Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/24/24: Kamala To Fire Biden State Dep, JD Vance Historically Unpopular, GOP Attacks Kamala As DEI Hire, Trump Confirms Kamala Debates, Bibi Arrives To DC

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Ryan and Emily discuss Kamala to fire Biden state dep ghouls if she wins, JD Vance most unpopular VP pick in decades, Republicans attack Kamala as DEI candidate, Trump confirms multiple debates with Kamala, protests and arrests as Bibi arrives to DC, Annelle Sheline joins on the latest out of Israel and if Kamala will handle the Gaza war differently.    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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Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's You're 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. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are

already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. All right. Happy Wednesday morning. Welcome to CounterPoints. We're now, what, about three days into convalescent. The world has changed since the last time that Emily and I were here. That's right. So much has happened in a week. Well, yeah, and we'll cover a new video of the president looking tan, rested and ready. Still alive.

He is alive. Every conspiracy theory was at least momentarily dispelled yesterday, so we'll start with that. Not every conspiracy theory. Lots of them still alive. Raging, in fact. Yes. But the one that he's dead didn't hold up. Well, I'm sure people are still finding reasons to doubt the video.

He doesn't look great. That's true. But yeah, he does not look great. We'll get to that in just a moment. We're going to start with a new video from Kamala Harris in Milwaukee yesterday, where she gave apparently a banger of a campaign speech to 3,000 people. Largest campaign crowd that Democrats have drawn so far still sort of pales in comparison to Trump rallies. But it's a big crowd nonetheless, and she was feeling it. We have new polling numbers, too, that are fascinating. We're going to talk about the

Republican reaction to Kamala Harris, which will be an interesting conversation. We're going to talk about the possibility of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debating one another. Bibi Netanyahu is in town here in Washington, D.C. The protests have begun. We have some video and some thoughts, and Ryan has some original reporting on everything there. So we've got a big show and a guest who left the State Department. Well, we have two guests today. We're going to have Moataz Salim, who's going to be joining us from the Capitol, where there are protests outside awaiting Netanyahu's visit to Congress. And then we're going to have Anel Shaleen, who was one of the

State Department officials who resigned in protest over the Biden-Harris administration's policy toward Israel. She'll give us her assessment of where Netanyahu is at this moment and where the war is going from here. Some good news, by the way. Over at Dropsite, the news organization that we started with Jeremy Scahill, climbed over 200,000 subscribers now. That's fantastic. Which is very exciting. Yes. So we still have the counterpoints discount going for that. Dropsitenews.com slash counterpoints will get you 20% off a year. So thank you, everybody, for signing up, for supporting it. It's really gratifying. We'll have some Dropsite reporting that we dropped last night, actually, about kind of UN casualties in Gaza. I obtained a leaked report

that we'll talk about later. I also appreciate that you can say you dropped news. Dropped it. From drop site. Dropped it, yeah. Well done. Yeah, there you go. All right, let's start with video from yesterday of current President Joe Biden. It feels sort of ridiculous to say that, but you can take a look at him. He was traveling from Delaware to Washington, D.C., appeared in person, looking really rough. You can see he actually has a mask in his hand. He's had COVID for a week now. His doctor says his symptoms have mostly faded away into the background. But Ryan, pretty interesting to finally see the president because nobody has seen him since. We've heard his voice. He called into his campaign headquarters. Well, his former campaign headquarters, now Kamala Harris's campaign headquarters.

But since he actually resigned from the ticket, that man hadn't been seen in days. He did it on Twitter, or X, and put out a statement. That was it. Here we see him, mask in hand, not really engaging or talking with anybody. He is set to address the country tonight, but that was really something. Yeah, and the explanation, essentially, that leaked out of his team for why we didn't hear from him is that he was looking terrible. And the speech that he gives tonight announcing that he's stepping down will be drained of all kind of climactic energy and suspense. We know exactly what he's going to say, but it will still be a speech that will be played a lot in history going forward. When documentaries or

news organizations talk about what happened in 2024, they will play a little clip of what Biden is going to say tonight, saying that he's stepping down and handing it over to Kamala. And my take was that he did not want to be a COVID-ridden, decrepit creature for that video that he knows is going to live on in posterity. Just watching him walk or amble, struggle from the car to the miniature version of Air Force One, the smaller plane. You can imagine what he would have been like several days ago, while also probably not getting much sleep, while also being at the lowest point, one of the lowest points of his political life. You can imagine that he wouldn't have given the kind of the lowest points of his political life, you can imagine

that he wouldn't have given the kind of performance he wanted to. So that, to me, was always the most logical explanation for why we didn't hear from him. Well, also, by the way, clinging to office. And some dignity, trying to cling desperately to some dignity. Yeah, we'll see if he maintains that tonight. But it's important and it's actually crucial to everything that they're campaigning on in the next several months. They're going to be hammered. They already have been hammered for this alleged cover-up of, I shouldn't say alleged, I mean, it was an obvious cover-up of

Joe Biden's frailty. He is clinging to power. He will not resign from office. As far as we know, as of right now, they're saying that's not in the cards. So why would he want to give the American people any reason, just again, strategically, to doubt that he can hold on to office? You know, I have plenty of doubts as to whether he can hold on to office, and I'm sure that they will be on full display or they will be, let's say, validated by his performance tonight because he's never given a performance that I've been like, this man is in his prime. And I think one reason they won't get hit too much for the coverup, because to the extent it was a coverup,

it was like a string bikini coverup. Like, everybody could see what was going on. So, it's like, okay, you tried. But you didn't really try. I was so close to spitting out my coffee on that one. Let's play some Kamala Harris so you can collect yourself. Yeah, that's for the best at this point. Kamala Harris in Milwaukee yesterday. So, Wisconsin, I am told as of this morning that we have earned the support of enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. And I am so very honored and I pledge to you I will spend the coming weeks

continuing to unite our party so that we are ready to win in November. He intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and make working families foot the bill. They intend to end the Affordable Care Act and take us back then to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with pre-existing conditions. Remember what that was like? Children with asthma. Women who survived breast cancer. Grandparents with diabetes. America has tried these failed economic policies before, but we are not going

back. We are not going back. Not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. I thought, so this is the line they've landed on, we are not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. I thought, so this is the line they've landed on, we are not going back. Feels pretty strong, like in terms of political rhetoric. Make America great again. Make America great again. We are not going back. So they always struggled in challenging make America great again because whatever they said sounded negative. Oh, America was never great.

Or America was, America's already great. America's already great, which sounds boring. And a lot of people just aren't feeling that at the moment. Yes, and it clashes with how people are feeling. So they never had a good response to that. But now We are not going back again still creates lots of room for optimism. Like we're going forward. And it's a very strong allusion to abortion policy. Like that because, you know, overturning Roe is going back to before

Roe. And of course it also plays into the we're not going back to Donald Trump. Now some people will say, well, going back to Donald Trump, I had more money in my pocket, et cetera. But going back still has a negative connotation, just rhetorically, compared to going forward. Everyone wants to go forward. People really don't want to go back. So I thought that was kind of something clever that they landed on. If she can continue to just only give speeches to cheering crowds

for the next two months, she's going to be in good shape. She's going to have debates. She's going to have interviews. So, well, hmm. Can she maintain the complimentum or whatever you call it when she actually has to respond to interviews? It's worth remembering that she had a really impressive campaign launch in 2019 with that crowd in Oakland, right? 30,000. Massive crowds, surging popularity. People loved her ads. Yep. Speech was good. The look was good. The vibes were good. And then she became president, right? She won the nomination. She was great in Iowa.

