Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/22/24: Trump's Win Or Lose Issue, Voters Repelled By Democracy Pitch, Jon Stewart Confronts Walz, Arab Americans Back Trump

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump's key issue to win, voters repelled by 'democracy' pitch, Jon Stewart confronts Walz on Cheney, Arab Americans backing Trump.   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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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. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do.

Of course, we're going to lead the show once again with new polling data. Yesterday, we had a bunch of polls that looked pretty good for Trump. Today, it's a little bit of a different picture and interesting commentary from Harry Anton. So we'll take a look at that. We also have an exclusive from the Center for Working Class Politics. They have some new polling that really breaks down how the working class is thinking about this election in the state of Pennsylvania specifically. Really, really recommend this segment to you. We actually recorded it yesterday, so I already know it's going to be fantastic. So you definitely want to tune in for that.

Interesting from Jon Stewart, he confronted Tim Walz over their whole Liz and Dick Cheney strategy. It was glorious. Yeah, so we'll talk to you about that. Also, we're taking a look at Polymarket, which has been really championed by a lot of Republicans, which has shown Trump surging for a while now, could potentially be rigged. So we'll dig into those details. We've also got some new allegations we wanted to cover about Diddy, two other unnamed celebrities also named in this, or we don't have specific names, but also alleged to have been involved in this criminal activity. And we're taking a look at Theo Vaughn choking up over thinking about what is being done to Gaza's children. And CNN, in the running now for perhaps the worst article

written about this, I mean, it's just unimaginably bad. You won't even believe it. I actually couldn't believe that it was real until I read it. So there you go. Same. Yeah, I pulled it up. I was like, this can't be right. There's like, there's no way. Anyway, but you know, they never stoop to new lows. So anyway, thank you so, so much to our premium subscribers who've been signing up. You guys got access to that exclusive Logan interview yesterday. We're down the wire here. It is officially two weeks now to election day, which is incredible. Go ahead and sign up at BreakingPoints.com, become a premium subscriber, because you're going to get access to our exclusive election predictions and all of that first before they go public.

So go ahead, take advantage, BreakingPoints.com, and you'll see it there. Now, as Crystal said, we've got polls really all over the map. One, so we're going to point in a couple of different directions, both into where the polling error might be and to where some potential good bullish news for Kamala might be. Here, Harry Enten has aggregated a bunch of polls and is starting to look at white working class support for Donald Trump and where even though he is winning by not winning as much, could potentially lose those blue wall states. Here's what he had to say. We've seen so many groups this year moving in Donald Trump's direction. So you would think his core group, his base of support would be doing

the same. But in fact, it's moving a little bit away from him. So this is Trump's march with non-college white voters. Unlike most voting blocs, this group is not moving towards him. It's actually moving slightly away. So you go back eight years ago, he won him by 33. You go back four years ago, he won him by 31. Now what we look is we see that in the latest average of polls, he's only up by 27. Now that may not seem like a lot, but given that we're seeing these double digit gains, say among black voters or among Hispanic voters in some of the polls, the fact that we're seeing this core group of supporters actually moving away from him, not just off of the 2016 baseline, but the 2020 baseline as well. I think that's a rather interesting development. Shrinkage. Yes.

Look at this. Non-college white voters make up 40 percent of the electorate. That's more than college whites at 29 percent. All other groups, voters of color at 28%. So this is something that we've seen throughout the board, right, which is that Donald Trump is making huge gains with groups that make up a smaller percentage of the electorate while he's losing a little bit, but these groups that he's losing a little bit of make up a much larger portion of the electorate. But more than that, you know, we're talking about the US of A where they make up 40%.

Why don't you go to those key Great Lake battleground states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin? They have outsized import in those Great Lake battleground states. Non-college white voters, look at this. They make up the slim majority of voters at 51 percent, way more than college whites at 30 percent, way more than all other voters at 16 percent. So if you're seeing movement in the Great Lake Battleground states among non-college whites, that could be a very big development, John. That is the key point, is that if there is movement there, even if it's just a little bit, because there are so many non-college whites, and specifically so many non-college whites in those blue wall states, it is a problem. I always try and remind people, the median voter in the United States is a 50-year-old

white dude and or woman who did not go to college. So that is the whole ballgame. That's where everything is. Now, the reason we laid that out is because that could either be two things. One, genuine movement, or it could be the source of polling myths, just like it was in 2016. So Amy Walter over at Cook Political put this out, let's put this on the screen, please. She says, I've been thinking about this a lot. If there is a surprise on election night, it is that Trump does better among white non-college than polls suggest, which would likely flip the blue wall. So this really is a choose your own adventure of where things are because it really, I mean, if that, if what Harry laid out is accurate, Trump very well could

lose. Because look, yeah, it's great to be up by 10% amongst black voters. But Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, yeah, there's some black people, not a lot. There's way more whites. So if they even move a little bit in the common law direction, boom, he's gonna lose. Men, if we think about it in terms of of a miss i don't know i gotta be honest my bias is in the missed territory like what evidence do we have that these non-college educated whites are not going more in the trump direction white college you know we can talk about that yeah all day long i guess the only uh answer would be that these would be women who are voting on the issue of abortion that's the only way I could see this

theory playing out. Well, I think the other evidence for it is the fact that he did actually lose a couple points among white non-college educated voters between 2016 and 2020. Right. So if that's the trend line and that has continued, and perhaps as you're pointing out, been exacerbated by Roe versus Wade among women, Wouldn't it be crazy if the story of this election is that Donald Trump picks up significant ground with black and brown voters and loses the election because- It was kind of the story of 2020. Of white voters. It was kind of the story of 2020. Yeah, and actually a little bit, so it would not be that shocking. And we all have to check our

kind of biases and caricatures of different electorates at the door. This idea that the white working class is just like mindlessly in support of Trump and that's that is, you know, as caricaturish as views of other demographic groups. However, to your point, Sagar, I was reading, you know, I'm just like reading every bit of data analysis that I possibly can about what direction the polls may move in and how they may be off, etc., etc. Nate Cohn has a new analysis out at the New York Times of two different theories of the polling misses from 2016 and 2020 and then what happened in 2022. One of them is what he calls the unified theory of polling miss, which is effectively that when Trump's on the ballot and he's driving super high turnout and all these infrequent voters come out,

it's just impossible for pollsters to be able to really get an accurate portrait of the electorate. White, not in college educated voters would be an important part of that. You just, even when you're correcting for, you know, education levels and trying to adjust as best you can, you just can't get people who have not voted in the past, who are not all that politically engaged, on the phone to accurately reflect in your survey. And those people tend to go more for Donald Trump than other candidates. If that's the reason for the polling miss in 2016 and 2020, then that would indicate that the polls are probably, once again, understating Donald Trump's support. Very possible. The other explanation is, I think he calls it like the patchwork theory,

where the idea goes that in 2016, the myth was because you didn't have pollsters waiting in education. That clearly was a big problem for them. Once you waited in education after the fact, that really made those polls a lot more accurate. So that's what happened in 2016. And then in 2020, you had the pandemic and this concept of like white liberals, college educated liberals at home, bored, isolated. You had a partisan difference between how people responded to the pandemic. And there's significant evidence that that is the reason for a significant part of the miss in 2020. So if that's the case, then that was kind of a one-off.

