Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/4/24: Shock Iowa Poll, Megyn Kelly Confronts MT Senate Candidate, Closing 2024 Ads, Did MSG Rally Screw Trump

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Shock Iowa poll has Kamala up, Megyn Kelly confronts MT Senator on gunshot claim, closing 2024 ads, did Trump MSG rally screw Trump.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. 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 Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Here we go. One day until election day. So we got a big electorally focused show for you. Logan's going to be here talking about whether the state of Iowa. Yes, that's right.

Iowa is in play. Ann Selzer shocked the world with her poll drop this weekend, so we'll get into that. Campaigns are also out with their closing ads, so we'll take a look at how they are making their final case to voters. Also, a little Epstein, a little Epstein info, some audio tapes released where he talks about how he was Donald Trump's best friend for 10 years. So we'll dig into the relevance of that. Also asking the question if Trump October surprised himself with that Madison Square Garden rally. New York Times is declaring the end of identity politics, but are they right about that? And of course, Sagar and I, with the big reveal of our maps, making the case for why we think the election is going the way that we think it's going to go. So break down the data, reveal both of our maps. We have them going in two different

directions, so that should be interesting. Yeah, it'll be fun. We got our whole thought process laid out. Not to brag or anything, just called every state and electoral college last time. Yeah, you nailed it last time. I got extremely lucky. I have much lower confidence in this map this time around, but that's why it's fun, right? That's why it's fun to do. As a reminder, thank you to all of our premium subscribers. And if you're not, you're going to want to sign up at breakingpoints.com. We've got exclusive major coverage that's going to be going on from basically now until whenever the election is called. So for context, we've got the show today that's going to include our election previews,

like our predictions. Tomorrow morning, we'll have an update for everybody that will drop sometime. Yeah, we'll record it in the morning. It'll drop beforehand. Yeah, Ryan and Emily are going to join us for that. That's right. Ryan and Emily will be there. And then all four of us will be here at the desk,

including with Logan and with Decision Desk HQ software. We're really excited about that because it means we're going to have full-on, you know, basically network style coverage. We have live returns. We can throw to the maps means we're going to have full-on, you know, basically network-style coverage. We have live returns. We can throw to the maps. They're all to be dynamic. We can make calls here at breaking points for when specific races will happen.

We'll have literally up-to-the-minute coverage just like any of the other major networks. So there's no need to go watch anything else. Can we put that beautiful graphic, please, up on the screen? That's right. Look at that. 6.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It's great to be back on Standard Time. I just have to put that beautiful graphic, please, up on the screen? That's right. Look at that. 6.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It's great to be back on Standard Time. I just have to put that out there.

6.30 p.m. Eastern Time. You can go ahead. You can set your clocks. You can watch it on TV. It'll be live on YouTube. We'll also be taking questions intermittently throughout the night from our local stream, which, again, is for our premium subscribers. So if you want to participate in that, BreakingPointpoints.com, you can go ahead and sign up. But all of this is just, it's like an apotheosis

of our premium subscribers. I remember the very first time that we ever did any live election coverage on Rising, this I guess must have been 2019, for some of those coverage. And people put it on in bars, people in their living room. The number one complaint was always, hey, we don't have any live coverage. You don't have a Kornacki-style figure. You don't have data and all that because we had to use others. And so we've worked very, very hard to assemble as big coverage as we possibly can. So we've got everything that we need over here. You don't need to go anywhere else except right here for election coverage. I am excited. It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. Come on. You can't help but be excited. It's fun.

Got to know how the story concludes, right? Although even I have to say that, I mean, it's not necessarily that we're really going to know how the story concludes tomorrow. Yeah. I mean, it could go on for a while. Yeah. And that's the other thing. Let's not sell it. Like, you know, tomorrow night, we may not know. We're going to go late, you know, if we need to, as late as possible. And then the next morning, and we'll wake up and we'll do it all over again. So it is election week. And every single day that this continues, we will have coverage here on Breaking Points. Don't worry about it until this thing is called. We're excited for it. The whole team is ready. We rested over the weekend. I bought an entire 18-pack of Celsius, so I'm ready to roll. You're ready to rock. I'm ready to go. Good deal. All right, let's go ahead and get to Logan. Very excited to be joined now by Race to the White House, Logan Phillips, our exclusive election partner. It's great to see you, my friend.

Hey, great to see you as always. All right, so let's get into it. I'm sure all of us at exactly 7.01 p.m. on Saturday for election nerds out there, it was a big Super Bowl. The Iowa seltzer poll dropped, absolutely shocked the entire political world and really made this thing much more of a toss-up than I think others were prepared for. So let's go and put this up there on the screen and take a look. So what they have inside of the Des Moines Register, the famed Iowa and Seltzer poll, is that they have Kamala Harris up by three points on Donald Trump in the state, Logan. Now, the reason why this is such a shock is that this poll arguably previously was one of the main reasons why Joe Biden dropped out of the race,

had him down by 18 points against Donald Trump, which people were transposing those results onto neighboring Michigan and Wisconsin and saying, if that's the truth, then there's absolutely no way that Joe Biden has a chance at winning any of these any blue wall states. Now, Iowa, I mean, what? A Democrat has not won Iowa since 2012. So the first time in 12 years of the poll has a Democrat leading there. Donald Trump won it by some, what, 10 points or so last time around. So give us your analysis, not only in terms of, you know, we can give all the caveats, if it's true, if it's an outlier and all that. But let's start with and let's suppose it is true. What does that tell us about what's going to happen tomorrow?

Well, you know, I just finished work for the day on Saturday and my intern called me and told me the result. And I like Had him check five times. Yeah Multiple times I was like, there's no way yeah like eight different Twitter accounts before I believed it because it was like they must have at least flipped the results because even if it was Trump only up by three just that would be terrible cataclysmic for her Yeah, cuz in the post blue check era You never know if like the Twitter account is someone that is like Dave Washerman's or something.

It's like slightly off. But no, the poll was legit. And so if it were anyone else, I'd be like, okay, they just had a weird day. Good on them releasing it. But Seltzer called President Obama winning in the landslide in the 2008 Iowa caucus when no one else saw it coming. That's right. Called Rick Santorum,

who's having a shocking win over Mitt Romney coming from 2% five weeks ago in 2012. Called Donald Trump's surprisingly strong win both cycles in Iowa. So I don't think we can dismiss it, given that almost every time she breaks with convention and she's right, this one is breaking so hard more than any of the others with what we expect that I don't think she's right

that he's going to win it. But before, I viewed it as a safe race. My own model had a 2% chance for Dems. Yeah. Which, hey, maybe doesn't reflect well on me now. I should give a little more room for uncertainty there. Yeah. Now I have it up to around 20 or 25.

