8/13/24: Trump Elon Interview CRASH, Voters Say JD Vance 'Anti-Woman', Olympic Athletes Stunned By Free Healthcare, US Cruise Missiles Ahead Of Iran Attack, Israel Economy Self Destructs

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.

We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent.

Coverage that is possible.

If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support.

But enough with that, let's get to the show.

Good morning, everybody, Welcome to Breaking Points. I feel very weird doing that part. That's normally some Sager is part, but he is out sick today and so Emily is filling in for him.

Great to see you, Emily.

Thanks for having me, Crystal, and thank you for sparing my ears. Because when Sager does the good Morning, I feel like I am dying.

It is so loud.

He really leans into it in a way that I'm just not actually capable of, because.

We are the weaker sex.

I'm just not capable of that kind of vocal oof that morning. That's exactly right, That's exactly right. Speaking of ears, there was a lot that we were listening to yesterday evening. Trump did his big Twitter spaces with Elon Musk it went just as well, if not even better, than Ron DeSantis's did when he launched his campaign.

So we we'll share a.

Little bit of they had massive tech problems, it started forty minutes late than when it did start. Trump's sound terrible, and there were a lot of interesting things that anyway, we'll get into all of that. We're also taking a look at some new pulling of where the race stands today Emily, and are going to dig into some policy stuff too. There's been really interesting conversation about the child

Maybe she just really shouldn't commit to.

Any policy because vibes are easier to get on board with than specific policy proposals, So we'll look at that. We're also taking a look at something went viral with regard to the Olympics, there was a number of athletes who were sharing tiktoks and videos of themselves availing themselves of the free healthcare that they could get access to in the Olympic village there and what that says about the American healthcare system. We're also continuing to take a

Chrystal, that is an enormous amount of news.

And we're going to start with really what was unfolding last night in all of our ears because Donald Trump and Elon Musk first were delayed. What I think it was forty five minutes. Ultimately forty five minutes. Elon Musk blamed a cyber attack. And I have to say, Crystal, the group chat was absolutely electric.

This is the group chat of all of us, Ryan Sager, Ellie and I the producers. We were going back and forth on this one. So first before the big Twitter spaces, this was also consequential. This is actually really probably more consequential ultimately than the Twitter spaces. Donald Trump has made his return to Twitter, so we can put this up on the screen. This was his first tweet back on the platform. He says, are you better off now than

Yeah, I think there's something to be said for that, although I also think with I wonder how much he actually uses because he sort of flirted with a Twitter comeback before and then it's just like they clearly take all of their posts to truth social So he had that big post we just put up on the screen like you know, we're make the American Dream affordable again, and it's supposed to be a very splashy debut boilerplate.

Yeah, the quote unquote adults in the room of the Trump campaign probably not super psyched about this development. And I mean you guys will all recall back in the Trump highly on Twitter era, all the journalists in DC had notifications set up, so the moment he tweeted something, it was right there on their phone. You know, sometimes things from true social will still pop and go viral and whatever, but it's just not nearly as common. It's not nearly as in your face, et cetera, et cetera.

So he decided to do this big interview with.

Elon Musk on Elon's Twitter spaces year we'll call Ronda. Santis also decided to do this very regrettably for him, as the launch of his campaign, it was beset with massive technical issues. Well apparently they have not worked out the kinks in however, many months between then and now, because it was again a technical disaster. As you said, Emily, I think they started something like forty five minutes late. Put this up on the screen. Elon claimed that it.

Was a d DOS attack, like a cyber attack on X.

It didn't really add up because the rest of Twitter was working perfectly fine. Other spaces on Twitter, I believe were working perfectly fine. And The Verge spoke to a number of Twitter employees and they said that it was ninety nine percent certain that Elon was lying about that attack because the rust of bacts did appear to be working normally, and a source of the company confirmed there was not actually a denial of service attack, So, you know,

It's just audio. It's just audio we're talking about here.

Right well, and also Crystal Trump, I thought this was interesting, clearly bought Elon Musk's claims about there being a cyber attack, and Elon Musk, It's not as though he just sort of had that as a throw a throwaway line. As they finally started, and I think he even posted this on X two. He was saying, you know, this is proof that a lot of people don't want to hear what you have to say. And Trump kept saying, you know,

Cared a lot about the numbers.

And I think clearly it was Elon convinced him that there was indeed some type of cyber warfare.

Yeah, I or, I mean that was also convenient for Trump. It's also worth keeping in mind as we again to talk about this. Elon Musk is at this point a major donor to Trump's campaign, perhaps the largest donor to Trump's campaign. He is some dispute about how many of his millions he's planning to put in. Originally he had, you know, the indication when we see was going to put in forty five million dollars a month to the Trump campaign. So this is a conversation between Trump, and

Yeah, and you know, even when DeSantis did it, I still like Elon Must, we always should mention is also a defense contractor. So when he's blaming cyber warfare and they're having those types of conversation.

I mean, it's important.

On the other hand, I do think Donald Trump, the way that Elon Must sort of theoretically said the conversation was going to not be quote adversarial. They were going to have just a discussion. And theoretically, I do think there are too few people who are willing to actually engage with Donald Trump, like on a psychological level. Elon Musk did at the beginning about how he was shot. Of course, Trump said at the RNC that he was never going to talk about when he was shot, and

But then it just we're about to get into this, I know, but it just went.

On and on and it just there was it felt like it wasn't, you know, anchored in anything useful, but we did, I guess gets some bit some policy substance out of it, didn't we Crystal.

Yeah, so a few things. I mean, first of all, yeah, it went on for how long. I actually I bailed at like ten thirty. I have to go to bed, y'all, I have to get up early. So at ten thirty I was like, all right, this is this is all I can do. I think it wrapped up what Emily. You stayed on till the bitter end. Maybe not too long after that, ten fifty or something like that.

And then I had a glass of one. I wow, have a glass of one afterwards.

Very impressive, very impressive.

So a lot of it my big takeaway, just like consuming the as a whole, Most of it was not about Kamala Harris.

The overwhelming majority of the.

Critique was aimed at Joe Biden, and there was some about Kamla Harrison. I'll play, you know, some of his better hits on her. He hit her a little bit for not doing interviews.

You know.

That was clearly part of the decision to do this conversation with Elon Musk was to make the point about, hey, Kamala Harris needs to sit for some interviews and get some FaceTime. He hit her on the stuff you would expect about borders are and she's too liberal, et cetera, et cetera. But most of what he had to say was about Joe Biden, and I think again reflective of the fact that he is really struggling to move on

We did some digging.

We asked our audio engineer, hear A breaking points, what's going on with that, because one of the theories was audio compression. So in any case, I'm going to play for you the SoundBite of him talking about Biden and the coup, and then we can talk also about that content and about the quote unquote lisp on the other side.

Take a listen.

Don't forget I beat I beat Biden. He failed in the debate miserably yeh. He hasn't done an interview since his whole scam started, and say what you want, This was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn't want to leave, and they said, we can do it the nice way.

Oh, we can do it the hard way.

Yeah, I'm going to just talk him out back behind the shed and basically shot him.

Know what they did with this guy? And I'm no fan of his and he was a horrible president, the worst president in history.

So emily before we get into the quality of his voice, just your reaction to that particular SoundBite, and also the overall assessment that he spent way more time on Biden than on Kamala Harris.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's right.

I think the Trump campaign is still clearly trying to find its footing with the attack on Kamala Harris.

They want to build this broader narrative about.

