Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds.
And President Biden called Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden rally simply embarrassing.
Pretty good assessment.
We have such a great show for you today, Talking points memos. Josh Marshall stops by to parse why Trump's Madison Square Garden rally was so insane.
Then we'll talk to.
CNN political analyst and writer for The Atlantic Ron Brownstein about what he is seeing in early voting. But first, the news, a lot of news.
So Molly, what was miss during the Trump rally at MSG was actually really important was a CNN interview with Tom Holman, who you and I covered in our Project twenty twenty five documentary for being one of the architects of the immigration policy in the next Trump administration if they get in.
He is the former Ice head and this is his plan for mass deportation of a documented immigrants. And let me just say, it's not like he hid this. He went and said this on sixty eight minutes.
Why should a child who is an American citizen have to pack up and move to a country that.
They don't know because their parent absolutely into the country illegally had a child knowing he was in the country legally. So he created that crisis.
While Homan ran ice.
In what became one of the most controversial policies of the Trump administration, at least five thousand migrant children were forcibly.
Separated from their parents.
Who were prosecuted for crossing the border illegally.
You've been called the.
Father of Trump's family separation policy.
How does that sit with you?
It's not true. I didn't write the memory of a separate families. I signed a memo. Why did I sign, am? I was hoping to save lives? Why you and I are talking right now? Child's going to die on the board it so we thought, maybe we prosecute people, they'll stop coming.
Maybe and if Trump wins the second term.
I don't know of any formal policy, but they're talking about family separations.
Should it be on the table I.
Think needs to be considered.
Absolutely so.
Anyway, the point is they're planning mass deportation, and we know this because they're telling us on sixty minutes.
I mean, I think it's very jarring that he's basically saying that it doesn't matter if a member or your family's here a legal or not, that they're just going to rip you apart. And I want to make a point too that you know, Trump has said that he doesn't know these Project twenty twenty five people. He's repeatedly on video said I'm hiring this guy to do this, So there's no wiggling around this bullshit.
I mean, he worked in the Trump admin and he worked on Project twenty twenty five, and he's planning to deport But I think the scariest part of all of this is they're deporting boas documented and under documented immigrants. So this will mean that if you have a family, and we saw a lot of reporting about this, most families you'll have one illegal member of the family. Well now it will be that everyone else in the family will get deported.
So Molly jd Vance, you know, Charisma King, here's some thoughts about how people should feel about the remark from Tony Hinchcliff at the Garden saying that Puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage.
So I just want to pause for a second and talk about this for one more second. So Republicans from Florida and from a lot of states to the Puerto Ricans are freaking out right. There are half a million Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, the must win state of Pennsylvania, so they are all freaking out. Okay, now listen to jd Vance's very sensitive response to Puerto Rican people being offended by having their island be called a pile of garbage.
I've heard about the joke.
I haven't actually seen the joke that you mentioned, but I think that it's telling that Kamala Harris's closing message is essentially that all of Donald Trump's voters are Nazis, and you should get really pissed off about a comedian telling a joke that is not the message of a winning campaign, and most importantly, it's not the message of a person who's fit to be the president of the United States of America. And my own view on this is,
look again, I haven't seen the joke. You know, maybe it's a stupid racist shoke, as you said, maybe it's not.
I haven't seen it.
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of the joke, but I think that we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America.
I'm just I'm so over it.
Yeah.
So if you're bad Bunny or j Loo and you're offended by the fact that the comedian a Donald Trump Broop's rally called Puerto Rico a pile of garbage, well Evans has a message for you.
Get over it.
Yeah, we should say Trump only won Pennsylvania by point seventy two percent and Biden won by one point seven percent, but Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania are three point eight percent of the population, so a lot of movement could happen there.
Yeah.
And also everyone is in damage control about this comment except Jade Evans, who was telling them to get over it because they are being two pc and sensitive when they're offended that their island was maligned by a racist. I mean, I think we should just say that fifty cent the performer was offered three million dollars to perform at Donald Trump's rally, and he said, no, three million
dollars a lot of money. It's a lot of money, and it shows how toxic the Trump rallies are because he was he was offered three million dollars to perform at the Madison Square of Bardon rally and he said no, which good on him, and then also good on you know. We've been waiting to see if George W. Bush will endorse Harris, but we have seen that his daughter Barbara
is actually canvassing for Harris. Another thing that is really shows just how unusual the Trump election is that the fact that pretty much both on the left and the right have aligned to support Harris.