Pollsters have adjusted. It's possible, because you saw in 2022 the miss go the other way, that some of the ways that the pollsters have adjusted could even be overstating Trump's support this time around. So those are two of the possibilities of what's going on. And of course, the third possibility is that it's something else entirely that could create God knows what in terms of polling error this time around. And obviously, with the polls as close as they've been, the polls could be accurate within the margin of error and still completely miss a sweep for Trump or a sweep for Kamala. And, you know, I think any of these scenarios

is really plausible. Absolutely. Let's put that on the screen just again to put give it out there and what it all looks like. So here you have this was Washington Post amongst likely voters, and they went state by state. Georgia, they have it Harris 51-47. Keep in mind, that's pretty different from a lot of the other stuff I've seen. Wisconsin, they had it 50-47 for Harris. Michigan, 49-47. Pennsylvania, 49-47. Nevada, 48-48 tied. So they actually have Nevada more tied. North Carolina, they had Trump up by three. Arizona, they had it 49-46. I would say that's in general a pretty bullish poll right there for Kamala. Definitely, yeah.

Just in general across the map. How much is it real? When you add it to the averages, it kind of nets out a little bit. That's what we saw in terms of the Nate Silver analysis that I looked at just yesterday where he incorporated those in. But what he keeps talking about is a tightening of the nationals and a tightening of the national in general, not really good for her. So it really, like you said, in terms of the choose your own adventure for where the polling miss and all of that will look like, let's put these up there because these are potentially a little bit more useful when it's not about candidates and instead it's about views of the economy. So when we look at the overall view of the economy, there has been a

significant rise from October 2023 to October 2024 of whether the economy is good or bad. Now, keep in mind, it's only 38%, 62%. So 62% of people still say it's bad. It used to be 73. Amongst Democrats, it's actually a majority, 61% of the economy is good, 39% of the economy is bad. Independent, though, that's a troubling number for her because you've got independents only 28% saying the economy is good, 72% bad, and then 13% Republicans saying good, 85% bad. So, again, there has been major movement from where things were, let's say, in October 2021, October 2023. But in 2024, in general, it does look like the independents are much more coalescing around the idea that the economy is, or the independents specifically, are still staying in the economy as bad. Now, of course, there has been some movement. Yeah. That does raise the question, though. Also worth pointing out that in October 2022,

just before the midterms, when Democrats did pretty well, views of the economy were significantly worse than they are now. So yeah, it's a- The corollary to this is you have to believe for this to be impactful, that this will be an economy election. And look, we have very recent evidence to say

that that is not the case. Let's go to the next place because that's where things could get a little bit more interesting. So I'll just read here the division on whether Harris or Trump is trusted to handle many issues. And this is going to explain a lot of why different campaigns are doing what they are doing. So right now, abortion policy is the single best issue for Kamala Harris. 51% say they trust Kamala. Only 28% say Trump. Some 13% say neither. Election integrity, aka stop the steal, you've got 48% there for Kamala, only 28% for Trump. Climate change,

you have 47% for Kamala, 21% for Trump. But now this is where things are starting to get interesting. Taxes on the middle class, here you have Kamala actually edging Trump out. You have 46-36. Natural disaster relief, 44-33. Jobs and unemployment. This was the most interesting one of all of them. This is effectively a net tie. It has 43% Kamala, 41% for Donald Trump. That was traditionally one of his strongest issues. On the cost of housing, they have 42% Kamala, 37% Trump. We're going to do a story on Thursday about that and the Sunbelt, how that's informing a lot of things. Here we see some Trump edge, cost of groceries and gas, 40% for Harris, 42% for Trump. Immigration, one of Kamala's worst issues, 37%, 45% for Trump.

And then actually this might be the most interesting. We're going to talk a lot about this in a little bit. Situation in the Middle East, only 35% Kamala, 39% Trump. To be fair, there's a big neither category there, but it is the worst category actually for Kamala Harris in that entire thing. Now, a lot of people, I would say the vast, vast majority of Americans are not going to vote, quote, on the situation in the Middle East. But there could be enough, and we're going to talk to you about those swing state undecided voters, who those people are. To to them it matters a lot. And for them, their views on Gaza are very important to that situation

in the Middle East question, which is super interesting from the survey analysis that we've been looking at. Yeah, well, we've been talking about, yesterday we covered, for premiums in this little post later in the week, for everybody, the way that these campaigns have shifted their ad dollars down the stretch. The Kamala Harris team is really pouring their money in two buckets. One is a contrast message on taxes, saying Trump is for the billionaires, we're gonna cut taxes for the middle class, for the working class. And if this poll is to be believed, it seems like that relentless messaging regarding taxes and economic issues is paying off for Kamala Harris because she's closed that gap and in certain instances is even beating Trump on things like cost of housing and other, you know, who's going to be better for taxes on the middle class, et cetera. Meanwhile, you see Trump really leaning into cultural issues in particular,

running huge amounts, dollar amounts of ads on trans issues specifically. And, you know, it's fascinating to me because I think the two campaigns have very different theories about who they can still persuade, who they can still turn out. But I will say, you know,

if the shoe was on the other foot and it was Democrats who were just like running obsessively on some sort of like niche culture war issue, I would be like, what is wrong with you? Like, what the hell are you doing? And so I do think there's a risk for Trump that he basically seeds the economic messaging and economic landscape to Kamala because he's so fixated on this one cultural issue that, you know, the Republicans really tried to run on a similar landscape back in 2022 without much success. I'll flip it around and I'll just say the only I think the case for it, I've increasingly been thinking about, like, why? Like, what's the purpose? Especially when I pair with the podcast strategy, is what? This is a men's thing.

It's mostly, if we're all being honest, it's mostly men who are really into the whole trans debate. I would count myself in that category. For some reason, it pisses me off a lot more than my wife, right? Or anybody else. There's probably deep psychological reasons and all that for that, but we'll put that all to the side. And we'll just say, if I had to guess, that's probably why. And if you specifically think about the internet, internet politics, and all that, trans is one of the biggest issues that is out there. I'm talking internet specifically. Yeah, this is like the Rogan sphere. Yeah, but I mean, clearly they are betting on that, no? And so actually, for example, we don't have time for this because it literally just came out, but the massive gender gap I'm looking at right now. So the final AJC, what is that, Atlanta Journal Constitutional Poll, just came out of Georgia. It literally just dropped a few minutes ago.

And they have a Trump plus 31 among men and Harris plus 18 women. So that's a 50-point spread between the two candidates. The biggest gap in gender in the history of the AJC poll. And they have some undecideds mostly amongst black men, actually, if you look at it. So you've got 17.6% of the black voters there in the AJC poll that are completely undecided. And I mean, that's, look, you can look at a couple of ways. I would say that's generally bad for Kamala Harris. And so, I mean, look, it doesn't take a genius to look at some crosstabs about how black Democrats specifically have always been very culturally out of step with the way that the National Democratic Party and elites are. And so that's the context where I

think it does make sense. And actually, now that we put this, we're about to show a clip here. Trump was talking about this issue actually in a black barbershop in the Bronx. That really could be why. Let's take a listen to that. This was from a couple of days ago. So Mr. President, I have a five-year-old son that's in public schools right now. I have a lot of people asking me questions as far as the failing school systems that we have here in the Bronx. What are we going to do to improve that in our school systems? Well, we're moving them back from Washington, where you have people that don't care about New York, frankly. You know, in Washington, I don't know if you ever noticed, you've got Department of Education, Department of Education.