Her being a chameleon and somebody you can't trust, and they want to actually extend that to Tim Wallace as well, but they obviously don't. I mean, I think there's a lot to work with there politically. I think there's a lot to work with there, but it has to trickle up, I guess the candidate, and when he's tried it sound it still sounds like he really wants to focus on

But I don't know about you, Chrystal.

I have this sense that a lot of average voters have kind of moved on from that and watch it like they're just they're so glad to not have to vote for a corpse that they're like, actually they want to hear plans.

Yeah.

No, And it's not just my that is my sense, but also the data really backs it up. I mean, you've got some close to ninety percent of Americans who were glad that Biden stepped aside, so they're not interested in going back and reltigating it.

They're glad that he said, Okay.

It's actually one of the most popular things he's ever done as president is to say I'm not going to run again. So no, I don't think that lands we covered yesterday some message testing that the Democrats did, a democratic firm did of like what attacks land the most effectively against Kamala and then how to best parry them. And this stuff about oh, is a coup and it's so unfair, and the stuff about oh, she's not really black, or she you know, changed her identity or whatever. Those

I know that is one of their strategies.

That sort of the like quote unquote adults in the room want him to pursue, which makes a lot of sense, But it wasn't even that. I mean, most of the time he was just talking about his problems with Joe Biden, et cetera, et cetera. So in terms of the lisp, we also had some videos that were recorded in the room because one of the things that was floated is, oh, this is an issue with the mic, which again we talked to our audio audio engineer, and he thinks that

Well, I think we will. I'm pretty sure we will.

And congratulations because I see you broke every record in the book with the so many millions of people, and that's an honor.

We view that as an honor.

All right.

So we got a quote from our audio engineer, Steve, so I don't screw up any of the technical details here.

Why wouldn't they, or better, why.

Wouldn't two of the most high profile personalities in the world bring for a professional audio engineer on one end or the other. So Emily, that is the official assessment of the breaking points audio engineer.

That's exactly what I was going to say, Crystal, done to every last detail.

The sibilance, if you were on top of the sibilants.

Yeah, I was going to bring up the sibilants. I think that's crucial to this, but you know it is.

We were just talking about how so many people are glad they're not having to vote for a course, Trump is old too, and some people were like, are his dentures slipping?

This was like the discourse on X.

I have no idea, but I do think anytimes it's fair game anytime an older person who wants to be president of the United States seems to be struggling with basics, words, et cetera.

And it also raises I mean, we had a lot of discourse about this with regard to Biden, and it's fair game for Trump as well, because and I do think, you know, Biden being so old and so obviously in decline, it did hide the fact that, hey, Trump is also an old dude. To me, what's most noticeable isn't in any of these like you know.

Verbal slips or whatever.

It's his inability to be nimble and grapple with the circumstances. This is something you know, you see in older people. You're sort of locked into a routine or you're locked into a way of thinking and becomes more difficult to adjust. And his inability to move on from Biden seems to me to be part of, you know, representative of the age bracket that he's in at this point. But it also raised questions that you know, we were asking you

I would imagine that security and money are probably involved in the rallies. I don't know if it's also an energy thing. I do think he sounded, since he was literally shot in the head, like he has like less energy. He seemed a little like, I don't know, down is the right word. That's just something I've picked up on, and it's totally understandable if you're a literal elderly man who took.

A bullet to the ear.

So I get that, although I do also suspect that those rallies are just crazy expensive. The security situation is now obviously totally different.

So I don't know what's going on there.

But he has seemed lower energy, and you know, to your point about him being older, he gets caught up in these stories like people's grandfathers.

Do you know what I mean? Like just this.

I think that's part of the reason why this thing didn't end for two hours. They just kept going down different off on different tangents. And when people call it rambling, it really was and not. You know, Trump can be interesting when he rambles sometimes, but this definitely wasn't that.

Okay, we did get a little bit of I think policy news out of this, which is, you know, one of the Project twenty twenty five priorities has been eliminating the Department of Education. To my knowledge, Trump had never verbally signed on and endorsed that idea. He made a point, actually brought it up himself in this interview, made a point of backing this idea of complete elimination of the Department of Education. Let's take a listen to that.

What I'm going to do one of the first accidents. This is where I need an Elon Musk. I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts. I want to close up Department of Education, move education back to the states, where states like Iowa, where states like Idaho. You know, not every state will do great because states that basically.

Aren't doing good. Now you look at.

Gavin Newscombe, the governor of California. He's terrible. He's does a terrible job, so he's not going to do great with education. But of fifty I would bet that thirty five would do great, and fifteen of.

Them, or you know, twenty of them will.

Be as good as Norway. You know, Norway is considered great.

Not exactly compelling pitch for this idea, and you're like, well, some of the states, you know, the kids in California, I guess they're screwed, but others may do okay, Emily, But I mean more noteworthy is just him backing one of the significant policy ideas on a Project twenty twenty five?

Did he say Gavin new scum?

Like?

Was it supposed to.

Be a I don't know, did you.

Just get the name wrong?

Well, either way, Yeah, So the Heritage Foundation actually back in the eighties attacked the Reagan administration, and this is it goes along way towards explaining why a lot of so called like movement conservatives really latched onto Trump. The Heritage Foundation in the eighties, which takes a lot of credit for the Reagan Revolution, was attacking the Reagan administration for not abolishing the Department of Education. If you go back and look at their publications from the mid eighties,

Hell George W.

Bush is going to get rid of the Department of Education. So I think it's an interesting example of where a lot of people kind of in the conservative movement have saw with Trump someone who really will do some of those Admittedly, I'm someone who would support scaling the Department of Education to a state level.

But that's admittedly like a radical position.

That's admittedly like an extreme position and one that no Republican would dare touch other than Donald Trump.

Probably. Yeah.

Well, they spent some time too talking about He brought up what did he say, like there's a place called Argentina something like that.

Yeah, talking about.

Here that this is one of their tangents.

They went so deep on la and he said, in a place called Argentina, man ran on Maga worked out beautifully because to make Argentina great again.

And they just did that for ten minutes.

Yeah, but you know, I mean, Javier Malay is you know, sort of anarcho capitalist, like hard libertarian, which is the opposite of It's funny for Trump to say this is Maga when in reality you know, the conception that was supposed to exist in twenty sixteen of MAGA was actually, we're getting away from these like hardcore libertarian ideas and there's more of a place for industrial policy, or we're going to talk about JD vans with child tax cred

They don't want to have that hung around their neck.

But it's entire reasonable to look and say, no, this is this big, massive conservative project. This is the plan that exists and is likely major pieces of it to be implemented in your administration. I think this this moment is sort of confirmation of that. Moving on to some of the attacks that he did manage to make on Kamala, some of them were, you know, in the zone of what his campaign has tested and what they think will

Let's take a listen to a little bit of that.

And she's in charge of it because you know, now she's trying to say she had nothing to do with it, and she's such a liar because she was called the borders are the first day and it was on the headlines of every newspaper. She's the borders are and she never even went there. She went to one location which had nothing to do with where the problem is. You know, she went in and out, I guess because she was getting a lot of pressure, but had nothing to do

Yeah, I think Emilye politically, I do think this is one of their moresalient attacks, both because this is the one issue where he really clearly has an advantage over Kamala Harris in terms of who is more trusted to handle the issue, and it's one of the only issues

Her fingerprints are all over it.

