Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/10/24: Hurricane Milton Destruction, GOP Beating Dems On Voter ID, Trump Kamala Bet Everything On Pennsylvania, Trump On Schulz Podcast

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss aftermath images from Hurricane Milton, Republicans beating Dems in voter identification, Trump Kamala bet everything on Pennsylvania, Trump says he's 'basically truthful' on Schulz pod. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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but of course we have the sadness going on right now with Hurricane Milton making landfall. But we are going to cover that, and we're going to get to a lot of other political stuff as well. Yeah, that's right. All eyes certainly on Florida right now as residents there are waking up to scenes of mass devastation. So we'll bring you everything we know about that storm and the chaos that it has wrought in that state. We also are going to take a look at some of the political news coming out. We have some new data on a rare Republican advantage in voter self-identification and what that could mean for 2024. Also taking a look at Trump went on Sagar's friend Andrew Schultz's podcast,

and the results were actually pretty interesting. They were fascinating. We'll share with you some of those clips. Mark Cuban is joining the war against Lena Kahn. Bernie Sanders and AOC are diving into that as well. So a little intra-party fight there as Kamala continues to be silent about whether or not she would keep Lena Kahn, who's the head of the FTC and has been quite aggressive about challenging corporate power, probably the best bureaucrat in the Biden administration. Kamala has continued to be silent about whether or not she would keep her on board. We're also keeping our eyes on the

Middle East. Bibi apparently spoke with Joe Biden. We are still waiting whatever that attack on Iran is going to be. You have Gallant giving some indications of what it might look like. A Fox News reporter also sparking some backlash from the right after making sympathetic comments for Palestinian journalists. We'll show you that clip. And there's some UFO stuff that Sagar's going to explain to me and to all of you as well. Immaculate constellation. That's the only thing that you need to know. All right, let's go ahead and get to the hurricane. So guys, we are just getting our first look at the damage wrought by Hurricane Milton, which slammed into Florida as a Category 3 hurricane. It had previously been

as high as Category 5, escalating rapidly within a single day from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane with winds so strong that actually they're contemplating adding another category, Category 6, to deal with storms of this strength, fueled by incredibly hot waters in the Gulf of Mexico there. We can go ahead and put up some of the images that we've gathered to show you this morning. So you can just see the torrential rain and the palm trees blowing in that incredible wind. This appears to be some transformers that are blowing. This was, I believe this was from some Weather Channel footage.

This was, I believe, where Jim Cantore was in a parking garage. And you can see the way that the storm surge flooded many areas of Florida. Three million residents this morning without power. And part of what was so dangerous here, too, is you can see this tornado. There were many tornadoes across the state. Some people were killed by those tornadoes. This is a look at Tropicana Field, and the roof was torn off. This is a crane that was blown off of the roof of a building here right outside of the Tampa Bay Times. Very, very dangerous because

you actually, you know, reporters who were there at the Times building trying to do their job and cover this hurricane when this crane comes down. I also have a lot of questions about why you leave a crane up when you're facing a Category 3 hurricane. But what we know this morning is that the flooding is incredibly substantial. We know that some unknown number of people lost their lives because they were killed by tornadoes. We know a few people were killed by tornadoes in a retirement community. We know that there are 3 million people who lost power as a result of this. And in advance, Sagar, there was a huge effort to evacuate as many people as possible from Florida. Because if you looked at the track of this thing, which hit the west coast of Florida near Sarasota and then traveled across the state. It was a good, a large portion of the state, almost the entirety of the state

that was impacted in one way or another by Hurricane Milton. This also coming, as we know, on the heels of Hurricane Helene. Some of these places were still cleaning up and hadn't recovered from Helene, and less than two weeks later, hit by another brutally strong storm that was again fueled by those very warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. So, you know, we're still getting a sense of just how much devastation and damage here

and what the death toll will ultimately be. Yeah, what's really crazy is all those tornadoes that also ripped Florida at the same time. So I have the numbers here in front of me. There were 116 tornado warnings that were issued across the state, including far away on the different side of the coast. I'm not exactly sure of why, whatever, something to do with barometric pressure, et cetera. But nearly 125 homes were destroyed. A lot of these were areas that didn't actually expect to be hit by the hurricane or were kind of less of an impact. And so they were pretty surprised by all of that happening.

But so far, I mean, the damage still, while the damage in St. Petersburg and in some of these other areas, the initial storm surge that was indicated was almost like six to seven feet that came through. So, I mean, that's just devastating for a lot of the homes and the other areas. It's still very early in the morning, so we don't have like a full account, but, you know, people are going to have to return. There's going to have to be quite a lot of rebuilding, especially in a lot of those downtown areas. Florida authorities and

others are already preparing for the influx of people coming back and seeming to prepare. So I think it's going to be a days and perhaps like a weeks, even years long thing, you know, to recover the area. Yeah. There were some people who had fled from the inland devastation of Hurricane Helene to some of these areas in Florida and then had to evacuate and flee again because of this storm. It reminds me a little bit of, you know, I don't know if you guys recall, after Katrina hit famously in Louisiana and New Orleans area, a lot of people fled to Texas, Sagar. I'm sure you remember that. I was there, yeah.

Hurricane Rita hits and devastates areas of Texas. And, you know, they're left once again fleeing and trying to preserve their lives and their livelihoods and their possessions. Just to echo what you were saying about the storm surge and the amount of water here, truly astonishing. So this is from Matthew Capucci. He says, this is insane. St. Petersburg, he's an atmospheric scientist, by the way, and self-described storm chaser. St. Petersburg has reported 5.09 inches of rain in one hour, more than five inches of rain in a single hour and nine inches in three hours. He says that is actually more rare than a 1,000 year rain event. So just wrap your head around the fact that we had two storms in a two-weeks time period

that were one-in-1,000-year events, or at least they previously were. And, you know, of course, you can't say exactly how much is climate change and how much is just, you know, things that happened during hurricane season. But every meteorologist seems to indicate that the exceptionally warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico are part of what contributed to the strength and ultimate devastation of both of these storms. And so in a lot of ways, this is sort of the devastating new normal. You already have a situation in Florida that we've covered before, Sagar, where you can't in certain parts of Florida, in certain areas, you literally cannot get homeowners insurance. So Florida, while it's seen a huge population boom, a lot of people moving to the state because they like some of the political policies, they like the quality of life, they like the sunshine, the ocean, all of that. Then not only is housing, of course, expensive everywhere

and expensive in Florida, but then you're hit with this additional massive cost for homeowners insurance if you can even get it. This is going to continue to be an escalating problem. I know some of these insurers dropped another several hundred thousand customers from their policies. The state really has no idea how to handle this, doesn't have the money or sufficient funds in order to themselves run a homeowner's insurance market for areas that are essentially uninsurable now. So that's sort of some of the longer term projection here. Sagar was talking about the tornadoes. Let's go ahead and put A3 up on the screen. This gives

you a sense of how many tornadoes were sighted and hit Florida as a consequence of Hurricane Milton. So the National Weather Service issued about 100 tornado warnings between noon and six yesterday in Florida, at least 20 reports of sightings and damage. And as I mentioned before, usually with hurricanes, it's not uncommon that you have tornadoes that spin up as a result of hurricanes or storms in general. But apparently, I was reading this morning that these were exceptionally strong. Usually, the tornadoes that you get associated with hurricanes are relatively weak and peter out quickly. These were exceptionally strong. And we know, as I said before, that they claimed some number of lives.