Somali in both Washington and Oregon. Drop boxes we're set on fire and Phoenix police have the suspected custody. What are you seeing here?
This has happened in a couple states, someone who's unhinged setting fire to drop boxes. We're seeing a lot of this, and look, we're of course we're seeing this. Donald Trump is encouraging it. Here's a guy who's setting fire to drop boxes in Arizona, but we saw somebody doing it in Washington State, and I'm sure we'll see more of it. And that's why we all have to be super vigilant and careful. It's really just exactly what we don't want.
It's exactly what has not happened, and it's the kind of thing that only happens once Donald Trump, you know, Donald Trump is encouraged his kind of behavior, so none of us should be surprised.
Somali. Mister Trump a man who's known for reading the room really well. He said the massive Square Garden rally was a LoveFest.
Funny because you'll remember he said that the January sixth insurrection was a love fest. They love him, right, Donald Trump calls it a love fest when his people do stuff to protect or to elevate him, or to storm the capitol. That is Donald Trump's idea of a love fest, but it is no one else's idea of a love fest.
Yeah, one might think he's only concerned with the reaction towards him when they were clapping for him, so he saw.
It as good enough.
Right. But you know, he did do this press or at mar Lago today as a way of trying to, I think, enact a little damage control after the Sunday Madison Square Garden rally went so off the rails.
And I think.
That that question where he said it was a love fest, that's another really good example of how Trump is sort of unable to help himself. Like this smart answer there would have been like there were some thing's got out of hand, but we love the people of Puerto Rico, and we know that they're Americans just like everyone else. But instead he just was like there were no bad jokes. It was a love fest. So I do think like
this between him and JD. Vans, they really have handled this just about as poorly as anyone could handle it. And it's hard for me to imagine being a Puerto Rican American and not feeling like these people do not have my best interests in that sounds right, which of course they don't. Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Welcome back to the Fast Politics Josh Marshall.
Thanks for having me again.
Here we are six days from.
The election that will side whether or not we have elections anymore discussed.
I was telling someone I have been trying to embrace the uncertainty because I think that's where we are right, it's uncertain. I wrote a piece that there's a difference between the closest election ever and the most uncertain election ever, and I'm not sure it's that close.
Well, we don't know. I think that's a really good point.
Yeah, it's high uncertainty, and look at a certain level, if it's super close, it's very uncertain. That's kind of you know, that's kind of the way it works. But I do think and every election, every high stakes election,
contains a lot of uncertainty. But I do think that there are factors that make this one more uncertain, more possibilities than usual, and a lot of those have to do with polling, with trying to understand what happened in the sort of the mechanics of the twenty twenty election, in terms of the COVID pandemic, changes in polls.
All this kind of stuff.
When we look at these polls that I think, as we all know basic say, it is like literally tied to the extent that things can be tied. There's a lot of assumptions that go into those polls. That's always the case with polls, but there's probably even more this time.
People have had to make assumptions about what the electorate looks like and stuff like that, and those could be mistaken, and those could end up giving us a result that swings a few points in either direction, and obviously, in our day and age, a few points is like you know, a landslide.
There's a lot of uncertainty, are real uncertainty.
Right, And I think what's really.
Important here when we talk about this is that Trump historically gets at an electorate that is a non voting electorate, and that's why he won in twenty sixteen. He was able to re summons those people in twenty twenty, though he didn't win. And now you know, it's almost a decade later, we are all fucking tired.
The man is still running.
And again the strat is is still the same, double down on the really offensive staff and hope that the low propensity ones and twos come.
Out, right, Yeah, for better or worse, we know at many levels, you know, Donald Trump calls the shots. That's what the people who love him love about him. I think that is real about his campaigns, right. And one of the things that you know, it's been a lot of talk for the last year that he finally has Chris Lasovita and Susie Wiles and there you know, they have figured out how to tame him, not tame him from being fairal and crazy, but make him seem normal, yes,
to run a real campaign. I think what we have seen in these final weeks is that he's running a He's running a Trump campaign there too, but he's going to double down. He's not a reach out kind of person. He's a double down kind of person. And he's going to try to get hold of his people and get hold of his people who maybe are ready to be
his people, but weren't his people yet. You know, this whole idea that you know, there are people out there who love Trump but they've just never voted before, and get them to vote. There's you know, there's more people he does that. He wants to, you know, demoralize the opposition. A lot of head faking and stuff like that. So it's he's a double down kind of guy.
