Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/29/24: Final Trump Kamala Ads, Trouble For Trump In Early Voting, Ballot Boxes On Fire

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump/Kamala final campaign ads, trouble for Trump in early voting, ballot boxes set on fire.   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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and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. 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. 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. Guess what, guys? One week. Seven days. To Election Day.

We are taking a look this morning at the top ads for each campaign where they are spending the most dollars making their closing cases. Very interesting contrast in terms of what their theory of how to move voters in these final days are is whatever. I don't know. My English language is really going well this morning. All right, we also are going to take a look at the bull case for Kamala. We've been looking at some negative indicators for her, some positive indicators for Trump. So today we wanted to flip the script, and there are a few pieces of news that fit nicely into that. So we're going to make that case. We also are going to take a look at how Trump is prepping Stop the Steal 2.0 and whether

or not those efforts could be successful given that you have new legislation that's passed, given that he is no longer president of the United States. So we'll dig into the weeds with that so everybody knows what to expect were he to lose the race next week. Both camps out there playing for the Muslim vote, especially in the state of Michigan. Barack Obama making some interesting comments yesterday that comes on the heels of Trump securing some Muslim endorsements that he touted in that state, which of course is crucial. Elon is being sued over his big daily million dollar lottery by the Philly DA. And he also,

his organizing efforts on the ground have come under scrutiny to see whether or not they have been successful on the Trump campaign's behalf. We're also doing a little follow-up, just a quick follow-up on this whole Washington Post story. We added this yesterday when we found out that after Bezos decided that they were not going to endorse in this race, they have lost more than 200,000 subscribers. Yesterday, the number we were getting was 2,000. Then NPR was able to report by yesterday midday, so it's undoubtedly more than this at this point, they had lost more than 200,000 subscribers. That is like 10% of their subscriber base. So they are bleeding subscribers at this point. Bezos himself felt the need to come out and publish an op-ed. I don't think it helped matter, so we'll bring you all of that. And then I have a monologue today. I'm

taking a look at Trump's most important, potentially, moment on Joe Rogan, which went a little bit under-noticed given the whale psychologist discussion and then the whole Madison Square Garden situation, but something important that we should all take a look at. There we go. That's what's on tap. Before we get to that, thank you to all of our premium subscribers. We're really excited one week to Election Day, BreakingPoints.com. You can take advantage. We have a lot of fun stuff, literally running a bunch of tests today for election night. We've got an exclusive partnership

with Logan Phillips, with Decision Desk HQ. We are going to be a full-fledged newsroom on election night, which is really exciting. That's something that you guys have been asking for for years, and we invested a lot into it. So if you want to sign up, support that, breakingpoints.com. We'll also have some subscriber benefits that you guys will be able to take advantage of on election night. So we're really excited. We've got a whole week of coverage and all that planned. No matter what happens, we will be there right there with you. So as Crystal said, let's start with the ads. And the ads give us a lot of insight into the dollar figures that are

being spent and similarly what most people are hearing. I know a lot of people who watch this show and who are online, you guys are consuming a lot of stuff. But if you're just living your life in Pennsylvania and Arizona, in Wisconsin or others, this is most likely what you are going to see on your airwaves. So we're going to start with Kamala Harris and the two ads that have the most money behind them in the swing states. Let's take a listen. A lot of money. I know. What do you mean? You're rich as hell. We're going to give you tax cuts. We're going to pay you.

I am not rich as hell. I work hard. I scrape to get by. Donald Trump wants to give tax breaks to billionaires. But Kamala Harris has plans to help us. She's going to crack down on price gouging and cut taxes for working people like me. I voted for Donald Trump before, but this time I'm voting for Kamala. I know plenty of you and you're rich as hell. We're going to give you tax cuts. I'm not rich as hell. I'm the one that really needs the break.

Not the people that are already rich and have the money. The 1% don't serve anybody but themselves. So for them to get a tax break, no, that's not cool. Kamala Harris is going to make billionaires pay their fair share. And she's going to cut taxes for working people like me. I'm Buddy, and I'm not rich as hell. And I'm voting for Kamala Harris. FFPAC is responsible for the content of this ad. So those were the two ads.

They've got, what, 40-something million dollars behind them now. You can clearly see that it's very focused on the rich as hell comment. I would note that that second ad, that resident is from Allentown, Pennsylvania. I've come to know the region well. It's where my wife's family is from.

Donald Trump will actually be there today because it's a big swinging area. It also is the first test. It has one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in the state. And having been there, I can tell you there's yard signs everywhere for both candidates. So in terms of the enthusiasm, they certainly take it seriously for who they're going to vote for. But it is certainly that last part is one that you're seeing quite a bit on the airwaves, specifically for Kamala Harris on that. And frankly, I was a little bit surprised because if you also, from my own experience, having been there, watched some Eagle game or Phillies game while there, it was a lot more abortion ads that I saw. But maybe things have changed in the last month or so on this tax and billionaire one. But look, it's not a bad strategy. Obviously, it's one that anybody who watches this show would be able to connect to and could understand why that would move swing voters.

So it very much could be the thing that pushes it over the edge. Yeah, they're going for class war, and obviously I'm here for it. I've been seeing one in Virginia that is similar that says, like, you know, Canada Day is for the billionaires, and actually even has a picture of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein and a bunch of other, yeah, which is kind of noteworthy. And then Canada B is for you is basically the idea. So very much in line with this. The first one we showed you also hit the note of, like, listen, I voted for Trump in the past. This time I'm going with Kamala Harris. So one thing that's noteworthy to me is while a lot of what is, you know, what the speeches are about, Kamala's coming out and doing this speech on the ellipse. Is that today?

That might be today, actually. But she's giving that big, like, closing speech on the ellipse that's supposed to be about, like, democracy and those larger threats. They're talking a lot about the comments from John Kelly saying, hey, I serve with this guy and he is a fascist to the core. While they're doing that in terms of the sort of national media messaging, what they're actually putting paid, like what they're running paid ads on is this much more class economic focused message. And, you know, some of the polling indicates that this has helped to move voters so that she has at the very least narrowed the gap with Trump on the economy.

Some polls show that she is actually exceeding him or has matched him with regard to who people feel will be better for the economy. Every poll I've seen shows voters giving her an edge on who would be better for the middle class. That's obviously the message they're driving here. So, you know, in general, I think it's pretty smart strategy. Yeah, and then for Trump, I mean, clearly, and I've been talking about this, that's obviously the message they're driving here. So, you know, in general, I think it's pretty smart strategy. Yeah. And then for Trump, I mean, clearly, and I've been talking about this, it's immigration all day long. And we're going to get to issues and what people say is their top. I honestly kind of don't believe them anymore. I've gotten to that just because of where the way that the dollar figures are being spent on various different things. And also in terms of what's moving the needle. Could be wrong, though. Kamala certainly does win.

So here are two of the biggest ads with money behind Donald Trump. Let's take a listen. As San Francisco DA, liberal Kamala Harris let killers go free. And as California Attorney General, Kamala continued to put criminals first. After a little girl was raped and buried alive, laws were passed to keep sex offenders away from children. Kamala ignored Jessica's law and allowed convicted sex offenders to live near schools and parks. Kamala Harris has always put criminals first.

