rather to be able to come in as president.
If she wins, of course, with a new policy and a new initiative, she will only be able to respond to him and the crisis that he has created, rather than actually being able to come in and decide, you know, essentially sends strong signals to Israel or what she would like them to do instead she's going to be responding.
And you know, there's already been some speculation about the potential for if is confirmed as an Israeli much obviously appears to be what does that mean for how it could backfire potentially if there is a Harris administration, if there is UH you know, going forward, it does look like this is something that the US and their relationship or our relationship with Iran. You know, there's there's a total this is a new situation. This kind of upends
the diplomacy efforts as meager as they were. So is there any chance that it backfires on Netsa Yahu?
You know?
And there are a million different ways that could happen. But even just if there is UH, you know, an escalation and the US is even more UH or even you know less, the public, the public in the United States is even less supportive of Netsya who's war effort. That puts politicians in a different situation too.
I think you're absolutely right, and I think on a strategic level, in the long run, we have seen a lot of these different stunts by Netannan backfiring when it comes to his long term interest tactically enable to gain some things, but in the long term, it has backfired. Even the attack on April one against the Consulate of Ivan in Damascus, I think backfired because it also forced Biden to finally actually put some red lines in front of Nathaniel, something that he clearly had not done when
it comes to Nathaniel who slaughter in Gaza. But nevertheless, in the short rum, I think it's going to unfortunately
have similar impacts as we've seen before. But I think one of the things that is happening right now is that it's becoming increasingly clear to an increasing number of Americans who don't want to see the United States go into more wars in the Middle who don't want to see the United States get dragged into wars, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere our tire of these forever wars, that the one country that is most likely and most intent on dragging the US into such a war is Israel.
It's not just you know what is happening in Europe, et cetera.
And I think this is also starting to become more clear on the conservative side, where I think support for Israel perhaps has been a little bit more reflexive than he has been.
On the Democratic side, for the last ten.
Years, so there is a big shift amongst the American populists. And I think if this leads to a large escalation and the American bodybacks come home from this war, then I think tactically, perhaps it had helped nathaniawe just wants to prolong his reign as prime minister.
Strategically, I think it will be very bad for.
Visual last question I have for you, doctor Parci Control room, if you could put the final element I believe we have at labeled C four up on the screen.
This was Jeremy.
Scahill over at drop Site News interviewed a scholar of Hebola amal Sad and, as this was before the assassination of Ismail Haniya, asked what a war with Hesbola could look like, and in part he said, listen, we're talking here about a much more sophisticated military organization, well over one hundred thousand fighters, well over that number, over one
hundred and fifty thousand missiles and rockets. He went on to say, from all the information I've been gas, it would actually lead to the unraveling of the Israeli state. We're not talking here about just a defeat for Israel like in two thousand and six, it would be the sort of defeat that would actually lead to its demise.
I'd love for you to react to that if you agree with that assessment and lay out for us in a little bit starker detail the escalatory spiral and where it could lead and what it could mean for the US in particular.
Wells, as was said in that interview, more than one hundred thousand fighters, we're talking about more than one hundred fifty thousand projectiles. We know that Israel's air defenses are not as impenetratable as many thought them to be, mindful of the fact that Ivani has managed to gets nine ballistic missiles through, as well as a much more sophisticated technological base.
For that fighting force.
Given all of that, and particularly if it then also means that the utes yvonne Ibaqi militias and others will be involved, it is no longer a question as to whether militarily where the balance ends up. It's whether a state like Israel can sustain such a conflict. And I think already seeing ten months into the war in Gaza in which the Israelis are not suffering militarily but nevertheless they're failing strategically and even tactically. How that has created
very very strong raptures within Israeli society. We've seen how the right wing there and very hardline elements have gotten more and more leeway, to the point of what we saw just in the last couple of days in which they were attacking prisons in order to be able to release Israeli soldiers that had been arrested because of the torture that they had conducted against Pastinian prisoners. And now
they have been released once again they won. We've seen how that country's gone more and more in a very very radical direction. Such a radical direction almost invites self implosion. This is at least part of the narrative exists out in the Middle East, part of the reason why they think that such a military confrontation with Israel, even if it is lost militarily, strategically, nevertheless, it will lead to
the collapse of Israel. Whether it's true or not, it's really impossible to say, but they're clearly are signs and support of.
That analysis given what is happening in Israel today.
Doctor Parsi, is always so great to have your insights and especially on such a consequential day.
So thank you so much, my pleasure, Thank you so much.
All right, you may be looking at your screen and wondering, Wow, there are four wonderful women here.
Why who is doing this to us? Just kidding.
We are joined by Rachel Beauvard of the Conservative Partnership Institute and an Estepman of the Independent Women's Forum. We have a huge panel that we are going to get into. I think there might be some fighting, we'll see, but before we do, we want to make sure we mentioned this amazing special.
I know you guys have.
Heard this, but BP free one that's the promo code for this thirty day free trial that is happening right now at BreakingPoint dot com. We got an amazing flood of subscribers after yesterday's show. You get the whole show together, packaged nicely in your inbox in the morning. It's a great way to start the day. Of course, I'm biased, but I love watching Crystal and Sager all put together perfectly as a premium subscriber myself.
So BP free one.
If you just want to try it out see what it's like, you can go to breakingpoints dot com log in Huge News cycle huge few months ahead of us with the election and then what happens after the election. So we will be there for all of that and you can try it free at BP free one promo
code at breakingpoints dot com. All right, so we are again joined by the lovely and As Stepman of the Independent Women's Forum and the lovely Rachel Bouvard of the Conservative Partnership Institute, both on the right, and we are going to get into big topics. Obviously cat ladies. We couldn't have these two on without talking about cat ladies. Will we'll get into that. We want to start that. We can put E two up on the screen. Kamala
Harris is on a swing state tour. She's looking at potential vice presidential candidates from Tim Waltz to Josh Shapiro. I kind of feel like Shapiro has the lead on this. We're going to get in a lot of social issue questions later with the panel, but let's just start. I want to toss this to you, Rachel, with Kamala Harris trying to put together the Obama coalition in some of these states, where she said things like straight up she
wants to ban fracking. That's going to be all over the air waves in Pennsylvania from now unto election day, as we said earlier in the show.