She cruised to the White House. Yeah, that's how I remember it unfolding. There's something about Kamala Harris that just executing on the expectations is difficult for her. She does have one of the highest staff turnover rates. The Trump campaign has been hitting her on that a little bit. But there's obviously something going on there when you have a high turnover rate. That's a means that you're difficult to work with. People also want somebody like Kamala Harris to do well, particularly Democrats, but I think a lot of independents too.

They would love it to see somebody with Kamala Harris's background become president. It helped Barack Obama immensely. Having the first black president made so many people feel good about America because it fit into the line that everybody loves, that the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. It makes people feel like history is moving forward. And that all of those things you're saying about us, it's not really true.

Look, look what we did. Right. And so, like, there are a lot of hopes invested in her doing well. And I think that that helped propel her in 2019 when she launched. I don't know if she has developed into the kind of vessel that can carry those hopes across the finish line. She wasn't then. She hasn't shown that she has those skills during this term. But it's just two months.

Can you do this for two months? I was going to say, yeah. Or three. Three months, sorry.'s just two months. Can you do this for two months? I was going to say, yeah, she... Or three. Three months, sorry. Three months, yeah. Well, the mail ballots go out in September. Absolutely. And her persona, obviously, she's been more in the spotlight since she was vice president than senator, but she wasn't seen as quite a laughingstock when she was senator. The memes never materialized then. And actually, I think if you go back and look, there weren't a lot of those types of clips. Granted, again, she's talking way more. She's appearing way more in public when you're vice president. But if anything, her persona became less well-respected after she assumed the vice presidency. It wasn't a part of her campaign that she was kind of a...

She did not thrive in an environment where she was kind of flat-footed. Yeah. One of the first ones that really started going around was go look up her riff on time. Yes, that's a good one. That is a good one. She kept going back to it. Yeah. So anyway, we'll see.

But she's feeling herself. She's feeling good. You can see it in the rally, and I think you can see it in some of the reports that are going to come out, which is what you were just about to turn to here. Yeah, yeah. Selina Meyer in Veep was at her best when she was confident.

We should talk about the New York Times. We don't have to get into it, but the New York Times wrote an entire story yesterday on the Veep comeback, which, by the way, I'm definitely a part of. I've been binging Veep over the last few days just because everyone's talking about it. It makes me want to watch it. I think it was one of the best comedies in American history. But all that is to say, the New York Times wrote an entire piece

about the revival of Veep and didn't concede that it was because Kamala Harris is so eerily reminiscent of Selina Meyer. In fact, they just were talking about the Trump administration. The Times reporter completely failed that assignment. Incredible work. But so, Vice President Kamala Harris is threatening to get rid of, we can put this up on the screen, Jake Sullivan, Anthony Blinken, and Lloyd Austin, a clean sweep of the kind of national security foreign policy apparatus, which critics of the Biden administration would absolutely delight in. So Jake Sullivan was walking through the Capitol yesterday with the sulliest look on

his face that I think he could not mask. So that's something. He always kind of looks like that, though, to be fair. So rough, but still rough week for those guys. They don't like Netanyahu. He's coming to town with bags and bags bags of laundry which is a hilarious story every time the netanyahu's always bring loads and loads of dirty laundry because we figuratively and literally wash it for free apparently the taxpayers do for any foreign leader who comes which is fair you know you come you sell your we'll wash them, send you home with clean clothes. The NetYahus bring suitcases full of dirty clothes, which I kind of respect. You know what? I don't know that I respect that.

I think I would do that. Is it even worth it to bring all of the clothes? If you're not paying for the gas on the plane. I guess, I guess. Israeli taxpayers are paying for that, or probably American taxpayers are somehow. And Kamala Harris, we're going to talk about this later in the show, obviously has, at least we're told privately, we do not know how she would govern. This is an indication, but we don't know if it's just a leak for the purpose of framing this all in the press. Has some major disagreements with the Biden administration on Israel policy.

Let's also put this next element up on the screen. This is A4. Pro-crypto entrepreneur Mark Cuban, or Mike, I guess, says that the Kamala Harris team has reached out with multiple questions about cryptocurrency. I'm getting multiple questions from her camp about crypto, Cuban said Tuesday. So I take that as a good sign. The feedback I'm getting, but certainly not confirmed by the VP, is that she will be far more open to business, AI, crypto, and government as a service, Cuban stated. You and Crystal covered Jim Cramer yesterday, Ryan, but these two reports, both that she's ready to just gut the State Department's highest echelons, and she's already signaling that she's more interested in crypto. Biden's been fairly harsh on crypto.

She's feeling herself. I think this is projecting an air of confidence and like she is ready to take over. She's been ready probably for a couple of years because we've all been kind of on tenterhooks over Biden's health. You know, those of us who were always concerned about it, we always kind of knew that there was something that could happen at any moment. He's an elderly man. It seems like she's just been waiting in the wings. And now that she's getting a really warm reception from the media, not just in the Veep New York Times article, but someone took a screenshot of all the pro-Kamala articles in the New York Times homepage yesterday, it's going really well for her to the point where she is now openly telegraphing. Obviously, fundraising-wise, it's helpful to telegraph to crypto people. But there are a lot of people in finance world.

Wall Street, Seema For had a report about Wall Street Democrats all of a sudden getting really juiced about Kamala giving lots of money again. She's telegraphing that she's going to be a different candidate. Not just that she's going to slide in and take the mantle. Yeah. But that she's going to like actually try to make this a different ticket. Not just, you know, the Biden replacement ticket, a Kamala Harris ticket. Well, the polls are ticking up for Kamala Harris. We've got a slew of them that have all been produced kind of post Biden dropping out. We can put this first one up on the screen. So this still has, and this is what people need to remember, still has Donald Trump up one point.

This Marist poll has had Biden up even post-debate. Consistently, this NPR-PBS Marist poll has consistently had Joe Biden over Donald Trump by one or two points. Now, when they add in Kennedy, we start to see that the drift of Kennedy's influence is anti-Trump. So they go from 46-45 with Kennedy not in the race, then they go to 42-42 with Kennedy in it. This is the Reuters Ipsos. These are numbers from Reuters Ipsos, which are similar in a two-way race. It's 44-42. Donald Trump.

I mean, for Kamala Harris, to lead for Kamala Harris. And the margin of error is plus or minus 3%. So the three-way race is where this is interesting, given the margin of error on this. Kamala Harris, 42. Donald Trump, 38. RFK Jr., 8.

The other poll had him one at seven. The NPR Marist poll. So what you see happening there is in the three-way race, both of these polls show a bigger drop for Donald Trump. One thing that I read into this is a whole lot of RFK Jr. voters were just desperate for a sentient Democrat. A big chunk of the support for RFK Jr. was people who were so disgusted by what the Democratic Party did with Joe Biden. And I wonder, actually, as Republicans start making the case about the coup and the Kamala Harris honeymoon ends, media honeymoon ends, if that happens, I don't know if the media honeymoon will ever end, but at least the kind of vibe honeymoon, the pop cultural vibe honeymoon ends. Oh, yeah, it'll end, and the resistance people

will be so mad at the New York Times, like, how dare you, democracy's on the line. It'll happen, but yeah, go ahead. So, but that's what I was going to say, that, I mean, that's a huge opening for the third-party candidates, which, again, might not be a big deal on paper, but then you look at those Rust Belt states, like what Jill Stein managed to put up in Pennsylvania, really upset Hillary Clinton for good reason. She wasn't wrong to be upset about the fact that people rejected her because they felt like she was part of the machine. As Republicans make the argument about the machine ordaining Kamala Harris, which happened so quickly, a matter of a couple of days, we played the clip of Kamala Harris saying,

just this morning, I got enough delegates to win Wisconsin. That's insane. It's been, what, two days? Yeah. As that argument, I think, sort of pierces through the noise about having a new candidate and everything, it could still be dangerous for Democrats. Yes.