Don't make America her next victim. Make America Great Again, Inc. is responsible for the content of this advertising. He murdered a father of three. Sentenced to life in prison. Kamala Harris pushed to use tax dollars to pay for his sex change. I made sure that they changed the policy so that every transgender inmate would have access. It sounds insane because it is insane. Kamala was the first to help pay for a prisoner's sex change. The power that I had, I used it in a way that was about pushing for the movement,

frankly, and the agenda. Kamala's agenda is they, them, not you. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message. That last one I heard over and over again when I was there in Pennsylvania. But I mean, look, I think it's clearly that they have some different theories about what is going to move people. And actually, can we put A6 up on the screen? Because this is really what it all comes down to. What do people mean when they say certain things are their top issues? So here is from Pew Research, this came out last month. The economy is the top issues for voters in 2024. Number one is the economy amongst Harris and Trump supporters and all voters at 81%. Number two is healthcare at 65. Three is Supreme Court. Four, foreign policy. Five, violent crime. Six, immigration. But the thing is, how can you look at those ads that are being run

and say that this comports with that? And specifically in terms of what switches it. Like if healthcare is truly number two, I don't see a single person talking about healthcare. In terms of that concepts of a plan answer from Trump, which obviously was ridiculous, but then you would assume, if that was so devastating, that the Harris campaign would be pumping it into every swing state living room. They seem to believe that they can compete, as you said, on this better for the middle class question. A lot of people still do trust Trump on the economy.

The spread is not the way that it used to be. But it's pretty clear that immigration is that number one. Now, the other theory is that if you do look at the spread between immigration and between immigration for Democrats and Republicans, immigration is the number two issue for Republicans. Right. And then violent crime is what I think number three, just eyeballing it there. So if that's true, then the other way we could read it is that Trump's ads are all about driving his base and making sure that turnout is as high as possible. Whereas with Kamala, obviously they have abortion, which is one of their top issues. But for them, it says, if I'm reading it correctly, healthcare, Supreme Court are their top issues. I don't hear a lot of that coming out of them. So maybe theirs is more of a swing state strategy and they're just banking on these voters who are already committed Dems on abortion to come out and vote. But either way,

none of this 100% aligns with the ads that we've seen, Crystal. Yeah, I mean, it's culture war versus class war in terms of the closing messages that they are making on the airwaves. And I don't think that it's necessarily surprising given the way that Trump has run campaigns in the past, that his is a base turnout strategy. Yeah. You know, that's part of why you see the like Madison Square Garden rally and letting their freak flag fly, like very different from how you would normally position yourself for a general election. And we'll see. I've seen some polling that suggested that the ad attacking Kamala Harris on transgender issues in particular has been very ineffective in that many voters couldn't

even recall that they'd seen it in spite of the fact that it's blanketed the airwaves. And then on the Harris side, I think you're right that they're looking more at, that's part of why having the Republican there saying I used to be with Trump. Now I'm with Kamala. They're really trying to go at that sort of moderate swing voter. They're still in they're in the mode of still trying to persuade some of those swing voters that they think are gettable for them potentially in the suburbs. And so that's the direction that they're ultimately going in. You know, from based on the polling research that we've seen, what Matt Karp shared with us from the Center for Working Class Politics about the messages that work best, especially in the swing state of Pennsylvania. You know, they found that the basically class war, like the strong populist message, uh, pulled best in terms of moving voters. The second was

progressive economics that, um, you know, move voters. And then way down the list was the threat to democracy message. So, you know, it seems like the Harris people are seeing that. And at least in terms of their paid communications are responding accordingly. And, you know, I guess one of the big questions is how much paid communications move anybody. At this point, is it, but even if it's marginal, the tens of millions of dollars that are blanketing the airwaves, you have to think that it accounts for something. The last thing I'll say about the Trump campaign strategy, which we've mentioned before, is these ads are not just about those specific issues. They're also about painting a portrait of Kamala Harris as having these like

weird extreme ideas. And it's noteworthy to me too, in terms of the different strategies. This was something we saw in the dollar figures previously. The Democratic campaign is doing some straight negative, but most of their ad dollars, and that's what we saw in the two ads that we ran for you, are a contrast, right? They're about, here's a positive for Kamala Harris in contrast to a negative for Donald Trump. The Trump campaign is leaning heavily into just negatives, not building up Trump, not a contrast, but like, let's try to dirty up Kamala Harris. Let's make you question whether she's really the person that you want there as commander in chief. And probably that has to do, you know, partly with just like a different philosophy about what moves voters. And also the fact that she does

have a higher approval rating than him. So they probably feel like they need to bring her back down to earth a bit. Yeah, that's what I was saying. I mean, for Trump, everybody on earth at this point knows how they feel about Donald Trump, positively or negatively. I don't think building him up is going to change all of that. But the last part I would really get to is this theory of paid communications versus earned media. And I'm just a firm believer that earned media and the national media environment is just so much more important, even putting earned aside. So for example, Kamala may be dumping, how much is it? 40 million behind those two ads? I think we just said. But I mean, the truth is, is that the majority of her media coverage in the last two weeks has been almost

all Liz Cheney democracy focused. That was what her event in, I think it was in Malvern, Pennsylvania, one of the wealthiest suburbs of the Philadelphia mainline with Liz Cheney was all about. Similar in Michigan. Her event, I think today is about democracy, the fascism. I mean, this has become like basically mainstream. If you look on CNN or any elsewhere in terms of what the majority discussion is, is all about like Donald Trump is a fascist and all that. Look, again, it could be two 2016 rose colored glasses, but it's all been tried before. And if any, I mean, it's the least original argument in the book. Trump is going to be a fascist. Trump is going to be a dictator.

The other side of it would be exactly what I just said about Donald Trump. This is a base turnout strategy. Democrats hate Trump. You know, I'm walking around my neighborhood, which is 90-something percent, for Biden, dictatorship, bad signs are everywhere. Stop Project 20. I mean, this is the beating heart of True Blue. But I mean, these people are fired up.

They're ready to vote. And I saw somebody say that Democrats seem more enthusiastic than they have been since a campaign of Barack Obama. Obviously, Barack Obama won twice, right? So that's not a bad thing to be at. But some of the turnout data doesn't necessarily comport with that. We're going to do a segment soon about early vote. It actually is not looking terrible for a comma, but I have seen the warning signs. I think it's in Milwaukee, for example. Black turnout is like a 40-year low. There's a

little bit differing signs in Georgia, but low black turnout would not be what happened with Barack Obama. So of course, we can look in every different direction. What we're all just trying bit differing signs in Georgia, but low black turnout would not be what happened with Barack Obama. So of course, you know, we can look in every different direction. What we're all just trying to do here is just show people this is what swing voters are more likely to see, but they're also very likely to consume a lot of national media through the ether, not through watching CNN or elsewhere, through online, through clips, through this show, any other podcast that people listen to. And I'm just generally going to bet on the latter for what people are really going to hear.

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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. I think probably for Democrats, the messaging about fascism and the danger, the sort of existential danger that Donald Trump poses to the country, that's probably about bringing their own voters home. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. And there has been some signs of that, by the way. For example, there was a poll, an NAACP poll of black men in particular, and they had polled them

before. And it showed black men shifting back towards Kamala Harris, especially among young black men, her winning black men in this particular poll overall at the same rates as Joe Biden. So I do think some of the messaging, the sort of earned media messaging from the Harris campaign and the speech she's giving, et cetera, is about kind of bringing people who typically vote Democratic, who are maybe disgusted with the Biden policy, potentially on the war in Gaza, trying to bring them back home, I think is probably some of the strategy there. And then, you know, I mean, Trump doesn't do himself any favors with having this Madison Square Garden rally where he's calling, where his warm-up act is calling Puerto Rico an

island of garbage and making all kinds of other, you know, offensive comments throughout the night, not just from the comedian. And Nate Silver had a write-up of whether or not he thought that would make a difference, move the needle, could put that up in the screen. He thinks it could be. And the reason is he looks at, in particular, the Google search traffic for Trump, and it has spiked after the Madison Square Garden rally. Now, maybe you think that's a positive because, hey, Trump's dominating the narrative, blah, blah, blah. But I think more this is feeding a Democratic narrative about reminding people of the negatives, the reasons they soured on Donald Trump before. And his approval rating had,

especially post-assassination attempt, had creeped up and kind of stayed there. So there is room for him, for those negatives to creep back up. So in that sense, I don't really agree with, I know it's a common analysis. I understand where it comes from that like none of these scandals really stick to him. But he does historically have like a low approval rating. He did lose in 2020. His party did poorly in both 2018 and surprisingly in 2022. So I don't know that it's totally accurate. There is no doubt he can get away with things that would be total career enders for virtually any other politician. But the idea it has no impact at all, I don't really buy that because we have seen how his approval rating has been consistently negative in part because of these sorts of situations. As usual, the case can be overstated in both directions.