Huh. That's one and a quarter. That's a lot. One and a quarter chance for Kamala when that's, I mean, and just to be clear, no one was looking at Io as a battleground, including the campaigns. Like they're not campaigning there. They spent no time there. They're not running ads there. They're not doing any of that. And so what she finds, we can put this up on the screen,

is she finds effectively huge movement among women. Kamala is winning independent women in this poll in Iowa by 28 points. She's up by a two to one margin among senior women. And so that's basically the story that she's telling is that Roe being overturned was a political earthquake. It has dramatically shifted the electorate and other pollsters are not capturing the movement among women in particular towards Kamala Harris and towards Democrats. How much credence do you give to that story? Are there any other data points to support this?

Because as we know, as we've been covering on the show, almost every other poll is like tie, tie, tie, plus one in this way, plus one that way, maybe plus two if we're getting crazy. But it has been so stable and such a coin flip this entire time. So I would say the odds are that it is just going to be wrong by quite a bit. There's a case, though, that she's right. And if there's a huge polling miss against Harris, these are some of the seeds. There's another seed we saw last week. We were talking about hurting last week. Nate Silver did this really good analysis over the weekend,

or at least I read it over the weekend. It said there's like less than a one in a trillion chance that the pollsters aren't hurting. I think it was 9.5 trillion. Yeah, that's right. One in 9.5 trillion chance. Yeah. Wow. So I don't even know what the decimal point on that would look like. Yeah.

My brain isn't big enough to be able to calculate mentally the difference between the two. Getting struck by lightning like eight times is more likely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the reason they're doing this is because no one wants to be Quinnipiac being name-checked by Donald Trump

after a bad cycle, blaming them, and that hurts their ability to get revenue. Hey, ABC, Washington Post is poll partner. They've been with them for a long time. They've been one of the best. They had a horrible cycle. They're not with them anymore.

So it's easier to stay in the middle. I'm not saying all pollsters are doing this, but clearly a lot of them are trying to play it safe. The second thought of this is maybe they're not just staying in the middle. Maybe they're in particular avoiding having outliers like Beaver Harris because that's a lot more dangerous. She's not going to name check pollsters in her speech accepting defeat, right? Well, also I think it wouldn't even be the name checking. It's just that it's a pattern.

It would be three cycles in a row. Yeah, exactly. And that would mean that you have a systemic problem. And let's just hammer home for people what the past results. Can we put A4, please, up on the screen? So here you have the final poll findings and the results. On 2022 Senate, she had it R plus 12. The result was R plus 12. 2020 President, she had R plus 7. It was R plus 8. 2020 President, she had R plus 7, it was R plus 8. 2020 Senate, she had R plus 4, it was R plus 7. 2018 gubernatorial, she had, this is interesting, she had D plus 2 and it was R plus 3. So that was one of the bigger misses. 2016 President, she had R plus 7, it was R plus 9.

2014 Senate, she had R plus 7, it was R plus 8. 2012 President, she had D plus 5, it was D plus 6. So as he says, about as good as any pollster as gets. If we look back in the last 12 years, if your biggest miss is a five-point swing towards Republicans, that's roughly two points outside the margin of error. So if we were to even think that, you know, here, three points, margin of error. So that would mean it's actually tied. Donald Trump is up by two.

Trump up only about by two in Iowa in a state that he won by, what, eight points last time around? That's kind of a disaster, right? So that's if we take it seriously. The other case is just massive outlier, where you have polling response bias or any of that. So can you run through? Yeah, that's still by far the most likely. When something wildly goes against your assumptions, even when it's a great pollster, that's the probability. That being said, I literally have a Seltzer-specific contingent in my polling average element for anyone else because I found every single cycle when I tested it, the more weight I gave to Selzer's poll, the better it was.

And so eventually I kind of had to bite the bullet and just do that. So. I think Stilber has the same thing. He has his highest rate as pollster in his entire average. So there you go. Yeah. And you know what?

We have seen similar things in Nebraska second. I mean, that was expected Harris to be leading. She's gonna be like 10 points. Yeah, I think actually. What did Biden win it by last? Yeah. I think like five maybe. Five. And I've seen polls. It's that one electoral college vote 10 points. Yeah, I think actually. What did Biden win it by last? I think by like five. Five. And I see polls.

It's that one electoral college vote. Right, including I believe the New York Times poll of that district had her up by 12. Yeah. So quite significant. Okay, so let's say that even if Kamala Harris isn't winning Iowa, but this is sort of directionally correct, right? She's picking up movement that other pollsters are suppressing out of whatever reason. How does that translate to the other states in the region? Could it be, because we actually have some information here, I'm not sure what element it is, but anyway, Iowa has a six-week

abortion ban that was just instituted, and it has been a central issue in terms of the political conversation in the state. So is it possible she is picking up some accurate movement in the state of Iowa, but that is very specific to that state and does not really translate to Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, et cetera? Yeah, I mean, those states have had some ability to moderate on abortion in the 2022 midterms that Iowa didn't have. And, you know, Iowa swung a little bit back in 2018. Democrats won three out of four House seats. They might have won four if Steve King, the guy who called himself a white nationalist, didn't lose his primary.

And then it lurched hard right in 2020 and 2022, right? There's a possibility. Like an object in motion in politics doesn't always stay in motion. Sometimes it reverses. Of course. That's such an important thing for people to understand. It wasn't that people today, probably if you're young, you're like, oh, Iowa's a red state. Well, it wasn't that long ago. Obama won it. He won it by a decent amount two times around. Let's go ahead and move on, I think, to Emerson. This is the counter, right? A5. Can we put that, please, on the screen? So the very same day that Seltzer comes out, Emerson also comes out with its own poll.

It's got Trump up by 10 here in Iowa. Now, the criticism I've seen is that Emerson is more one of the herding pollsters, you know, that is out there. They may be using the traditional, like, recall to vote. I think Crystal's point is really key. You know, one of the reasons why nobody's been paying attention is that people thought it was a red state. Neither of the campaigns have been paying attention. But, you know, locally, they did literally just have a six-week abortion ban that went into effect. And of course, that's going to be felt deeply by the people there. And actually,

in the congressional races, they have all been running crazy ads on abortion in either direction for this entire time, which could be itself obviously contribute to the overall presidential result. But that's a confounding variable. I mean, it really is interesting because it's one of those where it's like, look, somebody's going to be right here, you know, and she's got a famous reputation and all that. But if it turns out to be catastrophically wrong, it will certainly, it'll, I mean, it'd be her biggest miss ever, I think. Yeah, it will be. And I'll give her respect for doing it. She's fearless. Yeah. Yeah, she's got, can you explain the methodology too?

So as I understand it, it's not weighted per se. It's more like random digit dialing that they use. Yeah, but she's calling voter rolls, not just random people. Okay. So it can go into that. Yeah, she's trying to get a sense of which different groups are going to vote by just talking to everyone and then getting representative sample the elector, which has worked for her. It's a little old school.

Right. But, you know, the reality is you don't know which groups are going to vote more. You can use last cycle as a basic principle, but it's part of the reason why you're going to underrate people, right? So let's do the opposite. So, you know, if she's wrong, obviously this is devastating for her reputation. Everybody else has proven right, including the pollsters who were just like, let's kind of kludge it and make sure it's not too far off of the 2020 result. What if she's right? Then what does that do to the entire rest of the polling industry if she's correct and

we're in the type of landslide territory where Kamala Harris is winning the state of Iowa or even competing, contesting the state of Iowa? It would definitely free up pollsters from hurting next time. It might free up a lot of pollsters a lot of time in general. I think everyone's ratings, including myself or pollsters that are forecasting, would emphasize to a greater degree those that don't heard. That would get more positive coverage. Right now it's kind of laughing at the ones that do that. Right.

