Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/29/24: Kamala First Interview, American Dream Over, Trump Tariff Debate, Trump Facing Six Years In Prison, UN Aid Car Shot By IDF, Bernie To Trump Pipeline

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Kamala first interview, voter registration spikes, Americans say dream is over, Trump tariff plan, Trump facing over six years in prison, UN aid worker vehicle shot by IDF, Bernie to Trump pipeline.     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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And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio 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 Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. We are awaiting tonight the long-anticipated Kamala Harris interview. She amazingly hasn't given one since Biden dropped down, which now feels like 83 years ago.

So that's happening alongside her vice presidential pick, Tim Walz. So we will preview that. We also have finally actually a significant amount of polling coming out post-DNC, especially some Fox News swing state polls that are very interesting and also some voter registration data that is worth digging into. So we'll get into that. We're also taking a look at a Wall Street Journal poll of how Americans are feeling about the American dream. Seems kind of important. So we're going to dig into that. We've got some Trump indictment news, a superseding indictment issued in the election interference case. We're also going to take a look at Trump's economic plan since we've been focused a little bit on what Kamala Harris is up to. We'll contrast what Trump's plans are as best you can decipher. Not that you ever really know what that man is going to do, but we should take him at his word that these are the things that he plans to

implement if he is once again elected president of the United States. We also have some news coming out of Israel. There's kind of, sort of, maybe a temporary partial ceasefire in order to vaccinate some Palestinians for polio. There is now a polio outbreak in the Gaza Strip. So we'll take a look at that. And I am doing a monologue today on whether or not the Bernie to Trump pipeline is real. This, of course, being relevant in the wake of the RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard Trump endorsements. There's something going on there.

We can talk about it. I'm actually excited to listen. I apologize in advance. Yeah. The monologue is way too long. Yeah. There has been a split. When I scratched the surface, there was too much I wanted to say.

Well, there's been a fun split. And, you know, it's almost like a study of religion or something. And to see, like, the fractionalization of all of it. So, anyway, I'm interested and I'm excited to talk about it. Thank you to all of our premium subscribers, BreakingPoints.com, if you want to go ahead and sign up and help us out here. But why don't we begin with Kamala, the big interview. It is today. Tonight at, what, 9 p.m.?

It's tonight at 9 p.m. I unfortunately will be on a plane, but Crystal will have a card. Dana Bash, also known maybe as BB Bash because of her pro-Israel commentary. Anyway, that'll be potentially relevant. Let's go and put the announcement up on the screen. So Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are going to sit with CNN's Dana Bash this evening, 9 p.m. Eastern. It says it occurs as the candidates embark on a bus tour through the battleground state of Georgia. Marks the first time Harris has sat with a journalist for an in-depth, on-the-record conversation since President Joe Biden dropped his bid for a second term and endorsed her on July 21.

A lot of pressure on her, Sager, obviously, to agree to do an interview. Seems like kind of the basics of what you would expect from a candidate for president in a democracy. So good that this is finally happening. A lot made of the fact that she's going to have Tim Walz alongside of her. You know, one of the risks of waiting so long and doing so few, at this point, zero interviews, is that it makes each one so much more significant. Yes, 100%. If you do a lot of interviews,

also it makes the media happier. So they're more likely to go a little bit easier on you. When you wait so long, on the one hand, it means you don't have an opportunity to make a mistake. She's timed this very strategically to be before the Labor Day weekend, holiday weekend. So if she does stumble as is possible, and as we've seen in previous interviews, it's very likely, you know, after the long holiday weekend, and we come back next week

on Tuesday, that a lot of that will be forgotten. So it's strategically timed, etc. But there's no doubt that there's, she has built a lot of anticipation around this interview simply because of the scarcity of Kamala Harris unscripted moments. That's why the risk is there. And so that's why there's a criticism that she's doing it with Tim Walz. It's actually apparently, I didn't know this. Apparently it is a tradition that you're supposed to do a sit down interview. It's with your running mate.

It's just that you usually do it like the day after you name your running mate. You don't usually wait for several weeks or any of that. It's an extraordinary time. I think only 68 days as of today until the election. I know, which is nuts whenever you put it that way. Voting starts in some states in like nine days. Yeah, nine days. You have early voting, which is completely crazy.

But OK, let's let's come back and think about the interview. The real risk here is that one of the major benefits for Trump, I think we can always say, was the spray and pray strategy where he just does – he's always in the public eye at all times. So I remember when I covered him at the White House, he would say something crazy, and then we would do an interview, and it would get cleared up or say we would do something else, and everyone would move on within 24 hours, sometimes even less than that. And that's the thing, the risk is if you do one bad one and then you are entrenched where all the evidence we have so far from her campaign, it's very risk averse. So they're looking back at all their past interviews. We're going to show everybody some highlights and some things that they want to do. But given her bad experience now so far, it may actually retrench her. And then all we will have as media and others is this single interview where it possibly, it doesn't go that well. I also do think there's like a real softball

element. I mean, you talked here about Dana Bash. Dana Bash is an incredibly biased figure from her Israel commentary to her like masculinity commentary, which we were going to talk about last time in our show and eventually will at some point. But like, this is not, you know, some so-called straight up news anchor. Fine if it's one of a lot, but it's a little different whenever it's somebody who is not on the record praising Tim Walsh immediately and Doug Emhoff immediately after the speech. And then you turn to the first interview. It's funny, our friend Glenn Greenwald, before the interview was announced, he's like, I bet she goes to somebody like Dana Bash. And he's even more cynical than me, which takes a lot of work. But what he's accurately pointing out is that you go to the safe route. And I think that's one of the reasons that they are doing so. And I don't

think that's a good thing. I really don't. I mean, I think Dana Bash will feel enough pressure just given the high profileprofile nature of the event. She's going to ask some things that are meant to challenge. You know, in terms of Kamala and how she'll perform, I genuinely don't know what to expect. Because, frankly, after she did that Lester Holt interview on the border that was crashing burns, she basically didn't do any more interviews interviews for like, you know, a long time. And I don't, so that's my last impression of how she performs in these settings. And obviously it was very, very poor, but that was also probably her most catastrophic interview incident. So I'm wondering if my expectations for her are too low because I'm actually biased in terms of thinking like that's how her standard

performance is. And in general, obviously, when she was running for president, she gave a lot of interviews and most of them were not all that noteworthy. She was able to get through it well enough. So yeah, the expectations are high. Perhaps the Lester Holt interview being the last thing in people's minds have set the expectations very low for her, which means that she just kind of gets through it with no major, major stumbles. Then it will be relatively inconsequential. But obviously, because she's waited so long, she's built up that risk. You know, the knock, the very legitimate, I think, knock on Kamala Harris that she and her team themselves obviously must agree with, given how cautious they've been about putting her into unscripted settings, is that she's not good in interviews and she's not good in debates. But again, you know, thinking back to how she did against Mike Pence, for example,

she did fine. And she had some moments that, you know, was perfectly serviceable performance. And she had some moments that they felt good about. Now, those moments are the sort of thing that the media celebrate. They're very like girl boss type of moments and, you know, that she was proud of and sort of reminiscent of the that little girl was me shot that she landed on Joe Biden, et cetera, et cetera. But CNN was recently reliving some of what they considered to be her strongest debate moments against Mike Pence. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of that. No, but Susan, this is important. And I want to add, Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking.

I have to weigh in. I'm speaking. You can have 15 more seconds, and then we'll give the Vice President a chance to- Joe Biden has been very clear. He will not raise taxes on anybody who makes less than $400,000 a year. He said he's going to repeal the Trump tax cuts. Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking. I'm speaking. It would be important is you said the truth. Is he only going to repeal part of the Trump tax cuts? If you don't mind letting me finish, we can then

have a conversation. Okay. Please. Okay. Let's talk about the fact. Yeah, I'm about to. I mean, it was iconic. All I can see is that it was not just a lie. Wait a minute. You're watching it right now. That is just what happened right there. So women oftentimes in the workplace try to be able to get their voices heard, and then men try to speak over them. I would never notice that.

Did you ever notice that? Abby, has that ever happened to you? Lauren, let me let you finish your point. Exactly. Both of these men attempted to enter being here. He has the floor. Is that right? No, I don't.

Thank you, Abby. That's lovely. Thank you. No, look, I mean, they are counting on the debates being a kind of catharsis for Democrats. Oof. I'm going to bullet my skull over that. Now I remember why people watch our show. Yeah.

However you need a reminder, just turn on cable news. You're right. I mean, they erected a literal I'm speaking mural here in Washington, D.C. I'm not sure if you remember that. I don't. But what CNN wants to do, what CNN was highlighting is that's what they want. That's part of the reason what they want out of the debate. It's part of the reason why Kamala wanted unmuted mics.

By the way, we still have yet to get an actual answer on the unmuted microphones. Oh, I thought they decided they were going to stick with the original rules. That's what Trump said. But then the Kamala campaign came out and was like, no, we still haven't agreed on that. But he's like, I will be at the debate. Whatever. Okay. I don't even particularly care at this point. Someone let me know. Just let me know, though, what the actual rules are. The point being that, yeah, look, she does fine. I mean, personally, you know, that doesn't do it for me, but I'm not the only person who votes in this country. There are a lot of people apparently who like it. What you want to see from a Kamala Harris is just a normal, like you want a baseline. But the problem is, and this is where it gets to the

risk, is that she has had many moments where she significantly underperforms the politician baseline. And that is the interesting thing here, where you have somebody who right now, you know, not only is running on vibes, but purely on script. And when you're so defensive, and what we also know about her is I think she's a deeply insecure individual from behind the scenes. We know this from her interviews, from the high staff turnover, from all of the leaks about the people, about how she explodes behind the scenes whenever she feels like she's not prepared. This is a very typical politician thing to blame your staff when an interview goes badly, even though it's like, hey, you're the one on the camera, lady. You're the one who allegedly is trying to get elected.

So I could see it going both ways. I do think it's going to be better for her that Tim Wallace is there with her because, frankly, he's just a far more compelling figure. He's more affable. He can clean some things up if he needs to. And in general, my general rule is like if you really can't sit for 30, 45 minutes and not make an idiot of yourself, you don't belong in this business, period. Like you should never have made it this far. So if she does fail, I mean, that just is real evidence about her genuine weakness as a candidate off the cuff, where, look, you can try and hide as candidate, but as president, it is actually quite literally impossible. The demands of the job actually make it impossible. Even Biden, as we saw, they tried their absolute best. We had plenty of evidence before we ever

set foot on that debate stage that he was a long gone man, right? And so there is a proven aspect to this job where I think some Americans hopefully will be watching. And she has set the stakes now so high, given that she's waited over a month to even have an interview. Also, I do think it's a little BS to time it right before Labor Day weekend, when people like me are getting on a plane and many others are probably jetting off or getting in the car and going somewhere on vacation. So that's, you know, that's another sign of weakness that we see there. Yeah, I do think in terms of her public appearances, it seems to me Kamala Harris has never had more confidence than she does right now. That's absolutely true.

She has, you know, she has a swagger and a command that she is kind of like, you know, undefinable X factor type characteristics that we didn't really see in 2020. But just to take, relive, you know, what was perhaps her worst interview moment, and which is really perplexing on a variety of levels, because the question was totally, totally predictable question that she received and is just completely flummoxed by. This is the now infamous Lester Holt border interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Let's take a listen. There's one other topic I wanted to talk to you about. Let me just quickly put a button. Do you have any plans to visit the border?

I'm here in Guatemala today. At some point, you know, we are going to the border. We've been to the border. So this whole thing about the border, we've been to the border. We've been to the border. You haven't been to the border. So this whole this whole this whole thing about the border. We've been to the border. We've been to the border. You haven't been to the border. And I haven't been to Europe. And I don't I don't understand the point that you're making. I'm not discounting the importance of the border. Well, I mentioned it because I know Republicans have certainly come at you on this. But Democratic Congressman Cuellar has a border district has said to you and the president, come, you need to see this. I care about what's happening at the border.

I'm in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration. There may be some who think that that is not important, but it is my firm belief that if we care about what's happening at the border, we better care about the root causes and address them. And so that's what I'm doing. Yeah. I mean, that was a very infamous moment, right? For good reason. We used to inarticulate, lack of command of the facts, a little bit of arrogance, unprepared. How did you not anticipate? I mean, these are like the absolute basics. And that's part of why she was the most unpopular vice president in modern history, you know, up until she basically got anointed here. And there's no question in my mind, I don't think she would win an open primary if it

were actually open back in the day, you know, in a real process, not necessarily being anointed. And that is why I think we are, I mean, it's a risky proposition for her and for the Democrats. And you see it too, where all of the flip-flopping on all of these issues, there's almost been so many that you'd have to do an interview solely focused on that, as opposed to, you'd be like, okay. Let's talk about Medicare for all. All right, let's talk about fracking. Medicare for all.