She has all of the vulnerabilities that she has had since the national public was introduced to her in 2019. We talked about it on Monday. She does not prepare well. She doesn't handle questions that are obvious and that she knows are coming at her. The big knock on her in all of these reports that were done by the New York Times and Politico and others that delve into the staff complaints about her, the key one was that she refuses to prepare

for obvious questions. And so in January 2019, when she launched her campaign, the New York Times came out with a piece by Lara Bazelon, this kind of member of the Bazelon family, which is like democratic legal royalty, really calling into question her bona fides as a progressive prosecutor, saying that she'd worked actively to keep innocent people in prison and on and on. Like really devastating piece. January 2019. It was July of 2019 when Tulsi Gabbard hit her with that in the debate. Basically regurgitated that Times op-ed, which had been widely circulated in Democratic circles.

Kamala Harris had read that op-ed. Her team had six months, seven months to prepare for attacks on that. And when she got hit in the debate with it, she had absolutely nothing. Same with that famous Lester Holt interview where for days the media was asking, when is Kamala Harris going to go to the border? He asked her, when are you going to go to the border? So she knew the question was coming. Of course.

And her answer was, we've been to the border. He's like, but you haven't. We is doing an awful lot of work here. And she's like, well, I've never been to Europe either. That's an amazing answer. I rewatched it recently. That was Selina Meyer. Perfect.

That was a Selina Meyer moment where you'd be watching people and be like, nobody would actually say that. No, even for a politician, it's insanely bad. Because she's the one who brings up the we've been to the border. And Holt goes, you have it. She's the one that invokes the we unnecessarily. It's just, I understand why her staff would complain about it because it seems to be the case. 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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Meanwhile, though, the picture is not at all rosy for Republicans. Let's put A7 up on the screen. This is J.D. Vance. Harry Enten on CNN yesterday made the point that J.D. Vance is the only candidate in modern political history, vice presidential candidate, that comes out of the convention not with a bump. Apparently, the average, according to Enten, is 19 points. And what I love about this clip is that Harry Enten is genuinely angry about this. He seems mad. Let's roll this. It's a negative net territory. Look at that. Negative six points. I will tell you, Aaron,

I have gone all the way back since 1980. He is the first guy, after immediately following a convention, a VP pick, who actually had a net negative favorable rating. That is underwater. The average since 2000 is plus 19 points. J.D. Vance making history in the completely wrong way. I mean, it's amazing. Plus 19. And I know people talk, VPs don't usually matter, but they're usually not a negative. Usually they're popular. In this case, he's dragging Trump down. All right. And then there's also Ohio, which I, you know, have been around long enough to have been there on an election night. And the reason I was there, because the person who wins Ohio wins the White House.

Right. Ohio's a red state now. Yeah. So what does the J.D. Vance pick do for Trump? Obviously, he is a senator from Ohio. There's this whole idea, oh, J.D. Vance is, you know, going to help out in Ohio, perhaps help out in those Rust Belt, those Great Lake Battleground states. But if you look at Ohio, if you look, yeah, J.D. Vance won in 2022, but he only won by six points. That's worse than Donald Trump did in 2020. It's far worse than

Mike DeWine did in 2022. He was the worst performing Republican candidate in 2022, up and down the ballot in the state of Ohio. He was the worst performing Republican candidate in 2022 up and down the ballot in the state of Ohio. He had nothing there. All right. So Trump does very well with white working class voters. That's one of his superpowers. So what does Vance add? Yeah. What does Vance add? Look, he won white working class voters. He won white voters without a college degree in the state of Ohio. But pretty much every Republican wins white working class voters. And if you look here again, the margin that Vance put up was the weakest performance of any major Republican. It's worse than Trump did in Ohio. It's worse than Mike DeWine did in Ohio. The J.D. Vance pick makes no sense from a statistical polling perspective, Aaron. He's rip-roaring mad. He's

mad. Yeah, he says at one point. Strategic failure. He's like, I don't understand it. You know, the best way to understand the J.D. Vance pick is that Donald Trump needed somebody who wouldn't—let's make this a verb—pence him. He wanted someone who wouldn't pence him in the 11th hour when, you know, you need to do the elector vote on January 6th. You need to stay in power despite losing the election. You better have somebody who doesn't care. And J.D. Vance did say that he would have not done what Mike Pence did, which was his duty, I would say. I know a lot of people see J.D. Vance as somebody who's sort of a flip-flopper because he quite literally flip-flopped. But one of the things that struck Trump reportedly is that Vance is a true believer. And Vance is a true believer. If people are, you know, I get Democrats attacking

Trump or attacking Vance for flip-flopping on Trump. But the truth of the picture is that he is a true believer. He is a true convert to the MAGA world. And for a lot of interesting reasons, he converted to Catholicism. But one thing to understand about J.D. Vance is he is a true believer. And you usually, after the primaries, tack to the center. That's the old saying. And they're not—with J.D. Vance, I don't know. I mean, I know they tried to do—I was at the RNC. I was listening to them.

Unity, unity, unity. We talked on Deconstructed last week about how Sourabh Amari and other people are trying to say that J.D. Vance is the new center or could be you know a smart argument for him to adopt would be that he's the new center so far not working clearly if you're you're down uh six because he's a really I get why that's off-putting but it's also because Trump is very off-putting to a lot of people still and I know Trump is favorability, his unfavorable favorables aren't super high either. So if your sort of claim to fame is becoming a big Trump convert, that's not going to be super appealing to people. And somebody tweeted that J.D. Vance is what you would get if some tech bros in

California tried to grow a redneck in a lab. And I kind of get what that argument is saying because his mother struggled terribly and it's wonderful that she has recovered and is now approaching, I think, what, 12 years of sobriety. He was raised by his grandparents who were pretty well off in a pretty middle class area of Ohio. Yeah. His Appalachian roots are ancestral. And he's clear about that in the book. I'm not calling him out here. His family moved before he was born to this region of Ohio.

And the book is kind of about that migration out of Appalachia into the kind of Rust Belt suburbia. Right. But so that was his actual upbringing in a pretty middle to upper middle class area with his wonderful grandparents. Yes. And I think it's hard for them to kind of construct the redneck kind of image out of it, especially after years spent on Wall Street and as venture capitalists and in those circles. It's just not, the beard isn't quite doing it. The beard doesn't make it work, yeah. And in fact, one of the best hits on this entire mega kind of thing that's going on, I think, was by Tim Walls, who I wish there was more, wish we had more time in this world because Emily and I talked about, I pitched Emily on doing this story where we look at both Minnesota and Iowa.

Because Minnesota was won by Democrats, a trifecta, by like 1%. Like just thousands of votes divided this purple state between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats took control. Iowa was a purple state most of both of our lives. Republicans won a trifecta in Iowa. Iowa is now as deep red a state as you can get. And they've pushed as far as hard right an agenda as you can with that type of majority. Just across the border in Minnesota, Democrats did something very unusual for Democrats, which was to actually deploy power and enact an agenda. And Tim Walz, with that very slim majority, has pushed through.

