Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/5/24: Joe Rogan Endorses Trump, Dumbest Election Predictions

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Krystal, Saagar, Ryan and Emily discuss Joe Rogan endorsing Trump and the dumbest election predictions as voters head to the polls today.   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. Hello, everybody. Happy Election Day. It's Tuesday. It's here. It's the morning. It's time for the update. All four of us are in the house, I guess in our respective houses.

We will be in our studio. As a reminder, what is it? We will be doing the live stream at 6.30 p.m. Eastern time, all four of us at the desk, and we will go as long as we need to go. We're really excited for it, and we thought we'd just – what is it, Crystal? We've got tea leaves. We're going to read some tea leaves. Yeah, all the tea leaves. So we do have a few votes cast in Dixville, Notch, New Hampshire. This is like, you know, every time election traditions. So we'll give you those results you. We've got a little glimpse in the final rallies and a big endorsement on the Trump side. Joe Rogan making it official that he is endorsing Donald Trump. So bring all that to you.

Also, because basically, spoiler alert, all of these predictions, like the fancy models, just came down to like, eh, go either way. I don't know. So we thought we would also take a look at some of the dumber ways that people do election predictions some of the like tradition superstitions things like which halloween mask sells more what this viral hippo did with the cake all these sorts of things so we'll dig into those tea leaves like a real tea leaves as well and also things that are equally scientific like Alan Lichtman's keys. Yes. So we can all make of that what we will. Yeah, it's exciting.

As a reminder to everybody, 6.30 p.m., like I said, we'll be live. Go ahead and sign up, BreakingPoints.com. You will want to do that because we'll also be taking questions from our subscribers during the stream. But yeah, what's first on deck, Crystal? What do you got? Well, I want to pull out Dixville Notch, but really quick before I do that, Emily and Ryan, you guys, we made you give us predictions like last week

and there's been a bunch of new polls and whatever that dropped since then. Any revisions while I'm getting the Dixville Notch votes pulled up here? It would be smart to make revisions because then no matter what happens, I could point to one of the different programs. I'm giving you that opportunity.

That's like Kyle. He made three different maps. I was like, that's not fair. Yeah, that's not fair. That's smart. No, that's very smart. Ridiculous. Yes.

One of my maps has Trump winning and one has Kamala winning. Oh, come on, dude. I'll stick with the Kamala one. All right, Nate Silver. Yeah. How about you, Em? No, I mean, that's basically... It's a cop-out, but it's like when you look at the... I'll stick with the Kamala one. How about you, Em? It's a cop-out, but it's like when you look at the, you go to do the maps, as we've all done, and you're calling certain states and then you're looking at where the polling averages are in those states.

And you're just like, this is insane. I mean, it could, with what you guys have been talking about a lot in terms of not knowing the direction of the polling error, like we don't even have a good sense. In 2020, it was like, well, they might be underestimating Trump. Like if I had to guess, the polls were probably still underestimating Trump. Do not have that this time around at all. So that's where you get these two different versions of the map where you can have like a Kamala sweep or a Trump sweep, or you can have something like what Sagar predicted, which is sort of what I'm leaning towards right now, which is a really, really close electoral college battle because it's split. The results end up being as split as they seemed like they would.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny because everybody knows the polls are wrong. Like the pollsters are definitely just like, it's a tie, I don't know what to tell you, but we have no idea what direction they're wrong in. Which means there's a strong chance that we could expect to not know until like friday or something but might actually know tonight like there's a strong chance we

actually are shocked and like oh wow this this thing's over well it's like 11 p.m and we're like oh we actually know what happened i think just to prepare for people like if kamala right because the polls close in georgia at seven and then North Carolina at 730 and then Pennsylvania at 8. If the polls close in Georgia and North Carolina and you can call, reminder, we'll have decision desk. If decision desk can call those two states, you know, almost immediately and then maybe put a trajectory for her in Pennsylvania. I'm not going to say it's over, but, you know, the math becomes very difficult for Trump. Similarly, you know, if Trump has big strength in Georgia and in North Carolina, which were two tied states and then shows a lot of potential going into the wee hours of like one or two a.m., they called P.A. at two a.m. in 2016, although everything I've read says it may

take a little bit longer. Pennsylvania election workers are not allowed to count ballots until actually what is it, the start of polls like on election day or whatever. So processing can take a little while, but there is a strong chance

we're going to know a lot, you know, tonight. Yeah, I think so. I mean, even last time when it came down to the wire, we really did go to bed pretty much knowing. Yeah, that's right.

The way things were going on. By 3 a.m. we knew. Yeah, we knew. All right. So here we go. The much anticipated Dixville Notch presidential results. And guess what, guys? Useless. It's a tie. Yeah. we knew. All right. So here we go. The much anticipated Dixville Notch presidential results.

And guess what, guys? Useless. It's a tie. Yeah. Harris three, Trump three. Now, if you are a Democrat, you may look at this and go, Dixville Notch has zero registered Democrats. This is four Republicans and two independents. So we're already picking up those Nikki Haley voters.