Then let's do fracking. Then let's do, what, the border wall, which you're now, you're a pro-border. Now let's go about the, what about crime? Let's talk about criminal justice. Yeah, let's, I mean, I could probably spend two hours with that woman just being like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. And so do I have confidence that Dana Bash is going to do all of that? No. Uh, and that's part of the issue, you know, and part of the why she needs to do more interviews because the other danger is that we see her recreate her infamous debate moment with Tulsi Gabbard, where she has no idea what to do when called out on her hypocrisy.

So with Dana Bash, I mean, she'll probably hit her on probably, I'm guessing, fracking, just because that's one where we've seen them stumble in the past. Probably the border, too. I mean, that's the most stark one that they have. She'll ask her some at least challenging questions. I really hope so. No, I would be surprised if she didn't because it just, as I said, they've kind of pissed off the press. And so they've made it much more likely that the questioning will be a bit more hostile, even from someone like Dana Bash. But to your point, Sagar, and this is part of why I think

there will be some at least somewhat challenging questions. You had John Berman speaking to a Kamala Harris spokesperson and on the flip-flopping question was really pressing him on fracking. Let's take a listen to how that exchange went. The vice president has changed her position on fracking in Pennsylvania. Do you know why she's changed her position? Listen, I mean, she's been very clear here. She's proud of the work that she's done as a part of this administration, making sure that American energy production is at an all-time high. We want to continue that progress into her first term in office here. And again, I think whether it's energy policy, economic policy writ large, that you have a fighter in Kamala Harris who is actually keeping these

interests of the American people front and center, coming together to bring people together in search of solutions that actually improve people's quality of life, improve our economy, improve energy production. But on fracking, was there something that changed her mind specifically during the four years of the Biden presidency? No, listen, again, the vice president is very proud of the Biden-Harris administration's record on energy production and the economy writ large. She wants to continue to build upon the progress that we've made here that goes for energy production and it goes for the economy across the board, right? So, you know, he's pressed multiple times there. And this one of the things that will be interesting is like, usually when Kamala is prepared, she does well.

You know, when she, that first debate in 2020 in the Democratic primary, you know, that little girl was me moment has kind of like curdled over time, but it hit in the moment and she was good, not just then, but she was on it in that debate. She was very good because a lot of the fire wasn't trained on her. So she could just insert herself when she felt comfortable. She could sort of occupy that role as the prosecutor. She had clearly like prepared herself very well for that. And she wasn't caught off guard. For whatever reason, the Lester Holt interview, she was not prepared for that question. There's no one to blame but herself for that. And a lot of the potentially difficult line of

questioning here is also very anticipatable. Like the, you know, the flip side questions no one to blame but herself for that. And a lot of the potentially difficult line of questioning here is also very anticipatable. Like, you know, the flip-flop questions are really obvious. So, if you can't answer that, if you don't have a plan for answering that, you can't execute it in the moment, it really would be sort of pathetic. It would be stunning. Frankly, it would be fairly pathetic. One last point I want to make about this, and then I'll get your final thoughts, and then we can move on to the latest with regard to the polls. But part of why, and I think this is unfortunate, but part of why I don't think that most voters really care that much about how many interviews she does, et cetera, et cetera, is because of the fact the media is so discredited. You know, like,

how much punch does it really pack when Republicans are on the one hand, like, all of this is fake news media, and, you know, Dana Bash is terrible, et cetera, et cetera. But also we really wanted to sit down for an interview with the fake news media. And for a long time, liberals have been the last bastion of like media trust. And that continues to be the case at certainly much higher levels than Republicans. But that has eroded also. There was a lot of, I don't know if you guys followed this or were in these circles, but there was a lot of liberal criticism and continues to be a lot of liberal criticism of like the New York Times and the Washington Post. First over what they saw as unfair coverage of Joe Biden's age. They sort of

dropped that one. But now, and some of these are really legitimate, like some of the fact checks that Washington Post and New York Times have been doing have been relatively absurd. And so there's a media critique conversation that's happening in the liberal side of the equation too, that I really have never seen before. And of course, independents are also really disaffected and distrustful. Americans in general, just like across the board, are mistrusting of the media. And so, you know, I think that's part of why she feels like she's going to check this box because she's under some pressure to do it. But other than that, I don't think she feels particularly compelled or pressured to do these

interviews. And again, that's an unfortunate thing. That's a sign of the degradation, both of our media and of like small d democracy in the country. But I saw one journalist describe her as like the first post media presidential candidate. And I think in a sense that that is correct. She just doesn't feel much pressure and isn't going to feel much pressure to have to subject herself to truly rigorous, difficult interviews. And that's just kind of the new reality in American politics until we, the people, force a different reality from this just like skating by and not really having to take a lot of tough questions. Exactly right. So I look at the data very recently,

trust in the media amongst Democrats, partisan Democrats is roughly 73%, but it's much higher for institutions like MSNBC and others where they feel like some kinship. And in general, what you're seeing, especially with younger generations, is that, you know, cutting the cord, obviously I support that and people should and they should support the show, but, you know, has really led to a stratification of news consumption. The only reason that Trump is not the first post-media candidate is because he's so old, he still worships a lot of mainstream media brands like the New York Times and Time Magazine. I mean, in his head, he still thinks Time Magazine is relevant. I'm like, again, I was born in 1992.

For me, time is like time for kids. I'm like, it's like trash, like something you could throw in the trash. Do I know that it once upon a time was relevant? Yeah, that's like telling me about somebody being on the cover of Life magazine in World War II. I collect them. Yeah, it doesn't mean I care about that. Does it even exist anymore? I literally couldn't tell you.

Yeah. And that's a generational thing. So for Kamala and for a lot of her advisors, they are in. The other thing is, too, is that the Democrats and Obama was the chief of this. Obama had a deep disdain for the media. People don't realize this. Because he privately both would talk with his advisors, and he was like, why do I have to give these people anything? They're going to basically support me no matter

what. They hate the Republicans, and why should I subject myself to fake scrutiny? So he would do, he actually pioneered the modern influence of presidency. Remember his videos with BuzzFeed, or he was the first person to do a Vox interview. He actually made history in his first question as president of the United States was not to the New York Times or the Associated Press. It was to the Huffington Post. And that was a very clear signal. He was like, hey, the rest of you, I got options now. And that, I mean, that was 2008 or 2009, the day that happened. Think about how long it's been since that. So Hamla, look at the DNC.

You had the Creator Lounge and all of that. That is a proto of what is to come. That's not necessarily a good thing. But you're right in terms of partisan distrust of media is at a point right now where—and the Quentin Tarantino was the perfect thing where he's like, why shouldn't you do an interview? He's like, I'm going to vote for you no matter what you say. There's a lot of people who actually think that, and they think that about Trump as well. True. Yeah. Trump's had some elements of this strategy too. He is really leaning into, and you see this with the Tulsi and the RFK Jr. picks,

he is really leaning into the sort of like, you know, online anti-establishment podcast realm. He's doing an interview with Lex Friedman, apparently coming up as an example of that and betting that that's like a significant enough force now in American politics to make a difference around him. So interesting experiment that he's running there. But yeah, I mean, the previous norms of sitting for these interviews and feeling responsibility to do them and like the main networks, you know, getting these interviews regularly. It's basically over. And so this is, this pressure resulting in her sitting down and doing this interview with Dana Bash is kind of a last gasp of the old way of doing things for better and mostly for worse.

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the DNC wrapped and we haven't had a lot of especially high quality polling. We finally got some Fox News polls and they are a high quality pollster out of several battleground states. Let's go and put this up on the screen. These are really interesting and I'll tell you why in just a second. So we've got Arizona, Harris 50, Trump 49. So one point difference there. Georgia, Harris 50, Trump 48. Nevada, Harris 50, Trump 48. And North Carolina is the one where Trump has a one point lead. And part of why this really grabbed a lot of attention, Sagar, is that these numbers are almost exactly the 2020 Biden Trump actual election numbers. So a lot of 2020 vibes coming out of these polls. These were taken post-DNC and also just after the RFK dropout. So they should, in theory, although sometimes it takes time for news to leak out and people to really get a sort of wrap their

heads around changing dynamics, et cetera, but they should reflect both a potential post-DNC bounce and a potential impact of RFK dropping out and endorsing Trump. Yeah. I mean, that is really interesting battleground polling. And you can take it two different ways. You can say, wow, that's accurate. It's just like 2020. Or you can point to the fact that it's so ambiguous and within the margin of error, it effectively just says what we always say on the show.

It's like coin flip. If I look at the Nate Silver projection, his last projection that came out after RFK dropped out of the race is not in terms of the national polling, but he has in his forecast Harris at a 50.4% and Trump at 48.4. I mean, that's as close as you possibly can for the tie. I looked at Polymarket just this morning, the biggest betting market site right now. It's about Trump 50%, Kamala 49%, same thing. And so I think a lot of it will come down to both polling error, but a lot of it is also enthusiasm. And enthusiasm, though, is with the Democrats. So right now, a brand new Gallup polling out this morning, U.S. respondents' enthusiasm about voting compared to different presidential elections is at the

highest level since 1996. Actually, Democratic excitement about voting is now surging to 2008 levels. Now, that said, one of the reasons why this is very different from 2008 is that Republicans were not enthusiastic to vote in 08, while Democrats were. Whereas this time around, Republicans are actually quite enthusiastic. So you actually have the battle of excitement, you could say. Previously, it was trending in the direction of a lower turnout election of 2020. I don't think that's going to be the case this time. It may even be higher or matching. And remember, 2020 was the highest level of voter participation that we've had in decades. So actually, quite a lot of this is actually going to come down to turning out your own side in the traditional coalition. If you're Harris, that's a good thing.

If you're Trump, it's also a good thing. So it really puts you in a fighting chance on both sides of that. I mean, if I were Trump, this is why, you know, with the podcast thing, it's easy to cringe and all that, but it's one of those where, is it going to be the, you know, is it going to be the main reason you win? Absolutely not. But in a game of inches, basically everything matters. And that's why, you know, RFK is really what brought me back to totally Trump 50-50 because yes, he's still going to be on the ballot. But, you know, if he's going to be stumping out there on the campaign trail for Trump and same with Tulsi, like, listen, 1%, that's the difference. That's literally the margin in half of these states. See, I just, I give, I actually don't think that it is a smart strategy leaning into the

Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr. strategy. Well, I was talking about podcasts more. Yeah. Not about them. The podcasting is interesting. We'll see. Yeah. A lot of these, a lot of the podcasting is going on. The people that are listening to them are already supporting him. But let me go ahead and cue up this next soundbite. To be honest with you, this is more persuasive to me than, frankly, any of the polls that I've seen. Because polls, we've seen them be all over the place. And I don't know what to make of them at this point. Are they understating Trump? Are they overstating Trump? You can look at 2020 and say they're understating. You could look at 2022 and say they're overstating. Hard to say, right?

But there's this data analytics firm. Now it is a democratic firm, so keep that in mind. But they're just looking at the numbers and crunching the numbers around voter registration and who is registering to vote. So this is not like, I've got to do a likely voter sample and can I get people on the phone, etc, etc. So this is not like, oh, I've got to do a likely voter sample and can I get people on the phone, et cetera, et cetera. No, these are the hard factual numbers based on what different states are reporting in terms of who is registering to vote. Now, the firm is called Target Smart.

