Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/7/24: Kamala On Call Her Daddy Pod, Trump Elon Mega Rally, Debate On Trump Econ Plan

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Kamala on the Call Her Daddy Podcast, Trump Elon mega rally, Krystal and Saagar debate Trump's econ plan.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots that is breaking this morning.

We've got Kamala Harris out on a bit of a media tour. 60 Minutes, Call Her Daddy. Many people are saying. Yes, many people are saying. So we'll look at some of the clips that have come out of that. We also have Trump with a big rally returning to Butler, Pennsylvania, this time with Elon Musk. So that was quite interesting. Huge crowd there to see the former president. We also had some huge economic numbers that came out on Friday. Really big jobs report. We also have some other economic news in terms of the port strike

being averted or being over. So we'll get into all of that and what that means for you and also for the political situation, what's going to happen in November. Today is October 7th. So it's one year anniversary from October 7th. We're going to take a look at a year of war on Gaza and where things go from here as best we can tell. We're also, of course, still watching closely to see what Israel's response is to Iran. So really that whole region continues to be on edge in the face of Israeli provocations. And we've got Gabriel Sherman joining us here. He's got a new movie out.

It's called The Apprentice, and it is sort of like Donald Trump's origin story so it'll be very interesting to talk to him about that and like because this is I mean at this point he's been

Donald Trump has been in the public sphere for literally decades my entire life your entire life it'll be interesting to ask Gabe like what is new

that we'll get out of this movie I totally agree also is like is the movie a political like hit job is it actually interesting like What is the attempt?

Gabe, just for people to know, he wrote one of my favorite books, which is a biography of Roger Ailes called The Loudest Voice in the Room. I highly recommend people watch it. I believe he also participated in that Showtime series where Russell Crowe played Roger Ailes. Highly worth watching that as well. So yes, look, I understand he's liberal coded, but he's a good writer. He's a good journalist. And I'm excited to talk. The reviews I've read of it say it's it avoids that sort of just like, you know, D.R. Blue, red dynamic and really tries to get into the psyche of like what this extraordinarily influential figure in America. If you read Gabe Sherman's work, it's like very clear where he's coming from. But he does a good job of actually humanizing and bringing these people to life where if you are right-wing, left-wing, or whatever, you'll come away from it being like, oh, I kind of understand how this person ticks a little bit more. Yeah, listen, he's an old man and people are relatively

set in their ways. And the origin story of that is actually quite fascinating. So yeah, a long way of saying excited to talk to him. Before we get to that, let's put this up there on the screen. We've got our discount going on right now for the election. You can go ahead and sign up. BP 2024 is the promo code for $15 off of our premium membership. We've got exclusive election content. We've only got 29 days left. Let's put that next one up there. 29 days until the election, only four weeks. So in the next four weeks, guys, we've got a lot of stuff that will be exclusive to our premium subscribers. Crystal and I's exclusive election predictions, our maps, etc. But more importantly, those partnerships that we have going on with our race to the White House, Logan Phillips, who's got a great projection of his own, his own model, and he's going to give us some exclusive

insights. So you guys get the first access to that, breakingpoints.com, as well as all of our AMAs, which we'll actually be shooting later today. So there you go. You should sign up for that. It's been such a weird election cycle. That's crazy. Absolutely crazy. The timing of it feels all wrong and weird, just given the Biden dropout and the condensed timeline. No debates. One debate. Traditionally, we're supposed to have more debates. Right around now is when I think the second and the third would be there. We've also got a lot more early voting this time around. It's a crazy election. It really is. And there's a lot to say about it. And with that,

of course, considering the crazy election, this is also in some ways the podcast election. This is the election where you have both candidates who are very much making use of the new sphere of podcasts and their reach. First and foremost was Kamala Harris, who out of nowhere announced a media slew of appearances. First and foremost is Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper, where the topic of abortion was predominant and really was the one that they spent the most time on. Let's take a listen to how that went for her. Madam Vice President Alex, welcome to Call Her Daddy. It is good to be with you. I do want to clarify something. In the debate, former President Trump claimed that some states are executing babies after birth.

Can you just clarify? That is not happening anywhere in the United States. It is not happening, and it's a lie. Just it's a bold faced lie that he is suggesting that. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? He is suggesting that women in their ninth month of pregnancy are electing to have an abortion. Are you kidding? That is so outrageously inaccurate and it's so insulting to suggest that that would be happening and that women would be doing that. It's not happening anywhere. This guy is full of lies. I mean, I just have to be very candid with you. When I was attorney general, I was the top law enforcement officer of the biggest state in this country.

And I was acutely aware that the words I spoke could be the difference between whether a corporation was in business or out of business. That the words I spoke could move markets. The idea that someone is not only so careless and irresponsible and reckless, but out and out lies to create fear and division in our country and thinks he should be president of the United States standing behind the seal of the president of the United States using the microphone that comes with that? So that was a decent enough taste of it.

I listened to the full thing. It was basically all abortion all the time. Look, no offense to Alex. It's not really, I guess, her job to like sit there and challenge. It was relatively scripted. Can you tell people, because I actually have never listened to this podcast. I have listened to Call Her Daddy. So it's one of the biggest podcasts in the world.

I think it's the second biggest podcast in the world. It's like Rogan and then her. Yes, Call Her Daddy. And I think the closest equivalent is to kind of say it is sort of like Rogan for women. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is the flagship pop culture show for women. So in the same way that there's like the Rogan universe and the Barstool universe, which is like sports, UFC, comedy, and all of that. To be fair to Alex Cooper, the niche that she created effectively is to have that, but for

women. The show itself started off as like basically this raunchy sex show under Barstool. It's since transformed into, I would almost say, like an Oprah for millennial and Gen Z women. A lot of the guests are reality television stars. It's a lot of like- A lot of it is dating advice or how to find- Self-help kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, look, it's not bad, I guess, per se. Clearly, people really enjoy it. She just struck $125 million deal. I mean, I will say this, look, as cringe as I found a lot of the content, it's obviously not for me. It's for younger Gen Z and millennial women,

which is the hardest core demographic trending towards the Democratic Party in the last decade, and especially when you flip that on the side with men. So the way I would look at it is there is a reason that Trump is doing the Theo Vaughn podcast. He'll be doing some other interesting podcasts, which you guys will see soon, the Aiden Ross show and others, which is trying to shore up that while at the same time, Kamala is now appearing on Call Her Daddy. They really are two sides of the same coin. And it's not a bad strategy, especially if you wanna go and you wanna talk there about the issue of abortion. That's exactly something that I would do.