And all six of these people voted for Nikki Haley in the Republican primary. If you're a Republican, you look at these and go, Joe Biden swept. Yeah, he got a 5-0 last time around. So, you know, really choose your own adventure with this particular one. So make of it what you will. And I recommend you make nothing of it. Yeah. Let me go ahead and show you John Ralston's predictions. Now, this made quite a bit of waves. I'm curious in particular what Emily and Zager have thought about this. So Ralston is, you know, the guru of early vote in Nevada. His presidential prediction record is actually perfect since he started making these predictions. And the TLDR here is that after he looked at the early vote and what mail ballots he thinks are still outstanding and his historical experience with the effectiveness of the Harry Reid machine, he is very narrowly predicting a Harris victory, 48.5 percent to Trump's 48.2 percent, which is like a preposterously narrow margin. But, you know, part of what was consequential about this is that the

Republicans really felt like this was the place where the early vote numbers were most clearly in their favor. And so I think, you know, there was an expectation that he was probably going to call it for Trump. And instead, he narrowly goes for for Kamala. Yeah, I mean, well, you know, by his own admission, he's got Kamala there by point three. It's also funny if you read the analysis. He's basically like, yeah, Trump is up, but I'm just going to guess that the read machine knows exactly how many votes that they need to be postmarked by Election Day. And I've never bet against the read machine and the read machine will turn those folks out, which is kind of a hilarious, almost like mafioso style analysis of the state. But he's not wrong. I mean, you know, he's called it correctly every single time. He has a perfect record. But he did, of course, leave himself there where if he is wrong,

like let's say Trump wins by point six. Well, you know, he's got a decent out. So last time around, you know, regardless, it does show a much closer election. Joe Biden got 50 percent of the vote, Donald Trump at forty seven point six. So narrowing the gap there, three. I took a little bit hard in this, even though he did predict a Kamala win just because this would verify a lot of the Sunbelt strength for Donald Trump that I had included in my map, including with the Latino vote. So I'm interested to see, you know, which way it goes, because even if he is predicting such a narrow result, that actually would be a sign of strength for the tightness of the polling, particularly in those states, Nevada and Arizona,

and not necessarily a large miss. So that was just my general read of it. And from my perspective, if if Ralston does have a bias, it's too much confidence in the Reed machine. And so I've covered Harry Reed for so long. I've also known and interacted with and had a lot of respect for Ralston for like 20 years now or something. And covering Harry Reed, you do get this sense of like, wow, this is an old school machine that like actually knows how to do machine politics and so you can't the question is do you get carried away with your faith in it after harry reid has died like we don't know yet like the strength of this machine so if he's wrong and that from the grave harry reid is not able to run this machine you know as effectively as he was uh you know from the earth

then that could make up the couple of points that you're talking about. I'm also sort of curious about, I think Republicans getting really excited about having, you know, more registered Republicans turning out in some states where they've been working really hard. I mean, if you, Ryan was at a Trump rally just last night, like they have the, I don't know if they're still doing it, but a month ago, you know, they were doing swamp the vote, too big to rig.

They were pushing it really hard. And, you know, part of me wonders if what we're seeing is just really high early voting from suburban women. So Republicans are getting excited about more registered Republican women returning their ballots early or in areas where they expect to do well, returning their ballots early. And actually, it was a lot of women who weren't voting for Trump, but are registered Republicans. So I don't know if that's the case, but I am curious about that. If Ann Selzer is even directionally correct, there is some of that going on. Because she found Kamala winning something like 10% of Republicans. That would be the theoretical sort of like Nikki Haley voter. And the other thing that is different in Nevada this year versus other years is that they passed a law that automatically registers anyone who goes to the DMV gets a driver's license. And the default is that you're just registered, you know, not affiliated.

And so Democrats believe a lot of those voters, because they tend to be younger, are their voters. And that's part of what factored into his analysis here, too. But, yeah, I mean, he talks about how this was, you know, maybe the hardest election for him to be able to predict. So I don't think anyone would be surprised if it comes in significantly differently from this. All right. Let me show you this next prediction. This is the Larry Sabato crystal ball, no relation prediction. And again, this is another,

I mean, he has it narrowly in favor of Kamala Harris. Basically, this is kind of like, before these campaigns really started and got into full effect, this is kind of what you would predict the map would be. She holds the blue wall, she holds Nevada where they've been consistently winning. And Trump takes everything else.

And there you go. It's, you know, it's narrow, but it's enough for her to be able to pull out a win. You guys have any thoughts or reactions to this one? I think it's a very possible map. I was at around this map for a while. And the real reason I bet against it with PA and with North Carolina was some different demographic reasons. But for specifically what this really is, is a bet on, you know, narrow victory in Nevada and then white overperformance with seniors and with

college educated voters across the blue wall states while losing the Sun Belt. And I think it's a highly logical map. It's a bet that I would not feel uncomfortable taking in a scenario for a Harris win. It's also one which was their most plausible path to victory. I listened to an interview that David Plouffe, who was the Obama 2008 campaign manager, gave on CNN. And he got pretty specific. He was basically like, look, we believe this is going to be a razor tight election. We are trying to operate in a sense where there is no polling error and we could still

be able to drive things out. And we see a scenario where any of the states that we win will be by 0.6, 0.8 or any of that. So that's basically a bet where a Kamala victory. And if, you know, in that 0.8 marginal victory scenario, this is what a Kamala victory would most likely look like with no major polling error. A polling error in either direction would just be read across the board for all of them. Ryan, was this your map, basically? More or less. I think I had Nevada going to Trump.

Yeah, so you had it actually 270, 268, right? Like as narrow as possible. Yeah. Got it. All right, let's take a look at Nate Silver. This is very unsatisfying. Yeah. He says, we ran 80,000 simulations tonight.

Harris won in 40,012. And his problem is, though, if it's garbage in, garbage out, that's what the simulations are going to produce. That's my thing. He has been arguing correctly and vociferously online for, like, these posters are basically just making stuff up. And it's not just the recall to 2020 thing. He was in this whole fight with this economist, Justin Wolfers, who was like, they're taking low quality surveys.

Then they look at what the average is and they rig the results to match that average. But it's like, if you think that's true, then how can you justify feeding this into your model and pretending like you're getting anything approximately? You're going to get the same like it's 50-50. It's tied that these pollsters are giving so that's you know that's the part of this is sort of what else is he supposed to do i was gonna say you go to war with the troops you have i mean it's just like what else can you do like there's no other option like he's got a decent i mean he does attempt at scoring like a lot of those hurting ones. I think they get scored less inside.

