Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal.
Indeed, we do a lot of interesting things that are happening this morning. We have new polls and it's the New York Times SIENA poll of several battleground states. So this is a really important and very closely watch one because this is considered a highly rated poster. We also have some interesting polls from other sources as well. Break all of that down for you about the current state of the race. Meanwhile, Trump is really flailing. He bought
into this whole AI crowd sized conspiracy theory. He's still holding on to his former opponent Joe Biden just can't let it go. Will bring you some of the highlights and low lights from that. Kamala has launched a very hawkish immigration ad, so we'll take a look at that and what that says about her campaign, her posture, the way she has changed over the years, et cetera. Joe Rogan sort of endorsed RFK Junior and chaos from the Trump Magaarl freaked out, ensued.
Again, Trump flailing.
Trump actually responded to it anyway, we'll show you all of that. Meanwhile, in some very very frightening and quite dire news, Ukraine has actually invaded Russia. It's gotten very little attention in terms of the news media, very little attention in terms of, you know, asking these various candidates what they think about that and where we're going from here. So we'll take a look at that. Israel is still awaiting what Aron's response to Israel's latest provocation may be.
There are some developments in terms of potential ceasefire. Meanwhile, Israel continues to slaughter innocent civilians, the latest strike coming with US bombs on a school where displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
But his emails.
Trump campaign emails were hacked, potentially by Iran ken Klippenstein is going to join us to talk about what we could learn there, how the press may handle it, and whether, in fact, what are the indications of whether this was actually Iran or not. So a lot going on there.
Yes, that's right, it is.
However, eighty five days until election day, I think I'm going to continue this streak about the countdown clock and next week is going to be the DNC, So we're going to be on the ground in Chicago, the whole team.
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We have a million and they're actually quite relevant. Yeah.
So, as I was saying New York Times, Siana, this is considered, you know, a top tier poll. Everyone watches it really closely. And they pulled three battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and that old Blue Wall States. Let's go and put this up on the screen. They show a pretty similar picture in all three, which is Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by a margin of fifty to forty six. If you dig into this poll and the other questions they asked,
it's actually quite interesting. So put the next piece up on the screen. They ask people about whether or not these candidates have certain traits so on has a clear vision for the country. You have Kamala at fifty three and you have Trump outperforming her there at sixty. However, on the other traits, Kamala outperforms Trump, so has the
temperament to be an effective president. Kalum's at fifty four, Trump's forty five is honest, Kamala fifty two, Trump forty one is intelligent, sixty five to Trump's fifty six will bring about the right kind of change. Kamala fifty Trump forty seven.
Saga.
That last one I think is in some ways the most important metric of where this race is, and it really demonstrates how dramatically it has shifted with the change of candidate. You know, Joe Biden, obviously, as the current president, was very much status quo choice, and when questions were asked like that of him and Trump, Trump was vastly
outpacing him. Now with a new change at the top of the ticket, Kamala narrowly outpacing him on the idea of being the change candidate and bringing about the right type of change. Just one last piece and I'll get your reaction to overall what this poll had to say. They also tested the presidential and vice presidential picks favorability
across these battle ground states. It's gotten put Pennsylvania there up on the screen so you can see, because I think this is another really important indicator, and this is pretty representative of what the net favorables were across each of these blue wall battleground states. Tim Walls very popular, plus eleven percent on net favorables. You still have a good chunk though, who don't know who he is and are sort of waiting to decide what they think about him.
Kamala Harris has dramatically spiked in terms of her favorability. She is now above water in these battleground states. She's plus two percent. In Pennsylvania. Trump he actually has also
seen a spike in favorability. He's at minus three. He's not as high as Common, but this actually represents the peak of where he has been in recent times as well, which in some ways is a bad sign for him, Sager if he's at the peak of his favorability and he's still losing, and then jd Vance down at minus eleven, has taken on a good bit of water since his launch. So, like I said, this was fairly consistent picture across each of these states. And I do think that this is
kind of a really very important indicator. Is regardless of you know, where they're positioning themselves on the issues, et cetera. You have one ticket that's broadly popular and one ticket that's broadly unpopular. At the Trump campaign obviously looking to try to.
Shift that ground, you're trying to shape it around.
I should remind I mean plus two is one of those where I would would rather be in Tim Wall's territory if I were Kamala Harris. And we should remember the Democrats, even with roughly a plus two percent popular voter advantage, can still lose in the electoral College. What stuck out to me about New York Times Sienna was actually coming to the previous polls where if we saw Biden was down in Pennsylvania by three points there, So the swing of Biden to herrit is pretty unbelievable. It's
almost eight points. Keep in mind margin of error and all of that. But I think the movement whenever we look at where the Joe Biden numbers were in Pennsylvania and previous New York Times standup polls that I was just looking at across the battleground states and generally compared to now, is we're looking at almost eight to ten
points roughly for Joe from Joe Biden's numbers to Kamala Harris. Nonetheless, that's a very very big problem for Donald Trump because it does show, and this is my previous hypothesis, that he has roughly a forty six or forty seven percent ceiling, and that's always been the issue for him, is that where RFK Junior potentially could be bringing some voats away from Joe Biden, or Joe Biden having very very low enthusiasm and a variety of other factors, that he could
win with a forty seven to forty eight percent and perhaps even some disaffected bringing over to fifty one. But if you're getting an outright majority, that is a big problem. Remember, we're in a We're in an election where a net swing of only one hundred thousand votes is going to move the entire thing. That's why looking at this movement is dangerous territory for Donald Trump.
I think that piece about her obtaining an outright majority is important one because back in twenty sixteen, even though Hillary was consistently polling ahead of Donald Trump, oftentimes she was still under fifty percent, and so it was a warning sign of okay. But once people fully decide and you know, they move off of whatever third party candidates they claim they're going to support, et cetera, how is
this going to work out? And you know, that's how Trump was able to narrowly eke out the electoral college victory over Hillary Clinton. So here when you see Kamala at fifty percent in all of these battleground states and not all that many people saying that they're undecided, obviously that's got to be a concern for the Trump campaign.
Of course, all the caveats in the world, These same similar polls showed Joe Biden with quite a substantial lead in twenty twenty at this time he won, right, so you know, he did enough to get over the finish line, but they definitely undercounted Trump's support. They undercounted Trump support in twenty sixteen. In twenty twenty two it went the other direction. But then again Trump wasn't on the ballot, So that's always important to keep in mind.
But part of why.
This New York Times Siana pole is so significant, as Zager was alluding to some of their polling that came out while Joe Biden was still in the race, was part of the more compelling argument of why he needed to go because when even a poll, because he was doing the whole pole denial thing that now the Trump team is adopted of, Oh, our poll shows something different. We don't buy these fake polls. We don't think that they're correct. That's not what our data is showing, etc.
Etc.
But it was pretty hard to deny, you know, this particular polster because of their track record and how much they're respected in terms of their numbers. So a lot that's interesting there. And one other thing before we move on to some interesting numbers about who people trust on the economy. I think it was Nate Silver that made
this point. You know, generic Democrat does well against Trump, does well against the Republican Party in particular in general, and always has and Kamala is not exactly a generic Democrat. She's obviously been in the public eye, people have a lot of feelings about her, et cetera. But she is really trying to occupy that space of generic democrat, and you know, that's the way the ticket is trying to
shape and position themselves. And listen, that's actually pretty formidable against the Republican Party, especially Kada like Trump, who remains broadly and you know, his favorability has gone up as well post assassination attempt, et cetera, et cetera, but in general, he is underwater in terms of popularity problem.
And this is where you know, both media and Kamala inability or unwillingness to sit for long form interviews, to even put herself in a public and adversarial eye, and only doing rallies, basically adopting the same strategy of Joe Biden and not being in any sense like challenged. That's where and then you get an incredible media environment. You put those two things together and you're in the perfect position you want to be as generic as possible.
She's disavowed every public.
Policy position that she's ever had, and it's like everybody is like, oh, I don't even know what you're talking about. Let's let's talk about something else from several years ago. But we will get to that. This is perhaps that's the biggest problem I've seen yet for Trump was put this up there on the screen. Keep in mind this is just one, but movement is important. This is from
the ft Financial Times, Michigan Ross Pole. They say voters who trust Harris significantly more with the economy than Biden, and it actually has Kamala Harris edging out Donald Trump in his trust on the economy. You could see for those who are watching, where you had Joe Biden significantly underwater on Donald Trump, where Harris has actually climbed. And more importantly is that the neither figure has dropped dramatically
from July to August. So I always bring this up because back in twenty twenty, one of the best indicators of Trump's support was not the top line polls. It was not polling averages, it was trust on the economy. Is something that Trump campaign would very often point out to me. I'd be like, hey, you know, it says you're down by fifteen points or whatever Wisconsin. They're like, listen, the economy figure is traditionally much more trusted, and it's
one that we are really relying on. And I think they ended up being correct because they only lost by somewhat sixty thousand votes or whatever. That was far more predict because it was genuinely more fifty to fifty back in twenty twenty in the midst of COVID you know Mania well now today, where they had a spread of almost eleven, twelve, fifteen in some cases, if we look on average, if we if this is perhaps an indicator, maybe they're not tied. Maybe he's only up by two,
maybe three. That's still way worse than being up by ten, fifteen, twenty.
On the economy, it's basically a dune ball, and he cannot afford that, and he kind of needs to have an edge there because there are a lot of other traits about him that people do not prefer, so you have to have a big lean on the economy to make up for that. And you know, it's actually quite fascinating to see the way that this has played out. Joe Biden did her the biggest favor in the world, number one by naming his economic program Bidenomics. So it's like very closely associated with.
Him and not with her.
Also by totally sidelining her, I mean, she's been basically invisible as a vice president, so she it appears, got all the benefits of having the trappings and the station of the audio of the office and enabling people to envision her in that commander in chief role. However, because she was sidelined, people aren't blaming her for whatever things
that they didn't like about the Biden administration. The other thing I would say is, you know, Biden's favorability rating has come up to since he decided to drop on of the race, So much of what was weighing down this ticket and now is really clear was just about this guy being really, really old, and that was you know, that's an entirely legitimate concern and perspective. Apparently even the
President himself came to agree with that assessment. So, you know, the fact that people believe she will do better on the economy, they are not tying her to whatever. You know, the most unpopular positions of this administration or performance of this administration was they feel like she represents more of a positive change than Donald Trump, even though she is, you know, part of the administration right now, these are all extraordinary things that I would not necessarily have predicted.
But also Soger, I.
Mean the Trump campaign, they're going to try to change that. You know, their whole mission is going to be at least of their paid communications. Donald Trump doesn't seem to be capable of doing a very effective job of pushing this message. But the paid communications will be very much about tying her to the less popular parts of this administration. You know, I think immigration is probably the strongest hit
on her, the whole border zar thing. There was some testing will show you in a little bit from Democratic group about which attacks were the most salient. That was the most difficult one for her to be able to parry, which is why she's already putting out some immigration stuff.
Like I said, we'll talk about that.
In a minute, but right now they've got some work to do.
And the other thing is time is really short.
Yes, eight five days, what's a long time.
While Trump is out here flailing around and still wishing it was Joe Biden indulging in like insane conspiracy theories, the Harris Walls team is, you know, been much more focused and on message. They're defining themselves, they're defining jd Vance and Donald Trump, and they're headed into a convention where most of the time time the party comes down of the convention with a bump.
Then you're into Labor Day and you're in the final sprint.
So there isn't that much time for Trump and Dvance to change the ground of this fight and be able to redefine what right now is a racistlipping away.