And I also think what's powerful here is how horrible the media covers has been. And that's where he kind of started that specific tangent with is that. I guess it wasn't a tangent, but that specific line of argument with saying the media is covering for her she was the borders are and that's going to be really powerful for the Trump campaign. I don't know if like journalists understand how powerful that is for the Trump campaign.

But when you're able to put.

These headlines side by side, and when Trump is able to make that point over and over again at rallies and interviews, and you know it.

Trickles into new media spaces.

It is such a glaring example of media dishonesty that it does no favors to Kamala Harris.

Actually when you're able.

To call attention to it, because it has been really, really bad. The cleanup job and the rehabilitation of Kamala Harris's image not just on the border, but definitely on the border also though kind of a across the board, So I think that gives it an extra as he and you can hear it in that interview. It's what animates him more than anything. It's hard for her to get away from the very bad policies of the Biden administration on the border, which even if you're like left

Yeah, no, that's true because you know, in my view from a left perspective, they just adopted a lot of the hardline tactics of Trump, which Kamala Harris ran aggressively against in twenty twenty, and even just from political perspective, And I talked to Sagera about this some yesterday, so I won't totally, you know, relitigate all of it. But she's out with this new end that Trump's kind of

Should come here legally. My own parents did come here.

Legally, but we need to have a pathway that's available, and right now that's just not the case. So, you know, creating a totally different narrative and vision around immigrants and around immigration versus just accepting the Donald Trump framing of like immigration is bad and we need to stop at period end of story.

Yeah, No, I completely agree with that I don't think it's smart politically for her to do it. I don't think it's going to end well politically for her, because this is the crux of the argument that the Trump campaign is developing. They clearly don't have it like totally perfect yet, and that's because of the candidate was sort of changed right before I can mention, and they're working

Flip flopper, that you can't trust her.

That and this goes to the tax on tips thing as well, that she's just blowing wherever the political winds take her, and doing that on perhaps the central issue of the campaign, on the sort of in a way that makes your opponent's central argument. It just seems incredibly stupid. And by the way, Biden ran against the Trump border policies, like all of their rhetorics and Democratic candidates in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty, that their voters clearly wanted to

The rhetoric about.

Again I don't agree with the framing, but the rhetoric about compassion and welcoming immigrants, it works really well with a big chunk of voters in the suburbs, especially that they need.

Yeah, it's popular.

I mean, when you pull on immigration, it depends so much on the question that you ask, because broadly speaking, Americans do really value our self conception as a nation of immigrants, as a welcoming place, as the great melting pot. And so not only did Biden run on that type of rhetic in twenty twenty, he won on that type of rhetoric in twenty twenty. So, you know, I think that this is I think this is an error. You know, morally, I object to the policy direction, but I think also

My own sense of this politically is that most of the people who.

Are single issue immigration voters, like they're not going to be voting for Kamala Harris anyway. So I don't know that it has the that it is the salient issue or the top issue that Republicans really hope that it will be. But there's no doubt in my mind that this is one of the places where they can draw blood. They're going to draw blood that they're going to lean into, and she's going to have to find a better way to deal with this, in my opinion, than she has

Say, individuals.

One of them, in particular, Trump starts talking about there's a new Time magazine cover of Kamala Harris, which actually go ahead and put a eight up on the screen, guys, just so you can see it. You know, it's this very like, hey, geographic puff piece of Kamala Harris. Her moment which she didn't even sit for the interview for this freaking puff piece, which is kind of pathetic.

But anyway, she looks great in the cover.

You know, she's an attractive woman, and they have sort of this drawing of her where she looks really you know, dignifying and really fabulous. And Trump talks in this interview about how beautiful she looks here and how much she reminds him of his wife, Milania.

So let's take a little in that.

And actually, she looked very much like our great first lady Milania. She looks she didn't look she didn't look like Camilla.

That's right.

But of course she's a beautiful woman.

So we'll leave it at that.

Right, Okay, what is he doing?

What is he doing?

And then he called her Camilla like does he think Camilla bucker bulls?

Like?

It's just it was that was incredible, maybe worth staying up for.

There was another moment.

This was on really on Elon's end, and most of the time it was just Trump talking and Elon could barely get a word in edgewise. But when they started talking about energy, Elon, of course, you know, with the evs and whatever, he had a lot of thoughts about energy, and he starts going off on this tangent about how actually nuclear fallout is not that big a deal and

It was like, what this is total?

To me, that was the most insane moment of the whole thing. Trump just nodded along with it. He didn't really like pushback or say anything. It was mostly on Elon's But to be like, eh, nuclear weapons, nuclear fallout, that whole chernobyl thing, no big deal it was. It was really overblown. Was kind of crazy to me, Emily.

We need to overcome our fears of nuclear catastrophe, like an apocalypse.

It's it's just holding us back.

But you know what, it came in the context of a somewhat interesting conversation because Elon was trying to make a point that he believes in climate change, he just doesn't see it as a sort of emergency or an urgent apocalypse, and I felt like he was trying to get Trump's response to that, and Trump just was not.

Taking the taking the bait. He wasn't willing to.

Say, yes, climate change is real, and it seemed like there I had two guesses. One, Elon Musk was trying to signal to everybody listening that, like he repeated over and over again.

I have always seen myself as someone on the left.

And Trump at one point said, yes, Elon, I've always thought of you as being somewhat left, and you know, they it was trying to make a point like I am not. I have not been this like red meat conservative, and I felt like he was trying to do that with the climate thing, or he was like, you know, I'm not maybe Ted Cruz or whomever. But Trump just didn't take the bait at all, and they ended up down.

This like little detour.

I guess it wasn't a detour, this little uh, what's the right phrase, what's the right metaphor for that, crystal?

But it's not a detour.

It was like a wrong turn down the road about Fukushima.

Right right exactly.

And then yeah, as part of that, Trump responded that, hey, if the oceans rise a little bit, I guess there'll be more ocean front property. So he definitely was not going with Elon along the Yeah, climate change, you know, it is a thing. It is a thing maybe we have to be concerned about. So in any case, before we move on to some of the latest pulling, any other reflections or overall takeaways on the big the big Twitter spaces here, there's a lot of propaganda on Twitter this morning.

Oh billion people's et et cetera.

These numbers are totally faked, by the way, and also because they usually count, they put it on everyone's timeline, right, So it was like unavoidable. So I don't doubt that there were you know, a lot of people that scrolled by it or saw that it existed, or like popped in for five seconds and then we're like, this is horrible.

You know, I'm not.

Sitting through this three hour discussion as we did. But what is your own overall takeaway on the success or impact or lack thereof of this conversation?

You know, I thought overall it could have been really interesting, but I guess maybe it never could have.

Been really interesting, if that makes sense.

Like it they're two interesting people It reminds me of those SNL sketches where they put like Born together with Charles Barkley on that old It's like a mocking sketch of something that used to be on I think Bravo, and they put them both together and they have these like they take them to in the SNL sketch a cheesecake factory, and it's just mocking this idea that you put to totally like interesting people together, you don't always get something interesting. And that was you know, there was

Were doing one thing or the other, like with the climate stuff.

And you know, it's just important to remember that a tiny fraction of the public is on X a tiny fraction of the public, let alone in primetime on a spaces So I don't think it's going to move the needle much in either direction. And I do think it's interesting that Elon Musk was willing to do this experiment again after the DeSantis one had so many issues getting off the ground, and that Trump I imagine his team was reassured over and over again that they would not

I don't know. I don't know how that ended up happening.

Yeah, no, I think you know to the extent that this has any longer term repercussions. It's just listen, this is a campaign that doesn't have a lot of time. You know, they've already wasted a number of crucial weeks where the public is deciding what they think about Kamala Harrison.