What is interesting is that Alex did reverse her past position as she had actually been offered Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the past while Biden was still in the race. She said, I'm not interested in being political or any of that. But look, I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the girl who does Call Her Daddy is herself a liberal, especially she's done previous stuff about Roe versus Wade. And I think one of the major cultural takeaways you can have from it is that the childless cat lady thing was a big flagship of that Call Her Daddy podcast on top of the issue of abortion. That broke through in the same way like the Taylor Swift endorsement did as well. So it's not surprising, but it is definitely, it fits with the media strategy of both of these campaigns. When you're looking at young people, you want to go with the

podcast demographic and you specifically want to go to the demographics that are trending the most in your direction. Here, we're talking about young women, and we're talking about the issue of abortion. And you're talking about young women who are not necessarily politically engaged. No, not at all, yeah. So the thought is, okay, well, this is a platform, this is a show that has a wide reach among young women who may not be super plugged into the election that I can speak to directly here on issues that I presume that they're going to be aligned on and interested in, et cetera. So, I mean, certainly as a like political strategy seems quite sound, quite reasonable. And it does, as you were saying, Sagar, like the choice of which podcast Trump is doing versus the choice of podcasts that Kamala is doing also underscores

like the underlying gender dynamics in this election, which some of the polls indicate you could have the largest gender gap possibly in history by the time voters go to the polls. And nowhere is that gender gap larger than among Gen Z. So when you're talking about, I mean, the podcast audience, it's not like podcasts are brand new. Older people have also discovered podcasts, so it's not like it's all Gen Z. But certainly, you're not reaching young people on traditional news shows. This is your chance to reach out to younger demographics. I would put it as for, sure, older people will listen to podcasts, but a lot of them watch the news and consume the news. Whereas a lot of Gen Z people in particular, they're not turning the news on at all. At best, they maybe served a clip from us or anybody else who does independent media, news shows. And even then, you're lucky if that's actually happening. IRL, it's like watching a viral clip go somewhere and or listening to your

favorite Call Her Daddy episode on your drive to work or on a run or something like that. Or I could see this being the sort of thing that gets clipped into and shared on TikTok and all of that. Yeah, well, she's huge. Alex Cooper is massive on TikTok, on Instagram as well. So look, I mean, it was a smart strategy. It's smart too whenever Trump does it. And he goes on these more like lifestyle men's podcasts as well. And I think you will see more of that during this election and not less. Now, also though, she did do some actual flagship like traditional media as flagship really as it gets with 60 Minutes. This was as part of 60 Minutes major election series where they had interviews lined up with Trump and with Kamala.

Trump actually ended up pulling out of 60 Minutes, but Kamala did sit for an interview with them. Perhaps most noteworthy was this answer on the US relationship with Israel, some vintage Kamala word salad. Let's take a listen. We supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden-Harris administration has pressed him

to agree to a ceasefire. He's resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon. He went in anyway. He has promised to make Iran pay for the missile attack, and that has the potential of expanding the war. Does the U.S. have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu? The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles that were just meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And when we think about the threat that Hamas, Hezbollah presents, Iran, I think that it is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening. Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things,

including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region. Do we have a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu? I think with all due respect, the better question is do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes. All right, so let me just repeat this about Israel. She says, well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.

Okay, a lot of words there. Going to need a translator. What does that mean exactly? Well, you know, look, we'll give 60 Minutes credit. The questions were actually quite good throughout the interview. Much better than, hey, how quick do you want to, like, nuke Iran? You know, which was the opening question of the debate. Let's give them that.

So much better framing here. In terms of the answer, well, it's a little bit difficult. And I think that highlights the very classic thing about the Kamala campaign. We're devoid of a lot of substance about what people are actually going to do. And look, this isn't just about a critic of like us personally. It is clear through all the polling that we see right now amongst swing voters, the tiny slice of swing voters that are left in this country, they want to see more substance from Kamala. They actually are yearning to be like, hey, what are you going to do? Maybe not

even if they care about the policy details, although I think some do. But there is this feeling that with Trump, I know everything. Not only was he in office, I feel like I know what he's going to do. There's a familiarity there. With Kamala, the question mark is still big enough that answers like this, I really don't think they behoove her to swing voters. They definitely do not behoove her to anyone. I mean, listen, let's talk about the politics first. So poll after poll shows, not only do people want more substance, they want separation from Joe Biden.

Yes. The messages that test the best for Kamala Harris and have since she got into the race is where she establishes her own ideas and her separation from this continually unpopular president. So here you have an issue where his policy is failed, where he is very unpopular, where not just the base of the party, but the majority of the American public would like to see a different direction in terms of actually using US leverage to, I don't know, withhold weapon shipments so that we don't continue to see complete annihilation throughout the entire Middle East, which is the track that we're on right now vis-a-vis Israel and Iran and Lebanon and Gaza and the West Bank, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So here you have perfect opportunity to establish a little bit of

distance, and instead you get whatever the hell that was. And the truth of the matter is, if you're there just to defend the Biden policy, you can't. You can't. Because the Biden policy has been one of impotence and failure. At this point, there was once a time where they could have said, OK, well, and not that this was really accurate, but at least it was something they could tell. We've avoided a wider war. You can't say that anymore. So you've allowed total annihilation of the Gaza Strip. And now we stand on the precipice of some massive escalation with regards to Iran. So you can't answer that question and say, oh, here's how our policy has worked. Here's how we've used leverage. Here's how we've constrained Israeli behavior,

because there's literally nothing you could point to at this point. So just to give people a sense on the substance here as well, there's all these articles being written now that are total cope and cover for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that are like, oh, well, he tried, but he just doesn't really have power in the region. Total and complete bullshit. The Serf shared this list of US presidents, all Republicans, by the way, who effectively used leverage to constrain Israeli behavior can go back to Dwight Eisenhower during the Suez crisis of the

50s, leveraged the threat of sanctions to convince Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula. Also, temporarily delayed funding to Israel over its construction of a hydroelectric project on the Jordan River. Ronald Reagan, back in 1981, indefinitely delayed two shipments of F-16 fighter jets to Israel over escalating levels of violence in the Middle East. The following year, warned Congress Israel might have violated its arms agreement with the U.S. by using American-made weapons during its invasion of Lebanon. In 1983, reaffirmed he would not send those F-16 jets until Israel withdrew from Lebanon. Quote, while these forces are in the position of occupying another country that now has asked them to leave, we are forbidden

by law to release those planes. George H.W. Bush, in 1992, the Bush administration threatened to withhold the delivery of $10 billion in loading guarantees to Israel if it continued building settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to the Washington Post. So somehow, previous presidents have managed to figure this out and not just get rolled over and over and over and over again, not just allow the country to be humiliated and civilians to be endlessly slaughtered throughout the entire region. But this hapless, failed president, with a policy that Kamala Harris is here defending, couldn't seem to do anything more than temporarily delay one shipment of weapons that then, of course, was superseded by many, many, many more shipments of weapons so Israel could continue to do whatever the hell they want.

And Bibi Netanyahu knows all of this, which is why he has known from the beginning that any of these quote unquote red lines were utterly meaningless because Biden and Harris were unwilling to use the leverage that is available to the US in order to constrain their behavior. Yeah, we will, I'm sure, you know, this is part of the other problem without debates is that, you know, this is about as good as we're probably going to get before election day of a genuinely substantive answer from Kamala, especially considering the rest of the interviews that we have lined up. Let's put this up there on the screen. So Monday, we had the 60 Minutes interview that's going to air in full. Tuesday,