You've got half the buildings in Department of Education. I never saw. You don't need any of them. You know, I want one person and a secretary to just make sure they're teaching English, okay? Give it a little English, okay? I say reading, writing, and arithmetic. No transgender, no operations. You know, they take your kid.

There are some places your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl. Okay? Without parental consent. What is that all about? That's like, that's when they talk about a threat to democracy, they're a threat. Could you imagine without parental consent? At first, when I was told that was actually happening, I said, you know, it's an exaggeration. No, it happens. So, yeah, I think that I, in the context of all that, I think it's what makes the most sense. I

could be wrong, right? I mean, at the same time, we've seen some pressure from some swing state Democrats to respond to this. Sherrod Brown was getting hit by it hard by Bernie Moreno. He felt the need to respond and be like, no, I don't believe we should have men in women's sports. Colin Allred in the state of Texas had a similar thing. That's a little bit different because it's Texas. But I took the brown one to be a lot more noteworthy to me because it's a genuine, like already in a red-ish state. Clearly, he felt the need that he needs to respond, even though some of his internal polls have him up by six. Moreno thinks he's up by two. Clearly, it's a bit of a toss-up over there. So I don't know. I have no idea. It could be like 2022, or it actually could be genuinely impactful. I mean, I don't know.

I'm just trying to put the shoe on the other foot. Like if Kamala got asked a question about failing schools where clearly the context of the question is not about like gender ideology. It's about, hey, my kids aren't getting the education that is preparing them for success in the world. And she pivoted to talk about like transgender bathrooms or something. I would be like, what is wrong with you? Like that is an insane direction to take this in. And you are not at all meeting this voter where they are. You are not at all responding to the concerns there. And so I don't know. I know they're putting a lot of stock into the podcast strategy and maybe it'll

pay off, you know, especially because in a presidential election, turnout is going to be high. You are going to have some people who are less frequent voters. But I just have to look back at the candidates who have been like the big podcast world candidates before, and every one of them has failed. I mean, DeSantis was big in the podcast world. Vivek Ramaswamy, big in the podcast world. Tulsi Gabbard, big in the podcast world. Andrew Yang, big in the podcast world. And I just haven't seen evidence that that is a group of people who is really turning out to vote, that is really, you know, a coalition of political power. And so I'm skeptical. And I would be skeptical, like I said, if I saw Democrats leaning into like

a niche culture war issue when you have so many undecided voters who can, I mean, the overwhelmingly voters, men, women, etc. Say the economy is my number one issue. That is what I care the most about. And you see these issue numbers where Trump, who's always dominated on who you trust to handle the economy, is slipping and slipping and slipping and losing ground to Kamala Harris, even at a time when she's part of the administration and people are upset about the economy. To me, it seems like a missed opportunity for him to really focus in on those bread and butter issues and relentlessly remind people of like, weren't things better under my administration? I'm going to deliver for you. Lean into some of the things that he's proposed, you know, the no taxes on tips and other of his policy. I know the Social Security thing is a little bit of a mess because it would probably

bankrupt the fund and people would end up with cuts to their benefits. But some of these things sound really good and sound populist that he could lean into that he'll just like throw out once and then you never hear about again. Look, I don't disagree. I would like for things to be that way. People say they vote on the economy. What happened in 2022? People say that they vote on X, Y, and Z. They don't do that. I mean, it's just in terms of what really drives people out. It is an alchemist story. Yeah, but it seems like in 2020, I mean, I do think that's part of why Trump was able to outperform. Now, he still lost. Yeah. But he made up ground. I mean, that's a big part of why those Latino voters in the Rio Grande Valley, for example, were like, you know, I got a check with his name on it and that seemed pretty cool to me.

They say that, but then what are the candidates who have run after Trump, who have won in that valley, run on? They didn't run on the economy. They ran on immigration. They ran on culture. So what's the truth? It's one of those where, and look, I'm not putting people down. I get it. I don't really know why I vote. I don't really know why a lot of people vote. But in terms of self-identification, I mean, any psychologist will tell you this. Anybody who's like, this is why I did X, Y, and Z, it's very rarely the answer. It's probably more interesting to say this is why they think they did it. But the truth is, is if you look at the performance, a lot of those places, most of it is on culture and on immigration. So I've really come to that.

If you look at California, if you look at the movement in New York, California, and elsewhere, specifically amongst Latino voters and others, sure, economy is a big part of it. But theory of the economy and kind of culture around like how people even talk about certain issues seems equally as important in terms of orientation as well. So like when I look at that Georgia number and I'm looking at a 52 point spread between men and women, that's not economic. I mean, sure, it's part of it, but it's a lot of it is theory. I mean, it gets to the bar to stall the conservative theory I put out before about a very libertarian, like, let me do whatever I want to do. I mean, that's a frontier mindset. It's baked into the American story. I

think that is probably what captures it more than anything. But I mean, if you really look at like the nitty gritty of like people who are like talking about like the school issue, the guy, again, no offense, but you live in the Bronx. That's a New York, that is a New York local and state issue over 90%. The Department of Education, probably the only thing they can really affect is funding and actually, yeah, Title IX or whatever, trans stuff. That's about it if you really want to look at it. So in terms of what they're thinking and how they're going to the ballot box, there's a lot. Culture just seems to be ruling the day. But we saw in 2022, they ran a lot of this stuff and it didn't work.

Yeah, I agree because abortion was huge. But that's a counter, that's almost a confirmation of what I'm saying. The economy could be terrible in 2022, which objectively it was. And people, independents, all came out for Democrats on the issue of abortion. They're trying to recreate that magic around. This time, again, if I had to guess, it really is to try and widen the gender gap as much as possible. I'm sure that is their theory. I just think it's a bad theory. I just think that it's, you know, it's sort of, it failed in 2022, not only at the like, you know, federal level, but there was a whole conservative effort to stack a bunch of school boards with people who were super anti-trans. And that didn't really, that didn't succeed either. Even when you were talking just about the local level.