Effectively defining her.

I mean, that's one of the big things that came out of the New York Times SIENA battleground poll that Saga and I talked about yesterday is you know, they tested a bunch of different character character traits on Kamala Harris, and she you know, people saw her as intelligent, they saw her as caring about people like them. You didn't even have a majority saying she was too liberal. So

So that's to me.

That's the broader significance, not any particular thing that they said, even though some of it was kind of interesting and also kind of Wow, some of it. Most of it was actually really largely boring and uninteresting. But just the fact that they continue to burn time and attention and resources that they really don't have at this point when you're talking about getting into you know, a home stretch in a really condensed campaign timeline.

I think that's a great point. I think it's a great point. And like looking to not seem niche.

And quote weird. Yeah, there's just a lot of central kitchen table issues that need to be emphasized.

So let's go ahead and get to some of the polling. One of the interesting things that can put this up on the screen that this individual was noting is Kamala has always has obviously turned this race upside down.

Right.

Trump had a very clear and consistent lead. He was ahead in all the battleground states. You know, it looked like things were just going his way indefinitely. Here Biden incapable of turning things around. But if you look at the top line number here for Trump in terms of how he was pulling against Biden, he was at an average of forty three point five percent of the vote. It's just Biden was down at forty percent of the vote.

To change people's views of.

How they feel about him, love him, hate him, or somewhere in the middle. So if I was the Trump campaign, I would actually find this very concerning because they no matter what has happened in the race, they basically have been unable to move the needle beyond this forty three point five percent of the vote total, and obviously that would be insufficient to win either the popular vote or the electoral College.

The ceiling is exactly the word that I was going to use, and I think that's always been a huge problem for Donald Trump.

And what happens is that you can get to November.

And if you can successfully define Kamala Harris and maybe to something sent Tim Walls as extremists. Trump, on his call with Elon referred to her as a San Francisco Liberal, which sounds kind of boomery, but San Francisco is such a mess right now that it just might work in places where, in fact there are a lot of boomer voters.

And if you can.

Do that in the weeks up to the leading up to the election and really paint them that way, then maybe some of that support that has gone to Kamala Harris in the aftermath of Biden dropping out leaves her and some of it goes to him. Not all of it is going to go to him. Some of it may go to Jill Stein. Some of it may go to just not voting. So if he can do that, that's where when people actually go to pull the lever, so to speak, he can make gains as people who say I.

Just can't but I don't like Donald Trump, But.

Man, I really I don't want Kamala Harris to turn America into San Francisco.

Whatever it is.

That's where the ceiling can suddenly be like budged up on election day. But it's tough. I mean, that's extremely hard to do. And that was one of his biggest problems with Biden. It's that like they were both racing to see who had the slightly higher ceiling, who could just like find a way to like a herculean you know, I can budget up one inch on election day because honestly, they both weren't very well liked. And if Kamala Harris can be well liked, that sort of game over.

In my opinion, I don't know how well that's going to go for her, because this is what.

Happened with her twenty twenty campaign. Had a honeymoon after a great rollout, was getting amazing media coverage, and because she goes into these weird rabbit holes about the significance of the passage of time.

It goes away.

Yeah, true, No, that's absolutely true. Right now she has we're all positive favorability rating. Her faves have gone through the roof in a really quite an extraordinary way. Tim Walls, also very popular, is actually the most popular person of any of these four individuals at this point. So right now you have a ticket that has pretty high favorability versus a ticket that has fairly low laved favorability, but cannot last because right now Kamala Harris is kind of

She's going to be defined.

So, you know, are they able to bring down those favorability ratings and you know, bring back some of the concern that surrounded Biden, not about her age, but about whatever it is that you know most lands for voters. The other person who's a major factor in this, of course, is RFK Junior. There was just a court ruling in New York kicking him off the ballot there, which I think is outrageous.

By the way. I think this. You know, they make it.

Far too difficult for third party candidates to be on the ballot, regardless of how you feel about RFK Junior in particular, but they said that he was using sort of a sham address and so got kicked off the ballot in New York. It could precipitate other states making

Let's take a look out what they had to say.

Trust more on the issue that's most important to you. This is among likely voters. And June, we're gonna look at a nationalvert.

Look at this.

We see Donald Trump at fifty percent. Look at Joe Biden at just forty percent. So Donald Trump had a ten point lead on the issue that folks said was most important to them. They could list any issue. Jump forward now to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

What do we see.

We see a completely different ballgame. We see Harris at fifty percent. We see Donald Trump at forty eight percent, within the margin of our but.

A ten point advantage for Trump.

I mean, you you go, and this this is the type of stuff that campaigns dream about and the Donald Trump nightmares about. Look at this, Harris, now with the two point advantage. This is significant movement. This is the type of movement that turns losers, which Joe Biden was a gunst Donald Trump in the winners, or at least

Things have shift.

So that could be inflation, it could be immigration, it could be abortion.

Could be protecting democracy, it could.

Be protecting democracy.

Earn their position. Kamala Harris, forty five percent of voters say that she earned her position. Compare that to Donald Trump just forty two percent. Donald Trump and his campaign is losing the messaging.

War right here. How about they are weird?

This is not where Donald Trump wants to be leading in. But fifty five percent of voters in those seven states say that Donald Trump is weird, compared to just thirty nine percent for Harris. So the Harris campaign, their messaging or the messaging against them is not working for the Trump campaign, and the messaging from the Harris campaign is working against.

The Trump campaign.

What do you make of those numbers? Emily?

I think that whole question is extremely useful, actually, and I don't think that about a lot of poll questions, but that one is super interesting because it's one thing to just pull people's top issues and then look at how they think, you know, any given candidate is doing on that issue.

We don't know. It just doesn't give us as good.

Of a window as just plainly asking on your top issue and comparing snapshots in time to each other. So I think that's very significant. I think it shows, from my perspective, how powerfully the media is still manipulating public opinion.

That's not to say I don't think the Trump campaign is making mistakes. I do.

I also think the Kamala Harris campaign isn't like doing incredible just the best campaigning you've ever seen that would turn the Titanic of public opinion on her around like this, because one of the benefits of that poll question is it's such a vibe snapshot. It reminds me of the polls about why Romney lost in twenty twelve.

And then Trump won in twenty sixteen.

People thought Obama cared more about people like them, People thought Trump cared more about people like them in.

Some of these key swing states.

So those vibe pole questions are actually really important. And this one, I think, you know, the Harris campaign should be very cautious because I suspect that they will start to see numbers like this going down. On the other hand, the Trump campaign isn't you know, doing a slam dunk on making their argument right now either. So I think

The weird framing is landing. I mean that's what that poll shows, basically, like the Democratic frame is landing. And then Trump you brought this up earlier, Emily, this his fixation and concern that you know, this was a coup and she's illegitimate and this was you know, signaled by also the argument that she's a quote unquote DEI candidate

Vance pick.

Let's put this up on the screen. Now, this is from a Democratic poster, so all the caveats are important here, Semaphore, wrote Hoffman Reid Hoffman backed poll of how people are viewing JD.

Vance.

First of all, this is consistent across a number of polls. His net favorability has fallen from minus seven to minus eleven, and you have fewer voters unsure either way. That's why these early attempts at defining candids are so important, because once a particular view is locked in, it's much harder to change once you have your first impression versus if you're trying to shift down the road what you think of a candidate. You know, it's very difficult if people

Right.