Basically, you look at the Democratic Party platform, they pushed everything through, from minimum wage to pro-union stuff to all the cultural stuff and beyond. It reminds me of the inverse of Wisconsin when it went red under Scott Walker. Both legislatures, senators, Scott Walker, they pushed the full sort of slate of Republican priorities. Right. And Tim Walz is a sleeper of a VP pick. Yes. And so anyway, check out how he communicated his differences with Republicans here. These are these are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room. That's that's what it comes down to. And don't get sugarcoating this. These are weird ideas. Listen to them speak. Let's know they talk about things. Listen to how your previous guests were right. Like you said, they've told them that they shouldn't talk about race. They can't help it. It is built into their DNA because there is no plan. There's no health care plan. There's no health care plan. There's nothing to do on that. They want to take away our alliances and leave Russia to do whatever they want. Look, they are bad on foreign policy. They are bad on the environment. They certainly have no health care plan. And they keep talking about the middle class that, as I said, a robber baron real estate guy

and a venture capitalist trying to tell us they understand who we are. They don't know who we are. Not bad. It's pretty good. Politically, not bad. Republicans, by the way, are also, we're going to talk about this in the next block, are also borrowing the weird line of attack. And arguably not even borrowing it. I feel like Republicans were making this argument for a long time that, you know, they'll talk about the suite of cultural issues, but at the RNC last week, multiple times, speakers on the stage framed this as the election versus, of weird versus normal. And so both sides are now calling each other weird. Maybe our whole country is just weird. So speaking of weird, let's move on to this great J.D. Vance clip that has been making the rounds. So let's just jump right into that one. It is the weirdest thing to me. Democrats say that it is racist to believe, well,

they say it's racist to do anything. I had a diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I'm sure they're going to call that racist too, but it's good. I love you guys. We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. And it's just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it? Famous cat lady, Pete Buttigieg.

Although since then, yeah, Buttigieg and Chase had a kid. Well, it happened a month before that clip. Oh, really? He hadn't even updated his talking point on that one? It wasn't updated at that point. But the— Mountain Dew, though. You wanted to defend it, I think. I was going to say, I actually think Diet Mountain Dew is one of the better diet sodas. I think it's Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Mountain Dew.

Diet Coke is in the league of its own. But Diet Mountain Dew, I'll defend. I think it tastes closest to the original product of many diet sodas. As a concept, it's just so ridiculous. Like if you take Trump's famous line that he's never seen a thin person drink Diet Coke. Which, by the way, he was drinking Diet Coke in that golf interview that dropped yesterday. He's not thin. He's like swilling it.

Mountain Dew is like one of the least unhealthy things you can put in your body, and it's obvious. You just look at it. Adding diet is not helping. On a family text chain, I had to explain what was going on with this clip here. He's trying to insult liberals, but they're just, they're actually, like, they're not getting it. So the question is, like, and maybe a lot of viewers who are actual normal people are watching that clip and being like, wait, wait, I don't understand. Why does he think drinking Diet Mountain Dew is racist? It's like, okay, he doesn't think it's racist.

And actually, no liberals think it's racist either. Well, there might be one or two. and they all have like big Twitter platforms. But what he's saying is that they will somehow, they think everything is racist, and so they will somehow concoct a way that Diet Mountain Dew fits into the schema of racism, and therefore he's racist for drinking a Diet Mountain Dew. It's very online. It's very online. It's very online. And it says something poor about me that I kind of understood what he was trying to do. Well, yeah. Even though he absolutely did not.

Now everybody flops a joke. I flop several every show. But wow, he flopped that one badly. Plus with the afterwards, like, hey, I love you guys. It's like yeah this stuff matters style style matters because people are deciding like who they want in their face for the next four years in which uh you know we're going to do a lot of criticism of kamala harris as she as she continues to introduce herself to the country over the next three months and

and we'll get into her kind of weird venn diagram and stuff like that. Very fair to say that J.D. Vance is not wearing well either. That speech was at his old high school or middle school. I shouldn't say either yet. High school. And he was really familiar with the crowd and down to the making jokes about specific teachers. So I think he may have like lost, and this is not a like positive, he may have lost track of the fact that he was giving an address that everyone around the country was going to have access to that was going to be clipped. And that's obviously one thing to keep in mind when you're suddenly thrust onto the national stage like this. It's not always going to translate as well when things are clipped and tossed around the internet as it might in person. And the joke is based on something very, very true, which is you can go down the line if you just type in blank is racist. Some

article 10 years ago in Slate will come up or BuzzFeed will come up from like 2014 saying, yes, Diet Mountain Dew is racist. That specific article probably doesn't exist, but maybe someone should look it up. I'm going to look. He's Googling right now. The first thing Google asked me was, bad for you. Yes, it's bad for you. So it's not entirely off base, and then this is something that rankles a lot of ordinary Americans that you can't do anything without being called racist. The Atlantic, J.D. Vance has a point about Mountain Dew. Okay. That's written by me. No, you've got to be kidding me. The sub-headline in The Atlantic,

the soft drink has long been associated with the joy and despair of white America. Oh, that's really something. That's really something. Anyway, we probably shouldn't go too deep down the mountain to wrap it all. I got to go. But. I can't. He's just closing the computer.

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. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.

The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick.

Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast.

From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's put the next element up on the screen. Speaking of things Ryan loves, here's Laura Loomer. It's time for Republicans to start talking about Kamala Harris' sexual history and the reason why she likely doesn't have any children of her own. Oh, gosh. I'm willing to bet she's had so many abortions that she damaged her

uterus. A woman who has no biological children of her own should not be allowed to make decisions in the White House for your children. So abortion point aside, that is why people who are very much a figment or are very much involved in online right-wing politics and are fluent in that language, which J.D. Vance is one of, it's why the online right likes J.D. Vance so much. That sort of meme of people who are childless shouldn't make decisions about the future of the country is why J.D. Vance felt comfortable saying that on Tucker Carlson a few years ago. It's something we've heard from Tucker Carlson, J.D. Vance personally. I detest that line of argument because it is so off-putting to people in those situations that you should be trying to persuade.

I'm not a parent. I imagine that there is something that changes about your politics when you realize that there's a future for your own offspring that's on the line. The stakes are obviously higher. But Republicans, from my perspective at least, should be offering a positive message if they want people to vote Republican, if they want people to become Christian and conservative and share their views. The insults are just coming across as bitter and counterproductive. So the Laura Loomer line, I think it's interesting to see it from her because it seems like it trickles down then to more mainstream Republicans. It's also not believable at all in the sense that

a lot of Republicans, if she did have young children, would be saying, why aren't you at home taking care of your young children? Then she doesn't have children. It's like, how could you actually care about the future? You don't have children. So it's sort of like- The Phyllis Schlafly paradox. I think you're just going to come up with a reason that you don't want this woman to be president. Some people might be wondering why on earth put up something as bonkers as that Laura Loomer post. She has 1.1 million followers on Twitter, and she helps to kind of drive and craft a lot of conservative narratives. I would say MAGA narratives. MAGA narratives. And this, I think, there's an interesting kind of Elon Musk point to be made

here. Loomer has been a notable member of the fringe for a very long time. When Elon Musk took over Twitter, drove out all the progressives, for the most part, except me, I'm hanging out there, and then elevated the fringe to center stage on this massive platform where journalists are still hanging out and watching, even if they're not all participating. He took the freak show and made it the main event. And I think it actually hurts the Republican Party. Yeah, it does. Because all of us are then seeing like, oh, this is y'all. It really hurt Democrats when Jack was in charge because that's the basis for the J.D. Vance argument there. You had mainstream writers, journalists on the left who were making absurd arguments about why everything was racist.

