Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/16/24: HIGHLIGHTS: Kamala Vs Charlamagne, Trump STUNS Bloomberg, Nebraska Senate Independent LEADS, US 30 Day Letter To Israel, NYT Kamala Plagiarism

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Ryan and Saagar discuss the Kamala and Charlamagne interview, Trump's tariff talks at Bloomberg, massive early voting and a Nebraska independent Senate candidate takes lead in the polls, Biden threatening Israel with 30 days until an Arms embargo, and the NYT covering for Kamala's book plagiarism. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop.

It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music

and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. All right. Good morning and welcome to CounterPoints. Sagar, how you doing? Oh, it's great to see you, man. People live for the pound. It's great to see you. It's great not to have to shout my own intro. I'm just here for the ride. That's all I'm doing.

So Emily is out doing some reporting. She'll actually be back for the Friday show. We're going to interview Ezra Klein for that one. Excited to see that. That should be fascinating. Today, often when you look at the kind of rundown along the bottom of the show, you can't really necessarily tell what we're going to talk about. Today, you definitely can. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both making the rounds. We're going to talk about that. Voting is starting. Literally. Already started in some states. Georgia setting smashing records. And I think that, and we'll talk about why that is. I think it's because Trump is now telling people, you also need to vote early. That's exactly right. So before it was, half the country was voting early. Now everybody is. Now everybody is. So they're smashing those records. We got a lot of

updates when it comes to the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon situation that we will get to, including some news that's breaking just this morning about potential U.S. plans for a quote-unquote day after. And then, of course, we've got to talk about Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris is a ghostwriter, we should say, getting busted for plagiarism, which is much more a media story than it is anything else. That's exactly right. Yeah. None of us really care. I actually, I didn't particularly, I mean, you know, it's, it's like embarrassing, but it's one of those where the media reaction to it was interesting. You're actually the person who flagged it. It wasn't me. And that's why I wanted to talk about it with you. So yeah, it's going to be exciting. Take

advantage, by the way, breakingpoints.com. You can become a premium subscriber. You get that Friday show early. That's what some of us live for over here, especially Ezra exciting. Take advantage, by the way, BreakingPoints.com. You can become a premium subscriber. You get that Friday show early. That's what some of us live for over here, especially Ezra Klein. I'm excited to see what you guys do with it. So that'll be fun. All right, let's get to Kamala Harris. As you said, she was on Charlemagne, The Breakfast Club, yesterday. And I listened to the entire thing.

I tortured myself. It was at 5 p.m., so I wasn't too happy about it. But it is what it is. You got to do what you do for the people. And there were a couple of interesting moments that came out of it. First is, and you haven't even gotten a chance to react, Ryan, this whole Obama situation where he's lecturing, hectoring brothers. Remember, his words, not mine. Insane, in my opinion. Being like, I want to speak to the brothers out there. Like, y'all are just making up all these excuses, but really, you just hate women. And you're like, well want to speak to the brothers out there. Like, y'all are just making up all these excuses.

But really, you just hate women. And you're like, well, maybe there's something else going on there. The extra awkward part, and we'll get into that. The extra awkward part, he's addressing a small room of mostly young black men who have taken it upon themselves to come out to a political event. They're at a campaign. So he's not even talking to them. I know.

It's all for the camera. They're at a campaign. So he's not even talking to them. I know. It's all for the camera. They're all supportive of Harris. So he's using them to speak past them. They're like props. Yeah, it's disgusting. But Kamala was asked a little bit about that by Charlemagne. At the very least, he did speak up a little bit about it. But her response tells you a little bit.

So let's take a listen. I do want to say, President Obama was out there last week waving his finger at black men. When are Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton going to wave their finger at white women? When are Bill Clinton and Joe Biden going to wave their finger at white men? Because 52 percent of white women voted for Trump in 2016. 55 percent voted for Trump in 2020. They all voted against their own interests. When the finger waving will start at them. Well, thank you for highlighting that. I do have the support of over 200 Republicans who worked for various administrations, including everyone going back to Ronald Reagan, to the Bushes, to John McCain and Mitt Romney and including Liz Cheney. And I'm very proud to have her support. And I believe that they who many of them who may have voted for Trump before are supporting me because they know the stakes are so high in terms of our very democracy and rule of law. And so the finger wagons should start today or tomorrow. today, Audemars? Well, I think what is happening is that we are all working on reminding people of

what is at stake, and that is very important. So quite a little bit of a dodge there. She was also asked by, she was asked by Charlamagne at one point, she was like, were you upset that Obama did that? Because it seemed like your whole blackmail reaction was a result. She's like, oh, I'm not upset. I'm not upset at all. But she will not touch it with a 10-foot pole. Yeah, she can't criticize Obama. Right. But it does seem clear. And this is one of those questions. Has Obama lost it or not? Because I don't know. Chris and I were talking about it yesterday. I wonder what you think. While he was president, nobody would even dare call him out for basically

hectoring and lecturing people, especially black people, to come out and vote for him. It was just too taboo. But now that he's not the president, he's actually doing it on behalf of somebody else. Maybe it's just a little bit grosser because it's not even about him anymore. It's about telling them what to do and go do something else. So she is trying to sidestep that very carefully, which is smart in my opinion. But why is it then that Obama feels the license to just freestyle and do all this stuff with basically, I mean, and I just can't help think that it's not helpful, especially with the media reaction to it. And for a lot of people who are, if you're a young black guy and you're 22 years old, bro, you were like 16 when

Obama was president. It's been a long time. Your parents might remember him fondly, but for you, you were a child during Yes We Can and all that. You were literally a child. You don't remember any of that. If anything, you've had a shit experience since then. So why would you want to listen to him? And in case Charlemagne's dig there was a little bit too subtle for some people, what he was saying there was that it is unfair and ridiculous to put this onus on black men in a way that you do not with white men and white women. Well, with any racial group, no person owes their vote to anybody because of their race. Right. So what he's saying there is like, okay, Obama's out there finger wagging black men, why are we forgetting the fact that white women

need the finger wag? Like if the way to get, and it's absurd, like his question is absurd, and it's deliberately absurd. And in the absurdity, you see the problem with Obama's finger wagging, because nobody thinks that white women are all of a sudden going to start voting completely en masse for Democrats if you just wag your finger at them and tell them that they're wrong for the way that they're voting. Certainly not the case for white men. And so what Charlamagne is saying there is, what is it about your relationship to black men that makes you think that that is actually going to work. Like, let alone having those thoughts in the beginning, but like, your goal is to win votes. And that's not going to work. So what on earth are you thinking here? Obama, though, is he just, he's Obama. He's like a god. Nina Turner even said that. He's a deity to some

people. Yeah, he really is. And in 2008, he didn't have to do any finger wagging. What he had to do, and people forget this history, is prove to the black community that he could win. Yes, that's right. Like his numbers before Iowa. I remember South Carolina was pro-Hillary up until after he won Iowa. And he really benefited from, I think, a lot of people in the country not really understanding Iowa's internal politics. And also, it's a caucus system, which means that the most liberal people are coming out. And people on the East and West Coast don't realize that Des Moines has a bunch of hipsters and coffee shops and liberals and like organic, you know, organic food and whole foods and whatever.

And so there is actually, there are a bunch of white people who are happy to vote for Barack Obama out in Iowa. They thought it was, you know, a bunch of corn fed, you know, white farmers with, you know, corn stalk sticking out of their mouth or whatever the stereotype is they have in their minds of who Iowa voters were. So when they saw that person in their mind voting for Obama, they're like, oh, he can win. Now I will support him. But it was never a, you will support me because I'm black. That never would have worked for him. Yeah, he earned it and he actually tried to work for it. But now that he's been president and they turned him into a god, now things are a little bit different.

Now, with Kamala, there was another – look, Charlemagne, I'll just say this. It's clearly like he is like an MSNBC liberal. That's his version of the world that kept coming through. He'd be like, why don't liberals make the point that Republicans are bad? He's like, why don't people understand that? And Kamala's like, well, I think we try, Charlemagne. It's like, why don't people understand that? And Kamala's like, well, I think we try, Charlamagne. It's like people don't always agree with us. But sometimes he would poke through with some good stuff. So we had two kind of challenging questions. One was on

him challenging her. He's like, why do you seem so scripted all the time? So here's what she had to say. Now, you know, one thing they've been saying, a lot of your press hits get criticized. You know, folks say you come off as very scripted. They say you like to stick to your talking points. And some media says you have that would be called discipline. Oh, OK. OK, go on. Some people say you have an inability to fearlessly say who you are and what you believe. I know that's not true. But what do you say to that criticism? And is it fair for SNL to make fun of it? Hasn't Maya Rudolph been wonderful? Yes. I think I have nothing but admiration for the comedy.

And I think it's important to be able to laugh at yourself and each other. But what do you say? In the spirit of obviously comedy and not belittling people as my opponent would do. But what do you say to people who say you stay on the talking points? I would say you're welcome. I mean, listen, here's the thing. I love having conversations, which is why I'm so happy to be with you this afternoon. And the reality is that there are certain things that must be repeated to ensure that I have everyone know what I stand for and the issues that I think are at stake in this election. And so it requires repetition. You know, some people say that until someone has heard the same thing at least three times, it just doesn't stay with you.

So repetition is important. So what do we all think? That's how she's trying to turn being scripted into a superpower. I kind of disagree with her. Just tell me what you think. I don't think it's that she's too scripted into a superpower. I kind of disagree with her. Just tell me what you think. I don't think it's that she's too scripted. It's that when she's off script, she clearly has not thought about literally anything at all

and then reverts back to safe territory, kind of like she did right there. Right. So she has a script, and she deploys it in different scenarios, no matter what the question is. Bingo. Yeah, exactly. That's what it is for me. But what did you take away?