Right, So Sunday he had this Madison Square Garden rally. This is part of these weird rallies he's doing, like the one he did in California. He had one in Coulchella, right, Couldchella Valley, This one where all these people got stranded. He had another one in another blue state. And the idea here is that they are control fundraising and they create this atmosphere of winning. But this one athlete spare of Puerto Ricans endorsing Kama Harris, including Bad Bunny, j Lo and Ricky Martin discuss.
Yeah, it's you know, it's hard, always hard to know, you know, what celebrity endorsements mean. I mean, I would have been a little surprised if Jlo endorsed Trump. So you know, if you had told me she endorsed Harris six months ago, I would have been utterly unsurprised. But I do think this has broken through in a significant way. I think it's clearly broken through with people in the Puerto Rican community, which a lot of people think, ah,
in New York, Puerto Ricans who live in New York. Obviously, lots of Puerto Rican Americans. I mean, there's no such thing as a Puerto Rican American. Pert Ricans are Americans part of the United States. Many live in Florida. A significant number live in Pennsylvania.
So half a million.
Did you know half a million Puerto Ricans lived in Pennsylvania.
I did not.
I did not.
I don't know how much that's concentrated in the eastern part of the state or Pittsburgh or just kind of everywhere. Doesn't matter though, right, yeah, exactly, it doesn't matter for these purposes. I do think that that is the most kind of eye popping remark. There's a lot, a lot of things this guy said, everybody knew going in this is going to you know, they're setting themselves up for sort of a replay of the first go around in nineteen thirty nine.
Right, what they did is sort of a Nazi rally.
The German American booned yet booned.
Yes, yes, I think the whole thing has kind of broken through a bit, just in the sense that it's not a shock to anybody that there are a lot of like racists and weird people around Donald Trump, but from the perspective of the Trump campaign that you don't want that to be your closing argument, right, like, we're
super racist. And I think this could have some impact on the results of the election because it's you know, because it seems to be very close, and you know, there's a lot of other things that this and other people there said. It's just everything works best for Trump when they keep the sort of you know, the really fairal degenerates kind of in the back room, you know, with a with a direct lawn to the base. But when you bring them out in front of normal people,
things get a little shaky. And it wasn't a great time to bring them out in front of normal people.
Yeah, and It's funny because it's like Elon has devoted himself to helping the Trump campaign in any way possible. You could make the supposition that this might be connected to this recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal, which on the news side does amazing stuff and has all this reporting about how Elon has talked to Vladimir Putin more than once, right, which technically is someone who sits on a pile of government contract and has very high security clears is pretty problematic.
So you could see where he might have some motivation there.
But he does seem and he didn't maybe seem this way as much four years ago. He does seem to be one of that crowd of this sort of deep and dark white national I mean, you know, I won't say he's a white nationalist, but he certainly does not seem uncomfortable with Stephen Miller.
Yeah.
I mean, he may not be, but all his friends are, right. I mean, you know, maybe in a way it doesn't matter. It's what he says and his friends and who he gives money to and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I think that Elon Musk in general is kind of overdetermined in the sense that he's just a weird on several levels, guy who's very impulsive, who clearly has some issues in his personal life that have driven some of this.
And I get the sense that he's just you know, sometimes people get really into bling, that's their new thing, and fascism is Elon's new bling, and he's really into it right now. And it wouldn't one hundred percent surprise me if it was something he wasn't as into in a few years. And again, I'm not like excusing him. He's just an impulsive, weird person and he's fixated on this.
It seems like a celebrity who's got you know, who has got a cause that they're sort of interested in but might not be interested in a couple of years. I mean, I think it's the capricious nature I've been so struck by as someone who you know, grew up with, you know, not so famous, but a little famous people and also a lot of people who had some money. Was that what this election shows so deeply is that the corrosive facts that wealth and power have on the
human soul. I mean, I am just stopped by the people who come out and you know, they really are their tax bracket. Trump ists. Right, they may or may not believe, but maybe they believe that, maybe they don't. Who cares again, but they have you know, decided that the tax brackets, may you know, to pay less taxes, they will go along with white nationalism and possibly the end of democracy.
In some ways, it is a very much a thing for a certain kind of liberal to think, like, well, is he actually white nationalists? Is actually this? Do they really believe this? As is often the case in life, it doesn't really matter what you believe, it's what you do.
