8/7/24: Morning Joe Weeps Over Walz, Trump Loses It On Kamala VP, Cenk Debates Pro-Trump Lawyer, AIPAC Defeats Cori Bush, Elon Says UK Civil War Imminent

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, and welcome to Counterpoints. Emily. How you doing.

I'm good, We're matching. We have a matching color scheme too.

Look at that. It wasn't even intentional. You're welcome everyone, excellent, great work.

By the way, we've got Breakingpoints dot com to go to your get your premium, premium subscription, whatever you want to call it. Support this, support this show. Yesterday I did an AMA with Sager. People were asking about the Friday Show because of the election and everything.

We're still doing the Friday Show.

We did not kind of fold it up because of the travel, the convention's coming up in the election, We're not going to do the exact same format where we have, you know, those kind of long form debates for the.

Next we'll do a few of those.

Yeah, and then after the election, I think we'll go back to that kind of format.

We're recalibrating based on the insane news cycle.

It's it's crazy. It won't love it. We love it, though we love it.

We hope you love it. But it's just been insane. There's no way to, you know, schedule something for a Friday that is like a shelf life.

Is two days long, right, But you love to see it, you really love to see it.

You love to see Yesterday I filled in for Crystal on the day that Tim Wallas was announced as the Pick.

Saga seemed down.

The vibes are down from this side of the desk, but so curious how how you respond to the kind of the joyful Walls Pick where he's at once uniting the country but uniting them behind bullying.

Jd Vance that's pretty funny.

I got you. Our our favorite friends at the Trotsky World Socialist website sent a great headline this morning next to a couple of other ones like got people right wing you know panic about Tim Walls. They send out from World Socialist website. Kamala Harris picks right wing governors.

That you love to see it for the trotsky Is. It's a right wing party, so you love to see it. You're gonna do.

Uh.

It's Corey Bush lost her election last night. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. What else we got.

We've got Corey Bush, We've got a panel, a really good panel that's going.

To talk to you and Will Chamberlain going to debate the Walls pick.

We're going to debate the Walls pick. There's a lot to talk about. Like you mentioned when we were talking about Corey Busch and Elon Musk is predicting a civil war in the UK.

Of civil wars, but he's.

Really predicting a civil war to the point where sometimes your predictions get to skirt the line of materializing.

Yeah.

Yeah, So he's in a back and forth with Keir Starmer.

Yes, those riots continue unfold and basically anti immigrant riots continue unfold in the UK.

Yeah, absolutely, It's it's actually a fairly interesting story. So we will get to that, but first let's start with the news of the day. The news. Everybody's talking about Tim Walls. Some people are still trying to figure out who Tim Walls is. But we've had like a day to get really acquainted with him. Ryan, You're reporting on Walls has gone back a while. You've at the intercept you guys were reporting on Tim Walls. There's a lot to say about him. The rally yesterday, Kamala Harris kind

A coach Walls, and he looks like the kind of coach you'd want to have, Like the not the mean coach, but the one who's a little tough but happy, joyful the whole time. Like I've seen a whole bunch of people saying, like, where the heck did they get this guy? He's so out of perfect central casting for a politician made in a lab.

Uh.

He's, you know, like you said, social studies teacher, military who becomes a coach whose team wins the state championship in a in a Midwestern state. He's military, but he's not uh not not really. He didn't go in as an officer, but he's not. And he went in as and his listed men. And they're like, if you're gonna make him in a labor how about a sergeant major, boom, sergeant major, give him an injury that he overcomes through the youth, you know, through his nationalized health care.

Uh, make him a dog lover.

How about a cat lover to throw that in two cute kids.

Uh.

And then as and and as a you know, driving driving him innivan, hunting, doing doing all the Americana stuff, but then also being uh culturally socially quite liberal and and and but then helping to enact a a sweeping kind of working class agenda, you know, the left wing working class agenda through the Minnesota legislature, but then also the left wing socialist and so it's it's going to be wild to see, you know, how that unfolds, because

Yeah, it's it's an interesting combination. We'll talk more about it. I'm sure this again, there's just a lot to say about how you can combine populous economics with or how you can sort of try politically to combine populist economics with either cultural conservatism or cultural progressivism. Here's a flavor of how the rally went. This is Kamala Harris, a mashup of sort of some of the things she had to say about what coach Walls.

I guess as that Tim Walls will be ready on day one.

In fact, in fact.

When you compare his resume, said Trump's running mate.

Well, well, well, some.

Might say it's like it's like a matchup between the varsity team and the JV squad.

JD Vance literally literally wrote the foreword for the Architect of the Project twenty twenty five agenda. Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland. JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community.

Come on, that's not what Middle America is.

And I gotta tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy, that is, if he's willing.

To get off the couch and show up. So you see what I did.

There's sort of like he's being played by Chris Farley.

Yeah, but it's Tim.

It's like a cross between Chris Farley and Rob Ford. Yeah, when he says, see what I did there and then makes that kind of grin to.

The camera, and you know what, Rob Ford and Chris Farley having common people love him.

That's true. No, that's not the only thing that's true.

So we also have so that That was Tim Moll's comment Harris obviously in Philadelphia.

Well before they oda Shapiro. Yeah, let's talk.

I'm curious for what your initial reaction was because the very end, everybody watching this show is probably actually, I don't know, we have a very broad cross section of viewers at this point.

I was about to say that.

Everybody watching this show is online enough that they got the couch reference.

Yea, I think that's true.

If you didn't go in the comments section, I'm curious and tell me if you didn't. It's funny to even try to explain the couch reference. So I'm not even going to.

But it's an.

Online meme's it's a way that the left has kind of been bullying jd Vance and he went there, but he did it with a big midwestern Minnesota and ice smile on his face, which is that people are like, that's not Minnesota and ice. It's like, no, that is Minnesota and ice. You tell me more, you know, the Midwestern nice more. But there's a there's a there's a sharpness to it as well.

I don't know.

I don't know about that. I feel like there's a sharpness to Southern hospitality. None of the Southerners are going to get upset with me, whereas the Midwesterners.

It's pretty genuine. But yeah, yeah, bless your heart.

Yeah yeah, but it's a way of saying f you, right, yeah, producer mac he can tell us more about the accuracy of that assessment. But yeah, the couch thing, I saw a lot of sort of centrists freaking out about last night. I don't know if you saw any of that on AX.

It was very much.

Some people were just like, this is a really bad sign, right, this is a unity ticket that is now you know, making couch jokes at JD Vance and you know, while they are up here claiming the mantle of happy, go lucky and unifying, which the media then granted them and said. You know, a lot of people were like this was the perfect note. They hit all the perfect notes, and then you know, at the same time he's making jokes

It's just a meme. It's just a meme.

It's a dumb meme. I don't even think it's a good meme.

But it's just a meme. It's a fault because the AP did it. Is they strisanded it.

Yeah, the AP did a fact check that you can find, and then people and then retracted their fact check, which if they hadn't retracted the fact.

Check, we might not be where we are today. Yet, yeah, we are right now.

They were in Philadelphia, and everyone thought that meant it was going to be jos Shapiro. And now, of course Joshapiro didn't want the job. He did not want the job, it must be said. He was really on the fence about whether he should leave his very critical role with Pensylvania Vania governor. And I joke about that because it seemed to clearly be leaking from his camp that as soon as he realized the writing was on the wall,

Obama used to tile at rallies.

It's just across the board, a cringe Obama impression.

Take a look.

And I want you to know I am going to continue to pour my heart and soul into serving you every single day as your governor, and and I'm going to be working my tail off to make sure we make Kamala Harris and Tim Wallas the next leaders of the United States of America.

That's right, Democrats of a certain age, John Ossoff does a good Obama.

Buddha Judge was doing it for a while.

I think he developed his own I guess he doesn't hit the stump. We'll see if he still has the Obama as he hits the stump for the reelection campaign or not re election with election campaign of Paris. We see him mostly on CNN and MSNBC and Fox, and that's he's his own kind of rhetorical dude there.

But yeah, on the stump, he was very Obama.

It's a and it's like a particular, like twenty twelve flavor of Obama.

But I mean he's also a good speaker.

And he's been pressed about this, Shapiro has and he said, look, yet, it's not a criticism. Obama is the greatest order Democratic parties had fifty years. So I'm proud to be compared to him. It's like, well, it's not exactly what people are saying.

It's just way too close. It's so obvious. It's just the way he even is modifying his tone of voice.

It's just two it's ridiculus. And the way that Obama would do it's like a single white female thing.

Obama would do like the southern accent, and you'd always be like Obama, where's that coming from? And the y'all and the you grew up in Hawaii, Kansas, but Hawaii.

When Hillary Clinton would do it, that was yes.

But then for Josh Shapiro from sper in Philadelphia to be doing the southern accent that he's drawing from Obama, it's like, what are what are we doing here?

What are we?

Which is which helps to explain why Walls resonates with people because he as you can tell, he's not trying to be anybody else, right, or maybe he's trying to be an archetype of a football coach, but he's been doing that his whole life, and he just fits it so perfectly that you can tell he just feels comfortable in his skin up there.

Right.