For that Trump is really Trump has really lost his edge, and I think, I mean, look, we can empathize at a certain point, at a human level. It's probably dizzy. It's crazy for us, and we're not even running. We're not the ones who are actually in the race. You can't imagine probably what it's like to go from front runner back to twenty sixteen insurgent status. I have been watching a lot of some of the MAGA influencers, boosters and others, and the ones who are honest are like, Okay,
we're in a knife fight now. Now we're back to twenty sixteen. We're the underdog. At this point. You have the entire media apparatus against us. You have a unified Democratic Party very much like they had under Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen.
You had the.
Same level of the unification of really the party establishment of the Democrats from that time period, and this time we're gonna have to fight just like we did the last time. The problem is Trump is a different man from that time around. He doesn't have the same almost free wheeling nature. His campaign today is a balloon that includes the RNC, that includes donors and all these other things.
He's you know, he needs to be unburdened by what has been I actually he needs to return to the scrappy staff of like ten people sitting in Trump Tower, and it turns out that that was one of the most potent political forces in modern American history. I almost think he's being weighed down by being in some ways the Republican establishment today were previously his fighting instincts of coming and beating the establishment for the GOP nomination set
him up for victory in twenty sixteen. The variety of things we could talk about, both policy and just campaign as well. He doesn't have the vigor that he did. I remember watching that man chriss cross that country every single day. He you know, he almost it was shocking, you know, to even younger people how he could get like two three hours of sleep.
And he would be doing all these rallies.
As president, he mostly kept up that schedule, but a lot of that is diminished. And the problem is is that this dizzying like finding yourself, like you're defining who we are. You don't have time for that right now. And I don't want to waste too much right now because we are going to get to that. But put this up there on the screen. All the data in the world tells you and backs up what I'm saying.
You know, here we have the Nevada Pole. A new poll of likely Nevada voters found Kamala with a nearly six percent lead over Donald Trump. That is the largest lead for a Democrat an anti presidential poll of Nevada's this cycle. Why is this crazy? Because Trump was up in Nevada by a couple of points. Yeah, for months, to the point where they were like, hey, we've got Nevada in the bag.
Sure, it's going to be a battleground. We're going to have to spend some money.
But the amount of money that I think that they previously had thought about having to allocate to Nevada. Now all of a sudden, we're in a totally different world. So your entire plan, your media plan, everything had to be torn up in the last couple of weeks. And in the interim period you have all of this incredible earn media enthusiasm for Kamala, lack of scrutiny on the record, the fact that she hasn't done these interviews is the best possible moment. The only question is this the honeymoon
period or is it not? And that's it's just too soon to say, because I think the convention, the strategic advanta of that convention, of their convention happening when Joe Biden was president, of them having that bump post assassination and everything, and not having the same, you know, the same opportunity to define Kamala Harris, to have the unified media paying attention to them. I don't think I can
overstate how, you know, really terrible it is for the GOP. Yeah, they had they blew their convention already, and I mean it's not their fault, of course they didn't know, but it's it's a major disadvantage.
No, yeah, absolutely, and you know they clearly didn't even though they had long been saying they thought it was possible, even before the disastrous debate, etc. That they thought it was possible that they would pull Joe Bid. They clearly didn't really prepare, and Trump certainly was not really able to wrap his head around it, and he still isn't.
In Nevada.
You know John Ralston, who is like the political guru in Nevada. I remember previous polls come out under Biden where he's looking at us. He's going, not only are they going to lose for president, like Jackie Rosen who's running for reelection in the Senate is in trouble. There's a number of swing districts in Nevada. He's like, you just can't have this kind of presidential margin and think that you're going to be able to hang on to
these seats or pick up these seats. So now with the shoe completely on the other foot, it really is remarkable to see. And then also previously, under when it was Biden, you had Republicans saying, hey, maybe we're going to put Virginia into play. Maybe we're going to put New Mexico into play. Maybe we're going to put Colorado into play. Now it's Democrats who are positioning themselves to be able to go on the offense in states that were beyond what Joe Biden was able to win in
twenty twenty. The most the place where they're most clearly making the play and have the best chance of success is North Carolina. Who can put this up on the screen. So this latest poll, this is from you gov, this is an a rated polster also has it tied in North Carolina. Harris forty six, Trump forty six. This is a state Biden lost, I want to say, by about one point eight percentage point, so it.
Was not a lot.
But it's also a state that you know, democrats ever since Obama won it in eight It's a state that Democrats can come close in but they can't really seem to get over the top. They're hoping with Harris's sort of newly reconstituted coalition that she may be able to
pull off the state of North Carolina. And another thing that they've got really weighing them down there is the Republicans have a very unpopular gubernatorial nominee who in this very same poll was losing to the Democrat by ten points. Because Mark Robinson is not his name, He's said some wild things and it looks to be headed to defeat there. That can help drive down the Republican ticket overall. So you know, I think it's still you'd still bet on
Republicans there. They still definitely have the edge, but now Democrats are spending money there and Republicans are having to actually protect that state when previously they were playing with Hey do we go on offense and you know, states that we didn't think we could have on the map before.
For example, if we look at the Senate race, it's very similar. You know, in twenty twenty Tom Tillis everybody thought was possible of the Democrat could beat him. Cal Cunningham col also had some of his own issues. But you know Tom tell us only one by about two percent something like that. Yea, you know, one point five roughly. That's not a great margin of victory. That's not what you want to be in a traditional state. Now, remember another thing I've been continuing to try to bring up.
North Carolina has significantly changed in the last four years. It has one of the most booming economies in the entire United States, second only to Arizona. They've had massive population inflow to Raleigh and to Charlotte in those urban areas they have a lot of fundamentals East Coast time banking, lots of jobs, it's a good place to live if you're under twenty five or so. They have high starting
salaries relative to the other big cities. But what that means is that they will have a similar Georgia phenomenon or Austin phenomenon, where we have all of these people largely from blue states, probably highly educated or people with bachelor's degrees, who are moving in and becoming newly registered voters, and that is just enough perhaps to turn the tide when we look at only a couple of one hundred
thousand votes, which are the margin of victory. And you know, things don't have to go a different Things can go a different way. If it rains, if it's nose, whatever, something could very much materialize a surprise there. Most importantly what I just brought up about Nevada, where they didn't think they would have to spend that much money in Nevada, or it's that much in North Carolina. Well, now you might have to spend millions just to win by one
or two percent. That's a bad situation. Generally, let's put the final one out there. Please, on the screen. This was an Arizona pole. This was conducted after July thirty, and this show is Kamala actually leading Trump by about two point eight percent, and that is in the US Senate race. They have Diego up by eleven percent over Carrie Lake. So this is the other question. Is Carrie Lake going to be a drag on the Trump ticket? Very possible considering how unpopular she appears to be in
the race in Arizona. The flip side of that for Donald Trump is that I saw a rally I believe with Comma of some twenty five thousand people in a stadium in Arizona that is astounding. Then they had to turn people away at the door. That's a bad situation. I mean that level of enthusias Arizona similar. Actually, they have doubled economic growth of North Carolina. What I was just talking about. Their inflow is massive from California and
from elsewhere. Their economy is booming. And Maricopa County, as we all learn in twenty twenty, is that primes suburban white vote that Kamala and Biden are going after with everything that they've got, highly highly educated, very very like they want to come out and vote specifically on abortion, and then what did we all forget what happened in Arizona just several months ago, that whole eighteen sixty four abortion.
Ban and all that nightmare.
You think they you know, if you think they've forgotten that, they certainly haven't. Millions of dollars in ad spend. Is they are on abortion right now?
I'm pretty sure they have an abortion ballad initiative yes, this fall as well, which could very much help drive turnout and be you know, in a close race, could be a determining factor. I don't know if it's quite as stark as in twenty twenty two, where the Republicans nominated just a rash of candidates that were really, you know,
unpalatable to a mainstream audience. But you do have in some key states, you know, Kerrie Lake weighing down the ticket in Arizona, Mark Robinson weighing down the ticket in North Carolina and also contributing to the Democratic messaging that this is a fringe ticket, this is a quote unquote weird ticket. That are you know, these are all headwinds that Republicans now have to deal with that previously they were completely sailing above. I mean I really thought with Biden,
Arizona was gone, Nevada was gone. The only prayer he had after that debate, he really didn't have a prayer anywhere, but the only prayer he had was hoping to hold on to those three blue wall industrial Midwestern states Georgia, Arizona, Nevada over. And now you've got Kamala leading in polls in those states and potentially even putting North Carolina back in play, which again we haven't seen since Obama two thousand and eight. So just an absolute one to eighty turn,
and you know, to segue into the next piece. Trump is really struggling to deal with it because as much as listen, Joe Biden is older and way more feeble, and so when he was in the race, you sort of forgot about Trump's age. But he's also an old man, and one of the common things is, you know, when you get all you get stuck in your ways. And he had his head set on this race being a
certain way and it is not that way anymore. And he's clearly having trouble letting go of his previous opponent, Joe Biden, and that showed up at a recent rally.
Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
I think crooked Joe is boy correct.
It's like.
You're like, all right, ready, crooked first, right, what do you like better, Crooked Joe or sleepy Joe. Crook it seems to always win. I mean, he's a crooked guy. All he had to do is think of it. If he didn't do the debate, he'd still be running. They'd be saying how great he is. He's a brilliant man, a wonderful guy. Couldn't beat me now, I mean, after the debate, he was down, way down in the polls. They didn't even want to show the polls. They said
he's sucking to win. So they said, we're going to take him out and we're going to put somebody new. And this never happened to anybody before. You've spent we spent one hundred million dollars fighting crooker Joe Biden, and then all of a sudden they decided to take him out and put somebody else in. She never got one vote. She was the first loser in the primaries. You know, she ran against Joe Biden and everybody else. I think they had like sixteen people running. She never made Iowa.
The first aid.
I love Iowa.
You know why I love it because I went at every single time with the farmers.
We went it.
But she never made Iowa.
She was the first one to quit and now and stupid honestly, she was the nastiest to him too, and then he picked her. I couldn't believe it. And she was part of the cabal that got him out. You know, they got him out. They said, we'll do it the nice way. We'll do it the hard way, Joe. We'll use the twenty fifth Amendment and we'll call you mentally incompetent and everybody.
Will believe us.
And you know, what they did is a terrible thing. Actually, they forced him out. It was a coup. We had a coup. That was the first coup in the history of our country, and it was very successful. He said, okay, i'll leave. If that's what you want, I'll leave. And now he's seeing what the competition is. I hear he's going to make you comeback. At the Democrat convention.
He's going to.
Walk into the room and he's gonna say, I want my presidency back, I want another chance to debate Trump.
I want another chance.
So still still hoping, still live in the dream that maybe Joe Biden's going to come back.
I think it's tough.
I mean, like I said, I understand where he's coming from, but I just think that look, really, what I have come to look at is where twenty sixteen Trump calls the mood of the country correctly, and that is perhaps his single biggest political insight. Hillary and everybody is running on optimism all you know, trying to recapture Obama, and He's like, no American carnage.
That's the message.
It was a negative campaign, but negative in a way that it captured the rage of the American people. The reason that Biden narrowly edges out Trump is because he did not return to normalcy.
But he's like, everything is just too crazy.
Elect an old guy and I'll just sit on my hands for four years and everything will be fine. And again that's enough to bring people out. But the Trump carnage mension still resonates now Here is where I think it gets complicated, because right now we have Change is the number one thing that people want from a presidential candidate, but change from what and that means many different things to different people. One of the things that Tim Wulas
has impressed me on is the joyful warrior. And there's also you have Kamala embracing this generic d messaging, abandoning all of her previous positions and trying to just be as un what is it inoffensive as humanly possible, so you could project whatever you want unto her. That is actually a Trumpian strategy. Trump was all things, all people. It was his greatest political strength on top of that, and so watching the grievance from Donald Trump, I really worry for him.
It misses the message.