They had a lot of high-profile failures in trying to stack these school boards as well. So even within the Republican primary context, up until recently, Donald Trump wasn't really talking about these issues. We noted that he really wasn't talking much about these issues. It was Ron DeSantis and others who leaned into it super hard. And even in a Republican primary context, it didn't end up winning the day. So I'm just skeptical. I think his strongest issue has always been the economy. And that he's letting her get an edge on that issue, I think, creates a real vulnerability for him with people who are late deciders, who are not super politically engaged, who are just, you know, may have some fond memories of the Trump administration in that

era for them economically. And it seems to me like he's not doing what he should to capitalize on it. And like I said, I just know if it was the Democrats running the same strategy, I would be like, you're idiots. Like, what is wrong with you? Talk to voters about the things they actually care about. You know, if you ask voters their list of top issues, this doesn't rank anywhere in them. And just to go back really quick to, the question itself, you know, I get that obviously most of the school decisions are, you know, state and local funding issues. But what this person's really asking about is like, how is my kid going to fare in this world? And if you're an effective politician, like you don't necessarily respond directly to a question that doesn't totally make sense in

the federal context. What you want to speak to is what their hopes and fears that are being expressed in that question. And I don't think that, I don't think Trump met that moment, not to make too much of it. Well, we'll see. If he loses, you'll be right. Okay. So, but if the gender gap is what I think it's going to be, and this certainly could be a part of it. And if, especially if that, what we talked about at the very top of our show, if those white college, or if those white non-collegiate numbers do end up being incorrect, then, I mean, clearly they had a theory and I think it was mostly the right one, especially if they can run up the scoreboard for the popular vote, come within a point, maybe even 1.5 votes

or 1.5% of Kamala Harris, and then run it all the way up in all swing states. That's going to be very impactful for what that looks like. Okay. As you just said, Matt Karp joined us from, what is it? The Center of Working Class Politics? Center for Working Class Politics. He's also a professor at Princeton University and contributor, editor, something like that to Jacobin Magazine. They did an in-depth survey of voters in the state of Pennsylvania and really through a class lens. So they broke down the electorate into not just college and non-college, but also different economic income ranges and different occupations. So you could see which parts of the working class are going towards Donald Trump, which parts are going toward Kamala Harris. And then they tested a range of different potential messages from the Harris

camp, some of which have been tried in various forms by the Harris camp, and then a couple that were sort of their formulation of how she could ramp things up on the economic front to see which were most resonant with which groups of voters. Super fascinating results, so let's go ahead and get to 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. 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

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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 Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States.

Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first

black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Very excited to be joined this morning by a great longtime friend of the show, Matt Karp, who is with the Center for Working Class Politics and has some extraordinarily interesting new polling data to share with us. Matt, great to see you. Good to see you, man.

Yeah, happy to be here, guys. All right, so tell us what you are up to in the state of Pennsylvania in particular. Yeah, so I mean, just zooming out nationally for a second first, Kamala Harris is struggling with working class voters by the most sort of commonly available metric, voters who don't have college degrees. She's down 10, 11 points, double digits. In Pennsylvania specifically, she's down between seven and as many as 18 points, a Times survey found last month. This is the constituency that she's most struggling to close the deal with. Biden, remember, lost this group only by two to four points in 2020. He made up some ground with

working class voters, with voters without college degrees from Hillary in 2016. So Kamala has drawn even with Trump in the polls, but she's still really behind with these working class voters. And so we ran a study in Pennsylvania and it was a regular poll and it showed, you know, like every other poll, a neck and neck race there. It showed Kamala, you know, and Trump close on with lots of demographic groups. But we ran something a little different alongside that poll. And we wanted to look at essentially the different kinds of messages that the Harris campaign is putting out alongside a couple other sort of hypothetical messages that the campaign could put out. So we ran messages on sort of a moderate opportunity economy message

that she's been hitting a lot in her rhetoric. We ran a message focused on abortion and Roe v. Wade. We ran a message based on the sort of Trump as a threat to democracy, who's going to cancel the Constitution. We ran about five different sort of versions of Kamala messages. And then we ran two messages that we'd written that were not, you know,

maybe not the sort of Bernie Sanders message I would dream up, you know, underneath my pillow every night. But they are stronger, tougher messages talking about Washington as run by billionaires, about needing to stand up to the corporations and price gouging. Some things that she said, but a lot stronger in tone on the populist sample that we ran. And then we ran a more progressive economic message that married that populist tone to some policy hits like expanding Medicare, guaranteeing a job, ending offshoring, etc. You know, stuff, again, stuff that's in her ballpark, but a little bit

more aggressive than what she's done. And yeah, and the results showed that, you know, with Pennsylvania voters, and specifically with independent voters and with working class voters by a variety of measures that these, that the populist and the sort of economic focus message were the messages, the things she's not saying essentially performed a lot stronger than the things she has been saying. And while you're talking, Matt, let me go ahead and put those up on the screen while you continue to explain this, because I do think we have this chart that we can show of how the messaging performed vis-a-vis Trump. Totally. Yeah, so I mean, this is just a crude graph. We're still waiting to get the final

report together. That should come out very shortly. But essentially, you can see that this populist message, which complained that billionaires are getting richer, we need to stand up to the big corporations and the politicians in Washington that serve them, that didn't really focus in the way that Democrats often do just on essentially populism as a partisan issue, you know, the Republicans and their rich friends, but actually sort of named the enemy as all big corporations and billionaires and didn't put it in as just the billionaires on the other side, unlike our billionaires, in parenthesis. And that message really outperformed every other one in the bag.

The second strongest message was the one that said expand Medicare, add paid leave and affordable child care, stop price gouging, stop offshoring. They kind of threw some sort of policy goodies in the works alongside some of the populism. And we were surprised to some extent, not only that it outperformed the sort of the democratic threat, you know, democracy under siege, we need to save the constitution message. But it also outperformed abortion, which, you know, is conventionally understood as the Democrats' strongest playing card.

Well, let's go to the next one. Can we put the next graphic, please, up on the screen about the favorability rating? So you have there from the strong populace, how it outperformed everything from even progressive economics, moderate economics, soft, etc. The Democratic threat message being the one that there's been a lot of Kamala messaging on, but you haven't even necessarily seen, you don't see it actually playing out. Even more interesting, you have it amongst independents. Can we put the next one, please, on the screen? Because that arguably could be the most important. And you saw the same thing here where the economics, strong populism message, both of those two were really important for independents as opposed to any of the other stuff that they were testing. Yeah, this is favorability. So this is essentially like we,

just to clarify how the study worked, we didn't just sort of put the messages in front of our sample of voters as independent items. We actually put them in a head-to-head against, under essentially Kamala, under Kamala Harris's name, with Kamala Harris's characteristics, simulating a kind of ballot box scenario. And then we put Trump, and we put the message against Trump, and we wrote a series of Trump messages also, like the Harris messages, drawn from his own rhetoric. And so we have not just how much do they like the message, which you saw there,

and you can see that Pennsylvania voters, especially the independent voters, were drawn toward the populist and the progressive messages, but they actually outperformed the Trump messages. So with independence, the populism message beat the Trump message by eight points. The abortion message only won by three, and the democracy message lost by one. That's with overall voters. With independence, which is a tougher crowd, the populist and progressive economic message is won by about three. And the abortion and democracy message is actually lost to Trump messages by six and

by eight or nine points. So with that real swing voter demographic, we saw significant splits, the difference between winning and losing. Let's take a look also at G4. This is how blue collar voters respond to these various messages. Again, I mean, it's kind of a similar landscape. Only here, the strong populism comes first, but then the moderate economic message, the whole opportunity economy framing, which I kind of hate, but they apparently like pretty

well. At the Latlan second, progressive economics land third. Put G5 on the screen also because this looks at non-college educated workers. So blue collar workers was the last one. These are workers who have high school degree or less strong populism wins, then progressive economics, then moderate economics. I have to tell you, Matt, like the thing that makes me most skeptical of these results is just how closely it hews to my own preferred view of the world. I have to sort of check myself. And I have to go back and say, when we were going into 2022, and I, like many others, thought there was going to be a red wave, it's because Democrats were not talking about any of this stuff at all. At least Kamala has sometimes talked about price gouging.