I would put it, what you just said is that in general, these things don't tend to stick. In 2020, lose by some 40,000 votes across three states, it's not exactly an overwhelming mandate by Joe Biden. And if we consider- I mean, he won the popular vote by four and a half percentage points. Right, but that doesn't matter. And he won all the critical battleground states. So yeah, it's- I mean, it depends on how you look at it. I mean, he's 10,000 in Georgia, 10,000 in Arizona. I forget what the other, I think it's Michigan. Right, but I'm just saying, when you lose the popular vote by almost five percentage points, that is a significant vote against you. And given

the fact that now the gap has likely closed between the Electoral College and the popular vote, like, you know, if you, if certainly if you, if he faced today, a four and a half point loss, it would be a landslide in terms of the battleground states all going to Kamala Harris as well. Definitely. But that doesn't look like that's going to be the case. I mean, if anything, what I think with Trump is a lot of this stuff is baked in and ultimately what will swing these so-called swing independent voters. And it's just difficult, I think, for anybody who does this for a living or has longstanding and well-held political beliefs to understand. It's just not how those people think. Maybe this will be enough to push them over the edge,

but something that has been consistent with these swing and independent voters is the things that piss them off are not the things that may piss you off or any other like liberal commentator. Same vice versa, by the way, for, you know, anybody who's on the right. You know, somebody who's saying something verboten to us or ridiculous doesn't sound all that ridiculous whenever it goes to a swing voter. What actually moves them is almost impossible to determine. It's like alchemy. In terms of what the actual spotlight on Trump is going to see, one of the reasons my bias, and again, this is a bias, tells me that it's probably good for him, is that the more he's in control of the conversation, the better off

that he is, as it has been in the past for his approval ratings. Now, the question is about whether things have shifted enough from 2022 onward for people to take this very, very seriously in the way that they did then that they didn't, let's say, in 2016. And same with Republican voters. Now, the Republican voter data would have to comport with the idea that there is some long-held, like, revulsion with Trump. But it hasn't happened. Like, if the Liz Cheney Democratic theory of like, oh, Trump is so bad that he's turning people off were true, you would see higher percentage of Republicans not wanting to vote for him. But I mean, in the New York Times-Santa poll, Trump is actually doing better with Republicans than Kamala is doing with Democrats. Now, we're talking about

two and four points, okay? So let's not overstate the case either direction. But my point is, you would want that number to be like 10%. Now, the other theory is anybody who's still pissed off by Trump, they're not Democrat. They're not Republicans anymore. They left the party a long time ago. And in fact, if you roll the tape, I kind of predicted that in 2020, I was totally wrong. I thought that there actually would be some sort of pushback or whatever. But yeah, by and large, it hasn't been the case. People have reconciled themselves to Trump. I think the Biden presidency has not been good. And so based on that, a lot of people are willing to just come home and have a negative polarization and partisanship.

I genuinely have no clue. We will obviously find out on election day. But everybody who thinks that these are enders for Trump, I mean, how many times does an old Donnie need to wriggle his way out for us to learn a different lesson in terms of what people actually see when they see this man? It's almost certainly not what most people will commentate on this for a living is. I just think that that analysis is very 2016 when he's been consistently losing since then. And so two things are different. I mean, the major thing that's different is that he himself is trying for a different coalition than he was in 2016. In 2016, it was all about let me just juice the numbers with the white working class. And obviously in key swing states, that was enough.

This time, they have seen erosion with white voters, especially white college-educated voters. So to try to make up for that, it's about going after, you know, these less frequent black and brown, younger men in particular. And so, you know, it's not the same group that you're going after. And I think the campaign realizes that there may be more sensitivity around some of these comments

with their aspired-to voting coalition than there was in the past. So, for example, the Trump campaign distanced themselves from the Tony Hinchcliffe joke about Puerto Rico being an island of trash. Every single Republican, I think, in Florida, immediately came, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, all these different Republican members of Congress in Florida came out and condemned the comments. The head of the Republican Party in Puerto Rico condemned the comments. So it's not just like me, some lefty liberal commentator saying it. The Trump campaign clearly sees it as an issue as well. Yeah, maybe. I mean, and frankly, I think that's kind of a stupid strategy. First of all, because it was literally at your rally,

so there's no disowning it, number one. But number two is, again, if we really believe this theory of Black and Latino voters, it's just incorrect if it's going to push you over the finish line. That's a tiny slice of the electorate. It's maybe 8% in the swing states, especially in the whiter states across the blue wall, white voters is the whole ballgame. Ironically, there are a lot of very racist commentators who often throw this at Trump because they're like, hey, man, why are you chasing the black vote? Whites are the only ones who actually matter for you. And look, in weird horseshoe theory, I kind of agree with them just on a statistical basis that their whole, what was it, first step

act and all this? It hasn't really done anything in terms of pushing people to come out and vote for Trump predominantly, I just read a study yesterday a big part of the reason that the Latino shift has happened amongst Latino men specifically is based on literally Latinx verbiage and on an aversion to cultural liberalism. That has nothing to do with Trump or even like a Puerto Rico comment or whatever. It has to do much more with like cultural conservatism deep at heart. And also, frankly, a lot of these people are more working class and are not college educated

and thus have a very different like cultural more that they swim in as opposed to everybody else. So that seems to be, you know, the only reason it happened. And I guess there's a long way of saying is I don't think the Puerto Rico joke is gonna matter that much. I really don't. I mean, again, like if somebody makes a joke about where you're from and that's literally enough for you to come out and vote for somebody else, to me that seems insane. But I mean, maybe, you know, all the Puerto Ricans in this country think differently than me.

I don't know. I'd like to think I'm more like everybody else. It just seems to me that the reason why they would come out to vote is, number one, of this longstanding, like, years-long aversion to cultural liberalism, as they said in that, I think it's an NBER study. We can maybe talk about it next week. But that's what the driver just seems to be behind a lot of this Black and Latino movement. But at the end of the day, the ballgame is still white working class voters, because all he needs to do, I believe, is turn out at 2016 levels or slightly above from 2020, and he could still win with no more increase in the Black or the Latino vote.

Yeah. I mean, when a race is really, really close, like if it's as close in the swing states as it was last time, then you could look at any one community and say a little bit of erosion here, a little bit of erosion there is what made the difference. I mean, Pennsylvania, what, there was like half a million people who are of Puerto Rican descent. And I have no special insights into that community, but I do know that it's been reported like, you know, Spanish language talk radio is all over it. Bad Bunny has apparently moved elections in the past and he's all over like every basically Puerto Rican star is all over it. People are calling into radio stations locally in Philly and saying, I was thinking about Trump,

but there is no way I'm going to vote for that man. So, you know, can it make some difference on the margins? I think it's possible. I think it's possible. I don't want to oversell it, right? I don't want to say, Leo, this is the ballgame. It's over for him. But when you tie that into not just the specific impact on, like, you know, Puerto Ricans, but how it feeds into the Harris messaging about how this person is, what does she say? She says like unhinged, unstable, and the messaging about him being a danger and just someone you really don't want

in a position of power. He gave them ammunition in the final week. And I think it's pretty clear from his campaign's reaction that they think it could be a problem for him. I just know, if I was looking at how the Democrats were closing and there was some equivalent scandal on the Democratic side and all of their ad dollars were going to like, let me push out these niche culture war issue ads that really only appeal to the Democratic base. I would be like, this is preposterous that you're closing this way. And so, no, I don't think that the Trump campaign is closing well. That doesn't mean they're going to lose.