Harris will speak to The View, The Howard Stern Show, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I'm sure we'll get a lot of hard-hitting stuff out of those. And then we have Harris campaigning in Nevada. She will participate in a Univision town hall. Finally, on Friday, she will campaign in Arizona. The reason why I think this schedule is very important, especially if you pair it with the Call Her Daddy appearance that aired yesterday, is let's look at the full view of the demographics in each one. For Call Her Daddy, it's young women. For The View, Howard Stern, and for The Late Show, we're talking about white boomers specifically. Then Univision, we're looking at Latinos. And then obviously Harris campaigning in the

battleground state of Arizona. So what we see is their electoral path of which they need to shore people up. They need to drive up the vote as much as possible there with young women, with white boomers. They need to try and win those college educated voters at an even higher pace than they did last time around. More suburban folks, the people who are older, anybody who still tunes into The View, Howard Stern, or The Late Show. And then the Univision town hall, that is going to be directly targeted at Latino voters of whom she's lost the most ground with compared to past Democrats, where Trump is likely to win not a majority per se, but maybe a majority of men and very likely as close to 50-50 as a Republican will have gotten since George W. Bush back in the 2000s. So I think those appearances, when we take them all together,

even 60 Minutes, honestly, it's one of those, probably still the most watched news program in the entire country. You put that together, you really see a clear picture of like the demographics. They are going hard for them. They are trying to drive out turnout amongst the people who they see either as needing to shore up or the traditional constituencies of the Democratic Party. I think you can also read into this that they have somewhat decided to switch strategies from the just like hiding her and, you know, hoping that the paid communications are sufficient. They appear to have heard the criticism that like, listen, this thing is on a knife's edge. And if you want to win, you got to be out there doing more than playing prevent defense. So that's also part of what's noteworthy about this relatively more aggressive schedule of media appearances.

And yeah, the Call Her Daddy is more of a niche audience. It's a large audience, but it's also targeting a specific demographic. Univision also obviously targeting a specific demographic. The other ones, these are broad, general population, very mainstream. The View, The Howard Stern Show, Late Show with Stephen Colbert, more of a broad swath of the American public and certainly an older demographic than Call Her Daddy, for example. There you go. Makes a lot of sense. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. On top of that switch strategy, like you said, Tim Walz has now announced a slew of media appearances. Similarly, he appeared on Fox News Sunday in a challenging back and forth on the issue of abortion. Honestly, smart, because really it showed that he was nervous in that debate. And he was rusty a little bit, I think, in terms of answering questions. This time around, it definitely changed up a bit. He was challenged on abortion and on past misstatements. Let's go ahead and listen to the abortion section first.

Abortion is legal throughout pregnancy in Minnesota. There is no ban or limit on abortion in Minnesota based on how far along in a pregnancy you are. You signed the bill that makes it legal through all nine months. Is that a position you think Democrats should advocate for nationally? Look, the vice president and I have been clear, the restoration of Roe versus Wade is what we're asking for. But that law goes far beyond Roe v. Wade. To make her own choice. The law is very clear.

It does not change that. That has been debunked on every occasion. But wait, let's agree. What you signed is there's not a single limit through nine months of pregnancy. Roe had a trimester framework that did have limits through the pregnancy. The Minnesota law does not have that. This puts the decision with the woman and her healthcare providers. The situation we have is when you don't have the ability of healthcare providers to provide that, that's where you end up with a situation like Amanda Zaworski in Texas, where they are afraid

to do what's necessary. This doesn't change anything. It puts the decision back on to the woman, to the physicians. And we know that this is simply something to be brought up. To be very clear, Donald Trump's asking for a nationwide abortion ban. Wait, he has said that he- And again, we don't see this as a winning campaign. He has said repeatedly that he will not sign a national abortion ban.

Are you calling that just, it's a flat out- And again, we don't see this as a winning campaign. He has said repeatedly that he will not sign a national abortion ban. Are you calling that just, it's a flat out lie? Yes, of course. And Senator Vance has in the past said so too. Now look, they may see this as an election issue. We see it as a right of women to make their own bodily decisions. So look, clearly that is good ground for Tim Walz and the Kamala Harris campaign. And it was an intentional choice that his first cable news interview was going to go to Fox News Sunday. He also got asked about those past misstatements. Let's see how it went for him, especially very shaky area in the debate. It went a little bit better for him this time.

Listen, before we go, because I wish that we had a full hour, I want to give you a chance, because you called yourself a knucklehead this week, to talk about some of your misstatements. You've modified your story or explained that you misspoke about things involving your military rank, about carrying a weapon in war, your 1995 DUI arrest, using IVF to have your beautiful children, Gus and Hope. Being in Hong Kong and China in the summer of 1989 during the Tiananmen events, a lot of people would say they couldn't get away with saying, I'm just too passionate, my grammar's not right, I'm a knucklehead. What do you say to the American people who think, I don't know that I can trust this guy with all those modifications to be the potential

commander in chief of this country? Yeah, well, I think they heard me. They heard me the other night speaking passionately about gun violence and misspeaking. And I got to be honest with you, Shannon, I don't think people care whether I used IUI or IVF when we talk about this. What they understand is Donald Trump would resist those things. Look, I speak passionately. I had an entire career decades before I was in public office. They know, and I'm very proud of my 24 years in service and my record. I have never disparaged someone else in this, but I know that's not what Donald Trump does. So look, I mean, I don't know what it is. Walsh is a lot more comfortable- This is like a different guy.

In cable news as opposed to the, well, China misspoke. I don't know what's going on there. But look, this is why, it's just funny. That's why he got the VP pick in the first place. It's going viral on TV. And then it took a bad debate performance for him to then go back on TV. But look, I mean, I guess you could see two different ways. One is they see it clearly as an error that they weren't doing more media and they were trying to save strategy. They also could be intentional, as in they held it back as far as they could risk-wise. And then in the sprint to Election Day, only 29 days left, you're going to try and pepper in as more media appearances. Traditionally, this is when the most amount of eyeballs will be on these people and with the swing voters in a very, very narrow election.

Really only data-wise three weeks before is when they really start to pay attention. This is crazy. I mean, to me, probably to you and most people who watch this show, there are millions of people, specifically swing voters, who don't make up their mind until like two weeks before election day. Some of them don't even make up their mind until like the day of the election day. And the things they look for and they consider their votes on are not the way that you and I would be doing it. A lot of it will be dependent on media. It will be dependent on the vibe of the candidate, sometimes the vibe of the day itself. There's a lot of political science research on this. So it's kind of fascinating. In the era where there are

less swing voters than ever, but they are still so determinative and matter. This period will be the most important, and that's when media, I think, is going to matter the most. Yeah. I mean, it's possible also that they were just like super focused on debate prep, but in my opinion, this is better debate prep than apparently whatever Pete Buttigieg was throwing at him in a cloistered room. So it is funny. I mean, I understand that the debate skill set and just the sense of pressure among at this one moment, you know, you've got this one opportunity, this one debate, and you've got someone who's adversarial, you don't know what they're going to throw at you, et cetera, et cetera. I understand it being somewhat different, but it's kind of wild

how much better he is in these cable news interviews where he's so comfortable, he's so forceful, he's able to like turn it, you know, difficult questions into a strength, et cetera. I knew he must have done well even before I watched it because the only things that the like Trump war rooms accounts were sharing was like the tough questions she was asking, not even his responses. So, you know, this is really a big part of why he ends up on the ticket, because he brings this level of comfort and, you know, this level of like, yeah, aggressive and effective communication skills to the tickets. So, you know, hopefully they'll be putting him out there more because I do think in these settings, he really is an asset and proves that, yeah, I mean, he's not a great debater, but he's,

when it comes to communicating in these forums, he's certainly ready for primetime. It's just in general, it's always just better to go on, especially in an adversarial interview. Yeah. Like that one was pretty fair. And so, you know, it works for him. Obviously, it worked well for J.D. Vance, too, because that was a lot of the way that his team prepared for those debates, which is just throw him into every single Jake Tapper interview or Meet the Press or Margaret Brennan on CBS.

