Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/29/24: Kamala TIED With Trump, Top VP Picks, Israel Hezbollah War, Trump Wants RFK Endorsement

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Kamala tied with Trump, first Kamala 2024 AD dropped, is JD Vance weird, Kamala's top VP picks, Trump desperate for RFK Jr endorsement, cops call out secret service over Trump failures, Israel Hezbollah war imminent, top cartel leader kidnapped and arrested.   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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Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there's a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 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. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of interesting things to get into this morning. We're going to start with the very latest polls. We are actually 99 days out from the election.

Kind of crazy, right? That is crazy. So we've got a bunch of looks at just the horse race, the battleground polls, favorability, top issues, all of that stuff we're going to dig in. We also have Kamala's first ad that she is up with using a Beyonce song that she got permission to use. Some would say freedom. We're going to play it and see if we get dinged on YouTube. So take a little bit of a risk with that one this morning. We're also taking a look at the Veep Stakes for Kamala Harris.

A clearer picture emerging of what she may be looking for and who the top contenders are. So we're going deep on this one. Our producers did a fantastic job pulling together mashups of each of the top contenders so we can show you who they are and what we know about them and who may be leading that deep stakes fight. We've also got new, very interesting behind the scenes reported details about Trump courting RFK Jr. and what exactly the play is there. So we're bringing that. We've also got even more revelations about Secret Service failures with regard to that attempted assassination of Donald Trump. I always want to say attempted assassination attempt for some reason. Anyway, massive communication failures and something that they've known

about for like literally over a decade that apparently hasn't been fixed. The SWAT team, the local SWAT team that was there on the ground is also speaking out. So we'll bring you all of that. And also a bombshell story, international story, two major cartel figures now brought down, arrested, apprehended here in the US. The behind the scenes of this is crazy. Seems like some sort of a soap opera betrayal, although I wouldn't believe everything that's coming out about this at this point. There will be a movie five years from now with all the actual details. But for now, this is absolutely nuts. As many other bros online, I have a deep fascination with the Mexican drug cartel. So when I saw this news, I was actually speechless. I was like, I cannot believe they got him. And I'm like, well, did they? That's

the real question. Because the deal with El Mayo is his whole thing is like he's never set foot in prison. Nobody even knew what he looked like. Even the photo. Oh, really? Really him? And I'm like, well, did they? That's the real question. Well, because the deal with El Mayo, his whole thing is like, he's never set foot in prison. Never. Nobody even knew what he looked like. Even the photo, everyone was like, is this really him? Yeah. I mean, I think the photos of him, it was very, very strange. And then the fact that Chapo Jr. was involved, he's a young man and allegedly struck a deal with the government. I mean, like I said, this is straight up out of like Narcos season four. So this is going to be, it's fascinating to see what the initial thing is gonna be. And I'm really hoping this one goes to trial because we learned a lot during the El Chapo trial and the government will actually have to give us some facts.

Last time around, we learned so much about the inner workings of the drug cartels, the connection to the Mexican government. Allegedly, the Mexican government this time around didn't even know this was all going down. So there's big questions there. So it's interesting. All right. So we'll get into all of that, but let's go ahead and start with those polls. Yes, let's start with the polls. And thank you to all of our premium members, by the way. We have some big news coming, so stay tuned for that. Let's go ahead and begin with the Wall Street Journal. This one really was the one that shook the political landscape and put it up there on the screen. And it actually just highlights how much things have really changed. So what you can see in front of you is if the general election were held today, for whom would you have voted? Originally, we had Trump and Biden,

and you can just see the massive swing between Joe Biden, who was at 42% in July 1st in the Wall Street Journal poll, and you had Donald Trump at some 49%. But Harris effectively has erased the entire Trump lead and is essentially tied within the margin of error in this latest poll at 49 to 47. You should always, of course, incorporate that margin of error of roughly 3.1% to then show you that this is an effective tie. What's also fascinating, and this is, I think, the story of the Kamala changeout. Are you enthusiastic about your candidate? Look at that sub 50% figure up until July 2nd with Joe Biden. Now you have almost 80% of Democrats who are saying that they

are enthusiastic about their candidate. You see the enthusiasm massively spike amongst independents. Republicans, it's also spiked. And that's not actually unexpected given the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the RNC. And of course, as close as we get to Election Day, more people are paying attention. But the fundamental story is the change amongst independents, the change amongst Democrats specifically, and to see what that turnout, skyrocketing turnout previously of 2022 will look like in 2024 when Donald Trump is there and on the ballot.

So I really think that that is the biggest story of the entire election. And then the favorability rating is one, too, that we really cannot look away from. Let's go ahead and put the next one, please, up on the screen because it also tells that story. Here we have from the Financial Times. They did a fantastic job of going through and aggregating a lot of favorability data. This is from actually multiple polls that they've aggregated. And you have Trump's favorability rating, which was increasing, but it was still underwater. It was roughly around minus 11%. Lately, this is with the attempted assassination. Previously, he used to go

pretty significantly. But Biden was in the deep, the doldrums, I guess, of favorability rating. Things were just getting worse and worse for him all throughout his presidency, but especially after the disastrous debate performance. Just look at the hockey stick that we have here with Kamala Harris, who, let's be honest, I mean, we've covered this a million times. She's one of the most least popular vice presidents in modern history. Nobody really cared about her. She wasn't having even a, you having even a third look or whatever from Democrats. But the anointing of her and giving just an alternative to Donald Trump that can speak literally and prosecute a very basic case against Trump that the most normie Democratic mayor in the country could has really invigorated

Democrats and has skyrocketed her favorability. And I think that this is one of those where the contrast of the aging, inept, basically dying Biden to somebody who is just not even a particularly talented politician, but nonetheless, somebody who's living and breathing, that has just breathed life into the Democratic base in a way that I have not seen, I think, ever in modern politics. I mean, I'm not going to say Obama-esque, but there is a little bit of that vibe of like, you know, excitement. Fired up, ready to go. Yeah. And it really is. The contrast is so important there because Biden set the bar below the floor. Exactly.

So when you see her capably, and she does this very well, like we should give her her due, when she's on the stump and she's delivering a speech, she's very effective. She hasn't had to do any of the things yet that have really caused her trouble in the past. She hasn't sat for a difficult interview. She obviously hasn't done a debate versus Donald Trump yet. Those are the things that were more challenging for her in the past. But up there on the stump in front of a cheering, adoring audience, she has a swagger right now that has really come across. And I think it is true, and we predicted this ahead of time, that just the fact that people don't feel doomed to the death march and the matchup that everyone was dreading, that there's some new life and vitality injected into this race has caused her favorability ratings to skyrocket. And it also just shows that part of the problem

for her was being tied down by the Biden administration feeling, her favorability was really being dragged down by how unpopular the whole administration was. So that was the thing that really blew me away. Because we should be honest about where the polls are. They still show either it's tied or Trump still has a bit of an edge. She really has brought the race back to where it was maybe a few months ago before Biden started having more and more precipitous decline and his position really started to dramatically erode. So it's not like she's where Biden was last time in 2020. This time last time, you know, in 2020, Biden was up by nine points in these type of polls. So let's just be clear about where the race stands today.

But what has been most shocking to me is just the dramatic turnaround in her favorability rating. And one of the things that I've been thinking about, Sagar, is when it was Biden, it was very clear who the change candidate was. And it was not Joe Biden, it was Donald Trump. Now, with Kamala Harris, she has, because she is different and she's a comparative fresh face and all of those sorts of things, she has as much of a claim on being the change candidate in what I think is likely a change election as Donald Trump does. That alone has completely reset the race. With regard to that Wall Street Journal poll, and we're going to talk more about RFK Jr.

and his role and how he fits into all of this in the C-block. But when you make it the five-way race, when you include him and Jill Stein and Cornel West, which they should include the libertarian candidate, too. I don't know why they're not doing that. Yeah, it's very odd that they did not. Yeah, because, I mean, he'll be on more Stein and Cornel West, which they should include the libertarian candidate too. I don't know why they're not doing that. Yeah, because I mean, he'll be on more ballots than Cornel West. Anyway, putting that aside, Harris very clearly at this point is benefiting more from having RFK Jr. in the race than Trump is. So in the five-way race, she actually, still within the margin of error, but she actually edges out Trump 45-44. So in the overall, it's Trump 49-47, also within the margin of error. In the five-way, it's 45-44, which is also very important to note

here. But just a complete reset of the entire matchup like that. It's incredible to see. It is shocking. But I mean, as you said, let's make sure we present a realistic picture. We have the Fox News battleground polls. We can put this up there on the screen. And what we see in the battleground is that if we look at Pennsylvania, we have effectively a tie at 49-49. In Michigan, 49-49. In Wisconsin, it actually shows Trump up by one, 50-49. Minnesota is kind of the most interesting, where you have 52 to 46. And we'll bring that up, I think, in the VP section, because it could possibly change how Kamala Harris is thinking about who she's going to pick and what that would look like. I would

also say on the issues, there are several issues which, considering at least what people self-report, what is most important, that is going to significantly, I think, tilt things in the Republican direction, although not as much of a slam dunk as it previously was. Let's go to the next one, please. This shows what issue is the most important in deciding your vote. Number one is going to be economy or inflation. These are for undecided voters. Number two is going to be the, quote, candidate's character or competence. Three is immigration. Four is foreign policy. Five is abortion. And six is state of democracy and corruption. So abortion and democracy are the only two issues where there's a massive clear edge for Kamala Harris. I believe Kamala Harris has some plus 15% or whatever

favorability with respect to Donald Trump in some head-to-head polling. But on immigration and foreign policy, foreign policy less so, but immigration especially, Trump has the leading edge. And on economy and inflation, you actually see a pretty significant edge for Donald Trump. A lot of that is going to be nostalgia from the last time around. But I will say this, and I'm sure you recall, in 2020, we would always ask the Trump people about the polling. We're like, listen, this is a disaster. This is really bad. And what they always came to us is they said the economy trust for Trump, even at the rock bottom of the COVID pandemic and everything, is that Trump was still always at least tied, if not leading Joe Biden on the economy. And that number became far more predictive of the actual

vote number in 2020 than many of these BS polls like, what, they showed Biden up by 17 points or something like that in Wisconsin in October. It's ridiculous. Trump lost it by, let's say, 1%, something like that. And so if we look at that economy figure, and remember, I mean, yes, there's a lot of talk here about enthusiasm, et cetera, but some independents and all those others coming out to vote, if they're breaking on the economy, it's still not the best thing for Kamala Harris right now. Well, that may be changing because there's some new numbers out. We didn't pull this. Maybe we can put it in post. This is from Atlas and they pulled on the issues. And she's in this particular poll. She's tied with Trump on the economy. I haven't seen a lot

on all of these who would handle this and that issue better? She's doing way better than Biden on everything, across the board, on health care, on education, on the economy, which is really interesting that people trust her way more than they do Biden on the economy. And I do think it goes to the fact that people just felt like, how can I trust him on anything? He's too old to do anything. So why would I think that he's gonna be like great for the economy? So even those numbers are really in flux right now and really shifting. Like I said, this is an Atlas Intel poll that was taken over the course of last week that found her and Trump

tied on the economy, which I was pretty shocked to see. Now again, it's one poll. So we'll see what else comes out with regards to that. But, you know, it is remarkable to see how even in the battleground states, because that was Biden was kind of hanging in there a little bit in the national polls, in the battleground polls, he was just getting destroyed. So even in the Fox News battleground state polls, she's pulling even and winning quite clearly in the state of Minnesota. And if you pull their favorability in those states, she has a higher favorability than Trump in the Fox News poll in each of these battleground states. So, you know, can't she's clearly there's an energy, there's an excitement. Her team has done, which is in, it's the same team as the Biden team, but they just have so much more life and vitality to her.

She has so much more life and vitality to her. They've done such a more effective job than they were doing with Biden was all this buttoned up, like restoring democracy. And they're just down there like, yeah, this dude's weird and we don't like him. I would also significantly not underestimate the money advantage because one of the main things that we were driving Joe Biden out of the race was the fact that the donors basically locked it up. They're like, you're done. We're not donating to you anymore.

Kamala raised $200 million in a single week. I believe that breaks the all-time record for the amount of dollars ever spent. I mean, that is alone, not something that I would discount. And, you know, in a certain way, it's cash that comes at exactly the right time. Statistically, the vast majority of Americans don't pay attention until three weeks before Election Day. Some people are beginning to tune in right now. Another thing, and this is one of the caveats for a lot of the polling that people should keep in mind, this is a very, very noisy environment.

A lot of people are still making up their minds about Kamala Harris. They don't know what they think about Kamala Harris. They're like, hey, maybe I need to see her in a debate. I need to see her in an interview. I got to read whatever. There's a lot of there's a lot of change, I think, in the way that people could view her. So it could go down. It could go up significantly, too.