Starting to switch ever so slightly now. So I think it would change the industry in that regard. Would it decrease trust to a degree? Yeah. I mean, we're also, you know, we're in a cynical era. I don't know if it's a social media thing or what goes viral, but when you mess up,

everyone knows it more than when you get it right. That's very true. Very true. That's absolutely true. It's not that fun to talk about which pollster was the best. Correct.

And also the people who were the best in 2020 were wrong in 2016. So it's one of those where you can't really use just past results as a perfect predictor. Anne will be like

literally the only pollster that anyone listens to. Yeah, that's right. She ends up being correct here. Yeah, that's a good point. Let's go put New York Times then up on the screen because this is a little bit of a different story and actually a very confounding and interesting one. So the New York Times, Sienna, this is a poll, which let's give them credit. They haven't heard it in the past, right? And they don't use the weighted sampling. So, but they've got very, very different results here. So in Nevada, they have Harris up by two points. North Carolina, they have Harris up by two. Sorry, three points. Can't do perfect math here. Wisconsin, they have her up by two. Georgia, they have her up by one. But in Pennsylvania, they have it tied. In Michigan, they have it tied as well. And then

in Arizona, they have Trump up by four. So they actually have Harris in Nevada, in North Carolina, in Wisconsin, in Georgia, but then tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan. So a tightening there in the blue wall states, whereas a Sun Belt kind of all over the map with Arizona leading for Trump, but Nevada, they're leading for Harris. What do you make of these results and some of the crosstabs to their explanation as to how they got there? Yeah, I still think the most straightforward path for Harris is through Pennsylvania, but North Carolina is probably the best backup in my book.

Yeah, it's the number two tipping state, I think, in the silver analysis. Yeah, and I think for me, it's two or three, too. So I think that we, you know, I've said this before, I hate to be a broken record, but we get too locked into like what the cleanest path is. There's so many variations that could easily happen. Absolutely. Yeah, you're right. Which I didn't know this before today, but somehow I just found out you got every single right state grant in 2020.

Oh yeah, that's right, yeah. Totally, totally lucky. Like I think you and Larry Sabato are the only two people I've heard of that got both Florida and Georgia right. Oh really? And I think it's a good example for the rest of us mortals that states can zoom in the other direction

than what we expect, right? Because you don't expect Georgia to be the right of Florida going into that cycle. So North Carolina could easily end up there. I mean, there's a lot of low, kind of like you're talking about if Iowa, North Carolina is being governed right, well, by the super majority in the state house

as if they're a very, very deep red state when it's a swing state. That could easily turn off voters, especially on abortion. And in migration, very liberal. That's the difference too with Arizona. I'll talk about this in my prediction, but that's a key part of my predictions.

Let's put A7 up on the screen here. This is some of the abortion stuff that I referred to before. So you've got a number of states that have abortion-related ballot initiatives that will be on the ballot tomorrow. Nevada and Arizona are two of them. Florida, another one. How much, if we look at 2022, because that's the only post-Roe cycle that we really have to look at, how much did it matter the state-specific abortion politics? So, you know, do you think, for example, that in Nevada, in Arizona, because they

have abortion ballot initiatives that voters are also going to be voting on, that that could shift vote, be impactful in terms of the ultimate outcome. If it were 2026, oh my gosh, yes. Because it's a presidential year, interest is already higher. It's certainly a help for Democrats, but it's not nearly as big of a help as it would be because this is the biggest game in town.

It already gets people engaged. Right, that makes sense. Can we put Iowa early vote up on the screen? This was a confounder to some of the Seltzer results. Just take a look at this. Tell me what you think. So in terms of the Iowa early vote, what they see is, you know, pretty decent Republican share of early vote there, highest that it's been, you know, in terms of where it is. Now, obviously, the no party vote is still some 21%. Obviously, if Seltzer is correct, then that would mean that almost all

of that is swinging towards the Democrats, which actually would back up some of her results. But taking a look at the early vote, this is what I saw a lot of Republicans in their criticism say. It's like, look, we just don't see any of this right now. If anything, we're seeing Republican enthusiasm coming out in terms of their share of the early vote electorate. I guess part of that could be, is they're just more used to voting early now than last time around, so you shouldn't read too much. And then, of course, the Democratic response is yes, but take a look at that Indy share, and the Indy share could be overwhelmingly Democratic. Yeah, and throw into the fact that Iowa has been zipping right at a fast pace. It was 12 points to the right of the popular vote, I believe, last cycle.

It voted R plus 8, I believe. Maybe it was a little more than that. So then all of a sudden move – I mean some of the polling of the popular vote is showing it tied plus one, plus two Harris. So that would mean it zipped 13 points. The other way. Yeah. Right. Unless, well, if she's winning Iowa by three, the popular vote at that point is highly likely to be like D plus two. Yeah, correct. Good point. Yeah. Boy, it would be a wild night if that ends up being even remotely accurate. It's going to be very surprising, I think, for all of us if we were to see that happen. But, you know, take it with all the other polling results and, I don't know, make of it what you will.

Let's go ahead and take a look at the Senate and how we're looking there. We can put your projection up on the screen. Guys, this is A10. So just take us through this a little bit, how these various races are breaking and what the most likely outcome is Wednesday morning when things start to shake out. Yeah, so this is where I have the polling average, right? And so I think that the pathway for Dems is just for one thing to go wrong for Republicans and for them to hold on to Ohio where they have a small lead. Got it. Yeah, they got four states where that could be an option, Nebraska, Texas, Florida, and Montana.

All of those except Montana have been moving a little more to the right lately in the close, which is kind of what we expected. There's still a pathway for it to happen, but, you know, they're underdogs. Two and three shots, GOP holds on to the Senate, maybe a touch more. Yeah, and I think we have that. We can show the projection, the next element, a 11 that shows the chances of winning a Senate majority. So you've got Democrats at roughly a third of, you know, 33 percent and Republicans roughly 66 percent. So Democrats with like a one in three shot at keeping the Senate majority. So is it your assessment at this point their best shot is Montana? Yeah, I still think it is. I mean, Tester has a lot of fundamental strengths. Last election, he did a great job. He has huge fundraising advantage,

which is kind of candidate quality. He's running against a first time candidate. She has his strengths. He has some weaknesses with the whole gun incident. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Yeah. Before we get to that, I'm looking at the analysis. So for the Democrats, so like in this over-perform, like where would the pickups go? It would be Montana, and then what else for them to keep a majority? Oh, they just need Montana. They just need Montana. Oh, if they hold on to Ohio. Which they probably, well, when I say probably, I think it might be the closest Senate race, right?