And that's part of what, why he felt very comfortable there from the very beginning. 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. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's move now to Donald Trump and their strategy. Kind of a mirror image here in terms of call her daddy. So who do you go for? You want to go for some bro icons. That was, of course, Elon Musk. And that's after Trump returned to Butler, Pennsylvania. He returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of that attempted assassination against him to deliver a crazy rally. Some 20,000 people were in attendance. Absolutely raucous

crowd in Pennsylvania, the most critical battleground state, and where polls show it is completely tied up there. So let's go ahead and take a listen to Donald Trump and what he had to say. Come here. Take over, Elias. Take over. As you can see, I'm not just MAGA, I'm Dark MAGA. Well, first of all, I want to say what an honor it is to be here. And, you know, the true test of someone's character is how they behave under fire. And we had one president who couldn't climb a flight of stairs. And another who was fist pumping after getting shot. Fight, fight, fight. Blood coming down the face.

You've got 14 states now that don't require voter ID. California, where I used to live, just passed a law banning voter ID for voting. I still can't believe that's real. So how are you supposed to have a proper election if there's no ID? All right, so Elon is dark MAGA, took the stage. Iconic photo, let's put this up there on the screen. I didn't say iconic necessarily in a good way. You can take it whichever way you want. Trump's face there is funny too, giving him a look like, what's going on here? He's like, what did I get myself into here? But look, at this point, Elon's preference for the Republicans, well known and obvious. To the question of how exactly it will manifest, I still don't know. Although, look, you can't deny that it clearly still has relatively high favorability rating amongst young men from what I was looking at.

Well, yeah, a couple of things to say. I mean, first of all, it's important to keep in mind Elon is maybe Trump's top funder. We're going to get into some of the fundraising numbers, the campaign and the RNC raising way less money than Kamala and the Democrats, like an order of magnitude of disparity that we haven't seen before. What's helping to somewhat close the gap is in part Elon Musk's super PAC, which is doing some of the traditional field work, etc. And so, I mean, it is like we do have to point out the irony of Republicans very upset about Twitter being supposedly biased under Jack Dorsey. And now you've got a guy who's running it explicitly in favor of Donald Trump,

who is speaking at his rallies and funding his campaign to a large extent. And for some reason, I don't see as much hand-wringing about that. So in any case, it's also, look, Elon's a billionaire. He's got a lot of government contracts. He's got a lot to gain also from having a very cozy relationship with the President of the United States. So that part should not go unremarked upon either. Yeah, and it's interesting, too, to look at his PAC, the America PAC. I was just in Pennsylvania this weekend, and there were actually quite a lot of ads that I saw that were done by that America PAC. So that's direct evidence of the impact that he's having.

Trump also did a, as I was saying, which is when he was shot at that exact moment when he was pointing towards a graph and a chart, the chart that he credits with saving his life. Let's take a listen to how that went. Pennsylvania, we love Pennsylvania. And as I was saying. Oh, I love that. I love that chart. I love that graph. I love that chart. I love that graph. So that was a big moment there for the crowd, especially, like I said, I was in Pennsylvania. I'm telling you, the number of political ads that people are dealing with over there, my God, God bless you. It's also all of the signs everywhere. You

can tell people are jazzed up, whether it's Trump, whether it's Kamala, whichever era you in and which way it tilts, they are huge. It also is in the context, these rallies of Donald Trump and now the media strategy by Kamala. There's some really interesting insight into how both of these people are spending their last month of the campaign. Let's put this up there on the screen. So as Crystal alluded to, Kamala Harris has a massive disparity in money and her ability to spend on traditional advertising in the lead up to election. She has placed $263 million in ads between the end of the convention and October 4th, two and a half times as much as the $109 million spent by Donald Trump. She has more staff, more volunteers, a larger surrogate operation, more digital advertising, more sophisticated smartphone-based organizing program, extra money for extraneous bells and whistles typically reserved for corporate product

launches and professional sports championships. A, quote, Harris drone light show recently flew over Philadelphia. Her rally attendees often get light-up pop-up race alerts. They are even plans in the works for a late October infomercial to air on swing state broadcast networks. The scale of her financial advantage larger than anything Trump faced in his previous two races for the White House. Now, look, money isn't everything, as they accurately point out. Hillary outspent him massively back in 2016. But if we put this next one up on the screen just to show people the scale of it, the scale is genuinely unprecedented. 2020, Joe Biden outspent him significantly.

So did Hillary. But this time we're talking orders of magnitude larger. bypass that with Trump and his allies are looking to is to get earned media and traditional, like the way that they really always have is capture public attention, get billions of dollars in free advertising, control the conversation. And he also has some incumbency bias as well, considering he was the president previously and everybody in America not only knew his name before 2016, but they definitely know his name these days. So that's a bit of a difference in the strategy. Kamala trying to spend her way there, trying to get herself across the finish line on Election Day. Yeah, I mean, that chart really kind of blew my mind, to be honest with you, because my recollection of 2016 as well was like, oh, Hillary, I don't

spend him by a ton. And then you look at this and it's dwarfed by the amount that Kamala is spending against him. And these totals reflect the Harris campaign and the DNC versus the Trump campaign and the RNC. Now, they are obviously not the only players in the election. You also have these outside super PACs. And there, the Trump campaign, this is another way that they're different from the Harris campaign. They're more reliant on these outside groups. This was a similar strategy that we saw with like Ron DeSantis, where he really outsourced a lot of what was even traditional campaign, like in-house work to outside PACs. Didn't work out that well for him, but doesn't mean it's not going to work for Donald Trump. But even when you factor in those outside groups, you still have a huge disparity on the Democratic side.

So according to this article, when advertising by outside groups is added to the candidates' campaigns, Democrats spent about $225 million more on paid presidential advertising between the end of the Democratic convention and October 4th. That's about 1.8 times the amount that was spent by Republicans. So, you know, we're going to have a real live experiment here about how much money matters in presidential politics. Now, based on the political science, my own, you know, sense of how elections go, money matters a lot, but it matters the more, like the further you go down the ticket, the more that it matters.

So you drop a million dollars into some local city council race, yeah, that's going to matter a lot. Or at the congressional level, it matters a lot more, but since you have just like less national media attention, less ability to get earned media. Here you have in Donald Trump, someone who is obviously a known commodity who can get attention and eyeballs whenever he wants to without having to spend a dime. So is it determined? It's certainly not determinative here how much of an impact it has. Even that is yet to be seen. And then the other thing they point out in this article as well is that, you know, Kamala's running more of a traditional campaign. They've got field offices across the country. They've built out this huge volunteer base.

You know, they're going door knocking and doing all the traditional field work that you associate with a presidential campaign and campaigns at all levels. Trump is really not as focused on that. He is more focused on the earned media, on the podcast sphere, on generating attention through his own sort of, you know, words, deeds, antics, etc. And I think the other thing to comment on is he used to have such a prolific grassroots fundraising base, but he's been hitting that list for almost a decade now. And I think there's also some sense of like that that base is sort of worn out.

And it's not just Trump that's been hitting them up for money. It's a whole sphere of Trump aligned grifters who are trying to sell them, you know, gold coins and, you know, you build the wall crap, the whole universe of Republican candidates also who are trying to hit that list, who are trying to, you know, trying to get money out of them for their campaigns as well. And so I also think that they've really kind of burnt that list down. And there isn't as much grassroots enthusiasm. When Kamala came in, Biden had zero grassroots enthusiasm ever. When Kamala came into the race, she had a genuine surge of enthusiasm on the Democratic side.