So is there anything she can do?
Is there any vice presidential candidate that could really be an advantage give her an advantage in some of those states? I know you've worked on actually how the right can start to both of you and as a Rachel both worked on how the right can start to make a sustainable coalition out of the gains that made with the Obama coalition. So what do you make of how Harris could potentially do that?
I think you're probably right that Josh Shapiro I think balances the ticket in that regard. I think he seems a little bit more moderate. He talks, I think, more to the moderate faction of the Democratic Party. But I also think that you have you know, I wouldn't sleep on someone like Mark Kelly, who I think has made his career in that sort of moderate vein. He also has a lot of political architecture behind him, right you know, he and his wife have built a pretty massive fundraising
and policy advocacy group on gun control. He brings that to the ticket. I also think he speaks, you know, well to these voters. He can balance Kamala Harris's progressivism a little bit, you know, by swinging to the middle. He's made his whole career that way. He's like the least inoffensive Democrat in the Senate, and I think that's by design. So I think he brings that you know,
and then you have people you know. Reportedly, she's also considering people like Andy Basheer, who's governor of Kentucky, who I think has proven his political medal by surviving in that state and moderating where necessary. But he's interesting to me watching him sort of take on the JD. Vance hillbilly esque persona, saying things like, oh well, he ain't from here, Like you have a little bit of an
authenticity issue. I think with Bashir that rivals that of Kamala Harris when you think about the fact that, yes, Andy Basheer, you are from Kentucky, but not everyone can have their first job out of law school be handed to him from his daddy's law firm. So I do think there's, you know, a little bit of a trihard
element there. But you know, she's got I think some interesting picks, and I think what's going to be challenging is when Obama was president, you had very much of a different dynamic now than I think you have an a Democratic party today, which is you have a progressivism ascendant to some extent. There's a definitely, you know, Joe Biden has shown that, and I think wetting those two, that those sort of moderate faction and the progressive wing is going to be more difficult now than it was
for Obama. And I don't know that you blend them as easily. Frankly.
I mean, what we're seeing in the polls right now is, by the way, I want to say, for the record, this panel was my idea. I wanted to be outnumbered ideologically overwhelmingly today apparently for some reason.
But it's always lovely to see.
You at least what the polling is showing now. Democrats are so working happy. It's not Joe Biden that everyone is more or less unified, you know. I mean, that's why you've seen RFK Junior's vote totals, you know, diminishing, and the people who were disaffected Biden voters coming back home. By and large, you have the Democratic coalition pretty unified, which is why I think, and you know, I am
ideologically inclined to think this. Let's be clear that Joshapiro is actually a risky choice because of his comment and he compared pro Palaesim protesters to the KKK. This is obviously an issue that has been very fraught within the Democratic base, and so to raise the salience of that and for lack of a better phrase, to like kill the unified and excited vibes that exist right now, to me, that's a risk. You also have unions not excited about
him because he's super pro chouter school. You have an issue with him, you know, allegations that he covered up sexual harassment in his office, and also a personal irritation, which is that he sounds like dollar Store Obama. So, however, and as it looks, the tea leaves are looking very much in the direction of Joshapiro. In addition to the fact, there were some new indications this morning she's picking a governor.
She had said.
Previously, according to reports, that she was looking for someone with quote unquote executive experience.
In addition, we just.
Got the list of the battleground stops that she's making next week after she announces her VP pick, and the very first one is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So as a conservative, you know, what do you make of Josh Shapiro.
On the ticket.
Do you think he's additive or do you think it's overstated what he can bring in terms of delivering the state of Pennsylvania.
So, first of all, like to agree with you from the right, Crystal, which is that I would call it New Jersey grandparent, like New Jersey Jewish grandparents meets Obama.
The accent that he's putting on.
I hate it so much, I can't even tell you. There's a whole generation of Democratic politicians who are completely poisoned by the like Obama, Cadence, Pete Boodhagic, Beta O'Rourke, Josh Shapiro, Corey Booker. The list goes on and on and is like such a personal pet peeve. It's so irritating to me.
Yeah, I agree, and it is that very recognizable Cadence and even some of the phrases. It's just it's it is very noticeable in terms of the ticket and balancing the ticket. There's in some way the Democratic Party, I think has some of the similar issues because of the swing states that exists, which let's from everybody you know, when we had discussions about the electoral college many years ago, was Oh, we're always going to be talking about Florida and Ohio.
Well, no we're not.
We're talking about you know, just a decade later, we're talking about a totally different crop of states, and the fact that those states are very different. You have a like a sun Belt group of those states, right, of those swing states plus Georgia, and then you have the rust Belt states, and those states have very different geographical interests,
they have different economic interests. So I think it's really interesting if the principle on the ticket doesn't have a strong appeal in one or the other region, it's very difficult for the other person to balance it because you kind of have to pick and those between the sun Belt and the rust Belt. And like I said, they have different economic interrusts, they have their different.
Cultural interests in many ways.
So I think that's probably a dynamic that will continue in both parties for quite some time. That being said, I don't know. Maybe I'm just not, you know, up on the horse race enough, but I don't I sort of doubt that vice presidential picks make as much difference as people seem to think that they do in elections. I think the principles are much more important. The people running for president are much more important to people's votes. I actually think they make more, they have a higher
importance after the election. So I no longer agree with John Adams that the vice presidency is a useless endeavor, especially because Congress is so sclerotic, can do so little. If you have a active vice president with an active agenda in the executive branch, they can do a lot.
They can shape the agenda a lot.
And the other thing, at least on their publican side, is to signal the future of the party right and so jd Vance, I think is a very clear pick on both of those post election metrics, Whereas I think you're right to say that the Democratic Party will not get a signal to its base that if Josh Shapiro is picked, that it's going in the direction that its base wants to. So I actually think those things are
probably more important. And a vice presidential pick then how they're going to balance the ticket or the states or I just I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that stuff is overblown. I don't think people care nearly as much about who the vice presidential pick is as as I guess political commentators, do you know.