Yeah, definitely. I think by the time they're picking up another, they probably have Ohio. Uh-huh. And he's led most of the polling. Yeah, he's led most of them. Very consistently, yeah. They don't seem all that confident. I mean, even the internal ones that they've released show him running well below Trump.

I mean, Sherry Brown's a strong candidate. He's actual credibility on union and steel issues. He's been there for what, like 12, two cycles now for a couple, he literally wrote a book, he supported a lot of, he's running ads being like, I support President Trump's tariffs. You know, it's like everything you possibly do. He and Dan Osborne. Yeah, exactly. That's what they used to do. That's what Dems used to do. That's my question then about Osborne. So how does he factor into all of this? How's the polling been looking at him? Because we've been keeping our eye on. Yeah, it's gotten more, it's gotten a little more friendly to Fisher, which makes some sense,

but it's still razor tight. He's outrunning Fisher to the right in his ads, which is kind of interesting to see, saying, I stand with Trump on all these things, and Fisher's been bought out by big donors. And I think it's working even if he doesn't win, because it's incredible how close it is. Yeah, truly. Definitely could be a model for future cycles. Oh, I think it will working even if he doesn't win because it's incredible how close it is. Yeah, truly. It definitely could be a model for future cycles. Oh, I think it will be, as was Evan McMullin for him. I mean, he's running a more moderate campaign. That was the guy who ran in Utah.

He only lost to Lee by 10 points. And it's a plus 30-yard state. So one other thing on Ohio, I think part of the problem for them is people don't trust politicians. Just about the only career profession that people trust less is a used car salesman. And so, you know, regardless of Moreno's individual characteristics, like that's a hard thing to get over from. That's his background. I didn't think about that, but that's true. That's absolutely true. Yeah, they literally have a national reputation, I think, for a reason. Well, you teased Montana, so I guess we have to get to it. There's this shocking clip of Megyn Kelly interviewing Tim Shee about an alleged gunshot wound incident where he claims, what did he say? He dropped the gun and it shot. Okay, so here's what he claims. He claims he was wounded during

his military service. Right. And now he's saying that when he went to a national park, he fell while he was hiking and the bullet fell out of his arm. But then he lied to the park rangers and said that he accidentally shot himself while he was at the park. And, of course, the story has shifted. And basically, it looks like he lied about being wounded during his service and how he actually was wounded was by shooting himself in a national park. Which also, by the way, that would be you're not allowed to discharge firearm in a national park. That's a good point. So there's that as well. So anyway, Megyn Kelly, who's obviously on the right, Trump supporter, wants Republicans to win, etc., was trying to get to the bottom of what the hell his story even actually was. And even now,

he still can't really explain it in a way that makes any kind of a sense. Let's take a listen to how that went. They're saying that you were in a park, Glacier Park, that you dropped your weapon, that it went off inadvertently and it shot you in the arm, and that there's a park ranger saying she spoke to you about that. It looks like you spoke to the Washington Post and you said that you lied when you told the park ranger about this. So which is it? Like, did you shoot yourself in the arm inadvertently in Glacier Park?

No, we've discussed this at length repeatedly with every media outlet for the last year. It's been beat to death. The point was, at the time, I was injured and went to the hospital. They required a police report because any gunshot wound requires a police report of any kind. And they said, we have to file this. We have to report this to law enforcement. It wouldn't work. But were you wounded in the park? Did you have a wound, Tim, in the park?

Yes, I fell and injured my arm when we were hiking. So that's why I went because, you know, I could feel the bullet get dislodged. When I fell and fell on the arm, you could feel the bullet get dislodged when I fell and fell on the arm. You could feel the bullet get dislodged. And then went to the ER to say, hey, you know, look, you know, I've got internal bleeding going on here. I've injured my arm. Can you take a look at this? Make sure there's nothing serious going on here. Are there medical records where the ER can say we did not treat a gunshot wound?

Well, there isn't. I mean, that's the point. You go in, you check on it, and you leave. There's not an extensive medical record for any of this stuff. So, yeah, I don't really know anything about what he just said. Right there. I'm still figuring it out myself. Yeah, it's like he fell out of his arm.

It didn't happen. What did he say previously? He's like Navy SEAL dudes. He was involved in whenever he got wounded. Why would you lie to the park ranger and claim that you shot yourself when actually your bullet just fell out of your arm while you were hiking. Oh, and conveniently there's no medical records. It's a magic bullet.

That's what I was looking for. I was like, it's literally like the magic bullet that fell out of Governor Connolly with the Kennedy assassination. Anyways, the point is that's getting a lot of attention in Montana. A lot of gun owners who are there. And I think he's been hit with that. So you think that there's a possibility of an upset? Yeah, there's a possibility for sure that Tester wins. He's done it before.

He's outperformed polls before. Yeah, I mean, Tester, he crafts quite a persona. Has three fingers, lost two on the farm. He comes back literally every weekend from the Senate to farm. He's as committed to his ranch as any Montana rancher. He's also a state that used to elect 50% of its statewide officials were Democrats for like the first 12, 14 years of this millennium. And that slowly ended one by one, even as it was voting for Republicans for a while, but that's the ticket voting's reducing. So it's getting tougher every year.

Yeah, I mean, I guess, actually, my final thing here on the Senate part is, can you give people a sense of how crazy Senate races can be off? Like, what was it, Maine last time? Oh, my God. They had her down by, I think, 12? I actually want to say 12 points for Susan Collins. But it might have been eight. It was something like ridiculous. I think she won by eight, and she was down by two or three.

So the margin might have been 12 off. The margin was crazy, right? But then they had, what, Jamie Harrison. They had it tied with Lindsey Graham. He won by, like, 17 or something. No, tied with Lindsey Graham. He won by like 17 or something. No, that's the height of bad polling for the Senate was 2020. It was even worse than the presidential polling. You just didn't get as much attention. So it money polling Ohio as well. So I guess the point of preparing people is upsets can happen in those places in particular, like we just showed everyone with Iowa. No one's polling Iowa except Ben Seltzer. So we don't have a lot of data. It could be certainly possible, but it just shows

that big surprises like that can come from places that people are not paying all that much attention to. I remember Texas last time, that big Latino surge, nobody picked it up, period, in any of the national polling because there had no reason to be polling South Texas. And then the polls come in and it's the Pata County or whatever goes in for Trump. You're like, what the hell is going on down here? So it can be fun for tomorrow night is what I'm preparing for. Last question for you. What is the extent, the likely extent of ticket splitting that we could see? Great, great question. You know, and this is relevant not just in the Senate race. I'm thinking of North Carolina in particular.

Yeah. Oh, boy. This dude running for governor, Mark Robinson, on the Republican side is probably going to lose definitely double digits, maybe 15, maybe 20. Yeah. And yet it's a state that Trump really kind of needs to win. So do you think it's possible to have that level of ticket splitting? Yes. And what about in the Senate races? I've seen some indications that there was more separation between the presidential race and the Senate candidates on the Democratic side. In particular, it seems like

in the blue wall states, that seems to be tightening and there seems to be sort of more direct correlation between the presidential race and the Senate races. Are you seeing that in other places as well? Yeah, there's some correlation for sure. They're getting closer. But I mean, look, Pennsylvania is like a 50-50 state for the presidential. At least in my model, it's 80% for the Senate. That's how upset we happen. It'd require a 2020 level polling miss for McCormick to win. That's happened before, but that's one of the biggest polling misses we've ever seen. So he's an underdog. He's done a good job against Casey, who overperformed Hillary Clinton by like 15 points in some red rural districts.