And it's actually something I don't necessarily notice whenever I see other successful Republicans or even jad Vans in many of his interviews, He's not channeling that same level of grievance both about today and then centering it around himself. At the very least, it's usually grievance about something like
policy related. And so for Trump, the more that it turns grievance onto him, and the more that it seems to be away from where that the change message Americans want, and it's stuff like this re litigating what he doesn't seem to understand as Americans of keep saying this have such a tremendous capacity for amnesia. People don't even remember Biden exists. They don't barely remember that the Trump got shot a month ago.
A month ago.
But that I mean, everyone's like, it's unfair. Okay, that's life. You have to you know, you have to go to war with the troops that you have. And I really think he's misreading the mood of the country. I also will say this, why he and Bose in Montana? Why are we in Montana? A state how many four electoral votes?
There's a close Senate context.
Okay, so that's his job to get elected. Your job is to get elected president. Bro, you haven't done a rally in five days, and your asses on a plane to Montana? What are you doing?
And she go camp out in.
The Midwest And he doesn't have any other rallies for the rest of the month. For the rest of the month, he went to Montana.
That's it.
So at the same time, you know, he so, I think one of the clever strategies of the Democratic Party ticket, and this really is you know, this came directly from Tim Walls. I think the rather than making Trump bigger than life of the threat to democracy and restored about this like very moralizing, sort of grandiose language about him. Instead, they're sort of they're diminishing him, they're making him small, and they're rolling basically, they're rolling their eyes and laughing
at him. So that's where weird is a very different frame than the threat to democracy frame. And in that contact, you know, all the things that he's doing where he's you know, this wild press conference he did last week where he's had all kinds of stuff, and the National Association of Black Journalist where he throws out the you know, race baiting stuff, and then the latest conspiracy theory that he's glomming onto. It just feels sort of pathetic, like it feels desperate if you.
Can see that he's struggling.
And so the I think that the rhetoric of laughing at him, not taking the bait every time, just moving on and staying focused on the message, I think has been very wise from them from a political standpoint. So just to break down this latest conspiracy, So, you know, Kamlain and Tim Wall's Democrats are elated that it's not Donald Trump at the top.
Of the ticket.
They are elated that they have a candidate who could read a teleprompter or ably and has some charisma on the stump and is able to just do like the basics of competent campaigning. And so they have been turning out in droves to every single rally that they've done. This is very difficult for Donald Trump specifically mentally to wrap his head around because in his head he's the big.
Rally guy, right. And there have been.
A and I think you know, magazine kind of their own self constructed like super online bubble where they also can't wrap their head around the fact that there's a genuine enthusiasm for the change in the ticket. So you started seeing this floating around many many accounts took this and ran with it. There's this whole theory that actually the rally cap crowds aren't real. In it all centers
around this one photo of her landing. Where was this but in Nevada, I think Detroit, and there they you know, circled in on the plane and they're saying, oh, look, you can't see the reflection of the crowd and the plane. So this is all AI. This isn't real. I mean,
obviously this is preposterous. There were a lot of people there, a lot of people, Yes at all around there were you know, reporters from Fox News at this rally who also reported on the crowd, like, do you think that they're in the bag for the Harris Walls campaign at it's preposterous, it's really desperate, empathetic. But it's one thing when a rando on Twitter at Jody Blues is sharing
this kind of content. It's another thing when the former president and current Republican nominee decides to go in on this as well. So Trump shared the exact same thing and says, has anyone noticed that Kamala cheated at the airport? There was nobody at the plane and she aied it and showed a massive crowd of so called followers, but they didn't exist, and then goes on to say, you know.
She's a cheater.
She had nobody waiting, that some maintenance person turned her in and exposed the fraud, etc.
Etc.
And he finishes by saying they're even worse at the ballot box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is election interference. Anyone who does that will cheat at anything. So rather than just repeating borders are over and over again, this is instead the line of attack on Kamala, which again just to any normal person, looks and feels preposterous.
Yeah, it's stupid. It's just one of those where Trump.
This is where Trump actually is its own worst enemy, and he's not playing four or five D chests. And there is a reason that there's not a single other elected Republican who is even doing this. He will glob onto anything we learned this during Stop the Steal, anything that you contributes to his ego. And hey, in an eighteen month race where you get to run against Kamala, I think that's fine. You know, history has proven it won't necessarily count against you. It's just a baked in
part of your personality. But when we only have eighty five days until election day, is that really what we want to be spending our time on. We have no rallies, We are attacking Brian Kemp. We are you know, making ridiculous claims about false AI generated images of crowds. Also, don't take it from me, take it from Timpoole. Okay, so somebody with more credibility, I think with people from MAGA,
like everybody is laughing and it is desperate. And that's where again I'm coming back to that mood of the country thing, I think he is misreading that people are not as outraged about the Biden situation as he has, perhaps some Republicans, but that's not the whole country. And that just gets to like how when message and grievance aligns with the mood, that's whenever he wins the best. Whenever it's on policy, that's whatever it can be convenient.
But here is where twenty twenty two energy is coming into play, and you are actually out of step where people are. For example, I watched his entire press conference on Thursday, and he made one of the most articulous statements I've ever seen from him, and it's against wish casting. He said, I don't think abortion will be a major issue in this campaign. And it's like, I get that you wish that to be the case, but that's not
how that works. Like, in fact, telling people not to worry about the number one thing that most Democrats and some swing voters are worried about seems to be the opposite of how it should be. You want to allay their concerns and then maybe talk about immigration a.
Little bit more on top of that.
So I'm just watching him flailing, and I think, again I empathize on a human level as to how difficult it probably is to be in that situation and dizzying. But you go, you know, like the cards are dealt the way that they are dealt, and that's just how it is.
Sometimes you had close to ninety percent of the country that was glad Biden stepped aside for everyone's having So you know, if you think that you're and I've seen some message testing on this as well, like going back and re litigating what happened in the pressure campaign to push Biden out. No one's interested in it. They're like, onward and upward, what are you going to do for me? What's the program for the future. But he is struggling clearly to get past his sense of the injustice and
unfairness that was done to him. And like you said, I mean, I can understand like they did an entire R and C assuming it was going to be Joe Biden, and then the rug gets pulled out from under them immediately. It was that weekend after the R and C, right where you know, after all of this messaging and program planning, and you're looking at the polls and you're not doing great, and this is going to be so easy, and you know, I'm gonna I can really run up the score in
these states that shouldn't even be on the map. And like that, it's changed, and he is clearly struggling to
adjust to that reality. And it's also the shoe is now on the other foot where Democrats previously, Joe Biden specifically was in total denial about the collapse in his position, electoral position, and polling status, and his aids were helping to insulate him in the bubble and only bringing him the best numbers to allay his concerns and feed his ego because they didn't want to have to deal with his wrath if they brought him some bad news that
he didn't want to hear. Well, now you have the Trump campaign doing the poll denial.
Not only do you have him denying.
That abortion is going to be a important issue, denying that Kamala Harris is getting significant rounds of rally crowds and has a lot of enthusiasm. They're just out and out now doing pole unskewing the pole stuff. So let's put this up on the screen. Trump's campaign polster put out a new confidential memo responding to the New York Times SIANNA polling showing Harris up in Blue Wall States.
He claims that they dramatically understated President Trump's support both among all registered voters and in their likely voter model. You know, Democrats, this is exactly Lee what I saw a million Democrats online engaged in when Biden was down in the polls.
They'd go in and they look at.
The sand Oh, they undersampled this demographic group. They oversampled that demographic group. These aren't accurate. It's literally this same pole the New York Times SATA poll. Democrats were doing this same thing with when it was Joe Biden in the race, and now that it's the same polster, it's the very same methodology. Now suddenly the Democrats are good with it. They believe it now, where it was fake
news before and now they believe it. And the Republicans who were, you know, really trusted it last time when it showed Trump up, now they're the ones who are doing the unskewed the pole nonsense.
Oy not good.
Look, you know it's one of those where we mock it from the Democrats because it is insecurity and it's like, even if it is true, then prove it, like, actually go out, continue to draw big crowds, have energy, point to that, and then come election day, if you win, you can say ha ha, look at you, you look like an idiot.
So even with these.
People like, keep in mind, I don't necessarily believe any of these I'm just looking at movement I think generally indicative of something. Now, will you know how many of us have all been burned here by poles to say that we can believe one hundred percent of where things are. It's only to try and shape the way that you think trends are going. And that's perhaps the way they
should look at it. If anything, it's just a better message to say, Look, if anybody gets a honeymoon period, Kamala, I'll see you on the stage on September, whatever the debate that they have agreed on, and I will humiliate you in front of the American people. I think it's a far stronger and a better message. And again, this is where Trump's insecurity really comes from, because he is
the central character who is putting this stuff out. He's the one who's ordering Tony Fabricio his Polster to put that out. I don't see JD. You know, he did what five interviews or whatever with the multiple different Sunday shows. He didn't unskew the poles once because you look like an idiot whenever you do it. I don't see even the press secretaries and all of them doing this. It's Trump,
you know, trying to massage his own ego. And you know, again, the more that he's going to make this thing about himself, the more that I think he will lose. Let's put this up there on the screen for eats ample. This is a frankly hilarious anecdote.
Yes, but it.
Shows donors inside of the Trump the donors to Trump who are urging him to try and shift some of his rhetoric. This was including a roughly one hundred and thirty people Quote dined in an air conditioned tent with some of Trump's wealthiest supporters, including Bill Ackman, who sat next to the former president.
Some guests Trump would signal.
Hoped that Trump would signal that he was recalibrating after a series of damaging mistakes.
He did not.
Before the dinner, answering a question that raised concerns about the upcoming election. Inside of the House. Trump said, We've got to stop the steal, reviving yet again the twenty twenty election, claiming his advisors had urged him to drop because they don't help him with swing voters. And that's the thing about him. He is his own like nope. And this is another maga thing I see all the time. Why did Trump's advisors always listen? He's a grown ass man.
He could literally be my grandfather. It is on him. He is the person who is making these decisions. To me, he is just pure it. He cannot control himself. He's one of those where if he feels something strongly, especially if it impacts his own image and he appears he thinks as damaging, he will just attack, attack, attack, and he will talk about that regardless, especially if people tell him not to talk about it.
In some cases, that's a political strength.
Here, I think it is very proven that it is a political loser, and it's one of the things that loses him the most of ground with people who are swing voter. So that anecdote is a real insight into him and how insecure he feels now at this moment. Now he's been here before, you know, we've seen him in access, Hollywood. We've seen him Charlottesville, many of these other things, and he usually comes out both swinging and usually you know, he's found himself to wriggle his way
out of a lot else. So I wouldn't put it past him. And I still think the election is basically a toss up if we look at Nate Silver and everything else. But the trend is not good right now for Donald Trump. Yeah, yeah, the trend is not good.
I think also part of this is him. He constructs alternate realities for himself and for his followers. And you know, we construct an alternate reality in twenty twenty where he actually won and was wronged and he tried to overturn the results. Now I think he would try to do that again. He's trying to construct this alternate reality where this is all fake. The rally crowds are fake, the
polls are fake. I'm actually up big. This is all ridiculous, so that even if when he loses, he can persuade his followers at the very least that actually this was.
All wrong and you know, the election was rigged, et cetera.
Et I do think he's partly laying the groundwork for that and constructing that alternate reality in which he can never lose. However, this time he's not the president. This time, he doesn't have any of the levers of power to try to eat to even attempt to effectuate some sort of you know, stop the steel type of situation. So it's yeah, as I said before, it just looks pathetic.