Right. So I think scripted, I think that's an interesting point. Scripted is, okay, fine. You've got your talking points. You've got your answers. We've been covering Trump for eight years. I can basically predict what he's going to say on a wide variety of topics. I think what people actually want is more scripts. There's like three scripts. But there are dozens of questions that people have. But what she does is all the questions on this issue get funneled into this script. And all the ones here are this one and all the ones here are that script. And so then you never actually get an answer. SNL has made fun of her for that. One of the ways they did that was she was in a game show and they asked her a question and she answered, I grew up in a middle class family.

Yes, exactly. Which is not answering the question. And it is a script. So yeah, but she's also correct that it's politics and discipline is a script uh so yeah but she's also correct that you know it's politics and discipline is a thing yeah i mean i think that look discipline as you said she's not wrong in the whole like if you don't repeat something but i think part of the art you know to the science is you don't have to people don't want to feel it they don't want to feel it it shouldn't become a joke if it becomes a joke on saturday live you you took it yeah and she's like oh she's like pretending like, oh, everything was all good with Maya Rudolph and all that. But the fact that even they can get to it, this like hyper-liberal comedy organization is taking a shot at you. Clearly, like that's something that the most basic analysis will lead you to.

The final thing that we pulled was actually on the border. This is, again, where Charlemagne, to his credit, actually will hit her a little bit. And he's like, come on. He's like, because she was talking about the border and how she's like, I support this new border bill and all of this. And he's like, he's like, come on, you guys don't bear any responsibility for the last three years. So she gets a little bit testy with him. Let's take a listen. But doesn't the Biden administration have to take some blame for the border, though? A lot of the blame? Because, I mean, the first three years, y'all did get a lot of things wrong with the border.

Charlemagne, within hours of being inaugurated, the first bill we passed before we did the Inflation Reduction Act, before we did the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, before we did the Safer Communities Act to deal with gun violence, first thing we dropped was a bill to fix the broken immigration system, which, by the way, Trump did not fix when he was president. And you can look at every step along the way. We then tightened up the asylum application process. We then worked with what we needed to do to secure ports of entry. We did a number of things.

Congress has to act to fix the immigration system, and it has been broken for a long time. Congress has to act to fix the immigration system. And it has been broken for a long time. Congress has to act. But it does not help when finally a bipartisan group got together to fix it. And Donald Trump told them, hold on, don't do that because it won't it won't help me. Come on, man. I mean, it's like, what are we doing here? It's like that. But the Democratic House passed a bill that the Republicans then didn't. And that's why things exponentially exploded. Just be real with people.

Like the idea that this is not as a result, at least a very large part, some of the delta between the Trump administration and the Biden administration is not a result of executive action is ludicrous. I mean, in some ways, that was a skillful answer. Charlemagne, you know, God bless him, but he's not like deeply familiar with immigration law or executive action. But at the very least, he intuited something basically. He's like, yo, some of this is on you, is it not? And the reason that that was such a disingenuous answer is that they did in fact send a bill. She misspoke and said passed the bill, but then she corrected herself later and said, we sent a bill down to Congress. They did. January 20th, 2021, they sent down to Congress the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. And people can gather from a few context clues,

one being the name of the bill and the other being the timing. This is four years after Trump, kids in cages, signs in every yard saying, we welcome immigrants. Democrats were at the height of their support for immigrants and immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship for people who are here. And so they put this all into legislation called the Citizenship Act of 2021. There is no chance on earth that Kamala Harris today supports that bill. And that's why I say it's disingenuous. Yeah, that's a great point. You can't say, hey, look, we tried. We did this bill that I no longer support. Yeah, that's in direct violation of that Senate bill. And this is, again, why it's difficult when

people who interview her. I mean, look. And I wish it would have passed. And here's the problem with our system. Yeah. It would be better if you could run on a thing, win the election, and implement your agenda, and then people then vote on whether or not they liked the implementation of your agenda or not. Instead, we have this dumb system where we elect this guy, Biden. He writes this law, sends it to Congress, and then it just, you know, the House passes it. But then it just sits there. And so then you're left with this executive action and a harebrained immigration system that falls apart that then lurches back and forth as a political football instead of saying, okay, look, Democrats like pathways to citizenship.

They want a fairly open immigration system. It's got billions of, quote, unquote, root causes in this bill. Like, try that. Let them implement it and then see what happens. And if you don't like it, vote them out. I think you should move to Europe, Brian. This sounds like a parliamentary option.

I agree. Yes, I know. Move to Britain. It sounds great over there, right? They're doing very well. I'm sure. They somehow figured it out either. I'm sure the parliamentary system is directly reflective of the needs, the wants of the British working class. And it hasn't instead been a 1,000 year battle between aristocracy and them. They did get national health care. They certainly did. They also gave up their empire. They also gave up any claim to great power status. They decided to have a single aircraft carrier.

And that's basically the only thing that is left between them and being just another Norway. But, you know, look, it's up to them. They decide what they want. I think Stalin and FDR had a little bit more to do with it. Certainly, certainly did. But they had a choice, too. They chose one way. And that's fine.

You know, London, it's a nice place to visit and spend your American dollars. But I'll just leave it at that. 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.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's move on, what, to Donald Trump. Trump, okay, so we had to put this in. This was really making the rounds on cable. Every liberal I know has seen this clip now. And I'm not really sure why. It really invites, I guess there's just a lot to say about it. So let's get into it. Basically, Trump had a rally, which was supposed to be a Q&A. And they think it took like five questions. And then two people, it appears, collapsed and had health events. This is a side note. This always happens at political rallies. Have people not heard of water bottles? Can we all just be taking water bottles? You know, every inauguration I've ever attended,

every political event, people are always collapsing. It's a young people thing. Old people don't bring water bottles. What is happening? Just bring a water bottle and stop taxing ER resources. Secondary. Are the Secret Service making you dump the water out like you're going into an airport? I didn't think about that.

I don't think so. More recently, actually, they make people throw away their jewels and their vapes, which is kind of funny, too. But these are all side conversations. Trump is at this rally. Two people collapse. In the midst of that collapse, they stop taking questions and they play a little bit of music. But what ends up happening is like a 30-minute vibe fest where Trump just plays music and kind of vibes on the stage. He doesn't say a word.

And then it just ends. It just totally ends. So we have the introduction to that and then we can just show you guys what it looked like when he was just vibing on the stage. Let's take a listen. Well, sir, do you want to play your song and then greet a few people or do you want to? Well, you had said you wanted to close with a specific song. Okay. So yeah, people were watching. He's just vibing. They're singing like Ave Maria and the crowd is like, what's going on here exactly? Like, what do we do? You can see how confused some people are.

The guy's looking straight into the camera. Others have their, he's got his arms up like this. They're just waiting for Trump. Some people are leaving. I don't know. My joke was is that Trump ascended to his final form. And his final form is he no longer has to speak. He's kind of like – so Catholics might get mad at me for this.

But if I recall, there was a time when the pope didn't speak in public. This is all from my knowledge of that HBO show with Jude Law. So just to show everybody. But as I understand it, the Pope did not speak whenever he was in public. The mere gaze upon him was enough to see his holiness, and actually to hear him speak was like blasphemous. And so that's what I think is happening, is that the people who are attending, to gaze upon his mere visage is enough to be in the presence of the emperor um like in the the chinese system of the imperial time so that that's that was how i took it is that you know he joked he's like i

could shoot somebody on fifth avenue but now it's like he doesn't even need to speak to entertain the masses that's how i took it uh it would have been better if they were playing like grateful dead of course it would for you uh yeah it looked, yeah, he'd popped a gummy and was just vibing on stage there. That was amazing. Yeah. But yeah, I've really enjoyed this one. Yeah. This was, like I said, this took really many rounds. People were like, has Trump lost it? Like, what is he doing? Honestly, I have no earthly explanation. That is my, the best I can take a stab at it is that he was like, hey, I don't really feel like talking. And most of these people love me enough that they'll just hang out and they'll stay. And you know what? He was kind of right. Some of them left, but a lot of them

stayed. And speaking of scripted, we dinged Kamala for being a little scripted. Trump, pretty scripted in his dance moves. Everybody knows Trump's dance moves. Yeah, he does this. Yeah, he's got that. And then he's got the punch too. Right. Yeah. I mean, look, I sympathize. I'm a terrible dancer, so I get it. All right. So, he also did an interview with Bloomberg. I believe this was the Economic Club of Chicago. And there was a real clash here on tariffs in particular, probably the most viral moment from the interview. Let's take a listen. You're also talking about 10, 20% tariffs on the rest of the world. That is going to have a serious effect on the overall economy. And yes, you're going to find some people who will gain from individual tariffs. The overall effect could be massive.

I agree. I agree. It's going to have a massive effect, positive effect. It's going to be a positive, not a negative. Let me just, no, no, let me, I know how committed you are to this. And it must be hard for you to, you know, spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you're totally wrong. It'll have a negative, it will have, I'll go a step further. 40 million jobs is a lot of jobs to rely on. They're all coming back. Those are 40 million jobs in America that rely on trade. Are you ready? John Deere, great company. They announced about a year

ago they're going to build big plants outside of the United States, right? They're going to build them in Mexico. And you threatened them with tariffs and they stopped. That's right. I said, if John Deere builds those plants, they're not selling anything into the United States. They just announced yesterday they're probably not going to build the plants, OK? I kept the judge. I personally really enjoyed that. Anytime you see like a rich British guy runs Bloomberg, this guy, Wharton, probably school or London School of Economics, who's like just talking about how great, you know, neoliberal economic theory is.

