Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/23/24: Kamala Historic Fundraising, Secret Service Grilled In Congress, Dearborn Mayor Speaks Out On Bibi Visit, Biden Disappears, RFK Jr Offered Trump Endorsement For Cabinet Slot

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

Krystal and Ryan discuss Kamala record fundraising after Biden dropout, secret service head grilled in Congress, Dearborn Mayor speaks out on Kamala Bibi meeting, Biden disappearance sparks conspiracies, RFK Jr offered Trump endorsement for cabinet position, Jim Cramer salivates over Kamala corporate shift.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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 Tuesday morning, everybody, and welcome to BreakingPoints. Soccer is still out on his honeymoon, but we have an amazing show for him. Indeed we do. We have lots to discuss. Kamala now appears to be the presumptive nominee.

She has locked up sufficient delegates. She gave a barn burner of a speech over at what was Biden HQ, which is now Kamala Harris HQ. We'll get into all of that. We also have some polls, early indications of how she fares vis-a-vis Donald Trump as opposed to Joe Biden. We also want to take a look at a wild hearing yesterday with the director of the Secret Service, who inexplicably still has her job. Hopefully that doesn't last too much longer because there is bipartisan outrage over the many manifest failures and inability to answer just basic questions yesterday in this hearing. So we'll bring you that.

We also have the Dearborn mayor joining us to talk about Bibi Netanyahu's visit to town and specifically about how he is viewing the shift from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris. They're going to be very interesting to hear his perspective and that of his constituents today. We're going to take a look at the latest conspiracy with regard to Joe Biden. Where's Joe? Where's Joe? Where's Joe? I mean, listen, it is a little weird he hasn't appeared in public at this point. Definitely weird. I will give them that. Absolutely weird. But in any case,

we'll give you the very latest about what is being shared and spread there, including his phone call into his former headquarters, campaign headquarters. But was it really a phone call, Ryan? Was it actually a recording? We don't know. A little voice memo. We'll take a look. It was WhatsApp. Also wanted to catch up with what's going on with the RFK Jr. report

that he asked for a Trump cabinet position in exchange for an endorsement, a quid pro quo that was too shameless, reportedly, even for the Trump people. And so what that means for the race. And we've got Jeff Stein in. Not a perfect call. Not a perfect call, I guess, from RFK Jr.'s standpoint. And we've got Jeff Stein in to talk about Kamala Harris. Who is she really? I think that is a big question mark. I don't think anyone can really resolve what are the indications about what her core policy commitments could be, if to the extent that there are any. Taking a look at Jim Cramer, apparently very happy with the shift from Biden to Kamala, which, you know, you could take in a number of different directions. So anyway, we'll dig into all of that, given that she is now the presumptive nominee. And we can go

ahead and start the show there, because as I mentioned, she gave this speech at what was Biden HQ. She's just basically taking his campaign over. She gets the benefit of his war chest. She has asked his campaign manager to now serve as her campaign manager. She's keeping even Chris Coons as a campaign co-chair, adding Gretchen Whitmer in as well. But let's take a listen to a little bit of what she had to say yesterday.

I think we made the right decision. I know how hard you've worked, how many sacrifices you've made. And so many of you, so many of you uprooted your lives for me and the kind of commitment few people make for anything these days. But you made it. And I've been honored and humbled. I mean, this is from the bottom of my heart. My word is abiding for all you've done for me and my family. And I know it's been a roller coaster and we're all filled with so many mixed emotions about this. I just have to say, I love Joe Biden. I love Joe Biden. And I know we all do. And we

have so many darn good reasons for loving Joe Biden. And I have full faith that this team is the team will be the reason we win in November. You all who are here. And as Julie always says, and I will quote the great Julie, we are one team, one fight. So in the days and weeks ahead, I, together with you, will do everything in my power to unite our Democratic Party, to unite our nation, and to win this election. You know, as many of you know, before I was elected as vice president, before I was elected as United States senator, I was the elected attorney general, as I've mentioned, of California. Before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor.

In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's type. So, Ryan, what do you make of her first outing? A lot of enthusiasm there for her at Biden, now Harris HQ. Well, interesting that she's definitely leaning into the cop versus the predator kind of kind of meme. She was she moved away from that in 2020. She tried to say that she was a progressive prosecutor because it fit with the more progressive time of that era, but it did not match at all her record. And so the gap between that and her record

was the thing that Tulsi Gabbard drove a steamroller through and ran her over. There's now a bit of a backlash to that period of time. And so she's kind of re-embracing the Kamala cop a little bit. Yeah. She's also not in a primary, really. Not in a primary, just going after Trump. Right. And so, right, she doesn't have to win over anybody in the party.

She's spent the last 24 hours with what Axios called shock and awe, I think accurately. Like she's just a, nobody wanted to run against her. And we see why the entire party, which loves order and hierarchy, you know, ordered themselves behind her. She's raised what? Over a hundred million dollars. She's raised over a hundred million dollars from grassroots and then another and another $150 million from rich people, at least. So we're talking about a quarter of a billion dollars in a roughly 24-hour time period. Right. And she's racked up all the endorsements she needs from delegates. She's got everybody lining up behind her. She's got all of her opponents dropping out.

So there will be a vote. Yeah. Although it won't be at the convention. Right. They are sticking with the virtual roll call convention plan for some reason. They continue to tell this lie for ballot access reasons. You know, they're so far into the lie, and now it's less controversial to go forward with it. Right, that they're just going to stick to the lie.

Well, because the other thing that they continue to be worried about is protesters with regard to Palestine. So, you know, the original—so Ohio did have this rule, this law. Ohio, the Republican governor and legislature there changed the law to make sure it wasn't a problem. But Democrats had already seized on this excuse of the law initially in order to try to avoid any sort of messiness with regards to pro-Palestine protesters. Then it became very convenient for the Biden dead enders who wanted to make sure he could lock this up as quickly as possible. And now I think you're right. I mean, it continues to be convenient in terms of Palestine protesters, but also they're so far into the lie that we're like, I guess we're just doing this virtual roll call thing. And they liked it last time around in 2020, even though going back and looking at the online DNC

is sort of like a fever dream. That's some weird stuff there. And you've seen some of the rationale for why the Biden dead-enders were so confident that they could be so out there for Biden, calling everybody who's trying to take him out racist, because they knew from the squad to the Rachel Bitterkoffers of the world that the second that Biden stepped aside, it would be just permission to forget all of it and just jump in, you know, with two feet for Kamala Harris. Yeah. Rachel Biddecoffer, who, you know, doesn't even matter who she is. Resistance Twitter.

She's actually a Virginia political scientist. Yeah. Christopher Newport University, I believe. She analyzes elections using the different data points, but has become like a leading blue and on voice was one of the ones just most viciously attacking people about taking Biden out. She said something this morning like this is the first morning where I didn't want to hide under my bed, under my covers like all day long. You were attacking everybody who was trying to get you to this place where you're now joyously participating in it. But the thing about joy is it just washes it all away. So Democrats are so happy that it's like the celebration at the end of the Super Bowl, everybody forgets what happened in game two. Yeah. I mean, Harry Sisson, like all of these people who were

vociferously arguing that Biden is the greatest leader we've ever had. It is outrageous that anyone would want to push him aside. The minute he does, they're like the happiest people on the planet and celebrating the historic nature of Kamala Harris' candidacy, which is legitimate. She will be the first black woman to be a major party nominee. So that is history making. It is a big deal. But to get back to your point, Ryan, we could put a five, I believe, up on the screen. We have a major update to this, though. This was yesterday. Kamala had crossed the 1000 mark in terms of committed delegates. Now she is at 2668 delegates. That means she has significantly more than the majority that she would need. So she now really is the presumptive nominee given the support through the shock and awe campaign. I mean, really one of the only remaining holdouts who hasn't just fully endorsed her is actually Barack Obama.

What about the brother from like Marshall Islands or whatever, who won the three delegates in Guam? Oh, I think he's still holding out. We looked up his name. Jason Palmer. I was going to say, we looked up his name yesterday and I've already forgotten it. He's famous in the mainland, according to his own campaigns. Yet somehow we don't we can't remember his name. But yeah, so Barack Obama and that guy are among the lone holdouts. Yeah. Obama can, you know, keep his elder statesman image here. You think that's what he's doing? At this point, I mean, I think he was genuinely hoping

that there would be some type of open contest. Yeah. Because also an open contest is where he gets to be the man. Yeah, that's right. Behind the scenes. Queen maker. It's not going to happen.

So now it's pointless for, I mean, you'll probably see him when it's like completely over. Yeah. One last point on Bitticoffer before we move on. She was also the one arguing that it was completely illegal to get rid of Biden. Oh, was she one of those? Not just wrong.

