This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty The Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. We are going to get some more information out of Hurricane Helen today in western North Carolina. President Biden Vice President Harris expected to get an aerial tour of the damage there. Of course, cadaver dogs and search crews continue to work through the mud and the debris. We'll get some information out of North Carolina. Coming up
a little bit later. Sean Diddy Combs is now facing dozens of new allegations. We'll be hearing from a lawyer coming up a little bit later in the show regarding his one hundred and twenty accusers that he says he is representing as young as nine years old. One of two doctors charged the investigation of the death of Matthew Perry is expected to plead guilty today. Fernando Venezuela's in the hospital. We have Major League Baseball Wildcard playoffs to go.
There's a lot going on today on this Wednesday, so full show. But we're going to start in what is believed to be the beginning of a wider war in the Middle East, Shannon Kingston is an ABC News State Department correspondent who's going to join us live from the State Department. The Ambassador to the UN today for Israel said this.
Israel will not stand by in the face of such a vision. Israel will respond. Our response will be decisive, and yes, it will be painful.
And of course he's talking about a response to the one hundred and eighty plus missiles that were fired from Iran into Israel yesterday. Shannon, the State Department obviously has ears to the ground when it comes to this sort of thing. Are we being naive when we say we're waiting for a wider war? Aren't we already in it?
Well, that's definitely an argument that you can make because we've seen chapter after chapter of escalation. But if farm An officials say it still could get much worse before it has a possibility to get better. So we do know that US officials have been engaged with Israeli counterparts, really since those Iranian missiles were actively streaking across the sky in Tel Aviv and other major cities in Israel, to try to find the right response to this aggression.
The sweet spot of a target that Israel can hit that won't prompt another retaliation from Iran another strike, but also will really you know, follow through on the threat to make these consequences felt.
Do you think the Supreme Leader of Iran is a potential target in some sort of retaliation.
I think it would be difficult to hit the Supreme Leader. I think that that would be on the far end of the scale as well. If Israel had the option, might be possible. I don't want to speculate, but really what they're looking at is possibly going after Iranian energy production, maybe oil production. Now that's the backbone of their economy. So that's something US officials have kicked around as a more serious target that they could hit without kind of you know, going all the way to one end of
the spectrum. Now, US official some have argued that they want to see Israel stick to purely military targets in iron So this is very much discussion that's still playing out, and Israeli officials haven't really settled on an answer yet.
I don't want to belittle the current conflict that's going on, but if this is a bar fight and we the United States are trying to hold our friend back from kicking somebody's butt. What do we say, What does the Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln say to his counterpart in Israel to try to prevent this from getting out of hand.
Or really what the Secretary has been saying, what other top officials have been saying to Israel is the message that they've been repeating for months now, almost a year. Think about the broader security situation, Think about the long term consequence of your action. But we do know that Israel wants to get back to a place where it can establish this feeling of deterrence among its enemies in the region. And you know, we also know that they're
promising that this retaliation is going to come swiftly. So really, I think officials are bracing in very much weight and sche mode.
And I know that that whole portion of the world is very tangled in terms of alliances. Where do other Arab states come down on what happened yesterday? We heard anything from from Jordan, from Syria, from Iraq.
Well, we do know that Jordan did participate in Israeli's sense, they haven't come out and directly back to Israel. It's still a very fraught topic, especially with ongoing Israeli campaigns in Gaza and against Hesbela and Lebanon. But they did strike down some of the Iranian missiles that flew over their airspace. So the relationship remains very complicated. But one thing that the running leadership made clear today is it
sees very much Israel and the US at linked. Really Ron came out and blamed the US for much of their problems in the region. So it's the door swings both ways here with the alliances.
Yeah, all right, Shannon, thank you, appreciate it.
Thank you, Shannon Kingston, ABC News State Department correspondent there from the State Department, so we get at least one Shannon on the show per day. I believe last night's debate between Senator jd Vance of Ohio and Governor Tim Walls Minnesota was informative, more informative than the two presidential debates that we had seen. It was cordial, a whole lot more cordial than we ever saw Trump and Harris,
or even Trump and Biden. It was introductory, which was important because a lot of people don't have any clue who either one of these guys happens to be. Now that worked for them in different ways, For one thing, I think a lot of people had a negative opinion of JD. Vance because he is now aligned with Donald Trump, and they're going to jump to a conclusion about what kind of a person would team up with Donald Trump on a presidential ticket. But also Tim Walls, Yeah, he's gregarious,
he's embulent. I'm not even no sure I'm using that word right. But he lacked some substance. It seemed on some of the answers that he gave last night, it wasn't full of personal attacks. In fact, it seemed like JD and Tim were going to go out and have a beer afterwards.