And he's just like, it must be hard for you to be wrong and have somebody explain it to you. You're completely wrong. I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed how he went after the Fed. I'm not sure if you saw. Oh, I missed that part. He was like, he said something along the lines of, he's like, it's the greatest job in the world. You go into a room, you flip a coin, and everybody treats you like you're a genius. I was like, he's totally right. He's absolutely correct. And there's so much, like, dressing around this, around tariffs and about, oh, economists say X, Y.

When was the last time economists were correct about literally anything or the forecast? And if you study economics in school, that's the first to tell you. Be like, hey, look at all these models and look how they actually work out in practice. It doesn't take a genius to see it. So this actually, look, you know, just a little history thing. This takes you really back to some like OG fights in American history around like this, about silver and gold, William Jennings Bryan, you know, people at one time had massive feelings about, you know, hard money and gold, the gold standard and silver and the famous Brian speech about mankind will not be crucified on a cross of gold and what

that meant for monetary policy and farmers. And so there's some of that coming back. But even on tariffs, I mean, it's interesting because for him, he's not even making the Kamala argument about, well, we're going to have some targeted tariffs. He's like, no, tariffs in general are all bad. And that is where Trump politically intuited in 2016 that that was a position both that he thought was overwhelmingly popular, but that you could implement without subscribing to neoliberal economic theory and taking a very different, almost honestly, like a mercantilist view of economics, which I really appreciate because that's my thing.

But anyway. Yeah. And the fights now over the Fed are really the exact same ones that people were having over silver. 100%. In the 19th century. Sager knows this. Most of the audience probably doesn't. But what he meant by crucify on a cross of gold was that the gold standard was keeping the money supply too low. And the silver bugs wanted to add silver to the currency. And they said that will put more currency in the economy and it will allow for economic growth. They didn't win. But then it's such, the history is so funny. Huge discoveries of silver in the West

flooded a whole bunch of silver into the economy. And economists will say, like, actually that discovery of silver, like, increased the monetary supply. It was like going, increased the M1, and it did the right thing. So it was like, it was like the nature flipped. Not nature, but genocide. Yeah, there is a poster somewhere in the studio, I'd have to go find it, of William Jennings Bryan from his Cross of Gold speech, like a cartoon from the 1890s that I picked up in an antique store because it is such an important point. And actually, I mean, if you want to talk, too, about third party and stuff, he's one of the most successful outsiders to ever get in.

He became the Secretary of State under Woodrow Williams, a titanic figure in American politics. Ran, was a Democratic nominee for like four times. Exactly. The Populist Party basically folded in a deal with the Democrats that if you accept our agenda, we'll go away and endorse Democrats. He was an interesting dude, very much. So people should go and read some books about him. We also should get to the next part here with Trump, where this is where, look, Trump, he gives and he takes. And so he'll give you a good answer on tariffs. He'll give you kind of a crazy answer about Google. Let's take a listen. Justice Department is thinking about breaking up Alphabet,

as Google likes to be known now. Should Google be broken up? I just haven't gotten over something the Justice Department did yesterday where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes. And the Justice Department sued them that they should be allowed to put those bad votes and illegal votes back in and let the people vote. So I haven't gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that. They can't even believe it. The question is about Google, President Trump. Yeah. Look, Google's got a lot of power. They're very bad to me. Very, very bad to me. I mean, I can speak from that standpoint.

All right. I can speak from that standpoint. It's so perfect. That is his frame of how he feels about anything. Well, how have they treated me? Okay. Google. Yeah. Don't like them. I mean, look, I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. You know, sometimes he gets those answers and you're like, what are you even talking about, dude? He calls it the weave. We'll see. We'll see if people are going to take that. By the way, I'm curious where you are on the, on his tariff answer. Obviously, at least obvious from my perspective, flat tariffs, even on things that we cannot make here, are silly. Well, Crystal and I have had this fight before. I mean, it depends.

Are you saying we should substitute out, let's say, mangoes, for instance? Again, it's the same type of thing. Well, first of all, Mexican mangoes are terrible. People should try any mango. So that's just at a very basic level. Most Americans have never had the taste of a real mango. But second to that— Florida mangoes are really good.

Are they? Are they? Okay, well, it's probably still of the Mexican variety. There's a whole fight about this. Anyways, this is all, again, secondary. The point, first of all, is that you can't even institute a bank, a tariff. Congress would have to do it and it's not going to happen. You would literally need some sort of smooth holly. So to me, this is very much like Trump. Seriously, literally, we had a whole debate about

it yesterday. You can go and watch that if you want to. IRL, what does it look like? Well, it looks a lot like it did last time, which is the Commerce Department and section, I forget exactly, the exact provision of law allows for national security declarations on certain goods, specifically farming and steel implements. Yeah, but remember this, the tariffs that under the Biden administration are specifically done under the same executive authority that Trump used last time. Trump basically pushed as much as he could last time in terms of goods. It was a lot of it was metals, a lot of it was steel, both with Brazil, Korea, Japan, China. I expect a ramp up of that from last time around. The truth is, is that Congress, even Republicans, is full of neoliberals in the corporate lobby. I mean, I can't tell you guys from behind the scenes, the amount of corporate exceptions that

these people try and lobby for is insane. They're like, oh, please, it's just so impossible for me to buy this part from anywhere else. And it's like, really? Well, it's like, well, but it would cost 20 cents more or something like, yeah, but that one's in Pittsburgh and you want to buy it from Shanghai. So, you know, you don't see a little bit of a problem here. I don't think it's a reality that you could actually impose some sort of blanket tariff. But at the same time, like, listen, drastic times, sometimes, like, that's what you need to see. I am in general, like, I call Trump a mercantilist. People should go and look at that definition. Here's another one you want to Google. Autarky, the idea of economic self-sufficiency. Fundamentally, like, that's what he is talking

about and he's trying to get to. I don't even believe a blanket tariff would go into place. And even if it did, again, like if you look at a lot of the imports and consumption of the overall U.S. economy, quite a bit of the stuff that we import, not only could it be made here with some limited exceptions, but a lot of it is just like cheap crap that people don't even necessarily need. Now, it's easy for me to say from here, people, I'll be fully admit it will raise the price. Absolutely. It's true. Trump's response is we would also be taking in a significant amount. He had an idea last time around, like with soybean farmers. And basically, because we took in hundreds of billions from soybeans was to cut checks to a lot of the people who worked in the industry. I think that's perfectly fine in terms of the distribution, you know, in order to offset some of this. So it's a worthy

conversation. I would much rather have this debate than the other one, which is should we have tariffs or not? I'll put it that way. 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. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024.

VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us

think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your 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 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. Trump, also at the same time, there's just been some strange behavior that's happened. So, of course, he canceled on 60 Minutes. I mean, that one makes sense. 60 Minutes and him got into a whole tiff last time.

But he also canceled on Joe over at CNBC, which is surprising because that guy is actually very pro-Trump. And he got really salty about it. So here's what he had to say. Trump canceled and he was going to come on. So, and I said, when you come on, we'll be able to say you came and I didn't talk to him personally, but I said. So yeah, I mean, he canceled on CNBC. I was frankly kind of surprised by that. I don't know about you, Ryan, that he didn't go on CNBC. Because it's exactly like the Bloomberg interview that he was doing previously at the Economic Club where he likes to go on and spar with the Wall Street guys and all that. That one's a much more targeted thing.

So for his cancel, people were saying he was scared of it. I'm not necessarily sure. There might be some personal beef or something behind the scenes. But at the least, I was like, huh, that's kind of interesting. Why did he cancel it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if he can do the Bloomberg thing and argue about it.

Right. That's why I was surprised. He can do the exact same thing there. And he could even go on there and troll about Lena Kahn. Like pokes the NBC, which hates Lena Kahn almost as much as the Wall Street Journal. And also then pokes the Harris campaign for being unwilling to stand up for her. When Kamala Harris was asked, is there anything you would do differently than the Biden administration? She said, I can't think of a single thing. The only thing that she hasn't really committed to

is that one thing, is keeping Lena Kahn and Jonathan Cantor. That is a good point. I'm not sure what Trump would say about Lena Kahn, if we're all being honest. Final thing is Trump will have a major campaign event. That's why I say troll. On Sunday. Yeah, fair enough. Let's put this up there. This will be fun to watch. Donald Trump will be visiting a McDonald's on Sunday in Pennsylvania, and he will, quote, work the fry cooker. This is a source familiar with the matter. This comes up as Trump has repeatedly claimed Kamala Harris never actually worked at McDonald's. So one of my friends, Joe Simonson, is actually the person who read, he put the story out where he was like, I don't think Kamala Harris, he's like, there's no

evidence Kamala's ever worked at McDonald's. Kamala has been asked about this. There was an interview that she gave. I forget. I think it was NBC News with Stephanie Ruhle. And she's like, I did the fries or something very vague. She has not released any photos of her working at McDonald's. I mean, presumably those would exist. So this is Trump trying to not only stoke that, but I mean, look, I hate to say it. I actually think this is the

type of thing that so many people will love to watch, like this video or whatever of Trump working on the fryer. Now, as I understand, it's actually quite a dangerous job. I will not pretend I've never worked at McDonald's. I mean, it seems scary, right? We're talking about hot oil. There's a lot of orders that you got to get through. It's not an easy gig, you know, from what I can tell. Now you've got automation and all this crazy stuff with those order things and everything seems very regulated in terms of how you're measured, how much you can do back there. So it's not, it's not the worst thing. He could also talk about removing, what is it? Taxes on tips. Not that anybody tips at McDonald's, although they should. So anyway, what do you think? What do you think?