Wow. Because he goes everywhere. Yeah. And he's from Western PA. He's got the credibility. He's got the family name. He's like, it's as good as it gets, I think, for a Pennsylvania guy. I went to undergrad in Gettysburg, and he was showing up in Gettysburg more than once.

Really? That's deep red rural area of Pennsylvania. That's so funny. Very interesting. All right. Well, we are going to see you tomorrow night. Yes, sir. That's so funny. Very interesting. All right. Well, we are going to see you tomorrow night. Yes, sir. In here for the big show.

Looking forward to it. Yeah, thank you. It's always great to have your insights. Good to see you, man. Great to be on, guys. All right, let's get to it. All right, guys. So we are going to spend some time taking a look at the closing pitch from both campaigns.

Up first, this is the final closing ad from the Trump campaign. Let's take a listen. Four years ago, we took a wrong turn and lost our purpose. We lost the strength that makes Americans who we are. If we dared to speak the truth, it was called hate speech,

and our values were labeled shameful. That's when everything we care about fell apart. We surrendered our borders, our paychecks, and our courage. Our patriotism was called toxic. Men could beat up women and win medals. But there was no prize for the guy who got up every day to do his job. Now we're being asked to settle for the way things are. And we're wondering if America can make a comeback.

We can. Because we've done it before. When we get knocked down, we don't stay down. We get up again. We fight. We fight. We fight. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message.

So closing there with the Trump assassination attempt, famous fight, fight, fight moment. You know one thing I just noticed watching that side? Almost 100% men in that ad. Yeah. It's 100% targeted at men. There was one lady there. I mean, come on. How can you not watch that? It's obviously the most masculine return ad that it is.

I mean, well, that's the strategy. That's what they need. That's how they should come out to win. If you think about it, that's a very American carnage message from 2016. It's exactly the one in the White House the first time around. And it's one with the imagery. The only thing I think you could really change is now you have a bunch of it's a very diverse ad i'll put it that way so it's it's diverse men as opposed to i think it was almost exclusively white in 2016 they're trying to go for the pan-racial

kind of male demographic and if you look at the gop commentariat one of the things that they're driving home right now is we got to get men that have got to come out and vote because of the historic gender gap and that's a big bet that they're trying to make here. Traditionally, women do outvote men, although, you know, turnout is down relative to 2020. So they could still have some interesting surprises. But I thought it was vintage Trump. That's very much like it is a spectrum of we got to go back. I mean, if you think about it, too, if you think about the affection that people still have for Donald Trump, one of the reasons why his favorables are so much higher this time than last time is he was literally president. And it was president in the before times, mostly before COVID. And people remember fondly prices, a feeling of order.

This is pre a lot of the crazy stuff that happened in COVID in 2021. They blame Biden for that. That's one of the reasons Biden's no longer in the race. You want to hit all of those notes of we got to take our country back from this like chaotic period. So I think it was a smart ad. It's very American carnage. It's the opposite of like a quote unquote hopeful message. And if he does win, I think that will be a smart strategy. Yeah. And so the other thing I noticed about it is outside of the final images of Trump up on stage, you know, after the assassination attempt,

it actually doesn't really have Trump at all. Which is smart, I actually think. Which is interesting too, making a referendum on the Biden years. And one thing I'll say is, I don't know that the campaign has done as an effective job as they could, trying to tie Kamala directly into the Biden record. And that was one of their main goals and jobs from the beginning from when she was swapped in as candidate. But Trump, because he has zero message discipline and never has and never will, has not really like consistently prosecuted that case. So part of the effectiveness of that ad really hinges on how much were they able to tie her to a Biden record, which is undoubtedly unpopular. On the flip side, we've got the Kamala

Harris closing ad. Let's take a listen to her final pitch to voters. Hey, Hannah. Come here, Hannah. Shake my hand. How you doing? Good. And bring everybody back together. And that's exactly how I feel. That's what I'm doing, man. Okay, you have to stay in touch with me, okay?

I'm very serious about this. Love seeing you. Okay. Throughout this campaign, I've seen the best of America and I've seen what is holding you back and weighing you down. High costs, fundamental rights taken away and politics that have driven fear and division. You deserve better. As president, I'll bring a new generation of leadership. I'll take on price gouging and bring down the cost of groceries and housing and prescriptions. I'll fight for your freedom to make your own choices.

And I will protect your health care and your benefits, not take them away. The vast majority of people in our country have so much more in common than what separates them. Good people. Hardworking people. We see in our fellow Americans neighbors, not enemies. We believe in each other. We believe in our country. We're not falling for these folks who are trying to divide us. Together, we'll build a brighter future for our nation, where we stand for freedom, we stand for justice, we stand for the dignity of work. We haven't yet quite reached all of those ideals, but we will die trying because we love our country. Now, the baton is in our hands. I pledge to seek common sense solutions to make your life better. And I pledge to be a president for all Americans.

Now I'm asking for your vote because as president, I will get up every day and fight for the American people. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. So pretty significant contrast in the approach there. The tone is like literally diametrically. Nine day, right? This optimism. Even the music is diametrically opposed. She's got this like aspirational, optimistic score. It's direct to camera from her.

She's speaking. I mean, part of that is putting her behind the podium is, again, trying to help people to imagine her in that role as commander in chief. You have men and women represented there in that ad, which is, you know, one thing that I've noted before, Sagar, is Democrats have recognized they've got an issue with men. You know, I don't know that they've done everything they need to in terms of outreach, but they certainly have made some efforts. Whereas the Trump campaign has really just decided like, nope, we can't win over like the women who are concerned about abortion. They're gone. We can't win them over. We need to just really super serve this male base that we're hoping are going to ultimately turn out.