We're not sure how many at this point. So that was part of what caused so much damage and devastation in the state. In advance of the hurricane yesterday, Kamala Harris took the opportunity actually to call into the Weather Channel and to explain to people what benefits were available for them, and also notably to issue a warning to would-be price gouchers about taking advantage of people's desperation. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. There are federal resources you are entitled to receive without condition. And there are resources that are available to you to deal with what you need right now to, for example, get money to be

able to fill your prescriptions and deal with a hotel expense and help you recover over the longer term. The other point I would make is this, and I've done this work in my career. Sadly, there are some folks who during the moment of a crisis will be very predatory and start jacking up prices like gasoline or hotels or airlines to take advantage of the desperation people are experiencing. So to anybody who's thinking about jacking up those prices, those companies that are thinking about doing it, know that we are monitoring and we're watching. And if there is that kind of price gouging, that there will be a consequence for that because it's just wrong to take advantage of people who are desperate for help. And so know that we're watching that as well.

So, of course, Sagar, using natural disasters and hurricanes for political purpose and age-old, age-old pursuit? I was going to say, we're in it right now. Ron DeSantis just went on television this morning because there's been this whole like beef between, it was like Kamala called DeSantis and apparently he was like, I'm not going to take the call. And then actually Kamala's advisors are very upset right now with Joe Biden because Biden was like, oh, he's doing a great job. Ron DeSantis, DeSantis and Biden apparently have been on the phone. Because DeSantis also complimented Biden. Yes, because DeSantis complimented Biden. He's like, well, Biden's actually the president. I mean, he does have a point. He went on television this morning. I mean, what does the vice president really have to do with anything? And we're being honest. He said, well, all the storms I've dealt with under this administration, she has never called into Florida or offered any support. She's trying to inject herself into this because of her

political campaign. I also read that Kamala advisors were furious that Biden took the podium at the press briefing because it kind of, I believe there was like a counter-programming going on because she had some event that she was participating in. So yes, the political machinations behind the hurricane are alive and well. Almost certainly we'll see it too with visits, maybe separate visits by Kamala and Biden to view the destruction. That's another time-honored tradition for presidents, Trump as well, in terms of how they decide to respond. But overall, I would just hope, especially that Florida can do what

North Carolina has done now so far. North Carolina, in general, actually seems quite committed to being like, hey, we're temporarily going to make sure that people who are displaced can be able to vote. We're going to figure this out. We'll set up precincts, et cetera. Let's set up the same thing for Florida, and let's try not let this make it too political. Let's just make sure people in Tampa, Sarasota, et cetera, come home, rebuild. Definitely thinking about that insurance thing. In fact, this could be a landmark moment in the history of insurance because we're going to find out just how much the devastation is, whether that state-backed insurance company has the funds and is able to meet those goals. It could require billions of bailout from the federal government, which I don't know. I mean, it's complicated because we got California and Florida,

two of the most popular states in the entire union, who now basically are uninsurable from wildfires and from hurricanes. And then is the federal government going to backstop that? Like, how does it work? Right. You know, it's a crazy system. I don't know. I'm of two minds. You know, they both create a ton for the economy, both Florida and California, massive GDP and,

you know, benefit to the nation. But it's also kind of crazy, you know, if the government's coming to bail you out every single time that there is a storm or a wildfire. Yeah. I mean, also what Florida doesn't have an income tax. They have no, so it's like, yeah, so they're, they don't tax their people. And then they want every, the rest of the country to pick up the tab for the fact to be fair. Yeah. The way that they make all their money is because people go to Florida for, they, they charge these exorbitant like hotel and visitors taxes. So America's paying for it no matter what. That's why they make all their revenue.

Every time they go to Disney World, you pay the state of Florida. So I don't know. The other thing is that the risk is accelerated or is higher in certain parts of the country. Certainly, you think about your Florida. You think about California wildfires. Colorado is another place that suffers from wildfires. But I think one of the things we learned from Helene is that really nowhere is safe. If you were living in Asheville, North Carolina, Western North Carolina, in Appalachia,

you were not thinking that a hurricane was going to come through and destroy everything that you have ever known and loved. That was not on your radar whatsoever. In fact, there were articles about people who moved to Asheville specifically because they thought this was a quote unquote climate change haven where they weren't going to be impacted. And so, you know, it's very hard to predict the impact that you're going to have from these storms and these increasingly regular extreme events. Again, these two storms back to back back, both one in 1,000 year occurrences that now are just happening on a weekly basis. And we'll see what the rest of hurricane season has in store for us. But right now, we're just praying for the people who are there in Florida and praying for a

quick recovery and that the loss of life in particular is as minimal as absolutely possible. I think, I hope that most people heeded the calls to evacuate, which were quite strenuous. I know you and Ryan covered the, what was it, the Tampa mayor. If you stay, you will die. So please leave. So hopefully most people heeded those calls and were able to survive the storms. Like I said on that show, Florida is either number two or number three state that listens to Breaking Point. So to all of our people down there, we love you and we hope you stay safe.

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Let's take a listen to what he had to say. How much do the state poll averages miss by? All right. The average error since 1972 in the close races in those battleground states we've been looking at, 3.4 points, 3.4 points. Every single state, all seven of those key battleground states are within 3.4 points. What's the chance for an even larger error? You know, we talk about the margin of error, right? So what is that 95% confidence interval? What is that true margin of error? 5% of errors

in state polling averages are off by more, off by more than 9.4 points. These battleground states are well within that. I want you to remember this number because the bottom line is this race is going to be too close to call almost certainly all the way to election day. It's definitely going to be within this interval and it's most likely going to be within this interval. So the bottom line is the state polling averages tell us what it tells us is it's just a race that is too close to call. I mean, it makes a lot of sense, Hager. When you look at the Trump era, you have 2016, extremely close election. 2018 midterms, very close election. 2020, extremely close election. 2022, Democrats did well. That was

a weird one because you had Democrats doing really well in certain states and then Republicans surging in Florida and New York in particular. Nate Cohn over the New York Times, his theory of the case is basically that the election is shaping up to look a lot like the 2022 midterms. That would have huge implications also for the popular vote advantage and electoral college advantage that the Republicans have. It would actually narrow that gap. But the bottom line is that if the polls are off three points in one way, you get a Trump landslide in terms of the electoral college. if they're off three points the other way. You get a Kamala landslide in the Electoral College.