So actually that's a good point because one of the things we wanted to put up on the screen here is a five. This is Jackie Heinrich of Fox News, saying, two sources confirm on background. The deciding factor in the VP's choice was what Senator Fetterman said publicly, concerned Shapiro's own personal ambitions would cause him to upstage slash override Harris. The video Shapiro produced with Philly Mayor Schrell Parker's team

New pulls, you know, pulling out of contention. Good move.

Yes, And apparently when when coach was asked, when Coach Wallas was asked by Harris like what he wanted to do as vice president, he said, you know you you tell me, coach, You tell me, coach, like, just put.

Me out on the field and I'll do what you need to do.

Where Shapiro has ideas, can't have ideas, and Kamala Harris has been just you know, pushed around and given the worst trek of the Biden administration, as Biden was given the worst trek of the Obama administration. And so she wants this crap roll downhill and land on Walls. And he sounded like happy to take it. She's like, here we go, yeah, scout. He also said, according to I Think Politico, he's at the end of his career. Nothing left, fight for, no no, no personal ambitions. Yeah, he's sixty

That's spring chicken, compared.

To our current leadership class.

Yeah, which he just joined. Absolutely.

Now, the football coach life expectancy is like sixties.

Jeez. That's so dark.

I mean, I don't know what it is, but the heart attacks they get the football coaches.

So morning, Joe, I think, reflected the sentiments yesterday that a lot of the Beltway was feeling when Walls was announced. You've got to take a look at this morning Joe meltdown again.

It seems like it was this.

If you wanted to take the temperature of the beltwegh yesterday, this segment did a good job of capturing what people felt here in Washington, DC after Shapiro was passed over.

For Walls, Well, exactly, candidate has to make the decisions herself. And I will tell you the candidate I'm most comfortable with is a candidate that helps me win Pennsylvania in twenty twenty four. So let us help Jonathan lemere that those outside of Pittsburgh loves Tim Walls.

So talk about Walls.

Let's talk about how the decision not made, the road not take. And Josh Shapiro, a guy that has approval ratings in the sixties in Pennsylvania, the must win state for both campaigns, and also the one who was considered the front runner for a very long time. But then there was a backlash, and we heard backlash. There was a very public campaign against Josh Shapiro, and and and

Can I make one point, and I don't want to tell Morning Joe how to do their job, but there was not actually a loud campaign against Josh Shapiro. There were people on Twitter against Josh Shapiro, but elected officials, people with power organizations like which of them came out against Josh Shapiro in the Democratic Coalition apparently.

Behind the scenes reporting now says Nancy Pelosi and others, but not.

In the Pelosi support of walls right. But what he's talking about is this a genocide, Josh, like the attacks on Shapiro over his Israel policy. And I'm questioning the premise that there was actually like a large scale national Now there were like this show, and people like us and others like raised concerns about it, like that's a thing, but nobody with the level of access to power like

On Mourning Joe particularly.

But then also, you know the kind of left cable media more broadly highlighting mean tweets about Josh Shapiro and calling out anti Semitism in the Democratic Coalition and elevating it and saying that this is, this is something that needs to be rooted out from the Democratic or in creating an intramural contest that really is manufactured, like does not exist on the level that they're saying it exists.

That's interesting because I actually that is a very interesting point because it's hard to know behind the scenes how seriously the hair campaign took the possibility. Obviously it was on the table. Obviously there were people in the sort of proverbial smoke field back rooms who were saying Josh Shapiro's having volunteered with the non combat you know, the IDF.

And then with none of the people who are concerned about that are in those smoke field rooms.

Well, but there are people in those smoke field rooms who know that there might be people who are concerned.

About it who might win. We're scrolling Twitter.

Right, No, I don't disagree with that. So to what degree that was for them a cynical calculation, you know, or part of what is obviously always going to be a cynical calculation, I think is an open question and a giant sort of variable here, because you're right, it's not as though ilhan Omar was making these decisions for the Kamala Harris campaign.

I don't remember her saying. Did she say anything about Shapiro?

I have no idea. I doubt it. I don't I don't think. I don't think she did so.

And this is another thing I accidentally skipped over this element. But it's premised on this idea that Walts is obviously a worse candidate than Shapiro. Because you hear that in the morning, Joe freak out. And we're going to get to this in the GOP block too. But it's this premise, is that Walt's is inferior as a candidate. He doesn't carry the Pennsylvania votes, he's not from a swing state, and he's just kind of a goofy football coach.

Blah blah blah.

So why would you go with this goofy social studies football coach over the governor, the popular governor of a big swing state. But let's roll a three, because I think there is it's worth kind of comparing the political talents. We saw Shapiro's an Obama impression. Let's watch Tim Wallas in this video with Kamala Harris.

Hi.

This is Tim, It's Kamala Harris. Good morning, Governor, Good morning, Madam Vice President.

Listen, I want you to do this with me. Let's let's do this together. Would you be my running mate and let's get this thing on the road.

I would be honored, Madam Vice President, the joy that you're bringing back to the country, the enthusiasm that's out there. It'll be a privilege to take this with you across the country.

Well, let me tell you I have just the most respect for you. I have really enjoyed our work together. You understand our country. You have dedicated yourself to our country in so many different and beautiful ways.

And we're going to do this.

We're gonna win, and we're going to unify our country and remind everyone that we are fighting for the future for everyone. So let's get out there and get this done.

Okay, let's do it, do the work in front of us.

Let's win this thing.

That's right, all right.

Buddy, I'll see you, so take care, thank you, Okay, bye.

I don't know when we decided that we needed to film these videos. This is like when Sager and Crystal called us to do counterpoints.

I should have been filming it.

It's probably over text, but you can see how the phoniness of Josh Shapiro, who is very much like I don't mean this ideologically, but has the sort of Gavin Newsome. I'm pretending to be really good at talking to people, and I'm really good at pretending to be good at talking to people, so it's almost convincing that I'm good at talking to people. Type vibes truxtupposed with whatever we think about Tim Wallas, and we're going to get into

I don't even think that premise is.

Correct, right and right, because progressives got the idea that wait, it's actually possible they might pick Waltz, and so once that was clear, I think that also ratcheted up the attacks on Shapiro because you're it's a zero sum contest at that point. It becomes between these Walls and Shapiro. You've got to take out Shapiro if you want your gott to elevate.

Right right.

Anyway, the whole question of Antie Simmonsons around that I think is more complicated than it's being made out to be.

We can save that for another time though.

Well, yeah, we'll talk about that in the Goop block because we have a clip of Ben Shapiro that I think will open up part of that conversation because he addresses it in and he addressed it on his show yesterday as well. Now, if we put a seven up on the screen, this is a shout out to Kyle.

I wonder if he rose in spite of that, because this is the kind of thing that would actually scare I think national Democrats, but calmed down. Yeah, Emily and I had talked months ago about doing a story about how several years ago Minnesota and Iowa are both swing states, both purple states, and to some degree Minnesota still is. In the twenty eighteen election, Minnesota went blue by just like a handful of votes and a trifecta as well walls as governor. Democrats took control of both houses. I

And would you know I did Obama win Iowa. Yeah, I think.

That state went republican Republican trifecta, and they pushed through as aggressive a conservative agenda as they possibly could. But it's it's it's the kind of mirror version of Minnesota in the sense that it's very pro business, not the kind of vancy and Trumpian national populism economics. And then it was the you know, extremely conservative social stuff as well, and just across the border with just a few thousand votes,

As he runs it down, universal free school meals.

That's why you see the uh, that's why you see that picture of the kids hugging him, legal weed, carbon free electricity by twenty forty, tax rebates for the working class up to thirteen hundred dollars, twelve weeks paid family leave, twelve weeks paid sick leave, and then he so then he banned conversion theories and pro trans stuff, twelve weeks read gun and then he did gun stuff. Free public

Minnesota is a big people don't realize it is a big business state as well. Huge Minneapolis is a huge business hub. There are a lot of very corporate.

Interests, corporations and warehouses, and increase in k through twelve funding and then a bunch of pro union stuff as well, uh, and there was a he vetoed a gig worker reform bill and then in staid he would compromise, come back with a compromised version because Uber and Lift and threaten to leave if it passed. And he did come back

We're going to push ours through and we're going to run on that.

Yeah, And it's like they basically haven't done that anywhere except maybe New York after all those DSA people took over the legislature.

But even so, it's a completely different thing, and this is one of them.

Doing in Minnesota is different than doing in New York.

It's a conversation. Actually that's been very popular with the Jdvance types on the right because there's this I go back to this a lot. Ronald Reagan gave this famous speech where he talked about painting with not with pale pastors, but with bold colors. Bold colors, not pale pastals. And it's sort of a famous saying, but people now associate Reagan with squishy sort of neoliberalism, when in fact, the

Yeah.

And I think the same way that Republicans had a hard time painting Joe Biden as a far lefty.

I think they're going to struggle with Tim Walls and it's identitary.