That's the other thing. And I don't think that we have yet properly priced in the removal of Biden. Biden was a noose around the neck of the Democratic Party of basically all of the issues. Because even whenever it comes down to trust in the economy, you have to factor in, you're like, this guy is so old. Like he's on the verge of death. And when you think about it, it just colors the way that you look at everything. So it's almost like a different light bulb has come on. And it's a different heuristic that we're all viewing the entire world in, especially for Democratic voters.

And actually, I think that's the most significant change for me is if we think back to 2020 and why Trump lost, a lot of it came down to not actually just getting the basic mail-in ballots of like boomer Republicans who didn't show up to vote on election day. Democrats love to, statistically, especially the older ones, they vote more than everybody else. And so to get them, let's say their enthusiasm has gone from 50 to 100, which effectively is where it is. Let's say that factors, you know,

a couple 10,000 more votes in every swing state. That's it. That's the margin of victory. You don't even have to convince anybody. You can just drive out normal people who voted for Obama in 2012 and you could easily clock this entire thing. That is a huge, huge change that a lot of people are not growing. At least the smart Republicans I've seen are grappling with this. They're like, hey, this enthusiasm, this is a major problem. Because the gap between MAGA, which was always turned up to like 80, probably now at 100, versus, you know, 85 Democrats where

it previously was on the floor around 20s. That is the biggest X factor, I think, right now. No doubt about it. And I mean, as much as I object on principle to these like white affinity groups that are white dudes for Kamala and white women for Kamala and all this stuff, the numbers they're getting on these organizing calls are insane. I mean, the white women one had like, what, 150,000 people? It was the biggest Zoom call in all of history. I believe the white dudes for Kamala Harris has like 112,000. Yeah, I mean, look, I agree with you. Do we really need to balkanize on like X group? I know. Kamala, can we just be for Kamala or Trump, please? Is that too much to ask? Well, just imagine if there was like a white

dude for Trump, the way people would feel about that. Anyway, putting that too much to ask? Well, imagine if there was like a white dude for Trump, the way people would lose it. Anyway, putting that aside, the energy is clearly real because, I mean, they did the black women for Kamala. It was like 50,000 black men for Kamala. It was like 50,000 people on these calls raising millions of dollars. And these are your people who are going to phone bank and they're going to door knock and they're going to kick in their 10 bucks a month or whatever. None of that, none of it was happening for Joe Biden.

The last thing I'll say before we can move on to Kamala's first ad, because it's kind of a good segue to this. One thing that was really important about that David Leinhart tweet thread that we put up before is he's saying, look, you guys are talking all about democracy. Kamala has changed the rhetoric she's using about the like democracies on the ballot. It's less, you know, existential and pro-clutchy and more like these are a bunch of weird freaks who want to take your stuff away. But she's still primarily focused on that. And what he's pointing out is, listen, the people who feel like that's their number one thing, they're already with you, right? The Democratic base now, they are locked in. They're with you. You're good there, girl. Where you need to focus

is on economics. Funny, Bernie Sanders made very similar comments to that and once again got accused of being sexist. Did he really? For saying that. I didn't see this. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's insane because he said very similar things when it was Joe Biden. He was like, we need to talk about going after the millionaires and billionaires, you know, his whole thing. This is his whole thing. And if you don't, you're not going to win. He was like, we need to talk about going after the millionaires and billionaires, you know, his whole thing. This is his whole thing. And if you don't, you're not going to win. He said something similar about Kamala Harris and all these, oh, he's just sexist. He doesn't think a woman can win, et cetera, et cetera.

No, he's 100% correct. If you want to win, you need to actually run on an affirmative economic agenda, like a very clear one, just a few things that you're going to do that separate you from the Republican economic agenda. And if you don't, he's absolutely right that you have a great chance of losing the election if you aren't focused on the issues that undecided voters care the most about. That parlays into the messaging, that obviously parlays into the VP pick. I will tell you, I think Tim Walz does a fantastic job messaging on middle class and working class economics. But in any case, I think the numbers are really clear that if she actually wants to win, which right now today, given the poll numbers, I would still give the edge to Donald Trump. Because we know that the polls typically when he's been on the ballot, and the polls are all over the place these days,

but typically when he's on the ballot, they tend to understate his support. I would not feel comfortable with where the polls are today if I was the Democratic Party, if I was Kamala Harris. If you actually want to win, you need to be clear about an affirmative economic agenda. And I think the numbers are really clear on that. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend.

I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband. It's a cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on Good Company,

the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming, how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there are so many stories out there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience

is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing, technology, entertainment, and sports collide. And hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and we need to talk. It's tapping in.

I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is.

And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like, he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's a good transition then to the ad. So we can see here kind of what she's going with. And this is part of where her getting the Biden campaign team and all of the apparatus transitioning over to her.

It may not be, you know, the benefit that some people think it is. It is in case she's bad at running, you know, she's bad at running organizations. She ran a disastrous campaign last time around. But their emphasis and their knowledge of like how to campaign and prosecute the case may not be exactly the one that you said, simply because Biden is not capable of doing that. He's not really capable of doing anything. Anyway, let's take a listen here to her very first ad and compare some of that messaging, looking at the polling and kind of where things could trend from there. Let's take a listen. In this election, we each face a question.

What kind of country do we want to live in? There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate. But us, we choose something different. We choose freedom. Freedom, freedom, I can't move. Freedom, don't be loose. Freedom, freedom, where are you?

Cause I need freedom too. The freedom not just to get by, but get ahead. The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to make decisions about your own body. We choose a future where no child lives in poverty. Where we can all afford health care. Where no one is above the law. We believe in the promise of America and we're ready to fight for it.

Because when we fight, we win. So join us. Go to KamalaHarris.com and let's get to work. I'ma keep running cause the winner don't quit on themselves. So, gives you a taste, kind of, of that. I don't know. What do you think? I mean, the abortion messaging on that is always very potent. I would say that that's one of the things that the Democrats rode to victory. But I didn't see enough there to try and convince people to vote for it. I mean, look, at the same time, it's our very first ad, right?

They need to get cross ads and all that. I wouldn't say it was a bad ad. It's one of those where as long as you hammer home abortion, the quote unquote freedom agenda, and you mentioned some economics there at the end, I wouldn't say it was the best. I wouldn't say it was bad either. It's definitely better than whatever Joe Biden was putting up there. And that's part of the difficulty in all this analysis. The normal rules don't apply because when your previous candidate was so old and people were so despondent, I mean, and that's one thing when you can't really count out so many people who

really hated Donald Trump and were just resigned to loss. They were in a state of what we can only describe as basically depression. And then that flipped on a complete dime. And their enthusiasm here from the white lady call or whatever, pink on the Zoom and all that. Listen, I can make fun of it all I want. And I do think it's a weird phenomenon. But I am not stupid enough to say, hey, that this is not gonna matter. This stuff matters a lot whenever it comes to voting. And given the potency they've been able to bring to politics from Ohio to Kentucky to Kansas, never count them out. Yeah, no, I actually think it's a good ad. I think it's a good opening ad. And mostly not because of the specific things that she says about abortion or children in poverty or healthcare or

whatever. It's more just, it's joyful. Yeah, it's a vibe. It feels fresh. It feels joyful. Joe Biden couldn't put it out. Donald Trump couldn't put it out. And so if you feel like the energy in this election, which I think it is, is we need something different. We want change.

We want a different vibe. To me, this ad, the essence of it captures that kind of sense of joy and this sense of a vibe shift and also the off the charts enthusiasm on the Democratic side for this new candidate. So as an opening pitch, I think it's I think it's actually very good. Also, it's also worth talking a little bit about the ad spend to this point. She hasn't she hasn't, I think, still really gone up on the air in a significant way. So Trump is dramatically outspending her at this point in the battleground states. The other thing that's worth mentioning is while Biden was absolutely tanking,

part of what was holding him up at all was he was dramatically outspending Trump in the battleground states. And even with that dramatic outspend, we saw the way the poll numbers were trending. So you can look at this and say, wow, even without really spending any money yet, and on the back of, of course, a wave of free media coverage, etc., Kamala Harris has really come up and given the Democrats a fighting chance here. To your point about the enthusiasm among women, we can put this up on the screen, presidential polling among suburban women. So Kamala Harris beating Donald Trump by 12 points among suburban women, 52 to 40. In the last Biden poll, it was basically tied.

Biden 44, Trump 41. This is Harris X, which tends to be kind of a Republican-leaning poll, but so I would just pay attention to the trend here. She is doing much, much, much, much better among this demographic set, just on the top line numbers. And then when you talk about, you know, I'm going to organize, I'm going to be on the white lady's call, I'm going to phone bank, I'm going to kick in some money, etc. Those numbers are even more astonishing what she's been able to pull off. Yeah, it's, look, again, I'm not, many people are like, how can you not point

out all the flaws? The whole point of the segment is to just show, look, she's still losing, but it's just you're in a better position than anybody Joe Biden ever could have been. As I said, I would probably give her 40, 60, 40. I'd put it in Trump direction. Well, I was giving Biden a 10% chance of victory. So that's a massive change if we think about what the percentage base are. And I think I made a joke, the ladies election. I really think that's what it's all gonna be about, especially whenever you've got, man, this is one of those where, again, previously, everyone decided after Hillary lost that it

was sexism or whatever that cost her. I don't think there was ever a better time to have a woman who was at the top of the Democratic Party. You have a huge amount of suburban white women, especially, who are voting for them in bigger numbers than ever before. And when abortion is the centerpiece, look, even as a guy talking about abortion, it's weird, right? Because one of the other things, what do people always say? Well, you don't know the stakes. I mean,

in a certain sense, they're not wrong. Like there is something like personal about the issue, not saying I'm not allowed to have an opinion, but it feels strange. But to have a woman who's quote unquote prosecuting the case on it or to talk about it, I think that's a strength. It's one of those where, look, I think you can drive people out more. You can talk about it in more personal terms. And especially whenever it's against Trump and the person who appointed all the people for Roe versus Wade, it's going to hit different than Joe Biden. I don't know, this weird like old energy or whatever about it. He never particularly found his sweet spot on abortion. He was just a beneficiary of it. Part of the reason why people like Gretchen Whitmer and other politicians like her have

been doing so much better than Joe Biden at a state by state level. So anyway, I would put that where I probably, this is probably the best time to ever have a Democrat who is a woman at the top of the ticket. She benefits from the fact she is the sitting vice president. So, you know, that helps people imagine her in the role. That's always the benefit of being the sitting vice president. So, you know, that helps people imagine her in the role. That's always the benefit of being the sitting vice president. That's why they so often go on to be their party's nominees and, you know, in history becoming the president of the United States. So she benefits from that. But she seems to be at this point kind of unsaddled by the Biden track record and the way people feel about the Biden administration, because they're not wrong to perceive she was on the ounce with them.

You know, so she has this at this point, this kind of sweet spot of getting the benefits of being in the office and having all of the credibility that that confers without having to be saddled with the record and the, you know, at least in public perception. I'm not saying that's the way people should look at it. But in terms of public perception, she's not burdened by the record and is being able to shake off the sort of Biden funk very quickly if we just look at her favorability rating. To your point on abortion, just to follow up there, there are very few things that I think Kamala Harris actually believes. Like she's finger in the wind. There's no doubt. You look

at her record in California versus in the Senate versus when she's running for president versus under Biden. I mean, she's all over the place. She clearly does, you know, wherever she thinks it's most advantageous to be. No doubt about that. The one issue where I think she that's probably not true is abortion. Yeah. Like I think she really believes it. I think she's very credible on it. And Joe Biden, he has throughout his career barely been pro-choice. He's been one of the most pro-life Democrats. He's Catholic. His own faith impacts the way he views the issue. And then his just identity is like an old dude who doesn't have a direct connect to the issue and hasn't had a direct connect to the issue for a

long time. Yeah, he was not a good messenger. He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't really talk about it much. And so on that vote, on that issue, which is very animating at this point, is the most animating culture war issue, I think, in the country right now. She is an effective, incredible messenger. And that's one of the reasons why I feel like actually, counter to the narrative of like, oh my God, we're too racist and sexist to elect a woman, I actually think that her gender in particular is an affirmative asset for her

in this moment as a Democrat. Yeah, and again, this is where you have to kind of put the media programming out and try and look at this objectively. It's like, in a time, I've done, how many monologues have I done about how we're bifurcating amongst gender lines? It's like, well, if you're going to be a predominantly female party, especially with the volunteers and with the swing base,

then you probably should have a woman at the top of the ticket. It's one of those where it's very obvious if you look at it. If you just look at where the trends are going, the base coalition, the most volunteers, I don't think it's an accident that the biggest Zoom call in history was literally white women for Kamala. And where's a lot of the money coming from? Who are the big female celebrities? Jennifer Aniston and all these other people. They're going to war. They're going to war. Exactly. It's like, look, I don't count them out. It's one of those where I've seen enough recent evidence in politics to show that they're very, very persuasive and that they can, again,

they vote more than anybody else. If I am Trump, I am J.D., they need to run as far away from abortion as humanly possible. Now, obviously, the Democrats are going to try to not to. So I still believe that this will, in a Trump victory, this will be the immigration economy election. I think all of the money that they're going to spend is Kamala Borders are, Kamala open border and everything. And then all the Democrats should be talking about is abortion and the economy as well. We can war over the economy and then the defining issue of either will come to decide who actually wins in these, especially the swing states.