All those things are on the table. And in spite of all of the wild twists and turns that we have seen throughout this campaign, since Kamala came in and kind of rose to the position that she's at right now, it has basically been stable. Yeah, exactly. And that's kind of the fascinating part. In fact, this morning, I was reading a lot of Democratic activists who were talking to Axios about their consternation that they've thrown almost $300 million of advertising into the blue wall state so far with the reserved another $300 million coming even just in the state of Pennsylvania. And they have seen basically no movement whatsoever. So the dollar figure, like I said, previously comparing it to Coca-Cola. We know that if it wasn't there,

it would have an impact. But we do know that its presence, we're not really sure what that impact is. Now, to build on this theory, because this is a little bit complicated, but everybody stick with us. Let's put the next one, please, up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. More Americans identify as Republican than Democrat. Now, as they say, here's what that means for the election. Now, this could mean, could mean that there would be a narrower Trump, Trump-Harris margin in the popular vote, but does not necessarily mean that Trump will win the electoral college. This is complicated, but just stick with us. The reason why is that just because more Americans

identify as Republican, if Trump wins Florida by 13 points, which was the New York Times has, as opposed to the three points that he won back in 2020, it doesn't make all that much of a difference in the electoral college. As it was going red anyway. Right. It's going red anyway. And you win the electoral votes no matter what. But let's say that the margin for Harris drops in Texas, or sorry, goes up in Texas, goes down in Florida, all these other places. Let's like, for example, Trump is doing rallies in Coachella in California. He's doing a rally in Madison Square Garden, which is 28 days to election day. I mean,

it doesn't make a whole lot of electoral sense. But what we know from both of those things is that you're watching the margins of victory for Republicans go up in traditionally blue states and probably go up even more in the Sun Belt. The problem that they accurately point out is that in 2022, even though Republican identification was very, very high, and in fact, beat Democrats on the generic ballot, it's that all of the swing voters broke so hard for the Democrats that was able to put the Democratic candidates up over the margin of victory. So just because Republicans have a major ballot advantage here does not mean that they will win. Again, I understand that this is

counterintuitive, but the thing is, is that more Americans identifying as Republican actually just means there are less swing voters. So in some ways that's good. It means that you have people who are explicitly like partisan are, they're gonna come out and they're gonna vote for you, but it will not take you across the finish line. You still need to win the swing voters. And if the swing voters break in the same way they did in 2022, you will lose every single one of the swing states. I mean, the TLDR of this is that the electoral college is really stupid because it makes no sense that if you win a bunch more voters in Florida or California or in New York, that it literally does not matter at all. But that's the

reality. I mean, all indications are that Republicans have improved their position in New York, but Democrats are still going to win New York. So yeah, that helps to juice your popular vote totals. It does not matter at all in terms of the electoral outcome. That's a stupid situation. It should not be the case that what voters think in New York doesn't matter at all versus what voters think in Michigan or Wisconsin or Pennsylvania in particular. But that's a system that we have. So this, again, is what Nate Cohn has been writing about over at The New York Times. And I encourage you to go read because it's a very interesting analysis. There's something else that ties into this that I'll do my best to explain. But basically, the idea is that Trump is picking up a lot of voters in those two

states in particular, Florida and New York. So that means that he is narrowing, that helps to narrow that electoral college edge, which means that when you're seeing these national polls that have Kamala Harris up three points or even up two points, that might be sufficient to get her over the top. Whereas previously, Democrats needed to win by closer to certainly three to four points in order to be able to win the electoral college vote. So in any case, it was interesting reading about this Republican self-identification. One of the things that they find in terms of driving some of these movements is just like, who's the party that holds the White House and how do people feel about that person?

So if you have George W. Bush, for example, after 9-11, he has this huge surge in popularity. And that was the last time that you even had for a brief period Republicans outpacing Democrats in terms of how people describe themselves because he was very popular and he was a Republican. Now, obviously, you have Joe Biden in the White House. He is very unpopular. So that has caused Democratic self-identification to take a hit. To your point, Sagar, I mean, it certainly is something that Republicans will be happy about. It gives them a little bit of a leg up and an edge going into this election. But in 2022, Democrats won independence sufficiently to overcome that edge that Republicans had at that time. So it's an interesting note, but it is not by any means determinative of what the outcome may actually be.

Let's go and put this next piece up on the screen. This is the latest New York Times poll, which finds that Kamala Harris has taken a narrow three-point lead in the national popular vote, 49-46. The same poll last time around had the two of them tied, I believe, at 47%, if memory serves. This is the first time in this particular poll that Kamala Harris has actually led Trump since July when Biden dropped out of the race. So certainly she'll be happy with that outcome from the New York Times, which is taken very seriously, whether it deserves all of the like, you know, this is one of the ones that everybody stops and takes note of when these polls come out. She has shored up her support, they say, among older voters, has begun making inroads among Republicans. 9% say they plan to

support her, up slightly from 5% last month. And she appears to have closed the gap on the question of change, a critical factor, they write, in an election where voters have repeatedly told pollsters they believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction. Put a pin in that one because she did herself no favors this week on that question of who would be the change candidate when she could not literally name a single thing that she would do different than Joe Biden, which is like, how do you not know how to answer this question at this point? All of the polling shows that it is important to voters that she separate herself from Joe Biden. But what I took note of here is, you know, this kind of dovetails with the idea that more people are self-identifying as Republicans.