It's like sanitarianism, and it's but it's working in democrats favor because you're like, oh, this like old white guy, can't be a bad can be a flaming radical communist. Just like the effort to paint Joe Biden as that, And I know it like really frustrated Republicans that he could be basically lined up with Bernie Sanders on a lot of his domestic agenda while that he was getting through and it just it just wasn't landing on him

It's like a normal looking white guy.

But we're going to find out because they went and found this normal looking white guy and Republicans are already saying he's the most radical nut job ever. We'll talk about this in the next block, most radical nut job ever to walk the face of the earth. Like, we'll see if that works or not.

And if people like you, so, if you're just a generally likable person, that's the same thing with Reagan. Reagan did have ideas that were unpopular and out of step with a lot of yeah, smiling, right, no, but that's exactly right. And so with Tim Walls, you can call him radical. And I think on certain cultural issues he is radical, and he would I mean people on the left would say, like, these are radical populist economic policies.

He meant that.

It was like, this is a successful pick. Who is They have said this is the goal, and it's not a dumb goal, and he's someone who can accomplish it. But let's watch the Steve Karnaki clip explaining how Walls did in different parts of Minnesota, because Minnesota is one of those states is very much coming apart right now, to borrow the famous phrase, between Minneapolis and some of those rural, especially northern parts. So here's Karnaki on how Walls is performed in different parts of the state.

Now here's the key, because this county Democrats used to be much more competitive in Look at this. In twenty twelve, Barack Obama won forty three percent of the vote in this county. It was only a little bit more than ten points that he lost to Romney.

By here.

The floor fell out for Democrats here when Trump came along in that Clinton race in twenty sixteen and they haven't recovered it since. In that Walls performance here, it's a little less than Biden's number, it's more than Clinton's, and it's a far cry from what Obama was doing. And again I'm showing you one. This is a stand in for dozens of counties in Minnesota where you saw the same thing with large rural populations, blue collar white populations,

He didn't do that here, he didn't do that in no other counties.

Walls really owes his.

Victory, that big margin, that margin he got eight points their statewide. He owes it to the Twin Cities area here, the area where Democrats in Minnesota and all these other states are already doing well. You know, look at his electoral history Tim Walls is in twenty twenty two, and the idea that he's got this automatic appeal with these small town areas in those three key battleground states, you don't see it in what he actually did on the ballot in twenty twenty two.

So all that is to say, belt white pundits should be very very careful to assume that Walls being the governor of Minnesota means that he is reflexibly or categorically popular and easily sold and packaged throughout the rural Midwest, because his own electoral victory was heavily dependent on the most urban part of his state, which is Minneapolis, which is also.

A booming metropolis.

So that is a very very important, I think, piece of nuance in the big Tim Wall story.

The only amendment I would have to that is that if Democrats can maintain Biden's share of the rural white vote basically white working class vote has brought more broadly, then they will win. And so that's the only that's the only caution on that on those stats is that Biden, you know, did better than Hillary Clinton, and that and that with Walls, you know, sticking close to Biden.

That's rather than that. You could look at that two ways.

One it would be like, oh, wow, he didn't outrun the national tickets, so therefore he doesn't actually appeal that well. But you could also say, well, Joe Biden actually outran the kind of normal Democrat that would have how a normal Democrat would have performed.

Biden did better.

Just because of his whole stick and also stuck with Biden in that direction. But nobody should be fooled and think that because he's got there's like a Harris Walls camo at, that they're going to win Royal America, or that they're going to even do that much better than an average Democrat because it's still Harris and Walls. But but I don't know, Yeah, it's a do no harm thing. He's not he's not hated in rural America in the way that kind of Hillary Clinton was so.

And that Kamala Harris may come to be by the way.

Yeah, oh well yeah, if she wins, it's going to be an interesting four years, that's for sure.

Will stick around for that.

Yeah.

I was in like rural Pennsylvania a couple of years ago, and the amount of like F Joe Biden's signs were surprising even to me, just like on total dirt back roads with bolt holes in them.

Just f Joe by Oh yeah, what's wild.

Yeah, not a lot of love for Democrats in a lot.

Of those places. My uncle in Cookstown, Pennsylvania.

We kept arguing with this guy who had a sign right at the front of town that said f Joe Biden. He's like, this makes us what you think whatever you want about Joe Biden. Can you have a like I don't like Joe Biden, I like I like Trump, rude Joe Biden, like anything like this makes us look so trashy, Like do you have any pride in this town?

Come on? No answer is no.

Yeah, the answer the answer was actually probably hell no. Let's move on to Republican reactions to the Walls pick, because there's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about in terms of how Republicans sort of decided to navigate.

You have this this virural.

Hunter, you have the Shapiro being passed up, and now there's reporting suggesting that Team Trump was intentionally coordinating to take down Shapiro as the pick governor, right, and they were sort of celebrating that the pick wasn't Shapiro and was instead Walls because they see Wallas a sort of weak and easy to attack and easier now to sort of staple his resume to Kamala Harris. So this is from Fox News right away yesterday after the pick was announced.

Well, facts still matter, so let's look back at his record. Walts's first executive order as governor was to create a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council. He also supported open borders.

He talks about this wall. I always say, let me know how hig it is.

If it's twenty five feet, then I'll invest in the thirty foot ladder factory.

And he pushed social don't ever shy away from mark progressive values.

One person's socialism is another person's neighborliness.

Just do the day on work.

Oh wait, and there's more. He signed an executive order protecting gender affirming care or surgeries for miners in his state. And in twenty twenty, he was the governor of Minnesota during the George Floyd riots that burned part of Minneapolis to the ground. It was so bad that Waltz himself called out his own response.

I got a call from a friend and a dedicated public servant, Senator torres Rey called in her district and it was on fire, and there weren't any police there. There weren't any firefighters, there was no social control, and her constituents were locked in their house wondering what.

They were going to do.

That is an abject failure that cannot happen if the issue was is that the state should have moved faster.

Yeah, that is on me. All right.

So they're at the throwing everything against the wall fase, what do you think would stick there?

Well, I mean go to a bar in like outside du Luth and say you want to invest in a ladder factory to help people get over a border wall. See how that goes? Tim Walls.

I mean there's a.

Serious I think he's telling a joke that the wall is a joke because people can easily find ways around it, and you could you could talk, You could say, hey, look, the United Kingdom is having a massive immigration problem. They have a giant ocean around their country.

Oh can't figure it out? I don't, Yeah, vote the wall. They have a huge moat and a channel.

We can continue going on his immigration policies. Defending them in that proverble bar or that hypothetical bar outside the Luth would be hard. Whether it's driver's licenses, healthcare assistants, that's a really hard argument to make now. So to make that point, I think there is those lines of attack. I don't think vice presidents matter that much. I could

See that was on the White Dudes. It was on the White.

Dudes for Harris called, which by the way, is not like that's a conversation that we could all have here. But when your governor freaks people out, and so I commend him for being honest about it.

Is politically a way of saying it one personal another person's neighborliness.

I think it is. But we're all in this together.

We're all in this for our neighbors, unless their neighbors are as long as our neighbors aren't bothering us, will leave them alone.

One hundred you know as well they need help, will help them out.

If they're not bothering us, they're not going to criticize them agree completely.

The label pulls so poorly that Republicans just a couple of years ago during the dun primary, we're salivating over the idea of a Bernie Sanders candidacy because they were just pulling the word socialism in the suburbs.

And if that's why he's rebranding it to neighborliness.

Right, but he said it in a way that makes it they can run that as an ad. I'm just saying, like, I don't think.

It's as an ad.

I don't think it's a.

Please, it's a please. Run that as an ad.

It's I think it's Politically it would be I think it would be wrong to say politically that does not add some vulnerabilities to the ticket. And now I don't think those are huge vulnerabilities. I do think they are vulnerabilities. I also think that his trans policies, in particular, because they were so specifically related to children, will be a problem on the campaign trail because the mood in the

It's also at every VP can it was going to have some problems when Mark Kelly, his big problem was he was lousy on labor.

And you know, at the.

Intercept back when, back when he used to be at the Intercept, we're just trying to help Democrats out and we hammered Mark Kelly multiple times for refusing to sponsor the pro Act of Major Labor Reform.

Uh and he didn't take our advice, didn't do it.

And sorry, buddy, next time, listen to us, and maybe you'd be VP right now. Instead, you had Sean Fain out there saying that, you know, the one he really liked, The two he really liked actually were Basher and Walls and the U a W the most kind of resurgent labor union in the country right now.

I think that really helped him and hurt Mark Kelly.

Yeah.

Now on the on the on the point about the trans politics hurting Walls, I this is where the weird thing comes in because e and when so when you pull that question, then in general Americans are against like the surgeries for minors in general like it, but it's very complicated. If you call it gender affirming, it's But overall, I think people don't like that Republicans are making them think about it, and Republicans are the ones they're tagged with the weirdness for.

Bringing it up.

Like there was a tweet that I saw circulating yesterday where it's a liberal is saying like good luck, you know, painting this guy is a comedy and showing him like hunting with his like hunting dog.

And I think with Stephen.

Miller, Yeah, Steven Miller says he puts tampons in the boys room in high school, and it's like, okay, you're why are you.

A grown man talking about tampon's.