And I can only imagine his donors, who you know, got in when he was ride and high, now watching this all sort of collapse and him being increasingly unhinged, and what they're thinking about what they've signed on for here. The other thing, as I mentioned before, is he is not really like campaigning that much. She let's put this up on the screen. He plans a light campaign schedule for August. He contrasts with August twenty sixteen. Trump had twenty seven rallies in the month of August in twenty
sixteen in fifteen different states. He later went on to win most of those states in November. This month, Trump is held one rally in Montana, not exactly a swing state. And that is all that is planned. That's all that's on the calendar for the entire month of August. Now, I mean, he could spin up a rally, you know, and do a rally or two before the month's down.
But what his campaign was telling Politico and others is basically like, now we're just gonna wait for the dums to do their convention and come out swinging after Labor Day. But again, man, you got a contens condensed timeline here.
It is so much.
Easier to be able to define someone who hasn't already been defined. So right now, Kamala Harris and Tim Wallas are out there finding you, defining jd Vance, defining themselves, and you're basically not really fighting back at all. And the rallies were really the lifeblood of that twenty sixteen campaign.
He fed off them.
It was part of what made him so strong in terms of having his finger on the pulls and his messaging because he would test stuff in real time with the crowd and get a sense of what hit and what didn't hit. So with him just you know, cocoonton mar A Lago, with his yes men and yes women around him, he's not able to get out into the world and have that real sense of how things are landing with an actual crowd.
Also earned media.
I mean, what one of the things that Trump was the master at is He was just everywhere.
He was always on the airwaves.
In fact, if everyone remembers the twenty sixteen criticism of the media is that they played too much of Donald Trump because he gave them so much to work with.
Twenty seven rounds.
They couldn't resist fifteen states in August of twenty sixteen. Why because you never knew what the man was gonna say. He always made news and then not only would he do that, then he would do I remember I attended these conferences here in Washington, the Foreign Policy Conference, the America.
First thing, he would turn.
It into a rally, and then he would say that he was going to make a major announcement, and then he would have a campaign rally and force people to cover it. So we've had one press conference, We've had one rally in freaking Montana, which nobody cares about. Sure, it's great to get a Republican elected in Montana, but
that's the Republican's job in Montana. Why is Trump acting like his midterm season flying is asked all the way to Montana again, he should be in the Midwest, he should be in Arizona, he should be in Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, all of these different states, and that is I think the central issue.
So from what I understand, that is the current plan.
Now from what I hear their alleged plan Crystal is that after Labor Day they're going to dump as much money as humanly possible on the airways and listen, maybe that is enough to put them over because they're like, at that point, he'll have the bump and all of that. But I just think that the momentum and also frankly, the media environment is one that needs to be shifted
and changed today. You have to get I mean, this is something JD actually I think successfully did, going over and pressing the media and be like, hey, why haven't you guys taken any questions from Kamala. She came out literally the next day and she said, I hope to have an interview scheduled within the next month.
Scheduled within the next month.
Great, but she's actually taken two or three questions now from the press corps.
Is that good? No, we need a ton more. We need way more than that.
She'd be doing multi hour scrums considering that she dropped in at the last moment, But that was enough to at least put pressure on her where she's like, all right, it's starting to look bad that I haven't done it. I need to sixteen days exactly. So Trump should be out there every single day. That was one of the genius things of his press conference that he should be
doing over and over again. He said, every question, I'm here taking questions from you on anything, including where I got shot in my ear, including mif of pristone the low as they call it, a hilarious moment.
At Tew points at the top.
Yeah, but listen, this is over what this was over an hour long press conference. Just standing and doing that is contrast. But the media, Comma, everybody's rolling their eyes. You can't do it once. You have to do it every single day. Force the conversation. Forced the conversation. And let's say we set the media environment up so that next week when we're all at the convention, Kamma is like, well, damn,
I do need to do something. I'm starting to look bad if he does thirteen press conferences now in between and rallies and he has energy and interviews and that's something though, that he's not doing. And so by dropping that and by getting the media less to contrast with Kamala actually looks okay, and that is where you know, the light campaign schedule.
I don't think I could stress enough.
I just think it's terrible, especially if all we hear on true social is this bullshit about ai rallies and unscrewing the polls. It's like when you have that, especially also in the absence of the lack of work, I don't think things are going well right now.
Yeah, I mean right now, he's enabling Kamala and Walls to basically like vibe and mean their way to November. And you know, even when you do, even when he does a press conference, So he did this press conference, it's not like you was saying anything that was really like it was was not what his advisors would want him to say.
Right.
But here's the other thing is I think Trump two things.
Number One, I think he sort of like burned out the circuits in terms of his typical style, like we're all so used to his antics that and the news cycle moves so quickly that like this whole you know, Kamala became black thing that he did what two weeks ago that would have sparked weeks of endless hand ringing from democrats in twenty sixteen and probably in twenty twenty as well.
And when you're.
Doing the whole like the soul of our country and democracies on the line, whatever, then that lends itself to this sort of like more sanctimonious moralizing that is just endless. When your frame is weird and pathetic, then you just sort of roll your eyes at it and move on.
And so I think both, you know, the media isn't going to hang on to his attempts to grab the spotlight as much as they used to, and the Harris Walls campaign is set up much more intelligently to deal with any of his attempts to really grab the spotlight back. But you know, to the point about him not really grappling with reality, not being able to really deal with
the landscape as it faces him. In that press conference, I believe the entire time he didn't say he attacked Tim Walls, he didn't say his name once, He didn't go with any of the attacks that you know, Republicans and Jadie Vance had been trying to make on Walls.
Instead, he said this.
Thing that actually I found completely hilarious mostly this is just an excuse to get this into the show, but also was incoherent and like barely an attack on him. Let's take a listen to how he talked about Kamala Harris's choice of Tim Walls.
She's a radical left person at a level that nobody's seen.
She picked a.
Radical left man. That is, he's got.
Things done that he has positions that are just not it's not even possible to believe that they exist. He's going for things that nobody's ever even heard of. Heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different.
Worlds, Heavy into lots of different worlds. Doesn't name a single policy, doesn't say his name.
I don't.
I genuinely don't think that he could remember his name in this press conference because he didn't say it once. He just referred to him as like her radical left man or whatever.
Trump is not currently sending his best, especially when JD you know, and all MAGA influencers are prosecuting the best they can on the airwaves. But this is the other thing again, they're still the number two man. The number two man can't overdo the yeah, number one man. In Trump's own works, especially world rarely matters correct, and I think that's true. Being the attack dog is great, but you're not the number one man. It's about ultimately supporting
somebody above you. And what he says is by definition ten x more newsworthy than everybody else. So I think they're truly flailing This campaign strategy. I think is absolutely counter to the insurgency that he brought and energy of twenty sixteen. Even in twenty twenty, he criss crossed his damn country, went everywhere. The energy was very high, and remember he very nearly won that election. So I do
think there's a lot of problems in that campaign. Turning now to Kamala Harris and some of the changes that she's made in her campaign, it appears that she has fully flip flopped on immigration, and one of our own producers remarked that one of her latest ads on the border may as well come from the Republicans.
Let's take a listen.
Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crimes. As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jail gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border. As Vice president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades, and as president, she will hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking. Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.
I'm Kamala Harris, and I approved this message.
She approves the message, Crystal.
This has got to be one of the biggest about faces that we have seen yet from Kamala. On the record, her campaign has disavowed now her positions. What is it on fracking, on immigration, on healthcare? Am I am I missing anything in terms of the shape.
Yeah, mis vowels.
Pretty much anything she said in primary that could be wrong she's run away from.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, she's not wrong that they did pursue actually quite hawkish for a bidemocratic standards policy on the border and tried to pass that bill that had a lot of the Republican wish list priorities, et cetera. But you know, as I've been saying Zager, like, I just I don't think that this is the most effective messaging because I don't think it's particularly credible. It's not credible if you're leaning this ad right here, like putting aside
my views of the immorality of this direction. This ad right here just sees the ground to the Republican view of immigration, in which the only focus needs to be cracking down, in which immigration is always bad and there's nothing on the other side. We also, you know, to your point, I'll get to what I think would be more effective and what the sort of pulling of data suggests would be more effective than its just like I'll be.
As tough as Donald Trumpy, if not even more.
It also really does contrast with the way she used to talk about the issue not so long ago. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that.
To somehow suggest then an undocumented immigrant is a criminal. Being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime. I know what a crime looks like. An undocumented immigrant is not
a criminal. An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal, and an undocumented immigrant is not when we talk about the immigration debate, I think there is no question that there are powerful forces, including this president, that are attempting to vilify immigrants because they were born in another country and suggests that they are therefore any different in terms of
their fundamental values or beliefs or priorities. And I think all of us as Americans should be insulted by that suggestion, knowing that all of us are just a few generations, if not one generation away from immigrants who arrived in this country.
I mean, yeah, come on, yeah, it's a total about faith in terms of how she's prying.
And the reason it bog bugs me is that you know, when you don't sit for an interview, even to Jake Tapper or somebody like that, can roll back his own tape and be like, what are we doing here? Like you really are going to sit here credibly and make this case. We have gone from kop Mala to what criminal justice kamala to back to kop Mala, and it's like.
Who are you?
And this is where at least some people in the Trump field have begun to found their footing. So JD had a potent attack in one of his interviews over the weekend where he's like, this woman believes nothing. She's a scripted machine. She is somebody who is completely a flip flopper. And I thought back to two thousand and four and one of some of the flip flopped attack on John Kerrey, and think back to what those splice ads used to look like back then. Keep in mind
that was on security. But the reason why I think is potent here is immigration is the number one swing issue, where's the biggest golf between the two. And it's similar actually how the Democrats should be hitting Donald Trump, Like he claims that abortion is not going to be a big issue or any of that. It's like, tell if I were them, I would say tell that to the women who were literally unable to get an abortion or don't even know, can't have any choice, you know, before
they even find out that they're pregnant. So you want to be able to hit the golf issue where the biggest issue divides you and your opponent. So that is where I think the Trump people are going to try and focus. But as you also correctly said, I think there is something just so deeply phony about this which hits to her character where you have no credibility, we don't trust you. You said something very different previously, and now you know, because of polling or whatever, you've decided
to disavow this. And if we do see swings or more potent attacks come on Comma, it will come from this type of direction, I think.
So, I mean, we all know why she's doing it because if you pull on the issues, this is the issue where she has the greatest vulnerability. And you know, the democratic instinct is, rather than make an alternative case that actually reflects you know, the vision is. Democrats have expressed it, including Kamala Harris over the past number of years, just to see the ground say you know, we're going to be just as tough. And again, I don't think that that is the most effective way to go about it.
But let's put this pulling up on the screen.
This is from a democratic group that was testing a bunch of different a bunch of different messaging and potential attacks on Kamala Harris, and the one that was the
most damaging was on immigration. The message they tested specifically was Vice President Harris has been an absolute disaster on immigration, is by so called borders are She has turned our southern border into a sieve, allowing countless legal immigrants, criminals, and drug traffickers to flood into our country, hurt incompetence, and open border policies have jeopardized American security and overwhelmed
our southern border. So that was the most potent hit on her that they and they test an economic message they tested like something like the anti family message. They tested these she's not really black message that wanted to do particularly well. But note what the most effective rebuttal
is here. The number one most effective rebuttal that they tested was as a daughter of immigrants, Vice President Harris understands that people who want to come to the US should do so the legal way like her parents did, and that we need a system that creates better legal pathways for people to immigrate the right way. Vice President Harris understands our nation strength comes from immigrants, and we welcome people from all over the world to pursue freedom
and opportunity here. Vice President Harris will pursue responsible, humane immigration policies that welcome, not threaten those seeking a better life. So combined Sager the idea of like, Okay, people should
be coming here legally. Vice President Harris's parents came here legally, both of them, and people should come here legally, but we also need a system that allows for that, and right now that's not possible, and it's a completely trasting vision rather than just seating Republicans like we got to be tough on the border, got to be tough on the border, got to be tough.
On the border.