But at a certain point, you know, we only have a few people who are out there doing high quality surveys who are not doing recall to vote and or not hurting. And even then, you know, there's a big question mark in that last New York Times Siena poll. Like they had it. They basically said jump ball in all of the blue wall states where you do have to ask, was that just a hurting thing? Because they don't want to deal with the blowback, you know, in a scenario where Donald Trump overperforms by four or five points or Harris overperforms by four or five. There's also just, you know, like the more meta questions that we always have to confront about over response bias, about the makeup of the electorate, people who literally are like an entire generation now with no landline. How are they even contactable? So this will look the country changes a lot.

You know, this is partly a monster of his own making because of the pollster rating that you're talking about. It's based on how close they were to the actual results, which incentivizes, you know, if you say it's 50 5050, then you're not going to be too far off in any direction. And so partly the, you know, I don't, they didn't intend to do this, but that was partly the impact. So, you know, that's why I look, yeah, it's good that he's out there arguing, like, look, all these pollsters are just basically making things up. They're hurting. It would be one in 9 trillion chance, literally, that they would be getting the results that they are.

But then I think you have to factor in more humility to your own model at the end of the day if you know that the data that's going in is basically fictional, right? In other words, vindication for Alan Lichtman and his keys. Only Alan knows how to turn the keys. Also for Mudang. Yeah, we'll get to Mudang. And I got into a famous or infamous argument with Nate Silver back in 2016, and I ended up looking like a fool. But the actual point that I was trying to make is this one right here. What I said is that, look, all of the polling models are saying that Hillary Clinton has a 90 plus percent chance of winning. And in the last week, he was artificially pushing his number down to try to hedge for a Trump win because he felt in

his gut that there was a chance that Trump might actually win. And I said in the piece, I feel like that's true too, that it seems absurd to say that there's a 90 plus percent chance that he's going to win. But you're a polling model guy. You're not a pundit. Your job is to follow your own polling model. If you don't want to do that, then go be a pundit and say, this seems silly. But you can't kind of have it both ways. And so I think you're right that it's a problem of his own creation. He has created this idea that you can put these numbers into this machine and it's going to spit out for you results but then as as human beings we look at those results and we're like this doesn't look right so then what was the whole point of the

machine to begin with that was my that was my point i think that's totally fair and it does get to this whole idea of this is all human. There is no science behind prediction. All of it comes down to human assumptions. And by the way, keep this in mind for AI and for any large data machine or for anything. This is the case for the assumptions that are programmed into these models are what determine the model itself. And that's why people have heard here a lot about it. I actually think it's very vindicating where a lot of people just have a lot more humility around these things and just really, yeah, nobody knows anything. And that's actually fine. It's okay. I mean, the truth of the matter is that as much as Nate Silver and Alan Lichtman and his keys like

fought back and forth, they're actually not doing anything different from one another. Yes, they're both wizards. They're both just like, you know, they have their own ideas about how to bake in the assumptions and what are the keys to the election. And, you know, if you go into Nance Algar, he has things like, you know, the fundamentals and what's the economy and whatever. Those are all just your assumptions

about how those things play into the election. And then because you have this illusion of feeding it into an impartial machine, you come out with what appears like a more scientific result. You're not actually doing anything different than Alan Lichtman is when it comes down to it. And at least with Lichtman, he puts his thumb on it.

He says, it's going to be Kamala Harris. You can check whether he got it right or not in the end, whereas Nate Silver, whichever way it goes, he can be like, I told you it was 50, 50.

It could go either way. Right. Yeah. That's funny. All right. So let's go ahead and get to the big news yesterday evening, which is that Joe Rogan. Oh, I have Mudang lined up next. That's not what's next. Well, Mudang is obviously more famous.

Which is that Joe Rogan did. He had Elon Musk on his podcast, and then he came out and tweeted this official endorsement of Trump. Now, he had had Trump on the podcast and he had J.D. Vance on and then he had Elon Musk on. And of course, Trump's biggest backer. And he says the great and powerful Elon Musk. If it wasn't for him, we'd be effed. He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you'll hear. And I agree with him every step of the way. For the record. Yes, that's an endorsement of Trump. Enjoy the podcast. Emily, let me hear from you on, you know, what do you make of this endorsement and, you know, Rogan's evolution to this position? Because we've tracked some of his, you know, he's previously

backed Bernie Sanders, his very left wing positions that he took at some point in the past. But he's clearly made a transition into both his audience and himself being more, you know, solidly in the pro Trump right wing space. So what do you make of the significance both from a Rogan evolution and a political electoral impact? Yeah, well, I mean, Republicans just on the electoral front desperately, desperately need to get low propensity, young male voters to turn out. So they're interpreting this as a major gift. Now, will it actually be a major gift? I don't know that a bunch of people are going to turn out to the polls because Joe Rogan literally on the eve of the election, as people had already had their plans in place for the next day and all that good

stuff, made his endorsement. But everything is marginal in this election. So I guess Republicans maybe are clinging to that as just something that can get young male voters actually to the polls because they're doing better than Republicans have in, I think, decades with young male voters under this Trump run. So they really, I mean, that's the worst demographic basically to be doing well with because it's just the lowest turnout slice of the electorate. So maybe this is motivating and animating on that front. MAGA movement post-2020 because, and I know we've all talked about this before, what's happened is a lot of Silicon Valley guys have sort of stepped into the ring and become MAGA. And I don't think this changes Joe Rogan's, and you guys would know better, but from my perspective, it's not, a lot of people are going to be tempted to see this as mutually exclusive with the Bernie-ism, but there were a lot of voters that kind of had both in their heads