Because that is where too, both abortion and immigration are very, very hot issues because they're genuinely contested. There are differing views. And I also would say dramatic, right? Because on the economy, it's one of those where, look, I think it's difficult to say and to parse the nuance of child tax credit, etc. for a lot of people. They're not looking at it in those terms. But let's be honest.

I mean, the daylight between Kamala and Trump on immigration is, you know, titanic. And same on abortion. You literally have somebody who appointed the justices that took down Roe versus Wade and somebody who says, I want to codify it nationwide. The difference between that, again, is titanic. And that is where I get the Barry Goldwater line, a time for choosing. I really believe that's where the sorting in the individual mind of people as to what's going to get them out to the ballot box, that's where it will come down to. And that's the actual issue set

that they're going to have to work on, both of them, because they're both going to try and spend billions of dollars either way to convince people on the other side. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me.

Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast

Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover

in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious. Somebody violated the FBI and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. The FBI went around to all their neighbors and said to them, do you think these people are good Americans? It's got heists, tragedy, a trial of the century,

and the goddamnedest love story you've ever heard. I picked up the phone and my thought was, this is the most important phone call I'll ever make in my life. I couldn't believe it. I mean, Brendan, it was divine intervention. You can now binge all 10 episodes of Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let me just ask you this before we move on to the VP thing. What do you think of the like, we actually are going to talk about this a little more in the VP conversation.

But what do you think of the like, these people are just weird thing? Yeah, I mean, look, this is, I'm going to say this for everybody else. It is very difficult for me to be objective. JD is somebody who I've known for a long time. I knew him on a personal level. So it is hard for me to sit here and to separate my own personal feelings and not. So I've tried to take a poll of the women in my life and others who I talk to, and I think it breaks along relatively partisan lines. So amongst my pro-life friends,

they don't care at all about the JD cat lady comments. That said, my Democratic friends, or like lean socially liberal, they were never going to vote for Trump either. But it does really piss them off. So my question is then, well, were you ever going to vote? Are you really going to vote on this? Were you already voting for Biden or not? The weird thing is where, look, and again, you know, this is very difficult for me because it's like, well, what do people find weird? I think for a lot of women, people, the whole childless cat lady thing, it pisses them off. But then if you're like right wing, you're like, okay, well, what pisses you off? What do you find weird? Like drag queen, transgenderism. They've got a bunch of trans flags here in the Kamala ad. I find that quite weird, but that's not what liberal people find weird. So that's where I'm like, it's going to be about

who you, what you personally find weird and objectionable. Does that make sense? That's the only way I can put it. Is it, I think it's very in the eye of the beholder, and I remain to be seen how it actually will be digested by the public. I think it's so much better messaging than the like, we must restore democracy. Yeah, that's fair. It's like the way that a normal person would talk about a person, a candidate, etc. And taking Trump and J.D. out of it because I don't want to, you know, it's uncomfortable for me. Also, no one needs your friend. We will have a panel tomorrow where we're going to go to war over the cat lady. So don't worry. But, you know, I think part of why Republicans underperformed in 2022

was we've been saying extremism. Yes. Right. Stop this deal. And, you know, abortion and this whole this group of issues that just read as like fringe extremism. Weird is sort of like a normie way of defining that is like you guys are in these, you know, weird online niche subcultures floating crazy ideas like, oh, if you have more kids you have, the more you get to vote, which is pretty antithetical to the way most people feel like, okay, one person, one vote seems like kind of a thing we've been doing here for a while and seems like a pretty good bedrock principle. So I think that putting that vibe and that label over everything they do is honestly kind of Trumpy. Like the way he's in the past with Crooked

Hillary, for example, been able to tag her with a label that then everything kind of feeds into and it creates this overarching image. I actually think it is very effective. And it's interesting, and this can help us segue after I get your reaction to the VP thing, because it was Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who came up with that, the former high school teacher who has this sense of how to talk to normal people very clearly, who had workshopped this and gotten big response to it. And that's he says it on cable news and it just takes off because it landed in this way of like, yeah, that's that's it. That's the way to kind of frame this whole thing that's going on. I would put it this way. It connects to why Republicans lost in 2022,

which was, it was about election denialism, right? It was about the whole like stop the steal vibe of Trump sycophancy. But a lot of it is, and this is where, look, this is my biggest difference from JD and many other Republicans is I'm not Christian. I'm not like a hardcore Christian. And that is weird because in America today, much to the chagrin of my Christian friends, we are a very socially liberal country compared to where we were 10 years ago, compared to where we go 25 years ago. We live in a different America. Social libertarianism is the predominant strain of how most people view social issues, even on the trans thing.

It's not so much that the objection for the average person is like, oh, well, we need to block this and ban it. It's like, well, some people should be able to make their own choice up until the age of 18, but let's keep it away from kids, right? And that's actually very different than the way if you were to ask conservative Catholics, they're like, no, we need to ban this straight up. And then same with abortion, where anybody who's trying to tell you what to do, the social ninnyism, there is a social ninnyism of the BLM moment where everyone's like, if you're not actively anti-racist, then you're a racist. Like, hold on, don't tell me who the fuck I am, all right? Like, I have my own ideas. Don't tell me to use certain pronouns, et cetera. Well, this is kind of the, like, as a person who grew up amongst

evangelical Christians in the 90s in Texas, I understand this viscerally and deeply, where when people try to tell you how to live your life whenever what you're doing, it's freaking annoying. Part of the reason I hate the modern left. That's exactly the same why. So there it gets to the telling you what to do and being – because authoritarian is not even the right word. But being prescriptive based on something that the vast majority of the Americans no longer quote-unquote believe in, that is where I think it probably connects more than anything. And I think that's the kindest way I can put this. Well, there's a whole ecosystem incentive also, and I see this on the left too, where the way to get clout is to be as like edgy and controversial. Yeah, that's correct. So specifically with regard to J.D. Vance and him

talking about parents, whatever, like if you're going to come out in favor of a child tax credit, first of all, our tax code already advantages. That is what's trying to piss me off. But hold on, let me just finish my thought. if you're going to come out in favor of child tax, OK, 70 percent of the country agrees with you. Yeah. But he intentionally phrased it in a way to make it feel edgy and like counterculture, because that's what is rewarded in online ecosystems. And he, you know, he's kind of had to, like, prove himself to the MAGA base because he was the guy who was saying Trump may be America's Hitler and all of this. So he's had to prove himself really hardcore. So he phrases it in a way rather than like, hey, you know, like parenthood is amazing and we need to help parents and families and kids, et cetera. Instead, it's like we need to judge and punish those who are childless and don't have kids. And so he framed it in the most possible,

intentionally framed it in the most like off-putting, like what the hell are you talking about? This is weird kind of a way because all of the rewards in the ecosystem are to being edgy and fringe versus, you know, in a previous media ecosystem, all of the rewards would be, how do I frame my policy in a way that appeals broadly to people and makes the best case for it and doesn't like instantly repel half the population? I don't think it's a mistake that the clips that have gone viral about J.D. are all running in the Republican primary. That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right. 2021, right? And that's when he was on Tucker. And that's when he was trying to be as MAGA as

possible. And I don't think it's a mistake that those of what's gone most viral, because that's not really how he's talked since post-2022, right? And that is, I would say, a lesson to people out there. It's also very indicative of the left, right? Where we had the same, like, you have to prove your bona fides and shibboleths. And actually, a lot of the Republican attack ads on Kamala are coming from the Democratic debates and the primary. Don't think it's a mistake. Healthcare to illegal immigrants. You're not running on that in a general election, but there's a clip and it exists. So yeah, I think you're correct. There definitely is a reward system that is built and all of that. I will just say on the policy, seeing Dave Portnoy and these people freak out

about it. He's like, why should I have to pay taxes more as a childless person? It's like, well, you already do, dude. The US tax code is built to incentivize marriage and having children, just so we all understand. Dependence and the marriage penalty, quote unquote, or whatever, the marriage incentive where you have a higher deduction limit, et cetera. So the US tax code is already built that way, I'm just saying. So all of you, if you think that the progressive tax code or whatever is fair, then you agree with that baseline message. And that's the only thing that's annoyed me is there is this weird libertarian instinct. They're like, if you can't have kids or if you can't afford to have kids, then you shouldn't have any kids. And it's like, well, what society we do want to live in? Mr.

Portnoy is worth $200 million or whatever. So I will just say that. But that is a tension. I agree with you. Although I do feel like Portnoy, I don't know all the ins and outs of his politics, but I feel like it could. I mean, he is like a conservative Republican. He's a libertarian. But that makes sense from a libertarian perspective. His position is consistent with a libertarian perspective. Absolutely.

No, you're right. But, I mean, I think that's a stupid view. I don't agree with it. Yeah, it's like, obviously, if you live in a society, the tax code is already built. The tax code is built to incentivize at a personal level, getting married, having children, starting a business, and owning real estate. Basically, those four. Actually, now solar, if we include the IRA. I think that's fine. I think those are good things. We should use the tax code to try and have more socially desirable outcomes. 99.9% of people at an individual level would agree with me on that. Then yes, whenever it comes to the framing,

et cetera, I would just say that the incentive structures for winning a Republican primary do not always obviously come out to being beneficial in a general election. And that is part of what led so many Republicans down a path to defeat back in 2022. Blake Masters is another perfect example where you had a guy running in Arizona who has to out MAGA everybody else. And what does he do? He starts talking about not just repealing Roe versus Wade and national pro-life legislation. He starts talking about going after like Griswold and like birth control, right? And people are like, whoa, hold on a second, dude. What's happening here? And again, that was an incentive structure that was built in to winning a hard right. I mean, if you look at what he's in

running right now, him versus, I don't even know this guy's name, Abe Hamada or whatever. This is a crazy primary. It's all about who's more MAGA and American. Trump has now endorsed both of them was the most Trump thing

of all time. Carrie Lake is backing Abe. So even figuring out who's the most MAGA in the race, if you guys want to go see Real Madness, go look at some of the ads.

They're running against each other. But again, the other problem with Blake Masters was that he just came off as weird. He just came off as a weird guy. There's no question. Like in his ads, in his public appearances,

you were just like, hmm, this guy is weird. And then you hear, you know, his ideas also feel weird and fringe, whatever. But that's why I think the tag does work. I do think that it is effective. But yeah, I mean, it's going to be interesting to see how they respond to all of this. And I also don't want to overstate how much the VP pick matters. Yes, that's a good point.

But I do think that having J.D. Vance on the ticket with Trump, especially now that you have Kamala Harris as the Democrats' choice. It makes the contrast more stark. It makes it easier for them to land those sorts of attacks. And then just one other thing that's like, just my nerdy self gets irritated about this conversation is like, it was Democrats who supported the child tax credit overwhelmingly. So if we're in the business of, we should have a child tax credit. It's like, you're right, Kamala Harris supported one

and the Republicans didn't, so. Yeah, fair point. Especially if you're talking about Mitch McConnell and all of that. I think my advice for the Republicans is stop playing the media game. I saw Vivek being like, it's not weird, it's Jew.

And I'm like, guys, when you are defending, what is the ironclad rule in politics? When you're explaining yourself or defending yourself, you lost. So what do we do? We don't talk about weird. We're talking about immigration because that's the number one area where most Americans agree with Republicans and Trump. And we're not talking about abortion. That's the only thing that we're talking about. In fact, something that J.D. did, which I thought was smart, is he, I don't exactly know what happened, but Kamala was like,

see, watching him transform back into a normal Republican is interesting to me because in the primary and all of that, a lot of this didn't come out. But you forget how general election politics really works. And something about Kamala questions, like, what has he ever done for this country? I think it was something like that. And he's like, I was a Marine in Iraq. I served my country and I raised, you know, I fought for my country. And I was like, oh, this is such a return to like 04, just like almost like Republican tropes about who served and who's not. But you forget that that actually lands with a lot of people.