I actually and I say, actually, do go ahead, Rachel Well.
I was just going to say, I think that you know, and as you're correct in the I think that the frames for the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign are slightly different on the vice presidential pick, because I do think for the most part, you know this, the dvanced pick on the right is signaling where the direction of the party is going. But I think Kamala Harris has a different set of challenges when she's picking her VP, which is that she needs a validator, right she is hindered.
I think, you know, from where I sit, from a host of progressive baggage she has. She has said things that will not resonate to your point in the Ross belt. You know, I think it's going to have a hard time speaking to the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. I think she needs a VP that can speak on her behalf. I think there's also the fact that she has a hard time maybe articulating coherent thoughts in certain scenarios.
I think this might be one of them, to put it gently, and so I do think it actually matters who she picks because she needs the validator, she needs someone who can speak for her to certain groups. And so I think the frame the selection crame is slightly different on the right and the left.
I think some of that is fair. I actually do think the VP pick matters. Obviously, the principle matters more like, obviously people are primarily voting for the present. But you know, if you look back at Trump's pick of Vance, I think that was important for him because at that point there was still evangelical skepticism of him. In between the Vance pick and then putting out the list of the Supreme Court picks, that kind of like solidified him with a group of voters that were a little bit shaky.
I also think a vice presidential pick can do harm. I think Sarah Palin did end up being harmful to John McCain and showed when he was supposed to be like the adult in the room and the you know, serious statesmen, et cetera, the fact that she didn't fit with that image and became a campaign liability in the subject of endless media stories of coverage, et cetera.
I think that was a problem for him.
I think Joe Biden, to your point, Rachel about being sort of like, you know, a validator or someone who was like a more comfortable pick for certain segments of society. I think Joe Biden served that role well for Barack Obama. He knew foreign policy, been in the Senate forever. He's just like comes off as this sort of like, you know, middle of the road, moderate white dude. And that's kind of similar framework that the Harris people are looking at now.
I mean, there's a reason everyone's been joking about, you know, the quest for the perfect like white guy to be on the ticket, to provide that level of comfort, and also with regard to the quote unquote vibes, because unfortunately that is so much of what our politics are about.
Much of the chagrin if I think everybody on this panel a white dude from the Midwest, whether it's Tim Wallas who has a very progressive record, or Andy Basheer, who has actually pretty good on labor and other issues but more moderate in other regards, or whether it's Josh Shapiro, like they all come off as this just sort of mainstream pick because it's the vibes, and it's what we're used to seeing in America. It is also like the
way that they communicate Tim Walls. Even though he does have this pretty impressive, from my perspective, progressive record, he still comes off as that like high school teacher, veteran you know, Minesota guide very relatable dude, even, you know, in spite of that record, and I think is very good at messaging that record to people who might be on the fence about a Kamala Harris ticket.
Before we live on Wait, can I.
Not even push back so much as just narrow what I'm saying?
Yeah, I actually I think a better way of saying what I was going. What I tried to say earlier, is that I think it matters more for intra party dynamics than for swing voters. I have a hard time, for example, imagining the person who is comfortable with the things that Trump says and does, and is not comfortable with the things that jd Vance says and does. I actually think that that person prop only exists in the Beltway, where people have much more specific views both about policy
and like about uh, you know, sort of. I guess even vibes indicate what ideological camp you're in, so I see it much more. I agree with you that and the specific example of Sarah Palin, I would say the opposite. In the beginning, Sarah Palin is the only thing that made the Republican Party excited. I think about the McCain ticket. I just think the more our politics become national, the more.
Divided the country.
Is, the more the more these kinds of regional politics fade out when it comes to the vice presidential pick.
And it's a very.
Traditional thing like actually, you know, in the nineteenth century in America, it mattered enormously how to geographically balance the ticket. I just tend to think that our politics are moving away from that, and I think there are probably some things to lament about the fact that our politics is moving away from that.
But at the end of the day, I think the best.
Thing probably a VP pick can do is probably solidify and excite the party to the extent that the party is not excited about the main nominee in.
Terms of the election. Like I said, I think vps are.
Very important for the future trajectory of a party and then what happens if that party is actually elected to office in Washington, I.
Think much more important than it used to be.
It used to be that most useless office ever devised by Van Right, But I think that's much less true now.
But in terms of the election, I think it's.
Probably more important intra party and what you're saying to the people who are either going to be excited to turn out for you or not excited to turn out.
Maybe do something else that day on election day.
I think that's probably more where VP picks make a difference.
So before we move on, I just want to we can put I'm going to go out of order here, control room.
I just want to put E five up on the screen. This is Kamala Harris.
A report that says Kamala Harris is going through portfolios basically of different binders full of men.
Maybe this is the right way to put it. Ron women.
Yeah, No, cal Laire's is setting through binders full of white dudes to look for who she could pick. Now she's expected to make that decision by early August, so very very soon.
Now we go to E.
Four.
We've mentioned Andy Basheer a couple of times, and he's been exchanging sort of romantic tweets ex posts with his wife, maybe suggesting something big is on the horizon we don't know. Could mean anything could just be normal back and forth. But you know, I think Crystal and Rachel could have maybe an interesting exchange on whether Basher A is a viable vice presidential candidate. But b I think maybe is viable as the future of the Democratic Party. Where we
just left off in this conversation. So I know you guys disagree on this. I'll toss it to Rachel first. You can flesh out a little bit of what you said earlier. He has made some interesting decisions on stuff beyond you know, just sort of traditional Democratic Party left stances on labor and all that. He's one of the more interesting figures. I would say him and Waltz are interesting in the context of like realignment politics. So what do you make of Basher Rachel?