too back in 2016 and 2020, like the Trump stuff and the Bernie stuff. And it might not be that Joe Rogan is like fully anti-establishment or is fully non-anti-establishment that now he's pro-billionaire, pro-Trump, pro all of that. He just sees it as the best shot at breaking up what the tennis swamp has come to signify and represent. So that is a totally arguable point. But I think just trying to parse his argument on behalf of Trump, it's sort of similar to some other people's. Fundamentally, it's still seen as the best anti-establishment

candidate to explode everything in D.C. So that's sort of my initial reaction. Yeah, I mostly agree with that. I mean, I think it's I mean, look, it's kind of interesting to see it in different directions. In a lot of ways, Joe is actually following the trend, you know, in the podcast. Like, it's not a secret. The podcast demographic has been trending right wing for like, what, three years, maybe four years. Honestly, I think of it.

I think he tweeted something about pop culture. And I think it's a really interesting view into the bifurcated way that we experience pop culture in 2024, where you have like Internet celebrities. Joe kind of being the king of that, the person, the driver, the new Oprah, quote unquote, you know, for the non mainstream. But then you also have literally Oprah on the same night, you know, giving a speech in favor of Kamala Harris. You have Hollywood, the celebrity kind of establishment, quote unquote, on that side. And then I would also say that, you know, amongst the Internet celebrities, I don't think it's a secret, you know, looking around. If you look at the top 20,

you know, shows or whatever on Apple podcast, probably 18 out of 20 of them are going to be directionally right wing. So that does tell you something about the audience and about the space in which that that is both permissible and for a lot of reasons. I actually think it makes perfect sense because, you know, in general, outside of Fox News, like being, quote unquote, right wing is not really acceptable or possible. And so you start your own thing on the Internet. That's also where you can have like literally the ability to congregate without a gatekeeper, which is predominantly more friendly to the establishment left. And so Joe has been now a part of this for several years. If you track his like ideological evolution, I don't think it's all that like surprising. If you look at the

politicians, people like he likes, like Tulsi Gabbard and others, who is now literally a Republican calls. She's like, I became a Republican campaigning for Donald Trump, for RFK Jr., who is now endorsed Donald Trump and is urging people to vote for him. So this is like an ideological valence which has been present there for quite a long time. And if anything, he's very late to it because, like you said, Emily, you know, 20. I mean, when did it drop? Yeah. Eight forty five p.m. last night. So it's not like this is going to be top of mind for people who are organizing or anything. It's an interesting cultural demarcation point to me because it is just like the final apotheosis of what I think a lot of the podcast audience, demographic, et cetera, all began with Dave

Portnoy in 2015. And secular conservatism kind of crowns itself here today with a Rogan endorsement. Can I just say like i don't think this is durable beyond trump like that's another thing i mean it's absolutely interesting yes absolutely i don't know about that like because i think it depends i mean rogan loved jd vance and yes but that was the jd talking about trans that was not the santis right but that's jd talking about trans not j loves Ron DeSantis. Right, but that's J.D. talking about trans, not J.D. talking about abortion. And that's where things got a little bit testy.

I don't know. I mean, Joe's top issues that he talks the most about are anti-wokeism and trans stuff. And immigration. And immigration and being anti-vax, which there was a funny part of the conversation with Elon where they're talking about that. It's like Trump is the person who did Operation Warp Speed and whatever.

Like, I understand all of that is right wing goaded, but it's just a funny, funny note. So I don't think I really agree with that because I do. I think he and, you know, most of the people in that ecosystem, like they just have pretty conventional Republican views at this point. I don't think so. Like why did he like Ron DeSantis? COVID. Anti-woke and COVID. And woke.

Right. But I mean. He likes J.D. because I don't know. Like. Because he can articulate like a well. Transcultural conservatism. Yeah. And these are all very different like sort of ideological flavors within the Republican movement.

So I, you know. Yeah. I think that these fears are just like they're just Republican. within the Republican movement. So I, you know, yeah, I think that these fears are just, like, they're just Republican. But I don't, I see, that's why I would disagree. For example, put Ron Johnson on there. You think Joe is going to like him?

I don't think so. Or what? Well, Ron Johnson's not running for president. No, certainly. But whoever, I mean, but this is kind of like the big thing that goes into this is a conservatism, quote unquote, or

Republican Party, which can appeal to the secular, you know, kind of libertarian male is mutually exclusive from a conservatism of Mitch McConnell, Ron Johnson or any of these other folks. I think it's quite clear what is won out under Donald Trump. But the big question is, if Donald Trump goes down, right, if Trump goes down tomorrow or today at the ballot box, then there's going to be a big fight. And a lot of a lot of the strategy will get blamed here. I mean, policy wise, I just don't see Trump as being really different from the Mitch McConnell's of the world or whatever. Like, I think what you're running around and talking about cutting two trillion dollars from the government.

He wants to put Mike Pompeo back in the cabinet. Like, I just there's a stylistic difference. Sure. That's a key point, though. But I think what you're missing is that, though, so the real, we all see party the way that the Democratic Party previously, you know, for the last 40 years or more, has been this party of coalitions where the Republican Party was more of kind of a uniform party that had people who had the same interests, same genders, well, not same gender, but same race mostly. In many instances. Yes. Now.