And clearly these are people who, you know, if someone came up to me and said, Hey, we're going to go watch alligators have sex and then we're going to cut their heads off and put their heads onto our heads and dance around in the blood, I would say that's so weird. I no matter how cool you are, I can't. That's too weird for me. And you have these people who it's not too weird for them.
I'm going to do this annoying thing and bring up a tweet.
I hate it when people interview me and bring up a tweet, But this I think is relevant because I think it's a really important idea.
I'm going to read the tweet as very annoying. But this is who Trump is, and this is what Trump is them is.
But there's a.
Part of this that isn't widely known and this is absolutely one hundred percent sure to a lot of reporters, and that is that there are a lot of these pop operatives I'm now you know, speaking stemborraneously and staffers under thirty who are in fact to come from for fin So explain that to our listeners and maybe with a little more clarity.
So, oh right, So there's a series of online communities that go back a number of years, and there places where the in cells hang out and the white nationalists hang out, and a lot of you know, hardcore racist, far right things are just part of the vernacular and that's that kind of world. And so they are online spaces that have that four chan is one of them. There's eight chan. There are used to be certain subreddits.
There's you know, just all these kind of places out there, and there is a whole cadre of young Republican operatives and staffers who not only have spent time there, but in so many of the cases being there in the sort of post game or gate that whole kind of world. That's where they decided they were Republicans, or they decided they were far right. The point is that that was
where they had their political awakenings. Basically, this isn't surprising necessarily, but this kind of got on my radar because, you know, I am in charge of this news publication and I'm almost never the reporter. I'm seldom the immediate editor. But in our big stories, I'll get brought in just to kind of kick the tires and whatever. And in story after story, sort of like, okay, the person who got who's getting in trouble for their you know, for their
old tweets. Maybe maybe that person came from four chan, but okay, turns out his boss started at four chan two and like and and okay, here's the here's the guy who is not as bad and he was.
A source for us. Wow, he's also from four chan. Like wait, what's going on here?
And this would just keep happening again and again and again and I and I realized that it was pervasive, and not only in sort of like you know, the you know, there's always like maybe a dozen members of the House GOP Caucus are the ones who are constantly getting in trouble, not just those people staffers for relatively
normal Republicans, you know. Also, and I think a lot of people remember that during DeSantis's primary campaign, there were a few times where his campaign would drop these these you know, kind of viral videos and they had, you know a lot of kind of like muscle bound dudes in like swim trunks and.
A lot of stuff that.
To people outside of that world look pretty home erotic and just a lot of kind of crazy stuff. And this background of mine being somewhat involved in a lot of our investigative stories, I got it immediately because I know that like half the people, half the guys under thirty on his campaign, they started out like on four Chan and then like in cell message board, and that's
how they communicate. And it's only when you sort of, you know, when a campaign drops that and everybody's sees it, like, dude, what what is what did I just see? What did I just see? So that's it's that whole thing. It's very real and something that occurred to me a couple days ago. It used to be that you scratch any democratic campaign and either the candidate or the top people
they first met on the McGovern campaign. I mean, I'm dating myself here a bit, but you know, back in the nineties, the odds okay, and a decade from now it's going to in Republican campaigns fortune it's going to be oh yeah, yeah. We first worked together at four chan. We first created a dank meme at four chan.
I wanted just interject for a minute because I think this an important point that relates, which is JD. Bans comes from that world, probably more so even than Ronda Sandis. But what I think about I think about this a lot because I saw him in that vice presidential debate, which he did do better than Trim in that debate. He is actually wildly unpopular. His favorability ratings are lower than Donald Trump's. He struggles with really the same problem
that DeSantis does. Trump isn't without Trump brought to you by someone who has the charisma of a you know, of flat eyed Coke is not a winning message, right, Like. Part of why Trump is able to get away with this stuff is he was a celebrity for many years. He makes it seem funny and not scary, you know, whereas Jadie Vance. I mean, for example, the joke the floating pile of garbage joke that we heard on Sunday.
Jad Vance said, why I didn't see it right, which of course is ridiculous, and then he said, we should be less offended by things. You know, this is obviously well and like you tell that to these groups of Puerto Ricans who are offended by having their country be called garbage, that they should lighten up. I mean, like, I don't think that's a wins.