But, you know, I don't think that they're putting their best foot forward, in my opinion, in this final week. 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. 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. Let's go ahead and shift to the bull case for Kamala Harris because we have talked about, yesterday we talked about the polls shifting towards Trump. We showed you some of those indications that his campaign feels very confident about where they're standing at this point. Kamala Harris, we'll start with this. She went on Club Shea Shea. This is Shannon Sharpe's

program. This was released yesterday and it you know, it was a very, like, friendly, softball. It was. As all these podcast interviews have been, it was, again, makes me deeply depressed about the media landscape

in which we exist. But in any case, let's take a listen to a little bit of how that went. Well, so I'm really glad you brought that up, Shannon. So first of all, let's clear up certain myths.

Okay. You know those checks that went out? Yes. Those skimmies? Right. Right. The stimulus check. Yeah, I know. Well, right. Yeah. We got to be stimulus, but they call them skimmies. OK. The reason those came about is because there was a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives in Congress, people like Maxine Waters, people like Hakeem Jeffries, right?

Yes. Who did the work of pushing to say people need help right now and we need to send out checks. There was a whole lot of opposition to it, including from Donald Trump's White House. Yes. Even him. I think he was resistant to it at first. Yes. That's why those checks.

Remember, Congress holds the purse. Yes. So really, Congress wrote those checks. But then Donald Trump, unlike any president before or after, decided he put his name on those checks. So therefore, people thought people thought Donald Trump gave me that check. So similar messaging has been coming from Barack Obama when he's been on the trail about like, oh, Trump's taking credit for the economy being good when he came in. That was me. I'm the one who built that economy. So her trying to close the gap again with Trump on the economic issues.

And obviously on this podcast, attempted to reach young men, young black men in particular, and sort of humanize herself with that group. I guess. I mean, if you listen to it. By the way, that was like 30 minutes into the convo, maybe 25 minutes, I believe. The rest of the time was about music or whatever. And man, we need to fundraise. You know, there was, how many ad breaks were there?

I counted nine. I could be wrong while I was listening to it. So Shannon, buy yourself a new suit, bro. Contact me. Let me know. I can help you out. In terms of the actual content, I don't know. It seemed deeply cringeworthy to me, as you said. It's been fitting with this podcast election.

Podcast election sucks. I'm not a fan. I mean, it's just bullshit is the best way I could describe it. He even opened the interview. He's like, and we hope that you win. I was like, come on, bro. Like, what are we doing here? It's not even a pretense of a challenge on anything. Now, let's shift to the bull case because obviously these, you know, stimulus checks did matter last time around. And let's think about where the signs could be for Kamala Harris that most people are not aware of right now. And in the early vote, there are some signs that show that there's actually quite a bit of strength. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was really interesting.

This was what YouGov amongst 48,732 like voters, so actually a huge sample. And then if you actually dig into it, what you start to look at is the swing from 51% for Kamala Harris and then 47% for Donald Trump. That would crystal would be the same four points that Biden effectively won the popular vote by last time around, which could be enough to put him over the edge. And if you combine that with some of the other early vote numbers that we're beginning to see, it could be a sign of strength for him. Yeah, if we leave this up on the screen,

this is a large enough sample. This is the largest survey of voters that we will get. 48,000 likely voters is a preposterously large number. The methodology here is a little bit different. They do a pre and post election interview. The data from that study they make available to scholars. This is something that's done every year. So this is a large scale survey of political attitudes. They run it then through their own likely voter model in order to come up with these numbers. So they give a four point gap in favor of Kamala Harris. That's the same amount that Ipsos ABC poll that we covered yesterday had in favor of Kamala Harris. And you're right to point out that's roughly the margin of victory in the popular vote for Joe Biden as well.

Just keep this up for another second. A couple of things that jump out here, the gender gap. They have Kamala Harris actually winning men, 49-48, very different than other surveys that we've seen that could indicate they're picking up something that other surveys aren't. They could indicate that their survey is wrong. They have Kamala Harris with a significant gap with women, 53, 42. So that's noteworthy. They show her performing basically the way Biden did among young voters, 18 to 39.

She wins them 59 to 37. If you look at the rural, urban, suburban split, they have her dominating the urban category, winning the suburban category, which I believe Trump has won in the past, and then obviously losing bad in the rurals to Donald Trump. So that's the data that they show here. And so we can ask the question, okay, well, how has this survey done in the past since this is something that they do every time? Last time in 2020, they actually precisely nailed Biden's nationwide percentage. So they got exactly right what percent of the popular vote he would get. However, they did underestimate Trump by four. So they got Biden's number right, but they underestimated Trump. So that's worth noting.

They found Trump losing to Biden 51 to 43. The 2016 survey apparently underestimated both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, with Clinton taking 43%, Trump taking 39% in their pre-election survey. They would go on to win 48% and 46%, respectively. Of course, we remember Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by two percentage points, but lost in an electoral college. So they had the, the margin was pretty close, and they had Hillary Clinton getting more of the popular vote. But in the end, you know, they actually underestimated both of those candidates. So take that for what it's worth.

But the fact that it's such a large sample makes people take this particular survey relatively seriously. Yeah, absolutely. That's why it mattered. Let's go to the next one. This was one that we wanted to highlight, too. And actually, we mentioned it a little bit with Logan, but it's still very important to dig into. And look particularly at that Nebraska number.

So what they have is that in Nebraska, Dan Osborne, of course, in a tight race there. But more importantly- Let's go, Dan. Yeah, I mean, I'm rooting for a shock. What they have most importantly within this is that they have Kamala up by what, some 12 points or so in that special district. Now, the reason why that matters is that that special district is Nebraska not only has its own electoral college vote, which is what would put

her at 270, 268 if Trump does win Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, but that Omaha suburb and white college educated vote was one that Biden only won by seven or eight last time around. So it actually shows an overperformance amongst white college educated voters, which last time was a big precursor for what the 2020 vote ended up looking like and the suburban vote shift. So what it would see is that not only would you have Kamala doing as well as Biden last time around with white college educated voters, but even better. Now, can we transpose that to the swing states? I mean, you know, not entirely, but it is an indicator of strength with that core demographic group and one that if it were to bear out on election day would be enough to put her

over the edge. Yeah. I mean, if Kamala actually won this district, that Biden won by six, if she wins it by 12, that is not consistent with her losing. Yeah, exactly. You know, I mean, because it would certainly extrapolate out to, you know, Midwestern states or Midwestern college educated voters or whatever. Like if she is winning these type of districts by a significant amount more than Biden was winning these districts, that would be very indicative. It's one survey, take it with grains of salt, blah, blah, blah. But one of the things that we've been noting is that there have been a few surveys like this, a few polls that have found that when you drill

down to the congressional district level, as this poll does, or to the countywide level, the more granular you go, the better it seems like the numbers are for Kamala Harris. So we can put this one up on the screen. This is from USA Today. So they found in Wisconsin a deadlocked race, Trump actually with a one point lead, 48 to 47 in the state overall. However, when you drill down into Door County, Wisconsin, which has been a bellwether for the state, meaning whichever way this county goes, the state tends to go, Kamala Harris has an edge. She leads Trump in that area, 50 to 47, and that is larger than what Biden won that district by. He won that county by one and a half percentage points.