And people even more fringe than that, whoever could say the craziest thing and say it in academic language would then get five million views on Twitter that day. Yeah. And Democrats would be tearing their hair out being like, God, this is not, this does not represent the mainstream of our party. Twitter is not real life was the phrase that everybody would kind of throw at them. Yeah. And now he's done the reverse. Well, I think we just landed on a really interesting point because you, despite our best efforts, because you started this by saying maybe America is just weird. Maybe America is just weird. And because Twitter and social media has gamified our politics, the fringe is obviously... Or maybe we're just attracted to engaging with weirdness.

Yeah. And who wouldn't be? It's fascinating. Even if that's not actually where we are, it's much more interesting. And the politicians mistake that for affirmation or for some sign that an argument they want to make is going to be more potent or mainstream than it actually is, which our politics then are further distorted from reality. of Republican members of Congress repeating these talking points despite an effort by Mike Johnson and others to say, guys, stop talking about her race, stop calling her DEI candidate, stop talking about her gender. So here's some of the efforts to use kind of normal talking points against her. Here's Manu over at CNN. I don't think it matters who the Democrats run. Can't change the facts.

Facts are in three and a half years, we went from a secure border to no border, and geez, the borders are. What's her biggest liability? I think the border. I mean, I think it was their biggest liability to begin with, and she was tasked with fixing it, and that has not gone well. Will she be tougher to beat? She will not be tougher to beat, no, not at all. We are excited about Kamala being at the top of the ticket. So I was listening to NPR on the way over here, and they were questioning Bob Casey about Kamala Harris on immigration, and he had a really hard time answering the question that even NPR was asking to defend her record or whether that will be, I think the question is whether it would be a problem for her

in Pennsylvania. Energy and immigration in Rust Belt states are a huge, huge vulnerability for Kamala Harris. There are a lot of old clips for her when she was trying to run to the left of a lot of people. Ban fracking. Yes. Ban plastic straws. If Republicans can make that argument, it will be devastating to her in Rust Belt states and could be devastating for them in the election. That said, you know, those states also have big suburban populations that can be driven to vote on the weirdness. And if they're, you know, running to out weird each other or to,

let's say, out, what is, how do you even say what they're going to be doing in terms of, like, running away from the weirdness charge? Like, they're trying to out-normal each other, let's say that, unsuccessfully probably. In fact, let's actually put, this is before, we'll put before up on the screen. Newsmax openly advocating for Kamala Harris seems unfair to the Trump campaign, wrote Matt Bender, supports massive corporate tax hike, wanted to cap rent and utility payments, backed tax-funded Medicare for All, investigated fossil fuel companies. Those were the Newsmax chyrons. Well, Kamala Harris spoke yesterday in Milwaukee. Now, B5 is a memo from the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, that has this section on Kamala Harris. It's kind of like an oppo document where they're

just listing some of the most potent lines of attack, what they believe to be the most potent lines of attack on Kamala Harris for Senate candidates, Republican Senate candidates. And under one section, it's just weird that Kamala Harris has a meat, loves Venn diagrams, loves electric school buses because she went to school on a school bus, recently discovered that electricity doesn't smell. So Ryan, then you're going to be juxtaposing J.D. Vance, who has said whatever about cat ladies and Diet Mountain Dew and Trump's weirdness, which is in another league and is actually much more funny than the weirdness of Kamala Harris or J.D. Vance with the weirdness of Kamala Harris and perhaps whoever she picks as her vice presidential candidate. And that's what, you know, voters are going to have to choose between in addition to the broader issues like immigration and energy. Yeah, your different versions of cringe.

Yeah, Yashar had—oh, this is the one we just put up. Yeah, it's like, yeah, you have two flavors of cringe. Yes, two flavors of cringe. With these two. Meanwhile, Donald Trump—this is pretty funny. We can put up this next element, B6. Trump just cannot let go of Joe Biden, crooked Joe Biden. And so Biden has left the stage. So everything Trump has been truth socialing has been about Joe Biden and not about Kamala Harris. And Joe Biden is now leaving the stage

with this crooked Joe Biden never landing. I love that one in the bottom left. It's like such a non sequitur. Biden never had COVID. He is a threat to democracy. He's just throwing stuff against the wall. Now, this doesn't mean that he's afraid to run against Kamala Harris, but it means he's having a hard time processing the events, it seems like. Yeah, well. I mean that he's afraid to run against Kamala Harris, but it means he's having a hard time processing the events, it seems like. Yeah, well.

I mean, it's been a big week for him. It's been a big month Near-death experience. Yeah. Plus then, a convention, plus then losing his opponent

and getting a new one. Getting a new one. And his son talking him into choosing J.D. Vance, his son whose judgment he doesn't really respect and yet followed.

You can just be certain that the fact that he listened to his son is gnawing at him as he kind of contemplates the J.D. Vance pick. Well, again, I think what he valued in the J.D. Vance pick more than anything, we've talked a lot about J.D. Vance in this show, I just don't see any evidence. Like, Harry Anton can put up that graphic that actually showed Vance's favorability is still higher than Trump's, his net favorability is still higher than Trump's, which RCP at least has around like net negative nine, somewhere around there, in their average. J.D. Vance could go down to like negative 20, and I don't think it would have a meaningful outcome or a meaningful effect on the outcome of the election. Honestly, I just don't think people vote on vice presidents. All that

is to say, it does affect the vibe. No question about it, it affects the vibe. So, vibes are weird. The vibes are weird. And whether Republicans use Joe Biden as a line of attack on Kamala Harris, Donald Trump clearly is. There is something to be said on the cover-up angle. You said you give good reason for why that might not work earlier in the show, but we'll see what Republicans end up sticking to. 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. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters,

and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business 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. more than once. We can put C1 up on the screen on a call with reporters. Former President Trump says he will commit to debating Vice President Harris, but is not thrilled with ABC as debate host, said he'd be willing to do more than one debate as well. Let's see, who would ABC be? That would be Stephanopoulos. It could be Stephanopoulos unless they're, I think they've kept him out of debate moderating before because of that. But it may have been just a pure Republican debate moderating that they've replaced him with what Margaret Brennan. So how do you think Trump would do against Kamala Harris? She is a Ted Cruz type, or Margaret Brennan's on CBS, so I take that back, but I think she's a Ted Cruz type.

I'm going to disagree with this, but I want to hear your arguments. Ted Cruz type in a very generic sense, not in a specific sense, but in a generic sense, which is that she is a talented, well, she was at one point a talented politician until she became vice president, and there was a camera on her all the time, and she sounded

insane, but she's sort of talented on paper, you know, has the right education, the right political career, and, you know, can talk about the issues, et cetera. It doesn't matter when you're up against Donald Trump. She's just a generic politician and Donald Trump eats generic politicians for lunch. Just you can be Hillary Clinton, whatever. Joe Biden is a pretty generic politician, but he's kind of got a folksier part of him, for what it's worth, that he always at least pretended to have these populist folksy instincts in a way that Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, they just could never pull it off. And so Donald Trump will eat you for lunch if you're like that.

So the reason I say I disagree is that Ted Cruz is a meticulous prep guy. And Kamala Harris isn't. He's going to have all his lines memorized. He's going to have all his arguments laid out. He's a debate bro. He loves laid out. He's a debate bro. He loves to debate. He loves to pick out what somebody says, challenge them. And he has a really thorough kind of maybe surface level, but thorough surface level grasp on issues such that he can talk about them long enough to sound educated and eloquent throughout the length of a debate. If you had

to go for days with actual policy experts, then obviously he's going to fall apart. But no politician really has to do that in public. So whereas Kamala Harris is much more of a kind of riffer and off-the-cuff person who has phrases that she goes back to. Sure. As kind of crutches throughout a debate. Well, that's what happened with Marco. And I guess it was Chris Christie because Trump wasn't at that debate. Right.