They brought in a lot of new grassroots donors who hadn't given to the party before. And so you couple that with the fact that we're about to show you in the economy block, she's gone in this whole Wall Street charm offensive to try to suck up as much Wall Street cash as she can. And you've got the makings of, we'll see whether it's a successful presidential campaign, but it is certainly a very successful fundraising campaign. My inkling is I don't think money matters all that much past a certain level in a presidential race, especially one where Trump is such a polarizing figure. I think it probably matters a lot more in congressional and in Senate races, door knocking, etc. But just the reason why people vote for president is not the same in terms of, oh, somebody showed up and knocked on my door.

A lot of that is very old school stuff, especially think in a media environment like today, especially also why people vote. There's a lot of negative voting as in I'm voting for this person to prevent the other side. I don't think you necessarily need to be touched by organizing, but look, I could be totally wrong. You know, clearly they do spend hundreds of millions of dollars. They don't do it for no reason. It yields something to what I'm again, I'm not sure yet. I'm pretty sure it's like the Coca-Cola experiment where the absence of advertising definitely can be felt, but the actual proactive, like, measurability of each particular ad dollar doesn't really exist for this one. So I'm not sure. And if Trump does lose, I don't think it will be because of money. But money doesn't hurt either. Yeah. On the field program stuff, you know, I think the best case you can make for it is that if you have people

who you've identified as like, okay, these are people who will vote for me, but you need to get them to turn out, a field program can help to make sure you're banking those votes, you're getting the early votes in, you're encouraging people like, okay, today's election day, what's your plan? You know, you need to get to the polls, how are you going to do it? And it gives you a better sense of kind of where you are because you are tracking all of these voters and having direct contact with them to know, okay, are they in our team? Are they on the other team? Have they voted? Have they not voted, et cetera? And so the research shows it can move races like a point. And hey, if you're talking about a really narrow election, it could end up making the difference, especially maybe in North Carolina where you have all of these voting issues now in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Being able to make contact with these voters and encourage them to get to the polls, it can potentially make a difference. You know, I am also very skeptical at how much the paid on TV advertisements. Consultants love them because that's where they make all their money. So the conventional wisdom about them really mattering has not been shaken because of how much money is being made on all of them. But at the presidential level in particular, I don't know how much are people watching the TV and like really going, oh, that's a good point. Now I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris. It's just hard for me to imagine. Maybe it makes a difference,

but it's difficult for me to see people really like making up their minds based on this like flood of advertising that's hitting them in the face every time that their favorite show goes to commercial break. I agree. 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. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband

at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care

to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions

that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time,

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

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. on wages and contract extensions. So let me explain because it is kind of complicated. Basically, the two sides have extended their existing contract through January 15th to provide time to negotiate a new contract as opposed to a strike that would completely close the East Coast and the Gulf Coast ports after the International Longshoremen's Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance have agreed to that tentative deal. So I don't think it takes a genius to see that January 15th is when, oh right,

after election day, it's also five days before inauguration day. Okay, got it. So clearly there was some major political pressure that was put down on the longshoremen. There were a lot of takes about how either they were betraying Biden or about how they were in collusion with Trump. When in reality, it looks like they were in it for themselves to try and get a raise, which is aka their job as a union. Right, yeah. What they were trying to do, but all of the doom and gloom crystal has officially

been a late until January 15th, whenever it appears that some sort of deal will be negotiated. So I think, if anything, what this does most damage to is all the take economy that was out there. There were so many. The take economy took it. There were so many takes. I don't know if you guys thought, there were a lot of like liberal conspiracies about how the head of the Longshoremen Union is buddies with Trump. Like a pro-Trump group. And so this was like, you know, seen as some attempt to screw over Kamala Harris specifically. I was always skeptical of this because also the Longshoremen, they endorsed Kamala Harris. Yeah, I know. So they are officially behind her. But in addition, it's worth noting, so in this temporary

agreement, they've already secured a significant wage increase. Their wages are going to rise 61.5% over six years under this tentative agreement. The piece that seems like it still really needs to be worked out, which is a very critical one, is about automation. Because a lot of the longshoremen's jobs are being automated out of existence. I think it's one of the primary areas of automation innovation. So that remains to be worked out. I also think you have to give the Biden administration a lot of credit for how they handled this. Joe Biden himself was quite clear on coming down in multiple statements on the side of the workers. There was a push from Republicans in Congress in particular to get him to invoke Taft-Hartley to block any sort of strike

activity and first force these workers back to work. He said, absolutely not. You had Pete, Mayor Pete, working behind the scenes, but also, most critically, Biden administration acting Labor Secretary Julie Hsu. The Longshoremen's Union thanked her directly for her work on their behalf to try to secure this tentative agreement. So in any case, this had a potential to be an absolute sort of catastrophe and nightmare. We played for you some of the quite striking and quite militant in a way that I appreciate comments from the head of this union saying, listen, we will cripple you. And he's not wrong. So much of our commerce depends on

these ports working effectively, working efficiently. We saw what happened in COVID when you had the ports screwed up and the backlog and all of the rippling effects that it took years to overcome from that. So it's good news, in my opinion, for everyone that they were able to secure this tentative agreement. They're able to get these wage hikes. And let's hope that they also are able to secure a good deal when it comes to automation. Yeah, it also highlights some interesting union politics around them. Because like I said,

it was clear that there was a significant, especially elite and democratic backlash against them when it looked like they were going to strike. And with a lot of those calls, Biden's call notwithstanding, a lot of the like commentary being like they're deliberately trying to destroy Biden. On the flip side of that, in some insight into union politics, let's put this up there on the screen. The International Association of Firefighters on Thursday said it would not make a presidential endorsement in what was, quote, viewed as a blow to Kamala Harris's campaign. The union, which represents 300,000 career firefighters determined quote, by a margin of 1.2%, slim margin, obviously against picking a candidate. The reason why I think this is so significant, Chris, I'm not sure if you remember this. We interviewed the president

of the international association of firefighters the day that Joe Biden came out with his candidacy. And it was because he was the first union to come out and to endorse Joe Biden. They loved Biden. They were the very first union to come out and to back him. Previously, earlier this year, I think J.D. Vance visited the Firefighters Union Conference. I think it was in Boston. Yeah, and he got booed. Okay, well, they didn't endorse Kamala, so maybe it worked out for him. So I think there's a lot going on here. There is a lot going on here. I mean, from a policy perspective, it obviously makes zero sense that you would endorse Joe Biden and not endorse Kamala Harris when they have literally the exact same policy when it comes to unions.

And Kamala Harris has been very consistent pro-union throughout her career. So if you look at, certainly looking at her time in the Senate, looking at her being part of the Biden-Harris administration, this is the most pro-union, not that they were perfect. They were not perfect, especially when it came to the railway strike. This is definitely the most pro-union administration that we have had in our lifetime in the modern era. And so to be willing to endorse Joe Biden, but not Kamala Harris, it's just about basically vibes and their sense that their membership has less affinity for her, likes her less than they liked Joe Biden. And it also is a blow to this political theory that I would like to believe was a reality of, quote unquote, deliverism, where if you deliver for a constituency in terms of their direct interests, that you are going to benefit from that. And, you know, again, this was a very pro-union administration.