It's an actually alternative vision and one that you know, immigration is a complicated issue in terms of the polling on it, one that quite a lot of Americans, in fact, a majority of Americans also believe in this conception of
the country. So you know, I think that's a much stronger direction to go in, not only because you know, I happen to agree with the policy, but also because it doesn't open her up to these very clear charges of like, you sound completely different than you did just four years ago.
You're fake. And I think that's what it comes down to.
I mean, I will note, you know, the number two thing that they tested was Vice President Harris is a prosecutor. Over the course of her career, She's taken on gangs and drug smugglers, put a violent cop killer behind bars for life. She supports biparts in legislation for border patrol to the money they need. She will take border security force, putting violent gangs like MS thirteen, drug smugglers, coyotes, and human traffickers in prison. So that one, I mean obvious,
that's a very popular message. I think it should be a popular message. Chie, But I think what you're correct about is not only about the testing. It's that that one is a way less fake than I'm the prosecutor who's going to throw these people in jail.
It's like, no, you're not.
You flooded our country with eight to ten million illegal people. Get out of here. Who do you think you are? And now you're going to tell me that you're going to take the border. Seriously, it's like you're a joke, and everybody who's voting on immigration, all of us know that you are full of shit. And that is where I don't know though, where the swing state voter will receive this message, because this gets to what we just
talked about with Trump, you need actual discipline. Even with Trump on immigration, I have yet to see him actually prosecute this case in the press conference and on the airwaves.
Now, look, it could be coming.
Like I said, they claim that all of these ads are going to come after Labor Day, and they'll probably let these ads come out so that they can try to do the contrast. But that's a very dangerous territory thing for the Trump campaign. And broadly, you know, what we see too from Kamala is that if they can get her on immigration, which is the number one attack that bleeds through to the economy and everything else of this woman believes nothing. She's phony, and she's reading off
of a poll tested script. And this is where her refusal to do interviews and her refusal also to you know, only participate in one debate, which is a disgrace. I mean, that really robs us of that chance to actually press her. Now, if I were her, I would do the same thing, you know, to be clear cynically, it's the correct move democratically, definitely not the best move.
Yeah, I mean Trump, just to give the example at that press conference, you know, he's still talking about the she became black at the National Association of Black Journalists.
What he came there to make that attack like that, of all the things they tested, was the weakest of anything you could say about her, and I think has a major possibility of a backlash effect when you know, I don't agree with the direction in the frame and whatever, but clearly just saying borders are a million times is way more effective, That's true, and then forces her on the back foot to have to talk about what she said before and what she says now and get the
press to you know, to start pressing the campaign on that, et ceteras. And like you said, it's not like they don't respond. They have been asking Harris surrogates about the quote unquote stolen valor Timwol's thing. They after Jade Vance went and track Diurner campaign plane, and Trump was making a big deal on us. She's not doing any interviews. She felt pressure to have to do interviews, so you know, it's I don't think it's the most ideal way for
her to rebut these charges. But I also don't see the Trump campaign really effectively landing the attack at this point. And I'm also just not sure of the salience of the issue because also the numbers of the border have
gone down quite dramatically over the past several months. People still say the economy is overall the number one thing, and I know you'll say, like, oh, well, these things are tied together, but most of the people who are voting on immigration are Donald Trump voters to start with. So you know, I'm not sure that this will be the critical issue that Republicans want it to be, and it certainly won't be if they don't do an effective job of raising the saliensge just because if.
Don vers are down, doesn't mean, like I said, there are still eight to ten million new people who are here illegally. The total illegal population is probably thirty million. Now that's insane. That's almost eleven percent of this entire country. So you know, you know, it's not like new numbers
aren't exactly making that horrible situation worse. And then second, you know, of course I do think that they're tied, but swing state polling tells us that the white working class voter, the people that they allegedly need to you know, win over, that is their number one issue is immigration. It's not just the economy, and in the eyes of
the voters, the two are tied. So look, Arizona and Arizona obviously very very border hawkish state that we have seen from Mark Kelly and even the Democrats who are willing to be like, I'm standing up to Joe Biden. So that's where I want to see Mark Kelly. Maybe you know, someone in the press could ask him a question, be like, you criticize Joe, and so do you stand with Kamala Harris, Like which way do you think she's
going to go? And then if he says, well, she's going to go in my direction, we can go to her and be like, is that true? Is that what you agree with? Because that's very different from where you were three years ago. I just come back to when you have the media like this in your pocket, it's very difficult unless the Trump people are ultra disciplined and
force them to actually ask something. But if they continue this bullshit about AI, I mean, that's a gift to CNN seeing all they want to do all day at CNN and MSNBC is look at this loser Trump talking about AI, crowd photos and attacking Brian Kemp. Now, if you don't do any of that and you only talk about immigration, they got to talk about something and that's
how you actually get them to respond. So the discipline and the lack of discipline from the Trump people is honestly maddening to watch whenever you see somebody like this just flip on a dime in the national public eye.
And obviously Trump has always been on discipline, But to your point in previous iteration in twenty sixteen, in particular, in twenty twenty, he was kind of I was like all over the place, it's way too online. There wasn't really an effective messaging strategy there either and lo and behold.
Even as an incumbent president, he ends up losing.
But in twenty sixteen, his lack of discipline worked to his advantage because he had his finger on the pulse of something, and he just doesn't this time. I mean, the only finger on the pulse with Trump right now is just like his own sense of unfairness and grievance, which isn't At that point, there was still that sense of grievance, but it was like connected to how a broader population.
Now it's just about him.
It's just about like how unfair this was to him personally, and not this broader finger on the pulse message that is actually landing. And so yeah, even if they have an effective point that they can make here, which again I think it is probably the best in terms of issue focus, it is the best issue focus for them, but he is unable to drive the point on an issue that has always been one that he's been super comfortable talking about. So it's kind of wild to see him flailing even in this area.
Only ever, in the words of Obama, said never underestimate Joe Biden's ability to fuck things up with Trump. I think the same logic applies. Let's move to the next
part here, the Joe Rogan controversy. This also is emblematic of me of Trump and many of his online boosters, but not only making a bad strategic move, but just showing tremendous, just tremendous, Like they're coming at this from a position of such weakness where they seem to believe that Joe Rogan praising RFK Junior and allegedly endorsing him, as claimed by certain Twitter clippers incorrectly, was enough for them to turn and to begin attacking one of the
most popular podcasters in the entire country. So here we have the clip that set everything off, Rogan talking about RFK Junior in a positive manner.
Let's take a listen.
That's just what they do. That's politics. They do it on the left, they do it on the right. They gaslight you, they manipulate you, they promote narratives. And the only one who's not doing that is Robert F. Kennedy Junior.
You a fan, Yeah, I am a fan.
Yeah. He's the only one that makes sense to me. He's the only one that he doesn't attack people. He attacks actions and ideas.
But he's.
He's much more reasonable and intelligent. I mean, the guy was an environmental attorney and cleaned up the East River. He's a legitimate guy.
Okay, so that's all he said. Now that was construed as a quote unquote endorsement by several people on Twitter. By the way, shall we all just take this as an evidence of when some random person you've never heard of says Joe Rogan endorses, maybe listen to the clip for yourself, and if you don't use the word endorsement, then it's probably not an endorsement. He was saying things are a positive. Rogan responds, let's put this up here.
He says, for the record, this isn't an endorsement. This is me saying I like RFK Junior as a person. I really appreciate the way he discusses things with civility and intelligence.
I think we could use more of that in this world.
I also think Trump raising his fist and saying fight after getting shot is one of the most American fucking things of all time. I am not the guy to get political information from. If you want that from a comic, go to Dave Smith. He actually knows what he's talking about. Now this, you know, kind of not necessarily walking away from the RFK endorsement or whatever was enough for then Trump to see it.
Let's put this up there.
Trump now says, it will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets booed the next time that he enters the UFC.
Ring MAGA twenty twenty four.
This is where, again Trump's pettiness is so ludicrous to anybody who even tangentially follows the UFC. It's like, are we to believe that Rogan, who quite literally is tied to the sport of UFC in its image from its infancy, and that the fans there who probably all listen to his podcast, are going to boo Joe Rogan for saying that he likes RFK Junior, or because Trump tells him to.
This is where Trump overestimates his own power. Just because they cheer for you whenever you enter the octagon doesn't mean that they're going to just do or whenever you enter the stadium or whatever, does not mean that they're going to like just follow your instructions to boo him whenever he And it's just it's again, it's petty, and it's one completely from a position of weakness, and I just think it was such was so stupid for them to be engaging in.
Because what happened this weekend.
Trump and Shane Gillis or sorry, Rogan and Shane Gillis are making fun of Trump at their latest I think the Kill Tony show. The clip just came out where they're making fun of the situation and in Madison Square Garden in front of millions of people, and everybody was laughing at the idea.
That Trump was going to be attacking Rogan. So anyway, very stupid idea.
Yeah, I mean I did a whole monologue. You recall it not the way that the left would only fixate on the things that Rogan would say that they really disagreed with, and when he would say things they do agree with, they would just completely ignore. And it's like, you have this very popular figure who has a lot of cloud. I mean, I understand why like a quote unquote endorsement from him matters. You remember when he endorsed Bernie. It was similar of him being like, oh, I'll proably
vote for this. I wasn't like I endorse Bernie Sanders, and the Sanders camp smartly took it and ran with it, because this is a guy who has a lot of sway and cloud with his audience. So why would you want to, you know, blow this thing up massively and make it appear like he's an adversary attack him aggressively when you know he does buy and large now talk about he criticizes the Democrats way more than the Republicans. He does buy and large host a lot of conservative viewpoints.
He has been very good for a lot of elements of the right and so for them to you know, turn on a dime and have the freak out that they did, it was very indicative of how insecure their feeling. And then it was also interesting to me that he felt enough pressure because he normally doesn't respond to any of the controversies, he felt enough pressure to have to come out and say, well, it was really an endorsement.
And here's something cool that Donald Trump did too, by the way, So he clearly was feeling the heat from an audience that has become increasingly right leaning over time. But just to give you a sense, put B seven up on the screen of the level of meltdown from from some of this cats heard in particular.
But this was there were a lot who were saying things like this. He says.
So, I've never been a Joe Rogan fan, can't stand him. Yes, he has a popular podcast. I've always thought he was absolutely politically dumb. He's great at figuring things out. Two years after we do what a legend? So did it surprise me? Hand he endorsed idiot RFK Junior today. Loll No, we're talking about the same fing idiot who endorsed Bernie Sanders.
Right.
He's the podcast equivalent of a dumb blonde joke. And this came after Catter. I don't know if we have these tweets after cat Turd. Previously had been like guess what to all of you lefty idiots out there, Joe Rogan can say whatever he wants on his podcast and you can just go cry about it. Was basically of the tweeting about it.
Joe Rogan can say anything wants on this podcast. There's nothing you can do about it but cry. January thirty first, twenty twenty two.
Yeah, and now a little bit of a change of tone.
Yeah, First of all, how did cat turd become a fig figure?
Yeah?
I mean, you know, there's certain things the Catter has done this, which I'm not going to mention here on the air, but anyways.
Involves a dog.
That's all I'll say that people can go and look into for themselves. My only point is like, how exactly did figures like this become the so called like maga cultural taste makers. It was by you know, sniveling at the boot of Donald Trump. That's all he's done this entire time. I remember, he would attack Jeff Sessions, he would attack anybody who would come out against Donald Trump. It's like a cultish figure, and I mean probably to
expected from a cat toord like individual. But the fact that he has, the fact that he has such way, such sway, I mean, he was on the Tucker Carlson Show, for God's sake, does tell us about his position, you know, in the modern GOP.
And so that is the problem.