It was illegal. Yeah. You can't do it. And now she's absolutely over the moon. Which was always so preposterous because he wasn't even the nominee yet. You know, he was the presumptive nominee, but there's a reason why you use that word because it hasn't happened yet. So the idea that he couldn't himself step aside and that that would be illegal to do was always preposterous. I still see Mike Johnson, you know, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson out there claiming he's going to mount some sort of legal challenges to Biden being swapped out for Kamala. But again, he wasn't even the nominee. So good luck with

those legal challenges. Those aren't going anywhere. But that's a that's a great point that a number of these people were making the point that this would be illegal and it would go to, you know, it would be wrong and Biden's amazing. And how could you possibly want to do that? And now they're completely over the moon now that it is Kamala Harris. Just to run through some of the additional movement in her direction, we can put up A2. Pelosi did come out and endorse Kamala Harris. She didn't do it right away. So she and Barack Obama were initial early significant holdouts since they were also two of the most critical figures in terms of pushing Biden out of the race. But she says that today is with immense pride and limitless optimism for our country's future that I endorse. Vice President Kamala

Harris for president of the US, my enthusiastic support for Kamala Harris for president is official, personal and political. I don't really know all of the intra California politics within the Democratic Party, but it was my sense that I guess she's more of a Gavin Newsom person. And so she was kind of holding space open in case Gavin had a chance to make a run at it but it was my sense that she, I guess she's more of a Gavin Newsom person. And so she was kind of holding space open in case Gavin had a chance to make a run at it once it was clear that everyone's consolidating quickly around Kamala Harris. She goes ahead and jumps in so she can be on the right side there. Let's put the next piece up on the screen so we can get to some of the polling about what we know at this point. So this was a new national poll that came out and it has Kamala

losing to Trump, but by less than she was losing to Trump previously, or rather less than Biden was losing to Trump previously. Trump here is plus two against Biden. He had been plus six. So you can see, I'm sorry, plus four. I'm just screwing this one up all the way around. But Trump was plus four. Now he's plus two. So Harris somewhat outperforming Biden there. And that's kind of what we're seeing. We also saw Quinnipiac poll that came out this morning that showed a similar result. Trump had been plus three nationally on Biden. Now he's plus two nationally on Kamala. That changes within the margin of error. So not a huge swing. We see a more significant swing. We can put the next piece up on the screen. We see a more significant swing if you dig into some of this data of which groups

are moving towards Kamala Harris. And one thing that was really interesting to me here, Ryan, is the fact that actually every group except people with postgraduate degrees moved towards Kamala Harris. So you see a significant movement among black Americans towards Kamala Harris vis-a-vis where they were with regard to Biden. You see some movement with regard to white voters, some movement with regard to Hispanic voters, significant movement with less than college degree, some movement with college grads and no movement with post grads. So it's a little bit different than what I would have expected, frankly. But in essentially every group, she outperforms Biden by at least some margin, according to this poll. Yeah. And I think Democrats had kind of maxed out their postgraduate lead that they could have on Trump because they'd already locked that one up.

The postgraduate folks, they read the news closely. They're on their phones all the time, checking Twitter or threads or whatever. Yeah. And they they knew how bad Biden was and they were still supporting him. Yeah. So now they're supporting Kamala. Yeah. Who you got against Trump is basically how those people think. They're sort of the most, like, partisan locked in.

Yeah. Least swingy of the potential voters. They're not taking in any new information and then deciding to vote for Trump. Yeah. Zero. They are the epitome of vote blue no matter who. Biden could have been dead on election day

and they would cast their ballot for Biden. Yeah, this is the Rachel Biddecoffer vote, basically. Yes, exactly. All right, we've got another poll here. This was an interesting one. This is from Civics. We can put this up on the screen. They say, we started tracking Trump versus Harris two weeks ago.

Normally, this info is paywalled, but this is our sharing. So through 7-21, Biden was trailing Trump 46-44 nationally. Harris was ahead in this poll, 48-46. They say Trump is stuck at a ceiling of 46. Harris gains from third party undecided voters. And then if you dig into the crosstabs here, you get kind of a similar picture. I can put this next piece up on the screen. Young voters go from Biden plus eight to Harris plus 20. So that's not surprising given how disgusted young voters in particularly have been with regards to Biden's policy vis-a-vis Israel. Perhaps they're giving Harris more of a shot there in spite of the fact that obviously, you know, she was part of this administration. Independents go from Trump plus 16 to they narrow that margin to Trump plus eight.

Harris also picks up seven percentage points among black voters, eight percentage points among Hispanic voters, almost all from third party and undecided. So what do you make of this data here, Ryan? A lot of people were just refusing to vote for Biden, but did not want to vote for Trump. And that is how we kind of have understood this election the entire time, that so many people just don't like either candidate. Yeah. But a ton of them just really, really, really did not like Biden, but they're definitely not voting for Trump or they're like they hadn't gotten themselves to the place yet where they were willing to admit that they were going to vote for Trump. And then Kamala Harris comes in.

She has a burst of news. People are like, okay, she seems like a fine, normal person. I don't dislike her. And I'm not afraid that she's incapable of doing the job like Joe Biden. Plus, you're right. She wasn't the one. Her administration was sending weapons. and is sending weapons to Israel. But she was not the one out there bear hugging Netanyahu.

And people understand in general that vice presidents are powerless. So she could benefit from that kind of just intuitive sense that people have that this was a Biden plan. Now, how she handles the Netanyahu visit is reflective of this. She doesn't want to be seen publicly with him, but she is going to meet privately with him. We'll talk about that later. Right. But yeah, I think that's what it is. What's your read? Is this what you would have expected to see? Yeah, this is about what I would have expected to see. Some of the polling indicates she performs less well than Biden when it comes to like old white voters where he has had a particular strength. And, you know, that is a real negative for her because those are people who show up.

There's a lot of them and they show up. So that was one of his strengths. But I do think that the fact, number one, she's a way more committed and credible messenger when it comes to Democrats core message about abortion. I mean, Biden has never been comfortable there. And all he can as we've discussed, like all he really knows and cares to talk about these days is NATO anyway. But he doesn't even really personally agree with his choice and has been bad on abortion his entire career. So to ask him to be a credible messenger there. I also think that there's an expectation. Kamala not only has credibility to deliver the message, she has more credibility that she might

actually do something on it, like she might actually care about it and exert some sort of effort to do something about it. So that makes it more salient. That makes her a much better messenger. And I think it'll matter a lot how she plays this week in particular with BB's visit in terms of whether young voters who were like, I can't vote for, you know, I hate Trump, but I can't vote for an administration and president who is committing a genocide, whether they are able to, you know, stomach voting for Kamala Harris, given the complicity. But if she's able to

strike some sort of a, you know, arm's length distance from from Bibi and express more empathy and just basic humanity towards Palestinians, I think that would go a long way. So we're going to talk, as I said before, to the Dearborn mayor today about how he is viewing things. It'll be interesting to hear from his perspective and that of his constituents, how they are assessing all of this. But, you know, the other thing with Biden is, yeah, the Democratic faithful were going to drag their butts to the polls and vote for him. But there was no enthusiasm for this man. I mean, he did not have ever a like movement behind him, which is how also they were able to so easily push him out too, because he didn't have any sort of grassroots true base of support. Very different from a Donald Trump, very different from, you

know, back in the Bernie Sanders days, even I would say different from Hillary Clinton, who genuinely had a group of women who were like really in for Hillary. Right. Yeah. He has never had that. He doesn't have that. He was a product of, you know, the sort of elite machinations behind the scenes that brought him in. We are seeing a genuine surge of huge enthusiasm for Kamala Harris. We can put this back up. We can put this up on the screen. The amount of money that she is raising is astonishing. So this Politico article describes her big donor money bomb.

They're talking about $150 million that was raised into a super PAC that will be all Kamala Harris all the time. In addition, we put the next one up on the screen. They say that she raised $81 million in the first 24 hours since she announced. This is now up over $100 million. So $250 million in the course of basically a day. And not only that, but a huge number of these come from first-time donors. I have the numbers in front of me. More than 1.1 million unique donors. So individuals in the country given to the campaign. 62% of them first time givers.

And more than 58,000 people, I'm reading from Ed O'Keefe, by the way, on Twitter right now, have signed up to volunteer for the Harris campaign since Sunday afternoon. We were talking before the show, Ryan. I was really floored by there was an organizing call among a group that organizes black women. They had 40,000 people on this organizing call. And, you know, that's insane. Like on a Democrat, for any group, for any time, et cetera, to have that many people showing up and saying, what can we do? How can we support? That is night and day from where they were with Joe Biden, where people were basically on like a doom march to November. Yeah. And then they had a call with black men that had many thousands as well that raised more than a million dollars. That one raised several million. And I think your abortion rights point is so key because people understand that they're actually,

because just think about this. Will there be a material difference in abortion access in a Trump administration versus a Kamala Harris administration? I think people just intuitively would say yes. Yeah. That there actually will be a difference. Yeah.

Like the Trump administration will work to shut down clinics, to empower attorneys general who are trying to hunt women going across state lines. We'll mess around with Mifepristone even if J.D. Vance says he's okay with it, which is the abortion bill you can get by mail. There's also, they're like, are they going to try to constrict contraception? These are all material things in IVF that you can imagine changing. And so often business Republicans vote out of material reasons because they think they're going to get a tax cut.

But in general, people vote on vibes and on emotion and on just kind of atmospherics of like, this is the party that I prefer over this party. But you're not exactly sure precisely how the policy is going to impact you directly. But when it comes to abortion rights, it stands to reason that there will be material difference between these two parties. And when it's on the ballot, like on a constitutional amendment or referendum, people come out and overwhelmingly in every state support abortion rights. So I think combined with the honeymoon that she's getting, rather than Trump getting

a honeymoon out of his convention, she gets the bump. Yeah, the RNC honeymoon bump. We'll see how much of it is a honeymoon and whether she can actually, because she's still an underdog. That's what people need to remember. Yeah. Completely over the moon for her. She's just less of an underdog than Joe Biden was. Less of an underdog, yes. Which is incredible because normally incumbency confers you with quite a political advantage.

But obviously because of his age and decline, that wasn't the case. I also think that that may be changing because people are just so dissatisfied with where the country is and where it's heading. It's almost more of a burden to be an incumbent and have to actually own the decisions and the state of the country as it exists under your presidency. But TBD on whether that's really the case. I think in some ways Trump has all the advantages of incumbency without the disadvantages that you're talking about because he's got the nostalgia as well. People think it was an incumbent, but they're like, yeah, things were okay then. But he's crazy and he's not in my

face every day like he was then. So you kind of get the benefits without the costs. I think that's right because one of the major benefits of incumbency, a couple of them, one of them is the bully pulpit. Well, obviously, Trump has a bully pulpit, like people are going to cover what he says, he can get cameras in front of his face whenever he wants to, he can drive the national conversation whenever he wants to, outside actually of this specific moment, where nothing was going to drive the news away from the drama with Biden and Biden dropping on who's going to be his successor, etc. But the other advantage of incumbency

is just the fact people see you in the job, you know, so it makes it easy for they don't have to use their imaginations to think about what that would be like. And so they've seen him in the job. They know what that was like. And he's got the bully, the Trump bully pulpit. So I think you're right about that, that he has all the advantages of incumbency without being saddled with having to reckon with the decisions that are being made now, the state of the country now. And you can put rose colored glasses over what his term was actually like, you know, now that we're four years down the road. So I agree with you. I think Kamala Harris is still an underdog. I think she's got a much better shot than Joe Biden did. She has her own challenges and weaknesses. But what we're getting from the Republicans is some of the attacks that they've

tried to launch on her have just been like, oh, God, ridiculous, silly, embarrassing for them, bad, et cetera. But what they're likely to mostly do is paint her as, you know, coastal, liberal, out of touch with ordinary Americans. There's also going to fixate on she laughs too much and her sort of goofiness and all of those sorts of things. And they'll certainly try to seize on otherizing her. Like, J.D. Vance is already basically painting her as like a welfare queen. So they're going to do those sorts of things as well, which may they may not be able to resist going too far in that direction in a way that is very negative and off-putting for them. And it reminds people of like some of the fringe views and extremism. They don't like coming off that ticket.