This helps to explain their Liz Cheney strategy. You know, this is not a strategy that I would personally, you know, go forward with. I think they should be emphasizing more of their economic positions. I think they should be doing more work to close that gap with Trump on the economy and on inflation in particular in those industrial Midwestern states. But they believe that there is a sufficient majority anti-Trump coalition, that the more they lean into like, oh my God, Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney endorsed us, and the less they talk about hard policy proposals that could be controversial

among some Republican voters, the better off they'll be. That's their theory, is basically like we're going to put back together the pro-Joe Biden, anti-Trump coalition, and we believe, based on the electoral results in 18 and 20 and 22, that that's enough to get us over the top. And, you know, they'll look at this and say, oh, see, it's working. Now we've got 9% of Republicans supporting us instead of 5%. Maybe. That's an awful lot. I mean, these polls are only 1,000 people, you know, that are even the sample size. So how many is that, like 90? It's like, are you really going to base your political theory based on that? I don't know. I mean, this is also the problem with a lot of crosstab diving is these samples are not that big. And by the way, a thousand are

actually quite big for over national poll and where they do live caller, but statistical sampling and all of that, the deeper that you try and go, it's very difficult. That's why you should try to look at averages. And ultimately the actual outcome on election day will tell us a lot more. I did see this morning a possible indication from Reuters. They say that Kamala Harris has, quote, erased Republican Trump advantage in the vast middle of American society, suburban residents and middle income households. That's basically who they're trying to go after with that Republican theory. Again, they're going after those Nikki Haley voters. Here's the reason the main one that I just don't think that that is correct is that, yes, those Republicans and all that may be disgusted with Trump. But when you're also

not acting as a change agent, which we're about to get to in her answer on The View, that's where I think it's going to be really difficult. I also saw, Crystal, remember that J.D. Vance answer about the election and we thought it was going to be everywhere. So it turns out that those ads, Dave Weigel pointed this out, those ads don't have a lot of money behind them. Yeah, they're just like internet ads. They're just on Twitter. They're not actually like the major ones that are playing in the battleground states. So I can tell you, like I said, I was in Pennsylvania. Every anti-Trump ad was just about abortion. And that, I mean, clearly that's something, but abortion's not

going to be enough. We talked to Logan Phillips just to carry you across because it's not as prescient as in 2022. I think the economy and feeling like you're going to do something different is really important. And that answer that she gave on The View, I don't think that that, I think that fact that the Trump campaign is now planning on blasting that everywhere, that does tell you actually quite a bit. Why don't we take a listen? I know Ryan and Emily brought some of these yesterday, but let's relive it. What do you think would be the biggest specific difference between your presidency and a Biden presidency?

Well, we're obviously two different people. And we have a lot of shared life experiences. For example, the way we feel about our family and our parents and so on. But we're also different people, and I will bring those sensibilities to how I lead. Listen, I plan on having a Republican in my cabinet. You asked me, what's the difference between Joe Biden and me? Well, that will be one of the differences. I'm going to have a Republican in my cabinet because I don't feel burdened by letting pride get in the way of a good idea.

Yeah. Right. So that exactly is the dynamic that we're talking about here. So, I mean, look, we'll see. We got 20, what, 27 more days. We'll find out on Election Day whether she's correct. If this turns out to be the right theory, I don't know. I give up because it's like just saying, oh, Liz Cheney is going to be my

secretary of defense, which, you know, between the Iran comments about our greatest adversary, the Liz Cheney thing, and now saying Republican in my cabinet, I think we all know who that person is going to be, or at least it's going to be somewhere there in the cabinet. And then we combine it with, I actually wouldn't change anything from the Biden administration, except bringing in somebody who is way worse on national policy. If that's enough, I honestly,

I don't really know what to say, but- It's also not even true that Biden doesn't have Republicans in his government. I mean, Chris Wray is a Republican, right? Aren't there other people in defense? Anyway, whatever. What does the term even mean at this point? So here's what I would say. I'm inclined to agree with you that they're really screwing up right

now. They should be leaning into economics because my view is people who are going to vote for democracy and part of the anti-Trump, they already know where they stand. That's why they're not running ads about J.D. Vance's answer, because it's like, yeah, those people are already locked in, right? And now we just got to turn them out. And they do have massive funds in terms of their overall operation, turnout operation. She raised a billion dollars, we just learned as of yesterday, in less than three months' time. That is unheard of, ungodly amounts of money that she's been able to raise. So they're going to have plenty of money for the field operation, whatever they want to do down the stretch, ads, et cetera, et cetera. The only thing is like, I just, I just am very

humble at this point about what is actually going to work because in 2022, they were doing the same, like, let's just talk about democracy and extremism and not offer literally anything on economics. In 2020, Joe Biden did not run on a single economic position, to the best of my recollection, even though he ended up, you know, having a pretty good domestic economic agenda, but did not run on really any of that in terms of the general election. And it worked out. You know, I really thought. I thought the red wave is coming. People are angry about inflation. Y'all aren't talking about it. People think you're on the wrong track, et cetera, et cetera. Joe Biden is already pretty unpopular. And I was wrong. So maybe they're right. Maybe it's enough. Maybe just

getting together the old anti-Trump band again, maybe they're correct that there just is an anti-Trump majority. And the less that you promise on policy, the less divisive that you are. And if you just lean into that like generic Democrat position, maybe it's sufficient. I genuinely do not know. Oh, I agree with you. That's my point is I'm like, I really hope this isn't correct, but I fear that it might be. Let's put this on the screen. Well, actually, at the very least, this time we're going to get a real test because what we have here from Axios is that Republicans are, again, planning to spend heavily to promote this clip of saying that there's not a thing that you would do differently. I saw J.D. Vance and Trump are now playing that clip actually

at their rallies. Obviously, people going to a Trump rally are already voting for Republican. But the point is, is that they see that as very beneficial to them. There is a significant amount of dollars behind the we need an actual change in the White House. One of the areas that she's always struggled the most with is differentiating herself from Biden. And the only thing she can really come up with is I would have a Republican in my cabinet. I would also note maybe part of this is media, because Crystal, what you and I know is that even if there isn't a necessarily major constituency for this stuff, there's nobody who loves it more than Morning Joe or like MSNBC's with Nicole Wallace, this idea of a Republican in the cabinet. So it could be to get more favorable media

attention. The other thing is maybe this is just what she believes. She doesn't want to do anything differently. She does not believe anything. Yeah, exactly. And that's part of why my theory of why she does so poorly in these interviews. And her aides were basically right. Like, she shouldn't have done these interviews. From just pure tactical perspective. Just don't do the interview.