But after all of that, after.
Ninety minutes, it wasn't even necessarily a big win for either side. Here's an example JD. Vance referring to the governor as Tim, even though that's the first time they've ever met.
Apparently, Tim, I think you got a tough job here because you've got to play whack a mole. You've got to pretend that Donald Trump didn't deliver rising take home pay, which of course he did. You've got to pretend that Donald Trump didn't deliver lower inflation, which of course he did. And then you simultaneously got defend Kamala Harris's atrocious economic record which has made gas, groceries and housing unaffordable fair American citizens.
There were a couple of different times when Tim Walls had good lines, good shots towards JD. Vance Basically, Okay, well, then defend your boss if you want to call them that, defend your running mates record on insert name of this. There things got a little awkward, and I felt let down by the discussion when it came to abortion specifically, because they want to argue the outskirts of that issue.
They want to argue the partial birth abortion, the nine month thing, the six weeks, six week abortion ban, and things like that. All of those issues are fringe issues. Not that they're not important, don't mishear me. Those are important when you talk about it. But the general ideas of what is abortion and whether you want to fight to keep the right to abortion or you want to fight against it, make it rare or make it illegal, whichever wherever you come down on it, those issues need
to be agreed upon in the beginning. I mean basically the terms of what you're going to argue about. And I thought JD Vance had an opportunity to a missed opportunity to say. I mean he referred to women in his life who have had abortions in the past, and I mean very clearly referenced to whoever he was talking about and said, I love you.
Go on.
He said that there would be a time when abortion, or I should say, there are places where abortion is going to be illegal, because that's how the states decide things. And as messy as democracy is, that's what this grand experiment is of having multiple states, multiple opportunities to come up with rules and laws, and if they work, they'll work across the country. The thing that he didn't say was I don't want anybody to have an abortion based
on economics. It felt like there was a missed opportunity. He was getting to it and then kind of shied away from it. I don't want any mother or family to feel like they can't afford to have a child and that that would be the main reason why they would abort their fetus. He had an opportunity to say that, and he didn't. They got caught up in the specifics of the the text of the law in Minnesota that apparently, according to the fact checks that I've seen this morning.
Jade Vance was a whole lot closer to the truth than was Tim Walls. But those are the issues that get figured out as we go through and deal with it a bit later. There's an interesting piece in the opinion piece pieces, I guess you could say, in the New York Times today and they asked thirteen of their opinion writers to basically grade the debate last night. Again this is the New York Time Times. Nine of their writers said that jd. Vance won the debate last night
for a couple of different reasons. They talked about his familiarity with the different issues that he was talking about, his ability to make Donald Trump likable in their words. In fact, one of them said, he made trump Ism sound polite, calm, and coherent. Jd Vance not only one last night in terms of the debate, in that he was able to prove those policies that Donald Trump cannot articulate can be articulated by somebody calmly, without personal attacks,
someone using complete sentences. That's what he was able to prove last night, and that's why he came across as likable. JD Vance went into the debate last night with the lowest likability rating of all the four people on those top of the tickets, But he came away so much more likable.
I know the eyeliner jokes are out there.
My daughter even asked me this morning why these two guys on stage last night had better eyeliner than she's ever had in her twenty two years of life.
I didn't have an answer for that.
But when we come back, I want to go through a little bit about this, including who won the debate according to the New York Times. It might surprise you, but even the people who say the jd Vance won the debate had a hard time giving him full credit for winning that debate. That and then the two major major problems that both candidates had. I should say they
each had one major problem that could have been avoidable. Well, we continue to talk about what happened last night in the vice presidential debate between JD.
Vance and Tim Walls.
I mentioned a couple of things in terms of the big missteps I thought that both of them had, But in terms of the general opinion, it appears that jd Vance was basically the winner life last night. Joining us now from DC is the Bureau chief Mike Vikara for News Nation, and Mike.
I was most interested to see. There's an opinion piece in.
The New York Times today where nine of their thirteen writers gave JD.