No, it's not a winning message. And I have to imagine that a lot of Democrats or Democratic operatives would say, like, Okay, cool, we'll put together a commercial for it, a commercial based on it. You dudes can run it, you can have the copyright, let's get it everywhere.
I don't even think it's cynical.
A lot of Democrats are like, they are not upset. They're like, hey, thanks for taking the mask off. It's just the right time.
Let's let every you know, I mean, a week before the election, it's a good time to do it.
Yeah, exactly.
And the thing is with Trump is that he's horrible, but we don't understand him and cannot fight him effectively if we don't understand he has a real charisma. It may not be your kind of not you, Molly, but you know, everybody's charisma. But that is what allows him to, you know, kind of do these things and to an extent,
get away with them. And whereas you have someone like JD Vance he says something, Oh yeah, kind of like angry lonely cat ladies and just he he'll say something and everything's just silent.
Everybody's like ooh, like no one likes you JD.
Yeah, No, I think that's right. We're in the home stretch of whatever this is. But it does certainly seem like a really important data play. Thank you, Josh Marshall.
All right, talk to you later.
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Ron Brownstein is a senior political analyst for CNN and a senior editor at The Atlantic.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ron Brownstein.
Ay, Molly, anything going on?
Nothing? Nothing? Not eight days until the election.
Yeah.
So one of the many, many things I like about you, besides the fact that you're so smart and so sane, is that you also have been doing this for a fairly long time, so you really know what this should look like.
Okay, so what the fuck is going on?
Go?
Well, look, I mean I think you know, if you look at the totality of the polling, clearly Trump gained some ground in October. He hurt Harris with the ad barrage but portraying her as week on crime, week on immigration,
and extreme on transgender rights. And you know, even before the debate, one Republican said to me the Harris Trump debate, one Republican said to me something that I think has really borne out when they said, you know, if we win this race, we're not going to win it through the interactions between Harris and Trump, whether in the debate or the daily news cycle, and we were reminded of that again on Sunday, this person said, if we win the race, it's going to be just by you know,
doing to her essentially what we do to Democratic candidates in the Swing states since time immemorial, portraying them as a you know, soft on crime and immigration and out of touch liberal. And that campaign has been very powerful and very pronounced, and clearly it has had some impact on the national polling and even the polling and the
key swing states. But when it was all, you know, now that we are in the final stretch, it's pretty clear that even that offensive have not pushed at least the former Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin out of reach for her. And there are reasons to believe. I think that she can still win those states even with a smaller margin in the national popular vote than Biden had, and maybe only as big a margin or even slightly smaller in the national popular vote than Hillary
Clinton had. And we can talk about that the Sun Belt states are murkier for her. Those are states where non wide voters people of color are such a large portion of the electorate that even marginal gains for Trump
in them could make all of those states tough. And obviously North Carolina has been tougher Democrats anyway, But in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which have always been in the most plausible path to two seventy, not only for Biden but for her, I think the race is well within the margin of error. And as someone smarter than me said to me, you know months ago, that means it is within the margin
of effort. You know, a lot of people are kind of agonizing and you know, doom scrolling and checking polls every hour. You know, if poles say that Michigan, Pennsylvania with consin are with a point or even two points,
it really doesn't matter which way the pole says. What it's really telling you is that the states will that state will be decided by things that have not yet happened, either interactions on the campaign trail, or perhaps even more important, the quality of the campaign and organization that each side can execute in the final days. So the way I
look at it, whatever happens in the sun belt. This race is within reach for her through the rost belt Michigan, Pennsylvanus, Constant, the three states Trump knocked out of the blue wall, and it really is within the reach of either side to bring this home.
Okay, now I'm going to ask you a question just for me because I'm interested in it. This is a brain tease. Okay, I'm going to read you a tweet. This is something I'm obsessed with. Okay, Pole after poll shows Harris leading among those that have already voted, even narrowly in Florida. So these are exit polls. This is the point this sky says. Unless I'm missing something, either A polls are badly misreading this group, so.
The exit polling is wrong, which is possible.
Or b early voters are bluer than we think and thus party affiliation is not really telling the story.
Yeah, I saw that too.
You know, I myself find early voting almost impossibly opaque.
And that's the conventional wisdom about early voting is that it just doesn't tell you anything.