They are one of the only outlets that successfully predicted that 2022 was not going to be a red wave. And the reason they saw it coming is because they were looking at this voter registration data and saying, listen, this just doesn't fit with the metrics of a red wave type of election. So Tom Bonior is the name of the guy you're about to listen to. He has new numbers reflecting since Biden dropped out and Kamala got in a massive surge in Democratic Party registration, but specifically among key demographic groups that you would expect to be enthusiastic about Kamala Harris and aligned with her and looking to vote for her in the fall. Let's take a listen to how he breaks this down. We're tracking something really interesting going on right now. It's a surge in voter registration in key groups ahead of the November election. Among young black women, registration is up more than 175%. You heard that right. More than 175% in 13 states. That's

compared to the same time in 2020. This according to the data firm Target Smart. Registration has also increased among young Latinas and black Americans. 175 percent. Can that possibly be right? You must have triple checked this or many more times than that. You're right to repeat the number because I've more than triple checked it. It's incredibly unusual to see changes in voter registration that are anywhere close to this. I mean, to remind people, 175% is almost tripling of registration rates among this specific group. You just don't see that sort of thing happen in elections normally. Let's go ahead and put the charts back up on the screen,

the next element that we have here, just so people can be taking a look at this. This is a tweet from the same individual senior advisor to Target Smart, Tom Bonior. He says, the Harris effect in the 13 states that have updated voter files since July 21st, that's when Biden dropped down. We are seeing incredible surges in voter registration relative to the same time period in 2024, driven by women voters of color and young voters. So if you look across this graph, all the way on the left, the smallest surge was among Republicans. The next smallest surge was among men. And the more you get to the right and the greater surge, but they also model whether a particular voter is likely to be a Democrat or Republican, which sadly is actually

quite easy to do. We're all very predictable, apparently. And 51% surge in increase in registration for Democrats post-July 21 when Biden dropped down. And like I said, to me, this is perhaps the most persuasive data that I've seen that it is possible the polls are actually undercounting Kamala Harris' support because they are very unlikely to pick up new voters. And another point he made, which was interesting to me, new voters are actually more likely to turn out and vote. So first-time voters are more likely to turn out and vote than people who have been registered for a long time. So, Sagar, wondering what you made of this and how much significance.

The other side of the equation would be, you know, these groups were so depressed under Biden that there's this, like, just pent-up, you know, they, rather than kind of gradually registering all the way along, like you would have expected, there was this pent-up demand. And once Kamala comes in, then people, they would have been the ones that registered before under Biden, but they were so depressed by him. And so this doesn't reflect anything majorly different. But to me, these numbers are pretty extraordinary. I know they are extraordinary. And also because they're real. And I mean, the cope, if you were a Trump person, would be, hey, listen, the electorate's actually changed. You can't necessarily bank on the fact that all young voters are going to go for Kamala or for black voters. I mean, I saw— Young black women seem to play pretty safe.

Young black women, maybe. But young black men, I mean, listen, the last Fox News poll, that's one that we showed, actually had Trump tripling his black support from 7 to 19. I mean, that's pretty crazy. But that's not, by and large, the group that's urging here. Yeah. Again, I'm just saying, like, the cope would be that the shift in the electorate has dramatically changed. One case for why a lot of this polling stuff is Ryan Gerduski recently wrote a post about the liberal poll response bias. This is not an unskew.

Yes, it is. No, no, no. It's not about Fox. It's about everything. I mean, it was accurate in 2020 is that a bunch of older white liberals were home and they were the only ones who were answering the phone. And that was part of the reason that they were off so much. I mean, I see compelling reason as to why that wouldn't replicate itself. I don't see how necessarily they might have been able to change it.

I'm not saying that it isn't tight or that Trump is winning or losing. It's that this voter registration data is very compelling. I do know that the Republicans have some of their own answer, and have been doing this now for two years. There's groups like Charlie Kirks and Scott Pressler who have been out there for almost two and a half years now just registering the shit out of a lot of Republican voters. So there was a – basically there was a huge recognition post-2020. They're like, all right, we got destroyed on mail-in voting. And then they were like, well, we'll try and beat them and, you know, win a midterm. And then you get killed in the midterms. You're like, okay, well, we're going to go to war with the army that we have under the

current rules. And so they're trying to register as many seniors as possible, you know, have mail-in voting, targeting with mail, et cetera. I think that the case would be that, you know, the Republican turnout machine is not as ideologically against the current voting system. And so that's one of where the corrective could be as well. So anyway, I mean, look, in general, voter participation is good. So I'm happy. I want people to be more registered to vote. So to be honest with you, I was thinking about this. If I put the polls aside, right, because it, like I said before, which direction are they off? At this point, no one can say, right? No one knows. If I put the polls aside and I look at the fundamentals, the race actually looks pretty simple. Kamala Harris is more popular than Donald Trump.

Tim Walz is more popular than J.D. Vance. The issue set she's running on, we're going to talk about more about this with the Trump economic block. The issue set she's running on, and we're going to talk more about this with the Trump economic block, the issue set she's running on is more popular, including her economic plans and leaning into abortion. He's old, she's young. And the big advantage that he's always had on the economy, which he maintained against Joe Biden, and Joe Biden was able to overcome, that advantage is basically gone. She's neutralized it. So the more I look at the fundamentals, the more I feel like the only reason that I'm, you know, so reluctant to be like, it looks like she's in the lead and she's, you know, has the edge in terms of winning is just because it's Donald Trump and who the hell knows what's going to happen. But to be honest with you, we may be overcomplicating this because when you look at all those factors lined up,

when you test all the different presidential characteristics that people want to see in a leader, she wins on almost all of them. The one where he usually gets her is strong leader. But on all of the other ones, she outperforms him. So this is someone who people like more, they like her policies more, she outperforms him. So this is someone who people like more. They like her policies more. She's more useful. She's captured that like we want change spirit, even as she is

in some ways an emblem of the status quo. She's captured that like change spirit. And so looking at those voter registration numbers, it gave me more of a sense that those fundamentals actually do reflect reality. You could be right. I mean, the counter would be, you know, the immigration situation is crazy. We're going to talk about the polling later with Trump. That has been a massive change. The other thing is we live in a way more divided country than ever before, where a lot of those fundamentals don't actually matter all that much sometimes for partisan people whenever they go to vote. And, you know, look at the way that people even perceive the economy depending on who the president is in power. The economy situation over

the last three years still was not good. So she may be running on something, but she's got the Biden baggage. And if Trump could successfully tie her, then you don't even need to win the popular vote. You only need to win by one vote of these three states. So that's one where I still see a major electoral college advantage that Donald Trump has. Pennsylvania in particular, the Senate races are actually narrowing in some respects lately, depending on where you look at. And so I see three scenarios. I see Dem blowout. I see extremely tight and narrow where whoever wins only wins by, you know, two to five electoral votes. But I could also see a major Republican victory as well, where there was a significant

underestimating of a lot of this discontent a la 2016. Just because, you know, polling, as we know, doesn't necessarily capture a lot of stuff. And Trump is such a unique and a dynamic figure that he is so able to always defy expectations at the ballot box. I mean, again, though, we don't have a lot of data. That's part of the issue with elections. It only happens every four years. So you can conjure a narrative like I just did out of two freaking elections. It's just not a lot, you know, for us to make any sense of. You know, the one thing, though, that the Trump people, and you always point this out, in 2020 would point to when they come on rising was the economy. They'd be like,

he still vastly outperforms Joe Biden on the economy. And we were sort of like, whatever. Because the polls were so clear at that. I mean, Biden was winning by nine points, 10 points, whatever. COVID was a catastrophe. We're like, it's over for your candidate. I'm sorry. But actually, they were right. I mean, they still lost. But the economic numbers were one of the things that kept him in the game. So when I see, and actually we can put, yeah, what is this, A9, the last element in this block, I throw this up on the screen. When I see, and this isn't the only poll that reflects this, when I see her pulling close or even, or on that question of who would be better on getting prices down, she pulls a little bit ahead. When I see that, I feel like that is maybe as consequential a poll number as I have

seen. Because that was the one thing that they were like, no, but people care about the economy. It's always the number one issue, and they still like Trump on the economy. That she has managed to neutralize his advantage on what has always been his strongest issue, I think is quite remarkable. And with regard to immigration, no doubt that's her weakest issue. They know that's her weakest issue. I think they're handling it very poorly. We'll talk more about that in a later block. However, I just don't see evidence that this is a big issue for swing voters. I think abortion is a much larger, more consequential issue in terms of driving enthusiasm and in terms of swing voters, especially given the fact that the immigration, you know, the border

numbers are down at this point. You don't have, you know, there was a peak of concern previously when there were all these buses going to blue cities and there was a real, you know, there was a real concern and frenzy about that, and understandably so. I think that has peaked in, again, the most hawkish immigration voters are already voting for Donald Trump. So yes, it's her weakest issue. Yes, it's a problem for her. I just don't see it being as consequential as Republicans hope it will be. It's like I said, if it's an abortion election, the Democrats are going to win.

There's just no question in my mind. Considering every state data that we now have at this point, the super majority, if it's an immigration election, I think Trump is going to win. If it's an economy election, it's very down the middle and I could see it. Yeah. I mean, look, there's no question that Kamala is a way better candidate than Biden. And that's why the GOP should be more afraid. They shouldn't be doing, it's like vice versa. They should just not talk about abortion, period. It should be as much as they possibly could. They'd be like, what do you mean? Oh, did you say immigration? Was that what you meant? And then vice versa, if I were the Democrats, I wouldn't

even try to compete. Unless you're a Ruben Gallego, because that guy is, what a unique race. We should talk about it at some point. The only candidate where, what was it, the Arizona Police Association is endorsing Trump and Ruben Gallego over at Cary Lake. And he put out an ad in Spanish talking about hiring more border agents. I mean, I couldn't love that more from a realignment perspective. But it does show you why he's up. That's Arizona politics. That's why he's up 11 points, up 11 points in the state of Arizona, while Trump is basically tied with Kamala Harris. I mean, that's shocking, just to behold some of what that looks like. And there's a case that overperformance by Gallego would actually help Kamala Harris.

Absolutely. So this is where a strong or a weak Senate candidate can really be, it can make the deciding factor just because split ticket voting in a presidential year, not saying it can't happen, but you know, it's relatively rare. So listen, I wouldn't deny, you know, that there are some fundamentals on the Democratic side. I just am always very, very cautious. I mean, you know, we lived through 2016. We lived through 2020. And, you know, getting the pulse and the mood of the country, foreseeing those Latino shifts in South Texas and all of that, or foreseeing the white liberal wave in 2020-22 were so, so unexpected with so tiny little bits of data to be able to point to. It's more about, like, let's just see, I guess, where the chips fall. That's really all we can do. Difficult, right? Difficult for people like us, especially.

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eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on

iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be

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podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself. And I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast.

From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's go to the next part on the economy. This was actually could be consequential as well. This is another reason actually to relate to our previous discussion about why I'm always just a little bit skeptical about counting all these fundamentals for the Democrats. Let's put this up there,

please, on the screen. There is an overwhelming amount of discontent within the American public right now about, quote, the American dream feels out of reach for most. And what is really interesting to me is both about how people define the American dream, and I think we're basically talking about the most basic things here. So for example, when it comes to achieving your own vision of the American dream, how is important is each of the following. So nearly 100% say financial security is essential and or important. Comfortable retirement, almost 100%. Home ownership, almost 100%. Home ownership, almost 100%.

Annual vacation, something like 80%. Things, you know, go down a little bit more whenever it turns to talking kids and or having marriage, but financial security, retirement, home ownership, annual vacation. So basically like decent life, quality of life, those are the things. And then the ability to support a family is somewhat less so. That's what people define as the American dream. Now, do you think the American dream, that if you work hard, you'll get ahead, still holds true? The precipitous drop in numbers really, I think, feeds the anti-establishment sentiment that I can't let go of. So for example,

in 2012, the first time that they were asked this question, 53% of Americans said that the American dream, quote, still holds true. About 42% said once held true but not anymore. And never held true was 4%. Well, now, if we look at 2024 numbers, 49%, so the majority actually, or the plurality here, say it once held true but not anymore. Only 34% say that, quote, or the plurality here, say it once held true, but not anymore. Only 34 say that, quote, it is still holds true. And some 17% say it never held true. So the nihilism is very high, but probably even worse than nihilism is once held true, but not anymore. And that is where, you know, I could just see that Make America Great Again messaging as it did in 2016, resonating just

enough with people who have been priced out of the American dream. Don't forget that the mortgage rate continues to remain high. Yes, an interest rate cut is coming, but that doesn't mean that the prices changes or anything or that will be in the foreseeable future. Home prices have either stabilized or have gone up. Grocery prices and all the inflation whenever we peg two, four years ago is not good, up almost 25, 30%. The fundamentals of a lot of where people see in life is still high to the point where

they feel discontent. Now, the problem for Trump is that Biden was so tied to the 2020 status quo that he was such a winner on change, where Kamala has a chance to compete on change here and make it a little bit more of a contest. But in general, this is why I never count out Trump and the discontent feeling of actually building something new. Yeah, I mean, this is like on a long-term decline. Right.

And I think it's, obviously there's the reality of housing has never been more unaffordable. Right. All of the things that we think of as the bedrock of a stable middle class life have become more and more and more and more and more and more expensive over decades. Right. So, yes, we have this very important inflation conversation about what you're paying at the grocery store, what you're paying at the pump. These are things that are in your face every single day and impact your budget every single month. But we've missed the inflation conversation that has led, I think, to this chart, which is number one, no retirement security, right? The end of the guaranteed pension, you know, effective end of the guaranteed pension, where now it's like, you got to be out there saving on your own and hope for the market to work out for you. And there's just an amazing level of precarity that comes with that. Number two, health care, so expensive and not a prayer that either one of these candidates have any interest in really fixing it.