Trump would have, let's be real, Trump would have had a field day with that too. Now, the reason I think that it could be an interesting debate is that Harris is at her worst when somebody is pressing her directly on a vulnerability that she should be prepared to respond to, but she isn't. And Trump just doesn't do that because Trump is all about himself in the debate and exuding his own kind of self. That's him. He doesn't tactically kind of try to pin somebody down. Instead, he uses his own buzzwords. He'll say like laptop.

Wrong. Hunter. Wrong. Hunter, wrong. And you have to kind of be kind of in the mix of his train of thought to understand what he's saying, which means that whoever he's saying it to doesn't have to respond directly to anything because Trump doesn't say anything directly. Trump just kind of throws a whole bunch of stuff against the wall.

Which is why nobody can compete with him. But at the same time, he'll have a hard time exposing Harris's big vulnerability. Because he'll just say like, you know, he'll say border, border, border, chaos. Energy, band fracking. Immigrants raping people. And by the end of his answer, like it will be very clear what Trump is trying to say, but he won't be, but it will be so out there that it will let Harris off the hook so that she can just give a speech about immigration or something.

Say what you will about Joe Biden, at least when he's, you know, conscious, he is a charismatic politician, and he always has been. That's actually something that's to his credit. He's able to— He can riff. He can riff. And sometimes he really shouldn't riff, but he does. Like, when he talked about 7-Elevens in his state in an interview, which if you haven't seen, go ahead and look up Joe Biden 7-Elevens. Very Trumpian. Yes, very Trumpian moment, circa like 2007.

But he's charismatic. Hillary Clinton is not charismatic. Kamala Harris is not charismatic. Both of them try very hard to be, though. And that I see standing up to Trump very poorly, just because he is so absurdly charismatic that he just drowns it out i think she i mean maybe it depends on your it's then it's subjective but i i kind of feel like she does have some charisma certainly personally cringema i tried to make that word in person she does exude a charisma oh i've never um i've never talked to her despite Despite, and maybe it doesn't come through on the screen. I kind of think it does. I think it kind of is evaporated by the looping sentences where you start to get really worried for her. You're following the sentence.

You're like, oh, God, where is this going to go? And is she stuck in the loop talking about time or whatever else and just hoping that she can find her way out of this loop? And so then you forget that there is some charisma there. Well, it's interesting because I remember covering her Senate campaign and thinking, I actually was pretty impressed with her as a politician because the Los Angeles Times back then had gone with her to a fundraiser. And she was, you know, in front of this room of California Democrats pushing them. It became her 3 a.m. policy or whatever. But at the time, she was like, listen, the identity politics stuff is not what people are thinking about when they're laying awake at

3 in the morning worrying about their families. And that was a, this was what, 2018, something like that. It was a pretty brave thing to say in a room full of California progressives back then. And I remember thinking, she actually might have something. You have to have charisma, I feel like, to be making points like that. So it just seems that being vice president totally broke her brain. I thought she had charisma in those Senate judiciary hearings. She was going viral all the time for those. I completely disagreed with her most of the time. She was going viral.

She handled it well. Yeah, but it's like being vice president just caused her to melt. Or running for president too. That's true. Right. She had a lot of, I mean, charisma didn't necessarily come through during those debates. And last thing I'll say, by the way, is Trump in this call with reporters that was mentioned in the element we put up on the screen, he said that he absolutely, that was his quote, absolutely thinks he should be debating

Harris. He said multiple times, you mentioned that earlier, and he said he thinks that people have, quote, an obligation to debate, which was on the table before he agreed to these debates, whether or not either candidate felt obliged to stand on the stage and debate one another. I think because of what happened with Joe Biden, I pray that we were approaching this norm of no debates for primaries or whatever. People were saying, it doesn't really matter. Trump skipped a debate. It was becoming more and more of a talking point.

I pray that this is finally disabused us of the notion that it is okay to forego debates. Because if Joe Biden had had to debate in the primary, where he did have serious opponents, he would have crumbled. And we could have done all of this earlier. And the irony is that if Trump had refused to debate him and the first debate wasn't until September, by then it would have been too late for Joe Biden to drop off the ticket. And he would have lost in a Mondale-level landslide. So Trump, by accepting the debate, put the whole thing at risk, put his whole campaign at risk. Sure did. He also said he thinks it'll be, quote, no different debating Kamala Harris than it would Joe Biden in, again, that call. Because Trump doesn't care who he's debating.

It's just himself. Right. And it gets to the point you were making earlier in the show that you can turn Biden migrant crime into Harris migrant crime or Bidenflation into Harrisflation. That's something Republicans are really banking on at this point because they have spent months preparing the case against Joe Biden. And almost before the convention, right at the end of the road, they had the rug pulled out from under them.

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. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business

from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick.

Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business 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

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We're joined now by independent journalist Motaz Salim joining us from Capitol Hill. Motaz, thanks for joining us. Of course. Thanks for having me. And so Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington, D.C. We can put this video up on the screen, as you can see. Smiles all around as he lands here in the D.C. area. He'll be addressing a joint session of Congress at 2 o'clock this afternoon. At least 20 Democrats have so far said that they will be boycotting the address. Almost all of them will be meeting, you know, willing to meet at some point privately, either on Capitol Hill.

Yes, I just saw a picture of the entourage there. In the White House, there's the entourage there. Including Noah Argamani, which the picture was pointing out. Yep. Former hostage, now released, has become really the face of, or one of the most prominent faces of the war, in support of the war that Israel is prosecuting. Yes, indeed. Yesterday, ahead of his speech, protesters kind of took over the cannon rotunda. If we could roll some of this. this i saw motaz you were there uh at cannon yesterday can you tell us what the what what the demands of the protesters were and what what the mood was there the demands

ultimately are for permanent ceasefire in Gaza as well as a arms embargo on Israel as well as there was a very it was very emotional in the sense that you could tell people really, really don't want for very justifiable reasons Netanyahu to speak or to even have been invited. But ultimately, I think the central demand is an arms embargo and to bring an end to the genocide. And you're on Capitol Hill right now as the Capitol Hill police and other law enforcement have prepared with what looks like the leftover fence from the January 6th barricade that they put it on the Capitol afterwards. So tell us what the mood is like there, what you're expecting to see today, and if it's groups like Jewish Voices for Peace, which is who we saw yesterday

and who we just saw in that video, basically what's happening outside the Capitol in the morning of Wednesday as we're talking to you here? Yeah, so right now it's around 9.30. It's still like there are people congregating. There's this sort of central area. We are on Pennsylvania and kind of a few meet and the actual meeting time is 11 o'clock. And you have like a medical tent, you have a lot of water, supplies, signs and whatnot. And people for now are just meeting.

I know that there was a protest in front of the Watergate happening earlier today as well, because that's where Netanyahu and his whole entourage is staying. Do you expect any lawmakers to come to the protest today? If so, who? None that I know of so far. And what are you hearing from Democrats about how they're handling the decision by Democrats and Republicans to invite him here? Well, hearing for the, I mean, for the most part, it seems like, and I think this is like a really awful thing, the fact that only about 20 or so Democrats have outright said that they are going to boycott his speech.