Well, you know, I think he's any any governor who survives in a state that routinely sends Ran Paul and Mitch McCollums for the Senate, you know, I think is interesting. You know, you're you're building and he's built a sustainable coalition. Now he's also you know, his father was a governor. He's trending a little bit on you know, family dynamics in that sense that dynastic stuff always matters, I think
in state politics to a great degree. You know, when you think about him vaulting to the national ticket, if we talk about vibes in our politics, my objection to him at that stage is purely aesthetic because I just think that the like he and JD. Vans trying to outheill Billy each other is going to be insufferable. And that is that I think, you know, you're already kind of seeing that. That's why I brought up that comment
where he was talking about JD. Van saying, when you ain't from here, I think it's literally going to be like the War of Appalachia on the vice presidential ticket. And you know, I just that is a vibe, right, and we could be here for it, but I also think it would just be insufferable.
I'm here for the War of Appalachia, No, I see. Andy Bashir is actually a fascinating character to me because I know him a little bit when I lived in Kentucky. His vibe is very much like Mini Van Dad. Really truly, that's how he comes off, and I think that has served him in terms of his political persona. He is not a particularly charismatic figure. He's sort of the anti
cult of personality. And you know, the context in which he gets elected initially in Kentucky is listen, the fact he's a basher, No doubt, it makes a big difference.
In Kentucky in particular.
These things matter, these like historic names, since s it's a state that was democratic and is trended to the right. The Democrats who have like that his connection it helps a lot. But it also was on the back of the teacher's strike wave and the previous governor, Matt Bevin, who was himself the sort of like Trumpian businessman out of nowhere kind of a figure, he had gone after teacher pensions. It had created a massive cross partisan backlash across the entire state, and so Andy comes in on
that promise. A part of why he's been so popular, he's the most popular democratic governor in the entire country, which I think is astonishing, is because he's really delivered the goods. There's been a huge amount of job creation in the state of Kentucky.
He's attracted a number of large scale battery like ev battery.
Plants of the state, which from a democratic perspective too, you're like, oh, you delivered the jobs, their union jobs, and their green energy jobs. So that's part of why he's been so incredibly popular there. So listen, I obviously think he could be additive to a ticket, just from the sense of he's proven that he can speak to people who may otherwise be skeptical of a Democratic Party.
He's had his.
Eye on the ball in terms of, you know, some of the populist instincts of Kentucky as a state. Kentucky's not just like a hard right conservative state, is a little more politically interesting than that. So yeah, I think he'd be a decent pick, you know, electorally. I understand the appeal of Shapiro because of Pennsylvania and because he
won there by freaking sixteen points. I just think, to Anez's point about keeping the positive vibes and the excitement in the Democratic Party, he could be a problem there to be. The ideal candidate is Tim Wallace, who is such an effective messenger. This will be a good transition to the JD Vance and the Weird Conversation all of that. Like, he came up with this tagline that has now rapidly
been embraced by everyone in Democratic circles. You know, used over and over and over again, and you guys may disagree, but I actually think it is an effective tag in the same way that some of Trump's tags and nicknames like Crooked Hillary, et cetera, were kind of devastating and effective. So to me, that proves his bona fides not only in terms of the record that I like as or Minnesota, but in terms of how he's able to communicate about that message and frame the opposition.
Crystal's right, that's a good point to move on because you will be shocked to learn that when you have four women doing a segment, sometimes you talk more than expected, and that was the case here. So let's talk about out the battle to brand Republicans as weird. I will say one thing that I think is getting missed in that conversation, because I was at the RNC and I heard Republicans talking a lot about how this was the
election between crazy and normal. Someone, you know, the three of us definitely not on the right, is Terry Shilling, and he likes to say that all the time. This is an election between crazy and normal. So there's some of it happening definitely on both sides. But let's put
the first element up on the screen for this block. Please, this is John Harwood saying things jd Vance has said about people without kids, childless cat ladies, childless, sociate pass lessionan, most arranged, most psychotic, radical, childless leaders, more sociopathic, driftless, childless democrats must be stopped. We also have a sot here, a clip here that we're going to roll of JD Vance and we will get everyone to respond.
On the back end of this, you can go ahead and roll the next element.
There's just these basic cadences of life that I think are really powerful and really really valuable when you have kids in your life, and the fact that so many people, especially in America's leadership class, just don't have that in their lives, you know, I worry that it makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less, a less mentally stable. And of course you talk about
going on Twitter. Final point I make is you go on Twitter, and almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic are people who don't.
Have kids at home.
So Democrats obviously feel like this is fodder to make that weird label stick to Republicans. Tim Waltz has been using it a lot. Kamala Harris now has been using it a lot as well.
Now, I will.
Start by saying, on the right, the three of us, I would say, as compared to the general population are politically weird, ideologically politically weird because we're involved in conservative movement circles. And jd Vance was running in those circles before he decided to run for Senate, and before he
you know so, he converted to Catholicism. He worked in a super high profile job in the tech industry, converted to Catholicism, had a real ideological transformation that I think you two know as well as anyone, definitely is sincere. He was writing like three thousand word essays for the Lamp about his calism and his politics. That would be pretty difficult to totally fake. But is jd Vance? I'll start with who do I want to pick here? Let's start with you Andez because you and Rachel may disagree
on this. It is jd Vance going to help Democrats? Is he really giving fodder for Democrats to make this weird label stick?
Well, it depends on how he responds, And I think he should learn from the person on the top of the ticket Trump. In this regard, I don't think there's a single pick that Trump could have made where they wouldn't have gone through every statement, like the media wouldn't have gone through every statement and try to pull out some things that, especially isolated from context, sound crazy.
But I don't want to.
Pretend to be a political consultant or someone who works on a campaign. I've always been all the way back Emily, since I've been doing these shows with you, I've always been really clear I'm not a political consultant. I don't want to be, and he only an insane person would hire me.
As a political consultant. So everything that question that is it true?
Right, is the are the underlying things that jd. Vance is indicating or implying are they true?
And the answer largely is yes.