You get water in that, in that grease, you're setting the whole thing on fire. Oh, God, yeah. I mean, you're right. And it's slippery. Yeah. Don't they get burns on their hands? It looks scary, man. When you see them dunk them, you're like, there's a lot going on here.

That's the last place you want to be. Actually, it's funny. A friend of mine, I actually don't even know his name. He's an anonymous guy on Twitter. He's a polling analyst. His name is Ruben Rodriguez. I've talked about him here on the show. He's been suggesting previously, he's like, Trump should go work the fry cooker at McDonald's. And so maybe somebody at the campaign is reading his tweets. He's only got 12,000 followers, but he's a very smart guy. He called every state in the election last time around. That's why I follow him. Assuming Kamala did work at McDonald's, because that would be just an amazing thing to make up. The reason I'm like, maybe she did, is that's a crazy thing to make up. That's absolutely insane. But I wouldn't put it past anybody. The evidence against her that Trump floats around is

that there was some resume where she didn't include it. But that also is a window into kind of Trump's view of the world that, dude, you don't put McDonald's on your resume. That's true. McDonald's is the kind of job that is only cool once you've gotten beyond it. And that's what so much of poverty and working class life is like, actually. Right. That people love to look back on it as something that you did, but when you're in it, our country imbues it all with shame. And people should not forget that. You're not wrong. And it's fair to say there's absolutely nothing wrong with working at McDonald's, whether you're working there for 10 years or whether

you're working there for a summer. So here's what Joe wrote in his article. He said, Harris works at McDonald's, which allegedly took place at a franchise in the California Bay Area. It is a recent addition to her crafted life story. For decades, she has never mentioned it, not on the campaign trail, not in two books. It is absent from a job application from the resume that she submitted a year before college. Third-party biographers have not written about it. It is not until Harris ran for president in 2019

and spoke to a labor rally in Las Vegas did she mention the job, telling the crowd that she, quote, was a student when I was working at McDonald's. And so it's one of those where the actual evidence for this claim has not there. There is no photo, as I said, that exists of her working at McDonald's. I guess at the same time, not a lot of people necessarily want people to take a photo of her when she's at McDonald's. But Joe has done the legwork. And I got to say, there's a decent shot she hasn't worked at McDonald's, just based on that. Because why wouldn't you have talked about

it in two books? And the first time I'm going to mention it is 2019. It's conceivable, don't get me wrong. But you've been a politician for this long, and you've never talked about it? I don't know. I'm a little bit skeptical. At some point, you would think that that would, at some point, you're far enough removed away from it that you're proud of it. Okay. It's before 2019. That's possible. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. I'm agreeing with you. She's a lawyer, right? At that point, she's a multimillionaire. She got married to Doug. At that point, it's fine to say you worked at McDonald's. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm curious. I'm very, very curious. I want the long form photo. Yeah, I want the original. We're going to have to go into the photo archives and all of this.

We can look into it. So, yeah, it's amazing. Should we assign a reporter to check this down? Joe even obtained a 1987 job application that she had for a law clerk in Alameda County whenever she was, like, that summer afterwards. And it's like she does not, she listed several jobs, including a month-long clerical job at Stockbrokerage, but did not mention McDonald's. But see, that's the one where I'm saying I understand why she wouldn't put McDonald's in that one and why you would put the clerical one.

Right. Yeah, that makes sense. You're trying to show that you belong with these rich white shoe people. That's right. Who would look down on somebody who worked at McDonald's, which again, there's absolutely nothing wrong with working at McDonald's. I met some funny people working at McDonald's. One other point on this question about whether there's a photo of her. I was thinking about this. So my first job was at the Washington College over on the Eastern shore of Maryland, where

I worked in the kitchen and the dining hall. Absolutely zero chance there's a photo of me doing any of that work. And none of my friends, and a lot of me doing any of that work. And none of my friends, and a lot of my friends worked this same job. None of my friends ever would have thought to take a picture. And my upbringing, I think, and I'm curious for your take on this, my upbringing was closer to hers in the sense that there were no cell phones, period, let alone cell phone cameras. We didn't walk around with cameras. Once in a while, somebody would bring like a Polaroid to a party just as a party trick. Yeah, it was fun.

You absolutely would not bring a camera to work. Okay. Like, why on earth would you do that? Yeah, we were talking about our first job. So my first job was a liquor store as a cashier. I do think there is a photo of me doing it. But this was the 2000s? Yeah, no, this was 2012, probably.

Oh, so there's iPhones around. Yeah, it's the iPhones. I think we all had iPhone 4s, so there you go. It's not the same. That was an interesting job, though. You learn a lot about people selling liquor. I'm sure you do. And this was D.C.?

Yeah, this was here in Washington, D.C. You get rich people. I was just telling you about homeless people. The great equalizer, the liquor store. It's true. Yeah, you see everybody from all walks of life. You certainly, you learn a lot about people. People tell you their stories about what they want, why they're buying certain things.

People make up a lot of stories too where it's like, it's fine, man. I'm just telling you, it's like, I don't care. Kamala could actually settle this, not with a photo of her, but just talking about it for five minutes. That's right. I agree with you. So if you worked one of these jobs, it is indelible. That's right. She said, I did the fries. So she needs to give us some more detail. Yeah. We need more detail. For example, like, like you just said, in terms of sound, like, like we can get into it, you know, in terms of like bourbon.

When Kamala does her interview here, we'll make sure that you need to prove we'll bring in a real McDonald's worker. I'll be like, you somebody who, quote, did the fries at McDonald's would know. But not even that. I think just the experience of working in McDonald's, hearing her talk about it, you'd be able to tell if that was a real experience or if she was just relaying something. Like shift work. Yeah, whatever. It's like, oh, I got put on a crappy schedule or closing. I'll tell you everything you need to know about the dish room at Washington College. Yes, there you go. All right. I like it.

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 reexamining 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. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your 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 never found her, and it haunts me to this day. begging for help with unsolved murders. 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 got 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. All right, let's go to voting. So as you said, Ryan, there's a lot going on here. Early voting is here, but there's also some very interesting developments in those close races that we want to watch. Let's put this up there on the screen. So we got Osborne is making waves. Here we have- This is the counterpoints bump. Yeah, dude, you guys were first to it.

So we got to give you the credit. An internal poll now shared with the New Jersey hotline shows Dan Osborne at 50% ahead of Deb Fischer. 50% for Osborne, 44% there for Fischer. 6% undecided. Now, obviously that's an Osborne internal poll, but- It matches all the other polls that have come out. And there have been a lot of polls recently that at the very least show it leaning away

from Deb Fisher, so much so that they had her tied in an internal poll leaked by the Senate Leadership Fund, which is the major super PAC that backs Republicans who are running for Senate. And now Mitch McConnell and his guys are considering having to flood the zone and spend millions of dollars actually backing her. Now, keep in mind, though, he's still got 44%. So 6% is undecided. So it still could be 50-50. You have to bank on a decent amount of Republicans who are not even thinking about the race in the state of Nebraska just because it's such a hard GOP state. But I mean, if we're making the bull case for Osborne, it's not just the positions and all those, but having made abortion such a keystone of his campaign, it's not

the worst thing because that has worked in Kansas, that has worked in Kentucky, right? And a lot of these other deeply red states, Ohio as well for these referendums. So to make it on that, and also the key part, he's independent. He's not a Democrat. And he doesn't even say whether he would caucus with the Democrats or anything. So you really, you can't project onto him a lot of this like, oh, he would be a vote for Chuck Schumer or any of that. He's running really as his own man. So I'm very interested to see how he does. And if people remember from when he did his interview here, he describes himself personally as pro-life. Yes. He's like personally pro-life. And he uses the phrase pro-life, which is charged and

triggering to some people on the left. Right. Who cares? He's running Nebraska. Exactly. Exactly. So what he's doing is he's signaling that he shares kind of the social conservative values that a lot of Nebraskans have, but he is fundamentally more libertarian and believes that it's not up to him, that this is his personal opinion. That's not how he's going to legislate. And that's a 70, 80 percent position right there. You're going to capture an overwhelming majority of people. What this poll and all the other polls around Dan Osborne also show is the cost of being a Democrat. This stigma and the stain of the Democratic brand in rural America is so profound. Yes. So if you look at another statewide race,

Pete Ricketts leads Democrat Preston Love 53-37. Which is that, and that's how every other statewide race in Nebraska is going to go when you have a standard Republican and a standard Democrat. If Dan Osborne were running as a Democrat. He's done. He wouldn't even know his name.

Who? Right. Yeah, who? Yeah, exactly. The union leader who led the Kellogg strike. This guy sounds cool, but too bad he's going to lose by 20 points. Yes, yes. So according to the numbers here, he's basically outpolling the Democratic average by 20 points.

So that's the price. So that is the price, at least in Nebraska, of being a Democrat. Having a D on your name is 20 points. Makes you unviable. And also, everything's working out here for happened to luck on a replacement level Republican. The way that the Senate is structured now makes it so it's very much like the House. You just do whatever the majority leader or the minority leader tells you. That's right. You don't really do anything. You do a little bit of—if you're actually decent at your job, you do constituent services, and that's about it. So the days where people could—you have to be an incredibly talented politician at this point to break out as a senator. And Deb Fischer was just never going to be that.