Stephen Miller is the one making me think about this, Like come on, I don't.

Know, I see both sides of that one, because I do think it's like if you guys are selling this dude in a cameo hat, who's who's hunting? You know, just like a lot of my family as just your your average Minnesota And he did sign the bill that you know, mandated tampons in men's rooms.

But my thinking on but you're saying that.

When Republicans talk about children's tampons and also think about it, and you're like, shut up.

Right exactly and also because like when I think about it's like, Okay, should tampons be in the boys room in middle school or high school? It's like, if they are, it's probably because some student like found that helpful to them, and I don't care, like put them, put them wherever.

And also like the pro tip bring.

Your own paths or tampons to school, like don't don't count on the school to have them in the bathroom.

They're like when you need them, they're not going to be there.

So why did right Field the need to dispense this advice?

Because if somebody's watching this program and they're like, oh, I can just go to the bathroom either one, it is why people.

Watch the show though. For the health advice from.

Ryan Grimm, yes exactly. This is what mean for people.

Don't you agree you wouldn't count on like school having pats or tampons.

There are a lot of things I would just generally not come on schools for. That is one of them. So the Trump campaign's reaction was, I guess sort of as predicted. Here's what they said yesterday. Frank Lentz made a funny point, and I'm loath to say that, but here's Franklinz on AX. Interesting. This is B two. Interesting that Trump says Tim Walls will be the worst VP in history because it means that Kamala Harris is not. That's a Trump campaign email. Obviously, he'll Unleasha get through

That's true. That's a good point.

Maybe keep our borders open to the worst criminals. Imaginable green news scam. Trillions of dollars on fire, millions of dirty cash to buy the White House?

That one I don't fully understand. The real killer.

He's already pulled in quote millions in dirty cash to buy the White House. You're right, it does look like spam.

Now Trump, wouldn't he support lighting the trillions of dollars on fire because that will reduce the money supply. It's a good point, and they think there's too much money supply in the economy. Have you concerned that would be quantitative tightening?

You should respond to him on true social This is what you should be on true Social.

No, if I can find his email in my inbox, I'll just reply to whoever whatever that inbox is.

This is what he posted on true Social.

Gavin Newsom then pulled it, posted it to Twitter and said, oh he's scared.

What are the.

Chances that crooked Joe Biden the worst president in the history of the Yes, Who's US whose presidency was unconstitutionally stolen from him by Cambabla? Barack Hussein Obama, Crazy, Nancy Blowzis, Shifty, Adam ship cry and Chuck Schumer and others on the lunatic lock crashes the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the nomination, beginning with challenging me to another debate.

It's not great if you can't tell if it's a typo or an attempt at a nickname.

Yeah, I agree with Is it a real attempt? I think so. I think so because and is he.

Basically calling there for a January sixth to restore Joe Biden to the nomination.

Well, we know that there's a January sixth. There's a soft coup, there's a hard coup. There's a soft J six, there's a hard J six. Who knows what degree of J six.

One thing Trump and Biden have in common, from Trump's perspectives, that their vice presidents both pulled coups on him, right, and.

As Trump would be foolish not to remind us of this, but Tim Wallas also was on Cameronston I think think could hurt him shortly before Biden stepped down, right after the debate, saying that Biden was fit to lead. He's outside the White House saying that into a microphone to reporters that Biden was fit to lead and fit to be president for another four years. Basically so that can earn him as well.

Now.

Jd Vance has been hitting the trail hard. Dude has been everywhere. As you know, the idea was that Donald Trump was regretting the pick of jd Vance that he wanted to, you know, sort of turn down the volume on Vance. This is crisscrossing the country, right, now Here's what he had to say day about Walls.

The reason I didn't say a whole lot about Tim Waltz.

Is because the Democrats have showed a willingness to pull a little switcheroo on us. So I don't even know if we're actually going to get Tim Waltz out of this campaign. And I think that a lot of us are asking ourselves, well, it's not going to be official until the Democrats actually nominate him, I guess at their convention next week.

So that's the first reason.

The second reason is, look, Tim Waltz's record is a joke. He's been one of the most far left radicals in the entire United States government at any level. But I think that what Tim Waltz's selection says is that Kamala Harris has been the nee to the far left of party, which is what she always does. The only thing I'll say about Josh Shapiro is I genuinely there's some fans

Do you think you have any similarities you can talk about a common ground that you.

Share with laws?

Well, look, I mean, yeah, we're we're white guys from the Midwest. I guess there are similarities there.

I yes, yeah, What did you make of that?

Why do you say chaos behind him?

Like?

That was? That was my first sign behind him?

The sign behind him in Yeah, like you got to think more about the signs you're gonna put behind somebody.

I don't know.

It combined with that Trump tweet feels like real sour grapes from from Republicans about the fact that they're not getting to run against Joe Biden anymore. H And I get it, like I would much rather be running against Joe Biden. Like they were about to win Minnesota and New Mexico and Virginia.

Yeah, Minnesota, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, they were on their way to an absolutely historic landslide, a landslide so historic. Trump was like I'm gonna go with Don Junior's pick and Jadie Vance my vice president, and then all of a sudden And also I think that they're extremely frustrated by the fact that Harris has been running for president now for two weeks. It's not had a not done an interview, not at a press conference, and basically not rolled out any policies except to flip

I can't really mean anything with her because she raised Herump.

Says that to take care for all the right but yeah, Trump also says he's going to make the Affordable Care Act better.

He says that everyone will have coverage good.

Great, if we can have a presidential campaign with both candidates competing for who's going to make the Affordable Care Act better, who's going to expand coverage more?

Better? Great?

So I think Republicans, tell me, if I'm right, are just extremely frustrated.

Now.

They're used to, like.

The mainstream media kind of taking this ride, taking them for this ride, and then and then this. Now, it's interesting that the Trump campaign was so nervous about Shapiro, like that they felt like and.

There was some pole.

There was some analysis I saw that said that he would add about a point four percent margin to the Harris ticket in Pennsylvania, which sounds like not much, but in a very tight race, is actually a huge amount if you believe that it's statistically significant like that the race very likely will be decided maybe by that the town.

Yeah, because I mean, if you look at the tallies from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty in some of those states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, they're so I was looking.

Back at them the other day.

There's razor thin margins in those days.

So the Trump campaign seems happy that it wasn't Shapiro.

But I wonder if they're a little bit.

I think they expected worse Democrats than they're getting right now.

Well, I think that's true, and I think they also underestimated, In fact, I know they underestimated the degree to which Kamala Harris would be accepted with open arms by this sort of political establishment, from the media to the elite Democrats.

The left didn't put up much of a peep, right.

And you know, so I sent this to you guys yesterday. It was like Cynthia Nixon sipping like coconut water yesterday, Like that just has been that the all of the coup stuff has gone away. And that's what the Trump campaign really wanted to hammer home is like this was a soft coup. They have just totally thrown democracy out the window of the running on.

That stuff is not sticking and it's nothing.

It's like Trump saying this is a soft coup against a guy that I believe should resign.

So it's like, I feel like that's not it's not sticking, partially because the media just fully moved on. It's not entirely untrue that basically what we saw happen, but an immediate decision after the debate, like everyone was It wasn't immediate. It took a couple of weeks, but it was immediately things started to fall into place, and this started to you know, it didn't happen for the primary for a reason, and then suddenly happened after the debate.

So I get that.

But I think people are frustrated by how big of a boost Kamala Harris has gotten from pop culture and media. I don't think they expected it. They should have expected it, I don't think they did. That said, the race is still basically tied. She is doing well in some new polls. But the Shapiro thing in particular, Let's roll this CoIP of Ben Shapiro, no relation, no relation, talking about how he ended up getting passed up and what he thinks that means.

Roll B five.

She has opened herself up wide to every attack on her radicalism by picking Tim Walls. See, there was another pick that was available, and everyone sort of expected that person to be picked. That person, of course, was the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro. Pennsylvania has eighteen electoral votes. Josh Shapiro has a sixty one percent approval rating in Pennsylvania. Very easy pick, super super simple pick. For Kamala Harris, and we know why she didn't pick Josh Shapiro, and

So again I don't think he's wrong that those bring vulnerabilities to the table and vulnerabilities that Josh Shapiro might not have had. But I don't agree with this promise that Walls does not also bring advantages to the ticket that Shapiro wouldn't bring to the ticket, and that Shapiro is just this sort of Gavin Newsom like playing I could play a politician on TV.

Kamala is very much a seems like a politician. So two of those, Yeah, and against Trump, the anti politician is a tough race.

Yeah.

And Shapiro very much acknowledged Walls as a buncularness. He called it his affability, like his likability, Like I think it's the one thing that everybody is like, Okay, yeah, it's likable guy.

He seems cool.

Yeah, And that's going to be because one of the reasons Kamala Harris reportedly was interested in Walls is that when he went on news Chris and I talked about this last week.

And made that weird remark about JD.

Vancid.

These people are weird.

That was impressive because coming from him, it seemed to stick that he had this. Now Republicans may, because of that sort of cultural progressivism, may actually have an ability. We'll see how well it sticks to paint him as weird. Again, we will see how well that politically sticks. But that coming from him is different than that coming from Joshapiro. I don't know that jos Shapiro could even pull that

Right.