Vance the win.
Many of them qualified that with other you know, they said that he couldn't tell the truth, but they did say that jd Vance won last night. What is the prevailing opinion about how things went?
And Gary, It's a funny question because folks like me and others that write for the New York Times, I think it's been demonstrated that we don't necessarily have the pulse on the average Trump voter, or any voter for that matter, and so it's always difficult to tell the criteria by which we judge these things. Watching and listening to political rhetorics for a living, it's maybe different than
the average voter who maybe just getting to know JD. Vance, Senator from Ohio and Tim Walls, the governor of Minnesota. But having said all that, I would say, as someone who listens to political rhetoric for a living, I thought JD. Vans acquitted himself fairly well. He was smooth, He's sanded down the rough edges and some of the more controversial statements that he's made leading up to this since his nomination in July as the vice presidential candidate for the Republicans.
You know, there was no talk as cat ladies. There was no talk well, there was a little bit of talk of Springfield, Ohio, but there was no fabricating of stories. There was a very reasoned and measured JD vance, which you know, came off relatively well. And it's something that everybody says they want to see the overall tone of the debate being relatively civil, and that's something that folks have often said for I guess decades now that they
want them to see more civility and politics. Whether that translates into actually motivating viewers as another thing, and whether that translates into whatever jdvans edge JD vance is perceived to have over the self described knucklehead Tim Walls that you know, it remains be seen whether that's going to translate into moving the needle at all in terms of voting come November fifth.
We spoke with one of your colleagues yesterday regarding the importance of the debate last night, because it appears that it's this is the last debate for the tickets that we'll see leading up to election day.
Did they deliver?
I mean, did do you think that they did justice to their respective parties and their respective tickets?
I think they did. I mean I don't think by any objective standard, I do think that Governor Rowles had a difficult launch. There at the beginning of the date, the beginning of the debate, there was a question about foreign policy. Obviously, news of the day with the horrifying and just certain pictures of the violence in the Middle East and the rocket launches, some two hundred missiles launched towards Israel from Iran itself. He seemed to stumble somewhat.
He seemed to be visibly nervous. It was interesting because you know, they were setting the expectation bar so low in the hours leading up, were Democrats and saying that he was going to be nervous. Many of us dismissed that it's sort of playing the expectation game. But I thought he was evidently nervous and a little bit halting at the beginning, hitting a stride later in debate. The debate, no question, but each man showing respect for the other's opinion,
and so it was unusual in that respect. Again, whether it move the needle or not, I tend to doubt it. I mean, this is a vice presidential debate, and as soon as we hear again from President Trump or the next big moment or viral moment in the campaign. You mentioned the fact that President Biden was getting on the point out of Andrews near Washington here to head down to North Carolina. The Vice president is going to be in Georgia in Augusta, Georgia later today as well, surveying
storm damage. President Trump, former President Trump in Texas, fundraising in Midland and Houston, and Jade Vance has a stop in Michigan as well. So oh, and I forgot to mention Tim Walls. It was actually on a bus trip in Pennsylvania that was originally intended for the vice president, but because of the urgency of situation in the Southeast, she's heading that way. So whether or not this moves the needle, there's so much more debating, I mean virtual debating.
I should say they're not going to be on the same stage. It would appear at this point. Whether that last night moved the needle or not, I think it just sort of cemented the status quo.
To be honest with.
You, I like your term.
The Jdvance was able to sand down the rough edges of some of the things that he said. I also got the impression that he was able to articulate some of the policies using complete sentences that former President Trump does have a hard time doing. He gets distracted, he gets into personal attacks.
Well, that's so interesting, right, because we often hear that this is going to be the new Donald Trump. We heard that in Milwaukee. I was there at the convention where he was going to be much more measured, stick to the issues, you know, a healthy measure of skepticism from those of us who've been watching him in these last eight years when we heard that. But at the
convention he was somewhat more measured, somewhat less vitriolic. That's all gone on out the window, of course, and most recently we heard the former president try to tell us that the vice president is mentally impaired. There's something wrong
with she was born that way. You know, the kind of personal attacks that MAGA voters seem to enjoy or eat up anyway, because they like it when the former president of the Stock and Trades sticks a thumb in the eye at conventional wisdom and the Deep States quote unquote that he likes to rail against and his supporters like to hear him rail against. So yeah, JD. Vance
was measured. He did not sort of create any viral moments that would sort of rival the attentions that anybody pays to Donald Trump, which may have been another success that we hear often from Trump voters and that JD. Evance needs to keep his head down and not overshadow his boss. And I think he probably was successful in that last night. You know, Tim Walls again nervous his answer to his Tianon and Square where he was at the moment the pro democracy chesters were in Tianam and
Square in late eighties. You know, he was off by several months. He said he made a mistake. You know, he misrepresented where he was at that moment. He wasn't in China. He was actually in Hong Kong, which at the time was not part of the communist China. So you know, there were a couple of stumbles by Tim Walls, but I think overall he did hit his stride in the second half of the debate.