Again, margin of error, one survey, the overall top line result, not great for her since it shows a tie with Trump with a one point lead. But there have been a number of these that have consistently found when you look at the county level, when you look at the congressional district level, it seems like she's doing better than the statewide or the national polling would indicate. There's another thing that is a positive sign for the Harris people, which is that we can put this up on the screen. Some of the polls, now that you have people who have already voted, right, who have already cast their ballots, some of the pollsters have been breaking out, okay, among people who have already voted, who are they voting for? Who is leading? And these have consistently found an almost preposterously high level of support for Kamala Harris in the early vote, much higher than you would expect given the partisan breakdown of the data that we know from the early votes.

So in Arizona, they have Kamala leading, this is according to Marist Swing State polls, among early voters, 56-44. In Georgia, they have her leading 55-45. In North Carolina, they have her leading 55-43. This person opines, yes, these are essentially crosstabs, not weighted to be representative of that population, but it is an unmistakable pattern. In addition, we can put the next one up on the screen. This is another USA Today poll. They also looked at voters who had already cast their ballots and asked, okay, well, who did you vote for, you person that has already voted early by mail or early in person? And they found Kamala Harris leading by a two to one margin among those early voters, 63-34. They say that preference turns around among

those who plan to wait until election day to vote with Trump ahead, 52-35. And I've seen other instances that have also found very positive trends in favor of Kamala Harris among early voters. Now, on the other hand, Sagar, you would expect Democrats to have an advantage in the early vote because of habits that were established during COVID, because you still have Donald Trump, even to this day, running around, and Elon Musk too, by the way, casting doubt on mail-in balloting. Republicans are, by and large, trying to show up to vote early in person. That is their preferred method of early voting. In the state of Pennsylvania, that's actually an onerous process. I was reading yesterday, they don't have a normal, like you just show up and it's like election day

and you just go and cast your ballot and feed it in the voting machine. You have to go request an absentee ballot, go home, fill it out, come back. It's like very cumbersome.. It's stupid, right? And people are getting very frustrated with that process. But in any case, so especially given the way that things have trended historically recently, there have been, you know, the voting patterns early have been kind of all over the place, makes it very difficult to read into what these early numbers are indicative of. But like I said, what they seem to indicate in terms of the hopeful case is if you look at the partisan breakdown of who we know has voted early based on Target, Smart, and other data analysts, and then you look at this level of margin, it seems to indicate that some substantial proportion of independents are also coming into the Democratic camp, which is precisely what put them over the top in so many places in 2022. Yeah, and so I was just looking this morning morning and I saw a very good, concise summary from Mark Caputo, who's a reporter. He usually covers Florida. And he just says, look, number one,

Trump is doing well in Sunbelt. It's not enough. He needs one third of Rust Belt states to swing. So Harris has a bigger Rust Belt voter pool to draw from, but they are not showing up early in the way that she needs so far. If they do, she wins three, seven days to go. I thought that was a very concise way of looking at it in terms of the numbers. The big question mark is about those similar early vote domination that happened last time around. People are trying to say, oh, well, it's possible that that shows depressed Democratic turnout. But it just seems way more likely that everybody is fundamentally different from four years ago from the way that they vote. Part of why it is so difficult to look at any of the patterns, the other and the independent category that you just flagged,

that's really important too, where the non-identified and what they vote for really matters a lot. Now, if that is true, that is an indicator of a 2022 style dynamic where our voter is super high turnout, but the independents predominantly swing in one direction, which is just enough to put you over the edge. So, I mean, look, we wanted to make sure that you guys got a very clear picture that there's a very real path for Kamala Harris to victory. That's the key. The other thing I would say that echoes a point you've been making, Sagar, is that back in 2016, some of the warning signs for Hillary Clinton was that when you dug down into that district or county level data. Oh yeah, she was hosed. Things didn't look good. They didn't look good. And so you had these sort of

canary in the coal mines of different congressional districts that were like, oh, I don't know, that doesn't look great. But there was so much, you know, there was so much assumption, so many assumptions about the inevitability of Hillary Clinton that that was all sort of papered over until after the fact, when people looked back and said, you know, there were some warning signs here, people just totally ignored them. This time, if anything, those warning signs are going in the other direction. The congressional district and county level data looks better for Kamala Harris, looks very poor for Donald Trump. Now, these district level samples can also be faulty. They can also have a significant margin of error. But I think after election day, if she overperforms, these are some of the things

that we will look back to and say, ah, that was an indication of something that was going on, that pollsters were missing at the top line. The other thing that I'll mention is, I don't know if you saw this, but somebody wrote a post yesterday, like a pollster wrote out a post about how important the assumptions that they make in weighting their likely voter models are in terms of determining the ultimate result of the poll. So, and this is something we talked to Logan about. It's going to post for everybody on Friday. It's available now for premium subscribers. But this idea that pollsters were so burned in 2016 and 2020 that they're effectively hedging their bets and potentially even subconsciously kind of putting their finger,

their finger on the scale, thumb on the scale of these polls to try to engineer a result that's roughly 50-50 because that feels comfortable for them. Because they don't want to be the outlier that becomes the, what was it, Wisconsin by 17 for Joe Biden poll. And they lost a lot of business. This is preposterous. This was a preposterous result. Like, how dare you? How can we ever trust anything? They don't want to be in that situation. So if you have a bunch of pollsters that are all hurting around this like 50-50 race, then number one, you're not going to get singled out. And number two, the race is likely to be within a few points of that. So you're not going to get burned as having been wildly wrong. So it's possible there's some of that going on and that the electorate has changed post-Dobbs in a way that pollsters aren't really reflecting and haven't really accounted for. The last thing I'll

put up on the screen that people are sharing is, let's say we've thought about, okay, if the polling misses what it was in 2016, or if the polling misses what it was in 2020, Donald Trump is going to win. That's where we are. But if the polling misses what it was in 2022, that is a very different picture. I can put this up on the screen. In that instance, so you can see in the first column, that's where the polls are right now. I think this is according to the New York Times. So you've got Kamala plus one overall, plus one in Wisconsin, whole bunch of states that

are deadlocked, and then Georgia and Arizona plus two for Trump. If the polls miss like they did in 2022, Kamala wins every state except Georgia, where the polls actually in 2022 were accurate, which was different from the norm. So, you know, it's possible that this is the world that we're living in 2022 were accurate, which was different from the norm. So, you know, it's possible that this is the world that we're living in post next week election, where even if they're off by just a couple points in these swing states, if you have a miss, if they, you know, if they don't take account of the post-Royal electorate in a way that they did in 2022 and they have a similar miss, then it's going to

end up being a very clear-cut result in favor of Kamala Harris. Yeah, that's right. Can't help but look at that other category on the right, though. It's funny where Trump wins every single swing state and a blowout victory. Honestly, either one of those scenarios, I think nobody should be surprised by. Oh, no, not at all. Nobody should be surprised by. It's a weird thing to go into an election and not be surprised by any result. I guess the only one that would truly shock me is a tie, like a 269-269. Yeah. Especially because that would require this Nebraska district that we just covered that seems to be going very clearly for Kamala. That would require that to flip to Trump. The only other one that would surprise me is not just a tie, is Kamala wins the Electoral College, loses the popular vote. That would be genuinely shocking.

That would be fun. That would be fun. I am low-key cheering for that one because I do think that would be the end of the Electoral College, and I am cheering for the end of the Electoral College. It could have some interesting results. Yeah, it would end the Electoral College. The Republicans would almost certainly have to ditch the pro-life coalition if you ever want to win the popular vote. So, yeah, it's certainly possible.