She's just the Chamber of Commerce, like, you know, Chamber of Commerce when she got in, Trump, now that Trump's the thing. And so voters in Nebraska are like, all right, well, this other guy sounds cooler. Yeah. I like it. We'll see. I like to shake things up. Suds are still against it. I think Deb. Polling is incredible.

I'll be honest. I think Deb is probably going to win. But winning by two in Nebraska is humiliating. And so, listen, you know, these things, they take some time. So maybe somebody learns that. And the next thing you know, another union leader in another state tries it. And all you need is like, what, a terrible storm on election day, then shockingly you win. We have a Democrat who represents the freaking state of

Alaska right now. Remember? Remember Doug Jones in Alabama? That was, I mean, a Democratic senator from Alabama. It can happen. It did happen in my lifetime. It wasn't that long ago. Did he lose again? Yeah, but you never know, you know? Also, for people curious, and I'm curious for you on this, I am very confident that if it were decisive, he would caucus with Democrats or at least he would cast a vote. Well, you shouldn't say that. If you want him to win, you shouldn't say that. But it's not my job. I think he would.

But he would extract so many different pounds of flesh for Nebraska that everyone in Nebraska, and I think people in Nebraska understand that. He's running against the Republican. Right. Who was the senator? Is it Indiana? Who was the Democrat under Obama during the 2009? Is that who I'm talking? Wait. Lugar. Is that who I'm thinking of? Dick Lugar? Dick Lugar? Yeah. Who did he represent? Was he Missouri? Let's look it up. Dick Lugar, Missouri. Let's see this. All right. Dick Luger? Dick Luger? Yeah. Who did he represent? Was he Missouri? Let's look it up. Dick Luger, Missouri. Let's see this. All right. Dick Luger, Indiana.

Yeah, he was Indiana. And I remember him in the, no, and Nebraska. Was it Ben Nelson? Ben Nelson. That's it, right. Ben Nelson. I remember him voting, was it 2009? And you almost had Bob Carey.

Whatever that rescue plan was. And he was like, oh, I'll do it. But there's an industry of billion dollars coming to Nebraska. And he got it, too. It was actually amazing. Remember what they called it? No, I don't. The Cornhusker kickback. That's right, the Cornhusker kickback. And so, yeah, for people who have been in politics, this was a huge thing. This is what led to Republicans banning earmarks in 2010, because that was before the Tea Party wave. The Cornhusker kickback became like a massive political discussion. When Republicans take control of the House, they then ban earmarks, I want to say for over a decade. And it became the predominant. I think they just brought it

back or somebody did or anything. But that's what the lasting legacy of what that Cornhusker kickback was. That's what I was thinking. And it got taken out because it was so dumb. I mean, I don't care. I remember I was reading a story once about LBJ and the Civil Rights Act. And LBJ had just become president, and he needed some guy to sign a discharge petition. I think the guy was from Purdue, this Purdue district in Indiana. And he said something along the lines of, he's like, listen, NASA, they've got a big contract. They could build it in Purdue. They could build it somewhere else too. A lot of that depends on the signature right now. And he was like, all right.

And to this day, they still have it. So. Mary Landrieu. Yeah. She was Louisiana. Is that right? She was a Senator from Louisiana. She also got bought off for her vote on the Affordable Care Act. Hers was called the Louisiana Purchase. I like it. Man, politics used to be more fun back in the day. Southern Democrats were such an interesting breed that, unfortunately, people who watch politics, they just won't even know anything about. But let's continue down this road. Man, enthusiasm right now for early voting, crazy. Let's put this up there on the screen. What we have right now is that the Georgia early vote has shattered all records.

We have some 200,000 votes that were cast on the very first day in Georgia. The previous record for early voting was 120,000. I mean, that is just absolutely stunning. So actually, the total now that they've looked at it is 328,000 as of late last night. So that is 123% higher than the old record from 2020, when a lot more people were early voting. Now, for all the people out there who are like, oh, that's good for Democrats. No, Republicans have significantly changed their tune on early voting. And in fact, you have Republican activists who are just going hardcore, beating down the door, getting people, you need to go out, you need to bank your vote, we need to make sure

that it's done right now. So that is partially going to explain some of those answers. And I believe Georgia is one of those states where the demographic data, all of that is like hard to capture. I've seen some of this in Michigan too. Michigan mail-in ballots are crazy, but nobody knows who these people are exactly. But from it, what we know is that enthusiasm is still very high amongst the party faithful. The question is, is turnout going to come back to 2020? There's really no way to know. Impossible. How hard was it inside the Republican coalition to get Trump to 2020. There's really no way to know. Impossible. How hard was it inside the Republican coalition to get Trump to be supportive of mail-in ballots? I mean, he's still not

supportive of it. If you ask him about it, he'd be like, well, you still have problems with mail-in ballots. It's more that he's silent about it. To get him to the place where, well, he tells people go vote early. Yeah. Well, okay. Well, what happened is, is 2022, they were convinced that they were going to get a landmark victory in 2022, and then they got blown out. And so I saw a lot of them. It's funny the language they use. They're like, well, if the left is going to ballot harvest, then we need to ballot harvest too. But watching them in practice, people like Charlie Kirk or Scott Pressler or all these guys, they're like, okay, this is the landscape. Let's register as many people as we can. Let's get their damn votes and let's get them to the ballot box. Ultimately, that is the only

actual way to victory. And if they do win, that will be a huge part of it. It was the get out the vote drive by a lot of these people instead of having to rely on early votes. So with Trump, he's never truly made his peace with it. But the people who know and the people who are really running elections and who want the Republicans to win, they have very much made their peace. They're like, look, there's a system we have, can't change it. Literally, Democrats, Democratic governors rule five out of the seven swing states. That's a remarkable statistic. So that tells us also that they have no chance at changing whatever the ground is there. You have to work to make sure that it's redone. So it's up to you. And I think we're going to see national voter ID. You know, as soon as we ever get a functional Congress that's going to pass something again, I think we'll get it.

And it's because Democrats are now becoming more of the upper middle class, middle class party. And Republicans are the ones who have more working class support. And so voter ID, anything you do to, you know, if you look at the numbers when they go from registered voters to likely voters, like throughout my entire lifetime, Democrats did better among registered voters, but worse among likely voters. Yes, that's right. Because they had more working class support. Flipped in 2018. And so if you make it harder to vote and you have more working class support, your vote share is going to go down. There you go.

And so that's why Democrats fought it and Republicans support it. Now that's flipped. You're going to see all of a sudden the principle is going to be reversed. I like it. I can't wait until Republicans are like, well, you know what? Are we sure? Let them sign us. That actually will be hilarious.

I did see, somebody was claiming- What they're going to do is make student, Republicans will say student IDs don't count. That'll be there. Which, look, you know- It's a state university. It is difficult because there is a lot of low-key voter fraud that does happen, where people who don't live in- That voter fraud is real. No, it's true. By the way, I'm not making a stop and steal. And we're at the heart of it.

This is a decades-long weird thing. We're at the epicenter of it in D.C. Yes. So many people who have lived here for years. Yeah, they've never registered to vote. They just vote back in wherever they're from, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. And they're like, well, that's not fair. I wouldn't be able to have my vote counted if I voted here in D.C.

I don't know if they technically committed voter fraud. I think I voted in Texas 2016, requested an absentee ballot, but I think I qualified because I was a student who was out. There's something about residency law or anything, but like you just said, people work here for 15 years and they'll keep voting in Pennsylvania or whatever. And then they keep requesting mail-in ballots. That's where it gets difficult. Okay, let's continue with the actual polls. Let's put this up there on the screen from Nate Silver. He now has the race officially 50-50. Harris at 50.1% chance of winning. And you have Donald Trump at 49.7. So that's it. I mean, you know, what else is there to say about it, right? Got him incredible. It's like, come on, Nate Silver,

you got one job. Yeah. And you're just telling us it's 50-50. That doesn't help us. But if it is 50-50, that's what he's got to say. I think that's what, I actually think it's helpful. It's good for people to see where it's at. And so the real thing that has happened is the tipping point states, for example, like Pennsylvania, right now he has Harris at a 53.5% chance of winning Pennsylvania and Trump at 46. But the thing is, is that Trump has gone so much higher in the last couple of weeks. So for example, October 7th, just like a week or so ago, he had it at 42.4% chance of Trump and now he's up to 46.5. So a slew of polls in the upper Midwest and then the assumption that Trump will overperform in those places is really what is ticking him up. That, okay, there'll be an initial burst of enthusiasm, but then she will revert to her more centrist instincts.

And she doesn't necessarily believe anything, but if she has a gravitational pull, it is his advisors and his rejection of kind of neoliberalism, that actually implementing the things that people said they liked about Trump's populism, low unemployment. They hate the inflation from 2021 that has taken since then to rattle its way out of the economy. But in general, the strong antitrust stuff, strong anti-corporate stuff, strong pro-worker agenda. And she just refused to embrace that. It's interesting.

Yeah, I really don't know what a lot of it is. At the same time, they're going hard on this Cheney coalition. Right, and instead it's... Yeah, so well, let's show people that. I mean, this is... So Tim Walz, he was on the campaign trail. He was bragging about it. Let's take a listen. The only thing more amazing is we got Bernie Sanders, Dick Cheney and Taylor Swift all on the same ticket. There you go. All right. So, well, we got Bernie Sanders, Dick Cheney and Taylor Swift all together. And I'm like, imagine bragging about that, but they were, they love it. This Cheney thing and Taylor Swift all together. And I'm like, imagine bragging about that.