And the more that Stephen Miller goes on Fox News like ranting about tampon's tim walls and tampons and getting offended at the weird things, like you're not beating those charges, man, I don't think this is the guy you want to drag out to tell us that you're not weird.

And again, yeah, I agree that all those things are vulnerabilities, but to what degree their vulnerabilities in this larger context of how much much a vice president will even matter? To your point, there are marginal reasons that these are important picks in places like Pennsylvania. So I don't disagree with that, either. But how much this conversation will be about Tim Walls and his various policies going forward is very much an open question. It depends on what Republicans

And so I'm next We're going to have two people debating this very question, Jenk yuger tyt host and Will Chamberlain. What do you describe my conservative attorney?

Yeah?

Conservative, I would say, a sort of new right conservative attorney and very much a pro Trump voice on the right.

Yeah.

Jenk was taking a kind of counterintuitive contrarian Shapiro not necessarily pro Shapiro but anti anti Shapiro line.

But is over the moon about the Tim Walls pick.

Joining us now to discuss more on the Tim Walls VP selection. We've got Will Chamberlain, kind of a new rite conservative activist writer attained an attorney as well. And we've got Jenk Yuger, host of tyt's main show, Jenk Will thank.

You so much for joining us. Thanks for having me and Jenks.

Let's start with you, because talk to talk to us about how you were feeling during the kind of Veepsteaks competition, which interestingly was kind of what we had been proposing democrats do for their actual nomination, is to have this kind of an open process where it wasn't necessary going to lead to actual people voting, but by the general vibes of the country, somebody would emerge as an obvious favorite.

And that that that seemed to happen here.

Like it it was a participatory democratic process, even if nobody got to go and actually cast votes.

So how did you.

Feel about the kind of VP selection before you know, or or like you know, before the process kicked off, and how did you feel about it by the end of it?

Yeah, I felt many different things.

First of all, I felt, told you, second of all, apprehension and then at the end elation so told you as in, look at all these amazing Democratic candidates. This is why we thought that Biden should step aside, because the idea that Biden was the best that the Democrats had to offer was so preposterous at this late stage in his life.

I'm like, how about the.

Governor of Pennsylvania or Michigan, or Kentucky or apparently Minnesota.

And it turned out when we looked into them, they were all fantastic.

I told you, of course, there's a lot of great Democrats out there.

Now.

The apprehension part was I was like, oh no, here we go again with the Democrats, with all these great candidates out there. If they picked like a Mark Kelly snoozefest because they think they already have this thing one, or even worse, the corporate lego man Pete Botagic, all this will have been for naught.

And then I would have put them back as underdogs. But they didn't.

They didn't, and at the NFL elation is I can't believe they made the best pick. I can't believe, and I can't believe that the last two were the best two Josh Shapiro and Tim Walls. So that couldn't have gotten any better.

Well, let's start electorally, So just cynically, like setting aside what you think about the policies that this ticket is going to put forward electorally from your perspective on the right, how do you think this pick plays.

Which, by the way, want to add is an important addition to what Jankis said, is that is Tim Walls a good candidate? To Ryan's point, is he a good candidate for Democrats? Or do his vulnerabilities as you see them outweigh the potential advantages that he brings to the ticket.

I think among the Fanel finalists, he's the pick we're happiest to see a Republicans. We were worried about Jos Shapiro. We think that Jos Shapiro has massive favorability ratings and what's most likely to be the tipping point state if you saw him speak yesterday at that rally, he's a hell of an order, like just real talk.

The guy can speak that.

He made a pretty good joke too when people said he was compared to Barack Obama. He's like, well, Obama is a pretty good order, so I'm not upset about that comparison. So we were worried about Shapiro. Tim Waltz makes this a very simple election. It's make America great again versus make America burn again. They are going to have the Minneapolis riots hanging over their head the next three months. It's going to be an immigration and crime election.

Yeah, what do you think? Jenk All?

Right, First of all, let's all be amused by the idea of someone who definitely should not be running if they didn't call a National Guard soon enough and they just twiddled their thumbs while there.

Was a riot happening like on January sixth. Awkward.

Okay, so listen, it's hilarious that we have agreement here. He thinks Tim Wants is the best candidate for them. I think Tim WANs is the best candidate for us. The brother passed all these wonderful laws that are intensely popular, paid family leave you, free lunches for poor kids by the way, free college for lower income families so they can compete with the rich families, which Republicans are going

And I love it.

Please make the case against the American people, how they shouldn't have paid family leave, they shouldn't have child tax credits, they shouldn't have abortion rights.

Go for it, go for it. Make our day.

By the way, don't get me wrong. I like Josh Shapiro. I favored Josh Shapiro. But this whole thing that they do after every pick is like, well, if you'd picked the other guy, that we would have been scared of that guy. But you pick this guy, we're thrilled. I'm seeing this two thousand times over.

So will I imagine what was going through your head? And I don't want to put words in your mouth. But as jenk was talking about, some of these popular and sort of genuinely populist economic policies that the likes of Sarabamari and others even on the New Right, have looked at and said, there's some interesting stuff in here economically that would that is popular with voters, whether or and it's right or wrong, popular with voters at the

Well, yeah, I mean it's not twenty twelve.

Mitt Romney's not at the top of the ticket with Paul Ryan.

We're not about to run on you know, cutting a title and spending or pending the cost curve or whatever. So this is a very different Republican party. You know, the head of the teams who spoke at the Republican Convention, We're not going to be running on child tax credits are bad. The real problem with Waltz, I think. I mean, first off, obviously immigration, Waltz has allowed for taxpayer money to go to paying for illegal immigrants college. That's something

And you know, I like, as.

Much as jenk wants to say this stuff is popular, this stuff is not popular. You know, Deacons of reactionary conservatism like England and Norway and Sweden have banned all these treatments. This is this is stuff that's not going to go well with the broader public. And then there's also the biggest issue, which I think with Waltz, which really hasn't been covered. He's an appointment dodger. He was

Okay, let me answer that. So the brother was in the National Guard for twenty seven years. He got at least three medals that I saw, and he enlisted. Is the highest enlisted ranked member of the Armed service that we serve in Congress, and.

You're going to compare.

Him to Commander bone Spurs, who ran from Vietnam and they asked him, Hey, your daddy wrote you a note about how you had bone spurs in your ankle. Which ankle was it? He's like, I don't maybe both, maybe both. Your guy's a total utter coward. He ran from Vietnam and then later bragged that his Vietnam was dodging STDs.

At the Orgies he was going to.

So you want to compare him to a guy who served for twenty seven years, have a a hoss.

Yeah, I'll go right back at you on that.

My guy's the guy who got shot in the face and got up screaming fight, fight, fight. Your guy at who's a forty seven year old man supervising teenagers, and you know, young men who are about to go to the war, leading them for years the moment they're about to deploy, walks off the job, total loser. Anybody's a coward in this race. It's Tim Walls you're nuts.

So you're saying, actually defending the country is cowardly if you do it for decades on end, and you wouldn't. When did you defend the country one chance?

He didn't do it. You don't get to talk over me. Sorry, okay, fair enough.

And then and then wins the Nebraska Citizens Soldier of the Year. He wins every award there is. And then you go, well, no, you didn't serve thirty years. You didn't serve forty years. Your guys served zero years.

Okay. So, jenk though, could you respond to what Will said about immigration trans issues causing vulnerabilities for Waltz? I mean it is true that as popular as some of those economic policies might be, those are way more front issues and Waltz, who's who really relied on Minneapolis to win his groupernatorial election. As Steve Karnaki pointed on MSNBC yesterday, those are tougher cells outside of Minneapolis on some of those big cultural issues.

Yeah, I understand that.

So again, though, I want to make sure that everybody understands that Donald Trump is a giant coward who ran for Vietnam and wanted poor people and middle class people to die on his behalf. But to be fair, his daddy's doctor note was really sterling well paid for.

Okay. So now in terms of those issues.

Look, it depends on how you ask the questions on immigration, transwrites, etc.

And so if you say, oh.

My god, the police department and the fire department in Minnesota are wrong. They shouldn't have driver's licenses, even though it would make the cops lives much much easier and identifying them and I can't believe that a nondocumented immigrant would ever get anything. They should be dealianized, and we should hate them, and we should pretend that they're evil. Okay, you can go that route. You could run a hate field campaign. And by the way, my resoname with some people.

I get it. But we're going to come back and.

Double down on how he helped the average American and his economic bills are overwhelmingly popular. In fact, ninety percent of the bills that he's passed are overwhelmingly popular. Here's a guy who is a teacher of football, coach and from the from the Midwest. I almost pulled a Trump said, from the Middle West, that's the thing that we say. Okay, so look compared to loser bankropt, a businessman and a

Tacoon's on our side. Go for it, okay, But I don't think those are going to play well at all.

I think they're gonna get their asses handed to him.

What's your response to that one, will Oh?