He has not, you know, defended himself or whatever against weird. And I would not play that game. That's not a game that I think you're going to win because it's a frame which you don't even want to be in the conversation. You're fighting on their battleground. Exactly. It's just like if Hillary Clinton was out there being like, I'm not crooked. It's like, okay, well now we're just fighting on there. She did fight on there. Right. And that didn't work, right? I mean, so yeah, anytime you're fighting on the battleground, your enemy lays down, you are likely losing. And it's something that Trump has been brilliant. Yeah. Changed the. He is has that has been his greatest political skill

has being able to set the terms of the conversation. And so I think it has to be driving him insane that, you know, we're weeks after his assassination attempt and no one's talking about that, like searches for it have fallen off a cliff. All of the cable news discussion, et cetera, news media discussion is around Kamala, who her VP pick is going to be in. Isn't Shady Vance weird and Childish Cat Ladies? And it has been a rare period where Democrats have actually been setting the terms of the conversation. And I don't think that they'll be able to continue that indefinitely, because this is a skill he continues to possess. And he'll say something

wild and send everybody else into a frenzy to discuss it, et cetera, et cetera. But that's part of why she has come up in the polls so quickly. The race is completely reset is because they have been very effective at, and listen, the media wants them to succeed. So I don't want to deny that outside of Fox News wants them to succeed, but they are playing playing the cards they've been dealt very well right now, which almost never happens to Democrats. So the media is calling it honeymoon phase and I think I totally agree with that. That's it, we are in the honeymoon phase of the Democrats. There will be a disastrous interview coming soon.

There will be a Trump comment coming soon. There will be, I mean, listen, we're going to the DNC. You know some crazy shit's gonna go down at the DNC. I don't know what. Maybe some uncommitted delegates are going to scream in the middle of the thing. Maybe somebody's going to try and challenge her. The speech is going to go wrong. Plagiarism.

We never know. And that's the thing in America. If the last two months have taught you anything, is that things can change. We don't freaking know anything. Things can change, folks. So never just think that whatever the current dynamic is, is going to go on forever because it could be that two months from now, we won't even remember this entire conversation. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone,

I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95

has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month, and we need to talk. It's tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes.

Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just

being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious.

Somebody violated the FBI, and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. The FBI went around to all their neighbors and said to them, do you think these people are good Americans? It's got heists, tragedy, a trial of the century, and the goddamnedest love story you've ever heard. I picked up the phone and my thought was, this is the most important phone call I'll ever make in my life. I couldn't believe it. I mean, Brendan, it was divine intervention. You can now binge all 10 episodes of Divine Intervention on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get to the VP conversation that I've teased like 18 times at this point. So we're getting a clearer picture of who the top candidates are likely to

be. It's actually funny because two different news organizations reported two different, this is definitely her top three. But it looks like the top contenders are Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, my personal fave. He's a former high school teacher. He's a veteran. He flipped a very red district in Minnesota. He wins the state easily. I'm gonna play high school teacher. He's a veteran. He flipped a very red district in Minnesota. He wins the state easily. I'm going to play in a minute. He speaks very comfortably and easily about middle class issues. And he's actually the one that came up with the weird tag that I do think is effective. Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, whose favorability ratings in the state are sky high. New poll had him at like 61% approval rating

in the state of Pennsylvania. He won his election for governor so easily running against a guy who, again, a lot of people thought was pretty weird. He sounds like Jewish Obama, many are saying. I think when we play some of him, you will see that as well. Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky. Andy is the most popular Democratic governor in the entire country, even in spite of the fact that, first of all, he was governor. He got himself reelected. He was governor during a very fraught political time in terms of COVID in what is now a hard red state. And yet he still has very high approval rating. He is pitching himself hard for the job and really trying to strike like an Appalachian contrast with J.D. Vance as well.

That's been effective at times. You have another governor, North Carolina's Governor Roy Cooper. He and Kamala have known each other for quite a while, going back to their time as AG, another Democrat winning in a fairly red state, raising the question, especially with the different coalition Kamala brings to the table. Hey, if we have Roy Cooper on the ticket, is it possible that North Carolina in play? Joe Biden only lost it by less than two points last time around, so question mark there. And then the other one people are talking about is Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, astronaut, swing state, etc.

He also has a pretty high approval rating within the state of Arizona. Well-known guy, has some issues, unions are not in love with him. And then there's also the issue of initially, if he were to be VP, the Democratic governor would pick his replacement. However, that replacement then would have to run again in 2026, I think it is. So a little bit, you know, dicier in terms of the Senate and giving up that seat. In any case, we put together, because we wanted to go deep on each of these as her pick is relatively imminent. We'll probably get it, I think, within like the next week. We'll learn who her top pick is.

So we wanted to go deep on each of these individuals, give you guys a real sense of them. Our team has done a fantastic job pulling together some clips so you can get, you know, a sense of the type of rhetoric and their affect, their vibe, so to speak. So let's go ahead and start with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz talking here recently. Let's take a listen. Why is it so hard to understand when somebody else gets some rights? It's not like a damn pie. Oh, somebody got a bigger piece of pie. I don't get it. Rights aren't that way. There's enough for everybody. There's enough for everybody to be included.

Same thing with jobs. Same thing with housing. Same thing with health care. You saw it. We are not going to allow them to make the case. Yes, they're a threat, but we're not going to stay in their frame. We're not going to stay where they're at. We're not going to play their game. We called them out for the weird nonsense that they believe. And we presented a different argument to the American public, one where everybody matters, one where we can achieve, one where we solve problems. So he's got a lot of pluses in terms. He's a very good communicator. He's got a good, like, natural everyman vibe. For those of you who are just listening,

he's there in just like a T-shirt and a hat, and it doesn't feel try hard. It feels very natural. He flipped a red congressional seat. This is James Medlock tweeted this this morning, in a largely rural area, held it even in a cycle where Trump won that district by plus 15. He's the only Democrat to win that district since 1992. Like I said, very popular in Minnesota. And he has the rare combination of having the moderate everyman vibe. But his track record in the state is really quite impressive. With a one seat majority, they passed universal free school lunches they did a you know great legislation on labor on wages on the environment sort of across the board in terms of the progressive priorities so you would be very much pleasing i can tell you the progressive young base of the party in particular who are very walls pilled at this point i think for good reason but he also has that like swing

state appeal and Midwestern appeal that could be a real electoral asset. And the last thing I'll say about him, Sagar, is, as I mentioned before, he is the one who in his sort of like cable news VP auditions came up with the tag of weird that has been rapidly embraced by Kamala Harris. So I would think that that would be a point in his favor that he's already sort of proven his effectiveness in terms of messaging against the GOP. He's not bad, normal vibe, all of that.

I would say on balance, a stronger Democrat than many others. My only case against him would be Harris is up by plus six in Minnesota. And we're in the fight of our lives in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, in Wisconsin. The translation of Minnesota to the rest of the states may make some sense, but it seems better to me to pick an overwhelmingly popular Democratic governor of that state if we're just going for PA alone. Remember too, PA is probably the most contested of the big three Midwestern states that Trump is probably

the most popular in. And he got shot in Pennsylvania, let's not forget that either. So all of those things combined, I'm still just not sure he's the best pick. So let's take a look at, you're talking about Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, who is doing his very best Obama impression at all times, popular in the state, got easily elected. Let's take a listen to him. Now, Gabe, you could not have a clear contrast in this race. You could not have a clear contrast between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. And let me tell you something.

He's pretty afraid. Y'all see, he's backing out of the debate now. He's afraid to stand toe-to-toe with our vice president. And you know why that is. It's not just because she's a skilled debater. It's not just because she's got the right positions on the issues that matter most to the good people of Pennsylvania and this country.

It's because he can't run away from his record any longer. Think about it. Four years as president. Guy stacks the NLRB with a bunch of corporate folks who have tried to rip away your rights every step of the way. We can't go back to that. And he can't defend that. Doing his best Obama impression. Listen, you can hate him, but listen to this. Fox News favorability. I hate it so much. Fox News favorability. Kamala Harris,

49-49. This is in the state of Pennsylvania. Donald Trump, 46-43. Josh Shapiro, 61-32. He is up there with favorability with Andy Beshear in terms of de-governors in at least swing and or red states. So a 61% approval rating, a two-thirds increase for favorability versus disfavor in the 49-49 battleground state, that's as good as it gets. So here's a couple of issues with Shapiro. First that's, I mean, that's as good as it gets. So here's a couple of issues with Shapiro. First of all, I fucking hate that fake Obama impression. There is an entire generation of Democratic politicians, Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg,

this dude apparently, who modeled their entire speaking cadence after Barack Obama. His might be the most shameless I have ever heard. Yeah, well, his whisper combined with the upswing. You can just hear him, his next line being like, don't move, vote. You know, no, okay. But that's only, that's just my personal, like, my personal issue in terms of my irritation with his speech cadence. But in terms of, you know, what could be some knocks on him, because there's no doubt the electoral record and favorability is impressive,

you're looking at a swing state, etc., critical swing state. Number one, he compared pro-Palestine protesters to the KKK. And all of the youthful excitement and willingness to give Kamala a chance, all of that stuff, you can instantly deflate it by having someone who went so hard against the protesters. And that is a distinction from the other candidates in the race who either were quiet or in Tim Walz's case actually was, you know, sort of like affirmatively encouraging, like of the uncommitted movement, etc. So I think Kamala's strength right now, the reason she's come up in the polls so quickly is in large part because she's doing so much better with young voters. You risk that if you have a choice like Josh Shapiro. So that's one. Number two, he's got an issue with unions.

He's a big, this is again an Obama thing, big charter school guy. So you've got an issue with unions. Teachers unions. And unions in general. And Kamala has been close with SEIU and other parts of the labor movement, so that could be an issue. The other issue is that there are allegations he covered up sexual harassment within his office. So those are some of the potential drawbacks for Josh Shapiro. We'll see. I would still pick him.

I think that the Palestine stuff, I think, look, I still think it's relatively marginal if we look at the overall number of people. Young people don't vote, period. They may care about it. Doesn't mean they're going to vote at higher levels. Boomers are disproportionately much more pro-Israel. This is the suburban ladies election, not necessarily the college student election. It'd be nice if they come. All of these constituencies matter, though. Yes, but I think the suburban ladies, the suburban 38-year-old ladies matter a lot more, I think, than younger people.

Also, in general, these young people, you would have to presume that they're a single-issue voter on Israel-Gaza, which I do not believe at all. I don't think there's less than 300,000 people in this country who are going to single-issue vote on Israel-Gaza. So that means people are multifaceted, and a lot of them are either going to pull the thing or not. And so I think they probably will come out to vote for her because all she's got to do is throw some crumbs in their direction and they'll probably come along anyways. They can rationalize in your head. Second, on the teachers union thing, I agree that it's not necessarily like the best thing, but you know, on the charter schools and all that union, this is very unfortunate, but union membership is near all time lows in the United States. So organized SEIU coming out to vote, even Teamsters vote and all that stuff,

it doesn't matter as much as it did, let's say, in the 1970s. Sure. But they're still an important influential part of the Democratic coalition in terms of fundraising, in terms of organizing, et cetera. And so I think you're right with regard to young people in terms of voting. But all of the enthusiasm that we're talking about, like that matters as well, that you're going to have people who are out there door knocking, phone banking, memeing on, you know, with the zoomers on TikTok, all of that stuff. And you risk that with the Shapiro where you do not risk that with the walls. So, you know, that's why I think he's a safer pick. Nate Silver did a big analysis of like how much it matters where a VP pick is from. And the home state advantage that is conferred is

like very, very, very, very. Al Gore is a classic example. Tennessee. Yeah. Here's my counter to that. We're this is an exceptional time. Kamala coming in so late in the game. I think the VP pick for her is going to matter more than any modern VP pick in modern history, simply because it's definitional. It's like who is coming on board. Here is where I think Shapiro too, being such a unique figure. A governor is a very different pick than a senator. Let's be honest, like senator is much more of a Washington figurehead to a state like Al Gore was. As opposed to the popular governor who people in Pennsylvania know and like having him on

the ticket. I'm just saying, there's a lot of confounding factors, so you're not wrong. But it's like me saying debates don't matter in history. It's like, yeah, they don't matter until they do. Right. And so this is where, if there was ever a time where the VP pick for her mattered the most, I think it would be this election. All right. We've got another popular governor, this one of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, who got himself elected and then reelected.

As I said before, most popular Democratic governor in the entire country, in spite of it being the state of Kentucky. A lot of that, I think, not being in the state anymore, but a lot of that, I think, has come from the fact that he, number one, has leaned into a populist message in a populist state of Kentucky. He got elected initially on the back of the teacher strike wave and rejection of these sort of like, you know, cutting pensions and going after public services. That was very effective for him. And then he has brought a lot of jobs to the state of Kentucky. A lot of these new battery manufacturing plants are coming to Kentucky. So he's had a record that has been very clear in terms of like delivering benefits. And it happens that a lot of those jobs have been like new economy, green energy jobs. So that's what has been a strength for him in terms of the state of Kentucky.

Let's take a listen to a little bit of how he sounds. This is not my first speech on the back of a pickup truck. If you don't know me, I'm the guy that last November beat Mitch McConnell's handpicked candidate. I'm the guy that last November beat Donald Trump's handpicked candidate. Are you ready to vote? Are you last November beat Donald Trump's hand-picked candidate. Are you ready to vote? Yes! Are you ready to beat Donald Trump? Yes!