Kamala Harris wants to extend the Obamacare subsidies that were part of the COVID era package. And, you know, Trump last time around tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They're trying to say this time maybe he won't do that. We don't really freaking know. But there's no plan to actually fix the situation. I think that's pretty clear on both regards. And as I said, over decades, healthcare has just gone wildly expensive. You think about a college education, you know, what could be more associated with the like neoliberal era of the achievement oriented good life is you work hard, you go to college, you get that white collar job, you're

able to, you know, achieve that middle class or upper middle class, even prosperity, college education, so unaffordable, so expensive. And then maybe the most egregious rub at this point, it's obviously more than a rub, is housing costs. You know, rent is so expensive. To try to become a homeowner, which is really the bedrock of that, I've got my nest egg, I'm gonna be able to hand something down to my kids, I'm gonna be okay through good times and bad. You know, it's just become so impossible

to be able to put your foot on that ladder of home ownership. So who can blame? I mean, they're right, right? They are correct that it is very possible now to work hard, play by the rules, go to college, and then what? Then you're saddled with a mountain of debt and your dreams of home ownership are only getting further and further and further away as the housing prices go up year after year after year. So there is a, you know, we're, we're, and then you, you couple on top of that reality, just this, you know, the vibes that we're in a declining empire and our best days are behind us. Yeah. So, and that's where, how you end up with a chart

like this. Now to me, just to touch on the political point that you were making, this is an undersold part. Everyone talks about, obviously, Joe Biden is so old and the debate and disaster and feeble, all that is really the most important part. But this is, I think, an undersold part of why it was so beneficial to ditch Joe Biden and pick Kamala Harris, because she has not shouldered the blame of, you know, of incumbency. So she has the benefits of people being able to see her in the role and the confidence she appears to have gained on the job without being saddled with the status quo unhappy legacy of, you know, Joe Biden or whoever the incumbent president would be at this point. And I think that is an undersold advantage for her because she does have the ability and I think has successfully claimed the mantle of the change candidate from Donald Trump. And part of her campaign theme is like, we're not going back to that, you know, the ugliness of the Trump era and all that crap that, you know, this era of politics that many of us want to be done with. We're not going back to that. So, you know, in a certain

sense, she's sort of ideally positioned by having been able to be in the role and people be able to see her in the role, but not being saddled with the burden of actually inhabiting the presidential office. That's the only reason she has a fighting chance, period. And if Trump wins or if Kamala wins, ironically, a lot of it will actually come down to this, because it will be whether people see Trump as a change candidate or if people see Trump as a status quo chaos candidate and wanting to get away with that. Status quo and chaos, yeah. I mean, that actually is a choice. I mean, part of the whole Trump case under the Biden era was what? Oh, all you had to worry about was mean tweets. And there's something to that, which is like all you had to worry about was some dumb ass media controversy

or like the current parsing of like, was he allowed a camera at Arlington Cemetery or not? I don't know, maybe. But the whole point is like parsing all of those details as opposed to, hey, what was the housing price? What was the inflation, stock market, et cetera? Whereas nowadays, the Kamala people, which is interesting, under Biden, the Arlington thing is a good example. They would have been obsessed with this. Biden himself was obsessed with that, in my opinion, BS Atlantic story about the whole suckers and losers or whatever, based on the word of John Kelly or somebody else like that. And they made it a cornerstone of a Hillary-esque decency our children are watching. Now don't get me wrong, there is a flavor of that to Kamala Harris whenever she gave her speech, for example, or sometimes in terms of Democratic

media. But the general vibe I have seen from her is to roll your eyes at a lot of the Trump era controversies and other things like that of the past and just say, okay, we're not going to focus on that. This whole quote, we're not going back. And this is also where Biden being on vacation is so helpful to her. By the way, if anyone wants to check in on the president, he's actually on the beach right now in Rehoboth. Must be a nice job. He was on vacation in Santa Clara. There's a photo of him yesterday hanging out with Jill's friends on the beach. I'm like, yeah, if you weren't the president, that would be fine. That's probably what you should have been doing this entire time. But Biden's literally just sitting there doing nothing. He will apparently be on the

campaign trail, I think with Kamala in the state of Pennsylvania, I believe next week. But that's the only joint campaign appearance that they have scheduled right now so far. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I listen, like I said before, I'm beginning to become convinced that actually the election may be more straightforward than than I've been portraying at this point. But there's a lot of twists and turns to come. And this this data is certainly like, you know, this hangs over it in a very profound way that people are just generally unhappy with the direction of the country. And the Trump campaign will be spending a lot of money to persuade voters that they should saddle Kamala Harris with the way they felt about the Joe Biden presidency. And, you know, there's a chance that that could work. I think so. Credit card debt, all-time high. Household debt sheet is all-time high. Costs are very, very high. The homeownership

piece is very, very difficult. You know, the interesting thing that overlays all of this is kind of the social conversation, because that's where we saw, I difficult. You know, the interesting thing that overlays all of this is kind of the social conversation, because that's where we saw, I mean, if anything, it was way worse in 2022, because that's where Biden was the president. There was nothing, I mean, it was, the inflation was so in your face and so skyrocketing. Immigration situation was, you know, just as bad then, but even more like, like. There were more numbers. The numbers were both more in real time, but also it was a very shocking difference compared to just the last year. And that was also amid the whole like blue state freak out amongst migrants

being flown and bused here. But anyway, I mean, what we saw is that social, social issues can trump these economic issues. And that's why I just come down to, I'm like, I mean, what we saw is that social issues can trump these economic issues. And that's why I just come down to, I'm like, I really wonder what people are going to prioritize at the ballot box. But I know when abortion is there, it's a problem. That's actually one thing that a lot of us are discounting is this Florida amendment, which is on the books. So now, do I think Democrats are going to win Florida? No. But DeSantis won it by 20 points or something like that. I mean, if Trump only wins by three or four at this point. But I think last time Trump did only win by three or four.

No, he did. I'm saying this time around. Oh, yeah. So amidst the major realignment that's happened, all the massive inflow, the fact that it's effectively became a red state. But I'm really curious to see what that Florida abortion amendment vote does to overall Democratic turnout in the state of Florida. There's a number of states that have abortion-related ballot initiatives. I feel like the Arizona one might have gotten pulled, actually. You have to double-check. There was some court case about whether or not it actually should be on the ballot. But there are a number of swing states that have abortion initiatives on the ballot. And so, but, you know, just to go back to the housing thing, I'm surprised how much Kamala Harris has leaned into housing in her messaging as well,

because we've been talking about how that lean was wide open. And it's such a pain point. And so the fact that she's leaning into that and talking a lot about it in her ads, I think is, you know, I think it's intelligent and potentially consequential, understated in terms of the level of pain and just how central that is to people's lives. But as I was saying before, to me, maybe the most astonishing numbers we've seen in the polls are Kamala pulling even with Trump in terms of economic, who do you trust on the economy? Because even outside of Donald Trump, the businessman, et cetera, et cetera, Republicans typically have an advantage on that number. And so that's, you know, to me, that's quite extraordinary that she's even in the ballpark with him because that's always been his biggest strength.

I think that's been a bigger strength than anti-immigrant backlash even back in 2016 when that was obviously a very hot issue as well. I think that he's a businessman and he's going to be able to deliver for me personally has been the most compelling part of his pitch. Let's talk about that. Let's turn now to immigration. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies

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

unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be

voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room.

You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice

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get your podcasts. Let's turn now to some interesting analysis just about where Trump stands with some issues that may put him over the edge or where he stands unpopular. This one in particular caught my eye. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was a Vox analysis. Recent polling quote suggests that American public opinion on immigration has taken a quote, sharp rightward turn in the last four years. So absolutely fascinating to consider this graph. And also I want to, we should talk about this.

What happened in the 1990s? What was going on right there? I actually don't, oh, I think that's when the biggest surge of like Mexican border crossers. In the 1990s? I think in the early 90s. I have to look into it. I need to look into it, too. Anyway, so for those who are watching, what we have in front of us is a graph that says the percentage of Americans wanting lower immigration rose from 41% last year to 55%, which is now a majority. Where things go back is all the way from Gallup that has been polling on the question from the 1960s onward. Basically 1965, the 1965

Immigration Naturalization Act is what changed American immigration policy and basically set the norms as to where they are today. It was relatively stable throughout the 1970s up until 1980, but that is when things began to change. So the decreased number currently standing at 55% is now back to levels that we saw right after 2001, 9-11, and then actually near the top of where it actually peaked back in the early 1990s. What's even more interesting is that the increase number has precipitously dropped since 2020, roughly around the time that Trump was president. And then the keep as is, those people who were happy with the status quo policy, has also dropped pretty significantly. But the main divergence that has happened is from the Biden presidency onward is the exponential dip and increase in the decrease and the increase

number. So we have the decrease number there spiking from below 30% back in 2020, all the way up to 55, and the increase number significantly dropping from above 30% down to just 16% today. And so this does remain, I mean, probably the single most best issue for Donald Trump and where the divergence kind of stands and is a reflection both of the Biden presidency of I think of the current. I mean, obviously, it's a different situation in terms of how things are at the border. And it just comes down to a question of will this issue, you know, will this issue be able to get Republicans to compete with, frankly, better numbers for Democrats on abortion? And that is where I always caution my Republican friends. They're like, guys, we're winning on immigration by 50 or 60 percent. I go, yo, dude, the Dems are winning on abortion by like 78 percent.

You know, it's like it's like it's not just a majority. It's a super majority where those people stand. But I mean, nonetheless, that's stunning data. That's inarguable. Can we put it back up on the screen? Oh, yeah, please put it back up. Because there's something kind of funny that I want to point out, which is that, so if you look at 2020, that's like the peak of, you actually have a brief moment there where the line of the number of people who want immigration to increase is higher than the one for, you know, people who want it to decrease. So very ironically, Donald Trump made immigrants way more popular and immigration way more popular.

Some of us would just call it negative polarization. Well, I think that's exactly it, actually, is to me, this chart and the dramatic shift reflects two things, one more than the other. One is the reality that there are more border crossers. genuine, like, you know, in terms of being able to have the services available, the amount of money that needed to be spent, et cetera, like it was in people's faces in a way that was, that you couldn't look away from, right? But I actually think more important to that, because a lot of people don't actually think for themselves, they just follow wherever their tribe is going, is that back in the Trump era, you had a Democratic Party that was staunchly oppositional to his immigration policy and his whole way of talking about and thinking about immigration as just being a net negative.

And now you don't have that. So when you have both Democrats and Republicans agreeing on a hawkish immigration approach, then their partisans are going to agree with their party leaders that we should have a hawkish immigration approach. And so, like I said, I think it's multifaceted. But to me, this is very self-serving, but it sort of validates the point I've been making of, yeah, when you have the Democratic Party or the center left party just agreeing with the right wing party on immigration, then you increase the power of that issue for your opponent, not for yourself. Because no one who thinks we should be, and this is their number one issue, more hawkish on immigration is going to vote for Kamala Harris. So that's what I see going on that chart there. The negative polarization thing, I think, is a really,

it's not the only thing, but I think it's a very key part of the story of how you end up with those lines dramatically shifting. You have a lot of Democrats that in the Trump era when the party was, you know, doing their high school Spanish on stage and speaking about immigrants and how we needed more immigrants and, you know, and very oppositional to the cruel policies of Trump on the border. They were opposed to that and they thought more immigrants would be good for the country. And then when the Democratic Party under Joe Biden flips and now Kamala Harris is like, yes to the border wall and I want to do, you know, a border security package that doesn't include a pathway to citizenship, which is a break in the way that Democrats have always approached this

issue, you end up with Democratic partisans, you know, agreeing effectively with the case that Trump has been making for years. You could be right. I mean, I do think the reality is also pretty significant. I mean, what's also changed is even on the policy merits, for example, you know, in the same article, they have mass deportation is now supported by some 62% of all registered voters, 53% actually amongst Hispanic registered, or yeah, Hispanic registered voters. So, and that's mass deportation. That is as, you know as hawkish as you could possibly get. The big difference is about the priority. And that is where people who care about immigration by and large, they are Republicans. So for example, Republicans

are more likely to prioritize immigration by a massive number compared to the rest of the electorate. For Republicans, it's a 48%. It's the top issue. For independents, 25. For Democrats, just eight. So you can see it's a huge difference in priority. And it's something that we've been talking a lot about throughout this whole show, which is what are voters, what's going to be at the top of mind? It used to be a genuine rule that economy is the top of the mind. We know that's not true from 2022, from recent evidence. And in fact, if we think back through history, there have been social elections before. It's just been a very long time since any of us have seen them. Just because the parties in general have been, especially post-Roe, were really locked into a