But the other thing is, you know, going back to the abortion point, if that issue really does continue to be so central, the politics on that have moved so dramatically since Roe versus Wade was overturned. Now, for the first time ever, I think, certainly in our lives, you have a very clear supermajority in favor of abortion rights. Previously, this was a 50-50 issue. And so I talked ad nauseum way too much yesterday about Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky. But Democrats in Kentucky forever were getting killed on abortion. They were running away from abortion as fast as they possibly could. You had tons of pro-life Democrats so that they could continue to get elected.

Andy Beshear ran aggressively on choice in his gubernatorial reelect, And it was incredibly successful. That's how much the landscape has shifted on abortion. So painting Kamala Harris as a cultural elite in some ways only further solidifies people's view that like, oh, she's good. That means she's going to be good on abortion rights. Like that means she's going to be on my side and where I am on abortion rights. I think part of why that issue has been so salient and so politically powerful is not just because of the issue itself. It's because of the shock of having rights that existed and were taken for granted, taken away. And so in one instant, it blew up this very liberal notion of like, oh, progress is just inevitable and the moral arc of the universe is long,

but it bends towards justice. Then you have, oh, my mom had this right, my grandma had this right, and I don't? This is something I can't take for granted in the way that my mother did? What the hell is happening here and what else is on the table? So in any case, on that issue, I do think it's really clear

that she'll be a more effective messenger, more compelling, more credible, that she'll actually do something about it. She's been open to getting rid of the filibuster in a way that Biden was never open to getting rid of the filibuster. So there's some substance there, even as on a lot of the issues that you and I also really care a lot about, like on economics in particular, certainly on criminal justice, on foreign policy. Kamala Harris is just a giant question mark of what she actually believes and what she would actually do if she was president of the United States. Yeah. And the cynicism that people have,

justifiably, that the system can't produce much other change by voting makes abortion rights such a more salient issue, because it's the one thing you actually can vote on. That's a great point. Like if people thought like, well, if I could vote on to give myself a raise or to, you know, strengthen unions or anything else, they would happily do that, but they don't actually believe that the system's going to deliver that. Right.

It's controlled by oligarchs. Right. But when it comes to abortion rights, like, oh, this actually policy is going to change based on voting patterns here. Yeah. So at least what we're seeing in the early polling here, you know, it's Trump still with an edge, but less of an edge, closer to a toss up than it was with Joe Biden.

But Kamala Harris still an underdog with some benefits over Biden and some definite over Biden and some definite drawbacks and coalition challenges as well. So we'll see where it goes from here. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships.

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This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker,

the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Fascinating hearing yesterday in the House of Representatives, where the still head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheadle, came before the committee, and I think just surprised everyone, A, that she was still in her job, and B, that she had so few answers. And we should be very clear here. There are a lot of outstanding questions still about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Virtually none of them were answered during this hearing. And in fact, only more questions were raised.

Let's let's roll a couple of the exchanges from the hearing here. I think this will start with AOC here, who actually really deeply impressed the right. The right was like shocked that they were enjoying like an AOC interrogation. Let's roll some of this. The individual used an AR-15 in order to act out his assassination attempt. An AR-15 has a range of about four to 600 yards. My question is, why does the Secret Service perimeter, why is the Secret Service protective perimeter shorter than one of the most popular semi-automatic weapons in the United States? There are a number of weapons out there with a number of ranges. Again, an advance was completed. The determination of the perimeter, I'm not going to speak to specifics, but there are a number of ranges. Again, an advance was completed. The determination of the perimeter, I'm not going to speak to specifics, but there are a number of factors that are taken into account

when we determine our perimeter. Some of it has to do with terrain. Some of it has to do with buildings. Some of it has to do with assets and resources that are available. And so what I'm hearing is that a perimeter was not established outdoors in an outdoor venue that would prevent an AR-15, which is one of the most common weapons used in mass shootings, from being able to be within the range of Secret Service protection. A perimeter was established, and even though there were buildings that were outside of that perimeter, it wasn't just that building, there were a number of buildings in the area and there was overwatch that was created to help mitigate some of those buildings.

I own an AR-15 and last time I shot it, I shot it one time my whole life, it was six years ago. That is until Saturday where we recreated the events in Savoy, Texas. We recreated what happened in Butler. I was lying prone on a sloped roof at 130 yards at 630 at night. And I knew that he had a scope, but I didn't know what kind, red dot, or magnified. So I shot eight rounds from both. You know what the result was? 15 out of 16 kill shots. And the one I missed would have hit the president's ear. That's a 94% success rate and that shooter was a better shot than me. It is a miracle President Trump wasn't killed.

Corey Compaoratory's life is over because that damn shooter made it on the roof. And it wasn't the roof that was dangerous, it was a nut job on top of the roof. You know what else is dangerous? I believe your horrifying ineptitude and your lack of skilled leadership is a disgrace. Your obfuscating today is shameful and you should be fired immediately and go back to garden Doritos. That's a reference. She was the PepsiCo did did security for Pepsi before this. That's what the Doritos reference was there. But an excellent question from AOC there backed up by the Republican congressman, I already forgot his name. These scopes, when you look through these scopes at something that's 150 yards away, you could tell what kind of knot he did in his tie.

You could tell the brand of it if it's like flopping out. Trying to imagine what the shooter was able to see through that scope is just deeply frightening. Because as the guy said, you know, he himself tried it and squeezed off 15 out of 16 kill shots. He's right that from that distance, it is a miracle that he didn't hit him. And I really do think it was the crowd by, and we're going to get to this clip in a second, the crowd by saying, shooter on the roof, shooter on the roof, that then got the Keystone cops to boost one guy up and look at him on the roof. And then the shooter turned and pointed the gun at the cop, then turned and fired because he didn't have enough time to get himself set.

I think that's why he missed. If he'd have had 30 seconds to calmly aim, because he probably knew, he probably saw, there's a Secret Service sniper pointing his weapon at me right now. So, like, difficult conditions. So let's roll this next clip, which is relevant to all this. Director Cheadle, as you know, the shooter began shooting at 6.11 p.m. Eastern on July 13th. NBC reported that at 5.51 p.m., 20 minutes before the shooting began, the state police informed the Secret Service of their concern.

Now, the rally was not paused at that point, correct? No. And according to NBC, just two minutes later, at 5.53 p.m., the Secret Service notified its snipers about the gunman. The rally wasn't paused at that point either, correct? No. Let me show you some video footage by rally goers. If you could play the video on the screen up here.

This was taken two minutes before the shooting started. If you could turn up the roof. He's right here. Right on the roof. He's getting up now. He went right on the roof like that. Ma'am, that doesn't look like suspicious behavior. That looks like threatening behavior to me. And the rally wasn't paused at that point either, correct? I can tell you, as I stated earlier, sir, that the moment that the shift surrounding the president were aware of an actual threat. That's a threat right there. The guy's on the roof and everybody's yelling at him.

Yes. And and directing the officer's attention to him. The rally was not paused at that point. Correct. We are currently still combing through communications and when communications were passed. Did they share with you how many shell casings were on the roof? They have shared with me. Did they share with you how many shell casing were on the roof? Yes. Okay.

How many were there? I would refer to the FBI for the investigation. How many were there? And their information that they need to share in their investigation. So they've shared the information with you. You just don't want to share the information with us, correct? We have concurrent investigations that are going on. So they have shared this information with you. You know the answer to the question. You just refuse to answer the question from the member of Congress who has subpoenaed you to be here. Is there a different answer to that question?

I was always willing to come here and testify before this oversight hearing. Beautiful. Then let's do that. Let's for once have your actions match your words. So you've been in communication with the FBI. You know the answers and you refuse to tell us the answers. So I will ask you again. You know how many shell casings were on that roof. What is the answer to that question? What is the answer to that question? I think it's pertinent to talk to you about the information that the Secret Service has. Would you agree that this is the most serious security lapse since President Reagan was shot in 1981 of the Secret Service? Yes, sir, I would. And, you know, do you know what Stuart Knight did when he was in charge at the time of the Secret Service? You know what he did

afterwards? He remained on duty. He resigned. Brutal. Absolutely brutal. The middle one from that was Representative Lisa McLean, Republican of Michigan, asking about the shell casings is key because there are a lot of questions about whether or not there was another shooter there. And also how many shots did he get off and comparing the number of shots to the audio. And if you want to put any of those questions to rest, you would count the shell casings on the roof and see if they match the audio. Right. If they do, basically case closed. Right. For her not to provide that answer for whatever reason, she decided not to provide it. And to not even give a reason really why she was to admit that, you know, the answer and then just completely stonewall when pressed on it.

Yeah. And to not know that the guy resigned after the Reagan shooting. Like, how do you not know that? How did you not yourself resign? I mean, it really is perplexing to me. I have to think that if Joe Biden had like a shred of sense about him, she would be gone. Like, I just, it's unfathomable to me. Given all that we've learned since this shooting occurred

about the security failures, you can see truly bipartisan outrage. Like when those Congress people were questioning her, you really couldn't tell who was a D or who was an R because they all were so flabbergasted by these security failures. The New York Times, in another sign of how this is a deeply bipartisan concern at this point,

we can put up a tear sheet B3. They compiled a list of some of the questions that she would not answer. The shell casings being one of them. Here's some of the other ones. Why did the Secret Service not station an agent on that warehouse roof? She had previously said there were concerns

because it was sloped, safety concerns. It was barely sloped, number one. I mean, that's just preposterous. Number two, your job is to jump in front of bullets. Your job is to put yourself in danger to protect your protectees. So, I mean, just crazy on that one. But here she just stonewalls. Then, how many Secret Service agents were assigned to protect Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania?