And clearly, you know, attacking people like Rogan just shows Trump both on the back foot insecure for god knows what for no reason and then just making up this bs which does tell us again that the more that the pettiness is about him and the less connected it is to policy, the worst that Trump is going to perform.
As we all learned in twenty twenty two.
Yeah, all right, yes, okay, So there has been some just incredible interviews that Nancy Pelosi has been giving, just sort of casually savaging Joe Biden and his political team. In particular, she just put on a book, I think the Art of Power is what it's called that what it's called something.
Like that, The Art of Power available at Costco, which recently.
We put in a request for her to come on.
By the way, we would love it.
Yeah, I don't see it really happening, but it would be interesting anyway. So she's been doing a lot of interviews in the context of this book that's coming out, and she has just been sort of, you know, spilling the tea on what went behind went on behind the scenes during the pressure campaign. Let's take a look at this first one and what she reveals.
I didn't accept a letter as anything but a letter, I mean, I mean, And another there are some people who were unhappy with the letter. Let me say some said that. Some people were un feel like I'll put in some of the else is now because it was a I don't even know. It didn't sound like Joe Biden to me. It really didn't.
So, but please tell us what you told President Biden to persuade him to step aside.
Well, I've never come I've never shared any conversations with a president of the United States publicly.
No, it's said that he's furious at you, is he?
Well, he knows that I love him very much.
I understand that you don't want to own this, but it is so well reported that you were the leader of a pressure campaign.
No, I wasn't a leader of any pressure's party. Well, let me say things that I didn't do. I didn't call one person. I did not call one person. I love him so much. I think he's been really a fantastic president of the United States. So I really wanted him to make a decision of a better campaign because they were not facing the fact of what was happening. Just so back then, I've never been that impressed with his political.
Operation, Biden's operation.
Yeah, I'm not. I mean, it just happened. They won the White House, bravo. But so my concern was, this ain't happening, and we have to make a decision for us this to happen, and the president has to make the decision for that to happen. Let me just say, I won't say necessarily I knew what I was doing at that time. I knew what I was doing in the whole thing, not just that. What was and what was that that Donald Trump would never set foot in the White House again.
So a lot that's interesting there. First of all, she talks about the letter, remember the letter that Biden put out and his team, saying like, I am in the race period of an end of story in this conversation needs to stop. And then she goes on Morning Jo and says, well, waiting for him to decide, and they're like, no, no, he said he Well, we're waiting for him to decide. So she says, I just saw it as a letter,
and that didn't really sound like him to me. Then she has this very mob boss like type language plausible deniability when she's getting pressed on okay, what did you do?
What did you say to him?
And she says, well, I can always say I didn't call one person. I was not the leader of a pressure party. I did not call even one person. And then in the second interview with The New Yorker, she has to tell you the year I've never been that impressed with his political campaign. He won the White House, Bravo, but he wasn't effectively. He wasn't grappling with reality that he was losing. He was not presenting any sort of a plan or ability to turn it around, and was
in complete denial. Remember the reports from the time that she was like, get Donalin on the phone because he's not giving the straight truth about what these numbers are. He was in denial, just like Trump is now about where his poll numbers actually were and what was required.
To turn it around. So very very interesting comments.
For so yeah, it's absolutely fascinating and it does just tell us about what that pressure campaign look like. We also, by the way, Biden has now done more interviews than Kamala Harris since he has dropped out of the race. He sat down with a CBS news and he talked about his decision to drop out.
Here's what he had to say.
Let's begin with your decision at your home Rohoboth Beach, Delaware, late July, with your family, and you make this historic decision. Tell me the story.
Look, fools, we had showed that it was neck and neck race would have been down on the wire. But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues and the House and Senates thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic you be interviewing about. Why did Nancy Pelosi say? Why did some it? And and I thought it'd be a
real distraction Number one. Number two. When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president. I can't even say how old I am. It's hard for me to get out of my mouth. But things got moving so quickly it didn't happen. And the combination was that I thought was a critical issue for me.
Still is not a joke, maintaining this democracy. But I thought it was important because although I it's a great honor being president, I think I'm an obligation to the country to do what I the most important thing to can do, and that is we must, we must, we must defeat Trump.
So what do we see from that? Now?
He claims he was a transition president, even though he denied being that transition president a mere month ago. Whenever he was still trying to remain in the race. Now it's all about, Oh, it would have been a distraction. Well, it was a distraction whenever you used to clinging to power. What ultimately forced him out was not I think it was obviously Pelosi. It was the donors, and it was everybody's just saying, not only have no path to victory,
you will have no money to pursue it. So he held on to his very last gap, and let's not forget he still continues to cling to the American presidency. We have two segments we're about to get to where the US is green lighting a literal invasion of Russia and where Iran is poised to begin a possible regional and maybe even global war with US military assets that are streaming there. He has his finger on the button and the nuclear codes. It remains an enduring and terrifying position.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's no doubt about it. And I think reading into what he said there a little bit, you know, he says, oh, well, the media wasn't going to stop, and you would be asking me right now, what is Nancy? What about what Nancy Pelosi said? And other leaders, she and others really credibly threatened that if he didn't remember the quote, you could do this the easy way or the.
Hard way right.
She very credibly threatened that basically like we're not going away, We're not letting a drop. Every day until you go is going to be you haven't deal with. Pelosi came out against you, Schumer came out against you. Hakeem Jeffreys came out against you. Barack Obama came out against you, like ratcheting up the pressure up up until he was going to go. So you know, he came to the conclusion at long last that this was not a sustainable
position for him. And you know Pelosi's comments though about his being unimpressed with his political team, which by the way, I think is incredibly fair, given they had way too much self confidence and arrogance about their political prowess. When the twenty twenty primary he didn't win, he had that
handed to him. And then in twenty twenty in the general election, you're running against Trump who was doing all kinds of wild stuff and shooting himself in the foot every single day, and you barely eke down a victory even in what should have been really favorable circumstances. So I think Pelosi is actually right about that, but it clearly alloy those who were on Biden's political team. We had a long interview with Anita Dunn, who was one of those individuals in Politico, and she made a little
like passive aggressive undercutting comment of Nancy Pelosi. She said, we can put this up on the screen.
This is C three.
She said, the task in front of us, this is Anita Dunn, is to win the selection, not let Donald Trump become president again, and to win the House of Representatives, which had certain leaders in twenty twenty two done a slightly better job. Maybe we would control today, but we don't clearly a shot.
At Nancy Pelosi there.
So that's how that's how people in DC returned fires through like bitch passive aggression.
I was going to say, there's no other way to describe this entire interview as just literally bitchy. She's like, well, certain leaders and people, you know, denied us the ability to get back, and that just really kneecapped.
And I mean, this woman too is a liar.
She up until the day before Biden dropped out, was saying that they still had a pass to victory.
Everything was fine. Loo I mean that yeah.
In here, she says that if you look at the polls and what was it the poll dials, She says, oh, in.
The debate, Actually, people liked the second happening.
No they didn't, No, they didn't. He was actually worse.
It was just weird, you know, considering how terrible it was in the beginning. His very first answer was a national humiliation, and it was just a downswing from there.
You don't need a dial to tell you that.
And if you do have a dial that tells you otherwise, you should fire your dial provider.
Yeah.
No, she was part of the team that was bloy smoke up his ass and everyone else's and lying and denying the reality of his current state. Lying, I think to him, but he needs a grown man. He knows how to read a pole. But giving him only the data that painted the rosiest picture. And so you know, that's when Pelosi comes in, is like, all right, well, let me talk to Donalin, who is a top Biden
aid as well about what's going on. That's when the rubber hit the road of we're going to break open this bubble that you're living in, this alternate reality in which you're doing well and in which you're winning. So you know, I did see a report. This will be something to keep an eye on that. On the one hand, Kamala Harris is not good historically a building a political team.
So the fact that she could just you know, turn on the lights and the Biden campaigns, switch over the signs and roll out and be good to go is overall, I think, a tremendous advantage for her. However, there is an awkwardness between the people like Anita Dunn who's now on the Harris team, who were Biden people up until the very bitter end, and now the new people who have been brought in, like a David Pluff who also has a very senior role and who is you know,
part of Obama World. No Obama World team is very adversarial to the Biden world. So there is apparently some internal campaign tension that they're working through right now. And all of these campaigns are turf wars. You know, people are very jealous and protective over what is their sphere of influence and what is their level of power, and
that's the way all of DC operates. So you can only imagine when you had this campaign structure set up for President Biden with certain advisors who have been close to him for a million years and who thought that they were locked in in their spot of power, and then oh suddenly you got David Pluff breathing down your neck and telling you what to do, and others like him as well. You can imagine how that would breed some tension and resentment. As of yet, it doesn't manifest
in terms of the performance. I think anyone would have to say, just judging by the numbers and the you know, the look of the campaign and what they've been able to pull together, et cetera, that just from a pure political perspective, they've done a very effective job. But you know, that's something that is sort of brewing under the surface that could come out later as a source of problems.
I totally agree with that.
And look, I think that the book right now, everyone's disciplined and they're keeping it, you know, enthusiasm, all that. The twenty twenty five book on how this all came to be. I cannot wait. Mark Halpritn he'll make his grand return. He is the one he read, so he got the scoop. Remember he was the one who had the exact timeline for how it was all going to go. Is you right about that?
He was totally correct? About the timeline dropout. Yeah, and all of that, and.
Pelosi says she's going to write a book about it, so yeah, that'll'll be interesting.
I'll have to bio.
I look, I am a sucker for those inside stories for how it all came about, and I do think it was particularly insane. And if anything, no Biden book has sold well. The only one that will sell is about how we finally got him to go away forever. Let's turn to these two very troubling foreign policy situations. So we have a crazy situation right now in Ukraine media that barely even wants to report it. The United States is currently backing a full blown invasion of Russia.
Let's go ahead and put this up there.
On the screen. This is from the Institute for the Study of War. Of course, you want to color in and keep in mind their own bias, but this is basically the best data that we have. Russian forces have been pushed back some thirty square mile kilometers or so inside of their own territory out and again this is internationally recognized Russian territory, not territory that they have previously claimed in the Curse region of Russia. According to Russian officials.
Some one hundred thousand Russian citizens have had to flee the area. They are approximately one million who are there. There are several towns that have been taken over by the Ukrainians in a so called shock offensive. Now, the reason why it's a shock is that, according to the Ukrainians and to the US narrative, this is supposed to be a war of defense from invasion. So to counter their invasion Crystal, they have decided to invade territory which
they deemed Russian. Now, philosophically, I don't really have a problem with this. Of course, whenever you're in a war, you should be doing whatever you need to. The issue is not what the Ukrainians are doing. It's the fact that US NATO weaponry is being employed to literally invade Russia. And when we flip it around and we consider what it would look like here, this is not disputed territory. This is internationally recognized an invasion.
And that is.
Literally the justification for every dollar of the hundreds of billions that we have shipped to Ukraine is to defend against this invasion. And then just consider, can any great power nation sit there and tolerate and invasion of its own territory. If Mexico invaded even up until the city of Laredo or El Paso, would we tolerate that.
No, we would bomb them back.
To the Stone Age as the as the you know, the sayings go. Now, let's be fair too. This has also demonstrated the tremendous problems with the Russian military that they haven't been able to immediately push us back. Put this up there, for example on the screen The Financial Times reports Russian reinforcements have failed to push back the Ukrainian incursion.
The sixth day.
President Zelensky has openly acknowledged taking the war to Russian territory. And there is no doubt crystal that this is one hundred percent with the backing of the United States of America. And given Joe Biden's decline that we just talked about
at length, is he even in charge here? And as Americans can we sit here and risk a literal invasion of Russia at the same time that we have billions of dollars in military assets steaming towards the Middle East, and with the Israelis openly saying Iran is going to attack us and the United States is going to have to once again spend billions to defend Israel from that attack. How can we really tolerate the risk of these two
and the fact that they probably contribute. The Iranians say, hey, we got a lot of military assets tied up over there, and the Russians is saying got a lot of military's assets tied up over there.