I honestly agree with that. I don't think there is much you can do on the abortion issue. Like it is basically as binary as it gets. You're either supported or you don't. In terms of trying to win people over, if you look at opinion polling, you know, it is genuinely and always has the number one issue for a lot of these female voters, especially these newer female voters. But men are very different. They think about a lot of different stuff. That's another reason why that economy, that ad from Trump was all about the economy. Kamala, it's a little bit more of, you know, got a message for everybody, you know, for the men who are with you kind of on abortion, but you got to give them some economy stuff. But you've got a heavy emphasis,

like I'll protect your freedoms. You know, they use that language a lot. It's interesting too, if you looked at that big January 6th, you know, retrospective rally that she had about democracy, the word freedom was everywhere in the Kamala ad. And I took notice of that. I'm like, you know, this is actually kind of interesting in terms of the messaging. I've talked about the social libertarianism, how much more popular that is from Democrats as opposed to like ninnyism and that stems from more of like a woke ideology. So it is interesting to see what is obviously popular, what is pulling on. I also note there's not a single message of I'm a woman and you should elect me. There was a little nod to it because she had that, you know, she says something like

we haven't always lived up to our aspirations. They have the picture of like the little black girl marching in a civil rights movie, but that was it. It's funny that you read that your reaction to the Trump ad was that it was mostly about economics because my reaction to it was mostly cultural. Well, it was both. Because you've got, you know, they got to throw in the Algerian boxer is in there. They talk about, you know, your patriotism is labeled toxic. They sort of give this illusion to cancel culture, and then, you know, the sense of, like, chaos. So to me, it was heavier emphasis on cultural. Kamala's ad was similar to what she tried to achieve in that speech at the Ellipse, which was yes to make the case about like, we got to come together, we got to put this,

you know, this ugliness in our past. But also she got in there like, you know, I'm going to go after the price gougers, I'm going to seek common sense economic solutions, blah, blah, blah. So trying to marry sort of that like democracy argument with the more populist parts of her economic pitch. So, you know, which is going to land? We're going to find out soon enough. And if also these are the messages that these campaigns want to put out, that's the other big question is whether the paid communications really matter that much or whether it's more about the meta media narratives, which, you know, I think that's, yeah. The whole next block is about Madison Square Garden.

Exactly. It's a turning point. Right. We do have some other info we can share. So this literally just came out. I'm going to mention it. Maybe we can edit it in post-production. But the final day schedules from the candidates are out.

The final day schedule from Donald Trump will be Raleigh, North Carolina, Redding, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Grand Rapids is the traditional last time site for Trump. It was his last rally in 2016. Oh, really? Last in 2020. Apparently he's superstitious because he thinks he won in 2020, so he wants to do it. The final day schedule, this tells you a lot from Harris.

Scranton, Allentown, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia. So the last one, PA. So all PA, whereas Trump's got to shore things up in North Carolina, two stops in PA. PA. So all PA, whereas Trump's got to shore things up in North Carolina, two stops in PA, take notice, Pittsburgh, you know, Redding, and with the location of those, and then finally Grand Rapids last time. Michigan really was such a huge win for him in 2016. That was one that they bet the farm on. I remember, you know, so many arguments I had with people were like, there's no way

Trump is going to win Michigan. I remember thinking that, and it was like, boom, in terms of what the true shock of the night was. We also, should we remind people about Biden, about his closing message? You guys want to see it? Highly effective. Do you guys want to see his closing message? Let's take a listen. But I'm serious. This is the kind of guy you like to smack in the ass. Yeah. So even the delivery of that is very like, oh, what's going on there? You know, he's got the dimension stone face. Like every time he speaks, it's like his entire, the mouth is moving and nothing else is going on up here. It's just blank behind the eyes. It's also, I mean, he wanted to campaign for Kamala and kept reaching out.

And they just basically were like, no. And he did that, those comments. What was it that he said? Oh, the garbage comments. Garbage, yeah. That caused such a problem. He was supposed to do, I guess what they had relegated him to was like, okay, you can do these Zoom calls with some of the surrogate groups. We don't think that you can fuck that

up too badly. But after the garbage comments, all of those surrogate calls, they were all pulled. So even this very limited role that they felt safe having Joe Biden go out and do. At the end of the day, they were like, no, sorry. We're even pulling the plug on that, which just, I mean, it's just, it's astonishing that this man is still the president, right? He can't be trusted to do a Zoom surrogate call with people who already support the ticket. Even that is too weighty a responsibility for him, and yet he has nuclear code stuff. There you go. Case number, example number 3,572, why the Kamala Harris campaign is like, we're probably not going to be campaigning with you because this is just not helpful. Not only are we not campaigning with you, it's like, we don't even want to mention you. We don't want to, the Biden what administration,

who? You know, in terms of the ticket there. Totally. Yeah. So anyway, let's put the next one up there. This is going to be very interesting. So I mentioned the final day analysis. Trump is rallying every single day until the election in North Carolina. They say a swing state that he won twice. But that really indicates. So I mean, both of these schedules, we can read a lot into this.

The Trump campaign, they're worried about North Carolina. They got him there every day, all over the weekend. Final day, they've got a state stop there in North Carolina. And the Harris campaign, they're worried about PA. Four stops, all in PA. Final stop in Philadelphia. They had a big ad that's been running all across the Philly area about how Ph on urban turnout there, and they're hoping that that's going to be enough to stop what they see as the rural turnout in western PA. That's exactly why, by the way, you have Trump there in Pittsburgh for his final stop to see where the two demographics specifically of that big state, very, very different populations, even just across the state, and who they're trying to turn out for what is likely to be the tipping point in the election. Yeah. And both of those states are similar in terms of electoral college votes. So Pennsylvania has 19, North Carolina has 16. So both of them, you know, significant prizes electorally. And, you know, for either candidate, you know, if Kamala can't win Pennsylvania, the map becomes pretty tough for her. North Carolina might be a decent substitute. And same for Trump. If he can't pull off North Carolina, a state that he won twice, the map becomes a lot more challenging for him to be able to put together 270.

Last element we have here is the closing schedule for Kamala Harris going back a few days to show the focus over really the past week. So Thursday, she was out in those Sunbelt states in Arizona, in Reno, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Friday, woke up in Vegas, then headed to Milwaukee. On Saturday, she was in Georgia, North Carolina. And Sunday, she was in Michigan. And then, as Zagra was saying before,

closing out the day with a series of rallies in that critical swing state of Pennsylvania. So that's what it looks like. That's it, folks. That's the closing day. You know, we'll give you all an update tomorrow, but a lot of the stuff tomorrow is just like B-roll of people in line. You'll have some speeches.

And trying to read the tea. Oh, the lines are really long and wherever. And that means such and such for so-and-so. Maybe the weather is bad. Bad weather actually has statistically impacted turnout weather is bad. That's not, you know, bad weather actually has, you know, it has statistically impacted turnout in the past. Like especially if it's rain. That's part of the reason people want early vote.

So much of the vote is cast early now that those like, you know, election day, like where are the lines long kind of vibes are hard to- I think 60 million people have voted already. Maybe even more actually, which is crazy. I mean, we both voted early. A lot of people have. Almost all my friends.

Yeah, we will leave tomorrow. It'll be kind of fun. Should I wear my voting sticker? I saved it. Oh, did you? Yeah. No, I did not save mine. All right. It was long gone. But you're welcome to if you would like to promote our, you know, doing your civic duty. Yes.