But they love it. This Cheney thing, we first heard it. It appears he got it from Amy Klobuchar, who also made this joke previously. Take a listen to that. She is brought with her independents and moderate Republicans, right? You saw the event with Liz Cheney, you know, and it's only a matter of time where we're going to see like a bus going through Western Wisconsin with, I want you to picture this, Bernie Sanders and Dick Cheney together, holding a sign that says Bratfall.

So that's that they like it, Ryan. They love having Dick Cheney. I will never understand that one. I don't get it. Also, there's no way Bernie Sanders is doing that. But the fact that Democrats are floating. I know. How is Bernie not speaking out about that, too? I mean, he has. He has.

He has. He has said, like, Dick Cheney's a war criminal. And I don't support being involved with Dick Cheney. But guess what, Bernie? You are. Yeah. And they're going to keep reminding people that you are. The only way that this is exciting for you

is if you simply believe in taking power for power's sake. Because then, yeah, of course, if you have everything from Dick Cheney to Bernie Sanders, then that would suggest, in the old old world that you've got everything. Like you're going to – I mean in the Democrats' old understanding of the world, you're going to win with 100 percent of the vote then because that's far left to far right. What they're missing is that so many in the middle don't see themselves on that spectrum anymore. Yeah, no, I mean I think it's an excellent point. And it's one that is genuinely concerning for what the future of politics. And look, it's, you know, you could say it's terrifying if Trump wins, right? He's got this

coalition that he's abandoned a lot of the stuff that he used to run on. And it'll just be pure culture. But like, isn't it equally terrifying that it's like, oh, now Dick Cheney's in power. Honestly, I'm scared. And for so long, to those of us who were recoiling at Liz Cheney being embraced by the Democrats, they would say to us, look, it's just Liz Cheney. It's not Dick Cheney. Yeah, but now it is. And we would say, yeah, but Liz and Dick, they have the same politics. Yeah, they don't disagree on it. She didn't wage the Iraq war, but she has the same politics as Dick Cheney.

She supported it. And they'd say, no, no, no, but it's not Dick Cheney. And now it's actually Dick Cheney. Yeah. Who is somehow still alive. Right. First of all, how the hell is he still alive? Okay, test out this theory on you.

I think she gets sec def or sec state. What do you think? No. Okay, why not? Everyone says she won't get confirmed. I don't buy it. Why wouldn't Lindsey Graham vote for Liz Cheney? Of course she would.

I mean, they're not- And Democrats have been praising her for the last like three years. She's a hero. I think- She keeps saying she's going to put a Republican in her cabinet. Who do you think she means?

The reason I say no so quickly is that I refuse to believe that I live in that world. Yeah, but game it out. Do you not see it? But I might. Yeah. But game it out. Do you not see it? But I might. Yeah. Which Democrat realistically is going to vote against Liz Cheney? Oh, I think she would. Only Bernie. Sure. I think she'd get confirmed. I think. Yeah, well. But why? Yeah. She says, I want a Republican in my cabinet. When Kamala is asked, what do you agree with on Liz Cheney? She says Ukraine. Okay, so that's flagship policy.

What's the real distance between them on foreign policy? Not very much. I mean, you know, Kamala's in the post-Iraq era. She's never had to answer or vote for the Iraq war. So on Gaza, I mean, like realistically, what, they're semi the same policy? Kamala says, what's the last show we did? Iran? Kamala says Iran is our greatest adversary? That's an answer straight out of a Cheney's mouth. I mean, I'm not seeing that much distance. What they keep saying quietly to the people who are critical of this whole thing is that we have not moved to accept Liz Cheney. It's the Republicans who changed, and Liz Cheney just you know, it's the Republicans who changed and Liz Cheney just

supports us because we defend democracy. The second that you're like, hey, you want to be Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense, then either you have moved or you have always been a warmonger party. And I think that both in some ways are true, but they don't want to necessarily admit that. Yeah. I'm curious just to see how it plays out if she does win because, I mean, that would really give away everything. And like I said, I really do believe she would get confirmed. Everyone seems to think it would be a fight. How?

They've been calling her a hero for four years. No, I think they'd confirm her. And when they say you have a Republican in your, you know, a Republican in your cabinet, I don't think she means Secretary of Transportation. I just, maybe I'm wrong. Is Ray LaHood still alive?

I don't know. I'm not sure. Obama named Ray LaHood, a moderate Republican, as Transportation Secretary. The other thing I kept thinking about is what did Obama do

whenever he comes in? Who does he keep as the sec def? Robert Gates. Remember how much they touted that bipartisanship? They're like, look, we've got a Republican who runs the Secretary of Defense. And then who else did he pick, Ryan? Chuck Hagel, who was a Republican senator. So the precedent is there for some Liz Cheney type figure to be the sec def. By the way, she could be like, oh, her father, he was a sec def under,

I think it was under Reagan. He had a long time experience. She grew up around it. So I'm just telling people the case is there. You heard it here first. I think it's going to happen. I could be totally wrong, but I see it. The best thing about a Harris administration would be the war over staffing it because that would be the civil war that we've been seeing over the last 15 years playing out in miniature in just a couple of months. At Dropsite, we're actually going to basically, we're putting budgets aside just for the transition, reporting on the transition. And it'll be interesting if it's Trump. Yeah, it will be a fascinating dynamic either way. With Harris, something I keep thinking about is

if the likelihood is you're going to have a GOP Senate, so are they even going to confirm a single one of her people, right? I mean, for real. There's a bunch of acting people. So legally, what would happen is that she would almost be forced to keep the Biden cabinet because they have been in, they've already been confirmed and she could bring them over. And then everybody else would be acting. So that could create its own really. Yeah, exactly. So then, or you could have just actings, but that's really difficult for security clearance wise and all that. So anyway, we're getting in the weeds, but listen, folks, you know, preview the show for two months from now, because that's what hopefully we'll be talking about either, either direction.

Staffing is so interesting about who they pick and what's going to happen. All right, Ryan, break Israel down for us. What's going on? 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 reexamining 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. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover,

the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family.

I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your 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. 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. The reporter who's been breaking basically all of the news from either the White House or out of the Knesset or out of Netanyahu's camp, Barack Ravid over at Axios, the receptacle for all the leaks from both sides, has a news story that is kind of reshaping the politics of Israel. We put his piece up here. So basically what happened is over the weekend, the U.S. finally sent a sternly worded letter to Israel, which then it appears quite clearly that Israel then leaked to Barak Ravid. I want to read some of this just so people can get a flavor for it.

They write, the humanitarian situation for over 2 million civilians in Gaza is increasingly dire. This is supposed to be a private letter. Despite the July transition from combat operations to special counterterrorism operations in the Gaza Strip, multiple evacuation orders have forced 1.7 million people into a narrow coastal zone from Mawassi to Dere Bala. Extreme overcrowding has put these civilians at high risk of lethal contagion. Humanitarian implementers report they are unable to meet essential survival needs of aid-dependent civilians. Trucks carrying carrying humanitarian commodities including perishable goods funded by the united states are delayed at crossing platforms i would encourage people to go and read this entire letter uh it is it it reads like some type of left-wing screed that you would find me penning somewhere. But it is just fact after fact

after fact that says that, and it says that September was the worst month on record since this assault began a year ago for humanitarian aid getting in. And we also know that October has been worse than September. The situation is completely out of control. And they highlight the plight of 400,000 people. So you're talking 1.7 million people tucked into this little tiny enclave. They highlight the plight of 400,000 people in North Gaza that the IDF is ordering to leave North Gaza or be considered combatants and has completely cut off from water and humanitarian aid and starving them to death. And the U.S. is saying, you can't do this. Like, there is no military justification for this. And these 400,000 people, most of them are refusing to leave. First of all, and we have some reporting on this at Dropsite,

people who do try to leave are then shot at, many of them killed. But many others are saying, we're not leaving because we have been through this rodeo. We do not believe that there is anywhere else in Gaza to go that is safe. So we're stuck here. This is part of, and we can put up this next tweet, which is kind of a summary from the Israeli perspective of what's been going on lately. So this letter comes at the same time. And so if you're listening to this, this is somebody who's doing a rundown. So a rundown of kind of the international pressure Israel is under. One, Italian prime minister says that they're no longer supplying Israel with any weapons. Germany is refusing to supply weapons since March 2024. Some of this is like slightly exaggeration, but this is the way it feels from the Israeli perspective.

United Kingdom canceled around 30 licenses to supply weapons. Four, France and Spain advocate for full weapon embargo. Five, Canada suspended 30 permits for arms sales. And then six is this latest USA threatens to halt weapons supply amid its fight with Hezbollah. And then they quote, allies with ironclad support, unquote, Israel will prevail with or without you. So on the one hand, from the left, we see this letter going to Israel as what took you so long? It's a year in. You're not serious.

You're not actually going to do any of this. From Israel's perspective, they see themselves completely isolated. The left-wing perspective, or not the left, it's not the left-wing, it's my perspective. The question of what took you so long made up most of the press briefing like at the State Department. Well, that's the question is how real is this? And also, if you put a month deadline, that's after the election, right? Because we're 20 days to the election. Yes. So reality is you're not doing anything until after the election. Exactly. That seems to be key.