And right, increasingly so. And so now the Republicans are going to it's going to be a confusing process for them to be like, wait a minute, we don't all actually agree on all of these things. Yet we're all part of the same coalition. And so how does the Rogan kind of faction of the coalition fit in with the kind of evangelical faction of the coalition, which agrees on some things but disagrees on others And that's so, but it doesn't mean you can't put together a party in a two-party system. Yeah. The entire, the tent that holds the GOP together is hating the left and specifically hating ideological like leftism in all of its forms. That's the only thing that unites a Tulsi Gabbard and what, like a Tom Cotton, right? And so that's the key of the Rogan podcast, you know, male demographic is that they hate the left and they hate the higher institutions of culture and they really give a shit. Crystal, I don't disagree with you

when you're talking about policy. Like no matter who is at the head of the Republican party, that's still gonna be the case. Maybe, I'm seeing again, if Trump goes down big. Not going out of style anytime soon. Sorry, the dog is demanding my attention. I can only say inshallah to what you just said, Crystal. But I do worry that if you know, like, for example, I think that if Trump goes down big, let's say a Harris landslide, a lot of this podcast, bro, energy like no Republican

is going to be courting shit like that ever again. They're going to have to take big lessons away from suburban women. If anything, you're going to see the opposite. You're going to see a lot of these people going on The View and going on Oprah, trying to like beg these ladies to come back and to vote for them. I mean, but the other side is that Trump does win big. Then you are going to see a lot more of, you know, you had John Fetterman go on the podcast with Joe. I think you will see, you know, Pete Buttigieg or whoever, you know, didn't Buttigieg just

go on what's called Jubilee, right? Like he knows what time it is. He's a smart guy. He can you can see where the trend is going. The future primary, you will have the Gavin Newsoms and all these other people go on Joe. I actually think Gavin would do an incredible job on Joe Rogan, which is crazy thing to say, because I know that Joe hates him, but he's a masterful, skilled wordsmith politician. And so this is, I'm curious to see how it shakes out entirely dependent on the result

of what happens and where things go. I was going to just quickly say on the pop culture point, it's not silly to remember that the days of like CPAC people like freaking out because they had celebrities and by celebrities, I mean, Kid Rock, I'm sorry. I mean, Ted Nugent and Kid Rock's a bonafide celebrity, but I mean like washed up Ted Nugent and Kelsey Grammer or something like that. Right. And so it's just looking back to 2016 and looking now that it's, everything is shattered. Like it feels as though, uh, the as though we have like monoculture, I think we all know this, is completely shattering. And what that's meant is more mainstream people,

like more people in the quote unquote mainstream because the mainstream is just bigger. And that has meant some inroads for Republicans in popular culture. But does that translate outside of Trump and J.D. Vance as Trump's running mate? I don't know. Maybe it does. I think it was a kind of interesting conversation. My point is just like I don't think that the whether politicians this election will really be a verdict on if in the near term Republican politicians once again

kind of bet the farm on the bro sphere podcast world. That's right. I do not think the bro sphere podcast world is going back to being like Dem or Lib curious. I think that's definitely not like that's what I'm saying. They're they're Republic like they're just Republicans now. Their views fit very neatly into the broader Republican like coalition. And I don't I don't see that changing. Like I to me, the Rogan endorsement is like the final you know, it's like the crown jewel of Trump's bro podcast strategy coming on the night before the election. And, you know, and so it will be the election will in some ways be a

real verdict on how ultimately consequential that strategy was. Absolutely. Maybe this is one of the reasons I'm laying the groundwork for if there's a big Trump loss is a lot of and people should remember this look like anti establishment is not always loved by people who like the establishment. In fact, there's a lot of women and people out there who if you ever showed them, you know, a comedy set of Andrew Schultz or a Theo Vaughn or of Rogan or any of these others or Tony Hinchcliffe, they would really hate it. And so that's a question, too, about who those people are, the people who love Oprah or The View or The Today Show or Good Morning America. Those people

vote, you know, possibly just as much. So it was a big risk. I mean, it was a titanic risk, really, to bet the bet the farm on this. But I guess the question, too, is and you're not wrong, Crystal, there'll be Republicans, but there's also an energy level to this. Like, for example, Kumaru Usman, who is one of the greatest fighters in the UFC, came out and endorsed Donald Trump. I just don't really see him ever doing that for Glenn Youngkin or maybe even honestly like a J.D. Vance. Like, yeah, or Jake Paul or Logan Paul or I mean, I'm trying to think all the bodybuilders, you know, that I follow on Instagram. Trump is a deeply unique cultural figure in a way that is like like psychologically very different than a lot of these other folks.

Dana White, you know, look at his him and his friendship with Donald Trump was a huge engine, you know, look at his him and his friendship with Donald Trump was a huge engine behind a lot of this. In fact, if it does work out, Dana will be probably more responsible for this than anyone else. Him, his friendship with Donald Trump Jr. and his ability, you know, Joe even said on his podcast with Trump, the number one reason he's doing this because of Dana White. Will Dana White go to bat for a traditional or even like whatever comes next after Trump? I'm not so sure, to be honest. I don't really think so.

And so that's why Trump is just such he's so, so unique in his ability. So will they always be right wing? Will they always hate the left? Absolutely. But will they be as galvanized as united, you know, around Trump? I don't think so. Not in the current way. We'll see.