Send Tim Walls out. He does a fantastic job in these interview situations. But, yeah, they were correct about the basement strategy. Not that I'm saying it's a good thing for democracy. It's not. But in terms of tactical political decision making, they were probably right about that. But it's just because it's a lot harder to nail an interview like this when you don't believe anything because you just have to memorize every answer versus asking yourself like, oh, well, what do I actually think about that? Let me use my brain to articulate it. It's like, oh, what am I supposed to say to this? What did my aides tell me the right answer is

here? And then this was a classic Kamala moment in that it's a totally foreseeable question, like totally foreseeable question. It should be a layup. She should be hoping to get that question so that she can knock it out of the park of the ways in which she's going to be different from Joe Biden. Like that would only serve her. And yet on this very predictable softball question, she completely whiffs. So, you know, this is what happens when she I don't know, the preparation fails her or brain fails her in terms of trying to recall what her advisors want her to say in that moment. Because yeah, it's really difficult to try to memorize a thousand different answers on things when you yourself don't really have any core beliefs to draw on and go back to. She doesn't have the ability to say, oh, well, how would I

actually be different from Joe Biden? Because to be honest with you, if she was really answering that question truthfully, it'd be like with you, if she was really answering that question truthfully, it'd be like, oh, I'm probably going to be more receptive to the crypto bros and maybe get rid of Gary Gensler and Lena Khan and be more friendly to Silicon Valley, to Wall Street, which I guess, as we'll get to later in the show, the Mark Cubans of the world and others would be happy about, but may not be the best general election messaging. That's a good point. I mean, look, I think the part of the issue is I feel like in previous elections, we had a lot more either events or tentpole news. So 2020, obviously there was COVID and that was just such a crazy environment that we were covering. Not only the attempts at

interview or sorry, rallies, but we had the traditional debates. Trump had COVID, that was all happening. Then we had the whole debates. Trump had COVID, that was all happening. Then we had the whole mail-in balloting thing ahead. This just election, especially since Kamala got picked, just feels remarkably stable to me. And I know that's a weird thing to say, but the test case and the theories put forth by both of these candidates have been effectively locked in stone. And absent a quote unquote October surprise of a genuine war in Lebanon and Iran. Some, you know, obviously the hurricane that just happened. It's devastating. Hopefully we don't see any major fallout or anything from that.

Yeah. I'm hoping it doesn't change anything. But, you know, we don't yet know. But between those, like, I don't see anything yet. Of course, look, the Comey letter came when? October 23rd, I want to say. So we still have plenty of time that something could significantly change. In fact, I read an insane statistic.

I think I talked about this with you last time. In the 2016 election, 9% of the electorate did not make up their minds until a week before the election. That is crazy to me. We just don't. I just don't think we have that electorate anymore. You might be right, but I'm like, wow. Like not knowing who you're going to vote for nine days before election day and just be like, okay, yeah.

I mean, I agree. It's probably less. It may not be nine, but let's say it's four. I mean, four is enough. You could swing the entire thing. So there are a lot of people out there that think that way. The other thing is, though, that we just, we vote differently than we did in 2016. I mean, early voting and mail-in voting, you know,

obviously spiked massively during the pandemic and it's not going to be as high as the levels in 2020, but it's not going back to 2016 either. So you'd almost need more of like a September surprise than an October surprise. And we've had a lot of surprises in this race so far. And after Joe Biden is out, you know, everything that's happened since then, you know, maybe the polls take one point this way or one point that way. But overall, it is just really stable. And the steady, like stable place it is, is Kamala hovering with like a maybe about a three point lead in the popular vote, which is like translates into every swing state effectively being tied and within the

margin of error. So, you know, it's really a question of are the polls accurate? Are they, you know, are they missing some dynamic? That's the other thing that Nate Cohn has been talking about is some of the pollsters, they're very worried about understating Republican support and Trump support again, right? Because they really blew it. They famously blew it in 2016, but they actually were more wrong in 2020. Yeah, that's correct. They were more off. It's just that Joe Biden still had enough of an edge to win, so they didn't get quite as much backlash as 2016, but they were actually more wrong in 2020. And so some of the pollsters who've been burned by that have adopted this practice,

which was previously seen as bad polling practice, where they weight the voter sample based on how people self-report who they voted for last time. People are not reliable, actually, even about who they voted for in the last election. And without getting into the technical details of this, the impact of using that method as for weighting the electorate is that you're likely to overstate the amount of support for the last loser of the election. But they feel like, OK, but we've gotten it so wrong so many times. We need to juice Trump's numbers so that we don't have a similar miss again.

Now, if you look at the pollsters who are doing that versus the pollsters who are not doing that, and by the way, the New York Times where Nate Cohn is, is one of the pollsters that is not doing that. The results in most cases are not all that much different, but the subtle difference is that the pollsters who are using that like, you know, weighting based on self-identification method, their polls are sort of mirroring what happened in 2020. And using that method is likely to get you to basically mirror the last results of the last election. And the New York Times polls and other ones that aren't using that method, they're seeing more shifts that look more like the 2022 midterm elections. That's why you end up with the New York Times poll of Florida being a 13-point lead for Donald Trump,

where other polls have shown it actually quite close, being like three points, even two points, four points, more in the single digits versus 13 points. So Nate's point is basically like, you know, I understand I'm sympathetic to why pollsters are doing this, but if you are using this method, you may be missing some shift that has happened post 2020. And I don't think any of us would be surprised, especially given what we saw in the 2022 midterms and how that was such a like different election in terms of some places, the red wave did actually materialize, but in a lot of key swing states, it did not and went in the other direction. The map and the country looks a lot different than it did pre-pandemic. So in any case, that's something else to watch out for.

Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment

and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time,

have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go go and put this next piece up on the screen. This is a report out of Pennsylvania,

which it really is kind of the ballgame. Pennsylvania really is kind of the ballgame. Whichever of these two candidates wins Pennsylvania is very likely to be the next president in the United States, and they are going all in. The beginning paragraph here in this article says, when Vice President Kamala Harris rolled out her economic agenda, she went to Pittsburgh. When she unveiled her running mate, she went to Philly. When she had to pick a place for Obama's first fall rally, it was back to Pittsburgh. Trump has earmarked the greatest share of his advertising budget for Pennsylvania has held more rallies in the state than in any other battleground since Ms. Harris joined the race, including two on Wednesday, three in the last week.

And they talk about why Pennsylvania is so compelling. It's sort of like a microcosm of all of America. They write it's home to urban centers like Philly, of course, large population of black voters who Dems need to mobilize, has fast-growing, highly educated, mostly white suburbs outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, where Republicans have been bleeding support in the Trump years. There are struggling industrial towns where Trump needs to maximize his vote, smaller cities that are actually booming with Latino immigrants where Harris wants to make gains. And there's a significant, although shrinking, rural population. White voters without college degrees who make up Mr. Trump's base still account for roughly half the vote.