Right. And what that thing is, I think is starting to become clear. But your question is the one that everybody who read this letter immediately asked, which is, what took you so long? And this was also asked of Matt Miller. We can roll this from the State Department. The Foreign Assistance Act says, when it's made known to the president that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts directly or indirectly the transport of delivery of United States humanitarian assistance, it does not have arbitrarily. So given you are already saying humanitarian assistance is very low and putting in front of Israel a bunch of concrete measures on how to improve it. Why are you waiting for another 30 days to implement the law? Because we believe it's appropriate to give them a chance to cure the problem. And international humanitarian law does make exceptions for certain, I'll give you an example,

dual use items is a good example. If there are the dual use items that legitimately could use, could be used as a military purpose, of course, governments aren't required to let those dual use items in, which is not to say that they can use that exception as a blanket restriction on anything that could be used as a dual use item. So there was a lot of talking around in circles at the press briefing um which you know which was which combined like some stern words like yes like right now israel we do it believe is in violation of 620i this thing that says you can't send military aid to a country that is blocking u.s humanitarian aid but they but, wait, we want to give them a moment to cure this.

The context for this, like you said, is, okay, 30 days is after the election. What's going to happen after the election? And I think we're starting to see that. So control room, sorry, we'll skip me for now. I had a couple questions that I think are interesting, but are not exactly on this particular topic. Let's finish this topic first. If we could jump to D5, this is Senator Lindsey Graham talking about a quote-unquote day-after plan that is starting to be developed, absent the Palestinians, between the U.S., the Israelis, and some of their Gulf partners over there. And I think you're going to start to see this come into focus. Go ahead. Now's the time, if you're ever going to do it, to start a dialogue with Saudi Arabia about the day after.

Right. But the Saudis have also been very clear that what they want in return, that there needs to be a viable, sovereign, independent Palestine in the state which the Israelis recognize. They want two things. For them to recognize the state of Israel, they want a defense agreement with the United States. Saudi Arabia and the United States would have a mutual defense agreement like we have with Japan and Australia. In other words, the United States would go to war for Saudi Arabia. That requires 67 votes in the U.S. Senate.

Senator Blumenthal is a Democrat trying to get the votes. I told MBS a year and a half ago, that will be a heavy lift, but I will try. But the Israelis also have to want to recognize an independent Palestinian state. They're not going to do that. An independent sovereign nation called Palestine with security guarantees for Israel

to make sure there's no future October 7th. It will be more like an emirate than it will be a democracy. MBS and MBZ at the UAE will come in and rebuild Gaza. They will reform the PA. They will create an enclave in the Palestine that can live in peace and harmony with Israel. They will stop teaching their children to kill the Jews. I de-radicalized, I de-militarized. Is that how they teach it? Yes, literally. So what's going on there yeah so the key phrase there is from from graham if you pick this up was quote called palestine so this morning uh barack ervid had another piece and this this goes into the the uh the context of

what we're talking about here basically um ron Dermer, who is Netanyahu's top aide, and some top officials over at the UAE met with Antony Blinken and presented him with the proposal that you basically just heard Lindsey Graham lay out. Lindsey Graham's was about a week ago. This is putting it down in paper form. And what they asked Blinken to do was perhaps, after the election, to present it as a U.S. plan. That the U.S. has decided that this is the way to go forward. of Palestinian statehood because as the report lays out, Netanyahu is stridently opposed to any mention of a two-state solution, that any idea that Palestinians would get any version of statehood in this plan is something that Netanyahu rejects. Yet he is still working with the UAE on moving

forward with this plan. And so that's where it goes back to lindsey graham's idea of quote unquote called palestine so what that means basically as he said it would be an emirate so it would be something under the uae is that yeah so so Yeah, so basically the U.S., the UAE, Saudi Arabia, who knows who else, would get in and they'd say, okay, we're getting rid of Abbas. We're getting rid of the – because Israel doesn't even approve of the Palestinian Authority being involved in this. And they will create some other mechanism that they will call independent, they will call Palestine, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia will offer the security guarantees, and then they'll offer the funding, the US will fund it as well, and Israel will then have to withdraw. But it will not be remotely sovereign.

But who will be the sovereign? UAE. Well, the whole thing's fake. Yeah, exactly. I think what I'm just trying to get at. So you're trying, so basically the way for Israel to agree to it is that it would have to have no real sovereignty, but it would have to be called sovereignty. Look, this is nation building at its absolute

worst, trying to impose, first of all, I've lived in the Gulf. And notice what we haven't talked about here, Palestinians. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I've lived in the Gulf. The Gulf, they don't care about Palestine, okay? No. But people, but the leaders themselves, they don't care at all, period. They gave up a long time ago. They wouldn't even open their mouths. They hate that they have to deal with it. Oh, absolutely. The actual people there who live, they definitely do. But the actual leadership, they care less. They just want to be rich, live in London. That's all they care about. So this is like a thorny problem for them.

For them, if you have to consider this, to impose the rule from the UAE onto people of whom they have no relation to, both – yeah, they may speak the same language. That's about it. Who they frankly disdain and already looked down upon. That's a recipe for disaster. What do you think is going to happen? You're going to have massive insurgency. You're going to have like the funding for it. It will be like Afghanistan 2.0 in terms of trying to impose this like fake form of government with allies and partners and all of this other onto.

And if you were Hamas, like why would you even accept that? You would just fight against now this new insert. The only thing this would do is bail out Israel because they're the ones who don't want to be the occupier. But Israel won't even accept this, which is wild. And what's so delusional about it is that they still have this idea that it's the textbooks that is, that's creating like the hostility and the conflict. Every school in Gaza has been destroyed by Israel's assault on Gaza. You're talking about textbooks? They're blowing up all of the schools. If you talk to Palestinians who live in Gaza and ask them about the textbooks,

some will say, yeah, there actually is some like cringe-worthy stuff in there that that should be like edited out but the idea that the resentment of is of jewish israelis comes from the textbooks ignores the fact that they're get they've been getting bombed for a year and starved to death and that and pushed into an enclave where infectious disease is spreading out of control. The material conditions are creating the resentment. And if you print a new textbook that is filled with propaganda about the virtues of the Israeli state, you don't even have a school left standing where you can hand that textbook out to students. Like it's so utterly divorced from the reality on the ground that you wonder, you know, when is this going to actually clash?

And let alone the fact that, you know, so many bombs have been dropped on Gaza that the unexploded ordinance itself will take decades to remove before you can even do the reconstruction. What this just reeks of me is like imperial agenda, right? Like imposing rule, drawing state line, all these things we use supposedly. And my guess, this is something. And it might actually even be worse because this is, it doesn't even involve any of the people who supposedly would rule over. And my guess is we will see something like this. Oh, absolutely. I agree with you. This is the most likely outcome. But the point is, is that in the 21st century, it's not going to last as in the power, the amount of force it would take to enforce something like

this is not, I mean, it is within the realm of possibility for the U.S. It shouldn't be. We have no interest in doing this. It doesn't mean, I guess, that we wouldn't get locked into it. But it would turn into a multi-decade quagmire. It would just be completely unsustainable. Yeah, and basically it would just have to shrink the population down to – which was what they're ultimately trying to do, shrink the population down to a quote-unquote manageable size. I think if people want to see my exchanges with the states right now, we can see it tomorrow.

It's like we're running low on time. People can check out the Dropside Twitter feed. There you go. Check out the Dropside Twitter feed. It's there. Camp Sheen, 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. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal,

and at times it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times

where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your 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.

Okay, plagiarism. Set it up for us. What happened, Ryan? Kamala Harris wrote a book when she was a district attorney called Smart on Crime. Yes. She had a co-author on it. I can't even remember the guy. O.C. something. I can't even remember the guy's name or the person's name. So Chris Ruffo ran basically the book through plagiarism detection and also gave it to the guy who's known as the plagiarism detection and also gave it to like the guy

who's known as like the plagiarism hunter and this australian guy he found a bunch of evidence we can put this first element up on the screen he found you know a ton of evidence of plagiarism yeah what we'd understand is plagiarism like uh some Some of the most hilarious examples would come from John Jay. So John Jay College put out a press release about a program that they were doing. It's like a 200 or 300 word press release. And the guy or the person, the author clearly just copied and pasted the press release, dropped it into the text, and did not put it in quotes. Sometimes what happened in a lot of these examples, there was a citation, like according to John Jay College or according to whatever. You're still supposed to rewrite the words.

Yes, that's exactly right. For anybody who's ever been through a college writing class. What's crazy to me is, quote, stole long passages directly from Wikipedia. Not only assumes the online accuracy, but copies its language, quote, nearly verbatim without citing a source. That's pretty bad. That's like, as if any college freshman, you're, I wouldn't know if you would get expelled over that, but like, you're going to get it. You're going to have a problem. You're going to have a little talking to from your professor. The other bad stuff is that they noticed that a lot of the plagiarism that the book does

comes from the Wikipedia footnotes. So it's either Wikipedia itself. Yeah. And so you can just tell how the research is being done. All right. Reading here. Oh, I don't want a copy from Wikipedia. Let me click on the footnote here. I guess it's somewhat relatable, right? To anybody out there who's ever had to do it. But look, it's obviously a terrible look. And even in terms, yeah, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, like, fundamentally, substantially, like, do either of us care that a ghostwritten book was plagiarized? I think we probably don't. Like, we have probably such a low opinion of our politicians. Correct.

I mean, you and I both know the inside process. I know multiple politicians. I also, I know the people who actually wrote their books. Those are the people. I have a little bit of familiarity with the process. I literally have friends who have written politicians books. It's kind of funny. And most politicians, I don't know about most, lots of politicians don't even read. Oh yeah, absolutely. The book, let alone having had a hand in actually writing it. Now, it's still Kamala Harris's responsibility. That's true. Your name's on the thing.