Won't answer that for some reason. Who decided the warehouse roof would be outside the Secret Service's security perimeter, even though it was so close? Even though, you know, AOC is pointing out this is one of the most popular firearms in America and it's well within its range. How could this be outside the security perimeter? Won't answer. Why did the Secret Service allow former President Trump to take the stage, despite people in the crowd pointing out a gunman on the warehouse roof? And we now know that they had identified the shooter as a suspicious person nearly half an hour before the rally even began. So it is inexplicable. It is outrageous that he was allowed to take the stage

and then he was allowed to continue up to the point where he's getting shot in the ear and nearly directly assassinated. Another question not answered. How did the shooter, Mr. Crooks, get his rifle up onto the warehouse roof? Did he leave it there before the rally? We know he had made multiple trips now

to the area before the rally, including, and I'll put this tear sheet up in a little while, including apparently he was able to fly a drone multiple times over the fairgrounds to get a bird's eye view so he could really properly scope out what his target range was going to be. And finally, what additional security steps did the Secret Service take after the U.S. learned about this alleged potential Iranian plot to kill Mr. Trump? So they have stonewalled on the shell casings, on the perimeter, on basics, like how many Secret Service agents were assigned, on the timeline about what they knew

and when they say they haven't stored the radio communications. So that's probably lost to history over, you know, what the communication was like and when they knew there was a very clear active threat that was identified by the crowd. This is utter insanity that she's still in the job. If I were Kamala, the first major act I'd do is be like, I demand that she be fired. True. And then somebody would tell Joe Biden, like, hey, by the way, you're still president. Kamala would like you to fire this director. And then he makes it official. But she gets the credit for it. Because imagine if we tried to do like a CounterPoints Friday debate, like should the Secret Service director resign? You know how hard it would be to find somebody?

Like maybe Demetri would make the case. You'd have to get her herself in to make a wildly inadequate case. I think she'd be the only one defending. And listen, I want to be clear too. I think there are many problems at the Secret Service that go beyond just her, right? She clearly is the problem. And I think this testimony is a massive problem, but I also think there are structural issues there. Ken Klippenstein, our great friend and your former colleague, has closely covered Secret Service. One of the things he's talking about is the fact that they have had such mission creep. The number of things that are assigned to the Secret Service at this point have just absolutely ballooned. It's caused them in some ways to take their eye off the ball. You've also had a number of scandals over the years about their behavior and lack of professionalism. So there's a lot going on there that predates this particular Secret Service director. But still, ultimately, the buck stops with this woman

and the fact that she's still there, that she hasn't offered her resignation and hasn't been pushed out is just completely mind-boggling to me. We could put this next piece up on the screen. The two members, highest ranking members, the chairman and the ranking Democratic ranking member on this oversight committee, James Comer and Jamie Raskin, put out a letter calling for her resignation. They say, we call on you to resign as director as a first step to allowing new leadership to swiftly address this crisis and rebuild the trust of a truly concerned Congress and the American people. But you're absolutely correct, Ryan, the other day when you said,

listen, if you're a Republican and you are thinking that there was malicious negligence or some type of other conspiracy going on here, who could blame you given this stonewalling and preposterous series of events? Yeah, and especially including, and we'll put this Washington Post clip up here, this is confirmation of what we were hearing in the immediate aftermath of this, that Trump has been, and Trump's team

has been requesting additional resources, and the team itself been requesting additional resources, and the team itself was requesting additional resources. And this comes a week after they claimed to have learned of this Iranian assassination threat against Trump, and the Secret Service was denying these requests, which sounds malicious. It can only be malicious. And they lied about denying their request. And they lied about that. Because these allegations emerged very quickly after the shooting.

And the secrets are, no, no, that hasn't happened. And now they had to go back to the Washington Post and say, well, yeah, actually, we did deny these additional security requests. And then, as you mentioned earlier, we're going to put up this final element, Wall Street Journal. Not only did he have this scope and the range finder that he brought into the rally, he had a drone that he was flying over it. It's like just the level of incompetence on the part of the Secret Service here is absolutely staggering. It's actually one more indictment of the Department of Homeland Security, which was a mistake. Like DHS was created by Joe Lieberman, I think, was the chair of the Homeland Security Committee at the time.

Or was there a Homeland? I think they created a Homeland Security Committee that created Department of Homeland Security. And as a response to 9-11, they said, well, we weren't coordinating intelligence between the FBI and the CIA. And these guys are flying planes over here and the different offices didn't communicate with each other. So we're going to create this giant agency called Department of Homeland Security. And that's going to solve this problem of noncommunication. It absolutely did not. Right. It created the most broken, I think,

cabinet level body that we have in the federal government. It was a mistake. It should be, I think, unrolled and the pieces should be moved into more logical places. This one used to be under the Treasury Department. And I think that's a smart place for it. Put the Secret Service back under the Treasury Department, because then Treasury is not going to ask them to do anything else. Department of Homeland Security, they're like, oh, Secret Service. Do this and that and just spread their mission out wide. Under Treasury, you have one job. Protect the people you're supposed to protect.

Isn't one of the top things that they focus on counterfeit money? Yeah, right. That may stay in the Treasury. Right, that's Treasury. That clearly belongs in Treasury. Yeah. And this was, like I said, this is something Ken was tracking because he's very wary of the, and rightfully so, the conversation now about like, oh, they don't have enough resources. Right. You can't just throw more money at them.

It's not the resource. They have plenty of resources. Those resources are not focused in the right areas. And then there has been, you know, it seems a lack of a slippage in standards and lack of professionalism. And then I think it's entirely appropriate to ask whether they from the top level just didn't care that much about keeping Donald Trump safe. And we saw efforts from Democratic legislators to pull his Secret Service protection. And, you know, outrageously, up until this happened, RFK Jr. didn't have Secret Service protection, even though he was, you know,

repeatedly, routinely asking about and there have been credible threats against him, etc. So, you know, I don't think it's unfair at all to ask whether protecting the former president just wasn't really a priority, wasn't really something they cared about, because the profile of this 20-year-old nearly near assassin is not impressive. It's not like this is some highly trained, super sophisticated sniper. This is someone who couldn't even make it on his high school rifle team. As a freshman. Right. He got better. Apparently maybe improved over the years, but was so not stealth that you had dozens of ordinary rally goers spotting him long before he was able to squeeze off these shots against the former president.

So it's not like this appears to have been some high-level plot. So imagine if there was a high-level plot. There's no way that they would have disrupted it. He is a sitting duck, and by extension, probably anyone else that they're protecting is as well. Yeah. Iran missed their shot.

If it's actually true, and if that's not some fake intelligence, and they are trying to pull something off, yeah, two Iranian assassins could easily pull off against this Secret Service. The other thing AOC banged away at Cheeto for was she kept saying that she would have a report in 60 days. She's like, yo, dog, 60 days? Right. We're at the height of the presidential campaign. 60 days?

That's right. You don't get 60 days. Right. No, that's exactly right. And part of this, too, is the appearance of how weak the actual security was. I mean, part of security is like security theater, persuading people that, oh, it would be too hard to do this horrific thing, so I'm just not going to do it. And so because it was so lax, because it was so easy for this kid to, not kid, this 20-year-old

monster to fly drones and bring in a range finder and wander around the fairgrounds and climb up a roof with a rifle. And even when the cops spot him, they do nothing about it. All of this, you know, that could potentially embolden others who have horrible ideas in their heads. Oh, the other interesting background, then we can move on to old baby. Yeah. Some of the background of the resentment here is that I think the Secret Service executives have felt resentful toward the Trump campaign for years for overcharging them for like, you know, they basically they'd put them up

at the Trump Hotel and put them up at Mar-a-Lago and then Secret Service would get the bills and the bills would be like, because he gets to write the bills, be like, wait a minute, $3,000 a night for this room? Come on. You serious? It doesn't cost that much and nobody's even renting it right now. And so that was just seen as, like, padding Trump's personal bottom line. So I'm sure that that played a role in the interplay between the, like, demands for more resources.

That's interesting. Very human. Very human, you know, bitterness, pettiness, grievance, grudge, et cetera, leading to Trump to leading. Yeah, true. Leading to utter catastrophe. All right, guys, as I mentioned before, Bibi Netanyahu is in town. We're fortunate to be joined by the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hamoud, to talk about that visit and what we can read into Kamala Harris and whether her position will be identical to Joe Biden's vis-a-vis Gaza or whether she will create some space between them. Let's get to it. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together.

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irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get

the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Mayor, welcome back. It's great to see you. Thank you so much for having me. So as you well know, Bibi Netanyahu is in town, even as an ICC arrest warrant looms over his head and ICJ has just ruled that the West Bank settlements are illegal. This has raised all

sorts of questions, but in particular, we wanted to talk to you about how you are viewing the shift from Joe Biden to Vice President Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from Barack Ravid, how Vice President Harris is handling this BB visit this week. So apparently she is expected to meet with the Israeli prime minister at the White House separately from Biden later this week. However, she conveniently had a conflict in terms of his speech to the Senate. So she will not be in the Senate. She will not be presiding over the Senate for that speech. So what do you make so far of Vice President Harris's views with regard to Israel and whether or not she may be in lockstep with Joe Biden's genocidal support of the Israeli assault on Gaza or whether she may create some distance between herself and the way he has approached the issue?

You know, I think the idea that she won't be seated behind the war criminal Netanyahu as he's addressing Congress is a positive step, whether that decision was made recently or previously, it really waits to be seen. As it pertains to the private conversation and the talking points that you had on the screen, I think what's really lacking is the further emphasis and the need for the Palestinians to have a right to self-determination. And the idea now that the ICJ has really provided Vice President Kamala Harris with the shield and the sword to be unoffensive in those conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu in private, to talk about the need for Israel's withdrawal of Gaza and the West Bank and the end of the occupation, to talk about potentially an offensive arms embargo and

how we actually achieve a lasting permanent ceasefire with the ultimate hope of a just Palestinian state. So I think there's still a lot left to be seen on the table. And I'm hoping that there's a departure, though, from the current course that has been chartered by President Biden. I think really now there's an opportunity for Vice President Harris to demonstrate there's a clear, distinctual difference between where she stands on the issue and where the current president stands on the issue.