I just these guys loved Ron DeSantis five seconds ago. Yeah. Yes. So it's not like there was aren't other Republican figures out there that they're also really excited about. It's just my point. But DeSantis also, let's be honest, the guy kind of sucks. Right. So it's like when you get reality, DeSantis is like what it is compared to Trump. That's a whole other ballgame. Yeah. And one other point that might be obvious, but I think worth making before we move on, and I have a section of this on my book on the squad, about the moment when Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders

in that weird interview with Barry Weiss. Yeah, I'm voting for him. He's been consistent. And he lays out the reason he loves Bernie Sanders. The reaction from the Democratic Party kind of set a course that we're on today. That was a moment of agency where a different kind of party in a different moment, less kind of consumed by identity politics at the time, could have embraced Joe Rogan and his entire coalition at that time and said, we don't agree with everything that Rogan believes, but he agrees with us 80% of the time. So we're bringing him in and we're going to build a coalition here. And if you even have half the bro sphere, like the Democrats are, you know, have an extra couple point advantage long term. The-term trajectory of losing young men uh you know is going to add up over over

the years and it all goes back to this deeply emotional moment you know rogan said i'm never getting involved in politics again like i think a lot of his like hostility towards wokeism was ramped up in in that moment um yeah and then gasoline still fuels his politics today right and then gasoline poured on that by covid i don't disagree i think that's totally right i'm not so much i don't know if there was much you could do about it to be honest because we're talking about like way bigger cultural figure or like way bigger cultural shifts that have happened in the high like commanding heights of culture than just rogan or not you know yeah that's why i meant that's why i meant in terms of he's following the trend right by coming in this late like everyone

else is just pro trump like patrick bet david and all these other guys these guys have built massive channels they i mean think about it like in terms of how big they are relative to even four years ago of how gigantic the trend has come so So, you know, that's why it makes sense logically to me because the milieu that Rogan is swimming in of UFC and all this, these people have been wearing MAGA hats for three years, sometimes 10 years, you know, in case of like Dana White. So I don't know. I'm not so sure that there was anything to be done about this.

I think way more of it has to do with just mainstream media, with the broader like culture and with everything. So, yeah, I don't know. Clearly, we have a lot to say about it. Yeah. And this will be I think this will be one of the conversations that will continue, you know, kind of will be shaped by what happens tonight for sure when we see how successful this strategy ends up being. I can just show you guys if you want. I've got the Trump reaction to learning that Joe Rogan endorsed him from last night. I think this was that was this at his final rally. I'm not sure. It wasn't Grand Rapids.

It was the one before the one before. OK. Oh, and Ryan went to one of Trump's rallies yesterday. Just quickly, Ryan, give us a give us a vibe check on on how the rally was. So it was pretty low energy and Trump didn't really rile folks up. But it's in Redding, Pennsylvania. He had been in Redding a month earlier. He was in nearby Allentown like a week earlier.

If you're a Trump supporter and you want to see Trump, you've had scores like maybe 100 plus chances in the Red Reading area to see him over the last nine years. I don't want to discount his potential just based on that. It's a bunch of old people who've been sitting there for four hours waiting for him. It's not surprising that they couldn't get whipped up into too much of a frenzy. It may not even be advisable to whip them up into a frenzy. He rocked out to YMCA and he did the whole show. He did his dance. Yeah.

Okay. Let's take a listen to Trump learning on stage that Rogan endorsed him. Oh, wow. I have some more big news, Megan. I'm just getting this right now. So somebody that's very, very respected asked me to do his show two weeks ago, and I said, why not? And to me, it's very

big, because he's the biggest there is, I guess, in that world by far. Somebody said the biggest beyond anybody in a long time, and his name is Joe Rogan, and he's never done this before. And it just came over the wires

that Joe Rogan just endorsed me. Is that right? Thank you, Joe. That's so nice. And he doesn't do that. he doesn't do that he doesn't do that and he tends to be a little bit more liberal than some of the people in this room

I had a lot of fun he was amazing it was a three hour interview in fact I was two hours late for a rally that we had. I had explained that a little bit. And it was cold out that night. We flew, but we had to make it.

We were more than two hours late. And they understood. I said, you know, I just was interviewed by a very interesting guy. And he just kept going. They called it a long form. And it could have gone a lot longer. But he was great. And he's not a person that does endorsements,

but he did an endorsement, so I just want to thank Joe Rogan. That's fantastic. There you go. Ryan, I saw a couple people who were at, like reporters who were at Trump rallies detecting a bit of a wistful tone. Obviously, this could be very

likely we're the last trump rallies that we'll ever see which is you know kind of the end of a uh very specific and very tumultuous era in uh american politics did you pick up on any of that yes i mean yeah he he was wistful he's like you know guys we've been doing this for nine years now think about that uh like i think he counted something like uh 900 rallies wow uh and he said you know and his quip there was he's like and i've always been you know very well behaved once or twice i may have made a slightly aggressive statement uh and the fake news media has called me out on it but in general i've been i've been perfect they've been perfect rallies true perfect

phone calls perfect perfect statements. Perfect, man. That's all he does. And then he said, you know, this is not an end. It's a beginning, and we'll be back, but we'll be talking about our achievements and what we've accomplished. And people in the crowd are yelling out, we'll see you at the inauguration. So, yeah, the waterworks were flowing in Reading, no doubt about it. Gotcha. All right, well um trump was not the only

one receiving a big joe endorsement yes kamala harris also receiving the endorsement of fat joe actually who um i believe is puerto rican and spoke about the uh tony hinchcliffe comments and made an appeal specifically to latino. Let's take a listen to that. I really want you to feel the moment. I am a sucker for a good laugh. I'm the guy they throw out the movie theater because the movie's too funny and I'm making too much noise. I'm the guy that you can roast me in the comedy club and I will laugh with you all the way out.

The other day in Madison Square Garden. That was no joke, ladies and gentlemen. That was no joke. And it was filled with so much hate. Hatred of Jewish people. Hatred of black people. Garving watermelons. Calling Puerto Rico an island of garbage.