And, you know, you saw like, for example, Representative Nadler gave a whole statement about how Netanyahu is this worst possible human who's responsible for the atrocities and whatnot. So worst leader in Israel for like 3,000 years or something? Yeah, worst leader in Israel for 3,000 years, but I'm still going to attend it. And it's really like I run out of words, especially as someone Palestinian, of how, like, how much cover they're giving him. They're trying to rehabilitate his image. They have police forces coming from, they got NYPD coming in.

They got all of this effort just to protect him when he is really just the, you know, the man responsible for a modern day genocide. It's really awful. Who is participating in this protest? So again, yesterday was Jewish Voices for Peace was a part of that big protest in the rotunda of the Cannon House office building. I think that's an important component, obviously, of how people will interpret what's happening outside the Capitol. Are there Jewish protesters? What's the kind of coalition outside the Capitol today? I think it's really a mixture. There's a variety of different contingents. I know there's going to be a Jewish contingent here joining the protests. You have sort of Palestinian-led organizations.

You also have a lot of labor organizations that have mobilized in order to join the protests today because influenced a lot by labor organizing in Palestine, which has been putting out a lot of calls, a lot of messaging to pressure organizations at all levels to not just boycott Netanyahu, but really put the pressure on Israel to put the pressure on the U.S. to actually implement an arms embargo on Israel, because that's kind of the main leverage we have. But to answer your question, it's a variety of many walks of life and different backgrounds. Let's just quickly put the element D4 up on the screen, since we just referenced it there. Seven major unions just sent a letter, this is July 23rd, so yesterday, to Biden, calling on him to immediately halt all military aid to Israel ahead of Netanyahu's visit to Washington.

So that included the SEIU, the UAW, and some other big unions. Yeah, and the SEIU, extremely close with Kamala Harris, which could be interesting, raises the question, Motaz, of how people there and people you talked to yesterday and in the movement more generally are feeling about the switch from Biden to Kamala Harris. How much is the door open for people to consider now supporting a Democratic ticket, given the complexity of this question? Because Harris is part of the Biden-Harris administration. She also represents potentially a new path forward. Where are people coming down on this? Yeah, I mean, I think looking at it in an objective, as objective sense as I can. It does definitely, I mean, the chances are much higher for Kamala

to receive votes from people who are very concerned about what's happening in Gaza, what's happening in Palestine, especially from the Arab American population here. That being said, I think this is anecdotally speaking i mean my understanding from a lot of uh palestinians i've talked to and muslims is we uh they want to see first what if she is actually going to change any of the policies that biden has uh towed so far, because Biden has pretty much given a green light to Netanyahu and his administration, despite all the different, God knows how many red lines for different things there have been that Netanyahu has passed.

And then really there was no consequences for any sort of the atrocities, the massacres, the war crimes. So, I mean, you do see this rhetoric from a lot of people in like a lot of liberals saying that, oh, we need to push her left. I personally am doubtful of that because she's received a lot of money from the pro-Israel lobby groups in her career. And it seems pretty clear she's trying to have a harsher rhetoric, but it's been 10 months of genocide and rhetoric is not enough anymore.

I'll say that as a Palestinian first and foremost, like we need to see an action plan and things put into place to use our leverage as the U.S. to bring an end to the genocide. And instead, we're going to hear from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing a joint session of Congress later today, quite a moment. Motaz, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome back anytime. Thank you. Appreciate it. Up next, Nel Shaleen, a State Department official who resigned in protest over the U.S.'s unquestioning support for Netanyahu's war on Gaza. Stick around for that. Have you ever thought about going voiceover?

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Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who did make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first

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Well, we're joined now by someone who actually resigned from a post at the State Department over the way the Biden administration had prosecuted the war on Hamas. We're joined by Dr. Anil Shaleen, who is now a researcher at the Quincy Institute. Anel, thanks for coming on the show to talk about this. Thank you for having me. And so, Anel, you may have seen this Politico article, and we can put this up on the screen here. The headline was, Biden Resignees Are More Hopeful. What was the exact headline? More Hopeful about Harris's Israel

policy. That is a July 21st Politico story. And as we are talking to you, Anil, you are, we can put F1 up on the screen. You're one of those resignees, but I think there's an open question about whether you're one of them who is, quote, hopeful. So many people have resigned from the State Department over this policy that there's an entire now group of people that can have differing opinions. So curious where you fall down on the question of a change in, a potential change in policy toward this war? I mean, there is an opportunity right now. I think the question is who is in touch with Kamala Harris's team? And again, open question. Obviously, it's not yet totally solidified that she'll be the nominee.

But assuming that she is, I know that several of my fellow resignees, you know, we're in touch with each other. It's such a great source of support to get to work with them. We released a joint statement the week of July 4th, where we were calling for a different policy. So absolutely, there's an opportunity now for a new approach. I think I'm just a little bit less inclined towards optimism, just knowing the strength of the Israel lobby in U.S. politics. I think that we are seeing a generational change. I don't think we'll continue to see this bipartisan support for this unconditional support for Israel. But I don't know that that political change is either here yet or that politicians are really plugged into it yet.

I don't know that Harris and her team are plugged into it. I do think, I hope they would be because that could help bring young people who are completely disillusioned with this policy. It could bring really critical voters, Arab American voters in critical parts of the country, the progressives. But I won't be surprised if she maintains a lot of these same policies. Can I ask you a little bit about how the lobby actually works? So I've spoken to some State Department officials who've said that the way that it works from their perspective is if they push a little bit too hard, let's say, in a meeting with Israeli counterparts, all of a sudden they will be told, hey, so the boss got a call from Ron Dermer, you know, said that you're a

little bit off the leash. Why am I hearing from Ron Dermer about you? It's kind of chilling. And they just tighten the leash there a little bit. Is that, have you experienced that or have you heard that type of kind of influence or in general, how does it actually function in practice as you're trying to do your job? So I was with the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor or DRL and then their Office of Near East Affairs. And I wasn't working directly on Israel-Palestine. You know, my portfolio was different countries, but everything I was doing and trying to advocate for human rights was absolutely undermined and made essentially impossible by Israel's war on Gaza. But what I observed wouldn't have necessarily probably risen to that level because I was, you know, working level. But what I would see would be if there might be a shared document and you're working on it with a bunch of different people, different offenses, and you're suggesting comments and someone might put in your comment,

you know, if I had said something that was like more critical or pointing out something about Israel, someone might say in the comment, you know, that's not going to work or they might just erase it. And so then it's a question, well, do you escalate it? We're the Human Rights Office, so ostensibly. And to be clear, you know, my superiors in DRL were trying to, you know, within the sort of marginal space that they could to push for human rights. But human rights are never the first priority of U.S. foreign policy. And so we were always outranked. We were, you know, we never really got to call the shots when it came to human rights in Israel or, you know, any country other than countries that we just routinely call out like Iran and Syria. So what I observed would probably be less, you know, our boss got a call about you because I was too junior.

It was more this internal self-censorship of other people just knowing that like, yeah, you can't say that. Got it. So something interesting, you resigned in March and in your CNN op-ed, you wrote about how some of your colleagues said, please speak for us. What are you hearing, if you can speak to that, from people who maybe are still inside official Washington capacities or working in official capacities now that, you know, we talked about how people like you had already resigned are looking at a potential Harris administration. What are you hearing, if you are, from people who are still inside the government about what that might look like? Well, people in government think Trump is going to win and they're really scared of that, especially worried about Project 2025 and losing their jobs.