And if you look at Pennsylvania politically, Democrats did very well there in 2022, in part because Republicans had sort of like uniquely poor candidates in Dr. Oz and what's the other dude's name who ran for governor? Mastriano. Mastriano, he was really, really out there. And so Democrats did well at the Senate and the gubernatorial level. But if you look at the legislature, it's the only state in the country where Democrats have one chamber and Republicans have the other. And the margin in the state's lower chamber is a single seat. That tells you just how closely Pennsylvania is divided and why this is such a dogfight between them. And the dollars show, the dollars are the only place where there is not as much of a disparity between the Democrats and the Republicans. We have 180 million being spent so far by the Democrats,

170 million by the Republicans. In fact, they look at Pennsylvania, I think part of the reason too is not only is that Pennsylvania is the tipping point state, but the general theory that both of the campaigns seem to have is that a polling error is going to miss in either way. And so the theory behind that means that it would be very unlikely to, let's say, win Pennsylvania and not also win Wisconsin or Michigan. Right. Although I guess to be fair, in 2016, Trump only won Michigan by like 10,000 votes. I did look at his victory margin or loss margin in 2020. It's 80,555 votes in the state of Pennsylvania. That's incredibly close after almost 6 million some or more than 6 million votes that were cast in the election. So what

that means for, you know, for this is that it really is just get down to turnout in the constituencies that you can, and then just kind of hope and pray for those swing voters to come out. The point about Pennsylvania being America is very important. They have those industrial steel towns. They have a long legacy of, you know, half of the state, it's gigantic,

has more in common with the industrial Midwest than it does with the East Coast. The East Coast side has a lot of more economic dynamism. You've got the, you know, the Pennsylvania mainline suburbs. There's quite a bit of more economic dynamism. You've got the Pennsylvania mainline suburbs. There's quite a bit of wealth that is there. Philadelphia itself has got its own constituencies. You've got black population, Hispanic population as well. We saw previously that we played here on the show about how the poor areas of Philadelphia are actually swinging

at Trump. The biggest, we don't know if that's an urban only phenomenon, if it also translates to poorer, more rural areas in the state. So the point is that it's changing a lot and obviously it's very up for grabs. But Dr. Oz lost the state by almost six points back in 2022. So that could be an indicator also, a main indicator to me about the strength of abortion. John Fetterman, if you remember that time, barely even put a sentence together. Yeah, he had just had that stroke. He was basically vegetable. Remember the debate performance? It was crazy. Yeah, I mean, it's only recently that he's regained his power of speech. But my point is that Fetterman, I thought he was going to lose. To this day, I still don't really

get it, how anybody voted for him back in 2022. But he won not just by a little, he won by a lot, like six points in a major swing state. So that was the power of abortion at that time. Shapiro beat Mastriano by 13 points. So the question about the whole polling thing and the tightness is if 2020 is the benchmark for what they're polling against, I don't know. To me, the state seems to have shifted quite a bit in that time. At the same time, Trump is such a unique figure that he's so much better and more appealing to Republican voters or even swing voters than an Oz or a Mastriano or even a Dave McCormick. If you look at how much more he's running ahead of him, that maybe he's the

only guy left in America who could still win the state of Pennsylvania as a Republican. So it's complicated in terms of how we look at it, but the inside battle for it and the likelihood of it being the tipping point state is so high. I was just looking again, it's almost like 30 or 40% or whatever for the Nate Silver forecast of whoever wins it. And just in general, if we think about it, like that will be the main one to watch on election night. We're lucky we're on East Coast time. So as Pennsylvania, we can see. It was called at roughly 2 a.m. on 2016 election night. If it is as close again as it was in 2020, it could take a while, especially with mail-in ballots. Although I do believe the mail-in balloting, you know, things have changed in the last couple years for processing. It's no longer COVID and all of that.

Yeah, but they still— You could brace for a long election. They still, I believe, have a law on the books that says you can't even begin processing those mail-in ballots until election day. That means even just like smoothing out the envelopes and preparing them to be fed into the machine, which means that it's going to take longer. And it also means that just like last time around, remember we talked about that quote unquote red mirage because a lot of the Republican in-person votes on that day and in smaller counties where they're able to count things more quickly. Those came in first.

And that's what helped Trump to spin his tails about how the election was stolen and, you know, Philadelphia, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah. Stop the count. We are likely to see it may not be as dramatic an effect as last time. In fact, I don't think it will be as dramatic an effect as last time. But it will still be something to watch for on Election Day. That is likely those Republican in-person small county votes are likely to come in more quickly than the big urban areas or even the big suburban areas where Democrats are stronger. The other thing to point out about Pennsylvania is Trump just had his giant rally in Butler, Pennsylvania with Elon Musk.

We're turning to the site of that assassination attempt on his life. And that's another like X factor in all of this, whether that helps to drive local enthusiasm for Trump. The rally with Elon, I don't know what the final numbers were, but- It was like 20 something thousand. It was huge. There were a lot of people there, obviously a lot of energy around that. New York Times interviewed some local supporters who were really energized, inspired by his

reaction in that moment and decided, not only am I going to vote for him, I'm going to volunteer, I'm going to be a precinct captain or whatever. So that is possible to see that impact as well. But just to give you a sense of just how close these are, the state is in terms of the polls, we can put up the latest RCP average. Now, RCP, it's not a model. It just literally takes in every poll, whether it's a good pollster or a bad pollster or an in-between pollster, whatever their record is, they just feed them in to the average. But based on their average of every single poll that's out there, the partisan ones and the nonpartisan ones, they've got Trump at 0.2 of a lead over Kamala Harris. In other words, it could not possibly be closer. And Sagar, I know you spent some time in the state. Well, just for a weekend. Yeah, but were you, are you still detoxing from all the political ads that were shoved in your face?

I'm not lying. My in-laws, they like to watch actual cable television. And like sitting there being bombarded with those ads is maddening. Especially, I think when we're watching the Phillies game, every single commercial break is just, it's literally Trump ad, Kamala ad, Dave McCormick ad, Bob Casey ad, then whoever the congressional candidate is. I'm like, I'm going to lose my goddamn mind. It was the first time I'm like, I'm happy I don't live in a swing state because I don't think I could handle this. Because even if you don't want to engage with it and you don't watch terrestrial TV, it's on the radio.

The yard signs are everywhere. I will say they do. These are very civically engaged people. I'll give them that. Like when you ride along the highway or anywhere here in Virginia, I wouldn't say it's as common, but there, I mean, every house, whoever they're supporting, they're there. There does seem to be a lot of neighborliness, so that's good. People respect each other, but it was fascinating for me to see it in action of what it really looks like in the hardcore swing state for right before an election. The ads are just

everywhere. And also, like I said, the choice of those ads for Trump, every ad, immigration, immigration, immigration, immigration, migrant immigration. And then there were some Dave McCormick ads, which tried to do that thing where he's like, Bob Casey's the real radical on abortion. But from Bob Casey and from Kamala, it was abortion all day long. It was all Roe versus Wade for their paid advertising. I mean, possibly because I was in literally in the suburbs, so maybe that's why the targeting was there.

But it seemed to me like that, I took note of the fact that it was so strong, so unified in that message from both of those candidates, from the Senate candidates, as well as the presidential candidates that clearly they've got a lot of internals. This is the main thing to go all in on. Very interesting.