Really, it's not maybe not exactly that. It's as a lay person, you do not have access to the full layers of information. You need to see if there's any signal in the noise, because you know, the number of people from each party who vote early doesn't really tell you that much if either or both parties are simply cannibalizing, as the saying goes their day of voters and moving
them to early. You know, what you really need is something that tells you how irregular voters, how many irregular voters are coming.
Out for each side.
And there are people who do that kind of deep dive. You know, Tom Bonyer may be more famously than anybody else on the Democratic side who feel good about what they are seeing in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and not as good about what they are seeing in the sun Belt a swing stick. So which kind of you know, which kind of fits into this general that I'm offering here. I also have been struck by that polling. And look,
I mean, there is reason to believe. I think it would not be crazy if Kamala Harris won a higher percentage of previously Republican leaning independence, particularly college educated independence, than Biden did for two big reasons. January sixth had not yet happened, and Dobbs had not yet happened. In
the twenty twenty election. And you know, as I wrote this week, I think it is highly likely that Harris not only can, but probably must run better than Biden did in these big white collar inner suburbs around Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, but also around Madison, Pittsburgh, and Grand Rapids. I mean, there is a metro path for her through the former Blue Wall states, and you know that is probably I think where there's election is going to be is going to be decided.
So now explain to me kind of what it looks like right now, the early voting, it's hard to make sense of we have North Carolina, I mean, what should she be doing now?
The big picture is that if you look at polling both in the swinging states and nationally, obviously polls differ, but the basic story they are telling is very similar, which is that Harris has regained a lot of the ground Biden lost among voters of color, but she hasn't regained all of it, especially among Latinos and especially among
Latino men. I mean, there are reasons for Democrats to hope that the big declines among black men that some polls are showing is an illusion that will not pan out but it is hard to imagine that everything we're seeing among Latino men is not real.
At least you know, some of it is not real.
So she has regained a lot of the ground Biden loss among people of color, but not all of it. On the other hand, like Biden, she is running very close to the twenty twenty Democratic level of support among white voters, which remember, was enough to win six of the seven swing states. Right, so she might be down a tick among white voters without a college degree, she might be up a little bit among white voters with a college degree.
But the net is that she is very.
Close in both national and state polling on a consistent basis to where Biden was among whites.
Depending on the data source.
You used, Biden one between forty one and forty three percent of whites, and look at something like the New York Times poll was exactly forty three, the CNN national poll was forty one. Consistently, she is right CNBC was forty one. She's right in there. And so what does
that mean. That means that even a marginal decline, even a slight decline in her support among voters of color makes it really hard in the Sun Belt battlegrounds because in those states, voters of color are a really big portion of the electorate, and even a small change in their preference is hard for Democrats to overcome.
So Arizona, Nevada.
You know, if Latino men really break away from Democrats anywhere near the level we're seeing.
Hard to win.
Georgia still seems to be right in play, but even a few point erosion with black men might be tough to overcome.
North Carolina has been tough to begin with for Democrats.
On the other hand, if you are maintaining the national the Biden level of support among whites from twenty twenty, that leaves you in a much stronger position in Michigan and Pennsylvania, where whites were about eighty percent of the vote in twenty twenty, and in Wisconsin where they were ninety percent. I mean, the paradox that Biden faced is
still kind of true. Even though Harris has improved a lot with non white voters and become much more competitive than he was in the Sun Belt, the reality is is that her best states are still the ones that are older and less diverse. Right, So one last point about all this, imagine a world in which Harris doesn't run as well among non white voters as Biden did and way below what Clinton did in twenty sixteen, because she ran even better.
Among non white voters or does a color than Biden did.
Imagine where Harris doesn't run as well as Clinton did among voters of color, but she runs significantly better among white voters, which is what she's backed to do.
I mean, by holding.
Biden's support among whites, she is locking in the improvement that Biden made over Clinton from sixteen to twenty among whites. So if you're down among non whites and up among whitest, your net margin follow me here in the national popular vote may be about the same.
As Clinton's, which was only two points.
Your national popular vote may not be any better than Clinton's, but you would be better positioned than her to win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and was. As the political scientists say, it is a
more efficient political coalition. Democrats have become accustomed to the idea they have to win the popular vote by a lot in order to squeeze out an electoral college majority, and no one, no one would prefer to try to win as a Democrat with a two point lead in the popular vote rather than Biden's four and a half,
but it is not out of reach for her. She may fall short in at least one of those three states, but it is not hard for me to imagine a world where the same popular vote national margin as Clinton had can translate into two hundred and seventy Electoral College votes for Harris in a way that it could not for Clinton.