consensus. Probably the best example is going all the way back to the 1890s and to think about all of the massive divide that America had on Jim Crow and basically the treatment of black Americans and how it should look. That's where a lot of southern populism comes from. A lot of realignment politics happened back in that time and actually at very similar levels of very high voter engagement where when people care about social issues, they care a lot. And they were willing to basically vote only on that. Not an accident that also coincided with the Gilded Age when people were very distracted from economic issues. So I think there's a lot of rhyming that's happening there. The immigration issue, it's really interesting just to think about how that will be at the forefront of people's minds on top of some of the economic stuff. Because immigration inextricably is obviously

is linked from economic policy, but is also divergent in terms of the way that Republicans and Democrats look at it. So for example, if you ask a lot of Republican voters what the cure to many economic problems is, they actually point to immigration as a number one solution. Whereas it's very different

when we look at democratic social policy. So actually some of the interesting stuff here doesn't just stay with immigration, also goes to tariffs. So let's put this up there, for example, on the screen. This was an interesting New York Times kind of side-by-side piece about how Trump and Harris have a, quote, stark partisan divide on fighting poverty. Immigration is obviously a key part of that. But if we look at some of the other issues that we see here, there is a big change in terms of the child tax credit, which we've seen previously. I think we've talked about it a lot here on the show. What is it? Kamala supports a $6,000 child tax credit policy. We're not exactly sure where Trump

stands. J.D. Vance has been on the record saying he supports a $5,000 child tax credit policy. Where Republicans stand on that issue, I'll let you guess where that is. I think we can judge by the record of how they voted in the Senate, which is against child tax credits. Yes. All right. So if we think about tariffs, that has actually been an interesting one. Do you want to weigh on any of this before I get to the tariff stuff? Go ahead and talk about tariffs and then I can talk about the whole thing. So tariffs actually has been, I'm curious to what you think, because under the Biden administration, a huge portion of the tariffs were kept in place most of the time, which I support, by the way, I'm very supportive of tariffs. But I've seen a retrenchment since Kamala has become the candidate. Everyone's like,

Trump wants to increase prices because of tariffs. And there was a testy exchange here, actually, between NBC Meet the Press and J.D. Vance, who's been very supportive of tariffs, basically a supporter of the Trump policy. Here was the exchange they got into. Now, the estimates vary. But how do you respond to that charge that Trump's tariffs would hurt the middle class? Yes, if you step back a little bit, Kristen, there's this whole thing that Kamala Harris did at the convention where she made a bunch of claims about what would happen and not enough actually reflection

on what already happened, right? Because Donald Trump was already president. He used tariffs to bring manufacturing jobs back to our country. I think he'll do it again. And he did it while keeping prices extremely low. Because if you go back to the Trump presidency, we had 12,000 factories that were built

during Donald Trump's presidency. Inflation never really ticked above 2%. His entire administration, in fact, was sort of around 1.5% most of the time that he was president. So when Kamala Harris says, if we do the thing that Trump already did, it's going to be way worse than it was last time, I just don't think that makes a lot of sense. Well, let's talk about Trump's record during his first term. He did impose rounds of tariffs and it cost Americans nearly $80 billion in new taxes. Do you acknowledge that imposing more tariffs will ultimately cost consumers? Well, what it really does is it penalizes importers from bringing goods outside the

country into the country. And I think that's just a necessary thing. We know that China and a number of other countries are using effectively slave labor to undercut the wages of American workers. Donald Trump thinks that has to stop. And again, what Kamala Harris is saying, Kristen, is that if you do this, you're somehow going to cause skyrocketing inflation. In reality, in taxes, $80 billion. Do you acknowledge that consumers ultimately will pay more if there are more tariffs imposed? So economists- Do you just acknowledge that? No, I don't, Kristen, because I think economists really disagree about the effects of tariffs because there can be a dynamic effect, right? So what some economists will say is what you just said, that it will actually raise costs for consumers. But what other people say, and I think the record supports what this other view,

is that it causes this dynamic effect where more jobs come into the country. Anything that you lose on the tariff from the perspective of the consumer, you gain in higher wages. So you're ultimately much better off. I have been very interested to see, there's been an interesting retrenchment, I guess, on the Democratic side of being anti-tariff, despite the fact that Biden actually was very supportive of tariffs while he was in office. So here's what I would say. So let me talk about the politics and then we talk about the reality of the policy. So I think tariffs are broadly pretty popular. I just saw some polling, you know, in general, like having tariffs is associated with

the idea of bringing back manufacturing jobs, especially popular in the old industrial Midwestern states. I think it's like a 60-40 issue, basically. So the politics of it, I think, are fine. What I would say is I was supportive of the tariffs Trump put into place, and I was supportive of Biden keeping and even expanding those tariffs and of the tariffs Trump put into place. And I was supportive of Biden keeping and even expanding those tariffs and of the industrial policy in the Biden era in general, you know, really trying to aggressively bring chips manufacturing here in particular has been a real push trying to protect our burgeoning EV industry, I also think has been very important. But when you're talking about those policies, what you're talking about

is identifying some key industries where it is critical that we have domestic manufacturing capability or a key industry like EVs, where your sense is, okay, this is where the world is going and we want to have a piece of it. Applying an across the board 10 or 20% tariff, I frankly think is insane. Now, it's not the case as the, you know, some will argue that all of that cost is going to get pushed onto consumers, but it is the case that some of it definitely will. And when you think about like EVs are a good example, for example, a lot of the parts that go into those vehicles come from they come from Canada. They come from overseas. So now you're making the inputs on these finished goods much more expensive.

And there are also certain things that like, you know, where it's really important we have chips manufacturing here. It would have been really important for us to have, you know, the medical supplies during COVID manufactured here. There are other things like, for example, coffee. We don't make here, and I don't see any reason for us to grow coffee beans here. Hey, we grow coffee in Hawaii. That's not true. And yet, that's going to be, you know, there's going to be an added 10% import tax on coffee too. So, don't think that it's a disconnect or retrenchment or whatever to say it makes sense to have certain industries that you target. It is insane, especially at this point in time when inflation and cost increase is the number one concern, which is different, by the way, from where they were in 2016 when they were initially pushing

this policy. It is insane to just have an across the board tariff policy. And the other thing that I would say is the evidence that J.D. Vance is citing that Trump brought a bunch of manufacturing, it's not really true. In fact, Biden has brought more manufacturing jobs back than Trump did. The increase in manufacturing jobs across the Trump era. And I'm just talking about up to COVID because I don't think it's fair to judge him for the loss during COVID. But if you just look up to COVID, it was the same rate of increase that you saw during the Obama administration. And you had 1,800 factories that disappeared during the Trump administration. So like I said, I'm not opposed to tariffs when they're smartly applied, but to do it across the board is going to raise prices at a time when that is the number one issue for consumers.

And just one more thing on that. You know, with Trump, it's very hard to know if he means what he says. I think on tariffs he does. It's very hard. This is an area where he most likely means what he says, but like on the mass deportation thing. Are you really going to round up 12, 15 million people and throw them in camps and all the expense and everything that that would entail? Are you really going to do that? But that's what he claims he's going to do. And he claims he's going to reduce legal immigration. That policy is also insane.

Just in terms, put the morality of it aside. Okay, you have something like a quarter of the construction industry is undocumented immigrants. More than half of the agriculture industry is immigrants, and a significant chunk of that, I think around 30%, is undocumented immigrants. So maybe in the fullness of time, although keep in mind that labor force participation is very high and unemployment is very low, so you don't have a lot of native-born workers just sitting around waiting for jobs right now, the impact of that policy also is an insane spike in prices. So, you know, again, on the politics of it, I think he's fine. I think he's on perfectly fine ground with how the public will perceive these policies. If he were to actually implement them, I think they would be an utter and complete catastrophe.

And you would see very significant inflation that people in food prices and an even greater construction slowdown and in housing prices that would be very, very, very unpopular. So on the 10 percent thing, first of all, it's not going to happen. So it doesn't even necessarily bear, you know, like looking at- You said this was the thing that he actually- No, no, no, no. I think he believes it, but you don't have the legal authority to put a 10% tariff on everything. Although I don't think it would be the worst idea in the world. Now, that's where I just significantly disagree because a 10% tariff already, we have a far too globalized economy. Even the vast majority of the imports, exports that we have from Mexico and from Canada. Mexico is our largest trading partner almost entirely because they have cheap

labor and because people like to use that as an arbitrage opportunity. Will it lead to higher prices in the short term? I won't deny it. It probably will. Now, will it lead to better and more manufacturing investment in the United States? Absolutely. And especially if you change things on the tax code with a lot of what Joe Biden did, where you had tariffs put in place, and then you use tax credits and other strategic investment to actually direct a lot of the revenue into building things here in the United States. So that's number one, like in terms of the actual tariff policy. Legally, the way that you're able to put it in place was something called 301. That's the way that Donald Trump put it in place. That's what Joe Biden used as well. That's largely

going to be national security strategic. That's how they were able to apply it to steel. Legally, that's the only way it's ever going to happen because Congress will never apply a quote 10% tariff. Although again, I don't think it would be the worst idea in the world, especially if we were to apply it to, let's say, you know, all of the countries where we have a trade deficit. Now that's another where, where, look, I understand that the economists are going to get upset about this stuff. That factory and, you know, manufacturing stuff, I don't think it's necessarily fair just because this stuff takes over a decade to materialize. So for example, like investment and others can be announced, but not even implemented on a five to materialize. So, for example, like investment and others can be announced, but not even implemented on a five to a 10-year period. I mean, if you look at the CHIPS Act,

if you were to judge the CHIPS Act on a short-term basis, it's been a failure because there's a ton of money out and there's no new job created. But 10 years from now, what are we going to say? Probably was a good idea, was a good investment, even though it costs a lot of money in the short term. So that's another area where tariffs make sense. Even on EV and all that, whenever we think about Canada and Mexico and the way that they have undermined our auto industry, there's great reason where even if we're not national security, what is it? So we're allies and we're not adversaries, while we still don't necessarily have a strategic interest in having so much of a critical industry be outside of the country. So that's just on the tariff part specifically. Now on immigration, now again though, this just gets to the tariff

question where it's like, that is frankly a very neoliberal argument. It's like, oh, prices are going to go up. I'm like, okay, yeah, you're right. I mean, that's true. They will probably go up in the short term. I think most people support that. Most people who support the policy are very understanding of that. Have they grappled with the total reality of what it would look like? No. But people want an actual process through which people who don't just get to come here and work illegally. I mean, when you tell me there's 30% of the agricultural industry is an illegal workforce, that's nuts. And that obviously just means that illegal immigration is a massive corporate subsidy. And, okay, even on the labor force participation rate.

Yeah. The labor force participation rate is still somewhere in the 60s, which means that a huge percentage of the workforce is not working. But then, too, if you support a higher wage, this is the easiest way to force these companies like Tyson's, Purdue, and all these others to actually have to pay workers a much higher wage. And if you combine it with an industrial policy, which again, I support, many Republicans do not, there are a lot of different ways to come out of this. At the same time, on the mass deportation policy, even people like, by the way, I heavily support mass deportation, but the issue, as I know, is most people understand that emotionally and all that, it's probably not going to happen in any way. Just for, look, Trump buckled on child separation.

They buckled on the vast majority of the policy that they put into place. It's more probably a bargaining chip as to trying to get something done in the first place. But philosophically, there is a philosophical understanding that I saw often during the tariff discussion in 2016-17. I remember watching MSNBC. People would go to a Walmart and they were interviewing people about dryers. And they're like, how do you feel about the fact that this dryer is more expensive because of a tariff that Donald Trump put on China? And they're like, that's fine with me. I don't mind at all. And that sentiment is important. Like Americans understand what that means. Sure.

And so there's a lot to dig into there. It's one thing when you're like, okay, the cost of dryers has gone up. And actually the cost only went up for a short period of time. Yes. Okay, so I want to include the full picture here. The cost of a dryer has gone up. It's another thing. And by the way, back in 2016 or 2017,

when inflation was low and that wasn't a major concern for Americans, now it is the number one concern of Americans. It is another thing to say all of your groceries are going, every good that you can buy in the store, the price is going up on. What do you think about that? And then the other piece just to reiterate here is, yes, the chips tariffs and the EV tariffs, like that makes sense. These are critical industries that are growth industries for the future. If you put a tariff on everything, a lot of what the US does in terms of manufacturing isn't just creating the raw goods like the steel.