Trump was very anti-union in his administration, you know, was unwilling to move forward on things like the PRO Act. And yet they still can't figure out who to endorse in this race. So there you go. Well, look, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's up to the membership. And that's why I'm saying like, it's obvious now that the dividing, I mean, this, look, I agree with you, deliverism, I'd like for it to be a thing, but it's not. I mean, it's clear that we are ruled mostly by culture. And with these, you actually had, I believe Tim Walz spoke at that event as well. But both of the candidates courting them specifically on the Republican side, I do think it's kind of vindicating for inviting Sean O'Brien, who ended up not endorsing anybody

in the presidential race, and for J.D. going to the firefighters union where Joe Biden was there. Sure, a couple people in the back may have booed him, but them not coming out and endorsing Harris, that's a big deal. And especially with two of those major unions now not entering the fray, that is a major change in union politics. Those are two of the, I mean, 300,000 people is huge. Obviously, police unions have been pro-Republican now for a decade or so. Yeah, that's sort of a special situation. It's complicated. So it's like police unions on the right, teachers unions, and most of the other unions on the left. But this whole new just not endorsing does show you that it's the membership itself, which is trending in a very different direction. And it fits with

that CNN clip that we did in our last show about the historic rise in some of the working class support for Donald Trump and specifically about where the issues of disagreement are. Almost certainly, if you were to survey these people, immigration is going to be the number one reason that a lot of them are pro-Trump, just to show what the dividing line is between those people. people and also, you know, in terms of how they view what they can get in the future, because the theory I'd seen too is, yeah, look, Trump 1.0 wasn't great for unions, but this time around by not endorsing, which Trump sees as the victory, right? Especially for Teamsters and for firefighters here, they think that maybe they can curry favor with him. And perhaps it's a signal that they think that Trump may be the person who's in the White House next time around and that they can get something out of him next time. Especially if you spoke at the RNC or not endorsing Biden when you were the first union to do so. Obviously, it's a risky theory, but you don't have no idea how it's going to work out.

Yeah, I would just say good luck with that. Because if you think that the second administration, I mean, this is a lifelong union buster. He's still going on with Elon Musk and joking about how cool it was for him to fire striking workers. He's still going on and on about how he would do anything it was for him to fire striking workers. He's still going on and on about how he would do anything to get out of paying overtime to workers. That's who he is to the extent that he has any core ideological commitments. This has been a pretty consistent one. So if you think that you not endorsing is gonna lead you to getting some favoritism under his administration, just good luck with that. Maybe, maybe they're right. I

don't know. I still think that things could change in the second time around, but I'm, perhaps I'm too much of an optimist. Let's go to the next part here on the economy. This is with Heather Long reporting about the strong jobs report. Let's put this up there on the screen. Very interesting data. The U.S. economy has added 254,000 jobs in September, above expectations, a major bounce from August. Unemployment rate is now down to 4.1%. This is interesting just because this is right before the election and it does show there are signals that people are feeling a little bit differently about the economy as opposed to, let's say, 2021. That's especially indicated in this Cook Political Report. Let's put that next

one up, please, on the screen. It shows that Trump actually led Harris on inflation and cost of living from 48 to 42. Today, voters are more evenly divided on who they trust to handle the issue. The tariff plan, they said 45% of companies said that import goods would, quote, increase the price consumers pay for the tariff. Voters view on the economy are, quote, improving a bit. 46% now say the economy is getting better or staying the same, which is up 38% from May. And then, quote, young people are the most pessimistic about the economy. Amongst the youngest cohort of voters, 63% think inflation is getting worse. So some insights I

think where you could get from this are not only on the economy, but about the edge of the economy. So it's not a good thing if the Trump margin is not bigger with the economy because it always was a major advantage for him. At the same time, with the jobs report and all, it's always difficult to parse, especially with wage data and all of this, because the unemployment rate has been low for quite some time. They've been beating jobs expectations and all of that. But clearly people's experience of the economy and even of inflation and their memories of the last couple of years have really weighed them down, I think correctly. And I don't think this also factors in, for example, housing and a lot of the other structural problems. So I'm of like two

minds of the way to look at it. And this is part of the other problem with there's this huge war amongst economists right now about whether the economy is good or bad. And my general instinct is just to trust people whenever people are like, eh, it's okay. Basically rich people, people with assets and others are like, yeah, I'm feeling better. Now the younger voters who are most locked out are like, I'm not happy about this at all. And poor and or middle class people are like, yeah, it's getting better-ish. But I wasn't very, I haven't been very happy over the last couple of years. I would love to see the divide on economic pessimism between homeowners and not homeowners.

Yeah, there you go. That's the perfect one. Because I do think housing is, I mean, it is a big part of why people feel so dissatisfied with the economy and the direction of the economy. And so it makes sense that young voters would be the most pessimistic about where the economy stands and would have the most negative feelings because they're more likely to not be homeowners. And they are more likely to be getting gouged by landlords who are using these algorithms to like price fix and, you know, getting screwed on rent prices. And then they're looking and thinking like, I'm never going to be

able to own a home. And these prices just keep escalating and escalating and escalating out of control. That cost of housing is so central to my whole budget. Like, no, of course, I don't feel like the economy is great. So I do feel like that is one of the central, continues to be one of the central divides in our economy, in our society, and also one of the central pain points for everyone up and down the spectrum. But if you're not a homeowner in particular, that is a massive pain point. Going back to the politics, I do think these numbers are significant that Kamala has erased, Trump had a huge lead on inflation when it came to Joe Biden. People, even though Kamala's policies aren't really all that different from Joe Biden, people feel like she's different, feel like she would be better on the economy than he

would be. At least she's sentient. I guess that's part of it as well. So the fact she's erased his lead there is important. The fact she's even cut his lead on the economy overall down to five points is also, I think, quite significant because that has always been one of the strongest issues. And I would say, you know, whatever you think about, Sagar and I have a disagreement about Trump's tariff plan. He's in support of the across-the-board tariff. I'm very much opposed.

I think it's sort of, you know, economic insanity. It would certainly escalate the price of consumer goods, you know, kind of across the board. How much is a matter of some debate. But I think that's a very strong message for her. I think they should be running a lot of ads. Apparently, focus groups coming out of her debate with Donald Trump said in terms of her economic pitch, the thing that hit the best was her describing his tariffs as the Trump tax and talking about how it would increase the price of goods. It reminds me of, sorry, you've probably seen these commercials that for Republicans who

support the quote unquote flat tax, which would just get rid of the income tax, but then you get taxed more on everything you buy at the grocery store. I've seen these very effective ads at the congressional level where it's somebody like going through the grocery store shopping and showing how much the price of goods will increase on every single purchase. Some of the most devastating and effective ads that I think I've honestly ever seen. So if she wants to continue sort of building on now she's even with him, I think they should be hitting that over and over and over again.