So they asked respondence how they viewed Advance, and this is the semaphore write up. They say he's become more and more identified with his particular brand of conservatism and less with his fame biography as an author, veteran, and politician. Presented with a list of options to describe Vance in August, the most common answers were conservative, anti woman, and weird.

And weird.

They were also participants were very aware. They were most aware of the childless cat lady comments. Fifty percent of those surveyed said they had heard the remarks, and fifty five percent said that they were bothered by them. Scoring worse but less well known, was a twenty twenty one interview in which he defended a Texas abortion laws lack of exceptions for rape and incests by suggesting pregnancies from

And those with I mean, here's what just drives me crazy, and I'm on the right, so obviously everyone could take this with a grain of salt.

But the coverage of Tim Walls has.

Been I think he is like a fairly talented politician, but the coverage of him has been insane. I mean down to the like the type of llban barn jacket that he's wearing, and there've been like twenty stories about his fashion choices. There have been, however, many stories about how Kamala Harris is captaigning on joy and how Tim Walls is bringing this folksy you know, accent to the ticket, whereas I think the only dose of cold water I have seen corporate media throw on anything to do with

It was like two years old.

I thought it was wrong. I've talked about that. It bounced all over pop culture. It was, it just took off, and you just like I get that.

JD.

Vance is absolutely a movement conservative like new right kind of guy. I think the people like us are weird. Like, don't get me wrong, I do think that's all weird. But at the same time, it's like, good lord. The juxtaposition of coverage here has been infuriating, and I think it does contribute to some of these these imbalances, and it just it's been watching the shifts has reinforced to

You know, I mean, listen, there's there's no doubt like the MSNBC and CNNs of the world, they're liberal inclined, right, They're very pro democratic is now, there's no doubt about that. But also like Republicans know that going in, you know, so it's true, it's and it's not like Republicans have never been able to make their messages land about candidates.

So I don't know. I I'm sorry, Emily. I think it's cope because I think.

Most Americans also thought thought Kamala Harris was kind of a joke until the media started to cover Kamala Harris really powerfully and she replaced Joe Biden, which I understand. But I do feel like there's been an element of the media really rehabilitating her image successfully with some people, not with everybody.

That's with some people, though.

I think there's some fairness to that. But also I do I anticipated, and I think you did as well, that people would just be so happy to have another option that.

There would be.

You can't fake the level of enthusiasm that exists for her, like the media can't manufacture. If they could, they would have manufactured it for Hillary Clinton, you know, they would have manufactured it for Joe Biden and they couldn't. Yeah, so yes, they're getting a media assist. There's no doubt about it. There's any number of like glowing profiles and the conversations about the vibes and oh my god, who's

What are you going to do on Israel? What are you going to do on Ukraine?

I want to see those critical questions ask too. So I'm also very you know, I'm not happy with the way that the media has approached this, but I also don't think you can deny there's a genuine enthusiasm for her. There's a genuine enthusiasm for Tim Wallace, who is a very talented politician, does have a way of speaking that has worked for him politically, not just in terms of that gubernatorial race. But this is a guy who won a district that Trump won by I think twelve points.

So I never performed Joe Biden though, which is interesting.

He in twenty twenty. When are you talking about in twenty twenty, ye perform job?

Yeah?

Compared to it?

Yeah, right, So when he won his gubernatorial election, he was underperforming compared with Joe Biden.

But when you look at his overall, you know, electoral track record, this is someone who does have a track record of appealing to voters that you know, politicians like Kamala Harris has struggled with. All he has to do is help to return to the Joe Biden levels of like white rural.

Working class support.

It's not like anyone is expecting Democrats to win those groups. So, you know, if you look at the ticket right now, he is the most popular of all four. He is the most popular. He's plus like eleven in the state of Pennsylvania. And you don't get there by only appealing to the suburbs, so you know, as a media part

And we forgot to mention actually one of the strangest moments in the spaces last night was Trump talking about tampons.

Obviously tampon Tim, Yeah, tampon Tim.

I think he said the line was something like, you know what, he puts tampons in boys bathoms.

That's all I needed to know. Something like that that was yeoint, But yeah, I mean.

There's not to be charges with that one.

Talking about tampons with Elon Musk, Yeah, it doesn't doesn't help.

Probably, all right.

Let's talk some more policy because this was interesting. Jade Vance did a bunch of Sunday Show interviews and you know, really leaning into his role as the attack dog on the Trump campaign. In fact, at this point he's way more out there invisible than even Trump is in terms of the number of interviews he's doing, and he's doing rallies. Trump is not doing rallies, but he's doing all these rallies.

It's called the child tax credit, and we should expand the child tax credit.

If you think about what the child.

Tax you had the Bido administration agree on the.

Childcare tax credit, Well, we think it should be bigger.

I think President Trump and I believe in expanded child tax credit, but we also importantly want to actually get this thing done. The child tax credit has languished thanks to the Biden administration because Harris has failed to show fundamental leadership. Chuck Schumer's have been unable to get it through the United States Senate. And we want to have a more pro family policy.

Now, there was you know that, and we weren't. We

Now.

weren't there, but it was a messaging bill.

I'll give you that.

It was a show vote. I'm with you, and if I had been there, it would have failed.

And I specifically what you want to do to expand the childcare tax credit because it's like two grand per kid right now.

Well, I think one of the things you can do is make it bigger per child. I think we'd love to see at a higher dollar value. And again President Trump and I have proposed that. I mean, look, I'd love to see a child tax credit that's five thousand dollars per child, but you, of course have to work with Congress to see how possible and viable that is.

And again on the Harris administration, I got to push back.

Against something a little bit, Margaret, because when these comments where I said parents should pay lower taxes via the child tax credit came out, the Harris administration immediately jumped and said we disagree with this. The Harris campaign said we disagree with this, so that they want the elimination of the child tax credit or were they just being careless and responding to remarks that I made three years ago.

Emily, what did you make of these comments and their significance.

I thought he did a really good job in that exchange. I thought he did, and that's another reason. Sorry not to bring it back to the media conversation, but I actually think jad Vance has been as there have been all of these conversations about how Trump might want to ditch him from the ticket and he's dragging everyone down.

And his unfavorables are dipping.

There's this other storyline that while that's happening, the Trump campaign is putting him on all the Sunday shows, and he's doing a fairly good job, which is an interesting I mean, it signals confidence and signals that the campaign still has confidence in Jadie Vance. And I don't know if he can turn his own numbers around by being forward facing in the media like this, but I actually

Yeah, well, I mean the recent voting history would suggest no. And also listen, Jade Vance can support whatever Ja d Vance wants to support. I've never heard Trump talk about a child tax credit. He had four hours or whatever with Elon Musk on X yesterday to talk about it, and it did not come up, at least unless it was in the last ten minutes when I tapp down.

Now it wasn't. It wasn't.

So you know, ultimately what Jadie Vance says on the topic is not all that important. And as I was just alluding to, you know, Democrats expand the child tax credit was expanded during the COVID crisis. Democrats wanted to extend it and it was blocked by Republicans and they just had a vote. Jady actually brought this up because he got pressed on a little bit. They just had a vote on expanding the child tax credit. He didn't

And I think this is a really helpful discussion actually, because not only are those the fundamental disagreements between people who support a child tax credit like you and me, they're also the fundamental disagreements between Republicans.

And so the big.