She is running ads saying that Trump is for the billionaires and I'm for you. In 2022, they really didn't do any of that. It was all democracy and abortion. And guess what? It worked pretty well. So, you know, is it possible that even though when you test these messages, like sort of the overall numbers are yes, they favor the economic message, maybe the abortion message is super motivating for people to turn out. And even though it's not the preferred message over all of them, it's the one that is the most intensely felt among a key demographic group. Like how else do we explain what happened in 2022 when there was basically no economic messaging and the state of the economy was quite significantly worse than it is right now at this point in time.

Yeah, what troubles me there, because I hear you, Crystal, and I feel the same way about like, wow, this is exactly what my prior said, that there must be something wrong with the survey. But look, what actually troubles me about the 2022 analogy is that this is a different electorate. I mean, you have the midterm turnout is 50 percent or in a good year, like low 50s. I forget what it was in 2022, but it was between 50 and 55 percent. In a presidential year, the turnout is less. Last time it was over 65 percent. Maybe it's going to drop this year. I mean, in some ways, Democrats may be hoping it does.

But you have a broader electorate. You have a sort of a less reliably, less motivated electorate in terms of hardcore partisans on both sides. And yeah, I think abortion and democracy do bring out the Democratic base. You saw, you know, looking into the weeds of our polls, you saw essentially with professional class voters, because we did a, we broke down the data not just by education levels, which is the most common proxy for class, and I'll defend that as a way of thinking about class crudely. But we also looked at occupation. And so, yeah, you saw the blue-collar numbers.

And we could contrast that with professional class voters, that is voters in credential jobs. And professional class voters liked every message. They actually liked the populist messages too, but they liked the abortion democracy message. It was all between plus four and plus seven points. They're all in for the Democrats no matter what. The question is, what about these disproportionately working class, lower propensity voters in places like Pennsylvania? What are they coming out to support or potentially not coming out to oppose? What's going to bring them out?

What's going to motivate them or have them lean one direction or another? And yeah, we found, so again, with a blue collar group, that's defined by occupation. And it's one of the two working class groups we tested. We also tested sort of service clerical workers, which we consider broadly working class also. And that's the sort of essentially the Democratic working class and the Republican working class right now. The blue collar group, manual workers, they're plus 19 Trump. But even they were in positive territory on the populist message and close to positive on the progressive economic message, whereas the democracy message, they were minus 14 or something. So it's really, I really worry that she's preaching,

you know, when she's at these rallies in Erie, PA, and she's got Trump on the jumbotron, and she's talking about how unacceptable he is and how he's going to cancel Roe v. Wade and oppose the Constitution. She's, that's, a large number of voters are eating that up enough to win in 2022. Maybe, look, it's all close. Maybe it's enough in 2024. Personally, I hope so. But I don't think this is the most effective way to win the swing voters, the working class voters right now in these swing states. Well, you've got the data to back it up and luckily we'll find out, right?

Matt, I wanted to ask you one more question because you mentioned something that I think is interesting. You made this distinction between like the Democratic working class and the Republican working class. Because in addition to testing these messages, you did test these different class groups and you got down to a much more granular level than I've seen in any other poll in terms of which class groups just based on income level are supporting which party and based on occupation, which was also super fascinating. Can you talk a little bit about that and some of the cleavages even within what we might define broadly as the working class? Yeah, absolutely. Because the phrase, the keyword for us is it's not, the Republican

party hasn't become the party of the working class. We talk about class de-alignment, not realignment. Of course, one might say as a sort of a left-leaning group, we fear realignment because the Republicans seem to be pushing that direction. But right now, the working class is really divided. It's not aligned with either party. And one cleavage, some of the cleavages are around, you know, lines of gender, in some cases race. But, you know, a really vivid cleavage is in occupational category. So blue collar, that is manual workers, you know, truck drivers, manufacturers, generally, you know, this is according to sociologists, people who work with their hands. They're, you know, yeah, they're Trump plus 19 in Pennsylvania right now in our

sample. And they were in some ways the most, the differences were most dramatic in terms of their enthusiasm, or at least their winnability, I would say, with the populist and with the economic messages. Whereas the service workers, that's another large portion of the working class. Actually, numerically, it's a bit larger. And it's not as dramatically pro-democratic as the blue-collar workers. In our sample, it was Harris plus six. But it's a broadly Democratic-leaning working class group. These are everything from clerical workers to cashiers to other sort of people who work in service occupations.

Donald Trump, I guess, at the McDonald's, entered the Democratic working class there in PA. But yeah, this group was, they also really liked the populist and the progressive rhetoric. They were populism plus 12. They were also fine with abortion. That was a plus eight. This is a Democratic group. The democracy message left them pretty cold too, though. It was like plus two. So I think even those voters, they're going to pull the lever for Kamala, a lot of them. But some of that enthusiasm we might see might be stronger for a more hard-hitting economic message. And I do hope that the campaign leans into that. I mean, there's some evidence that they're spending ad money in that direction. And I do think that the sort of going after Trump as a billionaire is still the sharpest tool on the table that Democrats have never actually picked up and wielded with all its power.

Yeah, well, potentially Elon Musk running around dangling a million dollar check. The richest man on the planet could give them a potential opening if they choose to take it, you know? Yeah, yeah. Matt, tell people where they can find this survey research and also where they can follow your work. So yeah, the survey drops this week. I think it should be today. And it's at the centerforworkingclasspolitics.org.

It will also be featured on the Jacobin website. My work is at Jacobin. I'm writing a column for Harper's Magazine lately. So you can find me and you can find me on Twitter too. I didn't know that about Harper's. I have to update my reading list to include that. Great to see you, my friend. Thank you so much. Good to see you. Good to see you guys. 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

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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. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal,

to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Cheney question, it's been a big one here for a long time. I want to put it up there. It's one of the great questions of all time, right? Well, Liz Cheney hit the campaign trail hard for Kamala

yesterday. Three separate appearances in one day. They've been putting it out everywhere. They've been talking about it. She's been tweeting about it. She now is one of the most preeminent Cheney, or sorry, Kamala surrogates in the entire country. And it's not just us who have noticed this with a critical and a sad eye. Also, Jon Stewart, who had the opportunity to confront Tim Walz about it. Let's take a listen. The Cheney thing. Do we really have to do that? Look, it goes broad in that. Look, Bernie Sanders, Dick Cheney, Taylor Swift. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, don't you think though that, and I do this, I believe this. Yeah. There is still a core group of folks out there. Your point being and not joke that don't tread on me the Reagan piece of this, the libertarian piece of but the constitutional piece.

Yes. There are a lot of people out there. I think Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney give permission to those folks who wanna find a reason to do the right thing. It doesn't mean they agree with us. We're not gonna take their foreign policy decisions and discussions, you know, and implement those. We're going to take their- Promise? Yes, promise. I don't know if I believe Tim's promise there, Crystal, I'll be honest with you.