Casting your ballot, having your voice heard in whatever way that you choose. Let's get to this question over whether Donald Trump sort of October surprised himself with that, we'll say, controversial rally at Madison Square Garden. Put this up on the screen. So this is this data scientist who, I'm just going to put my cards on the table. I don't credit his philosophy here very much because he relies on the like betting odds. He uses the betting odds and then has his own proprietary model to project what he thinks is going to happen in terms of the electoral college. But he has had some success in the past. So let's take a look at what this individual has to say. The headline here from Fortune, which wrote up these data results, are October surprise,

Trump just blew a huge lead in the Madison Square Garden rally, started the drop, says a top data scientist. They say Donald Trump is suffering an historic descent in the campaign's final days, an ongoing freefall that is turning what looked like a walkway for the former president into what's most likely a Kamala Harris victory. That is the view from Thomas Miller, data scientist at Northwestern University, whose proprietary model is proven right on in past elections. And so basically what Miller takes a look at is not just the betting markets, but then he's got his own, I don't know, special whatever that he applies to it. And he found that prior to Madison Square Garden, at the time when everybody was feeling like, oh, the polls are tightening and, you know, Polly Market had Trump as like a 70% favorite to win, et cetera, et cetera. He found, according to his model, that Trump's odds really fell off a cliff after that. The quote here is, Miller's numbers show a draw-dropping possible to have that dramatic of a swing at this point in the country's history when voters are, by and large,

pretty locked in about how they think about Roe versus Wade, how they think about Donald Trump, how they think about January 6th, etc. But I do think we have some additional data that pretty consistently shows that the bulk of the late deciders are tending to break for Kamala Harris. And there's been a significant number of focus groups, too, where undecided voters describe the Madison Square Garden and the rhetoric there as kind of like the final straw that reminded them of all the things they didn't like about Donald Trump. And they just felt like they couldn't, you know, suck it up and vote for him or, you know, deal with that level of ugliness, chaos, etc. And so reminding them of that in those final days really did kind of eat into his margins and cause some shift among

those few late deciding voters towards Kamala. Yeah, I mean, that's why I want to do this segment is, you know, it genuinely is a Rorschach test. Like for me, it seems psychotic that it's like, oh, yeah, it's the MSG Tony Hinchcliffe joke. That's what put you over the edge. Not all the other stuff that Trump has said. He's been in national life for almost, what, 12 years. I mean, if you go back, what, birtherism started in 2011? Is that correct? So that's 13 years ago. So that's what put you over the edge. Not even something that Trump said. It was at his rally. And it was what other people were saying at his rally. Okay. Frankly, you should have your head examined. But that is the put you over the edge. Not even something that Trump said. It was at his rally, and it was what other people were saying at his rally. Okay, frankly, you should have your head

examined. But that is the big theory that the Harris campaign, media wants us to believe it too. And that's why I want to do it. I'm like, I don't buy this stuff at all. I just do not see how these quote unquote late deciders who are making up their mind are doing so based upon something that, again, is not even Trump related per se. I think the only case that you could make that it has hurt Trump is the media coverage of it, if anything, and the ongoing discussion relative to any positive message that he's been able to put out there. Which I think that's actually a fair one, right?

Which is that it could have people reminded of like, oh, is this what the Trump presidency is going to be like again? Are we just constantly going to have Fox and Friends segments about whether he, what did he say about Mika Brzezinski? He said she had like a shitty facelift. Face was bleeding or whatever. Right? So it's like, is that what the presidency is going to look like? Or is it going to be something that actually has to do with my own life? The data scientist stuff I thought was interesting because the thing is, and this has been a big media talking point. Can we put C4 please up on the screen, is the Harris campaign is running with this wild. They are claiming that absolutely MSG is what really pushed these late deciding voters to come home to the Democratic Party. They have put out, they say, quote, significant advantage in these late deciding voters and that they have seen significant movement as like, what is it, two to one margin over the garbage thing.

I saw what some quote that they had where somebody was even reacting to Trump in the garbage truck and they're like, well, you know, that only reminded me of the whole Puerto Rico situation. Well, they didn't even know about the Biden comments. Right. So when they saw him in the garbage truck, they thought he was just like doubling down on calling Puerto Rico a garbage island. Reminder, too, of what people in the median voter, they're not paying attention, you know, respective to people who, let's say, watch the show. But again, for me to believe it would be that there are all these Latinos out there who was like, I'm about to vote for Trump. But because of what Tony Hinchcliffe said about Puerto Rico, that's enough for me to come home. Kamala Harris, sorry, I just don't buy it. I absolutely don't

buy it at all. Even if you are straight up Puerto Rican, that's really enough for you to switch your vote? Seems nuts, especially if you're the type of person who's going to vote for Trump the first time anyway. It's just, again, ridiculous. But the data that they have, that's what they're claiming. That's another reason I'm suspect of it, is it just seems all too cute, all too perfect for a media narrative they already hate anyway and that we love racism, conversation, whatever, for them to have this and that's why the Harris campaign is leaking it to them. Now of course, should we really take what the Harris campaign itself seriously?

I take it just seriously when the Trump people are like, we're seeing absolute blowout turnout in New Hampshire. I'm like, no, you're not. You're not going to win New Hampshire. But what I'm looking at is actually the polling data that suggests like the New York Times-Siena poll that we talked about earlier showed late-breaking voters going lopsidedly towards Kamala Harris. There was a Univision-YouGov poll of Pennsylvania Latino voters. They did not like the comments. And they also had a huge divide in favor of Kamala Harris. She led Trump 64-30 among Pennsylvania Latinos. So here's why I don't want to overstate it, right? But when Trump was at his best during his campaign was, and his poll numbers were the highest, and he looked like he had the highest probability to win, is when he was being relatively quiet. And it allowed his approval

rating to improve, you know, where people have short-term memories and they kind of forgot, like, some of the things about him that they really hated last time around. They kind of forgot, you know, some of the ugliness and the divisiveness and all of that stuff. And so you pair the fact that you've got the Kamala Harris campaign prosecuting a case, not just about like, oh, Trump's a fascist, but this guy's a divider, right? Like, we're the ones that are going to put the country back together and we need to leave this ugliness in the past. And at the very time they're trying to prosecute that case, Trump and his campaign are out there in Madison Square Garden and with other comments, by the way, sort of proving the point of all of this stuff you don't like about this guy. It's still there.

Here it is on display, etc. So one of the reasons Trump has really stayed in the game and had such a strong shot this time around is that his approval rating is significantly better than it was in the past. So I think there's a reasonable case to be made that reminding people of their least favorite parts of his character traits here at the end has not served the campaign. And again, when you look at the actual polling of late-breaking voters, it does seem to pretty consistently show that they are moving towards Kamala Harris. So, you know, I wouldn't say it's like, oh, just because of this one joke. It's that the whole tenor of that rally fit into a Kamala Harris campaign narrative and was for some voters kind of like a final reminder or a final straw that really pushed them into the

Harris camp. So in that way, you know, we're talking about small margins here, et cetera. I do think that it probably, that it may have been, if we, if Kamala Harris wins at the end of the day, we may look back at that rally and say that it did end up being consequential. It also came at a time when they were feeling really hyper, super confident and felt like they could kind of just like let it all hang out. And I'm not sure the voting public were excited about what they had to see. I think that's a convenient narrative for people who always want to get jazzed up about these things. I just don't believe it. I think if Kamala loses or if Kamala wins, it's going to be all abortion all day long. I really do. On the polling that shows late breaking voters going for her, like, do you buy that polling?