I mean, I think like Tim Waltz is just goofy. That's another thing about him. He's really really I mean, think about Tim Waltz. Here's the other thing. The guy made a sex joke in his like announcement as VP, referencing this couch stuff. You know, it'd be one thing if he was just doing that on some podcast. He's doing it there on the speech where he's making himself known, and then he shakes his wife's hand. I don't know if if I shake my wife's hand, I got get slapped.

Okay, it's the fifth best state for business. So this whole thing of extreme liberal is absurd. It's the third happiest state. And then I love every point about Tim Wallas as it's as if they're talking about Donald Trump and don't realize it. That guy's really strange, says weird things. Can you believe he said inappropriate things? Really, a guy supporting Trump is going to tell us about how the

I mean, context seems pretty obviously different. What you say in private versus what you say in a rally. I mean, ye are read Zoba.

Yeah. I actually as a lot of people that sounds great. Yeah, that in private's way better.

Can we stick on the question of Walls's economic record, actually, because Jane, can you flesh out that point about Uh, this is something I've started to see coming from people actually within Minnesota who have said, you know, Walts did pass these economic populist policies, but what he did with the money and the budget and all that you know is conservatives in Minnesota unsurprisingly will hammer Walls for having

Yeah.

So look, first I should also acknowledge that this sexual assault that Donald Trump was convicted of was in public he actually assaulted or in public?

Yeah, he did in address, None of that, None of what you said is true. He didn't was not addictive of a sexual assault that.

The jury said. He definitely did it, and it was in public. It was a civil suit. It's not a conviction.

I'm sorry.

It was a civil suit where he jury said he definitely did sexual assault in public.

Okay.

So to the economic issues, so look, he passes all these wonderful laws that help America's Like look at paid family leave. That's a Democrat saying, hey, mom should get in that case, twenty weeks off after they have a baby so they could bond with a baby.

And Republicans going that would have hurt interests. Corporations want you to go back to work the next day.

And so they all voted no, and they said, well, if you both have moms spend any time with their babies, and you know how much Republicans hate babies, and if you do that, my god, it's going to sink the economy.

Except it didn't. It's the fifth best state for business.

So not only did the average Minnesota get a lot better situation, but you guys.

Were all wrong. It didn't hurt business at all. So it's always been a mirage.

It's the Republican Party is built to serve the rich and serve corporations, So they don't want you to have one day with your baby at all. They don't want you sickly, they don't want any day. Don't want child Exspreddit. They don't want any of that stuff because it would hurt their beloved corporations, they think in their infinite greed.

But it turns out he doesn't even hurt them. It still makes business perfectly happy.

So he found a way to balance interest in a way that helped everyone.

You can't argue with them.

And well, I feel like Republicans are going to have two problems in going after Walls, And one is that, like you said, Walls seems like a pretty boring white guy, So painting him as a as a radical is going to be difficult. And Minnesota is Minnesota, and so painting it as Steven Miller tried, as like the next Mogadishu is going to be difficult, and like portraying it as some like you know, communist Mecca is also going to

We're just going to keep publishing the images and videos of Minneapolis. In June twenty twenty, over and over and over again. That's what we're going to do. I feel like, I mean.

I mean, I think you're probably I appreciate that.

I suspect you will. I think that people are over that like that. It's that you're going to look like you're complaining about something that people are kind of ready to move past and are going to say, Look, the protests were well meaning, they were targeting a genuine injustice. They went overboard at times. We don't necessarily want to be reminded of that. Why are you guys reminding us?

Maybe you're maybe you see my point, Like, I don't know if this is going to work.

For it, but I think that the sort of people who are swing voters in this election, I mean, you look at generally, like what do swing voters care about? What are the Republican's strongest issues with string voters? Immigration, crime, inflation?

Right? Those three those are the ones, and crime is a big one.

Like the defund the police stuff that Kamala has said in the past, abolishized stuff. That's all stuff that she's extremely worried about. That's why she spent like a whole week having her flax go out there and claim that she wasn't the borders are so like they're worried about this stuff. Tim Waltz makes it much worse for them. This is where jos Shapiro would have been a really

His times and why Jink, is that not a huge problem for Waltz in your opinion?

Yeah, So a couple of things here.

At number one, this is the same thing Democrats did about January sixth. They beat it into the ground and they showed the video after video after video until people got bored of it. So I'm kind of known for being honest about our side and the weaknesses in our side, and I don't think that was great political strategy. And right now Republicans are remaining that same mistake. I think Ryan's exactly right. People get it.

Hey, listen, George Floyd was one of the greatest injustices.

I don't know, maybe Republicans changed their minds and they think maybe he had a coming or something.

I don't know.

Maybe they're going to defend Chauvin like they defended Kyle Rittenhouse and George Zimmerman. But in terms of the riots, he did call out the National Guard. They're saying, oh, he didn't do it fast enough. But again, if your candidate is Donald Trump, and he refused to call out the National Guard on January sixth, and he sat around and enjoyed it while his own supporters chanted, hang Mike Pence,

It's Minnesota. He's a lovable old grandpa.

He passed the laws that the people of Minnesota are thrilled with and so they're gonna go to weird. But that's what he said about you guys, and everybody thinks that's true. So it just seems super weak. I don't think they have any case at all. Look just real quick on this. When Joe Biden was in the race, I said he had a zero percent chance of winning.

So it's not like I'm.

Telling you, oh yeah, raw, raw, Democratic Party they're so great now. I think they're the clear favorites because his record of Minnesota is excellent. Kamala Harris has been terrific on the campaign trail, and now Donald Trump looks like the stale, old tired guy who's still raving like a lunatic in the corner. I think they're in a world of herb.

So Ryan made a point earlier in the show that about this exchange Stephen Miller had with someone about the It was someone posting a picture of Tim Waltz with his hunting gear on, like bird hunting, something like that, and said, how are you going to paint this guy as like a San Francisco liberal or coastal leader or something, And Steven Miller replied, he put tampons in girls' bathrooms

But on the other hand, I do see Ryan's point.

I think the politics of that issue in particular have changed over the last eight years, and that the general public is a lot less sympathetic to especially when it comes to stuff about trans and kids. So I don't think it helps Tim Waltz that he was like making his state a refuge for you know, you know, puberty blockers for children. I think that it's going to actually

Was about to deploy. That's what They're going to look at him and say, that's sick.

Well, I mean it's just prue so smick.

You guys do it every time to actual veterans. It's an emooral line of attack. You did it to John Carry after you took bullets for this country. Your guys are all chicken hawks. They're all loser cowards like Donald Trump who ran from Vietnam, Dick Cheney who never served, Tom Delay who said, oh, black people took my spot. Otherwise they would have gotten to Vietnam they never served. They're always coward or is they always send other people

Yea van Tim waltsteron, okay, what do you p twenty seven years? Then I'll judge you. I'll Joe stayed twenty eight year.

Jack judging you, so jenk to knock on him.

That you're going to hear from the right is that it was May sixteenth, two thousand and five, just when when when Walls stepped aside and as he as he retired, So this was after twenty plus years in the National Guard, but as he retired, his unit was about to deploy, and according to people in the unit, he had told those in the unit that he would deploy with them.

To a wreck.

So that that's gonna be the hit.

You think, it doesn't land because because they go they went after John Kerry s, they'll go after everybody.

So they've lost.

And Jane, let me add also that Chris Lasovita is the head of the Trump campaigns wills right now. He is the architect of the swift boat ad campaign.

Yeah, of course, that's what he does is he does this to every veteran who's served. Oh, you want to serve America, We're going to find a way to smear you, and we're going to pretend that you didn't get shot enough.

We're going to pretend that you didn't serve long enough.

Even though our guys never served, and you served over two decades, but we're going to find a way to use that against you. So hey, listen, if you're an average American and you like politics and you care about this country and you want to fix it, be careful if you go into the armed services, the Republicans will viciously smear you later.

Oh he took a bathroom break once. I didn't like him.

Oh yeah, he was something I didn't like in the in training, in the army, or in the National Guard. Okay, where was your guy? Oh no, he didn't have a unit to deploy because his dad literally bribed a doctor to write a doctor's note about a bone.

Spur he didn't have. So will can you explain?

I'm being serious because you're smearing a guy who served for decades. So I want you to answer to me why Donald Trump isn't a gigantic coward from running from Vietnam. Don't tell me about an assassination attempt. Okay, that's a different thing, and I gave him credit for that. Tell me about why he ran from Vietnam and let Lura and middle class Americans die. Or and while he bragged about going to Orgy's instead.

I don't know the details of what exactly went on with his Vietnam stuff, but I will say this, this is the obvious comparison. He was twenty two when Vietnam was going on. Tim Waltz was a grown man and the leader of his unit, and he abandoned them.

So, since he was a spoiled little brat and his daddy had given him four hundred million dollars and he was twenty two and he wanted to get laid, he let other people die for him. That seems like a really compelling argument. You guys seem super brave and really into veterans. I mean, Tim waltzs did exactly that. He could have gone with his unit. Three of his unit died. These were the men he was leading and told what he would deploy with them, and then fifty thousand died

He had them removed.