Are you ready to beat J.D. Vance? Yes! Are you ready to elect Kamala Harris president of the United States of America? God bless. Thank you all. Let's win this race. So that was him at a campaign stop in Georgia, a Kamala Harris campaign event in Georgia. You know, he really came out.

He's been pitching himself pretty hard. Like he's been he's been trying pretty hard in the VP stakes. I think it's fair to say. But, you know, one of the things that went viral for him was him making a contrast with J.D. Vance and going after him like you're not from here. You're not really a representative of Appalachia. And Andy's got that, you know, that nice country drawl and his his red state record. Downside for him is it's obviously not a swing state. So, you know, does that factor into the decision here? Does he come off as trying a little too too hard in terms of

getting the VP nomination? That's another issue. One point in his favor and Josh Shapiro's favor and Roy Cooper's favor is they all were attorneys general. And they all coincided at least briefly, I think, with Kamala Harris's tenure as attorney general. So if she's looking for another, like, we're going to prosecute the case or even to someone that she knows and has familiarity with, that's an asset for those three candidates in particular. Andy's a talented politician, but it's not 1992 Bill Clinton era where, you know what I'm saying? Like we're not going for Southern Democrats who might be like that constituency that he could flip doesn't exist. Like we're going all in for 271 electoral votes. We need to go Midwest here. That's the only logical choice that makes any sense to me. We're playing to win in the game

of pure margins of more than 1% in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Georgia, great. Arizona, great. Nevada, great. But we actually need to win this election. So for her, I think if you look at that, picking somebody from an R plus 33 state just doesn't make any damn sense. The case for him would be, you know, it's not about I'm going to bring you deliver Kentucky. It's I have a proven track record of winning over skeptical people. And, you know, the Southern accent, it just codes as conservative. It just does. And so the, you know, white, he's like the whitest man on the planet. People are sharing the picture of him and his family and whatever. They're like, if you're looking for the whitest person available,

this is your guy. So he codes moderate to conservative. And I think he's governed in relatively moderate to conservative way of Kentucky, but he is good on labor and some key issues there. So in any case, that would be the case for him is not like, I'm going to deliver you the state of Kentucky, but I have a track record of appealing to the type of voters that are going to be most skeptical of you. And you can see it in the fact that I got elected and reelected. So I think that would be the case for him. It's a fine case. I don't think it exists today. I actually think in an open primary is a very different story. I think in an open general election, but in today, who she is, where she's running and who she needs to win, I don't think it makes as much sense, especially when you consider who he's up against. I also do think he's trying too hard.

I mean, in a certain sense, I don't blame him because I'm like, listen, Kentucky governor, where do you go? And isn't he already rich? He comes from a political dynasty. It's like, well, what else? What else do we have left? VP, that sounds great. A heartbeat away from the presidency. So I don't blame him per se, but this is politics, man. You can't wear your ambition too much on your sleeve. Yeah. You know, he does come from a political dynasty family. I don't know.

I don't know that he personally is like that wealthy. He's not like one of the super blue bloods in the state of Kentucky. But he definitely, the limit for- Only five million. Like you're not going to win a Senate seat as a Democrat in Kentucky at this point, even if you are Andy Beshear. It's just... Exactly. That ship has sailed. So yeah, he's term limited out as governor. What else is he going to do? So he's making the pitch hard. This is his chance. Or maybe if this doesn't work out for him and then Kamala loses,

which is still more likely than not, I would say, then he's built up some sort of a national profile that he could use to make a potential 2028 run. So I don't blame him for really taking the moment to get out there as best he can either. I knew the guy a little bit when I lived in the state of Kentucky and he does just come off as like minivan dad, like, you know, in spite of coming from the political dynasty family, he does come off as very sort of like normal, relatable, et cetera. He does not come off as a superstar, charismatic, political talent. That is not him whatsoever. But in any case, let's move on to the next governor on our list, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, which I read a whole thing about how he doesn't pronounce his last name Cooper. He pronounced it with like, you know,

the way you say foot with the O-O and foot. Cooper. Cooper. Apparently it's like a Eastern North Carolina pronunciation, but let me tell you, buddy, the whole nation's going to be calling you Roy Cooper. Governor of North Carolina, obviously red state, popular figure, has governed as like a very sort of cautious, moderate type politician, exactly what you would expect from a North Carolina Democrat. Let's take a listen to him. Donald Trump won North Carolina in 2020 by 1.3 percent. This was his closest win and Joe Biden's closest loss. This was during COVID, during 2020. Democrats really weren't doing the door-to-door, taking people to the polls work that Republicans continued to do through COVID.

I believe that North Carolina is definitely on the table to win. I've told the president that. I told the vice president that when she and I talked the other day. It was clear that the Biden-Harris campaign was targeting North Carolina. I think it's important for them to continue to do that. The threat to democracy that Donald Trump brings, the threat to women's reproductive freedom that he brings. And I think that's a message that will resound not only in North Carolina, but across the country. So if you look up generic Democrat in the textbook, like this is the guy. He's on a

central cast and you can imagine playing like the president in a movie. I guess those are the advantages for him. He's got that look. He's just got that very like, you know, standard politician kind of vibe. And that's kind of how he's governed. The other big edge, I think, he has in addition to being popular in the state of North Carolina, which maybe the Kamala Harris team wants to put in play, the other big advantage that he has is, I think, he and Kamala have the longest personal relationship. And that may count for a lot. You know, if I was her and I was thinking about this choice and thinking about who I wanted to serve in the White House with for four, potentially eight years, I think I would really value actually knowing the person and having some track record of comfort with them because this is going to be

a very important person in your life. So to me, that's kind of the most compelling reason why I think he's on the short list. To me, listen, as a communicator, he doesn't really do anything for me. It's not like a negative. He's fine. I just see he doesn't get my heart racing. But I think he would definitely be a do no harm type of candidate and could potentially help them to make North Carolina a theoretical possibility. You could do worse. Yeah, this is where I'm a little bit more skeptical. The only thing in the case is the personal relationship. Look, throughout history, almost always, the vice presidential pick and the president are not close. It's very rare to have a close vice president and president.

The president always distrusts the vice president because they think they want to be president. It's one of the reasons that Dick Cheney was very unique because he never wanted to be president. Thus, he was able to at least have some credibility with Bush. But that is an aberration. You know, the Kamala-Biden relationship is the typical one, where you put all the shit jobs on them, you make them look bad, you squeeze them out. They think that they're the heir appointed. They beef with the personal staff. And then something happens, like Biden's side not to run, and they end up having to endorse them anyway. And there's a lot of bad blood that eventually gets written about 10, 15 years from

now. That is the typical vice presidential relationship. Yeah. Well, part of one of the knocks I've seen on Shapiro is that he is one that wears his ambition very heavily. I could see that. That's true. And so if she's worried about that, about him being more interested in his own political climb than her political climb, that could be a knock on him. But then again, all of these guys are comparatively young, comparative to Joe Biden and Donald Trump. So I would think that any one of them would have their eye ultimately on the presidency if they got picked for the slot. So the last candidate that we have on the list is the one senator who has been consistently

named as one of the potential top choices. This is Arizona's Mark Kelly. Let's take a listen to him. What is wrong about a woman who has been raped to not want to be able to terminate a pregnancy? What's wrong with that? I have two daughters and a granddaughter. I really worry about their rights if Donald Trump is elected again and J.D. Vance is the vice president. I mean, that really concerns me. So there you get a sense of him. Again, he's not an electric communicator, but he does have a good reputation in the state of Arizona. If you think that he would bring something in terms of helping to deliver that state, perhaps you pick him. This also would be someone that Kamala Harris knows, I think, fairly well.

So perhaps that's an added advantage. There is some reporting that this is like the guy Obama wants. I don't know how much that counts for. I don't know if that's true. And I don't know how much that counts for. But it does feel like Democrats are kind of like fall in love with this, you know, astronaut hero persona with him. So I could see him getting picked. The issue for him, two issues for him. Number one, the Senate seat. Look, a Democratic governor gets to appoint the replacement, so that gives them a good leg up in terms of reelection. But you still are then making it a lot iffier that Democrats will be able to hold on to that seat.

And the other thing is unions don't like him. He was basically drag-taking and screaming through this process to supporting the PRO Act. Big red flag there. There were some other nominees that the Biden administration wanted to get through that were important to labor that he was skeptical or not supportive of. So he doesn't have a great track record with labor. Maybe that's a hindrance for him. The sleeper thing for him, he's actually a big border hawk. He won his race

by running against Biden on the border, which a lot of people didn't expect. But anyway, I mean, that's not a bad thing. Well, I do think that's one of the things that the Harris people would consider is like, okay, does this person help me with our weakest issue, which is immigration? Yeah, so that would be the only, also look, America loves an astronaut. There's a reason that it's a very selective program. And you know how many astronaut politicians we have? Bill Nelson to all these senators, people love it. It's a legacy of like the Mercury 7 program. So I wouldn't put it past, you know, that being a thing. He also, you know, in terms of his own record and the personal story, there's some inspiration there with Gabby Gifford. So I think that's not something I would discount per se. I would

simply not pick him because it'd be bad for the large D Democratic Party. And I don't think Arizona is in play. But the border issue is one where he would lend her some credibility on the issue. And now let's think about this too. Whoever she picks is going to go up against J.D. All J.D. talks about these days on the campaign trail is immigration. So you need somebody who could stand toe to toe there with immigration. That said, how many people are basing their vote on the vice president debate? Let's be honest, it's like zero. So, you know, these are all like hypotheticals that I'm just bringing up.

Yeah. Just making the case that for one that exists. Yeah. I mean, my my overriding assumption is that whoever I want to be the least is probably the person they're going to pick. So it's going to be Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro. And by the way, I've met Mark Kelly and I've met Gabby Giffords both before and after she was shot. And they're very kind, lovely, like on a personal level people. It's not personal. I just, you know, labor is important to me. It's been bad on labor. So it's not, not my pick, but let's just, we'll just quickly go through these last couple of elements. You can put up the next one on the screen. So apparently the big union choice is Tim Walz, governor, as I mentioned before, before of Minnesota. They like him. They feel comfortable with him. He was, you know,

he was a public school teacher, so he was in a union himself. That always helps. Let's go ahead and put the next one up on the screen. This we mentioned before at the New York Times. The quiet bond, Kamala Harris forged with three VP contenders. I was a little bit wrong in what I said earlier. Roy Cooper and Andy Beshear both directly overlapped with Kamala as attorneys general. Josh Shapiro came into the job as she was leaving her post and as Trump entered the White House, but she may like that they share that AG background. There was one report that she wanted someone with quote unquote executive experience that would seem to indicate a governor, not Mark Kelly.

But who knows if that's true or not? And then the last thing that I mentioned before, which might be a point in Tim Walz's favor, is the fact that he really came up with this framing, the weird framing, which the Harris campaign has gone all in on. And I'm already seeing signs at their rallies of like, these people are weird or whatever. But this is a press release where they said, this also is emblematic of the massive tone shift since the Biden team has become the Harris team. They put out this press release. The headline is statement on a 78 year old criminal's Fox News appearance. And one of the talking points here is Trump is old and quite weird question mark. So they really are leaning into that and embrace that. So for what it's worth, that's where we are. Yeah, it could be a sign. We will. I will see that. That's my only thing. I'm not I'm not really going to make a guess. I think there's an equal chance.

I would say relatively equal chance between Tim Walz and Josh Shapiro. I would say those are the front runners. In my opinion, she could shock us by picking a Kelly or Cooper. Yeah, I don't think Bashir is in the running at all. I don't see it. Like I said, I just assume whoever I want to list is going to be the one that gets picked. Josh Shapiro, congratulations. Over the past six years of making my true crime

podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her.

And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into,

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, ampl amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there

was my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious do they like rap along now? Yeah cause I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like yo your dad's like really the GOAT

like he's a legend so he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war.

J. Edgar Hoover was furious. Somebody violated the FBI, and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. The FBI went around to all their neighbors and said to them, do you think these people are good Americans? It's got heists, tragedy, a trial of the century, and the goddamnedest love story you've ever heard. I picked up the phone and my thought was, this is the most important phone call I'll ever make in my life. I couldn't believe it. I mean, Brendan, it was divine intervention. You can now binge all 10 episodes of Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now let's turn a little bit to RFK. There's some really interesting new reporting about how the Trump campaign was desperate to get a quasi-endorsement from RFK and what the details of that meeting look like. Let's put this up there on the screen from Mediate. And here's what they say. Basically,

there was, as we know, that private conversation between RFK and Trump, of which the video, some of what was released by RFK Jr.'s son. Well, it seems that behind the scenes, Donald Trump was desperate to get an endorsement from RFK Jr.,s son. Well, it seems that behind the scenes, Donald Trump was desperate to get an endorsement from RFK Jr., who he believes is eating into his base of support. So in their July 15th meeting, Trump, quote, attempted to persuade Kennedy to endorse his campaign, citing polling. Kennedy refused. Instead, Trump and Kennedy came up with an idea about making a unity announcement in the wake of the assassination attempt. Trump was trying to get the endorsement from Kennedy.