Because the biggest issue that people have in the economy right now is high prices. So if you're explaining to people like he's gonna make things worse with this policy, I think it's very politically effective. But that's what, it doesn't make any sense. Her administration and Biden have expanded more tariffs than Donald Trump did while in office. So clearly they philosophically support tariffs. The reason that the prices are high right now is because of the global supply chain. The reason why we need tariffs is specifically to build up domestic manufacturing. So I just don't think it falls apart, in my opinion, along the actual analysis. But the thing is, having selective tariffs on industries that

you want to build up, that makes sense. Having tariffs on bananas and coffee makes no sense. Why not? I mean, certain industries, like we're just not well suited, like our climate is not particularly well suited to. And also a big part of our manufacturing sector is advanced manufacturing, where you require parts from overseas in order to build and assemble that final product. So now you're talking about all of those costs coming in, all of those pieces coming in from overseas are gonna have an added cost to it. That actually doesn't even necessarily accomplish what you wanna accomplish, which is to build out domestic manufacturing.

So again, whether you support the policy or not, it's pretty clear it is going to increase prices across the board. So having a few areas where, okay, we can handle prices increasing on washing machines or whatever for some time period. But for voters looking at this and thinking, okay, we're going to increase prices on literally everything across the board. Yeah, it's unpopular. It's already unpopular. And like I said, I think it's effective political messaging to lean into that given where the pain point is right now.

It's up to America. You people want cheap shit from China and from everywhere else. And you want to complain about inflation every time something happens in a global thing, then yeah, go ahead. Go ahead and support zero tariffs. I think inflation concerns are a reasonable concern. Okay, but I'm saying, if you have to decide what you want, you want to be extremely vulnerable to price shocks for every single little thing that you consume in the economy, or do you actually want to try and buy as much stuff that's made here in America as possible? And that's a vision that I support. Also with tariffs, it would bring in hundreds of billions of dollars in additional revenue. That is unambiguous. America is the beacon of global trade. People will export here

no matter what. The idea that we're not going to have some beneficial, not only monetary, but manufacturing rise from tariffs is ridiculous. And that's what I mean too, is if she was running a purely neoliberal trade campaign, fine. But her only objection is like, oh, there's tariffs on, there's too many tariffs on other sectors. But the whole idea of targeted tariffs reveals that the idea of tariff itself is the big ideological war we had to fight was whether tariffs are useful in any context. They have already conceded that. Now it's just a battle between where the tariffs should be and not. And clearly, what we saw from the Midwestern states all throughout the Trump administration, people kept saying, oh, all these people are going to revolt, all these farmers,

etc. It's not true. It actually benefited their economy. It's not like our trade with China was affected really at all. If anything, our trade deficit went up under the Trump administration. Our trade deficit did go up under the Trump administration, which is part of my point. That's my point, though. So here's the thing. There's a big difference between, you know, you don't have to have an all or nothing approach. So again, there are certain industries that are important for, you know, for the economic base that are growing industries of the future, like EVs that are important for our national security. Steel, I think would be an important, you know, fall into that category that are important in terms of during COVID, we learned like, oh shit,

we don't make any masks or gowns here. Like there are some critical supply lines that, yes, it makes sense to protect those industries, even if it comes at some cost to consumers. To do that across the board just doesn't make any sense. Then you're just hiking prices on everything, including things that we don't really have any interest in making here and that, you know, or we don't have the climate even to grow here. So, you know, I think there's a very, I think it makes a lot of sense to actually have targeted tariffs. And the other piece is, so under Trump, you just had these certain tariffs and it actually didn't

accomplish what they wanted to accomplish, which was to bring manufacturing jobs back. As you mentioned, Sagar, the trade deficit actually increased with China, and we lost manufacturing jobs, even excluding the COVID era economic decline. We've seen more manufacturing job creation under the Biden administration because they've had a combination both of targeted tariffs plus industrial policy investment through things like the Infrastructure Act and the CHIPS Act. The EV sector is one important indicator of that. In particular, they focused on increasing battery, EV battery production here in the US, and that has actually borne some fruit. But to just do tariffs across the board, it's using a sledgehammer for a policy that makes more sense to use a scalpel or perhaps a large knife, but not a sledgehammer.

Look, I'm a proponent of industrial policy, and that would be my criticism of the Trump administration. But on the tariff question, again, a lot of it is frankly just dishonest if you are also a person who supports tariff. Here's the truth. You will pay more for electronics under the Biden administration than you did under, let's say, the Bush administration, especially whenever we factor in the export duties or the export import duties with respect to tariffs. I think that's fine. I think that's a good thing.

I think it was a good thing under the Trump administration. Yes, it's true. Tariffs alone are not going to accomplish anything. But it's also about the economic vision of the United States. What Trump talks a lot about is Smoot-Hawley, which is derided by a lot of these brain-dead economists. And they have this whole theory about how Smoot-Hawley is really why the Great Depression went the way that it was. And I don't agree with that at all. And there's a growing amount of literature that goes into that, specifically around the manufacturing piece, like what you talked about with the advanced

manufacturing. That's not necessarily the only economy that we want to live in, which is just purely high-tech manufacturing. You actually want labor capital jobs that don't require a minimum of a college education for mechanical engineering to be able to work with. And then importing a lot of the other cheaper stuff from China, Vietnam, whatever, India, et cetera, or maybe Mexico. You actually want the majority of that supply chain here in the US, and that will require a significant amount of tariffs. I'm not dishonest. I think it would lead to higher price. I also think it would unleash more GDP here in the US. And I think it's unfortunate that this whole tariff thing, it's like when the way that they talk about it, where they don't ever

acknowledge that they believe in a very similar vision, just a similar vision targeted towards industries, which they think are more important. But at the end of the day, you're agreeing with the philosophy. The philosophy is important. I mean, you're acting like there's only one answer. Tariffs, yes, or tariffs, no. Where it's very reasonable and I think correct to say it depends, right? Is it an industry that has an important job base here in the US? Is it an industry that is growing for the future like green tech? I mean, the amount of solar panels that we manufacture here has skyrocketed under the Biden administration because of the combination of tariffs and industrial policy.

So I don't think that the answer is just tariffs yes or tariffs no. You could say, all right, it makes sense and it's a reasonable trade-off for consumers to have to pay more for washing machines or have to pay more for EV vehicles even in the short term because this is an industry that's important to the future and that is important to our economy in the future. Like the trade-off is worth it versus just this, you know, blanket across the board. Now we just want to raise prices on everything, including bananas, which it doesn't even make sense for us to grow here in the U.S. So that's my only point. I'll just go back to the political point, which is that even though you support it and other people do as well, I think it is a very potent political messaging at a time when the top economic pain point is prices to point out that Trump's policies unambiguously would raise prices on a lot of goods across the board. The last thing I'll say is it is a very different economic landscape than 2016. In 2016, we had low inflation. In 2016,

price increases were not, you know, didn't rate for consumers because we weren't experiencing them. So it's a very different economic landscape that this blanket across the board tariff policy enters into. Yeah, no, you're not wrong. And I agree. Americans are very short term in the way that they're thinking. But, you know, but you know, you got poor for a reason. Okay, but people are poor for a reason, which is mass deindustrialization. Yes, you know, per capita, things were more expensive. People also had a lot more money back in the 1970s before all of this trade bullshit that currently happens.