That's very true.
Yeah.
And meanwhile, you know, the media has basically lost interest in this story.
There's rial coverage of it.
You know, Jadie Vance and all of his many interviews he did yesterday, there was not i think one question.
About He brought it up once in a print interview, but yes, to any of the media people, they didn't bring it up.
They didn't bring it up, like what could be more important?
We're backing the invasion of a nuclear armed superpower, and hey, how's this going to end?
Where is this leading? What's your plan?
You know, if you were in the White House, what would your side of the equation be?
And there's zero interest in it.
You know, people have lost interest in this story because it is a lot messier than it was in the early days when it was just like go Ukraine and Ukraine had Russia on the back foot. Now you're in this long, grinding war of attrition.
And make no.
Doubt about it, the fact that the Biden administration finally caved and sent those F sixteen fighter jets, that is a big part of the reason why they were able to make these games. You'll recall early on in this war, Biden was very resistant. He was very careful about what he sent. There was a lot of concern about potential escalation. There was, I mean, the idea in the beginning that you would send F sixteen fighter jets to enable Ukrainian
invasion of Russia would have been considered insane. And yet here we are and no one's even talking about it, which is even more insane.
Quite frant we have that. So let's go and put please D four up on the screen. In terms of the F sixteens, they began to arrive. Now, actually, even more troubling is not only the F sixteens and the way that they've gotten their hands on that. It's that all of the precision guided munitions are very, very difficult to manufacture here in the US. We have very limited stocks of them. And of course, what has the Biden administration done. They've decided to green light shipping those precision
guided munitions for the F sixteen back to Ukraine. And so they're going to be using hot like precision guided weaponry from US stockpiles, which are difficult to manufacture when we're in the middle of two global conflagrations, which possibly and very you know, I wouldn't say likely, but possibly
that the US forces could get themselves into. We also literally have Zelensky openly acknowledging this D three please where for days, And usually when the Ukrainians pull some terrorist attack or whatever in Russia, they're like, oh, what a tragedy. You know, it's crazy that somebody would do that. They're just openly saying it. In his video address that was late on Saturday, he said Ukrainian military is pushing the war onto the aggressor territory. Now again, I want to say, philosophically,
I don't care about this. It is normal actually to try and hit your enemy wherever they are and to throw them off balance. But when it's America's role and we're the ones who are funding all of this, and we are the ones who experience any potential blowback, then that's a real issue. We also you know, shockingly enough, Yes, it's true, the Ukrainians can pull this off. And then this morning in the Wall Street Journal they talk about how the Ukrainian commander is begging for more troops.
They have no idea what to do.
They've had six days worth of success and now they're like, do we owd this territory?
What do we do with this territory? Now?
We have to pull stuff away from previous defensive fronts over here. Their own military leadership has no idea what to do with these gains. So, yeah, it's been a good pr stunt.
Can you hold it? You know?
Are are you now going to annex it into Ukraine? Are you going to I mean imagine the hypocrisy and the sheer insanity of bargaining, you know, and claiming that your territory needs to be given back to you, but then occupying internationally recognized hair toy swapping it. Now, that's a very different moral narrative, isn't it then saying well, we're just fighting back against the people who have invaded
our country. Yeah, And that's the problem, you know, is that the longer this drags on, there's the moral ambiguity increases. The so called justness of their cause decreases their overall ability to even stand this without literally tens of billions of dollars a month having to flow there in Western Aid. It shows us that this cannot go on forever, and we all know how it's going to end, and so
they refuse to end it. Currently we refused, frankly, to responsibly end it, and we bear the ultimate risk for anything going on.
And that's the real question. I mean, this has been you know, for for Ukraine. That's been a real show of force. It has exposed, as you said, you know, world weaknesses on the Russian side that they haven't been able to repel these forces on their own territory. Obviously, the Ukrainians are trying to demonstrate that the entry of the F sixteen's into this conflict is a real game
changer for them. They also just called up a bunch more men and are trying to constitute new battalions that they also want to use to try to bolster the manpower issues that remain a big problem for them. That ammunition issues remain a big problem for them. They're still taking on a lot of water in eastern Ukraine. The most hopeful thing you could say about this, No one really understands or.
Knows what their strategy is except for them.
Maybe even the US doesn't know, because they seem to keep things, a lot of things from us. The most hopeful thing you could say is, well, maybe they're trying to strengthen their hand for potential talks.
Maybe that's what the play is here.
And if so, okay, but let's have some indication from our leaders what we think where we think this should lead,
where we think this is going. Since we are so deeply intertwined with the Ukrainian cause and with this offensive, and you know, if this is to strengthen the hand for potential talks, we need to start laying the groundwork also for what a you know, not maybe a just resolution of this outcome, but a reasonable resolution to this outcome that everyone could be angry about but ultimately live with might look like.
Because when you just.
Have the continuing narrative from Zelensky and from us that there's not going to be any territory lost and it's all or nothing and we're in it forever, then it's very difficult to turn around and come to the table and have talks and try to come to some sort of a Resolutional.
Absolutely, very true. All right, let's get to Iran.
Yeah, so there's a lot going on here. Obviously, you'll recall we still have we're still awaiting whatever the Iranian response is going to be to that Israeli provocation assassination on Iranian soil the day before the new president was inaugurated. Nonetheless, let's put this up on the screen. This is Barack Revide, who's close both with the DC establishment and with the
Israeli establishment. He says, the updated assessment of the Israeli intelligence community is that Iran has decided to attack Israel directly in retaliation for the assassination of from US political leader Ismael Hania, and may do within days, even before the.
August fifteenth hostage deal talks.
Per two sources, we also have some indication from the Iranian side that maybe potentially or in the other direction, Israel is really bracing for a massive offensive year, and the US, judging by the military assets that we are rushing into the region, are also bracing for a massive retaliation from Iran. Here's what Iran had to say about it, in part, it can put this up on the screen. They said on Saturday. They want to avoid negatively impacting Gaza ceasefire talks. This is e two guys with its
anticipated retaliation. Achieving a permanent ceasefire and Gaza remains a priority, Aroun's permanent mission to the UN said in a statement. It also said any agreement accepted by Hamas would be acceptable to Iran as well. The statement condemned Hania's assassination Tehran as a quote violation of Iranian national security and sovereignty. Iran emphasized its right to self defense with stressed it
hopes its response would not impede the ongoing ceasefire efforts. Now, as far as those ceasefire efforts go, Sagur don't appear to be going that well, because I mean, who has It's long been clear him and his government don't have.
An interest I want it.
They don't want to cease fire. They've played all these games of pretending like they're interested, but then throwing up some obstacle at the last minute. And you have new reports that maybe the Biden ministration can be a little bit tougher on them, but no indication that we're going to actually do the things we need to do, which is to say, listen, you're on your own. We're cutting off weaponshipments, et cetera. I could put this up on
the screen. Diplomatic sources told Haretz that it has been clarified to Netnyaho that the Biden administration is reaching the point where his behavior would result in the White House publicly accusing him of preventing the release of the hostages. Up till now, the White House has only blamed Tamas for any problems in the ceasefire talks. Now allegedly they're saying, well, we'll blame you and tomasus.
Twelfth who cares at this point?
And that's the thing is, like, you know, we've how many of these Oh they're upset behind the scenes, and they're being tougher and he's really going to be tough this time before.
People realize that this is also all a joke.
This is all nonsense posturing and BBNATANYAHUO obviously does not care what Joe Biden thinks or says of him without actually applying any real pressure using the mechanisms of power that we have. So I mean, this is all ridiculous.
And then the last piece I'll put up here on get your fulsome response, sager Is Hamas has basically said, listen, we're done playing games here, like we see the game that you're playing here, of pretending to do serious negotiations and just using this to throw up new obstacles and
walk away from any potential deer deal. So, in part what they said is in light of this amount of concern and responsibility towards our people and their interests, the movement calls them, the Mediators, to submit a plan to implement what they presented to the movement and approved on July second, based on Biden's vision the Security Council resolution, to oblige the occupation to do so instead of going to more rounds of negotiations or new proposals that provide
cover for the occupations aggression and give it more time to perpetuate the war of genocide against our people. And remember the guy that Israel assassinated, Ismaeil Haniah was the political leader of Hamas, and in the context of Hamas, was more of a deal break maker, more of a moderate.
Now you have Yaya Sinowar, who was the architect of the October seventh attacks, who is the lead voice and the lead negotiator here and he is much more hardline, which, by the way, Sirs bb Night, now who too because he doesn't want to.
See spied deal. I was going to bring that up.
I also, I mean, what I am just so terrified right now is that Lloyd Austin and the Israeli spoke yesterday. The USS Abraham Lincoln is accelerating right now to go to the Middle East as fast as possible. Two US missile our guy that believe guided missile destroyers are headed to the eastern Mediterranean. Hes Bulah yesterday penetrated iron Dome. There's so many things happening, it's almost too much to
put in the show. But are we all going to ignore northerre in Israel, the so called incredible Iron Dome. Almost every rocket penetrated the Iron Doman was able to hit its target. A preview of what a real general war with Hesbula would look like. Iran, according to the Israelis, says that they are preparing a quote large scale attack. Now, as we all know, the Israeli military on its own
is completely incapable of repelling this. It will take again Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the UK and France all to have to step in and to shoot down all these missiles on Israel's behalf. And look, at a certain point, I don't even necessarily have a problem with that, as long as we're also trying to constrain Israeli action on the other side that would lead to it.
That keeps drawing.
That's the problem very intentionally.
If we are lessening tension and lessening the likelihood of regional war on both sides, I have no problem. Cool, you know, let's shoot it down here and then tell Israeli Is like, hey, guys, you know you got.
To cut this out.
But to have it second time now in the span of justice several months, we know where the action is coming from. And I continue to say this, if Israelis did not have total confidence, we would shoot dow the stuff for them. They would never dream in a million years of blowing somebody up in the middle of Tehran like this and basically openly cheering about it. Because if Hesbola, a paramilitary organization can penetrate Iron Dome, what could Iran
do to them? You know, this is where the concept of strategic balance is so important, and why when you put your hand so far on one side and then you basically take it off on the other That's what actually increases the likelihood of escalation.
Well, and here's the thing too.
Last time, it appears Iran basically coordinated their retaliation I mean with us.
They wanted it to look big, but be capable.
For us to be able to deal with it in the Israelis and Jordan at all, and for it to not really inflict much, if any damage on Israel. Is that the case this time? I mean, the Israelis may be overestimating our capabilities to deal with it.
Oh, it takes one.
Massive issue, that's exactly right, massive issue that they have created for themselves. And know, while this is all going on, we can have a lose sight of what is happening on the ground in Gaza, where the horror absolutely continues.
Now it's worth.
Remembering both with this assassination in Tehran and also the assassination in Beirut in Lebanon, Israelis were able to be really very precise, very very precise. Yet we now have another horror unfolding. We could just run this as vo guys, so I can talk over it. We have a school that was hit by the Israelis using massive munich huge bombs that just killed around one hundred people. According to reports on the ground, this was a school in Gaza
City where displaced Palestinians were sheltering. And it's just an absolute horror. Now these Raelis area, we can put this up on the screen. Israelis are claiming, oh, of course, what else this was Hamas was sheltering here. This was Palestinian Islamic jihad that was sheltering here. They put on a list of nineteen supposed militants that were among the dead. However, this is from a human rights organization. They went and
they looked, okay, well, who are these people actually? So far, of these supposed eliminated terrorists in this school massacre, three had already been killed before, so it can't kill them twice three Another three were elderly civilians no military ties, one a school principal, deputy mayor, and a university professor. Six are absolute civilians. Some were even opposed to Hamas.