Kennedy was not keen on dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump. Trump's team then requested that Kennedy draft a, quote, unity government proposal, which would outline what they plan to work on together, including vaccines and government corruption. They requested that the pledge also outline what role Kennedy would like should Trump become president again. Kennedy campaign sent the pledge also outline what role Kennedy would like should Trump become president again. Kennedy campaigned, sent the pledge, never received a response. The document says, quote, that there are many issues Trump and Kennedy do not agree on, but the unity pledge was important for the nation after the assassination attempt. In addition, the pledge outlined a role for Kennedy leading the HHS department, which is one of the largest, I think the largest federal agency, Health and Human Services. According to them, Kennedy was not going to endorse Trump, but agreed to draft in the unity government proposal pledged by the Trump team. Trump

wanted, quote, something fairly desperately to make people think Kennedy was in support of him. But in lieu of not giving him an endorsement, he agreed to the pledge. Trump was then anxious to move forward with announcing the pledge before the RNC was over and was texting that Monday night with urgency. Kennedy was prepared to do the pledge with the RNC, but then the conversation halted, quote, it is unclear why the Trump campaign went dark. So that's some of the details of what we have there. I mean, here's the thing. Trump is right. He desperately needs RFK to endorse him. That's basically, I mean, if we look at the five-way polling, which we'll get to in a little bit, he is basically costing him a ton of votes, especially in critical states.

I would not be surprised if RFK Jr. stays on the ballot if the margin of victory is such that Trump is cost the votes in places like Michigan and elsewhere. But I mean, it's not entirely fair to say because maybe those people wouldn't vote at all. But there's an argument at least to be made that there is a decent chunk of RFK Jr. support that if RFK Jr. to endorse Trump might put him over the edge in a lot of these battleground states. It's very logical, these two having some sort of an alliance. On the one hand, RFK Jr.'s vote share has been diminishing. He suffered a blow. Listen, his entire energy for his campaign was like, you hate both of these guys, right? I'm here as an alternative. And now one of them is

out of the race. So, you know, the people who were Democrats, but they were unhappy with Joe Biden, for whatever reason, including primarily that he was just too old, they have come back into the fold. That has hurt him. And that has made it more clear that the candidate he hurts, quote unquote, is Trump. So there's a lot of logic on Trump's side, wanting to get him out of the race, wanting to offer him something in his administration so that RFK Jr. can continue to have a platform, some sort of political power, and parlay his campaign into some sort of role in the Trump administration. That makes all the sense in the world. And then for RFK Jr., the campaign is not really going that well at this point. The trajectory is in the wrong direction. So it's increasingly unlikely that you're going to be

in any sort of position to win a single state or contest or even be, you know, particularly consequential in a single state. So if you're looking for some sort of an exit ramp, maybe the Trump administration is smart and you're certainly not getting anything in a Kamala Harris administration. So that's kind of your only path. Yeah, we'll see. It really depends on what he has to say. So he gave an interview to CBS News. He was asked about this specifically. Let's take a listen. This video of RFK Jr. on the phone with Trump shortly after the attempt on his life heightened the drama. I would love you to do so. And I think it'll be so good for you and so good for you. And we're going to win. Were you in those meetings prepared to end your campaign, endorse former President Trump and accept a role in his administration? No. President Trump called me a few hours after the assassination. Was that ever any part of the discussion, those things I just described?

We, you know, I won't talk about exactly what we discussed because it would be a violation of trust. All right, so there you go. Basically dodges. He opened the door a little bit. I mean, it basically confirms the report there, the unity pledge, not an endorsement. It really is depending now on RFK Jr. and what he wants to accomplish. I mean, I don't think anybody is owed their vote. So Trump is going to have to court him. And it's clear RFK doesn't want to endorse him. So I'm going to give him that because at the very least, he's not he's like, look, I disagree with you on a lot. I have said very publicly there are things I do not agree with you on. We may have some overlap, but that doesn't mean I'm a dyed in the wool Trumper. And he's like, so I'm gonna have to get something out of it. And it's clear too,

Trump probably doesn't wanna give it to him. That's, I mean, if you think about it in bargaining terms, giving up HHS is titanic. I mean, it's one of the largest federal agencies. Also, RFK Jr. may be forgetting this, but you have to get confirmed by the United States Senate. And I just foresee some problems there with a lot of Democrats and Republicans voting for him. Just saying.

That's one of the things I would be concerned about. Polling-wise, let's put this up there, because this just confers why he is working so hard, Trump is, to actually get RFK out of the race. In the Reuters Ipsos that was recently conducted after Kamala replaced Biden on the ticket, it puts Kennedy at 8% in the three-way contest against Harris and Trump, down from the 11 that he scored just a week earlier. Separately, a big caravan poll of 2,000 adults from July 22nd, again, after Kamala was out of the race, puts Kennedy at 6.7 versus the 9.2% that he scored when the same question was asked just 10 days or so before.

I don't agree with the headline of, quote, wiping out the campaign. What it does wipe out is the disaffected Democratic support, which, let's be honest, that was a large part of it. RFK is pro choice. RFK is an environmentalist LA Hollywood lib in many respects. I can personally see many celebrities and people like Zachary Levi and others who endorse him specifically because they are liberal, but they don't like Trump. And that is that, I mean, I'm not going to say it's a majority, but it's some people. And so for Kamala, there's enough there for some people that I think that confers it. What is it? Three, four, 5% or something of people bleeding away. But that's enough if you can win back that, but continue to keep that disaffected Trump voter or Republican leaning voter away from Trump. That's a bad situation for Trump. And that's why

he should be desperate. I really think he should. Yeah. It has made it much more clear that, you know, RFK Jr. Because it was, it would go poll to poll. Some polls, it would seem like it was worse for Biden having RFK Jr. in the race. Other ones, it was worse for Trump. It really was pretty evenly split. Now it's quite clear that it's more of a liability for Trump to keep him in the race. But, you know, I don't know what sort of, I'm just, all I can say is there is some logic to the idea of RFK Jr., from his perspective, dropping out and endorsing Trump and getting something for it. There is definitely logic on the Trump side to push for that and want that.

We know RFK Jr. has at this point rebuffed those inquiries, those requests up to this point. And I don't know what he's weighing. He's made a lot of promises to his supporters that they are supporting a campaign that is in opposition to Trump, that is in opposition to both of the major political parties. He also does, as you say, come out of this like liberal Hollywood ecosystem. And those people really hate Donald Trump. So if you, you know, it's one thing to be sort of like, you know, low key, maybe hurting the Democratic Party ticket or whatever, critical of Biden.

It's another thing to be affirmatively in a Trump administration. And maybe he's already so estranged from the liberal Hollywood circle or whatever that it doesn't matter. But maybe it does. Maybe it's an issue for his wife. I genuinely don't know what the calculus is enough to make a prediction. All I can say is that there is a logic to the entreaties being made by the Trump people. Well, the Trump people should be desperate. And in many ways, it's their own fault because they helped try to prop him up when he was running against Biden. And then a lot of Republicans were like, hey, I like this guy. And now they're like, well, hold on a second. No, we didn't mean it that way. Let's put this up there on the screen just from RFK himself.

There was previously a false tweet that said he was going to drop out of the race. And he responded saying, I'm in it to win it. I lead in popularity and independence are now the largest voting bloc. Momentum is shifting in my favor as I close in on ballot access in all 50 states. I look forward to challenging President Trump and the DNC nominee at the next debate. Hashtag America strong. Now, very unlikely that ABC will let him. Actually, we don't really know what's going on with that debate.

Trump currently basically says he won't debate her until she's officially the Democratic nominee. So I guess we'll wait until afterwards. This is where, too, I'm a little bit upset about the process, where we previously had three debates. We were going to get two. Well, Biden and Trump had one. So now there's only one left on the schedule. We can't just have one debate with the new presidential candidate. At a minimum, I think she should do three. It would be better if she did like five. But she's not stupid, you know.

Well, at this point, Trump's the one who's saying I may not debate you at all. So at this point, it's more of a problem on his side. What did his tweet say? It was something like, I won't debate her until I know she's the nominee. I think that's what it was. He's also trying to get her not to just do the ABC News debate. He wants to do a Fox News debate and or both. He didn't officially resign himself from ABC.

But I think they need to do a lot more debates because it's really not fair to the American people to only have one. Because with Kamala, it's not like Biden where he just falls apart because he's literally like a walking corpse. I think most people, most politicians of a C-minus standard can keep it together for 90 minutes. But 270 minutes, well, that's where it gets a little bit interesting. And that's where we might see some breakage and things. And this is a risk for Trump too. But we need to see a lot more than just one because that is straight up not fair at all to America. Absolutely. I mean, she was put in place through a non-democratic. Exactly. She's got to defend something. The very least we deserve is some transparency, some ability to evaluate the two of them side by side, contrasting their visions, their communication skills and political aptitude, which is an important part of the presidency.

The theater is an important part of the presidency. There is no doubt that we deserve all of that. So we'll see. But there is also no doubt that there's no chance they're going to let RFK Jr. on that stage. Which is wrong. It really is. Which is absolutely wrong as well. And again, anti-democratic. But yeah, we'll see where this goes with RFK Jr. I could see it going any number. I could see him hanging in there for whatever reasons. Yeah, he's running a campaign. He wants to stay until the end. He wants see it going any number. I could see him hanging in there for whatever reasons. You know, he's running a campaign. He wants to stay until the end. He wants to see how it goes. Maybe he's seeing some movement in the polls internally that we're not seeing publicly, whatever. Maybe he has some theory of the case that we're not privy to, or he just wants to

keep his promise to oppose both of these major party nominees. So we'll see where it goes. I hope he stays in, actually, because I want people to prove that there is a quote unquote viable path to at least winning some X amount of a third party. If we look at the history of third parties in the past, it's very rare that they just come out into existence and win. That's not how it works. They win 10%. I mean, look at Europe, for example. You have these tiny little parties. They win two seats. They prosecute a case. Then they win 20. Then next thing you know, they win 50. Next thing you know, they're the number two coalition in the French parliament. That's how it should work. And that's one of those where we can prove viability through a slow process and through

democracy. And so anyway, that's part of the reason where if you do actually want a chance to break a duopoly, that would be the case for doing it. Yes. And we need rank choice voting to help make that a reality. Then he actually would, I mean, imagine how much he could win in a rank choice scenario. That would be crazy, actually, if you consider, especially in swing states and others. But yeah, anyway, that's never going to happen. We're a long way from that one. All right, let's move on to the latest revelations with regard to the massive security failures that allowed this horrific attack on Donald Trump to go forward. Let's put this up on the screen. We're getting more details about failed communications on the day of. So the Trump Secret Service team is complaining that they were not told

of suspicious person reports before the shooting. Now, this is a Washington Post report from Josh Dossi and Carol Lennig. Carol always has fantastic sources within the Secret Service. You always want to read what she has to say with regard to at least their narrative of what's going on. The subhead here is members of the former president's Secret Service detail and his top advisors have said they were not informed of warnings that were circulating before shooting at the July 13th rally, according to people familiar with the concerns. So they go through the TikTok here. They talk about how approximately 20 to 25 minutes before Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at the former president, local counter snipers noticed him behaving strangely. They sent his photograph to a command center staffed by state troopers and Secret Service agents. The head of Pennsylvania

State Police told a congressional committee Tuesday. Members of the Secret Service detail that protects Trump and was with him backstage have complained to confidants and others inside the agency. They were never made aware of that warning about a suspicious person. Because remember, he was spotted with a range finder attempting to enter the premises. And they were never informed of that. And they were also never informed that the team on the ground there lost sight of him and did not know where he went. They said they were not aware local counter snipers lost track or that another local officer

hoisted up to the roof of a building just outside the rally site security perimeter, saw crooks perched there with a gun. This was also interesting to me. They say these type of communication breakdowns because of the different radio frequency than officers and agents stationed at the White House. And no one had alerted him to the threat outside. That is crazy. And what's even crazier is that here we are well more than a decade later and they're complaining, Sagar, here about the very same problem. Yeah. What we learn is that this is an incompetent agency. It's basically been evident now for a decade plus. It took the most incompetent sniper attempted

assassin of all time to basically just prove all of that in a single event that went wrong. And the fact is, is that we still don't have enough of an answer. Because one of the things that we knew immediately was that this was not a single security failure. It was a confluence of terrible events. And what we're learning now is that all of the things that have been bubbling beneath the surface, the petition amongst agents saying that there was unprofessionalism, here we know about the decade-long problem with respect to communications. Now we see the Secret Service director who barely even wanted to resign. What we're seeing is that these institutions and agencies are almost more incompetent than you could have ever presumed.