Backlash to the Biden increase was over some of those like you say those new liberal I think it's fair to call them half measures that Honestly, I have a hard time conceiving of supporting a child tax credit without some of that, and so do most Republicans. And from my perspective, it's not the same reason as you know why a lot of Republicans want to do it, which is because they're stingy with our own tax payer money. It's more just because I think that's important a family formation,

Marco Rubio and.

Ted Cruz at the time jumped on the Romney plan, and this became a historic dust up in the brief history of the New Right, was over this very question whether Republicans were going to move towards that universalist, populist, genuinely populist economic policies away from saying we do also ideologically believe that there's something anti family about sort of creating systems of dependency, which I know you and I disagree with. Priscilla, I disagree on and I think I

Yeah, so let's go ahead and talk a little bit about how the politics of this could play out.

Let's get ahead, guys, to this SoundBite. We have B three B. He gets Jade.

Gets asked about, you know, as child was cat ladies' comments and specifically about, Hey, Kamala Harris is a stepmom like Pete Boodhagidge has adopted kids. Do not consider them to be parents. And let's just take a listen to, you know, how he perries those attacks and how he describes what he was trying to say with those comments.

You called out Kamala Harris and Pete Bootagidge in particular, Kamala Harris has two step children. Pete Bootagidge and his husband have adopted twins. Do you recognize them? As parents and more broadly, as being part of families.

Well, of course I do, Dana. I mean, you know my life story. I was actually raised. I was raised, but Dana, I was raised.

One of the first people that I gave a hug to after my my RNC convention speech was my step mom, who's been an incredibly important person in my life. My kids, my kids call her mamma. Of course she's not childless. But again the criticism, I certainly not call.

My own step no.

Kamala Harris.

I criticized Kamala Harris for being part of a set of ideas that exists in American leadership that is anti family. I never Dan, I criticize people for not having kids. I criticize people for being anti child And I do think that Kamala.

Harris said bizarre statement.

She has said things like it's reasonable not to have children over climate change. I think it's the exact opposite message we should be sending to our young families. I want to expand the child tax credit. I want to stop those surprise medical bills. I want to make housing more affordable, so if you have a young family, you can actually afford to put them in a home, and I think that it is unfortunate that so much of our public leadership has become anti family.

So I think I think he does the best there with you know what he can given the nature of comments where I mean you very clearly said like Kamala Harris, Pete Boddages, these are you know, childless cat ladies that are running our country, et cetera, et cetera. But so I sort of feel about this framing of the election in the contest the same way I feel about Democrats

I think it's the same.

I think this is very poor ground for Republicans to fight on. I recognize it's not exactly what they chose, it's these comments were unearthed, et cetera, et cetera. Now JD's trying to grapple with them and make them more palatable.

It's the worst possible messaging you could possibly have, right, But if you.

Pull Americans on who has better like pro family and pro child policies, I have zero doubt that Kamala Harris comes out wildly on top of that conversation, and having Tim Walls on the ticket only helps with that because you know, he did paid family leave, paid work lee, he did a child tax credit in the state. He did, you know, a community school for people who are under eighty thousand dollars a year. He did the free lunch

Yeah, And I think actually there's no question defending the childless cat ladies comment is going to play like it is not a politically wise strategy.

It's obviously not one that they had.

An option, like, they weren't choosing to lean into the childless cat ladies thing. They still aren't. He's just kind of responding defensively to questions. But that is not a good position to be in for all of the reasons that you just listed. That said, I think ideologically, not politically in the long term, it is a it is a question, you know, some of the things that Kamala Harris has said that Jade Vance tried to raise there about talking about children.

And climate change.

I remember the RNC before the Dems rolled out this weird messaging line around the childless cat ladies uproar. Republicans were trying to make this the election of weird versus normal, and that It's been so interesting to hear that shift because this is one of the reasons that Republicans kind of wanted to lean into that message. And I've heard Honestly, I've talked to Marian Williamson about this. I remember I talked to her on a podcast about this a couple

Almost demonizing it.

Sometimes not everybody, again, but I do think ideologically, if not politically.

There is something serious.

It's just when you try to take niche podcast conversations and then turn them into a presidential ticket, it's not.

Going to go, well, that's and I think that's you know, that's part of what they're struggling with, you know, just a last piece here, you know, to to not leave Kamala Harris unscathed, Like, we don't have a policy agenda from her, right, we don't know what she Now. You may say, Okay, she just jumped into this thing, and you can just kind of assume she's going to continue what Biden was doing more or less. That's probably a decent assumption. But there are some specific issues where it'd

I think one of the things is that people really see because it empowers their family. At Joseph, I think the paid family and medical lead where the last nation on earth basically to not do this. It is so foundational to just basic decency and financial well being. I think we should do paid family medical leave across the country, and I think that would start to change both Finance's attitude strengthen him. This is one if jd. Aanswers right about this, that we should make it easier for families

I do think if they just picked a few of these like bread and butter are like really popular issues and just relentlessly message and lean into them. I think it will be very potent for.

Them agree completely. I think Tim Wallis is really good at that. I have long thought Tim Walls is really good at that. And Ryan and I talked about this last week. But there's the Reagan line of bold colors not pale pastels, which is that you can be principled and sell your principles politically, even if they're not super

And I was elected and I'm going to do it.

I'm going to pass this stuff through the duly elected legislature.

I don't like Tim Walls. I don't agree with a lot of his policies.

I think some of his stuff is going to undercut some of his culture stuff is going to undercut some of this populous stuff when he's trying to sell himself to the public. But serious credit to being a Democrat who believes in the bold colors not pale pastels. I think argument because that's where you find politicians that are both principled and smart politicians, and that's a rare combination, and I think he does understand that.

Let's gotten onto this story that went viral from the Olympics, which really caught my attention, and put this up on the screen.

So, if you're an Olympic.

Athlete, you actually get access to all kinds of healthcare services. And some of these athletes made great use of that because number one, you know, even a lot of the medal winners in sports that are less popular, that aren't the main line, you know, basketball, etc.

They don't earn a lot of money.

I mean, these are incredibly high level, exceptional athletes, but they may not have the money to afford healthcare in the United States of America. And so you have this headline here that American and athletes were radicalized by free healthcare available to them at the Olympics. And in particular, you had a rugby player, I believe, who realized that she could go and get like all of her appointments and whatever, and was shocked to find that there was

That, Okay, y'all so not only in the village do we have free food, but we have free dental, free healthcare. I literally just got a Papchmere for free, and I have a densit's appointment and I exam next week.

Like what and Emily, like we're the only developed country in the world that doesn't have free healthcare. There were all kinds of comments about basically like oh, Americans discover healthcare, but you know, it's a national embarrassment that our top elite athletes who are going here to represent our country don't have access to like a basic gynecological exam and a PAPS mirror back of the United States of America.

So again like this is the biggest handicap in the world for Republicans, and they legitimately have no idea, Like elected Republicans in Washington, DC have.

Absolutely no idea.

How seriously this issue is weighing on the minds of voters, how heavily it's weighing on the minds of voters. And you can see it by the fact that they even made these videos, like the Olympians made these videos because it struck them immediately. And Democrats you see the Harris campaign, you see Tim Walls starting to talk a lot about freaking healthcare. How came Jeffries is coaching his candidates to

Yeah, well that is true, just by default. But I mean, I don't want to let Democrats off the hook here. Joe Biden claimed in his presidential campaign that he was going to fight for a public option, and then the minute he even got the Democratic nomination, he stopped talking about it.

And obviously even in.