And they're continuing to verify the remaining names. But let me be clear, even if even if this wasn't a why and they actually did kill nineteen militants in this strike, you cannot just bomb a school where Palestine civilians, women, children, who were the majority of the dead are sheltering. That is not acceptable. That is a war crime, even if Hamas is quote unquote using them as human shields.
So this is what continues.
If you look at the map soger Of, I mean, Gaza has just been decimated like that was clearly the goal to make it so there was complete anihilation, nothing to go back to, and they may have not destroyed him us, but that goal they have surely accomplished.
Well internationally too.
It's just one of those where again when the Biden people are like, oh, we are going to call you out, It's like, so what who cares at this point? You know, in terms of exactly it's like who in America actually would even care if they start blaming them now? You had leverage many many months ago, you decided not to use it now. And then the other very smart thing that BB is done from his own political calculus is
it just keeps rationing things up a little bit. You know, everything is a step forward, step for what can I get away with here? What can I get away with here? We got he got us to spend a billion bucks in a single night to shoot down missiles before we run.
Now he's going to get us to do it again.
Let's hope it works, that it doesn't go even further, But what's going to happen next time? And then the more that you focus away from Gaza, the more that you change the conversation here, then it becomes about Israel's existentialism, about whether they're going to get drawn into a regional war. And the next thing, you know, US troops are the ones who are involved and who are paying the price.
And that was the plan literally all along. Yeah, so you know, we have enabled a lot of this, and we are marching dangerous and dangerously close to even more embroiling. And you know, to talk about Joe Biden, I mean, this is forget age. This is the actual legacy is look at how on the brink the world is right now and how dangerous things are for America. If we had had any sort of realism at all, I mean, we wouldn't be in this situation. And you know, the
entire foreign policy elite cheers it on. It's I think we're in a very dangerous situation. I mean I've been saying that for ten months and that's what people make fun of. But you know, you only have to be right once to actually acknowledge some of this happening. And even if it doesn't lead to a war, was it worth the hundreds of billions that we have spent on this, not to mention the human toll that has happened as well,
And that's just now and Ukraine. Put those two things together, it's disaster.
Absolutely sick.
All right, let's go ahead and get to Ken Clippenstein's standing by to talk about this hacking of the Trump campaign. So apparently, as I mentioned before, the Trump campaign has been hacked. A number of news outlets received a dossier of sorts on JD. Vans that was apparently internal of the campaign when they were vetting him, looking at what his strengths and weaknesses were. There's some question there. The
campaign is asserting that this was a run. Ken Clippenstein, independent journalist and author of the Ken Clippenstein's Substack that you guys should all subscribe to, is here to take a look at all of these claims and counterclaims.
Great to see you, Ken, Good to see you, dude. Hey guys, good to be back.
All right, So breakdown for what exactly do we know about what happened here?
Really, all we know is what Microsoft has alleged, and of course they have their own internal information. And in the report posted to their website on Friday, they described a hacking attempt into a presidential campaign, but they didn't say which one. And so the author of that post, which I find is interesting, nobody really went into his background. Clint Watts. He's a former FBI special agent. I knew
who he was because I've reported on him before. He's a yeah, he's a commentator on he was a commentator on MSNBC. He's been a long time commentator and expert on foreign influence efforts. And I you know, in twenty seventeen, after the twenty sixteen Russian led interference efforts into the election, then he described, sometimes in hyperbolic terms, those those efforts, calling at one point these the Russian efforts in the past several years the most effective in history, which which
I thought was a little bit overstating it. And you know, I looked into that question, and you know, Rand put on an interstring report suggesting that they were not actually particularly well organized, they were not particularly effective. So you know, I don't want to I don't want to denigrate him, but you know, he's somebody who is an expert in foreign influence and that's what he tends to see. And so in the context of that Microsoft report that he authored,
that's definitely concerns worth looking at. But what was astonishing to me is neither the FBI nor the Director of National Intelligence has put out a statement.
On any of this.
So really all we have to go on is that a vague report by Microsoft, which again has declined to identify who it was. There was a report in the Washington Post a source to an anonymous anonymous source of Ellen Nakashima's that said that it was a reference to the Trump campaign, but we don't know if that's the same thing as the as the as the leaked information.
In fact, let's can we take a step back, though, and just maybe explain to people what happened is that this leaked dossier has come to reporters people are claiming it is Iran. Now, why is it unusual, like you just said, for the dn I, the FBI and others to have not offered comment with such a public story.
Yeah, so in a situation like this, going back months now that DNI said we are going to prioritize declassifying and releasing information proactive to head out foreign interference efforts. And for them to, you know, several days into this not even say we're looking at it, we're going to have something for you, just no comment at all from the DNI. We have no comment from the FBI either.
They're not doing very good at what they what they said that they were going to do, which was to you know, release information of the public as quickly as they can, or they don't have anything. And that essentially is the question. And I was just about to say a moment ago the New York Times yesterday David Sanger, the one of the national security correspondents, so that it's not clear if this was from a hack or a leak internal to the campaign. And I think that's a
responsible way to frame this. Now, there's plenty of reason to think that it was the Iranians. I mean to think that they that they had motive rather because you know, Trump very hawkish on Iran, theatrically so at times, posting a Game of Thrones at one point spoof of him saying sanctions are coming, and of course the assassination of Castem Solamani, the reimposition of sanctions that would throw from the Iran deal. So all that to say they have the motive, but we don't yet know that they were
actually the ones that carried it out. And the press reporting has been extremely irresponsible in this regard. I mean, we're coming into what could be this week in Iranian military retaliation for the assassination in Iran by Israel of the political leader of Hamas, and they're just running with this thing without any underlying proof or even evidence beyond just Microsoft's vague statement, which again did not provide any specifics to know that this was even the same event.
The ironies here, obviously are very rich when you consider the twenty sixteen Russian hacking and release of information from internal to the Clinton campaign and Trump, you know, going out and encouraging that Russia if you're listening, et cetera, et cetera. Now the shoe is very much on the other foot, assuming it is Iran, which, as you say, it's you know, not entirely clear that it is at
this point. So a Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chung said, any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are do the bidding of America's enemies and doing exactly what they want. I mean, that sounds almost identical to the language that the Clinton campaign and their supporters used back in twenty sixteen to try unsuccessfully to get the media not to report on the contents of those leaks.
Yeah, the ironer here seems to be appreciated by everyone except the Trump campaign. There's just no awareness at all of it. And I want to point out one interesting thing about that spokesperson. It's been reported that he was asked, have you been in touch with Microsoft? And he declined to say repeatedly to multiple outlets. So there's a lack
of evidence here. And in fact, if you look at some of the subsequent reporting, they describe the campaign having been aware of a breach several weeks ago, but that internally in their discussions they didn't know who it was. So I think there's a very good chance that they just don't know and that this is a speculation.
Now.
None of that is to say that at some point in the future we might find out that we wouldn't find out that it was Iran. But but what seems very clear is that they just don't know, and I haven't seen any country. I haven't seen any country reading evidence to suggest that that that their own understanding of has changed in the last several days.
Yeah, I mean looking, I was just reading as well, like you said, Even others are response. Media outlets are saying some have accused Iran, but nobody is definitively saying. The White House has not yet released a statement, which
it seems likely that it would given previous positioning. Can I mean, there's been some speculation that, oh, well, if it was, they wouldn't want to acknowledge it, but that doesn't seem true to me, given how you know, how outrage they were over Russian hacks and how big a deal they have made about election threats and hacking and all of that.
What's your read on the situation.
I mean, this is a huge budget priority, and I've reported on the on the emergence of all of these counter disinformation kind of foreign influence offices throughout the federal government, in the Department of Defense, in the Department Homeland Secure, already within the DOJ. They have thrown so much money at this and for us to be several days into this and for them not even to say we're looking at it, we're working on something, We're gonna have something is outrageous.
What are we paying these people for.
They won't even come out and say we're looking at the FBI did acknowledge that they've seen the media reporting, so they know about this. It's on their radar, but they won't give us anything. And I understand in a cyber world they have of saying attribution is difficult. It's hard to know who did what. I mean, you might see that there was a breach, but it could be a party trying to look like another party. It could
be you know, an independent actor. These questions are not simple technical questions, so I understand that might take time. But they have not provided any indication that they're working on it or that an answer is forthcoming, which leads me to wonder if there is one, or if the agencies are just doing a poor job of communicating and again time. That's really important to geopolitically, for them to be clear about what's.
Happening with regard to Iran. I mean, the.
Military's repositioning itself to prepare to protect Israel and respond to an attack. I mean, this couldn't come in a worse time geopolitically in terms of the conflict.
One of the things that's been curious to me is, while we know that the hack occurred, and we even know, you know, reportedly among the hacked materials was a document that the Trump campaign confirmed was authentic that was effectively the vetting document of JD. Vance that explored his strengths, weaknesses, et cetera, as Donald Trump was considering adding him to the ticket. Yet none of these outlets that receive these
materials have actually reported on the contents of the materials. Now, they did, and in my opinion, appropriately so when it was you know, twenty sixteen, and with regards to Hillary Clinton, because you're a journalist, you get information from all kinds of sketchy sources. If it's newsworthy, it's newsworthy. It doesn't matter if it was you know, hacked document or not.
If it's newsworthy, you report on it. So what do you make of the fact that none of these outlets, at least last I checked, have actually reported out anything on the contents of what they received.
Yeah, I've seen all these reporters falling all over themselves and say, I hope we learn the lessons of twenty sixteen. You know, with all these kind of very you know, self aggrandizing accounts of how how much we've learned, and the fact that nobody's reporting on it, that was not the lesson to learn. The lesson to learn was report on those things. I agree with you with the context of where it's coming from, if you don't know where it's coming from, if it's coming from the Russians or whatever,
so that the public can make its own determination. I think what we have is a.
Very kind of.
Patronizing attitude on the part of the press that, oh, the public, you know, they're not mature enough to be able to handle those guys.
Yes, they can just give them the explanation that there.
Is you know, a possibility, maybe it's plausible, maybe it's even probable that the Ranis were behind it, and let them come to their own conclusions. And I think what this show is more than anything, is that this attempt to try to you know, collapse. You know, Trump is
the favored candidate of the foreign or maybe. But the truth is all sorts of parties are angling to try to get what they want out of any election, and in the end, it I think it might be kind of a wash, and that this should encourage us to stop just you know, treating everything is, oh, who's the foreign prefer canic because the truth is, there's good reason to believe the Rane and in fact that the d n I has given indication that the Iranians would prefer
Biden to be president. On the other hand, there's good evidence that the Russians prefer Trump to be president. So maybe this neurosis about worrying about every single you know, which foreign party approves of what I mean, everyone is pushing for their interests in every direction. And so I hope that I hope that this is a is a reminder to people of that.
I couldn't agree more. Iran if you're listening, I will publish anything.
As long as it's true. I don't care where it comes from.
Yeah, true and newsworthy.
Then you know we that's not it, you know, And I know they've I think the Trump campaign has said what's in the JD vans vetting document is buying large public information?
Probably is, but it's still newsworthy to know.
But they were assessing what they were concerned about, how they thought about they could shore up his weaknesses, how they were evaluating him, you know, versus other candidates, et cetera.
Obviously that's new.
That would be newsworthy if it came out about Tim Walls from the Harris campaign. Certainly, so obviously it has a news value. And I'm actually kind of surprised, given the precedent that was set back in twenty sixteen, that no one has said a word about it. And we know they've had these documents for a number of weeks, so the time is not really you know, an excuse at this point.
Absolutely. All right, Ken, thank you so much for joining man. We appreciate you.
Great to see you.
Ken.
Thanks, guys, all right, we'll see you guys later.