That was, yeah, I mean, he's been saying that now for several, yeah, you weren't here for the last time Ryan and I talked about it, but this is a hit. He's been saying this. Amy Klobuchar, the whole, like, that line of Bernie Sanders, Taylor Swift, Dick Cheney. Oh, I've been hearing it. It's been absolutely everywhere.

You know, here's the thing. The Liz Cheney thing would be more justifiable. Dick Cheney is like, it really is like we would take the endorsement of Satan. I mean, this is one of, unambiguously, in my opinion, one of the most nefarious, evil doing characters in American political history, period. So to, you know, he's not on the campaign trail, but she said like, we need to thank Dick Cheney for his service. They bring him up all the freaking time. It's like, what are we doing here? And, you know, Tim Walz is laying out their theory of the case, which is like, okay, well, we think that there's some persuadable, probably mostly, you know,

sort of moderate Republican women who we can still pull into the camp. Now, you may think they have are already realigned, but that's actually not true. If you look at states like North Carolina in particular, Joe Biden underperformed among suburban women in North Carolina versus the rest of the country. So they feel like, you know, this is a large group. If we can pull one to two points more from this group, then that's going to make a big difference. But that assumes the only way you can reach this group is through odious characters like Liz Cheney or worse yet, Dick Cheney, which is like, this man had a 13% approval rating when he left office. Literally, who do you think this is appealing to? Because I don't, I am not familiar with that

person. But you know, they did a different approach that was way better that shows you don't have to go down that path in order to show bipartisan support. They went out and campaigned with 100 different Republicans. Some of these were like, you know, union workers who used to be pro-Trump and are now pro-Kamala and are up there speaking from the heart about why they think this is a better direction. That is a million times better approach than this Liz Cheney obsession. And the last thing I'll say about it is like, because I've agonized and thought a lot about this, is it would be one thing if she was doing her whole bipartisan outreach thing, but then coupling it with that Tim Walz Minnesota agenda where they're, you know, really emphasizing these bread and butter issues and going in one afternoon where you could name off the top of your head. Okay, here's the top three things that Kamala Harris is going to do once she's in office because I think that's ultimately far more persuasive than Liz Cheney supports me. But they're, you know, that – I'm not going to say they don't talk about anything,

but who could actually name what her top priorities are? I don't even know if she could name what her top priorities are. Actually, in the piece that we're going to talk about on Thursday on housing

and the Sun Belt, the reporters would ask people in Nevada who were very, they're moving right and predominantly they're very concerned about housing. And they're like,

hey, have you heard of the housing, the Kamala housing thing? They're like, what are you talking about? And then when they did hear about it, they're like, I don't believe she'll actually do it. So very little credibility. Also, if she was campaigning with Cheney and with Bernie, I would be like, okay, that's a little bit different. I'll see

Bernie out there. No, that's a great point. Let's put this up there on the screen. And Bernie is wildly more popular than both Liz Cheney and certainly Dick Cheney. As evidence, put this on the screen. Harris hit three states with Liz Cheney. They're going all in on this stuff. For example, I mean, and also it's not just hitting the trail with Liz Cheney. It is now adopting the Cheney, like basically rhetoric on foreign policy, which is absolutely insane, obviously. And for evidence of that. Let's go ahead and put B2, please. Bringing the allies together is because they are fully aware of and remember, to the congresswoman's point, World War II, remember this concept of isolation. We were once there as a nation, and then Pearl Harbor happened. Let's remember recent history. Europe remembers it

well. We, then when we got attacked, Pearl Harbor, we jumped in. And it is because America jumped in that we were ultimately able to win that war. And it should be a constant reminder to us. We have to remember history. That isolationism, which is exactly what Donald Trump is pushing, pull out of NATO, abandon our friends. Isolationism is not insulation. It is not insulation. It will not insulate us from harm in terms of our national security

so i say that to emphasize a point that the congresswoman made and the other point i'd make is also check out where he's been on how he thinks about america's military and service members so we've got mccain we've got, it's isolationist to not to want to fight and die for Ukraine, which is really what they believe. And look, Cheney, I'm just going to say it. I think she's scum. And I'll give you the real thing. It's not about January 6th. It's the fact that actually, Crystal, she was a lifelong pro-life conservative. Okay, whatever. I'm not pro-life. That's fine. She, though, disavowed in this same campaign event her lifelong positions on pro-life and said Dobbs-Quint went too far

in terms of the repeal of pro-life. This woman disavowed her own sister to try and win the Wyoming Senate seat over gay marriage. Now she's disavowing her lifelong positions when she was trying to fake being a Republican or whatever to try and win basically voters for her entire career. But the only thing she won't disavow is this fake anti-isolationist bullshit. Not that anybody even is an isolationist in this thing, or her lifelong position in support of her father and the war in Iraq. So it's like, what principles do you actually have, woman? I just think it's disgusting. Is J.D. Vance dumb for abandoning his lifelong commitment to pro-life issues to say, like, let's leave it to the states?

No, that's not the same thing. How's it not the same thing? Because he supported— I'm just saying. He supported—well, hold on a second. He supported an actual national abortion ban, as far as I remember. Correct. Then joined a ticket where he's like, okay, we're going to leave it to the states,

but has never disavowed his position on being pro-life. He campaigned for the Ohio pro-life law. But Liz Cheney's not. That's not the same. Liz Cheney's not saying that she's not pro-life anymore. She's doing a similar pivot to J.D. Vance of saying that Dobbs went too far. No, he's never said that. J.D. Vance was in support of a national abortion ban and is now no longer in support of a national

abortion ban and wants to leave it to the states. So I'm just saying, I'm not a big Liz Cheney fan, but I feel like there's a different standard being applied here. And I do genuinely think, you know, she paid a major political price for bucking Donald Trump after January 6th. And I am not a Liz Cheney fan, but I think she deserves credit for that thing in particular. Going back to Kamala's comments with regard to, you know, Trump's isolationism, it's just not even accurate. Like, Trump is not an isolationist. This sort of plays into his false framing that he's like the anti-war candidate, which is just not true. I mean, especially when it comes to Iran, we can hear

his rhetoric. He's calling for Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites. He pulled us out of the Iranian nuclear deal. He assassinated Qasem Soleimani, risking war. You know, his foreign policy record, there are areas of it where I definitely give him credit, but he stayed in Afghanistan and Joe Biden was the one who actually got us out. So part of why I hate this framing is because, yeah, she's positioning the Democrats as like, they're the party of hawks and Trump is the party of isolationism. It's just not even an accurate picture of reality. And then, to get to more of this, it's here you are in really dire straits with Muslim American voter, with Arab American voters. And I don't think that there's a lot of people who are going to be won

over by a Liz Cheney endorsement, but it definitely sends a message to a lot of voters who are disgusted with your policy in the Middle East about who has your ear and who you're listening to. I still recall the fact that at the DNC, they would not allow a Palestinian American on the stage, even one who was pro-Kamala and wanted to make the case for why people should get on board with her campaign. The tent was big enough for Dick Cheney and certainly big enough for Taylor Swift, but it was not big enough for a Palestinian American. And at the end of the day, maybe it ends up not mattering. Maybe they win enough of those white suburban women voters. That's their theory of the case, that moving a couple points of them into their column,

they think that's doable and they think that will be a game changer for them. But they've created tremendous risks on the other side, not just among Arab American voters, either among young voters, among a range of voters of color. And, you know, I think the data at this point proves that out. Well, at the DNC, you know, just for that point, it's not even just about the Palestinian thing. Remember in the DNC platform that they disavowed the Iranian nuclear deal, and Kamala has now said that Iran is the greatest threat that the United States faces. So, okay, that's a little bit ridiculous. To return to the Cheney thing, though, one of the reasons that I think it is incredibly different is that, A, she's actually campaigning for a literal president who wants to codify Roe versus Wade, so there's that.