Maybe I should cheer towards it. 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 Boy Sober 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. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. 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. So as we have mentioned multiple times at this point, we are one week out from Election Day and things are starting to get very edgy, I guess, very a little bit ominous. We can put this up on the screen. We had a number of ballot drop boxes, three different places in the state of Washington and also in the state of Oregon that were set on fire according to local authorities. In this particular video that you can see here where the ballots are on fire, this was in Clark County at the Fishers Landing Transit Center.

They say that hundreds of ballots were inside at the time. The last pickup had been 11 a.m. on Saturday. A Vancouver ballot box had also burned, that's in Washington, in an arson Monday morning, authorities report, with hundreds of ballots there possibly damaged in a fire. They also think that that is connected to another arson incident in Portland, Oregon. The police have put out an image of a car that they think that is a person of interest potentially in these arsons, which they believe to be connected. You might think like Oregon and Washington, these are not swing states. What is going on here? But one of these areas actually is a swing district in terms of a congressional race.

Marie Lusenkamp Perez won this district very narrowly last time around. And of course, even if it's not a swing state, people are voting on a variety of things to have their ballots in the mail burned up is very troubling and also, of course, causes people to be concerned. Hey, did my ballot make it in? Was it in that box? Is my vote going to actually count here? So this is troubling to see. Yeah. Well, in Oregon specifically, it's all mail-in voting. So that's what people need to understand. That's right. Yeah, I forgot about that. A lot of the states, they don't even do in-person voting. Everything is mail-in. Kind of interesting. They have very high voter

participation, but that's a secondary conversation for the people who are anti-mail-in voting. The key that you also mentioned is that this is the, how do you say her name? Is it Glusenkamp? Glusenkamp. Glusenkamp Perez and Joe Kent, which was a complete nail-biter last time. What was it, a few thousand votes maybe? It was barely anything. Yeah, Kent is, a lot of people might know him.

He's like a MAGA guy. Oh, that's right. Podcast circuit. Was he a former Green Beret? I forget. He's an interesting guy. I'll put it that way. My point, though, is that he became a big celebrity online, but then in 2022, swing vote against him. A lot of people have been watching that for potential signs of where things could go. Interestingly enough, it remains a toss-up

in the polls today. Last time around, Kent actually appeared to have a major advantage, and it was a shock. So it's a big question mark, too, about the reliability of polls. And obviously, that would be one of those districts that could be precursor, where if she does win re-election, that could be one that we could look to and be like, oh, that's similar to the 2022 D wave that ended up materializing or at least blunting the red wave. Whereas if he wins and he wins handily, that would indicate like a Trump vote. Yeah. Yeah, potentially. So in any case, it's something we have an eye on and, you know, obviously troubling series of events. We wanted to take some time, I've been teasing this for a while, to lay out what is likely to happen in the event, which obviously far from certain,

in the event that Donald Trump loses, what will Stop the Steal 2.0 look like? And as Sagar has rightly pointed out here, there are a few things that are positive that have happened since January 6th. You had legislation that was passed that was meant to prevent the sequence of events that occurred last time, where there were big question marks about what Mike Pence's role as the vice president is in certifying the results and whether or not the state legislatures just have like carte blanche to pick whatever the hell slate of electors they want to pick. There was legislation that was passed that sought to provide clarity to avoid that same sequence of events. So that's positive. And then the other thing is just that Donald Trump is not in charge of the federal government right now. So he has fewer tools at his disposal.

But that doesn't mean that he's not going to try some stuff. And that doesn't mean that he isn't already laying the groundwork to contest the results in the event that he does actually lose. We've heard this in a lot of his rhetoric. We also hear it from Elon Musk both at his town halls and also on his own platform of Twitter. You hear it from all sorts of Republicans. Republicans are starting to get asked. I saw Jim Jordan was just asked whether or not he would urge Donald Trump to accept the results of the election. He refused to say. So just as a reminder of that, here is a little taste of how Donald Trump is talking about the election when he's asked whether or not he will accept the results. Either way, will you accept the results of the election?

Yeah, sure. If it's a fair election, always. I would always accept it if it's a fair election. We're leading in all the polls then. We're leading in every swing stand. We're doing well. No, I don't think so. In fact, they just had an RCP say we're 93.2% chance of winning. I think that's pretty good. So one of the key things he says there, soccer, that we've talked about is he says, I have a 93.2% chance of winning. And part of the MAGA approach right now,

led by the Trump campaign, is to project total and complete confidence that there is no way that they can lose this race. Now, on the one hand, that may just be like their, you know, that's a very Donald Trump kind of thing to do. Like, of course, I'm going to win. I'm a winner, blah, blah, blah. But it also helps to lay the groundwork for if he were to lose,

I had a 93% chance of winning. Like, there's no way that I could have possibly lost. And then you pair that with, I don't know if you just saw, he just put out a true social, and this, again, consistent with other things that he's been doing, where he's already claiming that there's fraud in Pennsylvania that could be determinative, referring to a ballot registration issue in Lancaster County, which is interesting in and of itself and could be actually from the Republican side of the aisle, but using that incident to already

call into question the legitimacy of the Pennsylvania election results. He's going to declare that he won no matter what. So the question is really like if he actually does win or not. The interesting part, too, is on the legal stuff, as you mentioned. Can we please put C3 up there on the screen? From all of my reading, a lot of it is going to focus here. This is a Wall Street Journal article, which is actually very important. It's called, quote, The Secret of Billionaire Network Funding Stopped This Deal 2.0, $140 million from nearly 50 groups working on, quote, election

integrity and another crusade of ours. And what it focuses on specifically are, quote, training an army of volunteers to monitor voting on election day, $200,000 poll watchers, poll workers, legal experts recruited by the RNC. One group is essentially Facebook for election fraud, allowing users to post, comment, and share anything that they deem to be, quote, election regularities, filing incident reports, which are then followed up by lawyers and the legal team. They focus specifically on this, what is it, the Center for Election Innovation and Research, and they talk about some of the quote-unquote different things that they are looking out for. But the actual legal maneuverability inside of this, specifically because of the passage of the Electoral Count Act, has significantly going to change the way that both certification works at the congressional level and at the state level. I believe that what this will look like is it's going to push the certification fight

down. And that is based on this article and one we're about to talk to. Because previously, certification was both at the state legislature level without gubernatorial approval and then being sent to the so-called slate to Congress, it was kind of elevated up. Now certification fights are going to happen more at the county level and specifically local officials, people who have been elected to whatever, where you have seen the so-called election integrity network has a lot of people, specifically in more redder areas, that have put themselves on those. And that is where you could see the alternate slate push come from. But there is a change fundamentally from the way that things worked back in the 2020 election. And it's going to be a lot less, I would say, institutional. The other thing is, is that even with this army of lawyers, and I can't keep getting away from this,

look at Rudy Giuliani. He is literally bankrupt. And if you look at all of the, what, who is it? Jenna Ellis, if Sidney Powell, was it Chesborough? I forget how to pronounce, whatever his name is. All pled guilty in Georgia. All of them are out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Trump's the only guy not out any money on legal fees because his, what is it, Super America pack or whatever, are the people who paid for it.

So, you know, that's your hard-earned money. You can do what you want with it to donate. The point, I think, just comes back to what Stop Steel 2.0 is going to look like is much more local this time around. Lots of fights at the county level for certification, potentially fights around the secretary of state for certification as well. Although a lot of that has changed because of the electoral count act. Yeah. So let me, let me do a couple of things and just bear with me for a moment. So on the one side of the ledger, in terms of positive sort of bulwarks, you have number one, Trump isn't president, and number two, the Electoral Count Act, and those

are significant. On the other side of the ledger, you have a more premeditated, more organized plan in advance than you did before, as evidenced by the secretive network of billionaires who have been, they're already filing lawsuits. They were upset that Trump was not more effective in contesting the election results last time around. So they vowed that this time they would have a plan and they would be ready. And it's extremely well funded and it is well organized.