For Michigan voters who are concerned about Gaza, how much does her link to the current administration make it impossible for her to make her case versus how willing are people to say, look, vice president doesn't actually have much say over what's going on. Let's hear what she has to say. What are you hearing from people? You know, people, I would say that the door is open. I'm not going to say that the door is wide open, but there might be a crack in this door that's open that Biden once had closed. And what people are saying, at least the constituents and the conversations that I've been a part of, is that they want the vice president, who is the presumptive Democratic national,

who's going to be the presumptive Democratic nominee, to come out and willfully and boldly say and declare that she would like to see a permanent ceasefire, she would like an offensive arms embargo on the State of Israel, given the ICJ and the ICC rulings, that she wants the unfettered access to humanitarian aid, and that she's going to distance herself further from Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet of war criminals. And so I think these are the talking points and the policy decisions that people are eager

to hear from the presumptive Democratic nominee. There's a lot of reading of the tea leaves of some of the comments she has made, even as vice president, and also some reading of the tea leaves of some of the internal reports that she had been somewhat of a dissenter, that she had at least, you know, had some concern for Palestinian human rights that, I mean, we've just never really seen any empathy from President Joe Biden when it comes to Palestinians. You can put this up on the screen. Several of the ex-Biden administration officials who had resigned over his Israel policy say they are more hopeful about how VP Harris would handle

the war in Gaza if she were president. One of those individuals said, quote, frankly, it's hard to imagine any Democrat having a worse approach to the genocide than Biden, given his complete resistance to any shift over the last 10 months. So, Mayor, how are you reading those signs given Kamala Harris's public remarks and some of the reports that have come out from her role inside the White House? I think hopeful is the right word here. I feel the same way, and many constituents and people are eager to feel that way as well. Ultimately, what's going to drive people to come out and cast their ballot in November is hope, the hope of having an aspiring candidate who can depart from the decades old democratic foreign

policy agenda that has led us to endless wars and the unfolding genocide now in Gaza. And so if we want to advance transformative domestic policy that centers working people, that centers peoples' humanitarianism, at the same time, we need to have a foreign policy that's reflective of the same dignity that we have for Americans, that we should eliminate these geographic borders and say what we want for Americans, we'd also love for others around the globe to have,

including Palestinians, those in Gaza, West Bank, and Jerusalem. And so, again, we're hopeful. It's in the early days. And I think time will tell where exactly Vice President Harris falls on these issues. I think she is walking a tight rope knowing that she still is the vice president

to President Joe Biden. We know very much where he stands on these issues. At the same time, she needs to create space as the presumptive nominee to demonstrate that she differs from the president on this issue. You know, one key question I think will be outreach. And this is only her second full day as the presumptive nominee, and she had spent a lot of time kind of sewing up the delegates for the nomination.

But I'm curious if you've heard from anybody in the Michigan community who has gotten outreach from either the vice president herself or from people in her circle with some sort of an olive branch? You know, I can say that months ago I was in contact with the vice president's team. And this is prior to any assumption that the president may step down as a Democratic nominee. I mean, it was a conversation where the messaging felt more empathetic and sympathetic to what was unfolding for the Palestinians. And I know folks in the community are now beginning to receive calls and invitations to participate in roundtables and to really hopefully have our thoughts jotted down,

not only at the table, but also in policy. And so we're hopeful to see what this next month and a half, two months prior to the convention demonstrates. And obviously the long time between now and November. And as we're seeing, each day brings an exciting new announcement of what's happening and unfolding on this presidential campaign trail. Each day seems to be a world of events unfolding. And so I can't tell you what tomorrow holds, but I think we're all eager to see what happens. Lastly, I want to put, Abby Martin tweeted this, you know, I brought up the sort of hopeful signs for Kamala Harris. Let I brought up the sort of hopeful signs for Kamala Harris. Let me bring up the not-so-hopeful signs for Kamala Harris.

Abby Martin put this together. She says, Biden leaves off as a disgraced war criminal, but let's make no illusions about where Kamala stands on Israel. And then she ticks off regular AIPAC speaker, compared Selma and the U.S. civil rights struggle to her pro-Israel activism, called BDS anti-Semitic, co-sponsored a resolution against Obama in support of illegal settlements. Former campaign director says her support for Israel is central to who she is. She hosted a White House event promoting Israel's atrocity propaganda about October 7th. After calling for immediate ceasefire in March, she then clarified she just meant Biden's temporary pause. Biden officials say, quote, there's no dispute on policy between Biden and Harris on Gaza. I'd love for you to reflect on some of those pieces.

But also, you know, is it your sense that Joe Biden is just sort of at the center of Democratic opinion, Democratic Party opinion on Israel? Or is it your sense that he's uniquely bad and any just sort of normal, run-of-the-mill Democrat would at least have more skepticism and more willingness to use the levers of power when it comes to Bibi Netanyahu in particular? I think President Biden was one of the most extreme cases. And I think if we've noticed anything over the last 10 months is that the center of the party has certainly moved on this issue. The plurality of Democrats, of independents, of Republicans have all been calling for a permanent ceasefire. Plurality believe that what's unfolding to be a genocide, yet we have not seen our president

move with the center of the party, although he's done that in previous years of his time as senator, when really critical issues have changed over time. And so for the vice president, I'm very much aware of her history and her track record, either as U.S. senator or currently now as vice president. And I think, though, for the community, the anti-war community, the pro-justice community, Arab community, Muslim community, we are not blind to the idea that more than likely we're going to have a pro-Israeli president, somebody who would strongly believe in the allyship with the Israeli government, regardless of who the prime minister or the cabinet is that is in power. That is just de facto going to be the case. And I think what we're trying to do now is begin to create the room to charter a new course, one that uplifts more than just a two-state policy,

but actually inks and is willing to put pen to paper to talk about an exact timeline about how we actually achieve a just state for the Palestinian people, about how we hold the Israeli cabinet accountable, about how we usher in the ICC and ICJ rulings and make sure that international law is actually upheld and respected. Because more than just the genocide that's unfolding that's at stake, it's also America standing on the global stage, which has been seeded greatly and tremendously over these last 10 months under the current president.

And my colleague Jeremy Scahill over at Dropsite News wrote on this topic yesterday, if we can put this up on the screen. And he dug up this really extraordinary quote that I wanted to get your response to. It's from a private AIPAC conference in 2018. Kamala Harris was asked why she's so adamant in her support for Israel. She said, quote, It's just something that has always been a part of me. I don't know when it started.

It's almost like saying, when did you first realize you loved your family or loved your country? It just was always there. It was always there. You can kind of read that in two ways. One being like, oh, wait, I don't have an answer for this. It sounds very Trumpian. And just like, yes, like which Bible verse do you like? Well, really, all of them. And it's so private to me. So on the one hand, it could sound like that, like she'd never actually didn't have an answer for that question and never thought about it. On the other hand, it's wildly over the top. From your

perspective, you were probably quite used to seeing the over-the-top statements of support for Israel from Democratic candidates over the years. How much stock do you put in rhetoric like that, given just how pervasive it is? It carries some weight. Tonality carries weight. The verbiage of the words that are used carries weight. But I think what I'm trying to do now, not only for the sake of the community I represent,

but for the sake for the public, the broader public at large, as well as what's happening in the Palestinian Gaza and West Bank and Jerusalem, is that I'm trying to create room to have a conversation to see if there's a willingness to chart a new course. I think what I don't have the luxury of doing is sitting on the sideline and just writing off any individual saying, well, the previous decision making has demonstrated that there is no room for change. We have to create room for change,

whether that's through pressure points such as the uncommitted movement, whether it's through pressure points like you saw calling on President Biden to step down or now knowing that this is going to be a very tight race, meaning there might be opportunities to strike deals at the policy decision-making table about how you coalesce a coalition of groups that wants to usher in a pro-justice, anti-war era. And to do so, that means there must be a stark difference and a new center for the Democratic Party on this policy of Israel and Palestine. You know, I did I did come up with sorry, one more question for you. But I was just curious if you've thought about the potential vice presidential contenders who have been floated as being on the Harris ticket. You know, a few of the top ones you can think of are actually Tim Walz, who's the governor of Minnesota, popped up and won a bunch of governors. Mark Kelly is another one's Arizona senator. Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania. Roy Cooper,

North Carolina. Andy Beshear of Kentucky. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois are some of the names that have been floating around. I think Gretchen Whitmer, your own governor, is mentioned occasionally, though less often than some of those others. I wonder, do you have an opinion on where any of those contenders might stand vis-a-vis Gaza? I, you know, I think there's a few governors, and I won't specify, I think the news speaks for itself, who have made remarks as it pertains to potentially comparing the protesters on college campuses to the KKK. That would be Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Yes. They very, you know, dystopian comparison to draw and something that is absolutely not supportive of by many of us in the progressive movement on the left or in the Arab and Muslim American community. I think I leave it to the VP to vet who she believes to be her strongest nominee in order for her to have the best chance coming this November. But what I would say is, you know, there's a coalition that is fractured.

The coalition that ensured that President Biden received the winning amount of electoral votes four years ago, that coalition needs to be brought back together. But in order for that to happen now, the Democratic Party needs to be more than just a big tent party. It needs to be a party that actually puts pen to paper and ushers a new era in policy. Whether that's domestic policy, global policy, we have to talk about where the new center of the party is and make sure that those values are reflected in the policy agenda that we put forward. You know, personally, you know, we've taken a lot of criticism over the last 10 months for having the gall to say that we put people over party and

people over president. But I firmly believe that as Democrats, we should be a party that's not a cult. We don't follow an individual just because that individual may be popular. What we rather do is put our values at the forefront and lead in that manner. And that's what we're trying to do now. So regardless of who the presumptive nominee is, our values have not changed. We want to see permanent ceasefire. We want to see unfetter our values have not changed. We want to see a permanent ceasefire. We want to see unfettered access to humanitarian aid. We want to see an arms embargo on the Israeli government, especially given that war crimes are being filed and charged against the prime minister and many of his cabinet members.