He thought that they lowered his property values because those veterans went to Vietnam. Oh, I guess they were dramatized because Daddy didn't get them out so here it kicked them off of my in front of my Trump Tower. This rich bitch who ran, ran, ran, who never served, who's a giant coward who doesn't know which ankle had the bone spurs, has a temerity to go after a veteran who serve for over two decades and has the medals to show for it. It's disgusting.

Let me, maybe this is a good place to start winding down the conversation because does any of this actually matter? Like, that's the question I want to pitch to both of you. This is the vice president, the vice president's nominee that is, so does litigating the details of his departure from Army National Guard, like whether it's that, whether it's economic policy, is is it going to have a meaningful effect on the Harris ticket or on the Trump Vance ticket? Like

Drink.

Yeah.

Look, I have to play defense on it because these guys are immoral, so they keep smearing every Democratic candidate in the same exact way. Oh, you dare to serve in our armed services, We're gonna use it against you.

We're gonna weaponize.

So I'm not gonna let them do that, okay, especially when their parties fill to the rim with cowards who never serve.

Okay, so you don't get the smear veterans after.

You chose to run from every battle and start those wars and then never serve in them. So I'm not gonna let them get away with it in terms of what people vote on. Go ahead, do your.

Immoral smears of veterans. It's not gonna work. The only thing people care about is how does this election affect my life? The reason I was there's.

Many reasons I was against, but one of them was he kept talking about my legacy and I got to have a second term, etc. I'm like, yeah, brother, what's your policies? How are you going to help the average American? But now we have a team that has a track record of helping I mean, you want to talk about Tim Walls.

You're attacking him.

He's a track record of passing dozens of bills that help the average person in Minnesota. That's why he's intensely popular in his own state. That's why these bills worked because they weren't about ego building for tim walls. They're about actually improving the lives of Americans. And Donald Trump doesn't have that record. He has a record of what he did one giant bill when he was in office, enormous corporate tax cuts for his donors, and that's his legacy.

So he's gonna run on that.

Oh, I helped all the corporations, so oh, all the corporations are my best friends. I gave them all the biggest tax breaks and they're all now much richer and you guys have to pay more taxes because of it.

Go ahead, run on that record.

And I think that it's going to be super obvious who people should vote for.

I think we're gonna win this actually relatively easily. Now.

And will any final words, If you've got like one minute to talk to this swing voter who was going to decide this selection or swing, whether whether it's a vote or not vote, might be their swing decision, what do you say to them about this pick.

Like, really, are you better off right now than you were under the Trump administration? Economically, the economy was booming under Trump and it absolutely crashed under Biden.

Inflation is out of control.

If you would even go to the grocery store, you can tell gas prices are out of control. And why they're at war with domestic energy. I mean, Kamal Harris wants to ban fracking. She said that repeatedly, so you have I mean, if you're talking about just core economic issues like this, good is this team Harris Walt's going to be good for your pocketbook? It's not there. They have a slew of bad policies. Meanwhile, you know they're trying to portray Trump vance as Romney Ryan. It's a

All right, Well, thanks thanks to both of you, guys.

I was gonna say, that's an interesting place to end, because I think we'll just previewed where Republican messaging will want to go. And whether or not Donald Trump carries that, you know, successfully, is an open question. Trump and others carry that successfully is an open question.

And how it works against Waltz is an open question. So thank you both. It was a very helpful discussion.

Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Wesley Bell has defeated Corey Bush in the race for Missouri's first districts Democratic primary. He won ended up winning by about six points, not five and a half points. Ryan, you followed this race really closely. A lot of chatter and the media today about what actually happened. I'm not convinced that the media knows what actually happened, but I am convinced that you know what actually happens.

But please tell us.

Well, So, I mean, the headline is the you know, the squad is now depending on how you count it, shrinking from what was eight members at the BA if you count summerly in Great Gazar.

Should we start crossing people off on your books? Coyeah, you can see it. I'm right, Yeah, we got it.

So, yeah, you've got Corey Bush and Jamal Bowmen. So of those six of two of them have lost primaries. But have cost a pack a combined total of at least twenty five million dollars to knock them out. That's seventeen million in Jamal Bowman's race, and now eight million dropped on dropped on Corey Busch to win the All the votes are not counted yet, but we're looking at

So he ended up being a pretty close.

Race for you know, as as massively outspent as as Corey Busch was. You know, what we learned from the Nina Turner race and the Summer Lee race is that millions of dollars in camp in spending on TV can move the needle roughly twenty to thirty points. It's it's it's a dramatic amount that you can kind of push the number now if you have. Summer Lee ended up winning that race where she dropped twenty five thirty points in a couple of weeks.

She won it by a you know, just a few thousand votes.

Nina Turner ended up losing that race by something like four thousand votes. Very close, very close race as well. But people are not plugged in. People don't have as you know, a lot of voters don't have a depth of feeling about a candidate such that millions of dollars is not going to sway their their choice for that race. And so you get a lot of debating about whether or not spending APEX spending twenty five million dollar in these two races matters, which to me is the craziest

Money for no reason.

And it's almost insulting to their intelligence to suggest that anybody would spend twenty five million dollars to have no effect, Like why would you do that?

Yeah, just buy it.

You know, there's things they could spend that money on, like an elevator, an elevator for your garage so you can move your cars up and down the different Yeah, like rommy, Like that would be a cool thing to have if you're super rich. Instead, you're going to waste it for no reason. On a political campaign, they have a lot of money to raise the money. The money matters, so and this does not count, by the way, the million, we don't know the fine Well, well we can figure

And I want to ask you now about how that money was spent, because if we look at the polling, this is the next element D two that we put this up on the screen, it was absolutely all over the place. So this is from five thirty eights sort of coalating of the poles. Last one had Bell up by six points. Now, these small house races, the polling is usually going to be scattered through a lot of

And you know, credit to Mark Mellon who's the head of the Melman Group and also the founder of d MFI, which is like basically an a Pack affiliate. Some of these poles are from Yeah there, he's the one that did the plus six pole that was in the plus foio and the plus one pole and I think those

Uh.

What Corey Bush was hitting Wessey Belt with everything in the kitchen sink, including in some in one of her final ads, attacking him for sleeping with subordinates as a prosecutor, as a he was a kind of reformist kind of Soros back to d a in in Saint Louis. He got, he got sued. He was able, Uh, he was able to or for some reason the lawsuit that would have involved a lot of dirty laundry being aired was delayed

Women in his office who either fired or who quit.

And are making all sorts of allegations and maybe those will come out a year from now and we'll get a Cory Bush Wesley Bell rematch at a Jamal Bowman Richie Torres race.

Well, how did how did Belle successfully sort of.

The same playbook that he's that that they went after summerly with that they went to Jamal Bowman with at Corey Bush is a radical, she's out of step with Democrats.

Even as a reformist prosecutor. He was able to sort of make that argument.

Well, that's yeah, because I mean, being a reformist prosecutor in Saint Louis is very popular among Democrats.

Yeah. So yeah, just just the ads.

None of the ads, to your point, were about Israel Palestine. Apex spent in the twenty five million dollars they spent on these two races, all most zero was spent talking about Israel Palestine. There was one ad that Apax super Pac ran shortly after October seventh where they came after Corey Bush and they mentioned and it was about Israel Palestine and you know, basically calling her Hama supporter. And that was before Wesley Bell had even jumped in the race.

Money that was available increased. So he called.

Uh.

He called Corey Bush after the Saint Louis Paper had said that he was thinking about doing this and and swore to her that that absolutely was not happening.

We do we have that audio if we run that.

There's some stuff that I know because I just just just his game.

Long enough bills are there. Their Hollman is the heck he is.

In the in the proof of.

It is name one legitimate reported at one.

They eat it close to that and this is stupid, exactly. No, you're right, you're right, you're right.

Don't big, don't big, don't be big for even a second that that's the case. And I'm telling you right now, I'm telling you my word, not running.

Soren.

This is audio a Bell telling Bush that Holloman was a quote hack.

Yeah.

So basically, so basically what he's said, what's going on? So basically what he says is that the author of the piece is a total hack. Everybody believes he's a hack. The reporter should not be believed. There's no chance. Don't think for even a second that that's the case. I'm telling you right now, I'm telling you on my word, i am not running against you. That is not happening. And

But he did.

And he's like, I'm no Steve Roberts. He says, I ain't no Steve Roberts. Steve Roberts then ended up endorsing Westy Bell. So anyway, so shockingly he lied to her and then jumped into the race. But we could see a rematch in twenty twenty six, who knows, we'll see what.

And Corey Bush got attacked.

For for paying her husband to do security that that that quote unquote scan.

Her now husband, right, while also being a defund the police type progressive it was that was a big item in conservative media.

Right, that wouldn't have mattered. It is hard, but.

Yeah, and also like the whole premise of the movie, Bodyguard is about falling in So I don't see how.

Everybody loves that.

Well, I just mean for your average voter there, if there's a sense or an aura of kind of drama and chaos around someone, that can someone else comes in and says, you know, I'm a no drama.

Obama or whatever it is.

It's that can that can actually hurt someone if there's a lot of like scandal and.

Yeah, that was that was Yes, Corey Bush is causing too much chaos.