Yeah, I was a little surprised that the word cats never came up. I know, they kind of danced around it with Springfield, Ohio, and the words task hardly never came up. They didn't talk at all about the dock workers strike on the East coast the port.
Yeah, amazing, you know, and you know, obviously the longer this goes on, we know all about the supply chain issues, having just lived through the pandemic that really are coming into play here, and how much money can be lost in the economy and how businesses are going to suffer not having a supplies as we hit into the holiday season. That's obviously an urgent issue. It's in its second day now. We have a reporter standing by at the Port of
Baltimore at the picket line there. But this is all up and down the East coast along the Gulf as well, obviously an urgent issue. Yeah, I'm surprised that it didn't come up.
All right, Hey, great stuff, Mike, thank you, appreciate.
It, all right, Thanks Gary.
You bet.
Mike Vicarera again DC Bureau chief there for News Nation. One more little segment on what's going on with the debate, because there were two things I wanted to point out that the negatives for both of these guys, they both had an opportunity.
Mike referred to one of them.
They're the TN and Men's square answer that Tim Walls kind of stumbled his way through, but also the non answer that jd. Vance gave when it came to January sixth, and then my wife's reaction till last night. It's fun. I love her, She's fun. It's fun to be around.
Uh.
Fernando is in the hospital.
Fernando Valenzuela has been a part of the Spanish language broadcast for the Dodgers for quite a while, but he stepped away from his play calling duties last week, but they didn't say why.
Now they're saying that he is in the hospital.
But the family's been pretty quiet about exactly what is going on, so we'll keep an eye on that story. Israel's defense system stood pretty firm.
Last night.
Iran unleashed a barrage of nearly two hundred missiles across Israel, and most of them ballistic weapons. That makes intercepting them kind of a challenge, but at this point, still no reports of fatalities within Israel. Israel has said that they will retaliate of course, the Iranians have said they'll retaliate for the retaliation if it gets to that, so we
will have an update. We'll do updates at the top of the hour, by the way, regarding what's going on with Hurricane Helen, because we know the President vice President are going to be down in that area is viewing some of the destruction that we saw. So more on just to kind of wrap up what we saw in the debate last night between jd Vance and Tim Walls. I said before, I believe that jd Vance did better
for himself in that debate. He was able to, as Mike Vikara put it, sand down the rough edges of things that he has said in the past, across as very likable, very thoughtful. Yes, he used the line multiple times that he was born in the middle class, and I don't know if it was a shot at Kamala Harris or not, but it worked. There were a couple of things that he did though, that I thought he
should have unleashed a little bit more often. In his closing statement, jd Vance used this line that I think has to be used over and over and over again against Kamala Harris.
Now I've been in politics long enough to do what Kamala Harris does when she stands before the American people and says that on day one, she's going to work on all these challenges I just listed. She's been the vice president for three and a half years. Day one was fourteen hundred days ago, and her policies have made these problems worse.
Not necessarily a mic drop moment, but definitely an important message that he and Donald Trump can use in terms of his bad moment, though it came when they were discussing January sixth, they were discussed election integrity. They were discussing the results of the twenty twenty election, and Tim Walls had a moment where he was going to force jd Vance to say that Trump lost that election?
Did he lose the twenty twenty election?
Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind and the wake of the twenty twenty COVID situation?
That is a damning non answer.
Now, it's a point that jd. Vance brought up censorship multiple times. I in the business I'm in am very passionate about censorship and the importance of the ability for people to debate issues and the ability to freely debate issues.
That was the wrong That was the wrong foil.
That was the wrong way to deflect by suggesting that censorship was as big an issue as January sixth, so as much as a negative as that was for JD.