Makes sense. Yeah. Makes sense. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical

and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion- dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned

as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Former President Donald Trump joined the Flagrant 2 podcast with my friend Andrew Schultz and his entire crew over there. And the results were actually incredible. Before we get into it, Crystal, I think you and I have been discussing it. The way that they handled this was amazing. And really what it came down to is they didn't have the, and look, in general, as people know, I advocate dressing up, treating the president, et cetera. But it's a comedy podcast.

So in general, their theory of going into it was let's just treat him like a normal guest. And by doing that, there was actually a lot that came out of it, both in the way that Trump was, Trump obviously felt very comfortable and all that. But it also led to some real world moments where I'm not sure Trump has ever experienced that from an interviewer. Actually, the most noteworthy moment to me came at the very end where Andrew was challenging and even interrupting Trump. And Trump led him, which was even the crazier part, about the phrase, make America great again. So let's go ahead and let's take a listen to that. The term MAGA, make America great again. I'm going to make this country great again. So let's go ahead and let's take a listen to that. The term MAGA, make America great again. I'm going to make this country great again. It's not a great country right now. It's loaded up. It's always a great country.

It's a great country. It's always a great country. Okay. But I say it has the potential and it was a great country. I think now there's so much hatred and there's so much dissension. I think when you have people that can't walk down Fifth Avenue, when you have people that can't walk down a street, it ceases to be. We can always be better. We can always be better. Yeah, but you can't blindfold yourself to say. No, I'm honest about it. But to me, I'm really proud of America because I think that I don't, I think I can be the best version of myself here. You know, I think that Donald

Trump can only happen in America. Your life, what has happened to you, this is an American story. I mean, I thought that was interesting. I have not, I'm shocked Trump let him talk, actually. It shows that Trump likes him. Having interviewed Trump in the past, he'd be very difficult to interrupt in that regard. But it was an interesting moment to me, both in the challenge. Also, look, no surprise, Trump's not going out and flagrant out of the goodness of his own heart. He's doing it to try

and reach the people who watch comedy podcasts, which is predominantly young men between the age of like 18 to 35. And so I was like, huh, that is, I'd be curious. Look, obviously, I'm in politics all day long. If this is your, maybe not first exposure, but maybe your first long-form exposure to Trump, I don't really know what to take away from that. I thought it was interesting. Yeah, they definitely think that there's an opportunity to move some young men their way, and that there's an opening there, and that podcasts like this help to serve that purpose. And this has been an integral part of their strategy.

We saw Kamala Harris do the Call Her Daddy podcast as well. So they also have their own podcast strategy. But I think Trump campaign, I think it's fair to say, has leaned more into a podcast strategy this election. So it'll be interesting to see what the results are. But yeah, to go back to your point about, I mean, Andrew Schultz is not a journalist. He's not gonna ask, he didn't try to pose as like, oh, I'm gonna do a bunch of tough follow-ups or whatever. I'm just gonna treat you the way that I would treat any normal guest. And by the way, I'm gonna laugh in your face and mock you effectively to your face. Well, we should watch that because that was a really funny part.

When it's called for, and I kinda liked the vibe of that. I think we should normalize laughing and mocking politicians to their faces more often. Let's take a listen. This was on the basically truthful comment. They can say what they want. I have a hard time doing it to them because I'm basically, you know, I'm basically a truthful person. But and frankly, no, but frankly, no, but frankly, she's given me so much ammunition, I don't really have to. She's a radical left lunatic. Who will destroy our nation other than that? But she'll destroy our nation.

That was great. You could see he just couldn't keep it together. You could also see Akash in the frame there just trying to shield his eyes because he also was laughing at him. I mean, yeah, I thought that was good. They genuinely just treated him like you would treat anybody else. He also, it was clear, was like picking up on it. He started doing his bit about the weave. This is perhaps the biggest insight into Trump's mind because what he's picking up on is there have been previous leaks and criticisms of Trump,

not even advisors, but also other politicians who are like, hey, he's rambling and he doesn't come to the point. He takes that very much to heart because to him, he calls it the weave and he believes it's part of his superpower. So he explained this on Flagrant. Let's take a listen. You know, I do a thing called the weave. And there are those that are fair that say, this guy is so genius. And then others would say, oh, he rambled. I don't ramble.

If I saw the story, what you do is you weave things and you do it. You have to have certain things. You need an extraordinary memory because you have to come back to where you started. A weave is only good if you come back. They would give you credit for that. You could go all the way over here and then get back. I can go so far here or there. And I can come back to exactly where I started.

Now, someday when you don't come back to where you started. You're Biden. And you say. No, but the weave is the way. When you're telling like a story. I was telling a story at a rally the other day in front of thousands of people. And I started off. And then.

You were weaving them up. Something in the story. in front of thousands of people. And I started off and then something in the story, I actually mentioned Air Force One. It was Air Force One was there. So I mentioned Air Force One. And then I said how I got $1.6 billion off the price of Air Force One. So, but then you have to come back to the story. Where was Air Force One taken?

So anyway, I do a weave. I call it the weave. There you go. Call it the weave. From Trump's own brain. There you go. Call it the weave. From Trump's own brain. So a few things to say about that. First of all, that feels to me like that New York Times analysis of how he's gotten like more rambly and more like disjointed and angrier and all these things like that. He, he. Oh, of course. Read that. And much as he like loves to hate the New York Times, he's always been sort of obsessed with what these prestigious mainstream outlets have to say.

So that's one thing. The other thing is my 16-year-old told me, Sagar, that it's a thing on TikTok where they say that Trump talks kind of like he's a 16-year-old girl. So with the basically truthful thing, like being like, you know, I'm like a basically truthful person. I had not thought about that. I had neither. I don't spend a lot of time with 16-year-old girls, but it does make sense. Certainly does make sense. I'm like a basically truthful person.

And like Kamala Harris is just, she's mean and nasty. And it's like, wow, that actually kind of fits. It does fit. I mean, one of Trump's great strengths is he speaks in incredibly simple sentences. I saw, I remember back in 2016, people would criticize him for that. They're like, Trump speaks at a third grade reading level or whatever. And I was like, well, you know, you should look at the average reading level of America because that's usually a good idea. I do think it's fair to say that his communication is not as sharp or crisp.