The midst of you know, there were some changes attempted changes to healthcare, expanding Medicare in particular to include dental and vision and ears as if your ears in your eyes and your mouth aren't part of your body, but expanding medicare to include those things. There was a push

I don't think.

I don't hear Republicans talking about health care at this point at all. They've just also been happy to sort

And who got really rich and benefited a lot from the Obamacare system. And Matt Stoler has written about this, Our friend Massaller has written about this, and his research and writing here is excellent. And I think that's really important too, because it creates vulnerabilities for Democrats. But it just shows, you know, we talk about the uniparty a lot in the context of foreign policy, but when interests are so tangled on lucrative issues like this, you end

Change, it's been incremental at best.

It's changed the system in some ways for the better, but in some ways for the worse, and in some ways just really not much change at all. So it's so depressing to think about how we are. Probably I don't know, Chrystal, I feel like we're never going to

Yeah, I agree with all of that. I mean, on Obamacare, I think it's undeniably better than the disastrous system we had before, just in terms of, you know, you can no longer be denied for preconditions and some of those systemic changes that were made.

But it was designed to be.

Good for the health insurers so that they wouldn't stand in the way, and that was always going to really curtail how much you could do with it.

You know. It's interesting.

Nancy Pelosi, I think, talked recently about how she still regrets not being able to get a public option at least into Obamacare, and it's certainly not a major push, and then that means that the sailings of the issue too in terms of people's focus and what they're voting on also drops, because that's the only thing that would really change this at this point is a massive national backlash that could overcome those powerful interests. All right, Emily, and know we have to say goodbye to you a

Yeah, and thanks for letting me do it.

Remotely, I have something to tape here, so it just worked out that way. But Sager is so rarely takes a sick day, so you know, it's serious with him, and we hope he feels better and rests up because we all have a big week in front of us with the and Stay coming up in a few days.

That's right, It's going to be big, and we will see you and Ryan for counterpoints tomorrow. So we are still awaiting that potential Iranian response to the Israeli provocation. Of course, the assassinated top hamas leader on Iranian soil the day before Irani's president inauguration, and there's a lot to sort through here, so I brought an expert to help us understand what is happening with regards to Iran. Also,

Great to see you, sir, Absolutely great to be with you, Crystal.

Yeah, so let's start with this.

The US military rushing all kinds of assets into the region in anticipation of this Iranian response. In fact, yesterday everybody was on pins and needles thinking that the response was incredibly imminent. You had a lot of American soldiers who were deeply concerned about potential attacks on American military basis in the region.

Let's take a listen.

To this Fox News clip setting up what assets are moving into that right now.

Israel putting their military on Hiler once again, as Israeli intelligence is picking up signals that Iran and one of their terror proxies has the law are now poised to attack at any moment. Really, the Pentagon is now racing to send more firepower to the Middle Eites to defend

In addition, let's go and put D two up on the screen. The White House is saying that they agree with the Israeli intelligence that is increasingly likely Iran will attack Israel this week. Put the next one up on the screen. We also have indications Ron has taken quote significant preparatory steps in its missile and drone units, similar to those that had taken before the attack on Israel

Sure, and honestly, just a part of what you said in the setup I think is really important to emphasize, which is that this all started with that assassination in the Iranian capital, and you can imagine if another country had set up a bomb in Washington, d C. What the American reaction would be. We would instantly be bombing whatever country is responsible, and the same for any European capital,

Actually paying attention.

So what the US position right now, what they are defending, is a situation in which there is different rules for different people. We say, if this were to happen to us, we have to respond. If it happens to Israel, Israel has to respond. But when it happens to Iran or to Lebanon, then you need to take it. And if you do react to that, then that's an active aggression

Object to it.

And I think it's important to remember too, you know, we have a number of soldiers who are stationed in the region who are very much.

Put at risk by these provocations.

And yes, last time around, you know, the US rush to Israel's rescue and was able to repel, and I think it seems there was some back channel coordination even with the Iranians, to make sure that that would be the end result. There's no guarantees of that this time around. And so not only is it obviously grave danger for our soldiers stationed in the region, but grave danger for

Gaza and Israel.

However, you could have a much bigger and much even more deadly and destructive war than what we've already seen.

It's honestly difficult to put into words how significant it would be. I think Americans have a memory of what a war in Afghanistan look like, what a war in Iraq looked like, and frankly, a full scale war with the Iran would be fundamentally different. It is far more destructive and devastating than anything that we've seen, simply because Iran and its allies in the region have such a massive capacity for launching rockets that can target just about

Likely accelerate the annexation of the West Bank as well, which is something that Miriam Adelson, who's huge donor to Trump, has said that she you know, that's basically what she's asking for in exchange for her campaign.

Cash, and Israeli policy has been they have not been squeamish about being open about that. At this point, you have the entire Cannescid voting in opposition to a two state solution or Palestinian state even in the future, and a situation frankly right now where there are running literal rape camps and torture camps for Palestinians, and when news of that breaks and gets out, the reaction is not to deny or be embarrassed, but to basically flaunt it

So yesterday you brought up the ceasefire talks which are ongoing, and I think very pretty helpless at this point.

I mean, for one.

Thing, Israel assassinated the top Hamas negotiator, who you know, in the context of Hamas was more of more interested in those peace talks, and now you have yeah, Yah Sinowar. It was the direct you know, negotiator, the top top communicator in terms of those talks. We got one of

This is no surprise to you and me, Is it real? Is it actually a surprise to them?

Like?

Are they that dumb? Yeah, that they really.

Didn't see these dynamics which have been in place the entire time.

Yeah.

This honestly for people who have been paying attention, that has also been obvious for a very very long time that Hamas has made clear early on that they're willing to give up all the hostages in exchange for a ceasefire, and that Tanyahu kept looking for reasons to put up obstacles. And the big sticking point for many months was that Hamas wanted the permanency's fire and Antaniahu wanted only a temporary cease fire where Hamas releases all the hostages and

Leaks unhappy, leaks this or that or no.

Yeah, it's much leader stakes for Nathaniajo. He's going head and into further war and conflict and violence, and it's going to take a meaningful change in American policy for that to actually.

Change for them.

In fact, I think an argument can be made pretty compellingly that you know, the instances where Biden has expressed displeasure about this or that, or leaked displeasure about this or that, and bb has gone ahead and bucked him and done what he wanted to do have actually bolstered him politically that it has actually improved his approval ratings within the State of Israel.

It's incredibly humiliating for the American president that just for that dynamic between us and a client state that they constantly tell us to shut the hell up.

They don't want our advice on what to do.

They just want us to keep paying, you know, paying for the weapons and sending them over.

That's a stupid dynamic.

It's fine if you want to say that Israel's a independent country and they can make their own decisions, fine, but certainly American taxpayer should not be funding their crimes. That's the problem here, is that we have a dynamic in which we constantly insist that Israel's independent country, they make their own decisions.

All we can do is advise them.

Meanwhile, American taxpayers are picking up that tab and instead of taking care of Americans at home with we were just talking about in the previous segment about the fact that we're the only country developed country that doesn't.

Have health care.

All that stuff is set to aside, and in Israel, everybody has public health care. And that's the country that we're sending extra weapons and money to to make sure that they can commit atrocities with impunity. That's an extremely stupid and broken dynamic that Americans ought to object to if they were more familiar with actually how it works.

That is such a great point. I wanted to get your assessment of how the switch of Biden for Kamala Harris, how that changes both the potential trajectory of Israel policy here in the US, if it does represent any type of the potential shift. And also I was curious from your perspective how bib Nanna who may be assessing that switch, and how that may have changed his calculus here as well.