Vance. Tim Walls tripped over his own.
Shoelaces left and right when he was confronted with his story about being in Hong Kong during the Tieneman Square protests in China.
Governor Walls, you said you were in Hong Kong during the deadly Tianamen Square protests in the spring of nineteen eighty nine, but Minnesota Public Radio and other media outlets are reporting that you actually didn't travel to Asia until August of that year. Can you explain that discrepancy?
Yeah, well, and the folks out there, it didn't get at the top of this. Look.
I grew up in small, rural Nebraska town of four hundred town that you rode your bike with your buddy still the streetlights come on, and I'm proud of that service. I joined the National Guard at seventeen, worked on family farms, and then I used the GI bill to become a teacher. Passion about it. A young teacher my first year out, I got the opportunity in the summer of eighty nine to travel to China thirty five years ago.
Be able to do that, I came back home.
And then started a program to take young people there. We would take basket ball teams, we would take baseball teams.
Again, he gets into this and he never actually explains, Okay, but you said you were there. It's an easy thing to say, and politicians are so unable to simply say, listen, that was a long time ago.
I blew it.
I screwed it up. I didn't mean to. There's no ill will, but I just screwed up. And he could not say it.
Can you explain?
They all I said on this was is I got there that summer and misspoke on this.
So I will just that's what I've said.
So I was in They just stop talking.
Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest. No, just just say that's what I've said.
That's what you just say. I just misspoke and then leave.
It on this. So I will just that's what I've said.
He had an opportunity to just appear even more human. I thought he came across very human. I mean, the guy does seem like got a central casting, a football coach, and a teacher, and the guy that you would go to with your after school special problems, whatever it was. But just drop the political aspect of answering a question and just get into it. Jady Vance fell into that same trap when he couldn't answer whether or not Donald Trump won or lost the election in twenty twenty.
They both fell into it.
So in general, again I'll say this again that I think jad Vance was the winner. The New York Times agrees with me, if you can believe that they ask thirteen of their columnists and contributors to assess who won and who lost. And I just want to give you a taste of this. And again, this is the New York Times, who you would assume would not give JD. Vance the time of day. A couple of them didn't.
But Benjamine Applebaum said JD. Vance was more effective in presenting a version of his party's ticket that might broaden its appeal. Said he made trump Ism sound polite, calm, and coherent. John USh Borrow said Vance was far nimbler than the nervous Tim Walls, especially in the first half of the debate. Charles Blow, a columnist, he outright said that Tim Walls won, that he clearly did his homework. Anyone afraid that Vance would roll over him could breathe easily.
Vance seemed not to have been told to come across as a condescending valedictorian, or sorry, has had been told not to come across as a condescending valedictorian. Jammel Bowie, a columnist for The Times, wrote it this way, It's a pretty straightforward verdict. Vance won this debate. It's not hard to see why. But in the next sentence wrote, he has no regard for the truth. He lies as
easily as he breathes. Jane Coston, a contributing writer, Vance seemed smoother and more practiced, but one would be a very strong term here. Another one calling it a draw because Waltz was so bad in much of his delivery. Vance was much more forceful speaker. Another one for Vance. It was a commanding performance for Walls a nervous ramble. Matt Labash, author of a newsletter called slack Tide. Nobody dominated, but I am going to give the light a slight
edge to Walls. Specifically because of the January sixth answer, another one Vance won compared with the candidates for the presidential debates. Both vice presidential candidates performed admirably, And it goes on and on again. The vast majority of those thirteen columnists and opinion writers for The New York Times suggested that it was JD.
Vance that won.
My wife also said this, and this was echoed by a lot of people I saw on social media that going into it, there was an expectation that JD. Vance was an unlikable person, an unlikable character, an unlikable politician. But seeing that performance last night made him much more likable. He seen down to earth. He wasn't arrogant, he wasn't boastful, he wasn't bombastic the way that his running mate is. And he refered to Tim Walls multiple times as Tim.
He honored him by calling him governor a couple of times, but also got down to that folksy level and just called him Tim. They mentioned off and on both of them, Hey, we agree on a lot of this stuff. There is some commonality in the things that we believe in, and that I think was endearing on both of the candidate's parts, and then at the end, Oosha Vance comes walking out and my wife says, who's that Hatzie Dotsie, And I said, I don't objectify women that way.
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