And by the way, steel tariffs also make sense because we should have a domestic steel industry and that is important to do, right? But a lot of the manufacturing here is the higher end, we're creating the finished product. You put a tariff on everything across the board. That means all of those inputs, the cost of every single one is going up. Now, maybe theoretically in 50 years, maybe that means there's more domestic manufacturing here, or maybe it just

means that those automakers or whoever are making those finished goods move to another country where they can get those inputs cheaper and then, you know, where it makes sense for them to sell it back into our market rather than making it here. So even if I, you know, I agree that I do think that the CHIPS Act and these tariffs, I do think that over time they will increase manufacturing in those sectors. I think they're a good idea. I support that sort of targeted tariff. But when you do it across the board, it's not even clear that you end up with the manufacturing gain that you want. And in the meantime, consumers who are already so stretched on inflation are being asked to pay dramatic, significantly higher prices across the board. And so, like I said, listen, I think

politically tariffs popular, but I think if it was actually implemented, which, you know, we should take seriously what, even if you say, okay, Congress can't do it or whatever, whatever, we should take seriously what he says and what his plans are and, you know, like take it to its logical conclusion. We will have more tariffs than we have today, most likely under a Trump presidency. I think if you did it across the board, I think people would hate it. It's just not going to happen. I think it would be catastrophe. And, you know, also, I'll just leave it there.

Yeah. Well, I would say it's not going to happen, first of all, just because I know how the process works quite literally. It's just going to be on steel, on food, the way that we have the retaliatory tariffs, all of which I'm totally fine with. And Chinese can, you food, the way that we have the retaliatory tariffs, all of which I'm totally fine with. And Chinese can, you know, whatever. Your best case for a candidate shouldn't be, well, they're not actually going to do what they say they're going to do. If we were going to do that, I would defend it.

But I'm saying it's not going to happen. So if we actually look at what the reality is through the executive branch, you have the best legal authority under the Commerce Department, under USTR Section 301. You can use like a national security study. You can designate a certain industry critical to US national security. That's why food and, what is it, food, steel, those are the two things that obviously make the most sense. The thing is too, though, is that, and in general why the 10% figure is not as crazy as people think, go look at the tariff policy of the European Union. Go look at the tariff policy of South Korea. Go look at the tariff policy of China. And then by the way, even if they don't have tariffs, the amount

of national support that those companies, flagships in those countries receive compared to us is crazy. Volkswagen might as well be a part of the government. Like Samsung literally might as well be the South Korean state. And in some cases, Samsung executives, they run the country, not actually the people who are in Korea. In Japan, Toyota, what you think? That's not a literal, like they're like ambassadors for the country. It's very different from the way things run here in America. We should be more like them in my opinion. But I don't know if I want corporate leaders running. No, no, no. I'm saying- To the extent that they don't at the moment, but yeah. It's a little bit different because in those countries, the power dynamic is very one way

where the government's like, hey, Samsung, this is what you're going to do. And they're going to be like, well, this isn't as like, yeah, that's cute. But just so you know, this is what's happening. Same whenever it comes to China. Now, we shouldn't have all of that, but there are aspects which are very important for strategic industry, chips and elsewhere, where our laissez-faire attitude puts us at a major strategic disadvantage. I read a history of TSMC. It's incredible. It all could have happened here. The guy Morris Chang, he was here. He left America to create TSMC in Taiwan. And it was just because Taiwan was like, here's every dollar that you could possibly want. And reading that history, it's sad because it's one of those where our laissez-faire system, our government policy and all that has a lot of advantages, small businesses like us, the tax code. But for major strategic industry, we're failures completely.

I mean, there's nothing you said I disagree with. It's just what you're talking about are strategically intelligent, targeted, applied tariffs in places that make sense. Just to give one more example of what I'm, I use the coffee example. Another example, potash, right? Potash is critical ingredient for fertilizer. We don't have much or any domestic potash production. So now maybe you say like, that's critical. We should focus on that over time, et cetera, et cetera. But if you put a tariff on the importation of potash, what that means is all of your agricultural prices go up. And then of course, if you talk about immigration and deporting all of the undocumented workers and clamping down so you have even less legal migration than previously,

then you're talking about an even greater price hike on all of your agricultural goods. So, you know, agreed that there's, personally, in terms of immigration, obviously, I think there should be a path to citizenship. I think you're right about the way they're exploited and that's outrageous and that can have a wage impact. Certainly when people are being paid under the table because they're not earning the minimum wage, they're not, you know, protected by all the labor protections

that add additional costs to labor. I do think that's outrageous. My solution is a pathway to citizenship for those individuals. I think we should have more legal immigration, not less. But, you know, putting those things aside, the big three planks of Trump's economic plan are number one, the across the board tariffs, number two, mass deportation, and number three, the extension of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which was the tax cuts that largely went to corporate America and the two in particular, the immigration crackdown and the tariffs, both of them in the short term,

I don't think you would deny this, both of them in the short term will spike prices. Yes, I won't deny. Some amount. And it was one thing, the economic and political climate 2016, very different than now when Americans say the number one thing they're concerned about are prices. So that's just my sort of summation of how I'm viewing all of this. Producers are telling us we're talking too much about tariffs. Fine.

We can talk about the environment. All right. I'd rather talk about tariffs. Yeah. Same. But that's part of what the beauty of doing the show is, isn't it? Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left.

In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment

and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

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

think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez.

I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty.

You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get to the indictment. CounterPoints didn't cover this yesterday, but still some pretty big news. Can't take our eye off the legal drama involving Donald Trump. People will remember there was a Supreme Court ruling which effectively vacated some of the Jack Smith indictment against Donald Trump as related to January 6th. So Jack Smith actually convened a new grand jury and has brought new

charges against Trump, which he says are in line with that Supreme Court ruling. Let's put this up there on the screen. The new indictment was actually filed on Tuesday. It includes some of the same criminal charges, but actually narrows the allegations, quote, in an attempt to comply with the Supreme Court ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution. So in the new indictment, one of the reasons they had to do it was because the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents, quote, are absolutely immune from prosecution for official acts that fall within the exclusive sphere of constitutional authority. So all of the charges have to come from a place where it is not a, quote, official act of the presidency.

The new indictment does away, quote, with any reference to Donald Trump's interactions with the Justice Department, whom prosecutors allege he was trying to enlist in his effort to undo the election. By doing that, they take it outside the realm of the so-called official act and try to kick it into the realm of the political when there we're talking both about language, about coercion, and about some of the false elector stuff that was happening under the purview of the campaign. So for example, the first page of the old indictment refers to Trump as the 45th US president. The new indictment only refers to Trump as, quote, a candidate for president of the United States in 2020. It also, quote, deletes all references to any Trump statement made from the White House. So for

example, that January 6th message that was made on Twitter and instead focuses in on the campaign speech at a privately funded, privately organized political rally that occurred on that day. What actually stayed the same is four counts. It's obstruction of official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and conspiracy against the right to vote. So all of those charges, they say, are within the realm of the Supreme Court ruling. Obviously, Trump is going to challenge them and we're probably going to have to get a new ruling or scrutiny or whatever on this. But at the very least, here's what people can say. It's not, none of this has happened before the election. No, this is not going to be a short process. I'm sure it will go back up the chain in terms of

appeals and challenges likely end up back at the Supreme Court with them having to weigh in more specifically. One thing that you might recall from the decision that they issued with regard to presidential immunity is that even the conservatives, some of them issued like dissenting concurrences where, you know, they had a different opinion about how immunity would be defined, like which things are actually official responsibilities and which are in your personal capacity. So it's not at all clear exactly how they would create that dividing line. And I mean, it's a difficult line to draw. So I think it's entirely likely this ends up back at the Supreme Court. But it's the same four charges. That hasn't changed. Some of the details, underlying details

have changed. Some of the phrasing, emphasizing he's a candidate, this was in his role as a candidate, has nothing to do with his official responsibilities. Some of that has changed as well. But this was a separate grand jury, a different grand jury than issued the initial indictment that returned this now superseding indictment. And there was an interesting segment on CNN that we wanted to highlight for you all. So Ty Cobb, who's like a big shot Washington lawyer. He was Trump's lawyer. Very well known here and was for a time Trump's lawyer when he was in the White House. He was interviewed on CNN and he was like, these charges are very strong and he's likely to face six to

nine years in prison as a result just of this particular case. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. Does this indictment make a clean-cut case that the acts were personal? I think it does. I think some of the editing you highlighted in your intro is spot on, emphasizing the private nature of many of these acts, the private funding of the speech before the Capitol intrusion, Pence's ceremonial role, the non-governmental roles of the co-conspirators, which they can now say categorically now that Jeffrey Clark is out

because he was the only government official who was actually in the original indictment, he's no longer in this indictment. Whatever the indictment was going to look like after it went through whatever hearings that Judge Chuck is going to have, she still will have a hearing on the adequacy of this indictment. You know, it does have, you know, there is an interlocutory appeal available, at least as I read the Supreme Court decision. And that doesn't mean the Supreme Court has to take it if the D.C. Circuit acts before and they're content with whatever they do. But this is definitely this has never this hasn't been on course to go before the election for months. This was never that that was never going to happen. But as you point out, I mean, this is a very forceful document.

It's pared down. Every sentence is, you know, crisply worded. It's a tight narrative. You can't read this and not understand the crimes that Trump actually committed. And as you pointed out, 55 years is exposure. He's not going to get 55 years, but he'll get six to nine on this. So, I mean, it's pretty confident there. I don't know if, you know, I don't know. I don't know.

But six to nine is a lot. He's like, he's going to get six to nine years. He helped negotiate on the, again, I mean, I just see that so massively unlikely, but listen, he's the former Trump attorney, so we should at least take it somewhat seriously. The other thing he said that was interesting to me is he was like, Trump's not going to take this seriously until it's like the sentencing happens and it's inescapable and he's headed to prison. Like he is not going to take this seriously until it's undeniable, which I thought was just having the fact that he worked closely with Trump, I thought was an interesting like intellectual insight to the way that Trump approaches all of this.

Certainly true. Yeah. The last thing that I'll mention here, it's a little crazy. I mean, the way we thought this election would go and the way it has actually gone have been two very different things. You know, we really thought, and for good reason, that these trials and his, you know, indictments and potential convictions or whatever would be so central to the election season. And it really is such a side note. Now, the one thing I will say that is counter to that is he does have a sentencing date coming up in that Alvin Bragg case on September 18th, which will reinsert this back into the political conversation. So we'll see what happens there and how significant it is. I think it's very unlikely he ends up with this. It's a relatively minor charge that he was found guilty

of. I think it's very unlikely that he would end up facing any prison time over it. But I guess you never know. It is theoretically possible. So we'll see how all of that goes down. But that's September 18th that we'll have that sentencing date. There was some push to, you know, extend that or push it off for a while, but they are going forward with it. So that's next. Significant Trump legal Georgia is past the election. Now this is past the election. I mean, the main two ones where he was the most in legal jeopardy are now at the very least past. Also, if he does get elected president, there will be so much considering the Supreme Court ruling and that, you know, all of the circus around that

being sitting president and facing some of this, it will be, you know, so many novel legal constitutional theories will be tested. Well, this one in particular is a federal case. Yeah. So, you know, he theoretically can just pardon himself on that one and not, you know, not face it. And then you also have the question of like a sitting president being prosecuted. And that's typically been seen as a no-no. So, yeah, I think him getting elected is probably a get out of jail free card for all of these things, which, of course, heightens the importance of the election, certainly to the person of Donald J. Trump, who I'm sure would prefer not to go to prison. Big time.

All right. We have a few updates we wanted to bring you with regard to Israel that are consequential. Can put this up on the screen. Channel 13, which is a Hebrew language news outlet, reported this, and it seems to be correct. Israel has agreed to a sort of kind of temporary humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza to allow the administration of polio vaccines. The next tweet down from this, which we don't have, but I'll just read you, it says, first report, Israel has agreed to Tony Blinken's request to implement a ceasefire in specific areas of Gaza, so not the whole thing, not as part of negotiations, but for the purpose of vaccinating

the population against polio. Decision was made by Netanyahu and the security establishment. Netanyahu's office responded, this is not a truce, but a designation of specific areas in the Gaza Strip for vaccination. The matter has been supported by the ministers. And Sagar, this is obviously very significant because of the fact that you have already had, I mean, polio is supposed to be basically eradicated. And you've already had a baby, a 10-month-old, so has known no life outside of this war, who was born and died because of polio. And they have been picking up polio in the sewage in the Gaza Strip. So, you know, I don't think the Israelis are doing this out of the goodness of their heart. Their soldiers have to be operating in the Gaza Strip and are also probably concerned about the outbreak that is apparently ongoing of polio in Gaza. So that is the, you know, what we know about this theoretical temporary partial ceasefire.