She put her name on the book, and she did not put the fear of God into the ghost writer to say, don't plagiarize any of this and get me in trouble 20 years later when I'm running for president. So, therefore, she is responsible when I'm running for president. So therefore, she is responsible. I also don't care. What I do care about is the media's response to this, and particularly the New York Times, which has been the worst offender in response to it. Yeah. So notice the headline, conservative activist seizes on passages from Harris' book. So the story- Well, you know, you got to read the subhead too. Yeah. A report by Christopher Rufo says the Democratic presidential nominee copied five short passages for her 2009 book on crime. A plagiarism expert said the lapses were

not serious. So starting with the headline, what they focus on is what Chris Ruffo is doing, which isn't the point. Like, who cares what Chris Ruffo is doing? I don't care what Chris Ruffo does all day long. That's right. What's the story? It only matters if he gets something right. Right. Chris Ruffo seizes on lots of things. Should it be a headline in the New York Times every time Chris Ruffo seizes on something? Absolutely insane.

So it's already slanted to begin with. Either the Times should write an article about it or not. And if they decide to write an article about it, the article should be, is there plagiarism in the book? The subhead, which you're picking up on, to me, it's offensive. Clearly, they're trying to minimize in that subhead five short passages. So by saying five, that's already wildly wrong. Like there's a whole bunch more passages that they found. By five, they're trying to narrow it to one little thing. By short, they're trying to minimize the kind of intellectual crime committed there.

And then a plagiarism expert said the lapses were not serious. That plagiarism expert has now come under fire and has said that the New York Times only shared with them a couple of the excerpts, not all of them. And so they cannot be – they should not – they're saying, look, don't use me as a shield here. Yes. What's so stupid about it, we had a joke back in my Daily Caller days about any time that we would report something, the headline would just be conservatives pounce on X, Y, and Z. It'd be like conservative pounce on Harris plagiarism accusations. Whereas, let's say it came from where you used to work at the Huffington Post. They'd be like, HuffPo reveals Harris plagiarism. And it's like, look, it's a very subtle form of media-like bias, but it's also a little bit ridiculous because as you just said, Ryan, you and I work in the news business.

The headline here is Harris plagiarism revealed in 2009 book. And then you cite where it came from. You can even add all this BS about some plagiarism export who said it's not that bad. Fine. All of that is color and you should be filling out the rest of your paragraphs. But at a very basic level, it's just very telling that their news judgment is conservative activist seizes on passages from Harris book. It's like out of a meme of what the actual thing is. And then if you read that subhead, it says, copied five short passages for a 2009 book, a plagiarism expert said the lapses were not serious. So what do you take away from it? It's a conservative hit piece, and it's actually

not that bad. How many people actually read the story? Very few. So the headline, the subhead, you know, in the news business, that's just kind of how it works, is all designed to convey fundamentally a partisan message in what is supposed to be a news story. That's the problem. That's media bias in a nutshell. That's how it works. But if you read the story, even, they continue to sort of basically play defense for Harris. Like they said, the passages called into question by Mr. Ruffo on his Substack platform, which is a little dig. Yeah, Substack. Yeah. There you go. I like that. Love it. Involve about 500 words in the approximately 65,000 word, 200 page book. So what they're trying to say is like, it's tiny. Don't, don't worry about it now. Like we're up to like a dozen or so. It's like the five isn't even, even right. Uh, 500 words of plagiarism is

that's several pages. Like that's an action. It's like, it's like a decent amount of plagiarism is, that's several pages. Like that's an action. It's like, it's like a decent amount of plagiarism. And then they say, um, then they say that she wrote the book with another author, uh, fair. That's, that's like, that's her best defense. Um, and in a review of the book, the times found that none of the passages in question took the ideas or thoughts of another writer, which is considered the most serious form of plagiarism. Instead, the sentences, copy descriptions of programs or statistical information that appear elsewhere. So, okay, fine. Yeah. But just say that. Instead of this relentless kind of minimizing and defense of it, or just don't write the article. I don't understand why the New York Times feels like they have to write. I guess they felt like there's under so much pressure,

they have to write the article. Yeah. But then... No, I agree with you. Why even cover it? That's just news judgment at that point. They had three reporters on the byline. One of them is the college.

Look, at a structural level, it's kind of sad because you have the college and university journalist, correspondent for the New York Times, who is now underplaying plagiarism. So is that really who you want, covering college and university issues? This is why they shoot themselves in the foot when they try and go in some half direction and why everyone is better off with just straight up news from these outlets. Just report it. But as you just said, most Democrats are just going to ignore it. It will be a talking point by Trump or J.D. Vance. But at the end of the day, is the

election going to turn on this? No. I mean, I don't know. I mean, it is like sometimes when you think about it, Biden's 1988 campaign was sunk on plagiarism accusations from when was it his law school days or something? No. Well, I forget. It was even better. Yeah. So he was plagiarizing his stump speech. That's what it was. And his bio. Yes. That's why it was so damning. It was this Neil Kinnock, the Scottish populist politician. And Biden stole the Scottish politician's backstory. There were a couple of times where Biden accidentally said that his family had been working these hills for thousands of years. It's like, wait a minute, hold on. We're pretty sure, pretty sure that, or maybe it was hundreds of years. Whatever it was, it was hilariously impossible for this Irishman to talk about Scranton that way. That's incredible.

Or Delaware. Like, you haven't been there for that long. Then it turned out that he cheated in college and lied and plagiarized. So it was about a pattern. Fair enough. Yeah, but it was his stump speech and his bio. If it wasn't, it's like, okay, you plagiarize how John Jay describes a program. That's funny.

You plagiarize somebody else's bio and apply it to yourself. No, that's absolutely right. Hilariously ridiculous. But for me, the New York Times should just take the L. The Times, you didn't plagiarize. Yeah, exactly. It's not an L because you're't do it. She did it. Because you're not supposed to be on a team. She didn't. You're just supposed to cover their campaign. It's dumb.

Her co-author screwed up. She never read the book. Rufo caught him. Yeah. You got him. Dead to rights. It's over. Just write the story and move on. Now you extend it and you make it actually interesting to people like me. Yes, who are like, wait, why are you incapable of saying, yes, this is obviously dangerous.

And then the right, which is already skeptical of the New York Times. And while we're on this, control rooms, I think it's D6. Oh, yeah. Can you pull that over, guys, please? Which is actually more relevant to this block. So the Times is involved in this other kind of scandal here, which is a completely manufactured scandal. 65 doctors who have served time at medical facilities in Gaza saying that they have observed a pattern of the IDF sniping children in the heart and in the head. And they included three x-rays, CAT scans that immediately sleuths on Twitter used their armchair expertise to say

were incorrect. The Times then reinvestigated everything that they'd been given by these doctors and put out a very strong statement that said, we checked the metadata. We gave these x-rays and CAT scans to new independent doctors. We also have photos of these children in question that match the CAT scans. We are not publishing the photos because the photos are too gruesome of these children. And also, people forgot. People were were like a bullet hitting a head, it would have shattered the skull all over the place. It's like, these are children who lived, like that's why they're in the hospital. So like stop with your armchair. Oh, I did see some of this. There was some like, listen, I never know. I don't know enough about

ballistics or bullets or any of this other stuff to get involved. Yeah. I'm like, I don't know, maybe. I saw somebody who was like, oh, it doesn't comport. Maybe, you know, doctor says this and that. And then, you know, I saw that and I'm like, okay, well, another doctor, a bunch of the people who signed it were like, no, this is actually a systematic thing. I was assuming to get published in the times that there was some level of due diligence, especially for something like this, right? Which you know is going to ignite a firestorm. And then they came out and were like, no, we think it's true. Yeah, and so what's interesting to me about this is who the Times feels compelled to respond to.

So for whatever reason, they felt the need to write this weird story about the plagiarism allegations and then write it in the way that they did. Then when it comes to some Twitter cranks who were calling into question this article that they thoroughly vetted, they feel the need to do a quick independent investigation. I see what you're saying. Basically pro-Israel lobby. Yeah, exactly. Pro-Israel lobby comes at them. They feel the need that they better defend their stuff. And immediately they're out with this very thorough statement. You know what? Good for them. But I wish they would do that all the time. I see what you're saying. With their infamous

screams without words investigation that came out December 28th of last year, which was alleging that they had uncovered systematic use of sexual violence by Hamas on October 7th. Extraordinary claim. Within hours, people were casting doubt on that and finding that people in the story had contradicted themselves in previous ways. Within days, there were articles written about that report. They didn't feel the

need to respond to that at all. It was only until months later, you know, when The Intercept came in and did a much more thorough, not more thorough, but like did our own investigation and eventually got a spokesperson for one of the Kibbutz team on the record that then like, okay, and they gently update their piece to say, okay, this part isn't true. Just incredible. But it felt no need to respond the same way that they did to these Twitter cranks who were doing trutherism around CAT scans. So just New York Times is such a mess is the point. Well said, Ryan.

All right. Thank you guys for watching. Thank you for having me, Ryan. I enjoyed being here. It was fun. Thank you. You watching. Thank you for having me, Ryan. I enjoyed being here. It was fun. Thank you. You guys are going to do a great job as your client. And I'm not leaving this seat when Emily gets back.

Okay. Hey, Crystal and I switched sides. People freaked out about it. Honestly, get over yourselves, okay? Sometimes it's more comfortable. Sometimes it's fun. Maybe we'll switch sides again. You know, do whatever we want around here.

We sit where we want. Yeah, exactly. What's the point of being your own boss if you can't do it? That's the whole point. All right, guys. Love you. Appreciate of being your own boss if you can't do it? That's the whole point. All right, guys. Love you. Appreciate you. And I will see you all tomorrow.

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