And that this is revealing, especially video and other we're about to show from the incident, that the closeness call of all of this, it's only a miracle that something like this didn't happen five years earlier. That's true. Or something like that. Yeah. I mean, if this was a trained professional, it'd be over. Game over. This was a 20-year-old who got picked off his high school rifle team because he was such a bad

marksman. But to your point, Benny Johnson went to the location, braved the sloped roof, the dangerous sloped roof, just to demonstrate how close this position was to Donald Trump. Let's take a listen to a little bit of the video that he shot. This is the trail of blood from Thomas Crooks,

still visible on the building where the assassin was able to shoot directly at President Trump from this exact position. You can see right there in the field, that's where President Trump is. I'm just on iPhone magnification. This is how close the president was. That is where the Secret Service sniper team was. And this is where no one was or maybe someone was but no one law enforcement wild that's

very instructive because you could see it's like a higher position up at the water tower being on the dangerous sloped roof where nobody was supposed to be how far people away and yeah i mean iphone magnification is a good tell because you're like, wow, it's that close. Literally just being able to zoom in like three times. And you could see that where the guy is standing. And you also see the clear vantage point of where the sniper was, the attempted assassin. And then just the failure, both of the law enforcement officials who were inside the building at the time, and then the lack of the perimeter that was set up. So the whole thing still remains absolutely nuts.

But as we learn more about the communications failure and others, the lack of coordination with law enforcement, it all makes sense. Yeah. No, you know, Kyle has gotten me into golf, so I've become very familiar with what a like 150 yards looks like, and it is really not that far. So this was one of the questions AOC asked in the hearing when everyone was going after the Secret Service director, and then she resigned shortly thereafter because it was clear Democrat, Republican, didn't matter. They were all

horrified by the total incompetence and manifest failures and stonewalling of any of these questions. And so AOC says, hey, this is one of the most popular guns in America. Why wasn't the perimeter inclusive of this range, which is so close? She wouldn't answer, couldn't answer, didn't have an answer. Just absolutely astonishing. And so to your point, the local SWAT team from Butler, Pennsylvania, they were interviewed and they claim. Now, I do want to point out there is a bit of a like, you know, pointing fingers between the Secret Service and the local teams and whatever. That's part of the jockeying that's going on and going on in the Washington Post and is going on with these comments as well.

In my opinion, the failures can be manifest across the board, across all of these teams. But the local SWAT team says, listen, we were supposed to meet with the Secret Service before this rally and they never met with us. We had no communication with them whatsoever. Let's take a listen to that. We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service snipers whenever they arrived, and that never happened. So I think that that was probably a pivotal point where I started thinking things were wrong because that never happened, and we had no communication with the Secret Service. You had no communication with the Secret Service at all on that Saturday? Not until after the shooting. And by then? It was too late.

So apparently it's common for the Secret Service to utilize local law enforcement resources to bolster their protection, their response, whatever. But you would certainly assume that since this was a common thing, they would have a common protocol in terms of integrating their communications and really being in touch about the plan. And that apparently didn't happen here whatsoever. Yeah, the local, like you said, let's be honest, too. There is some beef because some people said that the local cops confronted him and then they ducked away and they were afraid. Possibly true. Yeah.

So let's be real. But at the same time, blaming the local cops is not fair here because they didn't have the overall mission and the jurisdiction. They're not the Secret Service. Exactly. Their job is just do whatever they're told. So they show up and the Secret Service is like, get on that rooftop. They're like, cool, got it. Stand here and make sure that nobody comes in with a gun. Okay. But they're not the ones with anti-drone jamming technology and they're not supposed to let a comes in with a gun. Okay. But they're not the ones with anti-drone jamming technology, and they're not supposed to let a guy in with a range finder and having counter sniper teams who are supposed to do scouting missions beforehand and denying resources. That's their job. They're the ones who are ultimately in control. So I still think,

even if there is maybe some culpability, that the local cops here are being done dirty in that they never should have been in a position where they don't even know that nobody's on the rooftop or anything. They're just supposed to follow orders. They're not the ones who are in control. So, you know, the responsibility falls on command. And that's the Secret Service director, the head of the detail, etc. All those people need to go. Yeah, and that's right. And, you know, yes, the Secret Service director has resigned. I don't think anyone should be comforted that the problems here have been solved because, as I just mentioned, these issues with communications, etc., this goes back to 2011. So there are some deep incompetence failures here in terms of Secret Service. And just one

last thing that I'll flag again, that Ken Klippenstein was mentioning, he also has, you know, really fantastic sources and great knowledge of these agencies. You know, all the push is going to be, all right, now they need more resources. They need more money into their budget. And it's not that they need more money. It's that they need to actually focus on the mission at hand rather than getting having that money spread in a million different directions that many none of us have ever heard of before that the Secret Service is doing that they really shouldn't be doing.

They should be focused on mission number one, which is, you know, protecting the people that they are charged with protecting. Absolutely. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

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All right, let's go ahead and turn to some very disturbing and very scary developments out of Israel. So we can put this up on the screen. A strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights killed 12 kids and young adults who were playing soccer in that region in a Druze community. Israel and the U.S. are blaming Hezbollah for this attack and the killing of these children. Hezbollah is denying any sort of culpability here. In a sense, what actually happened really doesn't matter because Israel and the U.S. are certainly treating this as an attack perpetrated by Hezbollah in the, as I said before, Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. We could put this up on the screen. This is a very fast-moving story because now the question turns to, okay,

what is Israel going to do in response? And Sagar, you pulled news just this morning that the Israeli Security Cabinet has authorized some sort of retaliation. We don't know what that looks like yet, but we do know that there is an incredible risk right now in this fraught moment because we've had these exchange of fire between the Israelis and Hezbollah for, you know, since effectively the beginning of this latest war, and it has remained relatively contained. But now the Israelis are threatening massive retaliation. Iran is involving themselves as well. Of course, Israel is always wanting to drag us into some broader conflict and especially into some conflict with Iran. Reports are that U.S. and other Western diplomats are trying to get the Israelis to temper their response and avoid a massive escalation.

But this is a very scary situation we're looking at right now. Yeah, it is terrifying. I mean, it's also very sad here because we did have 12 kids or teenagers and others who were killed in the strike. Obviously, there's a lot of incentive both for Israel to claim it's Hezbollah and for Hezbollah to deny it's them. So in a certain sense, like you said, you know, we're not necessarily going to know what's happened. But we do know that this is the nightmare scenario for a variety of reasons. Well, we have the Israeli war cabinet and many other security officials, including Netanyahu, who have been wanting to take the war to Lebanon for quite a long time because it prolongs the war,

which means it prolongs any sort of discussion of what happened on October 7th, conversation around that. So that's very much to their benefit. Well, then we also have the situation where the U.S. security establishment is one where they have to follow along but try to push back to the best of their abilities. Well, in this particular moment, it's very difficult when the Israelis can claim, perhaps with some credibility, I haven't looked exactly into the striker, whatever, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that a Hezbollah rocket killed 12 people in Israel. When they've been firing on, they've killed some civilians, IDF members, et cetera. The scariness really of the situation is, is that this is not Gaza. And we've tried to say this from the very beginning, is that Hezbollah is a real paramilitary organization with deadly

rockets, with much more sophisticated technology, with tens of thousands of more fighters, fighters who are much more well-equipped, battle-tested throughout the entire Syrian civil war, and would put the IDF in a very difficult position. And if they're running low on munitions already, you know, just bombing Gaza, good luck actually fighting a real paramilitary force. An actual straight up, almost peer, not peer military, but something that is significantly more equipped to deal with IDF, as we have seen through some various attacks and others that were able to penetrate the Iron Dome. So it's a very different military situation. It's one where the IDF would be seriously matched in its fighting capacity and the potential for the blowout from there is just sky high.

With Iran, with others. I mean, the relationship between Iran and Hezbollah is like this. There have been reports now that the Israelis want to assassinate Nasrallah, Hassan Nasrallah. The thing is, is that what people forget is even if Iran were not to get involved, then Lebanon would explode. There could be another civil war that happens there. And who the hell knows how that could happen? Very rough shape right now. Yeah, Lebanon. Lebanon's been in rough shape for decades, but especially- Economic basket case. We can put this up on the screen, which just sort of was a good summary

of what has happened so far. So Joyce Karim says, Lebanon braces for Israeli response. There is fear that the Israelis would strike even in Beirut, which would obviously be, you know, complete disaster. Hezbollah is evacuating sites in Lebanon. Pro-Iran groups are evacuating sites in Syria. Israel security meeting underway now that meeting has completed and they did authorize some sort of response. Here's the other thing.

You have a number of nations telling their citizens to leave Lebanon. But the other context here is this is happening in the midst of these continuing ceasefire talks, which there are some indication that the Biden administration is really trying to push to wrap this thing up. I'm going to play for you Kamala Harris's comments after her meeting. Aviv was in town last week, obviously, and she met with him, Biden met with him, Trump met with him, etc. In the piece that's linked there in that tweet, they write, the escalation is taking place as the Mossad chief, the CIA chief, Qatari's prime minister, and the head of Egyptian intelligence are all meeting Sunday in Rome to continue talks on a potential deal between Israel and Hamas that would see the release of the hostages and a ceasefire in Gaza. And so while the US wants this thing to be wrapped up, and they are trying

to avoid an even broader escalation, which so far their original goal was let's not have it spread outside of Gaza at all. That obviously has completely failed, but now it's a let's not have a broader conflagration. But you have to remember the Israeli politicians who are, you know, totally in control here in the absence of our leadership, they have an interest in expanding the conflict. They have an interest in continuing this war and having justification to do so. So that's part of why this is such a scary situation, such a scary moment right now, and why we're all watching very closely what's going to unfold next. At the same time, we don't want to lose sight of the horrific attacks that continue to occur by the Israelis in Gaza. This was, I mean, just imagine for a moment if it was Russia doing what I'm about to show you, which is an IDF soldier planted explosives, detonated a water

station that a million plus people depend on, put it out on Instagram, very proud of his actions. He says it's in honor of Shabbat. And also the soundtrack is some song about destroying Gaza and how great that'll be. So take a look at this Instagram that was posted here. You can see the water station. You can see the IDF soldiers there preparing the detonation. And then this is the water tank, the large facility. This is in Rafah, by the way. And here is the explosion blowing up this absolutely

critical water infrastructure at a time when obviously Palestinians in Gaza are already starving, already struggling with a lack of clean drinking water. We now have reports that there's polio in the sewage in Gaza. IDF soldiers are being vaccinated for polio to make sure that they don't contract it as well. It's just a disaster situation. Ryan and Jeremy Scahill over at Dropsite News, they commissioned an article from the journalist who had discovered, this is Yunus Tarawi, who, I don't know if you guys follow him on Twitter, you definitely should, but he has been finding a lot of these IDF TikToks, Instagrams, et cetera. And he wrote about this particular one. The headline here is the IDF just destroyed a key Rafa water facility that Rachel Corey spent her last month of her life defending. He writes,

on Friday, I discovered a video posted on Instagram by an Israeli soldier showing the calculated demolition of a chief water facility in Rafa. He goes on to say that U.S. human rights activist Rachel Corey, who was crushed to death in 2003 by an Israeli military bulldozer while attempting to prevent demolitions in the city, spent much of her time during the last month of her life helping to protect this very facility, specifically the municipality workers who were at this very facility because it was so critical. I referenced before the soundtrack that's in the background of that Instagram. He says the lyrics include things like, we will burn Gaza, shake all of Gaza. For every house you destroy, we will destroy 10.

And critically, Yunus also points out that this plan to starve and dehydrate residents of Gaza, Palestinians in Gaza. This was announced early on in the war. Early on in October, an advisor to Yoav Galant laid out this strategy in a radio interview. She said, Israel, as I understand, closed the water supply to Gaza, but there are many wells in Gaza which contain water, which they treat locally, since originally they contained salt. If the energy shortage in Gaza makes it so that they stop pumping out water, that's good. Otherwise, we have to attack these water treatment plans in order to create a situation of thirst and hunger in Gaza.