But two is that if you look at the stringent nature of her positions in the past, in which she was literally willing to disavow her own family members, it does tell me that war and commitment to whatever this fake democracy thing, which happens to help war and at least at the very least, like help the neoconservative agenda, which is really what I think she cares the most about, is the preeminent value to her. That is fine. I actually am fine with that. But you can't be talking and disavowing your own sister, spend a lifelong representative of Wyoming basically campaigning for wanting to overturn Roe versus Wade and exactly have the Dobbs decision and then reverse on a dime just simply on the question of Trump. Like working within the confines of, yeah, J.D., as far as I understand,

still probably believes in an actual national abortion ban, doesn't believe it's politically feasible, is with the candidate who says, yeah, we should leave it to the states, which is about as good as we can get, and is still personally pro-life. I just think that's very different on those questions of values, and especially in terms of the candidates and with what they're campaigning for, than what Liz Cheney has done. Given her own literal past, and I mean, causing rifts, not just with a sister, with her own father, who, if I recall, came out and attacked her for her position on gay marriage in that Wyoming Senate race, which she lost, by the way, which

is the best part of this entire thing. And look, I'm not just the one saying it. A lot of the pro-life people are the ones who are the most upset. Again, I'm not even pro-life. I don't care, but it's more about who are you? You believe nothing. I feel that there is a different standard being applied. J.D. Vance literally said previously that Trump was potentially America's Hitler. And then when it served him in order to get a Senate seat, he changed his tune, right? Kamala Harris has shifted his, her positions. Trump has changed his positions on abortion a million times, and I don't hear you calling them scum for doing so. It's different. So for example,

on Trump, I don't think anybody believes that Trump is genuinely pro-life. Or if you do, like I've got something to sell you. I think the Cheneys definitely positioned themselves in a very different direction on that. I mean, Trump, I mean, the character question on Hitler and all that, that's been nauseous. That's been like litigated a million times. He either changes position conveniently or he changes mind. I think he probably changes mind. If you ask me, you can, you're welcome to change your or have a different opinion if you want. I just don't see the difference even specifically on the issue of abortion between J.D. Vance, who is deeply religious and Catholic, who five minutes ago was in support of a national abortion ban with basically no exceptions, to, yeah, it's a political

reality. He's on a ticket where they realize abortion is a problem for him. So he has shifted his stance. Guess what? Liz Cheney is doing something very similar here and recognizes, OK, if I'm going to be acceptable to the Democratic mainstream, I see how unpopular Dobbs has been. I need to at least say like Dobbs has gone too far. None of this, I think, is particularly principled. I'm just saying, you know, to say she's scum for that. There are many other reasons why I might say that Liz Cheney is scum, but I don't necessarily, if you're going to apply that standard in this instance, I would say we have to apply. I'm bringing the sister thing in from 2013, which I remember quite well for a lot of the liberal press agreed with me at that time for what that looked like. But then in terms of Roe versus Wade,

there's a big difference in supporting a candidate who's like, leave it to the states, which would effectively allow pro-life states if they want to pass those things, as opposed to a candidate who wants to literally codify Roe versus Wade and make abortion nationally for everybody. If you think abortion is murder, which J.D. Vance previously did, then it's murder whether it's being done in California or Mississippi or wherever. So in any case, there have been a lot of politicians who have conveniently shifted their position on the issue of abortion post-Obs because they recognize how wildly unpopular the previous position of the Republican Party was, and Liz Cheney happens to be among those people. I think it's a little bit different,

but I guess we'll just agree on that one, or disagree on that one. 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

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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 voice over, 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 Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor going above and beyond the call of duty.

You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the issue of Cheney, what do we have? An interesting fissure where Trump is now trying to use the Cheney support to try and win over Muslim and Arab American voters. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is a tweet or truth, I guess you will call it. He says,

Arab voters are very upset that Kamala Harris, the worst vice president in the history of the United States, and a low IQ individual, is campaigning with dumb as a rock war hawk Liz Cheney, who like her father, the man that pushed Bush to ridiculously go to war in the Middle East, also wants to go to war with every Muslim country known to mankind. Remember, Liz Cheney lost her congressional seat by the largest margin in history for a sitting congressperson. If Kamala gets four more years, the Middle East will spend the next four decades going up in flames. Your kids will be off to war, maybe even a third world war, something that will never happen with President Donald J. Trump in

charge. For our country's sake and for our kids, vote Trump for peace. Now, this is the first time that I've seen something like that actually come out. And interestingly enough, it could be part of a real concerted strategy. Let's put B7, please, up on the screen. Because this came out last night, and I was really interested in this. Quote, Trump holds edge with Arab Americans, according to a new Arab News YouGov poll. Some 45% of respondents said they are more likely to vote for Trump, while 43% that they would cast their ballot for Kamala Harris. Obviously, that's within the margin of error.

And they have Jill Stein at a 6%, 2% say that they would decline to give their choice. put those together on top of some New York Times analysis, Crystal, that you found. This really does show that within swing voters and around this question of Cheney, that there actually could be some organic pushback in the Arab American community around this and potentially enough to swing the state of Michigan. Yeah, well, it's funny, Trump's truth there. I seem to recall last election cycle, him campaigning quite happily with Liz Cheney. So, you know, for him, oh yeah, the only question that really matters at the end of the day is how you feel about Donald Trump. That's very true. Let's put B6 up on the screen though, because this explains where this true social came from and, you know, why they are moving in this direction of trying to

make some sort of appeal to the Arab American community and some sort of pivot on Gaza in particular. The Trump campaign's research, they write in this, found that up-for-grab voters were about six times as likely as other battleground state voters who motivated by their views of Israel's war in Gaza. The campaign also found that undecided voters were less likely to be white than those in the battlegrounds overall and were likely to be black. About 25% of undecided voters are black, according to the Trump team. And these two things go together because we've tracked that in the polling all along, African-Americans have much higher support for Palestine, much lower support in general for the U.S. policy of unconditional support vis-a-vis Israel.