And we want to see a just Palestinian state because a return to the status quo is unacceptable. So these are the values, at least on the global policy front, as pertains to this one issue, as well as we also care on many domestic issues, whether it's expanding access to health care, ushering a new green era, ensuring that our children, our grandchildren have access to a healthy future, talking about small business policy and centering workers' rights. So there's so much that we want to discuss and address, but the values should take center stage. And this idea of just following personalities has to really fall to the wayside. Mayor, so grateful for your time this morning. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you again for having me. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other.

It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really

actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.

This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up, so what are they gonna do to get those millions back? That's so unfair.

Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret,

even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So as we've been tracking here, there have been a lot of questions about what exactly unfolded in Rehoboth Beach when Joe Biden resigned, dropped down of the presidential race, of course, maintaining his spot in the presidency or dropping out of the presidential race. He is reportedly sick with COVID and has not actually been visibly seen in public since this stunning decision to drop out of the race. This has sparked a lot of conjecture and conspiracy about maybe it really wasn't him. Maybe he's so unwell he can't even do this anymore. Perhaps he's even already passed away or he's locked in the basement. And it was some intern who got control of his account who put out this letter and then the endorsement of Kamala

Harris. So Joe Biden decided yesterday to call in to the Kamala Harris sort of rally and campaign speech at what was Biden HQ, now Harris HQ, probably in part seeking to put to bed some of these rumors about where he's been and what he's up to. So he calls in to this rally, but this has not come close to killing the rumors about where is Joe Biden and the conspiracies and conjecture about where is Joe Biden because of a unfortunate slip up from Kamala Harris, who seems to come close to calling the phone call a recording instead of a live call. This was seized on by many online. Let's take a listen to how that went down. It is so good to hear our president's voice. Joe, I know you're still on the on the call. And we've been talking every day. You probably you guys heard it from Doug's voice we love Joe and Jill we really do they truly are

like family to us and we do everybody here though it's neutral I knew you were still there you're not going anywhere Joe I'm watching you kid I'm watching you kid I love you I love you Joe so this is the latest evidence being entered into the uh that he is, I don't know, gone, no longer locked in the basement, whatever it is. Let's put this up on the screen. This is like, you know, one of the main tweets with the timeline that has gone viral backing up this conspiracy. Let's recap this historic day. It says Joe Biden suddenly resigns via Twitter. White House staff find out one minute later Joe Biden resignation letter is not on official letterhead. The Biden signature

is suspect. Steve Ruschetti helped write the letter. I'm not sure why that is suspicious. Of course he did. Yeah, he's his top aide for years. Anyway, Joe Biden tweets heart emoji response. Also not sure why that's suspicious. White House wipes Biden's schedule. White House chief of staff calls cabinet managers comms. Frank Biden confirms health is a factor. Families suggest Biden may have terminal illness. I'm not sure what that refers to. Joe Biden holds no live press conference.

Where is Joe? Just another perfectly normal day in Biden's America. Let's put the last piece up on the screen here. A bunch of high profile figures like Bill Ackman in particular has been going wild with this, retweeting these sorts of accounts and just going kind of all in on the Where's Joe direction line of inquiry. Alex Berenson here saying this isn't good. The End Wokeness account saying Biden dropped down over four hours ago, yet we literally have zero evidence that he knows about it. Not even a photo. The paperwork has already been filed. The campaign

cash is being transferred. Endorsements for Kamala are pouring in, yet we have no clue who sent that post. Ryan, what it is, I will say, like he should probably appear in public at this point because it is getting a little bit like, OK, for real, you know, what are you doing? But I think the most likely explanation is he does have COVID. He is bitter and pissed off at everyone and doesn't really want to have to do anything anymore. Just wants to hang out at his beach house in Rehoboth and sow his resentment. But anyway, what do you make of all this? It feels very weird until you consider exactly those two key points.

The one key point, we know he has COVID or he has said he has COVID. No reason to believe he doesn't have COVID because he wanted to show that he was able to go out of the campaign trail and getting knocked off the campaign trail helped lead to his demise, which is something he didn't want. So why would he stage that? As an old man with COVID, he would have appeared even more decrepit than usual. And his speech, where he announces his resignation, he knows is going to be one of the most watched speeches in looking back at him from the future. Just like we've all seen LBJ's clip of saying, I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party in 1968. We've all seen that hundreds of times just put in front of us. We've seen him say that more than we've, like people who weren't alive then have seen that

more than they've seen anything else. So he doesn't want to be the guy with COVID who can barely speak in that clip. But secondly, consider this. You always have to ask yourself, theorizing your conspiracies, who benefits? Democrats would love it if Joe Biden would resign, or not to be macabre, but even die. Because then Kamala Harris becomes president. And she then goes in with these incumbency advantages without the disadvantages of having been the president for the rest of the terms. You can't blame her for the rest of that stuff. It's very difficult for people to envision a black woman as president of the United States. Having her serving as president of the United States would help get her over that hump. So they would like that. So why would they have

that opportunity in front of them, but then engage in some conspiracy to cover it up? So that's where the Bill Ackman conspiracy and Laura Loomer and all that just kind of falls apart. Yeah. Well, what I appreciate about it is that it's going to get dis, like, two days when he is back in D.C. and meets with Bibi Netanyahu. Or he dies because everybody dies. Oh, that's true. At which point Kamala Harris becomes president. And Democrats will be happy that she became president. Yeah.

And they will mourn President Biden. That has been one of the things, too, because you now have a drumbeat of, like, you know, J.D. Vance and these people who are saying he should resign. And I don't really understand the tactical consideration there. Careful what you wish for there. Because it actually would benefit, I think it would definitely benefit Kamala Harris to serve as president. I think Joe Biden should resign too. I actually agree with that because I think the fundamental point of if you're not fit to serve another four years, how can you, given what we've seen of you, make the case you're fit to serve today? I think that's entirely fair and legitimate. I just don't think it particularly serves their political

interests to really push hard on that point. But they probably don't expect that he actually will resign. And so it's more of a ploy to illustrate that there was this cover up of his condition, which I also think is true and legitimate and a legitimate question that Kamala Harris is going to have to grapple with. What did you know of his decline and what were you hiding from the American public? Now, fortunately for her, she was very much on the outskirts of the Biden administration. I don't think she was seeing him all that regularly. I think she was sort of shut out of that circle of close aides after they felt that she didn't handle herself well. And she didn't handle herself well, especially in the early days of the administration. She's not one of these who's had this long, long term relationship with Joe Biden. And that,

in the end, was effectively the only people, those were the only people who had any access to him over the past roughly year. We keep getting these anecdotes. There was a new one that came out that the last time he met with congressional Democrats was back whenever they were trying to pass the infrastructure deal. Like, that was a long time ago. Yeah, that was years ago. It was the last time that he met with congressional Democrats. And the meeting, his talk was such a disaster. Yeah, 21, right before the Virginia elections. He forgot, that's right. He forgot even to make the pitch he was supposed to make

for the trillion dollar infrastructure package. It was completely disjointed and garbled to the point that after he left, Nancy Pelosi had to come and clean it up and say, this is what he meant to say. And since then, that was it. He never met with them again. We also learned what he had met with his cabinet in some nine months because the last time he met with them, he they insisted that every cabinet member submit to them exactly precisely what they were going to say and told them here are the questions that Joe Biden is going to ask. It was 100 percent totally prescripted. So there are a lot of questions about, you know, all of these people and how they're implicated in a cover up of Joe Biden's health. But but yeah, I think this this theory, it's also partly Republicans have been they didn't think that Joe Biden was going to step down. They thought he was going to hang in there and they're kind of spinning their wheels right now about how to grapple with, you know, he's out and now we have like a candidate

who can speak and who has some enthusiasm behind her and is still a weak candidate. But we actually are going to have to run a race. Maybe J.D. Vance was not the greatest pick at the vice presidential. And so I think this is part of the spinning of the wheels that Republicans are doing right now to cope with the moment also. Yeah. They haven't found their footing yet. Not yet. They will.

They will. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the things they've been saying about Kamala Harris. On the harlot. Yeah. Yeah. And her childlessness and whatever are really off the rails as well.

So I think maybe you and Emily, I think it'd be interesting for you guys to talk about that tomorrow on CounterPoints. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? you and Emily, I think it'd be interesting for you guys to talk about that tomorrow on CounterPoints. in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me,

but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids,

promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series,

we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John, who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead. But I have DNA proof that could get

the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Washington Post out with some wild new reporting on RFK Jr. and Trump. We can put up this tweet here from a friend of the show, Liz Smith. We pulled this from her tweet. But yeah, so the Washington Post reports, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held talks this month with former President Donald Trump about endorsing his campaign and taking a job in a second Trump administration, overseeing a portfolio of health and medical issues, according to four people familiar with the matter. The discussions, which began hours after the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally on July 13th, did not result in an agreement amid concerns in Trump's orbit about the complications about promising a job

in exchange for a political endorsement, according to the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. And so, Crystal, what the Post goes on to report is that the Trump people were concerned that he was too explicit in his quid pro quo request. It is standard practice in politics to drop out in exchange for stuff. That's what you do. When Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the presidential campaign on the phone with Obama

and decided that he was going to endorse Biden as part of that consolidation around Biden, it was very much understood that doing so puts you in the good graces of the administration and that those good graces would lead to some type of a good position. But it is highly unlikely that either of them would have been crass enough to say, I will make you transportation secretary under Biden's administration if you do this. Because you're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to say it outright. You're just supposed to.

It's supposed to be understood. And also, you don't care. Like, Buttigieg doesn't care. Make me secretary of something. And he'll make the most of it. Actually, remember, he did care because they offered him OMB, and he wanted something that would be more forward-facing because he wanted that ability to travel around the country and be at the ribbon-cutting ceremonies or whatever. Which is funny because OMB has actual more power. He's like, no, no, no.

No, no, no, I don't want the power. I want the show of power. But anyway, go proceed with your, with your analysis here. Right. So even the Trump orbit, which is the most quid pro quo, Trump sat down with the, uh, oil industry and said, give me a billion dollars and I will, and then tell me what you want. Like the most like explicit quid pro quo you can imagine. Even they were like, whoa, this is a little bit much from RFK Jr. here. There's also the question of why this is being leaked at this moment. What do you make of that? I don't know, actually.