If we set aside the question of how this plays or who's offended by it, we see a huge gap in voting patterns between essentially married men, married women, and unmarried men in one batch that are all between slightly leaning to like you know, fifty five fifty six percent leaning Republican, and then unmarried women, which by the way, doesn't tract perfectly with child is obviously, but there is
not that much pulling on this. So and the unmarried women who are sixty eight percent leaning Democrat, right, So there is a real phenomenon going on here. And then to the psychotic comment, right, whether or not again that language is inflammatory. There's all kinds of surveys now showing that, and self reported surveys that liberal Democratic women who are not married report the highest level of mental illness, like themselves report the highest level of mental illness. So he's
observing something I think is real. And frankly, I would flip this around and say, we're talking about you know.
We've been talking endlessly.
I can't remember an election cycle that we weren't talking about the gap between male and female voters.
Right.
That gap opened up in the nineteen eighties. It was not there before. It used to go the other way. So in the nineteen fifties, women voted more Republican leaning than men did, but that gap started opening up in the eighties. And I would actually argue that if you look at the underlying statistics, it's less driven by any particular messaging or issue and more driven by the fact that simply fewer and fewer people are getting.
Married, and you see that.
Gap explode with gen Z where you see now young men going further right and young women going further left. So I think there is something about marriage, about building families with the opposite sex right that tempers the political instincts of the two sexes.
And I think we are.
Probably about to see the most male centric campaign versus the most females campaign possible on the respective Republican and Democratic side. It's going to heighten that one final thing. We could just bus easily be talking about a gap on the Democratic side among male voters, because in twenty twenty, Joe Biden was able to get those numbers.
Pretty close to fifty to fifty.
Now Republicans still won men, but not by a huge margin. Kamala Harris is pulling at thirty nine percent with men. So we could just as easily have this conversation. We could have pulled up AOC's tweet about in cells right, and we could have this conversation about in cels and childless cat ladies and the problem that the Democratic Party has with men.
Yeah, but AOC is not on the ticket. Is the thing that ques just.
Thing We could have the same political conversation.
But we've got votes for cows there to solve the problem.
No, but okay, but the principle on the Democratic side is pulling very very poorly with men, and we might we could have the same conversation about why that might be or why some of her rhetoric might be alienating to men.
So it would be you would.
Be hard pressed to find, you know, a mainstream Democrat or certainly the Kamala or Joe Biden or the gents that are being considered for the ticket who have said things that are so intentionally offensive and the things that you're saying, and as I think, like, for example, I'm in favor of family you know, pro family policy. I'm in favor of a child text credit, I'm in favor of affordable childcare. I'm in favor of making it easier for people who want to have families to be able
to have families. So the difference is, and Rachel, I'll get you in on this, how you talk about those things. And Matt Brunick actually made an interesting point. I think part of the problem for Jade Vance and how he messages in particular, which is very different from how Trump messages and Trump's clean up of this, he was like, he just likes families. He just likes families, not against anyone,
He just likes families. But jd Vance did come up through these very like ideological and often online spaces, and
the wards don't really come in those spaces. From saying things that are broadly appealing, like for example, child tax credit has seventy percent support, they come and I know this because this happens on the left too, from saying the things that are like, feel edgy, feel subversive, and so when you take those comments out of that context and you blast them out to a general election audience, suddenly you have a political messaging problem.
Matt Brunning made this point.
I'd love to get your response to this, Rachel, because you're deeply plugged in like in the you know, the New Right space problem. Jdvance has the same one, or in casts and similar have. They want to break with GOP economic orthodoxy, but not in a way that is so palatable that the Dems are cool with it, which requires either making the policy actually suck or framing it
in some way that piques the Libs. And that's kind of what I get off of his comments is Like if he just goes out there and he's like, hey, we should have a child tax credit, well that's not exciting, that's not edgy. But if you say, like, ah, screw these childless sociopaths and these.
Deranged ladies who are destroying.
The country and must be stopped at all cost, Like, then you get online tracks, you become a thing. So you know, what do you make up as comments and what do you make up that analysis?
Well, I actually think it breaks down into two categories, right, I think the family formation policy and how we talk about our politics being run by you know, white liberal women without kids are two separate things. And I think, you know, he to get to an ass point about the latter point, heat is correct, Like there was a pupil a couple of days ago that came out showing that I think among Gen Z, among young millennials, people aren't having kids in greater numbers and the reason is
that they just don't want them. Now. To pretend that's not going to change our politics, to pretend that's not going to change how our social culture is built, is ridiculous. Right, we have to be able to talk about that, you know, And I think that the white women for Harris that the woman who led that has kind of gone viral as a case in point of kind of what JD. Evans is talking about, which is this sort of HR culture, whether you have kids or not. Right, this HR culture
that's built toward policing conformity. Helen Andrews at The American Conservative talks a lot about how women in groups act about this. Right, They're different than men. Men will go out and create conflict around things. Women police conformity in very sort of passive aggressive ways. That is reflected in our politics, and I think that's kind of what he's talking about. Do you want people making policy in that vein which is totally different in many ways of how
people with kids view the world. You know, people with kids tend to have a stake, more of a thought and a stake toward the future. They tend to have a little bit of a different perspective because they've got, you know, financial concerns that are completely different than people without kids. Now, going to the second point about family formation policy, Yes, the way you talk about that, I think is a challenge. And Ross Stout that had an
interesting Twitter thread about this the other day. The Pro natalism. Space is inherently weird in itself, right, being able to talk about it in a way that's that you're talking about something very personal and very you know, people have unique views on it. It's a difficult thing to talk about generally, and so it can come off as weird. And I think you know, someone like JD Vance, who's an elder millennial who has grown up in a lot of you know, who came of Asia, I think in
a lot of blue space. Yeah, right, saying things that are you know, edgy and come off as subversive. To your point, that's you know, if you grow up in if you come a vasional blue area, that's how you tend to talk about it. It's a very online way of speaking. He's going to have to change how he does that because I think that doesn't fly, you know, outside of these very niche Twitter spaces. So he's the
foundational truth he's talking about I think is correct. But to your point, he's got a messaging problem that he's got to fix.
Yeah, it's got it's got basket of deplorable vibes where it's like, you know, train all this is my personal train, all of the fire you want at the people who
are setting policy at you know, the financial like media. Yes, but his comments were not just about Kamala Harris, which by the wa Kamala Haris is a stepmother, which you know, for a lot of people that are looking at and going, wait, you don't count stepmoms, you don't count step dads who are you know, raising kids and doing the work as well.