Okay, now I have two questions.
One is I want you to talk about what happened last night at Madison Square Garden. The comedian whose name is Tony Hinchcliff made a number of racist jokes.
And also misogynistics jokes.
He made a joke about oj Simpson, but the joke that may have really cost the campaign the most votes was his joke about how Puerto Rico was a floating pile of garbage, almost.
Like a mirror.
Hour later, we had j Lo, we had bad Bunny, Mark Anthony did a video today, but Ricky Martin. So we've had a number of Puerto Rican celebrities indors Harris, and it reminds me a lot of You'll remember that when Donald Trump was tweeting out these or retweeting these fake Taylor Swift endorsements. That led to Taylor Swift endorsing Harris. And remember when Trump said that Jamie Diamond was going
to endorse him. That led to Jamie Diamond saying that actually he would take a cabinet position in the Harris administration. But yes, so Donald Trump helped get a lot of endorsements for Harris.
Is it too late for something like that to move the needle?
Someone showed me a private Democratic poll that had Pennsylvania within half a point, you know. So the answer is there are five hundred thousand Puerto Rican citizens in Pennsylvania, and I believe you. John Fetterman tweeted today that four hundred thousand, roughly four hunred thousand of them can vote. So Trump was counting on improvements with those voters as
part of his winning coalition. And first of all, the tenor of the overall rally I think was a signal, like everything else we're watching, that Trump thinks he has won, that America is on board for a full scale kind of cultural purge and racial purge, that they can just kind of, you know, let it go. And also, I mean they also believe that the more extreme and outrageous you get, the more likely you are to activate rarely voting conservative men, younger men, non college men, all of that.
So it's it's like they turn up the volume because they think that's the only way they can reach these people who are disconnected from the political system.
Right, but that they then very likely take a chance to really alienate.
That's the thing.
The way I've been phrasing it is that for the final week.
To me, the question is what is the question?
Like Trump started his speech yesterday, I believe with the question that we're Republicans want to be the question are you better off than you were four years ago?
Now? It may not be fair.
Given all the growth in the job market and all the billions of dollars hundreds of abilities osma vet right.
But a straight economic message you could see delivering for a Republican right.
But you know, most people, because of inflation, say they're not better off than they were four years ago. And that's especially true among families living paycheck to paycheck, which include a lot of you know, in black families.
The irony, though, is that four years ago we were in the middle of a pandemic.
Right that lead that aside, If that's the question it's a hard road for Paris, but there is no reason that has to be the question. I mean, the other question that America is grappling with, that could be the dominant question in the final days, is are you willing to risk returning this Donald Trump? Who is this overtly racist, xenophobic, misogynist and authoritarian.
Are you willing to return him to the White House.
The answer is yes for a lot of people, but there are certainly some voters who might be dissatisfied with the economy, might trust more on the economy, who simply are not willing to.
Take that risk. And this is not a theoretical proposition.
We saw it in twenty twenty two when Democrats won an unusually high percentage of voters who disapproved of Biden or disapproved to the economy and still would not vote for Republican alternatives.
Right than Nicki Haley voters.
Part of Nicki Haley voters, but you know, even probably some blue collar white women and some black and Hispanic men. In the end, I mean, I think Trump is trying to execute and maybe appropriately enough, after this rally with its nineteen thirty nine echoes, he is trying to execute a pincer movement. I think it is highly likely, given the way they portrayed Harris as his out of touch coastal liberal, that he will run even better than he did in Trump country, small town, rural e serban America,
mostly non college white. It's a lot of conservative Christians, you know, very resonant with the social issues. And I think primarily because of inflation, it's likely that he will make at least.
Some progress at crack these.
Towering traditional Democratic advantages in the central cities among voters of color.
So where does she go to offset that?
Well, partially she starts with a cushion because Biden won the states that she has to win. But where does she go. She goes to the inner suburb. She goes to the racially diverse, well educated, generally doing pretty well. Like inflation is kind of a pain, but it's not really an existential crisis for people in Montgomery and Delaware County and Oakland County and Kent County and Gaine and
the Wow Counties, Waukesha and so forth. And there are the voters who could say, yeah, I don't think the last four years have worked out that well, but I am not willing to take the risk of going to Trump, and if you ask me today, she can, and she probably must do a little better than Biden did in all of the places I just mentioned, the four suburban counties outside Philly. Biden won them by two hundred ninety thousand votes, which was itself one hundred and fifteen thousand
more than Hillary. She may have to do better yet Oakland County he doubled the margin of Hillary.