I mean like it's about her.

And this.

So Crystalin and I back at the Hill, Uh interviewed Corey Bush the morning after she won her primary. So yeah, that was a while.

It feels like a while ago.

And I just have always been frustrated on some of the conservative attacks on court Bush because there's she's I'm very curious about her future because I think she falls into sort of whatever the we talk about red meat maybe blue meat. I think she falls into that sometimes. But she's also a more interesting person than some people give.

Her credit for. Extremely interesting.

Yeah, here's where her future goes.

I hope we haven't heard the last of her.

Ryan in the UK, the Southampton fallout, the tragedy that happened in Southampton continues to rock the United Kingdom. Protests are erupting all over London, and Elon Musk is of course playing very close attention to geopolitics, as he always does. Worth noting in literally every discussion of Elon Musk and foreign policy that he is a defense contractor, so let's keep that in mind.

It's not quite as.

Relevant here as it is when he weighs in on Israel or Taiwan and China, but always worth noting here. Now Elon Musk has been all over let's actually just put e one up on the screen. This is an article from Politico Europe. The headline is UKPM slams Elon Musk for saying fire right riots for quote inevitable. So a spokesperson for Prime Minister kre Starmer came out and said there was quote no justification for Elon Musk continuing to say that Europe is heading towards a civil.

War, that the.

Labor parties policies and actually the Conservative parties policies over the last decade plus. And this is something that a lot of excellent writers have pointed out at Unheard where I work now that those policies were inevitably The word inevitable has been used a lot in these conversations. Were inevitably going to come to this climax? If it is a climax, Elon Musk seems to think there's more to come, full civil war, to come to the point where.

Let's put up this next element.

This is yeah, so he says to care Starmer, shouldn't you be concerned about a tax on all communities? When Starmer says we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities, this is in reference to the riots that have broken out after uh there was there were killings of children in Southampton that were initially attributed to like immigrants. It turned out that it was the child of immigrants, so a British we know so far.

Was what originally circulated on social media and heavily on Twitter, was that it was an illegal Muslim that stabbed.

These and killed these three little girls.

It turned out it was a Christian who was born in Wales to Rwanda, to Rwandan parents, to Rwandan parents, and the UK took the step of actually putting out like look, no, like this is this is who did this?

This is miss This is misinformation.

Regardless it it would not justify lynch mobs going through the street trying to beat, trying to eat up Muslims throughout throughout the UK. Yeah, gosh, nothing and Elon Musk's like to attempt to like both sides it there is.

I think.

Doesn't do justice to the reality of the situation that it. That is, like the rampaging mobs are in general like racist, anti immigrant folks going after Muslims and refuge and asylum seekers.

Well, what's happened is anybody who looks Muslim In the aftermath of the original outbreak of protests against Muslim communities in the UK, Muslim communities have responded to them and there has been I mean there genuinely now has been outbreaks of unrest on quite literally both sides. That's not

But Elon musk Oh, go ahead, yeah, no, I mentioned this on the show yesterday. But if it's it's it's an interesting historical fact to your point that pick pick a pick a riot or revolution and uprising that you're familiar with, uh, and then go search like the origin of how it happened.

World War One, and it almost all war or a world war.

It almost always was based on something that wasn't actually accurate.

You're going to do the British take on the American Revolution?

Oh yeah, that one too, right, maybe the Boston massacre and the Party some of that, Yeah, but yes, but what you always also find is that these structural conditions were in place for something to set off what came. So it's true that yes, usually it's misinformation and hundreds of years ago predated Twitter or.

Some mutation, but it also doesn't.

It also doesn't justify algorithms pushing like obviously false things in front of people's faces, like like where where's the community note? Like where where's this?

Like that's why we should get rid of algorithms. Go back to old Twitter, where it was just your timeline and the and it wasn't put its thumb on the scale.

And just to hear from your friends.

Yeah, yeah, and you know you can be like okay, so five minutes ago because this is further down in my feed someone said this. Now you know, five minutes later and this is the new post, and you can like make your human being with you know, a brain. You know, not everybody is going to be brilliant at making those judgments, but uh, it's it's better than Twitter's like algorithm making.

The judgments for right.

And also the mob didn't care when they were like, actually it's a Christian from Wales who had rewarded parents.

It's a good point. That's a really whatever we're rampaging well.

And the broader point is that the levels of migration to the UK have been unsustainable.

So that's what this like, which.

Again, as I mentioned before, it they have a channel and water around them.

It's also good luck with the wall.

Also a very problematic birth rate, as you have talked about before. So there's questions about all of that baked into this, but basically there's this broader argument that is not just shared by people on the kind of for far right, so called far right, but also increasingly people on the left that look at this and say this has been unsustainable over the last decade. And there's a very necessary conversation about how neoliberal wars pushed these migration

Yeah, civil wars brewing.

Europe appears to be head of her civil war. These are actually all from last year, like from after October seventh, so late October to early November last year. But Elon Musk is very convinced that civil war is coming to Europe.

I think a lot of people.

Are increasingly convinced that civil war is coming, not just to Europe but to the broader West. And anytime you have outbreaks of civil unrest like this in ways that people have not been used to in the last you know, if you grew up in the eighties and nineties, this might feel unfamiliar, even though there has been a lot of civil unrest.

If he would have said Bangladesh, she'd be looking so precient right now, civil war coming to Bangladesh. But he keeps saying about America too. Yeah, he's invested in this. He's one of those guys like and hopefully not literally right. It's hard sometimes to know what people like him mean when they say civil war do they really mean? Because when we think of civil wars like we think of like armies that are fighting each other over you know,

Now there's clearly a cultural war, and as the culture war civil war when to this example, the child of these Rwandan immigrants was from Wales, it was not quote unquote foreign. So then it does kind of become the argument that it's right, that's true, but it does become civil war if it's internice because of these people who are born with all of the rights as citizens.

Well again we're getting to the Whales distinction.

But let's just hypothetically say it is from London all of the same rights as you white Londoner. That that means these values are just as I mean, that's what uh is what a lot of people would say. These values are just as as British as your values. So is it a hot civil war? Is it a cold civil war? I think is an open question. Does it keep rupturing into civil unrest like this or is it managed? And you know, is it managed in a way that

I hope we manage our imperial decline better, yes, than the British managed there is maybe we need to look into the Dutch imperial decline. They seem to have managed it pretty well. Like they seem pretty I guess it's they have enough distance from their imperial decline also tiny.

That they're kind of comfy with it.

But I mean they were absolutely massive and destructive and lately they they caused a lot of misery for a long stretch time.

Their borders now at least, and they did collapse pretty badly.

So so Elon Musk though announced if we can put up this this final element that Johnald Trump announced sorry that he that he's going to be doing a quote major interview with Elon Musk. Details to follow. My guess is that he will do this on spaces.

Santis though.

What an absolute disaster that that DeSantis one was.

When you know Trump doesn't put up with that stuff. Like, even if the lights are wrong in a room, he'll be like, turn the lights off, they're too bright.

He does not put up with port production.

At the NABG thing, the National Assession of Black Journalist thing last week, when the audio was bad, it was driving him visibly crazy.

Yeah.

Right, He's been doing a top shelf like production work, celebrity apprentice, et cetera for too long to be putting up with lousy audio.

He doesn't like it. So that tells us Spaces has advanced.

We'll find out. We'll see Elon Musk do not screw this up. Trump's gonna be very mad at you.

But Elon Musk says, even he denied the forty five million monthly thing, he says he's pledged I think like one hundred and.

Eighty million something like that.

It's it's nebulous what we actually know about it to the trumpere election campaigns. So for that kind of money, maybe you put up with that audio, or you put up with a glitching Spaces. But it does solidify I guess it should solidify the new or union between Trump and Musk. With the new alliance between Trump and Musk, Trump is now pro electric vehicles. He was in a tesla. Did you see his cyber Trek interview.

He hates electric he hates evs.

And now he loves them, and he said he's openly said he has to love them because of Elon, which is like a perfect Trump and construction.

On that note, also, can we bask in the delicious irony of Elon Musk saying that he was taking over Twitter because he was mad about the election interference and it's now just like wildly tilting it towards Donald Trump in the.

Last few months of an election. That's kind of funny.

Yeah.

Well, Also, I wanted to bask in him saying major interview because it reminds me of Christmas story where he says he's won a major award and it's the.

Leg lamp Major Interview, Major Awards, the same thing. On that note, that's the end of Counterpoint. Hope it goes better for him than than the leg lamp did.

Yeah, yeah, that is a great note to end today's episode on. Just a really bad joke from me. This is perfect, pitch perfect. But thank you everybody for tuning in and continuing to tune in Breaking Points dot Com if you want to subscribe to the full show, get it in your inbox, you get it early, no breaks, You get all of counterpoints, which is nice. We don't you get access to every segment, as opposed to the few that get posted to the YouTube.

We were posting them all now, oh well I might as well. They're all good, I go. I promise you don't want to miss a single one.

I promise they're all good. Yeah, we listen, We're always on.

That's right, that's right. I never missed leg day. All right, see you guys.

Don