So the more indirection of tariffs, I think we're better off than we are. I mean, even the solar thing is a good example. The only reason that they're fake, these manufacturing numbers on solar are totally fake, especially because they had to waive the tariff on the import duty from China because no solar company was able to actually properly manufacture it in the U.S. We had whole debates about this a couple of years ago. People couldn't go and watch. In fact, I think Ro Khanna and I argue about it here at the desk. They had to waive the tariff on it because it's not actually capable here in the US. That's a perfect example. Yes, you need industrial policy. But for a lot of this stuff, the tariff itself is important in actually literally forcing the manufacturer here in the US

to, especially against nations like China, which not only do they have massive tariffs on us, but have their own state-sponsored industrial policy. Every high-tech manufacturing piece that people always point to, France, Germany, these are massively subsidized by their own government. Only in America are we the fools that float entirely on free market and just let all these other companies, all these countries completely take advantage of it, from steel, transshipping. I mean, it's a disaster. I just think the current economic landscape.

Even for what you're talking about, just increasing manufacturing. Again, it doesn't make any sense to put tariffs on things like bananas and coffee. We'll put that aside. But, okay, let's imagine that you are manufacturing something that requires a lot of imports from overseas. And now suddenly your costs have gone up on every single one of those pieces.

What are you likely to do? It is just as likely that you decide to relocate your factory to an international location and then bear the cost of, okay, just one time I'm going to have to pay, you know, it's the tariff coming in to sell into the U.S. market. It's just as likely that you end up with a lot of those jobs leaving to go to places where they can import the goods without having to pay that tariff on every single piece that goes into manufacturing the final product. So it's not even clear that for what you're talking about, that you end up with high prices and you could also end up with losing manufacturing jobs in some of these industries.

So that's why I just say like, it makes perfect sense to me and I, in certain industries to be protectionist is that this is something we wanna foster. We're gonna put a tariff, we're gonna do industrial policy, we're gonna have these incentives for companies to locate here. We have seen that be successful under the Biden administration in certain key areas in a way that it wasn't under the Trump administration, because all they did was tariffs. But in some industries, again, it just makes no sense, especially if it's not coupled with that industrial policy, then the only thing that you're doing is raising prices and also potentially losing manufacturing jobs in some of these places.

Well, my response would be, A, we have the long arm of the US government. If you want to try and you're doing is raising prices and also potentially losing manufacturing jobs in some of these places. Well, my response would be, A, we have the long arm of the US government. If you wanna try and leave, then good luck, because we should penalize the shit out of you. And that's actually something Trump supports, so I think that's good. Whether they would ever get through a Trump Congress or any of that, but I mean, that's on a philosophical basis. It's like, okay, you wanna leave John Deere, GM, and all of this, then welcome.

You're gonna have to pay a lot of money back to enter our markets if you want to leave our country. And anybody who thinks this is radical, every nation on earth does this. If you're a Swiss manufacturing company, pharma, good luck leaving Switzerland. If you are Volvo or any of these other companies in Europe, yeah, good luck actually leaving your flagship. They will smack you. It will never happen. Only here are we saying it's even an acceptable solution that people who get billions of dollars in government subsidies are allowed to just freely leave or whatever when they want, especially when they're still in the red, considering their contribution to us and all the taxpayer assistance, subsidies, etc.,

that they get on a basis. So that's why the tariff is, in general, on the policy. I don't disagree. I think it probably politically is not landing the way that I wish it would. And I think people should actually have to think about this stuff, not in terms of the immediate term of whether something is going to cost 10 cents more or less. You need to think much more in the future, because if you don't, then you'll end up in a COVID situation where you can't buy anything at the grocery store, or you're going to have a three-year supply shock to the the US economy and everyone's going to freak out and wonder how exactly that happened. That's 40 years of problems that happened. Yeah. So let's go ahead and move on to Kamala Harris courting Wall Street because there are some big questions about whether she

would continue the parts of the Biden administration that I really support. And those pieces have been specifically around corporate power and antitrust and also the more aggressive approach that the SEC has taken towards crypto. By the way, one of the, I think, undercover stories in this election by ourselves and everybody in media is that crypto is the largest funder by industry of both campaigns. I mean, if you look across our entire political spectrum, the amount of dollars coming from crypto dwarfs literally any other industry. So they seem to effectively have gotten their way. Trump flipped on his views on crypto.

Kamala seems to be behind the scenes doing some similar, like, I'll be different than Joe Biden. We can put this up on the screen from the Financial Times. They had a good write-up of the behind-the-scenes charm offensive that they describe as beginning to, quote-unquote, pay off. She's been building ties with finance bosses in an attempt to quell support for Donald Trump. They quote one leading private equity investor that I thought this was pretty interesting. He said, I was going to vote for Trump because I was annoyed about being targeted by Biden. I could reconsider. Now, Trump is still better on taxes, meaning that he will cut taxes for the rich.

But Harris seems to be more like Clinton than Obama or Biden. Hard to think of more damning words. Also, the delusional view of Obama is crazy. But it's fair that Biden, you know, the Biden administration has been more aggressive, certainly on antitrust than the Obama, Clinton, Bush or Trump administrations. So she has still, Sagar, not taken a public position on whether she would maintain Lena Khan at the FTC. But behind the scenes, she seems to be indicating to these Wall Street people that like, yeah, I'm going to be different than Biden on this. Well, the biggest tell to me was Ben Horowitz, for people who don't know who

that is. He's the co-head of A16Z, who previously had actually come out and endorsed Donald Trump and is now actually, quote, making significant donations to Kamala Harris. As of just yesterday, it was announced that because of his, quote, longstanding relationship and him and his wife who have known Kamala Harris, that they have decided they will be making significant donation to entities who support the Harris-Walls campaign. But that perhaps was the biggest tell to me because he previously had literally endorsed Donald Trump and said that he was better for technology. The technology industry in the Biden administration was bad, specifically Lena Khan and all of that. So the flip from Horowitz on that was the most significant to me about where things are going. I don't think people like that

give billions or millions of dollars and who are themselves billionaires with money that is on the line unless they have somewhat of assurance of the way things are going to go. That just broke yesterday. Yeah, I saw that as well. I mean, to me, it's deeply troubling. Kamala, clearly, she has very few ideological commitments to anything. And she doesn't even really need their money. We showed you the charts before. She's wildly out fundraising him. She's wildly out spending him. So it would be far better, Kamala Harris, I know you don't care about, like, the morals or the principles.

It would be far better politically for you to be seen as having an adversarial relationship with the people that most of the country absolutely hates. And listen, there's a lot you can say about Donald Trump this time and the coziness with billionaires. He just literally had one of the world's wealthiest men up on stage with him at a rally. He's been going around to oil and gas executives saying, give me a billion dollars and I'll give you whatever you want. He's been shamelessly, in a way that is more brazen than, frankly, anything we've seen before going to wealthy billionaires and saying, fund my campaign

and I will cut your taxes and give you everything that you want. But you can't make that case when you are yourself engaged in some version of the same game. So the other thing that I see is Mark Cuban going around and making this case publicly, basically, you know, making a similar case. Oh, she's going to be different than Biden. She's going to be better to Wall Street, et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, I don't know why you think this helps your campaign. It also speaks to the embrace of the Cheneys. I mean, embracing Dick Cheney is just, this man is pure evil.

It's just disgusting to affiliate yourself with him whatsoever. And I don't know what you think you're getting out of that when so much of the public is in favor of taxing these people more, is in favor of a more aggressive stance vis-a-vis the rich, is disgusted with how much they've eaten of the economy and how much they control the entire world. So even just from a base political perspective, I don't get it. And certainly from a moral and policy perspective, I think it is the dead wrong direction for her to take. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's, yes. However, with the money, with who she is, with the people who are surrounding her,

it's not a surprise exactly why she's going in that direction. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content,

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