Because who does it benefit for this to leak? Maybe it benefits Trump a little bit. But Trump wants, I mean, Trump wants RFK's supporters to support him. Right. And so maybe they're annoyed that he leaked that audio, for sure. So maybe this is a way of undercutting RFK Jr. with people who would be sympathetic to the Trump campaign. Yeah, it is interesting how this came about and does come on the heels. We didn't actually get to cover it on the show because there was just so much else going on. But you guys probably saw there was a call between Trump and RFK Jr. shortly after the assassination attempt.

And the audio of that call got leaked in which, you know, effectively Trump is looking for an endorsement and they don't really, you know, come to a conclusion there. And I think it was RFK Jr.'s son who leaked the call. RFK Jr. apologized for it. So we know we already knew that there was this communication unfolding between them. But, you know, the other thing in terms of RFK Jr. is I wonder if he I wonder if he is concerned that now that you don't have Joe Biden on the ticket, that the appetite for third party may be reduced because some significant number of his some some number of his supporters were people who were just disgusted with both choices.

And a big part of obviously the problem people have with Joe Biden is just his age. So now that you have someone new there, there's less just total, you know, loathing and contempt for the matchup going forward. And you also have Trump's, you know, on his side of the ticket, there's a lot of energy and excitement around him on the Republican side and after the assassination attempt, et cetera. So he may also be sensing that the very clear and I think very compelling to a lot of people pitch that he previously had, some of that juice may be fading at this point. And so he's kind of looking for an out. now. Yeah, because the RFK Jr. constituency largely gets its news from YouTube and podcasts and independent media because he's been blanked out of mainstream media so much. That also overlaps somewhat significantly with Trump's potential support, young men, men in general,

who are disaffected by politics. And so with Democrats no longer running such a repellent candidate in Biden, it does seem like the third party now is more of a threat to Trump than to Democrats. Well, to answer your question about who this story benefits, it's definitely Democrats. I mean, Liz Smith's chair in it because it paints him as, oh, this is someone who would be in a Trump administration, right? This is more of a Trumpian figure. He's not on our side. And obviously that's the point. Liz Smith has been trying to make, you know, tying in whoever his donors are. And these are donors who gave to Republicans and here's his views that code right wing. And, you know,

there's been the game being played on the other side from the Trump side. They're trying to code him as all he supports all this environmentalist stuff and he's a radical left winger. And here he supported Hillary Clinton, et cetera, et cetera. So there's been this war over what his true partisan valence, how he really codes. And so the people this really benefits are Democrats who want to code him as, you know, as a Trumpian figure. You know, if you're RFK Jr. and you're looking at just pragmatically where you stand and where things are heading, it makes sense as a move because the Harris administration

is not going to have you in any cabinet. Like, that's just not happening. You can imagine them taking him in in exchange for an endorsement. Like, I'm actually kind of surprised. To me, the most surprising part about this is that they said no, that it was too naked and they had qualms about it.

And they were like, eh, this is a little bit uncomfortable. That's, to me, the most surprising part of this because on any other level, this makes a lot of sense for him. It makes a lot of sense for Trump getting the endorsement and they could put him in whatever meaningless, non-important administration position and sort of bury him and have him not be that significant, but get what they want out of the exchange. So to me, that's the most surprising piece of it. Yeah. And your point makes me wonder like how this happened, because you're right, this does benefit Democrats. So why would the Trump campaign leak this? I mean, maybe they were just drunk at a bar and the reporters just got the story. Like that can, that can happen sometimes. I also don't think the entire concept should be even stigmatized. It's like if Kennedy really does like Trump and

Trump likes Kennedy and wants Kennedy in his administration. Right. Thinks there's a fit as HHS secretary or whatever. Think they're a fit. And then he wants, then Kennedy wants to endorse him in exchange for being HHS secretary. They should just be public about it. Say, Kennedy is endorsing me, and I'm going to name him HHS secretary. And if you like that, you should vote for us. Like, that actually seems totally clean to me. Yeah, I agree.

Because it's not like Kennedy's trying to make money off of it. Like, you know, he's married to an actress who's got real money, and he's a Kennedy. Like, he's doing okay. actress who's got real money and he's a Kennedy. Like, he's doing OK. Yeah. He's fine. Yeah. He wants to maintain his political relevance and, you know, pursue the issues that he really cares about. And the Trump administration is more likely vehicle for that continued political relevance than, you know, him remaining out on his own.

And as I said before, there's no way in hell that a Harris administration would take him in in any capacity. So the chain of events is all very logical. And it is sort of funny that it's being spun as conspiratorial or I guess the problem for RFK Jr. is he still wants to convince his supporters that vote for me and I'm in it till the end. And I don't like either of these, you know, Biden or Trump. I want to take away from both of them. We have a real path to victory. I mean, that's part of his real point. And we're going to be on the ballots. We're going to win. Here's the path, etc. And so it really undercuts that narrative for him to have this out in the public that he is basically looking for an out. Yeah. And it also goes against what we were told from people that were close to RFK Jr. in the beginning of this campaign was that he wasn't going to go too far in supporting Trump because he wanted to maintain his social connections

that he's built up throughout his life and his wife's social connections in that California liberal universe. This seems like just going full break from that. Yeah. No, I mean, I think in a lot of ways he already has because like his family has in particular come out very publicly. Thinking he could do both was an error.

There was no way that that was going to be possible. Not a chance. There's a hubris and an arrogance to a lot of people that they think they can do things that are actually impossible. Yep. So there you go. All right. We wanted to take a look

at Kamala Harris's record, such as it is, what we could glean about what a potential Harris administration would actually look like. You know, we read the tea leaves a little bit earlier

about what she said with regard to Israel and Gaza. We wanted to bring in Jeff Stein, who, as you guys know, is a fantastic economics reporter for The Washington Post, who's been taking a look at that record and what it is we can say and what we really don't know, which is most of all big question marks about what Kamala Harris might actually prioritize. Let's go ahead and get to that interview. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's

political, it's societal, and at times it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA

test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Or Wall Street, or at least big tech, or at least Jim Cramer is salivating at the possibility of a Kamala Harris administration. We're going to talk to Watch Post Jeff Stein about that in one moment. First, I want to play a little clip from CNBC, Jim Cramer. Let's take a look at his reaction to Kamala's rise. A few weeks here, Jim. These are very different people. Biden has been and remains unsophisticated about the way business works, unsophisticated about the

stock market by nature, picks people who have been historically bad for Wall Street, Nina Khan, Jonathan Kanter, Antitrust. That ends. That ends entirely. You've got a person who's from California. I'm regarding this actually as mega versus MAGA. Mega tech does better with someone who's sophisticated, who understands California, who is not against tech. Biden has done everything in these agencies that he can to annoy, to go after tech. Let's not forget,

her brother-in-law is Tony West, who is a former general counsel of PepsiCo, then was with the Justice Department, is now the general counsel of Uber. And you tell me if there's someone who's more sophisticated and knows more about business and the West Coast than her brother-in-law, who would be an amazing advisor. They're close. And I just keep thinking, this is going to be globalist versus nativist. Not nationalist.

Nativist. Yes. Populist in terms of the Republican Party versus pro-business versus the Democrat, international business. These are very big differences. And I have followed her career and followed Biden's career. And if anybody, Biden didn't hurt the stock market at all. It is pretty amazing how well Biden administration has done. But this whole idea

that she's a clone of his is completely wrong. All right, Jeff Stein from The Washington Post joining us now. Jeff, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, always glad to be on. Thanks, Ryan. So there's a lot to tease apart when it comes to Kamala Harris's economic record. But let's start here with antitrust. You've got Jim Kramer of CNBC, who luckily for us, perhaps, is almost always wrong about everything. There's two ways you can read those comments. So he's forecasting that if Harris were reelected, that he would fire Lena Kahn, the FTC chair, and fire Jonathan Cantor, who runs the antitrust division in the Department of Justice, big foes of big business. He's not basing that on any facts. He's asserting it, but he's asserting

it based on the connections that she has and the kind of ideas that she's put forward before. So it's not completely idle speculation or absurd at all. So starting on antitrust, and then we can move on to other things. What is your read on where Kamala Harris is on antitrust? And do you think that some of Biden's best appointees, Cantor and Kahn, would be on her chopping block? I mean, Jim Cramer, I know you were talking about this in what you just said, but he also predicted that Biden had no chance of dropping out of the race. I think there is a lot of questions and totally legitimate questions that you're referring to. I mean, Tony West, Harris's ties to California Silicon Valley elites, those are very real. But I would be really surprised if a Harris presidency significantly retreated from the Biden antitrust policy. It is true that Harris has ties to these

elites that are, you know, you would assume to be dispositionally opposed to what Biden has done on antitrust, you know, not just Tony West, but david pluff is now rumored to be back in the mix um you've you know her husband is a white collar attorney um defense attorney so there there's a there is a lot there but i think it's worth pointing out that ryan you and i were looking at the people close to president biden at the beginning of the administration and there were a ton of blackrock or blackstone or, you know, you name it, Uber, former Uber executives, Steve Ruschetti and Bruce Reed and Donilon, all these old Biden hands that seemed so fundamentally entrenched in the sort of Clintonite era, the Clintonite wing of the party,

people who had done welfare reform that, you know, that the left and others would find highly objectionable that then were quite avid advocates of expansions of the welfare state. Obviously, those weren't approved. But I think it's clear that Harris, you know, is signaling to the business community, the business leaders I've talked to have said, like, yes, we're trying to get better vibes from the Harris administration, but I think it's too early to say, unfortunately, like, who's playing who here. And I would not be surprised at all if Harris,

you know, her record is really thin. Like, she hasn't had an executive position for very long, so we really just don't know which way she's gonna go. She is also, I would say, just incredibly close with the labor unions. SEIU in particular. We can get into that. But her political coalition, her political allies, it's complicated in the way that I think Biden's complicated, where you do have these people with really corporate resumes who end up appointing people like Lina Khan, who the antitrust community is really happy to see. How did Lena Kahn end up in that position? Because I think that tells us