But in addition, it was a broad brush and so there were many people who felt themselves condemned to you know, this characterization as being less mentally stable, most deranged, most psychotic, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's to me what it has echoes of is the minute that you show contempt and judgment for like a broad swath of the country, you're going to lose, both in terms of electorally but also in terms of whatever it is that you're selling.
And I don't actually think it is hard to talk about it. At least some family policy like it's a tile tax card is like seventy percent support is very popular. Things like affordable childcare, and I know we've their debates about within the right. He wasn't a big fan of the idea focusing on childcare. But the idea of making it easier for moms to be able to raise kids, for parents to be able to have families. I think those are broadly accepted and very popular.
It's only when you go out of your way to.
Frame it in this like aggressive, negative way that it becomes unpopular. And for me, it's a problem because I actually want those instincts and the right to be cultivated and be successful. So I'm cheering for the messaging on the right to be better and more appealing on those areas where you know there is some genuine overlap that's starting to develop.
Well, this will likely be a lesson in that.
Here, let me roll and as I get you to respond to this clip that we're going to roll.
This is a Fox News.
Compilation of people being called or of i should say, of people calling like Kamala Harris calling Republicans Trump vance weird.
Let's go ahead and roll this.
Well, it's just plain weird.
I mean, it's not just a weird style that he brings. It's that this leads to weird policies that that is weird behavior.
More extreme, more weird, more erratic.
I mean, on the other side, they're just weird, the thirty two ounces of weird Donald.
Trump and his weirdo running mate.
And by the way, they are weird. It is bizarre, it's weird, it is weird. Jd Vance, just dumb Vance is pretty weird.
So I actually want to agree with Crystal. That's I think it's very, very powerful, which is why you saw this sudden rush of it, and why you actually saw Republicans like Terry for example, at the RNC using something similar.
Here is F four. This is a tear sheet. This is from the Hill.
Some House Republicans are slamming Trump's VP pick quote the worst choice. I've heard that from sources. I'm sure everyone's heard that now. So I'll just with all of that said, toss it to you and as jd Vance a bad pick or not, if you could, if you were a Trump campaign advisor and you could wave a magic wand and replace him with someone else, is that the right move?
First of all, I told you nobody in the right mind would give me that magic wand. But to answer the question anyway, absolutely not. Would I think he was, if.
Not the best among the choices, among the best of the choices. Part of that is what I said in the first part of the.
Segment that I don't really think that VP picks make that much difference seleatorially either way. And I think actually what Trump needs is a contiguliary, a competent right contingulary who's actually going to run policy through the executive branch and who's aligned with his vision which is very different
than the establishment of the Republican Party. And that's what I think a lot of this is by the way the Republicans sniping at jd Vance as opposed to Democrats trying out messaging which were in an election that makes sense, is just that jd Vance has some ideas that are very very different to both domestic and on foreign policy than the party establishment.
And I think that's where a lot of this comes from.
In terms of whether or not weird Lands, I think it maybe did initially, and I think there is a large element of return to normalcy. I think Biden was very much able to tap into that in twenty twenty. I think it's much harder after the last three and a half years to tap into that adult in the room, you know, sort of return to normalcy energy for the Democratic Party.
There is a record that the last three and a half years have not.
If anything can be said about the last three and a half years, it's not that they've been normal. So I think it's it's difficult, but I think that messaging generally is quite potent. I think this is way overused, and I think it's going to end up either burning itself out or being very easy to just throw back in Democratic Democrats' faces by pointing to a lot of weird examples on the left and then finally just one
sentence of what we were talking about before. In terms of like how to talk about these issues, I agree completely with what Rachel said. I thought rosst Out that the same rost Out that tweet that she's pointing to, I thought was also interesting.
These are personal issues, so it's.
Very difficult to talk about them without, you know, causing offense, even if you're very careful, which JD was not particularly careful in his phrasing. I also think there is an element in all of this of allowing ourselves to be ruled by the tyranny of but I'm an exception, right, we can talk about general trends in society in such a way that, like oftentimes, and this is not just
on this subject. You talk about any kind of general trend in politics or in culture, and the first ten replies, whether online or frankly in person, A lot of times are but that doesn't apply to me. Well, if it doesn't apply to you, then perhaps, like we can still discuss the rule as opposed to the exception. And actually, I think this replies to so much of our discourse.
We are constantly tiptoeing around the exception and therefore not discussing the rule, which I think is a deficit, not just in this conversation about how this major change in whether or not we replicate ourselves will affect our politics and civilization, but on so many issues where I guess I'm just tired of the like the chirp coming up every single time.
Well, but but there's exceptions, right, That's obviously They're not a statement you can make that won't have exceptions.
This is exactly why you're not a consultant, Rachel.
Two quick thoughts for you for you to respond to. First of all, with regard to weird, I have to tell you I was asking myself last time. I was like, is this getting overused? But then I have to remind myself that we are weird like normal people out there. In politics, the rule is you repeat the shit out of whatever it is, you hammer it.
And Trump is amazing at this right.
No one understands branding and repetition better than that man, Crooked Hillary, low energy, Jeb Lil Marco. We can still say it to this day. And it wasn't because he used it once. It's because he routine over and over and over again, so that it's the first thing you associate with in your head. With regard to Jadvance, my just very quick, you know case for why he is a problem for the ticket at this point is because the two areas where the Trump campaign clearly feels vulnerability are abortion.
And Project twenty twenty five.
Jadi Vance has said a lot of things that Trump does not embrace on abortion, and he has authored a forward, authored a foreword for the Project twenty twenty five guy, and you know is clearly aligned with the kind of like beating.
Heart of all of that.
So on the two areas where Trump feels himself to be the most vulnerable, Jade Vance brings additional baggage that he has to deal with and has to defend to the ticket.