Yeah, I think that there is the potential for a change with Kamala Harris. It was quite obvious that Biden, in addition to carrying out a terrible policy, also did not know how to talk about this with any kind of empathy towards Palestinians.

It was fundamentally clear.

Yeah.

I don't know whether it's him deeply ideologically from his background, or it's his mental decline or whatever it might be, but he always spoke in a very humanizing way about israelis utterly dehumanizing of Palestinians, whether you can believe them or their numbers and all that. And it's obvious that it's just empty rhetoric whenever he expresses concern for Israel engaging in discriminate bombings or all that, it did not have any emotional content behind that. He did not speak

But it's basically hers to.

Win or lose, and I think it really depends on how she behaves between now and the election. Yeah, and how strongly she signals a major shift in American policy, or whether they can even get a ceasefire between now and the election, that could have a very very significant impact.

So, speaking of that tone, we had an instance in Detroit where there were propal Sinne protesters and she took a very dismissive, condescending, i'm speaking tone, and there was a backlash to that.

Then she goes to another rally I.

Don't know if this was the Phoenix or the Las Vegas one, where she's again faced with protesters and she clearly had developed a different strategy to address the protesters. Let's take a listen to how she handled this one La.

Chang clothes, respecting the voices that I think that we are hearing from. And let me just say this on topic of what I think I'm hearing over there, let me just speak to that for a moment, and then I'm going to get back to the business in hand.

So let me say I have been clear.

Now is the time to get a ceasefire deal and get the hostage deal done. Now is the time, and the President and I are working around the clock every day to get that ceasefire deal done.

And bring the hostages home.

So I respect your voices, but we are here to now talk about this race in twenty twenty four.

All right.

So on the one hand, Omar, you have better tone there. You have her comments after her meeting with bib Nania, who I also thought, we're you know, well executed. You have her choice of Tim Walls over Joshapiro. Walls was much more empathetic towards the committed movement. Shapiro of course, compared to palestudent protesters to the KKK. So you have that, you have actually a new choice of a liaison to

Of a shift.

So how do you look at this constellation of events and signals.

She's savvy, right, she watched the backlash to her first reaction to protesters and realized that she had to make an adjustment, and she made it. And I think that the VP pick actually is not that trivial either. Yeah, it's funny because both Tim Waltz and Shapiro are both your standard pro Israel Democrats, right. Both of them are kind of soft and accountability for Israel, and none of them is eager to cut off military aid or any of that stuff.

Literally, the only difference.

Between them is that emotional intelligence on how to address the deep anger among young people in this country about what's happening in Gaza. And in one case, you've got the standard pro Israel line of tumult, that is, we support Israel, but we understand why people are angry and why this means a lot, because the situation is unacceptable.

For the idea you liked. I think he may have even said the.

Words, you like to control your politicians with your money,

It's just it's a losing strategy.

In the long term. We're seeing the beginnings of it, and there's an obvious, you know, demographic shift among young people who see this issue.

Very very differently.

Right.

One of the things that I've seen with regard to defend AMLA is this idea we'll listen Biden's the president. She can't really publicly under cut him, like she's trying to do her little tone shifts and pick the people that seem to indicate a different direction potentially, and of course we're very pragmatic about what that they're not gonna be where we are, but you know, maybe a little more Obama versus Biden. But she can't undercut Biden, so she can't actually come out and set forth a policy

Yeah, she's in a tough spot percisely because of that. I think that is fair, But it's incumbent on her. There's just the reality that the Israeli policy is absolutely intolerable. It is completely morally indefensible. And yes, you do have the constraints of currently being vice president serving to a president that feels maybe a little bit differently about this. But it's really on her to draw the contrast between

Yeah, well, i'll tell you, Omar, my highest aspiration is just that you would have someone who's not ideological on the issue. Biden clearly very ideological, and I think Josha Piro also threw his you know, repeated expressions and the way that he approached the issue was also clearly very ideological.

People who are not ideologically.

Committed to the issue, who see Bebe as the partisan, far right fascist figure that he is, who wants to elect Donald Trump, by the way, and can read the polls and respond to the pressure and realize that this is a politically foolish direction because as I said, I'm not counting on anyone's morality here winning the day.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

And I think in a way, Biba Nataniaho is paying attention to the fact that this is the trend. It's escalating pressure way too slow for my taste. I think you should have pulled the plug on genocide from day one, right. But Netaniahu is noticing the fact that there is growing frustration in the Biden administration, which is why he's pushing for this regional war to blow things up. And it's not surprising that it came on the back of his visit to Washington. By the way that he did the

And yeah, it's a dynamic. It's precisely what you said.

We have to understand that Natiniaho is interested in electing Trump and if Democrats are serious about not allowing, you know, not to be taken advantage of in this case, you need a real that you need the backbone to do not a cosmetic shift in policy, but a meaningful shift in policy. And it's just having the foresight. You know, politicians are by nature risk averse. It's all about status quo is how I got here, and you need to

All very well said, and Omar always grateful to have your time and your expertise, so thank you for coming in this morning. Israel's assault on Gaza continues endlessly, seemingly no end in sight. The US wimply looks on, makes some meaningless and disgruntled noises from time to time.

Some superpower we are.

The ICJ ordered Israel to stop its genocidal attacks, to no avail. The ICCs threatened the rest warrens, while they have failed to materialize as of yet, and we all wait with bated breath to see if Iron's retaliation response to Israel's provocation will plunge the whole region into an

So here are the details.

Mando Wise compiled what data is available on the Israeli economy, and the picture is really quite dire.

Quote, over forty six.

Thousand businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, Israel's credit rating was lowered, Israeli bonds are sold at the prices of almost junk bond levels, and the foreign investments that have already dropped by sixty percent in the first quarter of twenty twenty three as a result of the policies of Israel's far right government before October seventh, show no

Now.

Perhaps the biggest body blow, however.

Was Intel pulling out of a planned twenty five billion dollar investment in the state of Israel, an indication that capital is engaged in their own self interested bds weighing the ever risking risks, ever rising risks of operating in Israel to be greater than the benefits. Even more trouble, though, could be ahead here again is Mondo Weiss. Israel's power gred, which has largely switched to natural gas, still depends on

I think there's going to be a lot of people in Israel who if this continues to be the kind of government that they have in the long term will leave, and those will be the most productive members of society. Those will be the high tech leaders, those will be the professors, those will be the literati, and so on and so forth, which is something that I think the extreme right and Israel wants because that will help them

Able to survive.

The extreme right fringe and the fundamentalists aren't going to be able to support the Israeli economy, aren't going to be able to supports very deciding not in the long term. Many many don't serve in the army. It's a disaster for Israel if these people take over, and this is a step towards taking over, like make no mistake, they're hindering the functioning of the state. If they completely take over, the state of Israel will not exist in the long term.

So Chielle alludes there to the fact that the most conservative ultra orthodox members of Israeli society are increasingly represented in terms of governing ideology, but don't actually contribute too much to society. They tend to have large families, rely on government welfare, and receive a religious exemption from military service. The number supporting this dynamic, we're already getting kind of dicey, because this group has much higher birth rates than more

We just won't be anymore.

Has this exodus already begun? Difficult to say, and frankly, some of the data is really conflicting. But according to the Times of Israel, Israelis have already begun leaving the country prior to October seventh due to the net Nyahu government's extremism and attacks on the judiciary, which had led to a large protest movement for more secular elements of society.