something about, you know, what we might be able to expect from a Kamala Harris. I mean, Joe Biden was no anti-corporate lawyer. He was known as the senator from MBNA because of his tight, you know, relationships and willingness to do the bidding of the credit card issuers in his home state. He had a terrible track record on these issues, frankly. And then when he comes into office, you get these great appointments and a real shift. So is that reflective of just a shift in the center of gravity on these issues? Was it because of Ron Klain? I mean, where did that come from? I guess you could get the Matt Stoller answer or the Matt Brunig answer,

the two schools of thought on this question. The Matt Stoller answer, obviously, would be sort of what you first alluded to, that the Democratic Party has shifted considerably enough that this was sort of an important thing for Biden to fulfill to an important part of his base. I think the more cynical answer is that antitrust at the levels that it's being pursued in Washington, while maybe sort of important for business formation and getting more competition in the market,

is still kind of a solution that businesses want to see, right? Like this is the Matt Bruning answer that antitrust reform and antitrust legislation is kind of popular in Washington and has legs in Washington because it can be underwritten and supported by huge businesses. If you're like a second or third tier business, you're still not a worker, you know, you're still not someone who needs welfare benefits. You're actually often a very powerful entity, not someone we would think of as sort of a vulnerable, disempowered citizen. And so in Washington, there is a ton of money behind the antitrust community, which I think is counterintuitive to people on the left

who may think of antitrust and may be right that antitrust is this important anti-monopoly tool. But really going back to the early 1900s, it's also been successful in part because there are powerful business interests behind who want to have more competition who want to themselves grow their market share. But that doesn't mean that they're necessarily small mom and pop shops, it could just mean that they're not the biggest players.

So I think Harris's legacy or sort of what she would do on this is very interesting. I mean, I think it's quite clear that Donald Trump would be a lot worse on antitrust issues. His regulatory appointments to the FTC and elsewhere showed very little interest without, with the important exception, I think, of tech, where you saw some actions on Google and some other big firms

that Republicans and conservatives are discriminating against them. Other than that, Trump had really took a light touch with regulation in general, including on E.T. Trust. And the other layer of an answer to that question on a tactical level is that Elizabeth Warren made it a huge priority of hers to get Lena Kahn and Jonathan Cantor into those positions. And there was also a kind of parallel campaign in Washington that was, I think, orchestrated by a lot of the people you're talking about to basically eliminate all of the other competition for the job.

And they were easy to eliminate, and we did a bunch of reporting on each one of these candidates that was floated to be either FTC chair or antitrust chair, basically, of the Department of Justice had the problem that all of the lawyers that they wanted in that position had done very recent work with very unpopular monopolies. And all you had to do was kind of point out that they had done this work and then they would be kind of taken off the list. And if you notice, Cantor and Kahn were among the latest kind of appointments made. So it wasn't as if Biden kind of leaped at the opportunity to fulfill this pledge. He kind of tried to do everything else first and wasn't able to. And then finally was like, you know what? All right, these are the two left standing.

And Elizabeth Warren really wants this to happen. And there's this whole, like you said, organized movement that is well-funded behind it. So let's go ahead and do that. So that to me suggests, I'm curious for your take on this, that the same thing could happen in a Kamala Harris administration. And we can put up this Lee Fong element, this next element here, because this goes to this exact point. She doesn't really have much of an ideology. She has, as Lee Fong points out, she's been a tough on crime prosecutor. She's been a criminal justice reformer.

She's been tough on the banks. She's been weak on the banks. Whatever is like opportune at the moment, she's willing to do. So I think with the right pressure campaign, you could imagine that she could be dragged to the same position Biden was dragged to. What's your your sense i really like that frame for the lead piece and i have been trying to figure out what the hell i'm going to write this week so um i think i'm looking forward

or it's like you have marxist academics being like sharing coconut memes and being like actually maybe because of her dad and her mom or whatever that that there's like latent marxist tendencies and then mark cuban is telling politico like we have an ally here and there's this like moment of good vibes among democrats and that seems to have like filtered out to the even like the not the blue maga loyalist types like people on the left and right of the party are sort of after all of the depression that people on the left felt with the Biden era and his verbal lapses, there's now this moment where like people are hoping that there's some change, that that Harris represents what they

want to see. And I think the reality of politics, not to be like too big of a bummer for people who are hoping to see in her something different, the reality of politics is that all these people can't be right. You know, at some point, the unions or the business community is going to be disappointed. How long she can do this thing where she's sort of allowing people to see in her what they want to see, I guess we'll have to wait. I mean, I get the sense i i would say my the one thing that i have felt pretty strongly about from my reporting is that she she does seem to care quite deeply about what we would call like the care economy set of issues i don't know if we want to get into this but yeah go ahead leave child care elder care home care these are things that um you know the

biden administration tried to pass. It failed as part of the Build Back Better agenda due to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. But what is interesting to me about that is that Harris, as a black woman, has formed for decades a very, very close political alliance with the kind of unions that Biden has traditionally been weaker among, including sort of the service worker unions, which are more heavily composed of immigrants and people of color and women in particular relative to the building trades in the Midwest that you see particularly, you know, the National American Building Trades Union and the Teamsters, like those kinds of unions that are sort of doing construction and manufacturing. Biden had a very strong in with them. It's not clear if Harris is that strong, but it seems like her base and but also concurrently the policy issue space that she's very invested in and very interested in taking up. Again, who knows? Maybe she gets into office and does something completely different. But this the reporting I've done suggests that she she is deeply invested in that set of issues. And she spent a lot of time talking to caregivers, talking to SEIU representatives, talking to the people who would benefit from those kinds of investments that were

a noticeable failure in the first Biden administration. And so does that, does it follow then that you would expect a sort of similar orientation of like the National Labor Relations Board under Kamala Harris? Has she been consistent? Because, you know, part of what Lee Fong's piece brings out is a lot of times when she was elected and, you know, statewide in California or prosecutor DA in California, she was more conservative, more on the right. And then she reforms herself in the Senate and she reforms herself again to be more progressive because she thinks that's the lane that's open to her in the 2020 primary. So a lot of what you think of Kamala Harris depends on what era of her politics that you're looking at. And as vice president, she's just sort of wholly undefined because she's been on the ounce, you know, on the outskirts of that administration.

It's not her policy. It's the Biden policy. You really can't say anything about her vis-a-vis what she has done with Joe Biden. But, you know, do you see a consistent thread from the California time to the Senate time to the presidential time in terms of her support for labor? Yes, I think she has clearly from very early on cultivated that set of unions. And I don't know if that suggests that she'll be good on criminal justice reform from a left perspective or foreign policy. But I do think, I feel very convinced that particularly for the service workers, she's quite dug in on doing what it takes to help them as they've helped her move up, not just to the vice presidency, but, you know,

in earlier stages of her career when she was running for office in California. I will just say on this broader topic we're discussing, you know, I'm torn, right? Because part of me feels like Biden, you know, had all of these votes that, you know, your listeners and viewers will be familiar with, you know, for the Iraq war and to deregulate Wall Street and to, you guys know the list, credit card and student debt, changes that made it more difficult for people to declare bankruptcy and just discharge their debt, all these changes that suggest that Biden was really on the corporate wing of the party. And then in office, he did a lot of things that I think we all recognize were more left wing than we were expecting.

$300 billion in student debt forgiveness, obviously struck down by the courts, but I think it's fair to say that they've continued fighting for that. Obviously, there's a lot of frustration with Gaza and criticism of Biden over that. But Biden, at least, I think in part because he was so centrist in disposition, an old white man who people saw as a centrist, was kind of able to make things that otherwise would seem more liberal, give them sort of a centrist veneer, like the Midas touch where things became centrist when Biden did them. I know a lot of people disagree with that, but I think there's something to it. And I wonder if Harris could have the opposite thing, the thing we saw under Obama, where because she's a Black woman, because of her identity, and because her political fear is not the same as Biden's.

Biden's so afraid of losing the progressive base that he was very solicitous of them. If Harris's identity sort of reduces the need for her politically to assure that part of the party, maybe she will attack center in her policy implementation disposition. I'm not sure what you guys think of that thought. I think, yeah, it's probably true that centrist policies from her will be coded as left wing, like they were under Obama. And Biden can push pretty far to the left end of the possible spectrum from what a president can do and still be coded centrist because he's Biden. I think that's a kind of irrefutable point.

And it doesn't doesn't bode well for her ability to kind of govern. Unlikely, she'll have a Congress to do much of that with. So maybe that won't be a problem for her anyway. Yeah, well, that's true. But of course, there's still plenty that can be done at the at the executive level. And as Lena Kahn and Jonathan Cantor have shown with the appointments mattering quite a bit. Jeff Stein, always great to have your insights and your reporting. It's astonishing, honestly, how many years has Kamala Harris been in public office? That we can't answer really the most basic questions about who she is. And I think it'll be interesting to see how she positions herself because it'll answer some of these questions about whether it is about the person and their ideology or how they're perceived and how much bandwidth that gives them to do, you know, quote unquote

liberal things. Or is it that there's a different moment that is truly moving past the, you know, Reagan, Clinton, Obama, neoliberal era where it's just you stick any normie Democrat in there and they're gonna be pro-antitrust and they're gonna be pro-labor, et cetera. So it'll be fascinating to watch how all this unfolds. I'd add to that to say we do have an answer to the question.

We do know who she is. It's just not a satisfying answer. She's just a politician who's gonna do what she thinks is beneficial that day. True, Very true. Jeff, thank you so much. So great to see you. My pleasure, guys. Thanks again. Yeah, our pleasure.

All right, guys, thank you so much for watching. Ryan and Emily will be here for a fantastic CounterPoints tomorrow, and Sagar will be back on Thursday. So our long-awaited Sagar reaction to all of the events of this week. Can't wait. I'm going to watch. I'm sure no one is more excited about being back here to to all of the events of this week. Can't wait. I'm going to watch. I'm sure no one is more excited about being back here to share all of his thoughts on soccer. So Ryan, we'll see you tomorrow, and I will see you on Thursday.

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