And I would say forewarned of an unprecedented economical and humanitarian crisis. Even her radio interviewer in Israel was kind of shocked by those comments. But lo and behold, a BBC analysis based on satellite data from May 9th found that 50% of Gaza's water and sanitation facilities have been damaged or destroyed since Israel began their offensive following the October 7th attack. So as I said before, Sagar, imagine if it was Russia. It should be condemned. It should be condemned when it's Russia, if it's Russia doing this in Ukraine, and it should be condemned here. And yet we will hear nothing about it. And, you know, it's also worth pointing out there continue to be horrific, deadly strikes by the Israelis in Gaza. And, you know, it's nice to see people actually caring about children being killed as

they are with these Druze children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. I just wish that that same care and concern was applied to all children, no matter their race, nationality, or geography of where they happen to live. I think it's a—what I'm very worried about is the proxy fight and as the continuing spillover effect of all of this, that we will get further away both from any sort of humanitarian solution, you know, with the ceasefire and allowing aid into Gaza, but actually an expansion of the war, which let's not, there are millions of people who live in Syria and in

Lebanon, not to mention Iran and everywhere else. There are also, always remember this, tens of thousands of U.S. service members who are sitting there, sitting ducks. are also, always remember this, tens of thousands of US service members who are sitting there, sitting ducks. And also, I'll bring it back to the domestic situation. This is where I am most terrified of Biden. His cooked brain is the one responsible for trying to keep us out of this. A real president needs to get his ass on a plane and get over there now and actually try and bring some sort of solution to this. Instead, we've got, you know, like Blinken and Jake Sullivan, who have a great track record, right, that they have on this. So I am, our vice president is here campaigning for our job. We've got the literal C-minus team who is

running American foreign policy right now. I'm terrified. This is where he needs to go tomorrow. He needs to go and he needs to actually be willing to flex some American muscle with regards to this because, I mean, long overdue. And listen, if you're BB, you know, the calculation was very clear. You know, first of all, you've got an ally in Biden. You've got an even greater ally in Trump. So he clearly felt like, all right, if I can just run out the clock till November, Trump's going to destroy Biden. And so, you know, I can do whatever I want then and I won't get any pushback whatsoever, even like the little bit of handwritten that Joe Biden has done. So people were watching very closely what comments Kamala Harris would make coming out of her meeting last week with Bibi Netanyahu, reading the tea leaves of whether there's any chance she would be different at all from the Biden-Harris administration, given that, you know, this is a woman, as I said before, like she really, it's really not clear that she actually

has any core beliefs on anything. So trying to figure out where she's going to be is an art in like tea leaf reading and trying to figure out what the political calculation is going to be. She gave comments that the tone was definitely different from what Biden has said. This has been fairly consistent for her in the vice presidency, where she has sounded notes of much more empathy for Palestinians than Joe Biden has. Does that amount to any sort of policy shift? That is very much TBD. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what she had to say. I told him that I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters.

And I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there, with over two million people facing high levels of food insecurity, and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity. What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent. So there you go.

Like I said, different tone. Doesn't mean anything. Your guess is ultimately as good as mine. I guess the good indication is she's already said she's kicking out Sullivan, Lincoln and co. OK, she didn't say that. That was leaked to somebody who reported it. Do I believe that?

Maybe. Well, the fact that someone felt that it was a good thing to leak is, you know, a positive sign. On the other hand, you know, I Israelis freaked out. My God, how dare you? Like even even like gesture at a criticism of us. Her office put out that, you know, her position and Biden's position are the same and hasn't changed, et cetera, et cetera. So is there a shift coming in terms of policy here? Don't know. Here's what I would say.

Philip Gordon, I've known who he is for a while. He worked for Anthony Blinken whenever he was at the State Department under Obama. He was the assistant secretary. Did he write a book on the Middle East where he said Iraq was a mistake? Okay. I mean, that's just not, that's such a low bar for me. I don't think there's been a national security device. He genuinely comes from, listen, like the question is, are we going to get the Biden bear hug strategy or are we going to get the Obama like slightly better, like willing to, I mean, the Iranian nuclear deal, the Israelis genuinely, like that was a genuine rebuke of just, we're going to do whatever you want,

whenever you want, et cetera. When he was on his way out and he allowed a resolution through the UN security council, like we're not talking about a total 180 here with regards to where Kamala Harris positions herself. The reason why I am cautiously optimistic we may get the Obama policy versus the Biden policy is just number one, she just isn't ideological on this in the way that Biden has. And Biden has been so ideological as to be willing to damage his own political prospects. And it is my contention that if you were just doing, as Nancy Pelosi is, a naked analysis of the politics as they exist today, it would merit a different response here than what has been given. Because it was quite clear the Gaza war was a drag on Biden. It was

a disaster for him. It was a big part of the reason why his numbers with young people were so terrible. And his numbers with, actually, black Americans have a much different view of this conflict typically than white Americans do. And it was dragging down his numbers with black Americans as well. So I'm not hopeful because I think she's courageous or going to take a stare, whatever. I just think the politics on this have shifted. I think Bibi's made himself a very partisan right-wing figure. And so if you're just responding to like the normal democratic politician calculus at this point, I think it augurs more in the direction of an Obama-Israel foreign policy,

which again is not amazing, but is somewhat better, versus a Biden-Israel foreign policy. I agree with that. I do. My only caution is on Ukraine, where I think they've totally lost it. But we'll save that for- I think she's got the same view as Biden does, basically. But that's worse, because it's unchecked from at least the guy who got us out of Afghanistan, and at least waited to ship weapons weapons as opposed to letting them into NATO. We're all in now, so. Well, there's more to go all in. Just wait, we're only half the pot so far.

Let's get to the cartels block because this is a story I've been dying to cover. And when I saw the news, I was just absolutely stunned. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. What we have here is the El Mayo and Guzman capture. We have a picture here of one of El Chapo's sons who has been wanted by Mexican and American authorities. He has been indicted here under U.S. federal courts and has been long wanted by the U.S. Department of Justice and by Mexican authorities. Previously, you will remember that one of his brothers, one of El Chapo's other sons, whenever he was in a major firefight with Mexican authorities in a surprise capture where they didn't necessarily expect to be able to get him, and hundreds

of people were affected by this, the entire city was shut down, and it was a picture of lawlessness. This highlighted of what was thought by many people and analysts to be kind of a proxy war and or rivalry between El Mayo, one of the other singular figures in the Sinaloa cartel, and then the El Chapo dynasty, his two sons. Well, what has now happened is, let's put this up there on the screen, El Mayo has been arrested on Thursday by US.S. federal authorities near El Paso, Texas. The official story appears to be that El Chapo's son lured El Mayo onto a private plane in the guise of we're going to go tour some private airfields in northern Mexico, and we're going

to see and set up things for our drug smuggling routes. It appears that throughout this, he, El Chapo's son, was able to restrain El Mayo, or at least lure him there under false pretenses and restrain him there on the plane, before landing the plane in Texas and having US federal authorities arrest him on the outstanding indictments that have been against El Mayo now for quite a long time. Now, the reason why this is super fascinating is that El Mayo has evaded custody now for more than three decades. People didn't have an accurate photo of him. Nobody knew much about him. He was the antithesis to El Chapo, who avoided the spotlight, didn't want to do interviews, was very much under the radar, and in fact,'s one of the OG figures who was able to survive

for quite a long time. There's been a lot of skepticism, Crystal, that he was even, like we knew he was a drug cartel, but the theory was, is that the government, the DEA, the Mexicans had all basically made peace with El Mayo, where he is able to give up, like allegedly gave up his own sons to authority. He rats out others. And in exchange, they allow him to kind of be the figurehead. The theory is that having a bigger cartel is easier to deal with than massive cartel wars. But now his arrest- Well, that's actually true. It is true. Yeah. I mean, they're bracing for escalated violence because of these two.

The fallout of this is going to be that there will absolutely be massive war. Because now you have both of the sons of El Chapo and El Mayo now in custody. And El Chapo himself is now in federal, I think he's in Supermax prison. So now the political vacuum in Mexico is massive. The territorial wars, the Sinaloa cartel, the largest cartel in all of Mexico.

What does it mean for both their own home territory and the various ports, drug ports and all of them that they control politically? The big question here is why was he arrested in Texas? Why is El Chapo's son cutting deals with, you know, the federal government here? The theory is that El Chapo's son is a young man and I think he's like 30s or something. And in exchange for trading El Mayo, one of those wanted fugitives in U.S. history, that he could then possibly get out of prison and breathe air by the time he's 50 or something like that. And possibly even rope

in his dad and reduce all of their sentences. But the Mexican government was unaware of this deal. So there's a question, did the Mexicans, were they in on it? In terms of being protection for El Mayo, it is a bit suspicious. He was never truly captured there or even came close to authority. So there's fascinating levels at the cartel level, at the movie-like events here. There's even some skepticism and some theory out there that he actually engineered this entire thing. And he's like, I'm 76. I don't want to be on the run anymore. So I'm just going to go in, cut my deals, and just go out on my own terms. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me because I wouldn't want to be on the run anymore. So I'm just going to go in, cut my deals and, you know, just go out on my own terms. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me because I wouldn't want to die in federal prison. Yeah. If you could continue to evade capture, why would you? Why not? Apparently he had diabetes. He wasn't having a good time on the run. You know,

it's not a fun life. You got to move your, you got to move mansions every day. Whenever people are on your trail, you can't talk on the cell phone. You're constantly under the radar. Your own sons are in prison. So it's not like the best life that you're choosing. Regardless, it is a fascinating turn of events. It is a massive coup for the Justice Department to get their hands on El Mayo. And like I said, originally, my true hope here is that we go to trial because I want to know all the details about Guzman and whether he got a deal with authorities, how we actually lured him on the plane. There's a lot of questions here.

It's like, why is a multi-billionaire, one of the most powerful drug lords, getting onto a plane or even showing up to a meeting with no protection with your rivals who you know don't like you? So what happened there? Did somebody get paid off? You know, the details of this are truly crazy.

Do you buy this idea that he, because, so my understanding from reading three articles yesterday about this, very deep knowledge that I have here. But my understanding is that his whole thing, El Mayo, was like, that he was so crafty and that he'd never been caught and never gets tricked and would never get lured into something as thin as like, hey, buddy, let's go look at some real estate. That's why I don't believe it. That's why I think it's I think there's something else going on here. Really? Yeah. It's just shock. I mean, how do you evade capture? You're 76. You've seen every trick in the book. I mean, hundreds of people have tried to kill you. The Mexican government has been allegedly at least trying to capture you. You've been striking deals. You don't have a single source, you know, in the DEA or whatever. These Chapo brothers, you know, you think that they're idiots, which they are. And, you know, you don't have a source, you know, in their operation or somewhere else that

you just, how do you get on this plane? And this happens. The pictures of him that were released, you can actually see redness on his wrists. So indicating that there was some restraint. That he was restrained in some kind. On the plane. That's the theory. There was a picture of him released that was in the car. We can put the next one up there too from the New York Post. They say inside the cartel coup once in a lifetime caper. This is the official theory of events, which is that basically, you know, he was lured on the plane by El Chapo's son

in exchange for a deal that they struck with the, I think it's the Homeland Security Investigations. Former DEA say, quote, based on my experience, it's very possible the brothers developed a plan to arrest and capture El Mayo with the help of law enforcement in the United States. The drug business is dirty. People routinely turn on each other, like when El Mayo's son and brother testified against El Chapo. That's also could definitely be revenge itself. I just don't know what's happening here. I do know that inside of Mexico, they are very afraid that this will trigger a massive

bloodbath and war for a lot of the territory that the Sinaloa cartel had controlled. Some of this is also El Mayo, one of the reasons why the temperature's been turned up on him and El Chapo's son is a lot of the fentanyl that they are responsible for bringing into the United States. Yeah, but it's not like anyone has any hope that that's going to be reduced by these. I mean, that's the part of why that's like the Justice Department will crow about it and they'll, you know, be happy with their press release. And these are certainly men who deserve accountability and justice there. You know, there's no doubt about that. But in terms of actually impact on drug trafficking, there's no expectation this will diminish the flow. And in fact, what I was

reading is that the drug cartel organizations are not what they used to be. It's more like syndicates and almost like, you know, franchisees. So there'll still be plenty of people to take the place. And what you're most likely to get is just like a spike in violence in the drug wars. Very likely there'll be a spike in violence. Again, why I want this thing to go to trial is the most interesting stuff that came out from the El Chapo. I don't care about the drug traffic. I mean, I do. It's interesting and it's salacious. But the stuff about, hey, you know, Enrique Pena Neto, we gave him $100 million. People were like, wait, what? The guy who lives in Spain,

the former president, you paid him $100 million and he showed up to your wedding? That's crazy. Or that, if we'll forget, the former defense minister of Mexico was indicted on drug trafficking charges. He was the person who previously was in charge of the drug war. So what gets revealed is the high-level political corruption. And there is no doubt that a man who is a high-level cartel figure, able to evade custody for three decades plus, has not paid off a hell of a lot of politicians, probably including Texas politicians and border figures here in the US. And I want to hear everything there is to know about that. So that will be interesting. Plus, remember the theatrics of the El Chapo trial. He was held in the MCC in Manhattan. Yeah. And they had to shut down everything because they were afraid that people were going to come and try and rescue him. Yeah. So some of the security stuff. Well, he had escaped.

Yeah, he's escaped twice. Yeah. I mean, look, these people have limitless resources. People are willing to kill and die for them. So this will, it could be the trial of the century. We'll see if he actually goes up against trial. Given what happened to El Chapo, I'm not sure I would, because now you're going to end your ass up in Supermax, which is what happened to him. So we'll see. All right, we have a great show for everybody tomorrow,

and we'll see you all then. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case.

If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's

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