So I think, you know, i'd go back to something and has says, which is well to at first, I think to the point you made, yes, I think if you're repeating something to the point where you think you're saying it too much, you're probably just breaking through. And I think that's a maximum of political campaigns that Donald Trump,
to your point, has been very good that. But I think on the on the second issue, I really it goes back to this idea that whether or not jd Vance characterized it correctly, he is correct when he says that, you know, we are the divide between parties are people that want to actively control every aspect of how you raise your family, what you do, how you know, how you talk, and everybody else. And I think his sort of childless cat lady comments are a proxy for that
impulse in the Democratic Party. And I think the Democrat Party can continue to say, oh, you know, jd Vance is the weird one, but there's going to be example after example after example on the left, particularly culturally, where they're going to pop up examples of crazy far left culture and say, oh, these are the people that want to tell you that, you know, jd Vance is weird and I think that divide is going to continue to present itself because again, what he's saying, you can say
it was artless, you can say it was classless. But it's a proxy for this impulse on the to you know, control your speech, to control who you know, what you say at work, to control your you know, how you talk about your religious faith. These are things I do think will resonate.
So but right now, if I could, just, if I could, just when you're judging people for when and how and whether they have kids, This is exactly why I think this framing is a problem for Republicans, because you're right when it's Democrats who feel like they're policing how you live, what you can say, all of those.
Sorts of things.
That's Americans have this knee jerk reaction against it. And I think that's why these comments are problem because they reflect a similar tendency on the right of there is one way for you to go about your life. We're going to judge you for it. Here's the program, and if you don't fit into our model, then you're a childless, sociopath,
less mentally stable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's what you're identifying, that instinct against that like controlling, judgmental, like nanny state, cancel culture, whatever type of behavior that has come at times from Democrats. That's what comes across in these comments is I'm going to police you, your life, your bedroom, your choices, etc.
Yeah.
I think he, in my interpretation of it, having lived in these circles, is that it's an efficient proxy way for him to talk about that widened aperture, right that you're that we're both speaking about. So I do think he has to contextualize the way he talks about it, because they're hanging him on a throwaway way of speaking about these things. I do think he has to widen that and contextualize how he talks about it if he's going to break through the caricature that they're trying to
paint of him on the left. Because I do think whenever, to the point that you made earlier, whenever you speak about someone with contempt, it's dangerous, especially on the national ticket. And I think unless he's capable of and I think he is, of explaining this impulse on the left that he's fighting against, it's going to be an issue.
All right, let's go ahead and move on to another totally not fraud and difficult conversation about abortion.
But really the.
Best example of what we've been talking about, Crystal, in this entire conversation about you know, this is one of the best examples of where this is potentially a vulnerability for Republicans and potentially especially for the Trump Vance situation.
Right.
So Vance in particular, I mean you voted against the IVF bill that went through the Senate. You know, he was spoken in favor of some sort of national whether it's an abortion ban or quote unquote federal response to deal with abortion tourism. He's been out there on the issue in a way that is uncomfortable for Trump and
not where Trump wants to position himself. We already know Democrats are going to make this a key issue because it's been successful for them in the post Row environment, in special elections, et cetera.
Let's put this up on the screen.
This is just a report about how Kamala Harris plans to lean into abortion. And I think it's fair to say is a much more credible and much more comfortable messenger on the issue who you know, as opposed to Joe Biden, who is himself personally Catholic and personally pro life, and I know you guys will probably object to that characterization, but that's how he would describe himself and has been on the side of pro life positions at times in his career. So he just he's not really all in
on the issue, wasn't comfortable talking about it. I think Kamala Harris is genderous and asset here as well, just off the top, and as how do you think that this issue plays in the election, And also what do you make of the Trump campaign's clear moves to basically push abortion on the side, you know, take it out of the RNC platform, just say we're leaving it to the states and that's that we're not going to do
anything at the federal level. Do you think that those efforts are are good and do you think that that will be successful?
So, first of all, these are the problems of victory, right, because what happened when Dobbs came down is there was a very large and obvious separation between what Republican elected officials were telling their voters, their most enthusiastic voters and fundraising emails and what, first of all, what they were willing to do as a party. And second of all, there was a gap between what they were telling those voters and where the country ended up being on the issue.
That's you know, more probably relevant than the first, but it split that open so before the Republican Party could comfortably use pro life rhetoric, you know, as you know, sort of all the way to the wall, as hard rhetoric as they wanted, because they had no power to
do anything about the issue. And I do think this is like a and I know Rachel has many many examples of this in the Senate from her years in the Senate, right, but this is the classic sort of virtue signaling politics issue where you have politicians who were able to say things exactly because that like their bases liked exactly because they had no power and no intent of doing anything about it. And that's just very ear so.
And I do think that applies to the second part of your question as well, which is how to deal with the fact that the Republican Party, the dominant position in the Republican Party base on this issue on abortion, is increasingly isolated in the country. It's a minority position, right, but it's very strongly and sincerely felt by the large part of the Republican base, right, so how to deal with that? And again, I'm not a you know, not
good in answering these questions in terms of politics. I do, however, think that there is a certain insincerity that is always picked up when you just try to side step questions.
And I would prefer to see Republicans.
In general take this on in an honest and sincere and head on way and say simply, look, I know that a lot of people are going to disagree with me.
On this issue. I myself am going to bry.
The way a moderate on abortion, but I know that people a lot of people are going to be disagreeing with me on this issue. Here's why I hold the position that I, you know this, this is the difference between leadership and just you know, putting your finger in the wind and following whatever is most popular in the polls. And I think that insincerity actually does come through, and I think it makes people mistrust the rest of what you say.
I think the act Perystone comment. So yeah, no.
Jd Vance went on one of the Sunday shows before he was picked as VP, was obviously as a contender and kind of flip flopped on the abortion drug meth of pristone sent alarm bells across the pro life movement.
And I agree with you.
I think that makes people distrust you and distrust your sincerity on other issues, let alone that issue. Is there something particular you think about abortion that that's most dangerous for a jd vance to tack to adopt a Trumpey attack, I should say, now that he's on the ticket and basically has.
To, Yeah, I'm really not sure.