It was not enough of a ceasefire, apparently. We put this up on the screen to keep them from continuing to target aid vehicles. This is the World Food Program run by the UN. Temporarily suspended activities throughout Gaza after one of its vehicles was hit by at least 10 bullets. They went on to say, despite the World Food Program's coordination with Israel and Gaza, deconfliction, and that its vehicle was marked and cleared by Israeli authorities. It was directly hit by Israeli gunfire as it was moving towards an Israeli army checkpoint. This, of course, recalls that multiple drone strike on the

World Central Kitchen vehicles. And of course, the fact, Sagar, that we've had hundreds, dozens, and many more than 100 aid workers who have been killed by Israel in this conflict. So, you know, at a time when, of course, the starvation and overall humanitarian conditions for Palestinians are horrific shape. Now you have the World Food Program unable to operate because once again, one of their vehicles was targeted. Yeah, it was really, it was actually crazy to see Cindy McCain, who I always think it's ironic as the literal head of the World Food Program, especially because her daughter is probably one of the most pro-Israel people that's out there. Anyway, she says this quote is totally unacceptable.

The latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents have endangered the lives of the World Food Program team in Gaza. So overall, the situation in Israel is still quite crazy. I mean, Ryan and Emily covered this yesterday. There's this major West Bank operation, which is happening there. The government is also saying all kinds of crazy stuff. We had this major Lebanon situation, the ceasefire talks. I don't even know where we, where do we currently stand with that? I don't actually even know. Yeah, literally, basically in total limbo. Joe Biden's still at the beach, though, so don't worry about that. In terms of executing anything in American power,

I don't know. It feels like there is a level of stasis that things have reached. It is August 29th, and I was thinking about that. I mean, we're coming up on one year since October 7th, which is genuinely stunning and crazy to consider. But, and, you know, not only all that it's wrought there, but in terms of our politics and foreign policy and the change and what all of that has looked like. But in a certain sense, it does feel like things are both calming down in Gaza, but now expanding in terms of Lebanon and the West Bank. That's what it really looks like right now.

Yeah. You know, just to go back to that World Central Kitchen thing, because I was thinking. Yeah, you know, just to go back to that World Central Kitchen thing, because I was thinking about this, you know, at the time, because this was the outfit associated with Jose Andres, there was a hole. This was a big deal here in D.C. because people know him personally.

He was out giving interviews, speaking out. There was a big focus. You'll recall they triple tapped that vehicle convoy in this clearly marked. They'd gone through the deconfliction, and they made sure that everyone was killed. The survivors would move from one vehicle to the next and they would target that vehicle. And so there was massive outrage. And yet, you know, their calculation was we can let that die down. And it served their ultimate interests of, and I mean, this is very

clear from the way that they've operated the entire time and the public pronouncements they've made about effectively starving Gazans. They succeeded in diminishing the number of aid workers who were able to do the job and the amount of aid that could be distributed. And so, you know, this is just the latest incident in what has been a successful strategy of making it impossible and deadly to try to distribute. And even the wildly inadequate amount of aid that gets into the Gaza Strip. Also just in a sign of, again, I think any society can, like, I don't think that Israelis as human beings are any different than any other people around the world. But this society, in terms of what they have come to accept and embrace, a majority of

Jewish Israelis, it is profoundly disturbing the dark things that they now accept and embrace, including we've discussed this incident on camera of gang rape of a Palestinian, documented that this has occurred multiple times. And there was a new poll, we can put this up on the screen, asking how Jewish Israelis want to handle those soldiers who gang raped Palestinian detainees at that prison torture facility. Almost two thirds, 65% of Jewish Israelis say there should be no criminal prosecution. They prefer them to be handled in a disciplinary manner only. Only 21% of Jewish Israelis thought that there should be a criminal trial for gang rape.

I don't even know what you say about that. You know, the extremes have clearly taken over. And you can see how, you know, in Bibi's actions and the way he's prosecuted the war and the way he's really, you know, leaned into the Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, like literal terrorists, their view of how to prosecute this assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. these are the types of numbers he's responding to. And it has been politically, it has worked out for him. He had two goals. One was to just hold on to power as long as possible. Okay, well, he's doing that well. And two, by satiating this desire for just horror and revenge, he was hoping that he could regain his political position. And

guess what? It's kind of worked. His poll numbers have come up significantly from where they were after October 7th. Because recall, you know, he was Mr. Security. And it was his entire philosophy that, you know, obviously that Hamas is responsible for their actions. I'm not taking away from the horrors that they committed. But in terms of his theory of what would provide security for Israelis, it completely failed. And there were massive public recriminations. Plus there was, you know, already this massive backlash over the like judicial coup that he was trying to effectuate that was deeply unpopular as well. His position has recovered quite a bit. Yeah, no, his position is not only recovered, it's largely the strategy is working for him now currently.

And there's been, you know, we wanted to also put some other troubling precedents in here and to look into. Let's put this up there on the screen. There was a major report that Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange, was, quote, under scrutiny for seizing Palestinian crypto funds. Now, Binance is disputing this, basically saying that they're in compliance with anti-money laundering, anti-money laundering law. For example, let's go to the next part, please. They say the Binance CEO dismissed it, said that it was basically only in compliance with anti-money laundering funds, saying, quote, only a limited number of user accounts were blocked from transacting. There have been some incorrect statements about this. As a global

exchange, we have to comply with internationally accepted money laundering legislation, just like any other financial institution will continue to educate users. What this is highlighting is just like the power of the Israeli government right now in trying to deny and use its sovereign status in the conflict, not only over Binance, but Elon Musk previously had this issue with Starlink as well, for example, because he was like, hey, I want to give Starlink to Gaza. And they were like, yeah, that's not going to happen unless we give permission, basically. And it's one of those where it shows the power of the nation state whenever they want to, you know, whenever they want to act. Yeah. I mean, they've done it with Facebook. They've done it with a couple of other places as

well. I read the replies, by the way, to that tweet saying like, this is fun. We only did for a few and the people were not buying it. Or whatever that's worth. The crypto world was saw it as quite a betrayal, as they should, because one of the key selling points of crypto is that it would not be, that it would be outside of these various nation state pressures. And it's not very clearly, you know, in the same way. Like it's just not that simple. It may be, it could be, but it's not. No, I'm saying it can be like, you got to use a VPN. Like you got to like go to great length. Listen, in general, if you want to transact when the government doesn't want you to transact, good luck, even with crypto. And I think, but you can do it with crypto. I will just say that.

It's still very difficult. It's not the easiest thing in the world. I'm not going to give away any secrets here on the platform. So the FBI comes at me. But there are definitely ways to get around it if you want to. If you want it to be easy, like with a bank or something, then use the legitimate system. The problem with the legitimate system is, well, you know, the government, anytime they want, boom, your entire account is completely shut down. And we saw that with Canada, the whole freedom protest thing. But you're right. I mean, in terms of Binance and just the way that a lot of these international exchanges in particular portray themselves, they always say, like, we're above government institutions. And they do need to be honest about, listen, if you're trying to evade like the long arm of the law, it's a difficult process.

Sanctions or whatever, or targeting by the Israeli state who, you know, makes up whoever they want to deem as terrorists. Crypto is obviously not. And the other thing is, you know, on the one hand, they want to be like, oh, we're, you know, we're outside of the system, et cetera, et cetera. On the other hand, I believe this is correct. No industry has spent more in this election than crypto. I'm not sure that's true. Look it up. I'd have to look that up. Look it up. They've spent, I believe, more than any other industry. And, you know, they want to, they're here with their own lobbyist outfits and playing the same Washington influence game to get their goodies and their perks and their loopholes and whatever is everybody else.

So I don't see him as much different. Well, the reason on that is that there's a big divide in crypto also. Because what you're talking about is the reason that they're spending money is not to transact on crypto. It's specifically for SEC rulings about how an asset is governed and the ability to tokenize. That is actually really what's more at stake. That's not really crypto per se. This is more like blockchain-related tech and then also the issuance of tokens, which has its history in crypto, but has much more application to web-based transacting. This is part of the whole Web3 movement. Anyway, I know this is very confusing

and in the weeds, but there is a significant difference between that. There's also a big divide in crypto itself between like institutional crypto, people like the Winklevii and others. I mean, for example,

being able to buy like a, what is it, an ETF that just tracks Bitcoin. A lot of OG Bitcoiners are like, hey, we didn't get into this to like have an SEC regulated stock market fund just track Bitcoin. This also gets to the differences. And I mean, let's be honest, there's hundreds of billions of dollars now.

So there's various different stakeholders. It's used much more as just like a thing to bet on than it is as a currency. That's just undeniable. No, I found the stat. Big crypto now spending more on US elections than any other industry. They funneled some $119 million into federal elections, according to Public Citizen, from four days ago. So they're big players here. And they're winning, too. I mean, this is one area. Trump has already dropped his opposition.

He went and spoke at their conference. He's basically like, whatever you want me to do or believe, I'll, you know, do and believe. And it looks like the Harris people are more crypto favorable than the Biden people have been. So money well spent, looks like they're winning. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane

turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex

and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times

where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor going above and beyond the call of duty.

You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the past week, two significant formerly left-ish figures decided to throw their lot in with the reigning global symbol of right populist authoritarians, Donald Trump. Now, that would be former 2024 presidential candidate RFK Jr. and former 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. Both appeared to travel a kind of similar journey from dissident left to right wing, and so they sparked a round of online discussion about the supposed Bernie to Trump pipeline. There's a lot, of course, that this formulation leaves out. For one thing, Tulsi's most recent presidential endorsement in 2020, while Bernie was still in the race, went to Joe Biden. Yet there are no think pieces on the Biden to Trump pipeline, at least none that I've seen. I can't actually find

a record of who RFK Jr. supported in 2020. Someone can message me and let me know. But I know his similarly red-pilled vice presidential pick was a Mayor Pete backer. Former never-Trump resistance figure, J.D. Vance, is now literally Trump's VP pick. In other words, there are many ideological and ambition-driven paths between the two political parties back and forth. I could also point out that by the numbers, actually, more Hillary voters, bitter over her loss to Obama, defected to McCain in 2008, than angry Bernie bros defected to Trump in 2016. In fact, with the new coconut-pilled-inspired unity, if anything, the problem is closer to the one Matt Karp identifies,

which is that too many online Bernie bros are demanding too little from Kamala Harris for their support. All of this is true, and if I was writing this monologue a few years ago, I would have penned a blistering screed filleting these shit libs for their unending animus and bias towards the left. But the truth is, we've got a few too many examples now, several of which I've been personally burned by, to totally dismiss the Bernie to Trump pipeline as a baseless mainstream media plot to discredit the left. It pains me to admit it, but the libs are not entirely wrong. There's former communist, now ardent Trump supporter, Russell Brand. There's former TYT progressive host, Jimmy Doors. Politics now just seem to be centered around hating libs and being anti-COVID vacs. There's however you want to describe Twitter ubiquitous Jackson Hinkle. I'm sure you've got your own examples that come to mind. I think the online influencer horseshoe journey is likely more

common than the regular person horseshoe journey, as best I can tell by the polling data. But it'd be foolish to assume that none of these influencers' flock followed them from dissident left to Trumpian right, probably some of you listening to me right now. In terms of the horseshoe influencers, most of them would claim that their politics haven't budged an inch. It's that, in fact, the Democratic Party left them.

Just zooming in on RFK and Tulsi, these claims are pretty hard to take seriously, especially at this late date in Trumpism when few, if any, real populist elements remain and have instead been replaced by standard boomer-con attacks on imaginary communists. But a quick look at the statements of both RFK and Tulsi will leave you pretty convinced that to back Trump, they changed or abandoned their principles. I guess it's also possible that they've thoroughly confused themselves about who Donald Trump actually is and what the Republican

Party actually stands for. Remember Tulsi's most memorable moment of righteous indignation at Kamala's expense during the 2020 primary. Let's just take a listen to that again. I want to bring the conversation back to the broken criminal justice system that is disproportionately negatively impacting black and brown people all across this country today. Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she'll be a prosecutor president, but I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite,

but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence. She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. And she fought to keep cash bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way. It's impossible to imagine Tulsi Gabbard critiquing Kamala on criminal justice or much of anything from the left at this point.