If you go back and listen to him in 2016, especially if you compare his debate performance versus Hillary Clinton in comparison to his matchup versus Kamala Harris. He was way more crisp to the point, able to more effectively do the weave, to stay on topic, etc., versus in the Kamala Harris matchup. He was easily thrown off course, distracted from the main points he was supposed to hit. In fact, at the very end of the debate, you saw it sort of like click. Oh, shit, I was supposed to say that she's just like Joe Biden. I was supposed to hit her on these things. Let me just get it in here, you know, before the buzzer. So I do think it's fair to say that he is not as crisp as he was in 2016,

that he's not as able to pull off the weave as he once was. I had some moments there. Well, I don't know. You weren't there for the snake, which I had to sit through many times back in 2016. Oh, I remember it, though. I used to be able to recite it from memory. But he had a moment where he talked about nicknames,

which is really funny, because he was like, you have to make the nickname, like, pew, like, actually hit. But he acknowledges some of his best nicknames were from 2016 in the primary. He has not had a nickname hit, really, for a while. Yeah, it's like Comrade Kamala. but he acknowledges some of his best nicknames were from 2016 in the primary. He has not had a nickname hit really for a while.

Yeah, it's like Comrade Kamala, he's like, you know, it's hard to say, it's difficult. Or Kamabla, which no one even understood what that was. He hasn't really said that one. That one was more via texting. He said it a few times. Has he? I haven't seen the clip.

But I mean, clearly it hasn't caught on. Tampon Tim, it's okay. It doesn't hit. It doesn't, Lion Ted was just so good. I can barely describe it to people about how much it hit at that time. Even Little Marco. Little Marco, low energy Jeb. Like, oh, these were legendary.

He tried the same. Sleepy Joe, I mean, yeah, it was good. But I don't know, for some reason, it didn't quite hit as well. But this time around, he doesn't seem to be there. He even said, he's like, well, some of my best nicknames, I can't talk about them anymore because they're all my friends now. That's funny. It was good. I think Sleepy Joe, I mean, it was good in one sense because it sort of like landed and was accurate. Like the reason Crooked Hillary was so devastating is because people were like, yeah, she's corrupt. She is crooked.

Yeah. Literally. And I think Sleepy Joe, like, it just doesn't have the same, like, tuperative energy. Like, it's not as vicious as Crooked Hillary.

It doesn't bite. Like, if someone's sleepy, they're not, like, a threat. They're not scary. They're just kind of like, okay, they're a little drowsy, you know? So I don't know that it,

especially in an election where people are like, all right, it's been so chaotic. Could we just have maybe a little bit of sleepy Joe? Like, let's just have a little sleepy time and be a little calm. I think that's part of why it didn't work. But in this election, he really hasn't had any any W's on the nickname front. And yeah, back in 2016, that was that was a main skill.

There was one other clip that I found funny from this podcast that we didn't pull. But Andrew was like, so so, so what happened with Mike Pence? He's caught up with Mike Pence lately? Yeah, he said, so what's up with Mike Pence? And he's like, well, Mike, he's a nice man, but he didn't do what he said he should have done. And the Kamala people have already taken that part and spliced it into at least an internet ad where they have that clip and then they flash to like January 6th and, you know, people running around the Capitol calling for him to be hung, et cetera, et cetera. So I did think that that was like, I think what he did

well, Andrew Schultz in this podcast is he didn't try to be something other than what he is. And yet he still did some things that were effective, that didn't take Trump too seriously, that did treat him just like he was another person who was going to come on the podcast that they were going to screw around with. And I think that was a wise and smart approach. And we're going to have a whole... Obviously, politicians in the past, they've gone on podcasts, even in the Obama era, he was doing interviews with YouTubers and whatever. Mark Maron's podcast. I remember that.

But I do feel like this is kind of a breakout cycle in terms of podcasts being central to a strategy. Because you've had so many cord cutters. You're not going to reach young people going on any of the cable news shows or going on even with a Stephen Colbert, which still reaches a large audience, but not a young audience. So the best you would get out of that is some kind of a viral moment that gets clipped up and put on TikTok. So I do feel like this is the first election where the choosing these podcasts to target some demographic group, whether it's young men or young women, where that has really become a central part of both campaign strategies. But certainly the Trump campaign has leaned into it more than the Harris campaign. I was just reading Washington Post analysis this

morning about how central the young male thesis is to the Trump campaign. How not only is the campaign rung by dudes, but it very much is like a dudes rock campaign. By the way, I still think that is a very effective strategy. As I've said before, if you look at the main gains for Trump amongst racial minority groups, it's all within men. If anything, there's been more of a polarization. Young men are now more right-wing than any previous younger generation, especially in the spread with young women. So I've always said, I'm like, if you want the real multiracial coalition, it's just dudes. That's what you should be able to run on. I don't think it's necessarily good sociologically, but electorally it could work. So clearly they

think that that can work. Also with Kamala, I mean, I don't want to erase, like she did go on Call Her Daddy. I've seen a lot of people be like, oh, it didn't even get that many views. Guys, like Call Her Daddy is not a video first podcast. Like it was a, it's a, it's't even get that many views. Guys, like Call Her Daddy is not a video-first podcast. Like it's an audio podcast that predominantly is listened and or downloaded to. I'd be willing to bet it was in the millions. I mean the average download that they're getting is like 5 million a week or something. That's crazy. It's the second largest podcast in the freaking world. And it's, I'm sure, predominantly young women.

It's almost all young women. So it's like that, the idea. And apparently like Bill Kristol, who was, did you see that? Wait, what is this? There was some Politico playbook or some piece about the call her daddy thing that they had to disclose like, oh, Bill Kristol's a founding member of the Daddy Gang. Oh my God. Wow. So anyway, it's young women and Bill Kristol. I didn't even know she had paid membership. All right. Yeah. Yeah. The last thing that I'll say about, about this, just to make,

like, try to make a substantive political point here is that the polling pretty consistently shows that Kamala is leading when you talk about the voters who show up every election. She's leading among those, like, I'm there in the midterms. I'm there for the special elections. I'm there certainly for every presidential election. I'm there for the prime. That voter, Kamala Harris is leading with. The less frequent voters is where Trump has an edge. And certainly the young male demographic would be a classic less frequent voter type of demographic. And that's what they're really counting on, is to turn out those less frequent voters to come and support Donald Trump. So time will tell. I mean, certainly past indications, when Trump is on the ballot,

it usually leads to very high turnout. So, you know, maybe that works out for him. On the other hand, if you're going to have that kind of a strategy where you're trying to turn out less frequent voters, I do think that having a more effective field operation than they reportedly have and more money for an effective field operation, which they also are lacking in, may be a critical piece. Because if you're trying to, you know, got to remind someone, you got to contact, did you turn out? What's your plan to turn out? Have you voted yet? Who did you, like, that requires a lot of energy and effort. So, you know, that it's surprising to me that they haven't invested more in that turnout operation, that classic field operation, given how much their strategy is reliant on these less frequent voters. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean,

I think it will be, look, I mean, really just, I can't, I can't wait at this point now for election night just because there's been so many like theories and tests that I'm so interested in. Like at this point, I just want to see the data. I want to see what actually happens. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast,

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