I honestly don't because first of all, it's such a small sample. Second, like in the New York Times, Sienna, we're going cross tab diving on what, like 800 to 2,000 people. Even within that, it's like, you know, the sample gets down to like a couple of dozen then. We're talking about late breaking, Univision. I mean, again, for Univision to be true, then the entire Latino realignment is fake. If 60-30 break is basically a 2016 margin for Latinos. So you have to ask me after eight years of watching this movement happen, do I believe that? No, absolutely not, especially whenever we've seen previous – weren't you telling me in Philadelphia that the biggest movement was the Puerto Rican neighborhoods towards Trump? So, okay, again, like if I want to put myself in the headspace, Puerto Rican guy lives in Philly who supports Trump.

Is the Tony Hinchcliffe joke that's really going to be like, you know what, I'm supporting Kamala Harris. I just don't buy it. Like these are the type of people who hate political correctness. They're exactly the type of people who are on YouTube watching, you know, Tony Hinchcliffe comedy and think it's hilarious. Like that's the cultural milieu that if you're a Latino supporting Trump, that's kind of what you swim in is saying, you know, if we've seen the data, the vast majority of the Latino movement to the Republican Party started with Latinx, that terminology, some four or five years ago. And increasingly is moving along blue-collar cultural lines away from political correctness. It was the exact type of people who get all spun up about Madison Square Garden. So you really would have to believe that the entire Latino shift and all that is fake.

Now, look, it actually could be possible that it's all totally overstated. If there's a Harris landslide, it will be fake, and I'll eat it out of the sock. We could do it again. Just to lay out the rest of these numbers, so they asked Pennsylvania Latino voters, generally speaking, do you feel Trump is disrespectful or respectful towards the Latino community? 64% said disrespectful. 28% said respectful. They asked, what is closest to your view about the remarks at Madison Square Garden by the Trump campaign? 69% said they were more racist than humorous. 17% said they were more

humorous than racist. Only 14% actually said they hadn't heard enough about the remarks, which might be the most interesting number there. But, you know, I find it, to me, it's not so hard to imagine that it's not just this vote. It's like that brings up, oh, I remember how he treated, you know, Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria. And there's a corollary to, like, the sense that some men have gotten from the Democratic side of, like, I just feel like they don't want me, even want me in their coalition. Like I feel a sense of contempt. And of course, voters are going to pick up on that sense of like, oh, this is not a club that I'm really ever going to be part of. So again, I don't want to overstate it, but I do think that there's something to the fact that certainly if you wanted to choose how you were

going to close out the campaign, Madison Square Garden and some of the comments that Trump has made since then are not all that helpful. Well, we can play some of those. Yeah. So we have C3. C2. Oh, sorry. That's on Puerto Rico. Yeah.

C2 where Trump was, you know, asked about the, you know, the Puerto Rico joke. Now, his campaign thought this was a problem right away. They put on a statement trying to distance themselves from Tony Hinchcliffe. Trump, of course, though, he's, you know, again, totally incapable of any sort of message discipline. So he says, I didn't see any problem with it. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. Well, I guess somebody put on a comedian and he joked, here's a comedian, he joked, he mentioned Puerto Rico. All of a sudden, the Democrats, and they are good at this stuff, by the way.

That's the only thing they're good at. They're no good at policy. They're no good at government. They're good at other things. They're very good at cheating. But other than that, they're not good at anything. So let me just tell you. So they come up, and a comedian put in early in the show, as a filler, in all fairness,

I guess he said some joke. I haven't heard the joke, but he said some joke. And he mentioned Puerto Rico. All of a sudden, they come out with something about Puerto Rico. Nobody's been better to Puerto Rico than me. I saved Puerto Rico when they had some of the worst hurricanes, really bad. I brought in the hospital ship, the Mercy. I brought in this massive hospital ship. There's nobody, and Puerto Ricans will tell you that, nobody's done more for Puerto Rico than me. Classic Trump. Nobody's done more for Puerto Rico than me. He also made some comments at a recent rally. I'll just play him for you. Part of it is talking about how he wouldn't mind so

much if someone had to shoot through the fake news. And then the other part is him talking about how maybe he should never have left the White House even after he lost. Of course, he doesn't acknowledge that he lost. Let's take a listen to that. I have a piece of glass over here. And I don't have a piece of glass there. And I have this piece of glass here. But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news.

And I don't mind that so much. I don't mind. I don't mind that so much. I don't mind. I don't mind that. A country the day that I left. I shouldn't have left. I mean, honestly, because we did so well. We had such a great... So now, I mean, every polling booth

has hundreds of lawyers standing there. It's all about the lawyers. Everybody's standing at lawyers. Nobody should have that. So in the closing week here, much more of the focus has been on Madison Square Garden, Trump's own comments, etc., highlighting some of his most off-putting and most toxic traits. And so, you know, I don't think that's probably how the campaign wanted to close. Look, well, first of all, it's Trump's campaign, so he can close it how he wants. Now, the only problematic one electorally, I actually think was the last one about not wanting to leave. That was the one.

I mean, no one's going to cry for a joke about shooting through journalists. Like, no one's going to be, again, I don't believe all this Latino brouhaha around Puerto Rico. Could be wrong, you know, totally. I'm willing to eat it. If I am, we'll find out tomorrow. But the stop the steal was a big problem in Pennsylvania. And that actually is the one where you can see in terms of his message discipline, that's the one which always has hurt him the most. Doug Mastriano lost by such massive margin last time around that that is the one actually where if you were an advisor or something, you would be cringing about not

wanting to leave the White House because it was specifically that itself that turned a lot of people off in PA, people who were already Republicans. And that also cost them, Dr. Oz, his, I don't even remember what a mess of an answer he had on stop. It was bad. Even I remember that. In the disastrous Fetterman debate, even that one stood out of like, that was rough in terms of- That may have been the one that was most important at the end of the day. I mean, probably was that up there with abortion. So, you know, in terms of the two things that turn voters off, I think that that last clip was the most consequential because apparently this is something he said a long time. I mean, look, it's just a bunch of bullshit talk.

They did leave at the end of the day. But it's like, if you want to remind people of like genuinely one of the things that has turned the most voters off about you, that is the one which you would walk away from. But look, we'll see. Again, my theory on Trump is that all this shit is just baked in at this point, especially for a lot of men who are out there. They laugh. You know, if the criticism, they're like, it's funny. They, you know, the media bed wedding, they love it. There's nothing they love more. They want the jokes, play it. You know, the media bedwetting, they love it. There's nothing they love more. They want the jokes. Play it. You know, let's spread them around. They think it's hilarious.

Now, the big question is whether they're going to vote. And I do think that's a very open question. If there's a Harris landslide and it's because of the, what is it, the hidden women effect or something like that, there should be a male reassessment. There should be some therapizing that is happening in the male community. I mean, I've been trying to lead the charge on this by just saying, if your wife is afraid to tell you who they are voting for, you are a loser, and it means that you have a bad marriage. So let me tell you that. This is an iHeart Podcast.