My Latinos, where is your pride? So you get a sense of that. I will tell, I mean, this is kind of, you know, a contrast to the Republican closing strategy, Democrats genuinely feel that the Madison Square Garden rally was a bit of a turning point in terms of late-breaking voters going for them, Latino voters in particular, but voters in general. There is a decent amount of data that says, for whatever reason, late-breaking voters do seem to be going more for Kamala Harris. We'll find out tonight how true that ultimately is. I texted our friend Chuck Rocha yesterday to say, you know, this is a real thing. And he was like, 100%, this is definitely a real thing.

And the sense was it was kind of like a final straw for voters reminding them of some of the worst parts of Trump, blah, blah, blah. So they're leaning in hard to this final strategy and reminding people of, you know, some of the more noxious or toxic traits of Trump that have made him unpopular over the years. And anecdotally, for whatever this is worth, my stepmother and sister were in voted in Allentown yesterday and said that, like, it was mostly Puerto Ricans in line uh waiting to vote now it would be Puerto Rican population it would be probably a third Puerto Rican like normally anyway uh it's you know 60 population roughly in in Allentown you know but are they showing up late

and deciding to vote because because of this like the Democrats certainly think that it that it has gotten some people to vote who otherwise would not have voted like it's not as if they were like trump and now they're kamala um or they were like on the fence and now they're kamala it was like they were they were the classic voter of the choice is not who you're going to vote for is whether or not you actually decide to vote now they have a reason to it's the vote or the couch that would actually make more sense to me than like people who are swishing right who was the guy that we was it like i forget there was the artist who had already endorsed trump and he's like now i cannot stand with oh i'm just like bro shut shut the fuck up you know it's like you know exactly what you're getting into first time around i don't

remember what his name is um i think his name was nicky J. Nicky Jam. Yeah, Nicky Jam. Nicky Jam, that's right. Oh, Jam. Yeah, I apologize, Nicky Jam. But it's like, bro, like, I'm sorry, zero respect. Yeah, for that idea of somebody who was not voting and then decided to vote, that makes actually a little bit more sense to me in terms of the overall turnout. But, you know, part of the reason why I'm just so skeptical of all of this is I just feel like if Kamala wins is going to come down to a huge polling error, like we see with the Iowa Seltzer poll and the vast majority of it will be abortion. Right.

And, you know, in the scenario, even where she does win in the blue wall, like it's not like there's a ton of Puerto Ricans who live in Michigan and Wisconsin, like it's going to be white women who really push you over the edge. Now, look, it's highly possible that white ladies get very offended by this, like I was talking about earlier. No, I mean, like statistically, the most likely to get offended by it. And so that is the way I would kind of look at it. But that's where Trump's affect and character and all this stuff where these people were probably just voting anyways and couldn't wait to go and to vote against him. So we'll see. I don't know. I'm still curious.

OK, guys, so we took you through the supposedly scientific election prediction models, but the reality is they all are just like it's a a toss up. It's 50-50. So we thought we would give you some of the less scientific election prediction models that don't even have a semblance of a near of anything real to them. But people still look at them and some of them have pretty good track records. So we'll start with this one. There was a panda. Sorry, not a panda. A hippo that became very famous. I was not actually familiar with this.

You just misspecie'd this. Yeah. Crap it. I'll be canceled for this. I was actually not familiar with this baby hippo. With Mudang? Yeah, with Mudang. Mudang is very popular.

But she's apparently very popular. And they had her pick from two cakes. One that said Kamala Harris and the other that said Donald Trump. And drumroll, please. Mudang went for the Trump cake. Now, I have seen the conventional wisdom is that that would indicate a Trump win. However, I have seen the contrarian cake. Eating the Trump cake cake what she's really signaling is she wants to eat the rich and she's actually a secret kamala harris fan

yeah very possible uh what did they say there that they they're the conspiracy is that there was a bigger piece of dragon fruit that was on the on the cake and that's why they rigged it it's certainly possible listen if you've ever been in thailand dragon fruit is the shit whenever uh it is fresh so yeah shout out to mudang um i i no disrespect for choosing that cake uh it was funny though this one i've seen go viral everywhere now ryan asked ryan asked what was before we did the segment and i was like wellodang's record was before we did this segment. And I was like, well, Moodang's a baby. She's four months old, I think. So she's perfect.

She's never gotten it wrong. Yes. Yeah, that's Moodang's record. All right. In addition, we have a superstition about what's called the Redskins rule. Of course, now the Redskins are the commanders. But for a long time, there was a relationship between did the Redskins win their final home game and who ultimately took the White House so actually in the last commander's home game it was against the Bears and I don't know if you guys saw even as like not a big sports person I saw this unbelievable

touchdown pass crazy hail mary the clocks expired etc to launch them to a victory over the Bears. However, there's a catch, which is that apparently they have recently revised the Redskins rule to be the Redskins rule 2.0 because it stopped being predictive sometime in the 2000s. They were like, actually, now it's flipped. And if the Redskins win, then the party in power is going to lose. So I sort of rate this one a top of toss up at this point. OK. Yeah, I don't even know what to say about that.

You could also read it as 50 50 because the Bears had basically won the game up until the very last second whenever they threw the Hail Mary. So, yeah, I don't know. It could be that could be it. We could look back at that and say, you know what? That actually perfectly predicted what we're going to see on election day. This one I had heard about before. There's this monogram shop in East Hampton, New York, that sells cups of the different presidential contenders. And so they look at which candidate sells the most cups and they're not supposed to be predictive i don't actually have with the record here of how

accurate this has been i think it's been decently accurate though and they found that the harris cups have been outselling the trump cups pretty significantly most recently oh this is this the yeah this is the monogram east hampton yeah i was gonna say isn't this like one of the wealthiest neighborhoods like in in new york like isn't this like long island you don't think that this is extremely predictive soccer like i dare you okay i was like okay you even know how to turn the keys yeah that's like going to nantucket and being like oh the nantucket gift shop is going big for Kamala. I'm like, wow, really?