What if there's a good way for him to tack here without appearing insincere, And I think maybe the best way to talk about it would be just to be very honest and say these are my views. I know they're not held by the majority of the country. They're not even held by my running mate. They're not part of our policy agenda for the presidency. But here's why I believe what I believe. I'm going to be honest with you. I know that most of you won't agree
with me. I think that's actually a more I don't know as an American voter, as a citizen, I'd rather be talked to that way, even assuming on an issue that I very much disagree with someone on than to be gas lit and sort of misled, And I just don't think it comes off very well. And I think it just makes you lose credibility on other issues when you're not honest about, you know, things where you can easily pull up, you know, five hundred clips of you
saying a particular thing, right, it just comes off. I think it damages your credibility and other issues. Not to be honest and then to also be honest about the fact that you have realistic expectations about how much of those views of yours are likely to be enacted through the political process because the majority of the country disagrees with you.
Rachel, as a as a social conservative, I've been really actually curious to talk to you about how you felt about these issues clearly being which I know you care a lot about, clearly being intentionally sidelined by the Republican Party.
Well, I think Inez has sort of distilled this correctly. You know, this issue has been protected from politics for fifty years, right, it's been protected by judicial fiot. Neither party has had to actually engage it as a political matter in the political process, and there they become almost two separate questions at this point how in terms of the you know, the morality of the issue, which drives a lot of how Republicans feel about this. You know,
I'm a pro life Catholic, so is jdie Vance. I have thoughts about how Joe Biden presents himself on this issue that I will leave to the side for this moment. But you know how we have to now engage the political process almost at a state by state level, which is the position that Donald Trump has frankly taken. And I don't think we can jump to the end and say now we have to impose our end goal on everyone without doing the work first. To and AZ's point,
I don't think you can moderate on this question. If you are someone who is pro life for the very reason that you believe human life begins a conception, there's no moderating on that point. Be honest about it, but also be honest about the fact that we live in a country where these decisions are decided politically. I personally think our pro life movement on the right has to sort of read architect itself, and they aren't doing this right.
They're continuing this federal push for all these federal policies when in reality, I think there's a sequencing element here. You have to go make your case, so you have to persuade people at a very granular level before you can get to where you say you want to go. They're not rebuilding themselves that way. So I think we have a real disconnect. And it's why the pro life movement keeps losing around the country because they aren't actually going and doing the work. So you know, this is
a generational quest. I think it's not like suddenly Row falls, and you know it's like Roe falls, question Mark, question Mark abortion band. Like, that's not how it works. That's not how the politics of this work at all. And I think you're kind of seeing the Trump campaign grapple with that reality.
Rachel, what do you think of the potency of the issue come November? Because I have to tell you I mentioned before I lived in Kentucky, we were talking about Andy Basheer. Democrats in Kentucky were getting killed on the issue of abortion for years. Right this was you know,
Republicans really took control of the state. One of the key issues that they used was abortion in a state that is very religious, and so it was quite shocking to me, to see the way that Andy Basheer was able to run affirmatively on his pro choice position, and it was a tremendous asset to him.
He ran and out.
I'm sure you saw the young girl who was raped and he said, you know, Daniel Cameron would force her to bear her rapist baby. It was a devastating ad And to see that flip in Kentucky to me was wild. I would not have predicted that the politics on the issue, even in a state like Kentucky, would flip so quickly. The question is does it remain so silent? Clearly Donald Trump wants to, you know, push it off to the side and make other issues more of the focus, immigration
in particular, or the economy and inflation as well. Do you think that that is possible for him to or does this continue to be a highly salent, salient, important issue.
You know, it's it's honestly hard hard for me to say. I think it's going to be something that Trump campaign is going to have to grapple with because Democrats are going to make them. But I don't I don't think that, you know, on the right, you know, Donald Trump has already decided how he's going to handle this and people can agree or disagree with it. But what he how he's determined it is. He's you know, basically saying the tradition Republican position on this has been, you know, we
are pro life. We you know, from Donald Trump's perspective, we have exceptions for rape incests in the life of the mother in our abortion policy, you know, end of story. That's how Republicans are comfortable talking about it. I think that's what you're going to continue to see from his campaign.
Now.
The pro life movement, I think has a different perspective that they and they need to rebuild on this front. I don't think you're going to that is that is a year's long process. I don't think you're going to see that come out in this campaign.
I do think.
Democrats are going to continue to make abortion a centerpiece. However, I do think if if Democrats or I'm sorry, Donald Trump doubles down on his economic arguments, if he doubles down on you know, life being difficult for you know, middle class families, talks about open borders in that vein, I think Democrats are going to have a hard time continuing to say the only thing that matters in this you know this campaign is Donald Trump's going to make
your nine year old, uh, you know, get an abortion or not get an abortion if she gets pregnant. I don't think that that resonates too far when you're dealing with kind of kitchen table issues.
Well, you, guys, this is all I shouldn't say.
Guys.
I'm sorry you, ladies. This has been a riveting discussion. Thank you so much for joining us on today's edition of Counterpoints. We appreciate your insight.
Great to see you both. Thank you, ladies, Thank you for having us.
Crystal.
It's always so fun to have you to co host with you, and it's always so much fun to have you to bounce kind of ideas and arguments against. So appreciate you joining the show today.
It was my plagure. This was a fun one. I like that we leaned into the lady power.
So yes, next time we'll have all men.
I guess we'll have two guys on what we'll do, like white dudes for Kamala, or we'll do like maybe we should do Maybe we should do it differently, we should do like black women for Trump.
Oh okay, do that opposite?
Yeah, I like that. That would be a little bit of a hide. I can't like wal At the top of my head think of who that would be. Will come up with it, Candice Owens? Maybe she can join us if.
We can get Sager to figure that out, and we'll make it happen all right, of course, and everyone, don't forget BP. Free one over at Breakingpoints dot com for a free thirty day trial of Breaking Points Premium. We appreciate you watching. I'll be back here with Ryan next week for another edition of Counterpoints. Thanks everyone, hope you have a great rest of your week. Chris, we'll get back here with Sager tomorrow