And they've already filed a bunch of these lawsuits. In addition, I don't think you're gonna see the same level of Republican, like elected Republican resistance to Trump fraudulently claiming that he won the election because they've seen how this went before. And people who were, you know, who really resisted, first of all, they were ousted in Republican primaries. They see where the Republican base is at this point, where they're overwhelmingly believe that Joe Biden lost, that Donald Trump won. They're overwhelmingly primed to believe once again that Donald Trump is inevitable and there is no way that he could possibly lose. And they see the way that that position has, in most instances, not all, but in most instances, been rewarded within the party. So let's put this up on the screen from Politico. They chart kind of a worst

case scenario for how this could all go down. They say the very real scenario where Trump loses and takes power anyway. Now, as you go through these steps, and I am going to take the time to go through these steps just so you guys can see how this might all play out. But it is very tenuous. Like it would require a lot to happen. And it's a very, like, narrow outlier. That's why they say the very real scenario. And I'm like, come on. But, I mean, I think it's worth thinking. It's like a polycrisis.

You have to, like, you know, plan for, okay, what's the worst case scenario? I think that would be a better analogy. The worst case scenario is probably a better way to phrase that. But in any case, I think it's good that they went through and laid this out. It was at least helpful for me to think about it. So, they have bullet points here that I'll just go through so you could see the sequence of events that would have to happen. Number one is already happening. He will deepen distrust of the election results, making unsupported or hyperbolic claims of widespread voter fraud,

mounting long shot lawsuits, challenging enough ballots to flip the outcome in key states. That plan is already being executed on even in advance of Election Day. Next, he will lean on friendly county and state officials to resist certifying election results. A futile errand, they say, that would nevertheless fuel a campaign to put pressure on elected Republican legislators in state houses and Congress. So in a number of the battleground states, you have legislatures that are Republican controlled. Even as in many of these same states, you have governors who are either like Brian Kemp, a Republican, but already has a pretty established track record of standing up to Trump on his bullshit, or they're Democrats. So you could end up with a situation where the state legislatures send the fraudulent Trump slate of electors to Congress and the

governor sends the, you know, legitimate, like, actual electors for Kamala Harris in that state. This is, of course, in the event that Trump were to, in reality, lose. That sends it to Congress. Now, this is where the Electoral Count Act comes into play. Because it should, the language of the law makes it such that it should be an open and closed case. That Kamala Harris actually as vice president presides over the certification at the Senate level. They say this is just a ceremonial position. They also say that the state legislatures aren't the ones who get to determine who are the legitimate electors from the state. So you would think that would be open and shut, and perhaps it is. However, John Eastman, who was key in crafting the previous, you know, fake electorate legal strategy last time around, he contests that the Electoral Count Act

is constitutional. And that has not been determined yet. He believes that based on the language of the Constitution, I don't think that there are a lot of people that agree with him, but he thinks this is still the case, that the state legislatures still hold all the power. And that even with this legislation, because he sees it as unconstitutional, he doesn't think the legislation changes anything whatsoever. Mike Johnson, who is of course currently Speaker of the House, and would potentially continue to be Speaker of the House and would, you know, potentially continue to be Speaker of the House if Republicans are able to hold on to the House, he has not said how he would handle such a scenario. So if you have, you know,

either congressional foot dragging or if it ends up going to the Supreme Court and they're able to keep Kamala Harris from getting to 270 electoral college votes, then it's a contingent election. It goes to the House. House is run by Republicans. Donald Trump elected president. So the most tenuous part of this, a lot of these pieces are like, yeah, I could totally see that happening. The most tenuous part of it is the John Eastman constitutional theory, which to my knowledge is not supported widely. And the Supreme Court, obviously very conservative, many of the justices appointed by Donald Trump, but they have also ruled against Donald Trump. And the courts last time around did overwhelmingly rule against Donald Trump.

Now, I would prefer not to have to bet on that kind of a like, you know, last ditch effort to prohibit him from stealing the election. But I do feel like there is enough of a track record in place there that we can feel like they probably are not going to go along with this relatively like cockamamie legal theory of John Eastman. I will give you the case for that, which is that if let's say in this scenario where that happened, then why would the Dems not nuke the court forever? Like if from that point forward, because also remember in this scenario, you would still have some sort of divided government. You would probably have some insane situation where one chamber is democratic and they like refuse to, I mean, we can go on this hypothetical forever in terms of refusing to swear people in and what that would all look like. But IRL, the reason why I doubt it the most is because all of it hinges on the Supreme Court.

The Roberts Court is extremely small C conservative. People misunderstand. Yes, that both means that the Dobbs thing and the presidential immunity stuff will go through. But fundamentally, what Roberts cares about more than anything else is preventing court packing and preserving the quote-unquote like institutional respect of the court. If they did this, it would be over, basically.

I mean, we would be in full-on Banana Republic territory. And I mean, could you blame anybody? Like, what would you say if that happened? If you're on the left and this scenario played out, honestly, you would be an idiot not to say, all right, that's it. Let's go. Supreme Court is there. Yeah, exactly. But if somebody, if the left did that, I'd be like, okay, it's over. Let's go. You know, it's on in terms of like lawfare and everything. Where things are right now,

that would make it look like child's play. So this is why, you know, I know it's caused some heartburn over on certain YouTube channels, but I have a lot of faith in the Electoral Count Act and specifically in the way that the reform has now happened, specifically because of what even the institutional question marks were last time around, on top of all of the punishment that you saw for all of those that participated last time around. Like, if all of the punishment that you saw for all of those that participated last time around. Like, if anything, if John Eastman and Sidney Powell were the best you could get last time around, and both of them are either under censure or have now been effectively bankrupt, who do you think you're going to get this time to really co-sign some of this stuff?

Now, lawsuits in Michigan court, Texas court, and all that, I mean, is it annoying? Yeah, for sure. But you know, every, was it 60 something suits that all got struck down last time around? By December, I want to say 28th. I could be wrong. I don't know. We covered them all in and out last time. Yeah. I used to have encyclopedic knowledge, but I think it was December 28th. Every single court case was lost. You know, I mean, you'll know quite soon. Well, here's a couple of things that I would say. First of all, you know, I think we already see who will support Trump in the new Stop the Steal 2.0 claims. I mean, first of all, his vice president.

Second of all, Elon Musk. He doesn't have the same impact. Certification doesn't even matter. First of all, he's not even the vice president. So if you want to object to the electors, like, okay, go for it. But what I'm saying is you're submitting that Trump is going to be on an island this time and he's not going to have the, you know, lawyers and institutional backing. That's not true because we already see there's- I'm saying it's going to be very different than last year.

But hold on, hold on. But hold on a second, because we cover that Wall Street, we just showed that Wall Street Journal article where you actually have a more established network of donors and lawyers in advance who are prepped and ready to go. So I don't think that that is true. I do think that, you know, the part about like, it is better that we have the Electoral Count Act and that definitely, you know, provides another tool in the arsenal to try to prevent any sort of like effectively coup from occurring. Where I maybe differ with you, I don't know, maybe we don't differ on this, is that even if it doesn't get to the place of like Trump is actually going to steal the election, there

is so much damage that can be done between here and there. So last time around, he didn't steal the election, but it still was really bad for the country and it was really ugly. And it has created deep fissures that to this day have not healed and are not going to heal for a very long time. The possibility of more political violence, I think really looms quite large and significant, especially if you see, we're already seeing, we don't know who did it and I don't want to place blame on any particular partisan camp. But, you know, we already see ballot box being blown up in advance of Election Day using incendiary devices.