I have no idea. I think they predicted Trump over Hillary, I think, in 2016. Oh. How many of those people are buying Trump as a lark? See, that's the other problem with Trump. Trump is such a memeable figure. We're about to get to Halloween masks, right? Yes. to halloween masks right where yes so this is it this is another interesting one because

so traditionally the halloween mask predictor is um which candidate sells more halloween masks from spirit halloween like who how many people buy which candidates masks i couldn't find that data this year even though i've seen in every other election but the number one costume was apparently the crazy cat lady costume yeah that tracks so what do we make is that a is that a pro-common nominated too late to get those uh to get those masks shipped from china yeah good point oh that probably is what happened right the cat lady thing has hit in a degree which is like insane to me so like in my neighborhood here there's literally the lady two doors down has a childless cat lady for kamala sign in her window and our local cat cafe is

selling merch that's like childless cat ladies for kamala harris so taylor swift referenced it in her taylor swift references in her endorsement so did jennifer aniston um there's a lot you could say about that but yeah it certainly it certainly hit i'll just put it that way so you would say that's that's a pro kamala sign because i was gonna give that a toss-up because it's a little ambiguous no no it's pro kamala this is it there you have consensus here i can combine the last two i think it's pro kamala i think that's a positive sign for kamala i was on a flight about a month ago and there was a woman who seemed absolutely bananas while the flight was delayed and she started doing her workouts. She was elderly. She started doing her workouts at the gate, full, like lunging, all kinds of stuff, just going for it.

She was wearing a childless cat ladies for kamala shirt love that and i'm just like i don't know what's going on here get on the flight she's in first class she was in first class so you combine the two of them yes east hampton childless cat it all it all adds up it's a landslide all right next one we've got the um s&p 500 index. And if it's they say if it's up between August and November, incumbent parties likely to keep the White House. This one is a good metric for Kamala. However, candidate height, which was indicative in 18 of the last 24 elections, would indicate a Trump landslide because Kamala is actually quite short. She's 5'4". And what is Trump? He's like 6'3". I'm 5'4".

Yeah. Well, short for a president. Your aura is large, Emily. That's all that matters. It's actually average. I think she would be our shortest president, no? Yeah. I think that might be right.

James Monroe was like 5'4". So she might be slightly taller than Monroe. like James Monroe was like five, four. So she might be slightly taller than Monroe. They talked about the Redskins rule here, but then they also talk about this bakery buskin bakery in Ohio that's predicted almost every presidential election correctly since 84 through cookie sales. Can you guys tell how much research I've put in? Yes. And they have Trump way up. But a confounding variable i have to say is that elon did tweet about this bakery and so on monday the cookie count was roughly 11 000 for

harris and roughly 30 000 for trump so landslide for trump in that particular account all right does show that elon you know translates RL. There you go. That could mean something. Translates to cookie sales. I guess that's true. Okay, this is an interesting one. This one actually might be somewhat interesting to look at. This is the stock performance of the DJT, like the true social stock. And when Trump was at his most confident, it was very high.

Then there was a period of decline, but there has been a rebound recently. So, you know, again, I feel like this is a little bit of an ambiguous indicator of what could potentially happen on election day, but could reflect how people genuinely think about like, you know, how are things going to go for Trump here on the election? Yeah, definitely. People have been looking at that as like a inverse for how are things going to go for Trump here on the election? Yeah, definitely. People have been looking at that as like inverse for how things are going to go. At the same time, didn't Jim Cramer say that there's been some pro Harris trading that's been happening? But then there's also inverse Cramer where you're like, oh, no, that's really bad for Kamala Harris. I'm glad you brought that up because here we go.

Jim Cramer says market action anticipates a harris win which is devastating for her in my opinion yes there you go inverse kramer never bet against it and the last one i have for you guys is um the alan lichtman yep the keys he turned the keys he says that comal harris will be the next president of the united states so um you know his he likes to tout his track record they say correctly predicted nine of last 10 i think he claims he predicted all of the last 10 but some of them was like oh i got the popular vote right but not the electoral something like he's got what did he hope around some of these which one did he miss then but he did call trump in 2016 right he did call trump in 2016 yes um i'm not

sure which 2000 maybe that's the one he i think it might be 2000 that he called for gore which gore did win but yeah i think it might be that one so we'll give i'm willing to give him that one i feel like this should be single elimination like you don't get to say you've got nine out of ten yeah because it's once every four years you got nine out of ten. Yeah. Because it's once every four years you got one job. Right. You miss one, you're done. That's right.

Yeah, I agree with you. A hundred percent. So there you go, guys. So the hippo better take notes. That's right. Yeah, Moody. Could be one and done for her, man. What's the lifespan of a hippo?

Like 200 years or something. It was funny because when I was researching these yesterday, a lot of things came up in 2016. 40 or 50. That no one ever talked about again. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, right. Like there was some prophet monkey or something like that.

And you never heard of it again because I guess it got it wrong. And to your point, Ryan, like you can't. Oh, for one. Single elimination. You can't get it wrong. And especially that particular election, that was your time to shine and go against conventional wisdom.

And if you're the profit monkey and you picked Hillary, like, sorry, that's it. All right. Euthanasia. So guys, we'll be doing live stream tonight, 6.30. We'll be there

till I don't know when. It's going to be fun. And we've got Logan's going to be in the studio. We've got the Decision Desk HQ data. They usually are the fastest with updates and calls. They're really excited to have that resource available to us. And, of course, we will all be there trying to figure out what the hell is going on and what the world's going to look like tomorrow.

It's exciting. We'll see you guys then. Indeed. Enjoy the day y'all. This is an I heart podcast.