And so some of us have been warning all along that this was a massive risk for Democrats, not just among Arab American voters, but among a much broader coalition. And this is what the Trump team has picked up on, that and the fact you have a real schism in the Democratic base, primarily, honestly, between Democratic elites and the rest of the party, just judging by the polling. And so they're trying to signal some sort of empathy or some sort of support or some sort of contrast with the Democrats here to try to pull off as many voters as they possibly can. Will it be successful? I don't know. But for Democrats to be losing Arab Americans in the state of Michigan is just utterly, it's disgraceful. They did it to themselves. She did it to herself. This is the issue we

showed you previously where she has the lowest approval rating from voters. And you have voters who desperately want to see her being different from Joe Biden. This is the issue where you can do it. So, yeah, when you look at the polls, you know, there was a lot of conversation earlier in the cycle where it was like, oh, barely anybody even cares about Israel and Gaza. This is not that important to voters. It doesn't really matter where Kamala positions herself on this. But if it's important to a key group of swing voters in battleground states, then yeah, guess what? It ends up mattering a lot. So, you know, if she ends up losing, which I think is possible, because of her unconditional support for Biden's

policy of supporting a genocide in the Gaza Strip, they only have themselves to blame for going down in flames because the way she has consistently stood by that policy has been deeply disappointing and utterly disgraceful. It's interesting, too, if you look further in that undecided research, they say that these people describe themselves as non-ideological and then looking then at those issues that are going to push them the most. And they found that Israel, Gaza is one of those where, I mean, again, to be one that is six times as likely as other battleground state voters to be motivated by is pretty ridiculous considering, I mean, Israel, Gaza, Middle East in general, usually at the bottom tier of most people's ranking if you look at the overall aggregate, even amongst young voters that we've seen before. But with this tiny slice and with the Arab Americans, we could be looking at a real thing.

I mean, I'll be honest. I don't 100% understand it, but it's clearly a real phenomenon because what is it? We have that mayor of the Muslim majority town, is it Amtrak? I forget exactly the name. Yeah. The guy endorsed Trump. Apparently, Trump has a office that they opened there, which everybody in Michigan was like, why would you do this?

But now I think we do know why about their micro-targeting data for that. So it certainly is something. Now, again, like I said, the reason I don't particularly understand it is, if we're all being honest, like Trump, you know, definitely is a lot more pro-Israel than Kamala Harris. No doubt about it. And his coalition is more consistently pro-Israel. So even if he's just a creature of like, you know, his supporters and donor network, he's going to end up in a much more pro-Israel position. even if he's just a creature of his supporters and donor network, he's going to end up in a much more pro-Israel position. Yeah. So for example, we have Michael Tracy pulled this out. This is from a more recent, I think it was a town hall on Trump asked about Iran and nuclear facilities and whether

Israel should be able to hit them. Let's take a listen. They asked him, what do you think about Iran? Would you hit Iran? And he goes, as long as they don't hit the nuclear stuff. That's the thing you want to hit, right? I said, I think he's got that one wrong. Isn't that what you're supposed to hit? I mean, it's the most it's the biggest risk we have. Nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry. You know, I rebuilt the entire military, jets, everything. I built it, including nuclear. And I hated to build the nuclear. But I got to know firsthand the power of that stuff. And I'll tell you what, we have to be

totally prepared. We have to be absolutely prepared. But when they asked him that question, the answer should have been hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later. All right. So if we're all being honest here about what exactly that looks like, I mean, it's one of those where I didn't really want to like put this woman down yesterday, but we played that video of that. What was it? The undecided Arab American voters. And she's like, I'm voting for Trump to punish Kamala Harris. And I was like, look, I understand that. Like, I'm not going to shame you. But if your ongoing concern is about that, I mean, Trump has shown literally no care whatsoever. Now, listen, you know, it's not my top priority, so whatever. But if that's your top priority,

I don't get it. You know, in terms of like, this is the most pro-Saudi, you know, pro-Gulf Arab Emirates president in modern history. The Saudis in the Gulf have a real plan for Gaza. It's called, they get to take it over and we get to fund it. I mean, if you support that, that's fine, you know, but I don't know. I don't understand. I don't know how you can be like the whole like genocide person and also vote for Donald Trump. Again, it's not my top priority. So it's not like something that keeps me up at night in terms of like, oh, how to agonize for my vote. But if it is, then, you know, that's just one of those where I find mystifying. Yeah. No, it doesn't make any logical sense. Bottom line. And he's consistently at this point been hitting Joe Biden from the right on him not

doing enough to support Israel. Another example of that, this is B5. He got asked a question about exactly this issue. And he says Biden's trying to hold Bibi back. No evidence of that. He probably should be doing the opposite. Actually, let's take a listen to that. Does the death of Simar make it easier or more difficult? I think it makes it easier. Are you going to talk to Prime Minister Danyal about it? He's called me, yes. He's called me. I have not spoken. I'm going to speak to him probably now. What do you want to tell him?

Well, look, he's doing a good job. Biden is trying to hold him back. Just so you understand, Biden is far superior to the VP. He's trying to hold him back, and they probably should be doing the opposite, actually. I'm glad that VP decided to do what he had to do, but it's moving along pretty good. Everything's moving along. So there you go. As we pointed out yesterday, Zagar, you flagged this. Some 63% of Israelis prefer Donald Trump. Yeah, they want Trump to win. And one thing that I wanted to point out about the polling is there had previously been a poll showing Jill Stein leading among, I believe it was Arab American voters in some of these states. In Michigan, I think, yeah. In several of the swing states.

Right. So this polling is really dissonant from that. So just to put an asterisk there. But the other thing I saw recently, I don't know if you saw this, Agra, that there's been two separate polls that have shown Dilstein is now taking more from Donald Trump than from Kamala Harris. And if these survey results are correct, that would make some sense. Because if it's basically like Arab American voters have ruled out Kamala and now they're deciding between the other options, Jill Stein being one of them and Trump being the other one, it makes some kind of sense. So just who knows if that's accurate? Who knows if this poll is exactly accurate?

But I think there's no doubt Kamala Harris has a massive issue with these voters. It's 100 percent of her own making. And then the only other thing I'll say is with regard to Jill Stein potentially taking more from Donald Trump, you know, just you have to have some humility about how all of these things are going to work out. It was considered written in stone that she would be more detrimental to the Democrats. And, you know, voters are more complex beings than they're often given credit for. And so, you know, it may turn out to be the case that she's more of an issue for the Republicans than for Kamala Harris, which would be kind of wild. Yeah, it would be crazy.

How about she just gets to run and people can decide for themselves? You know, how about that? I think that probably works out the best. So in general, when we think about all of this, I do think it is pretty interesting. Why don't we put the last one, B8, please, up on the screen. This was from, it says,

the AP reported that 64% of Muslims nationwide supported Biden in 2020. 35% supported Trump. And in heavily Arab American counties in Michigan, voters went for Biden by a little less than 70%. So just to underscore what the flip of all of this would look like. I mean, there is an open question, how much of this is Gaza? I mean, how many of these people are voting for Trump because of the economy or for something like that? It's very possible, right? As they correctly point out, it's not just Muslim voters. You've got a lot of Christians who

are Arab American as well. They potentially could be voting on that. I mean, there's a lot of different reasons why people come to America and they vote. So the shift in that could be, I mean, could be men, right? It could be cultural issues. There's a lot of different reasons for why people might shift in different directions. But nonetheless, it is certainly a major phenomenon. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. 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. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships.

It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. 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. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected,

showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.