She might have to do it better.
Yet.
Dane County, it just keeps growing, turnout keeps going up, and the Democratic margins keep going up. She's probably going to have to max out there to squeeze out Wisconsin. Not a simple path, no guarantee that she can do it,
but not an impossible one at all. I mean, really within the margin of effort, as people say, for her to generate enough of the vote she needs in all of those three states to squeeze them out, even if the national popular vote is much closer than it was in twenty twenty, and maybe as close or even closer than it was in twenty sixteen.
All right, so now go along with me on this.
What if the polls are just wrong, What if she's doing better what if they're just waiting them to are heavy, to try to not underestimate Trump yet again, could be sure?
I mean yes, I mean you only find out the polls are wrong after I mean, maybe that's right, but I kind of feel like, you know, in some ways that were like past that question.
If after all of this, the polls.
Are telling you it's within one point either way, they're telling you that either side can win these states, and their polling probably can't predict which one it will be because it isn't surgical precision to that extent where you can look at it and say, well, you know, she's up at half a point in Wisconsin, so she's going to win, and you don't know.
I mean.
One thing Democrats do have to worry about is that in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the next circle of irregular voters does tend to lean more toward non college whites who are probably going to vote for Trump, you know, sixty to forty. But there are also a lot of high propensity Republican leaning voters, women in particular, but maybe even some men who are not going to go along with
him in the way they did last time. Because of the two things the two big things that have happened since then January sixth and Doc and also just this you know, turn toward ever more overt kind of authoritarian and racist. By the way, I can I just make one point on that it always gets a lot of focus when Trump says things that are outrageous or you know, just patently offensive. In John Kelly's interviews, we focus on the fact that he had praised Hitler and said he
wanted Hitler's generals from yesterday's rally. We're focusing on these remarks about Puerto Rico. But I think it's really important for people to understand that it's not just rhetoric. There is policy attached to this in each case. I mean what John Kelly, The most important part of John Kelly's interview was not that Hitler, you know, Trump said ad
Myron things about Hiller. It's that John Kelly said, Trump repeatedly as president wanted to use the military against American citizens on US Street, and as I've written, he has multiple specific proposals to do that. And similarly, at the same time this rally was happening in Madison Square Garden, one of Trump's top immigration divisors was on sixty minutes, and he said something that was so incendiary that I am astonished for we're not talking.
About it more.
Today he was asked, how would you avoid family separation in madics deportation, He said, no, we want to separate them at all.
We'll deport the kids too.
There are four million US c citizen children Latino US citizen children who have at least one parent who is undocumented. So the Trump administration is now openly talking about deporting potentially millions of US citizen Latino children as part of the mass deportation.
I have not heard that before yesterday. And maybe the courts would stop.
Them, though I'm not sure John Roberts would stop Donald Trump from anything that he wants to do in the end. But when you were talking about deporting not only undocumented people but millions of citizens, you are starting to veer
deeper into the realm of ethnic cleansing. And again, you know, the paradox and all of this is that Trump is not only hoping for he is counting on significantly improved performance with Latino voters, especially men, even as they are now talking openly about deporting potentially millions of US born citizen Latino kids, We just kind of wrap your head around that, you know, their expectation that they can get away with this, you know, kind of stereo broadcasting that
kind of message white yes and counting on Latinos to move for them on the economy.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Ron No Moon, Jesse Cannon, Molly.
The fallout continues from Tony Hinchcliff's really stupid joke about Puerto Rico. What are you seeing here?
So, Puerto Rico's Republican party chairman has threatened to withhold his support from Donald Trump unless he issues an apology for the offensive remarks that Tony Henchcliff made on Sunday at Madison Square Garden. He called the island a floating island of garbage. The comments sparked a lot of condemnation, but we haven't seen an apology. And if I know anything about Trump, and I know a little bit, unfortunately for me, it's that I would be very surprised if
you get an apology for this. You'll remember that Donald Trump still hasn't dissape out North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson.
So I think it's very.
Unlikely we're going to see an apology here, since what we saw in Chady Vance say was that everyone should suck it up and be okay with racism because we're all too politically correct.
That, my friends, is our moment of book.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.