I think that they're also pretty cynical about Harris, at least the folks that I'm in touch with. They don't anticipate a shift here. These are people who've spent their careers in government and they've seen people come and go and this policy doesn't change. This is the third rail of American politics. And so there are people now inside government who are continuing to do what they can. I know a big contingent are going to be at the protest today against Bibi.

Probably obscuring their appearance to avoid getting fired. Their state lanyards on. Yeah. But, you know, I do think that many people inside government are really worried about Trump coming back, but they do see it as kind of an inevitability. So speaking of human rights, if we could put up D3 on the screen here. I don't know if you saw this. This is a piece I published last night at Dropsite News. Leaked UN report, Israeli war has killed 366 UN staff and family members as Netanyahu prepares to address Congress. And this is the first, it's a confidential report from the UN that was leaked to us.

It's the first one that has laid out the number of dependents of UN staff, so not just UN staff. And, you know, people have been killed from UNICEF, the UN Development Program, UNRWA, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, and also from this UN IT department. So as somebody with a human rights record, since World War II, have you ever seen so many UN workers and their families targeted and killed in a conflict before? And what does it say about what's going on on the ground there? Never. Never. And, you know, the Knesset, I think, just designated UNRWA a terrorist organization.

This is a UN agency. And they are targeting, you know, not only did they level these accusations against the 12 UNRWA employees such that the U.S. withdrew funding, as did much of the rest of the world. Other countries have now reinstated some of that funding, which is good, but without U.S. funding, UNRWA does not have the money it needs to function. And so the way that Israel has targeted the U.N. and designated U. designated UN agencies terrorist organizations is completely dismantling the supposed legitimacy of the UN system in ways that will have repercussions around the world. I mean, if we don't have a set of institutions, and certainly there were already issues with

UN, it's not perfect, but it is what we have. Similar to international law, international law is not perfect, but the ways that Israel and the U.S. have so directly undermined it and even used it kind of to justify what they're doing, this is going to have massive repercussions for conflicts going forward. I mean, it's, it is, it is just, it's, it's sort of horrifyingly ironic because so many of these institutions were set up in the aftermath of World War II to try to prevent another Holocaust. And, you know, I think we, we can't even know yet what the damage from that will be. So that's something I think is really underappreciated in this larger conversation. And you write in your CNN op-ed about how American credibility on human rights has, I think the quote, has almost vanished from your op-ed over the course of the last six plus months as this war has transpired.

Can you talk to us a little bit about that and what it might look like down the road in future conflicts? Or, for example, there's a war in Ukraine right now. How is this affecting other spaces? And I want to be clear, advocating for human rights on the behalf of the United States in the Middle East was already not easy. The U.S. did not have a lot of credibility there, but it was still able to engage with civil society organizations. There's, you know, work that was done in these deeply authoritarian spaces in ways that really had an impact for people on the ground. And so it was so depressing to then meet with some of these individuals not from Israel

or Palestine elsewhere in the region. We'd sit at a table with them, start, you know, open the conversation about what it is that they're dealing with, the way that they're being attacked by their government. And they're like, Gaza. Gaza. Like, we want to talk about Gaza. How is this happening? How can you, you know, this person that I have a relationship with that I know advocates for human rights,

how are you letting this happen? And we kind of sheepishly have to say, like, I mean, this is coming from the very top. Like, you can't. This is what the president wants. And you're some, you know, working level person at the State Department or even a undersecretary, WDC secretary. You can't change that. terms of thinking about Ukraine, it is this sort of, it is such cruel irony that we have what Russia is doing to Ukraine in such direct juxtaposition of the U.S. reaction to that and rightful condemnation. And then the complete opposite, when Israel does even worse things

to the civilian population of Gaza. And we have the U.S. saying, you know, these international institutions are right and just in their condemnations of Russia, and then they're trying to go after, like, the families of the ICC or the ICJ prosecutor when they are, you know, have accused Netanyahu and, was it, Gallant of war crimes? Yeah. That just the hypocrisy is so blatant that I think the only thing that the U.S. could try to do to reestablish credibility on human rights would be to work to establish a state of Palestine, to actually make that happen, not pretend that that's been the official policy for years. But the U.S. has done nothing but provide this unconditional support for Israel,

which keeps moving us further away from that and towards more violence. In the meantime, if we can put up this F3, one of the more, I mean, I don't want to rank the shockiness that's been coming out of Gaza, but the headline here from the BBC is the World Health Organization, quote, extremely worried about possible Gaza polio outbreak. There were reports in Israeli press about Israeli soldiers being vaccinated for polio before heading into assault Gaza, reports of the virus that causes polio being detected in sewage.

This is a throwback to something that the world had felt like it had defeated. What does it say to you that the WHO is now extremely worried about this potential polio outbreak? I mean, like you said, polio, you think of FDR. You know, you think of a bygone era before we had vaccines that could prevent these completely preventable diseases. And, you know, if they're having a polio outbreak,

who knows what else could happen? I mean, it's completely, there's no water, it's completely untreated sewage. There could be all kinds of, you know, the population of Gaza, who knows what else, what other diseases might be circulating there that we're just not even aware of. But, you know, the fact that the WHO had gotten so close to eliminating polio and now we're worried about an outbreak, it's, I think it's just, like you said, it's just one more example of how shocking this conflict is. Is there anything about the conflict that you think people maybe aren't as aware of as somebody who actually worked in the State

Department, worked in human rights issues that we haven't covered yet? Is there something people just don't understand or should understand better? I think a lot of people aren't sufficiently worried about the war expanding and the U.S. getting dragged in. I'm fairly sure that Bibi is going to ask, certain he's going to ask for more money and more weapons. Right. But I think he wants Congress to sign off on him going after Hezbollah in Lebanon. Right. And I think his objective is to enter into a war

that gets Israeli civilians killed, that will try to shift this global condemnation of him and his actions against Palestinians in Gaza and try to claw back some of that sympathy that Israel had after October 7th to then justify expanding the violence. And what I'm worried about is that this will drag in the United States because the U.S. continues to pledge this unconditional support, that U.S. troops will get dragged in, and that this in some ways could be seen as election interference, that Bibi will do this right before the U.S. election. Americans are so tired of unnecessary wars in the Middle East.

This could hand, I mean, Trump's already, Trump could win by himself without this happening, but that could really tank the chances of whoever ends up on the Democratic ticket. Yeah. And so, Anil, thank you so much for joining us. Very, very much appreciate it. Thanks for having me. And so, yeah, at two o'clock, Netanyahu will address the joint session of Congress. At eight o'clock later tonight, Joe Biden will give his address where I guess he'll, any guesses what he's going to announce? I mean, he already tweeted it. He did tweet it many, many days ago. He's just been posting.

He's just been posting. He's going to confirm that he is not going to be the Democratic nominee. He'll confirm. A little scoop here. You heard that here first. Yeah, it's a great thing. You post something on X, wait a few days, jump on video, more content. You can just keep mining it for clicks. So well done to the president, sitting president of the United States. Indeed. All right, well, you guys enjoy that at Saga. We'll actually be back with Crystal tomorrow. He should have just taken tomorrow off.

Why did he? He should have just taken the whole week. He couldn't. Yeah, that's so, so true. So you'll get another, I guess, dose of Saga before the week is over. Great wedding, by the way. Super fun. We had a lot of fun.

Breaking Point's crew had a lot of fun. Ryan was dancing a lot. I was dancing a lot. Very happy for the couple. Yes. All right. Well, we will be back next week with more CounterPoints. See you then. Have you ever thought about going voiceover?

I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy. But to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible. It's customizable. And it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room.

You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives

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