And by endorsing Trump, Tulsi signing up with a man who called for the now exonerated Central Park Five to be executed, and a man who has already threatened to use the Insurrection Act to launch a military crackdown in Chicago and other American cities in response to crime

as part of this current presidential bid. With regard to RFK Jr., just a few months ago, he was absolutely ripping Trump on a wide variety of fronts, including Trump's militarism and corporatism. Quote, if you think a second Trump term would be any different, you are engaging in wishful thinking. Well, now RFK Jr. has flipped from blasting Trump for turning his foreign policy over to the worst warmongers and neocons to absurdly claiming that Trump is anti-war. He also claimed that Trump would combat censorship and wild, insanely dishonest claim that Kyle did a fantastic job of debunking. In reality, of course, Trump, among other things, wants to punish flag burning with a year in jail, sued CNN for $475

million for calling election denialism the big lie, sued Bill Maher over a joke, supports opening up the libel laws, called for jailing journalists who reported on the SCOTUS abortion ruling, wants to deport pro-Palestine protesters, etc., etc., you get the point. So at least for these two, the claim they're just consistently following their long-held principles, it's pretty preposterous. So what's really going on here? Everyone calls everyone a grifter these days. However, we would be naive to overlook the pull of commercial and career incentives.

Since we're talking about a bunch of hyper-online influencers, algorithmic rewards and audience capture are pretty compelling, if not totally complete answers. Look, I'm in this game. I know what clicks. I can see'm in this game. I know what clicks. I can see it in our metrics every single day. If I was simply following the anti-establishment money, my politics would look a lot like Tulsi or RFK Jr. or the others.

And there are few things more irresistible to the entire right-wing universe than a why-I-left-the-left narrative arc. That's why the Trump campaign has confused themselves into thinking that RFK Jr., who has a deeply negative approval rating and a rash of perplexing and horrifying stories about his past, not to mention a set of deeply unpopular ideas, and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat who garnered a whopping 0.7% of the primary vote, will be powerful campaign additions. Their brains have been cooked by the stew of right-wing traditional and social media. Naomi Klein digs a layer deeper into this reward system in her terrific book, Doppelganger. In it, she details a phenomenon in which she is constantly confused with Naomi Wolf, led her to think more deeply about what she describes as the, quote,

mirror world that some like Wolf have tumbled into. Now, Naomi Wolf followed that horseshoe arc from Al Gore advisor and leading feminist to Bannon war room regular and right-wing COVID era celebrity influencer. In the book, Naomi Klein describes how during COVID, she became somewhat obsessed with the confusion between herself and this doppelganger, and especially obsessed with the journey that that other Naomi had traveled. What happened? How did she justify it? One of the things that Naomi Klein found is that the mirror world or horseshoe or Bernie to Trump phenomenon, it's actually not just a U.S. dynamic. Similar movement in Germany labels itself Querdenken, taking a stab at the pronunciation there, meaning outside the box or diagonal, and combines neo-fascists with hippie-type health obsessives.

Other similar movements have sprung up throughout Europe as well. As Klein writes in her book, despite claims of post-partisanship, it is right-wing, often far-right, political parties around the world that have managed to absorb the unruly passions and energy of diagonalism, folding its COVID-era grievances into pre-existing projects opposing wokeness and drumming up fears of migrant invasions, alien abductions, as well as climate lockdowns. Still, it is important for these movements to present themselves as, and to believe themselves to be, ruptures with politics as usual, to claim to be something new beyond traditional left-right polls, which is why having a few prominent self-identified progressives and or liberals involved is so critical. In other words, these movements need former Democrats, so they'll scoop up a discredited Naomi Wolf or a failed and scorned presidential candidate or two and embrace them. Download their podcast. They'll

push them to stardom. They'll replace the scorn and derision of liberals with the praise and adoration of the right. That's an intoxicating brew for anyone, but may prove completely irresistible depending on a set of life experiences and personality traits. As Naomi Klein writes, quote, I could offer a kind of equation for leftists and liberals crossing over to the neo-fascist and authoritarian right that goes something like narcissism times grandiosity plus social media addiction plus midlife crisis divided by public shaming equals right-wing meltdown. She was joking, but it does ring a little bit true. I want to dwell on that public shaming piece though, because I think it's important. Gives me an excuse to get back on the more comfortable ground of criticizing liberals. Since the Clinton era, the entire

Democratic Party establishment has been dedicated to a project of punching left, deriding anyone who questions the narrow confines of their cramped worldview as a villain. And this project of derision and excommunication got turned up to 11 during the Bernie era. We weren't just people who wanted healthcare. We were toxic Bernie bros, hell-bent on electing Donald Trump or turning the country over to Vladimir Putin or whatever. At every opportunity, Democratic Party elites trashed us personally, mocked our priorities, undermined our candidates to the point of outright rigging. It's not an excuse for people to abandon their principles to throw in with Trump,

but it is highly predictable that this process of scorn and shaming will in fact lead to some folks embracing the side that is there waiting with open arms to praise and uplift them and their conversion story. Not to mention, to validate their online battle-hardened worldview that liberals were always and forever the root of all evil. On the contrary, in the new Kamala Harris era, it has taken remarkably little extension of the tiniest bit of goodwill to get many disaffected Bernie-type young people, and not-so-young people, back on board. I was personally shocked that Kamala picked Tim Walz for VP simply because he was the candidate the left wanted, and typically Democrats make a show

of humiliating the left for sport. In addition, after an initially ugly response to pro-Palestinian protesters, Kamala clearly heard the feedback and adjusted her tone to be more compassionate in future interactions. Now, don't mistake what I'm saying here. These gestures are far from enough,

but that's kind of my point. As the old saying goes, you'll catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar. Kamala is trying the tiniest bit of honey and judging by the polls and the Democrats that are coming back home, it's actually working like a charm. This monologue, already too long,

a lot more I could say about the appeal of conspiracy in a topsy-turvy world, about the particular characters who are involved here, about how Trump and then COVID just really broke a lot of people's brains. But I'm just going to end with this. The COVID era is over. The Bernie versus Hillary era, I think it's actually over. And so while there may still be various pipelines to the right wing, Tulsi and RFK, they're probably more emblematic of the last gasps of some phenomenon than a new wave of some phenomenon,

as evidenced by the fact that anyone excited about their embrace of Trump was really already supporting Trump. We'll have to await what strange new political phenomenon our AI algorithmic overlords are going to cook up next. All right, Sagar, there was a lot there. But anyway, Bernie to Trump pipeline, is it real? Yes, to the extent that Bernie is like Trump

in his 2016 campaign was a catch-all for a lot of different stuff. So some people were there for Medicare for all. Some people were there because they fucking hated Hillary Clinton. And some people were there because they hate the left, right, the establishment left. And so today, if you hate the establishment left— Because they hate liberals. Because they hate liberals. You should support Trump.

Like, if that's your number one thing, you hate— If your whole politics is just, I hate liberals. I mean, a lot of people think that. A they hate liberals. Because they hate liberals. You should support Trump. Like, if that's your number one thing, you hate establishment. If your whole politics is just, I hate liberals. I mean, a lot of people think that. A lot of people. That is their politics. I don't blame them. And yeah, especially online, like in particular, then that pipeline makes a lot of sense. Trump was a much more marginal figure in 2016. Bernie, obviously, was a catch-all of the Democratic Party. These were traditionally people who came up hating the Bush Republican Party. It wasn't exactly clear yet that that was going to be demolished. It would make a lot of sense to back a Bernie Sanders. It also would make a lot of sense then to back a Donald Trump in 2024.

And that's the thing. Look, a lot of people don't vote on policy. A lot of people are oriented towards hating the left. So if you hate the left, yeah, you should vote for Trump. I mean, honestly. And that's why I actually think the Tulsi and RFK phenomenon does entirely make sense to me. Because I never thought any of it really was about criminal justice reform or any of that stuff. A lot of it really was just about the establishment being anti-establishment, one is sticking it to the man, and in a realm where Bernie has now endorsed Trump, where AOC is on the DNC stage, a lot of it does make sense for the figures who

are most attracted to them, again, not for policy reasons, but for standing up to the establishment left, to liberals. For vibes. Yeah, for vibes. It entirely tracks that you should vote for Donald Trump and to support them. So, yeah, I mean, this is like former Trump supporters. I'm trying to think about this. It's, you know, we make a lot of the phenomenon of, like, former McCain people who are now Democrats. Everyone's like, how is that possible? I'm like, no, it's entirely, like, it totally makes sense. If you support warmongering.

You might call it, like, the McCain to Harris pipeline. Yeah, there's so many of those people. Stuart Stevens, the Lincoln Project and all that. That is entirely tracks to me. But part of it is, part of it is, number one, with a lot of those people, part of what drives it is also an ambition rewards calculus. Because in the same way, you know, you're feted if you do the why I left the left thing and you're, suddenly you're,

you know, you're popular and you have a podcast that's in the top whatever and you're getting, your presidential endorsement matters. Like, if Tulsi Gabbard

endorsed Kamala Harris, no one would give a shit. Yeah. You know, but that she endorsed Trump, he brings her up and says a big thing, she's on the transition team,

she's a hero, et cetera, et cetera. There's a similar, like, yeah, former Republican to resistance figure. That's also very profitable and that, you know, absolves you of all of your past sins of, you know, in the same way that it's not exactly the same because the never Trump phenomenon is we're talking about elite media predominantly. And here we're talking about like online media predominantly. But I do think it is more of a top level influencer phenomenon because of the specific rewards and incentives that are involved in those structures than it is a broader phenomenon. I think it's, if you just look at the numbers, far more former Bernie supporters have traveled the path to be like AOC, Nancy Pelosi, coconut pills. Far more than are like, yes, with RFK Jr. joining Trump and Tulsi Gabbard joining Trump. Now,

that's not to say those people don't exist. But, you know, I do go back to like, part of why I was reluctant to delve into this is because I do think the phenomena is vastly overstated by, you know, people who have an ideological ax to grind against the left and have always hated Bernie and Bernie supporters, whatever. And I think ignores other, like ignores, for example, that Tulsi endorsed Biden last time around, you know, and that many other figures have moved to the right who were not Bernie people. But there's a quote going around that Tulsi actually said to us in 2019. Oh, really? Something about Donald Trump. Yeah, I see it all the time. Oh, what was it? Let me find it. Well, while you're looking that up, I'll also tell people

the New York Times actually quoted the last interview that you did because I was out, I don't remember where I was on vacation or something, with RFK Jr. It was apparently the last time he criticized Trump was on our show with you in that interview. And he said he was a quote, terrible president. Here. It wasn't very long ago, guys. 2019. Look, there is no question in my mind, Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president and commander of chiefs. I've said this over and over again. Gabbard told host Crystal Ball and Sagar and Jetty. So that was, I mean, it was 2019. So a lot of things have changed. But again, if you look at the reward system and you, I mean, the same thing that we think about of Nicole

Wallace of the Bill Crystal pipeline completely applies the other way around. For voting bloc, I mean, in the same way, the voting blocs also does not follow elite opinion or that type of opinion. Most people who supported McCain support Trump. Now, did he lose some people on the margins? Yeah. But vast majority of Republicans are still Republicans. Vast majority of Bernie people are mostly still Democrats. So if you look at the voters, it's different. There's another thing too, where look, you know, since we're being honest about the open online phenomenon, sometimes, you know, if you want to keep your channel growing, by definition, you have to bring more people in. And so if you see a drop in left,

whatever, then what do you do? You kind of chase whatever continues, and then you lean into a little bit of that. Anybody is guilty of it. Obviously, like you said, it would be very easy, actually, to grow the channel even more to just post about certain subjects. It doesn't take a genius to figure all of that. We resist quite a bit of it here. And we can, because we have insight to it, you can see so clearly which channels are just riding the algorithm. Right, yeah. Now, in general, though, the caution is

you're probably going to get burned. You know, in the long run, the people who do that, you get burned and you almost never make it in the long run. Because it becomes clear to the audience as well. And you're just becoming predictable too. You know, it's like if you're just always riding the wave of whatever is the popular online thing, then eventually, yeah, it's going to become unsustainable. People are going to get bored with it. They're going to move on, whatever. So it is a short-term strategy that can be very successful. Long-term strategy, not. I don't think it works, but there's a decent amount of money to be made in the short term. That's usually the analysis that all those people have. We're

already running late, so we can cut it here. Everybody have a good Labor Day weekend. Chrisley, you'll have analysis on the Commonwealth interview. Yeah, I'm going to react to the interview. Sagar's going to be out, so it's not that I'm kicking him out from responding to Comrade Harris. I'm flying to London. Everybody leave me alone.

But yeah, so I'll react to that. We are going to be off on Monday. Monday, that's right. So we'll see you back here on Tuesday. See you Tuesday. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right.

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Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.

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