So that's why I don't want to downplay, even if I do think it's more difficult for him this time around to have a plausible path to actually steal the election. I don't want to downplay that even just going through these steps of like, we're going to say it's rigged. We're going to claim it's fraudulent. Guess what? The Republicans, they're going to believe it. And many more, I believe, Republican elected officials are going to go along with it and accept it this time than they did last time around, because that's where all of the incentives for like conservative mega world stardom lie. So I don't disagree with you that I think it's less likely this time that he, that there's a plausible path where he like, you know,

fraudulently in a coup takes power, which also didn't happen last time either. But I think that there's still a lot of damage that can be done that is short of, you know, actual banana republic coup. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I, you know, actual banana republic coup. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I guess you know what the response would be. The American people have spoken who are Republicans and this is what they like. So they can rue the, you know, the consequences of it. And that's just the country we live in. I don't know what, I don't think that there is anything to be done about it outside of Donald Trump literally being a different human being and being rejected by the voters. And they have decided that not only do they like him, but they literally love him on the Republican side. And

it's up to the primary. And we're at a situation where probably 40 something percent or more people are going to vote for him and see it as legitimate. I wouldn't say it's the best thing I've said before. I don't know how you really look at a guy like J.D. next to Trump and you're like, yeah, Trump is the person who used to be president, but I'm not the electorate. I don't really know what to say other than people seem to not care as much. People seem to believe it. Does Trump have a responsibility? Certainly, you know, to try and tone down things, but he's not going to. So everything that you're worried about, I think, is just simply, I guess, baked into the overall political consensus and direction of the country.

I mean, one thing you should maybe hope for is that the more they go down that path, you'll have two successive elections where the American people would have rejected it wholesale and outright. And if anything, it will lead to even more democratic control and institutional backstops through the Electoral Count Act, maybe even more so whatever they try last time around, on top of criminal charges if it goes down that way. So we can't sit here and say that Trump did not pay a price for January 6th, right? It's probably the biggest price that the Republicans have paid, maybe up next to Roe versus Wade. We can't say that those who participated walked away scot-free. I mean, literally look at Rudy Giuliani. I mean, Steve Bannon just came out of prison today, served time in a federal penitentiary. So it's not like these things have been costless to

Republicans or to Republican elites that they can just go along in a similar way as last time around. I mean, I just think it's fundamentally different. Like, if you're going to vote to not certify the election, yeah, I think it's dumb. But, you know, the other case of it would be David Perdue ran a whole campaign against, what's his name, Brian Kemp, based on stuff to steal, and he lost in the state of Georgia. Tom Cotton voted emphatically for certification.

He didn't pay any price in 2020. I believe Marco Rubio voted to certify. He didn't pay any price in 2020. I believe Marco Rubio voted to certify. He didn't pay any price. Trump, you know, endorsed all kinds of people who voted to certify the election. Of all the people who even voted for impeachment, some of them lost, you know, on the Republican ground, but a lot of them remain like, or remain in office, quite quiet and still popular Republicans in their home state. So, you know, it's not necessarily like the total dividing line that people thought. Going into 2022, I thought it would be. But these days, there's a real electoral path for people who don't go along with this,

and they don't pay any price for it at the ballot box. I don't think that that's necessarily true. I mean, I agree with your cases. Like, Brian Kemp is the clearest case, right? Where, you know, the famous phone call, Trump's like, find me the votes I need. He's like,emp is the clearest case, right? Where, you know, the famous phone call, Trump's like, find me the votes I need. He's like, no, they go to war, basically. And now, because they need him, because they want to win the state of Georgia, they've had to effectively kiss and make up. On the other hand, you know where the incentives are in, like, the MAGA influencer sphere, which many of these, But hold on, which many of these elected officials basically traffic

in the mega-influencer sphere is to indulge all of the most deranged conspiracies about this. And you have Elon Musk, who's the richest and one of the most powerful people in the world, who was already indulging in advance in pre-election conspiracies about fraud, etc. So, you know, I personally think this has been much more normalized within the Republican Party than it was last time around. And you're going to see less resistance this time than you did. You know, that's why even, you know, Mike Johnson, who is Speaker of the House right now, he won't say what he'll do. Jim Jordan won't say what he'll do. So anyway, we're going to see how it's all going to play out. I just would say my whole goal in wanting to lay this all out, it's just so people know what to expect, right? To as much,

as best as we can, lay out, here's how things could unfold, right? If Trump loses, here's how things could unfold. Here's the play loses, here's how things could unfold. Here's the playbook that they have ready to go, that they're already planning to run, so that you're not caught off guard, so you know what to expect, so that perhaps it's less unsettling. Perhaps it's just by understanding what's going on. Perhaps you are not yourself bamboozled by the inevitable conspiracy theories and inevitable claiming of victory, no matter what happens on election day, so that you just are mentally prepared for like, okay, here's the playbook they're going to run. And here's, you know, here's how they're already laying out the groundwork for that. And here's what to expect

so that you don't get fooled by any of that. I think that's fair. That said, anybody who watches this segment and isn't immediately convinced and is willing to be like, well, what about this one viral clip that I saw? Good luck to you. It's probably not much that we can say to help you. That's actually been my experience with most Stop the Steal people.

There is basically nothing that you can tell these people that won't convince them. They are swimming in an island of bullshit. And, you know, I mean, that's what you were talking about with MAG influencers. If you pay the political price and they continue to want to go down that rabbit hole, then they'll just continue to sign their own death warrants of irrelevance. So that's the free market at work. You know, that's democracy in action. I don't care. You know, if people want to, Matt Gaetz and all these other folks want to just

continue doing this and they just continue losing like popular vote and the electoral college in this scenario. If something like that happened, one thing that we do know is that Trump does lose this election that he likely, well, he said he won't run again. Well, what does that show you? Then we're going to try and get an entire generation of people without any of the charisma or the celebrity or the like, you know, plot armor of Donald Trump who are trying to recreate. I think we all know how that works out, Madam Carrie Lake. So I'm not worried about it in terms of the political fix outside of, yeah, do I think damage will be done institutionally and trust-wise? Yes, certainly. But at a certain point, that's what people want. I don't know what else to say. People like it,

they believe it, they forgive it, They look past it, at least on the Republican side. And until they learn a different lesson, then that's just simply the direction that people want to go down. What can you say to people? At a certain point, they don't want to listen anymore. That's been my experience and why I don't even try to talk to these folks anymore, just because if you see some of the stuff they go down, you know, in terms of what, put dominion aside. And the way that they can explain about how every judge is corrupt and why this happens. And, well, really, the Hunter Biden laptop, actually. And it's like, it's just, it never ends with them.

So, you know, we'll see. We'll see what the price is. I guess one hopeful note that we can wrap this up and move to the next block on is last election, Kyle was on Rogan's podcast that night. Oh, I remember that. And beforehand, before the results came in, he laid out, like, you know, there's probably going to be the red mirage effect where, you know, the first ballots that come in from rural areas and day of voting are likely to be more Republican. And then as the night goes on, things are likely to shift. And because he had laid that out in advance, when it all happened, then it didn't feel like fraud. It was like, oh, well, you know, this was predicted. Like Kyle told me this was going to happen and this is what happened. So I'm not going to like really buy into or indulge these election conspiracies. And so there are people, you know, like Joe and like others out there who are trying to figure out what's going on, who have some skepticism

of institutions. But if you can tell them in advance, like, no, here's, and by the way, there is likely to be another red mirage effect, at least in certain states, this election. But if you can anticipate, like, this is what it's going to look like, this is the arguments they're going to make, this is how it's all going to go down, then it can help to inoculate some people out there from falling into, you know, like an understandable mistrust of institutions can keep from leading them down the path

of believing things that ultimately are not true. I hope you're right. That's all I'm saying. You have a lot more faith in people than I do. 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

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