Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/16/24: Trump Pro-Ukraine Assassin, Shock Iowa Poll, Haitian Pet Controversy, Trump War On Taylor Swift, JD Vance Attacks Krystal, MTG Unloads On Laura Loomer, Jill Stein Vs. AOC

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump assassin details, shock Iowa poll, Haitian pet controversy, Trump war on Taylor Swift, JD Vance attacks Krystal, MTG unloads on Laura Loomer, Jill Stein AOC war on Breakfast Club.    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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Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here. And we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do a lot of political news, wild stuff going on. So Trump facing a second assassination attempt. This morning, we have a look at some really deranged social media postings from the alleged

attempted assassin. So we'll get into everything we know there. We've also got a whole lot of post-debate polls now. Things starting to come into focus. Also, excuse me for this very cheesy cringe thing I'm about to say. Trump and Taylor Swift, not a love story, guys. You did the thing. I had to do the thing. All right. In addition, J.D. Vance spending his time attacking yours truly and also Zed Jelani. And we have Zed on the show to talk about that and also just to get into more what the hell is going on there. J.D. was on a bunch of the Sunday shows yesterday talking about the whole Haitian pet situation. So lots to dig into there for sure. Also, Trump in his Laura Loomer era. What does that mean for him and the campaign?

What is the potential fallout as Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene are also completely beefing in the messiest way possible? So a lot that's interesting there. Bill Maher making a stunning prediction, saying it is over, over for Donald Trump. Yeah, we will see if he's right. Could be. Could be. Also, speaking of messiness, messy fight, beef between Jill Stein and AOC that we can dig into as well after Jill Stein was on The Breakfast Club. Very interesting appearance there. Yes, that will be very interesting. Now, as Crystal said, we're going to go ahead and just go straight into this second attempted assassination of Donald Trump. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. We've got some of the details now on the suspect, the alleged shooter. His

suspect's name is Ryan Ralph. He's in custody following that assassination attempt on Trump at the Florida Golf Club. On the right, for those who are watching, you can see the photo of him whenever he was arrested by authorities. The story behind this is honestly quite crazy. So we can go to the next part, please, which is a map that shows a little bit of how some of this went down. Now, according to Sean Hannity, who was on the phone with Trump and actually was supposed to golf with Trump that day, he said that Donald Trump was playing on the fifth hole of the West Palm Beach golf course. It is the, quote, long par in the northeastern corner. So for those who are looking, the green is about 50 yards from South Congress Avenue. The sixT box is right at the end of the road. You could see exactly on the map

where all of this went down. Now, the alleged way that this all happened is that Donald Trump was golfing. The Secret Service agents were scouting a couple of holes ahead of him. During that scouting, one agent spotted a man with a long gun, which has now been confirmed to be an AK-47 in a so-called nest where there were two bags and a long rifle that were found. The agents began firing at him. So at no point, according to the official narrative, any shots squeezed off by Ryan Ralph, dropped his weapon, or I guess leaned it up against the fence, ran away so the Secret Service agents did not hit him. He was able to get into his car. A nearby bystander actually was able to take a photo

of Routh's car and his license plate, which allowed police to zero in on the type of vehicle they were searching for. He was actually able to exit the county before he was then arrested by sheriff's deputies. So that is the official of what we've got. We actually have here some of the sound of the sheriff kind of breaking some of this down. Sheriff Rick Bradshaw giving a press conference following by a Secret Service investigation. Let's take a listen. 1.30 this afternoon, call came out, shots fired.

That was called in by the Secret Service. Because we're in constant contact with them all the time, we were notified of that and we had units here that immediately sealed off the area. Fortunately, we were able to locate a witness that came to us and said, hey, I saw the guy running out of the bushes. He jumped into a black Nissan and I took a picture of the vehicle and the tank which was great. So we had that information our real-time crime center put it out to the license plate readers and we were able to get a hit on that vehicle on I-95 as it was headed into Martin County. We got a hold of Martin County Sheriff's Office,

alerted them, and they spotted the vehicle and pulled it over and detained the guy. After that, we took the victim, I'm sorry, the witness that witnessed the incident, flew him up there, and he identified as the person that he saw running out of the bushes and jumped into the car.

Now, in the bushes where this guy was is an 8K47-style rifle with a scope, two backpacks which were hung on the fence that had ceramic tile in them, and a GoPro, which he was going to take pictures of. They have an agent that jumps one hole ahead of time to where the president was at. And he was able to spot this rifle barrel sticking out of the fence and immediately engage that individual, at which time the individual took off. So that's what we got right now, Crystal. Now, social media has now come out about Mr. Ryan Routh. Let's just say he's a bit of a lunatic, but I will say he's a lunatic who spent quite a long time in Ukraine recently. Seems to have made it his life's cause to support the Ukrainian military. He appointed himself the head of the International Volunteer Office.

He was quoted by the New York Times and by Semaphore. He allegedly met here in Washington with members of Congress, the U.S. Helsinki Commission, which directs military resources to Ukraine. I mean, you know, it's certainly something. His social media, he's got self-published books and others. Members of the Ukrainian International Legion have actually come out previously to this and said he was a lunatic. They had nothing to do with them. But at the very least, you know, he had claimed to have had multiple meetings with the US Defense Ministry, shuttling back and forth between there. So he's a troubled individual. And nobody who wants to shoot the president is like a normal person. So let's just say that.

But clearly, there was something enough going on that he was found credible enough to be quoted by these US news agencies. It also does raise a real question here about U.S. Secret Service. So you can view it two ways. You're like, well, they had a person who was ahead of them and he saw the gun and he shot at him. The other thing is, well, should he really have been on the golf course at all? And the sheriff does get to that. But before we get to the sheriff, do you want to weigh in on any of this? Yeah, I'll get to Ryan and Ralph in a bit because we're going to show some of the social media postings, et cetera. We can do our best to dig into the psyche of a clearly deranged individual. But there will be, of course, a lot more questions for the Secret Service here. It appears that he came within

some 500 yards, which we are about to show the clip, you know, that is a further distance than the last guy. And this one didn't get any shots off. So Secret Service clearly did a better job in this instance. But there still will obviously be questions of how you could have even this close of a call. In addition, they just completed, Congress just completed a report on the manifest security failures of the Secret Service with regard to the attempted assassination, the previous one, in Butler, where obviously, you know, the president came within a quarter inch of losing his life there on a stage in front of rally goers. And one of the rally goers did lose his life, was murdered there because of those incredible failures. So this will raise a lot more questions of how he was even able to come this close. But yeah, the social media postings when we get there are really

something. It seems that Ukraine was an absolute fixation for this guy. He was running a website that he claimed was, you know, for foreign fighters from around the world to be able to sign up to go fight in Ukraine. He has multiple postings where he's like, I want to go fight and die for the Ukrainian cause. He's pro-nuclear war. He wrote a book about that. He said, why nuclear war? Oh, Jesus.

I didn't know that. Here's the thing. He's pro-Nikki Haley, which, you know. I'm just going to move away from his musings and just be like, okay, what do we actually know about this guy? And, like, what we know is that he was in Ukraine for months. He was running an organization. He was found credible enough to be quoted by the New York Times, by Semaphore, who assumed to believe that he was some person who was involved in this cause. I have to believe that he at the very least had some credibility to allegedly get meetings with the defense ministry. He was always on social media. Now, look, it's certainly

possible that he was fooling everybody. If so, it was kind of embarrassing for multiple news outlets too. And the person who quoted him, Thomas Gibbons Neff, in my opinion, the best military reporter who was out there. He's done multiple reports actually about Israel, about the misconduct of the IDF. He's done some of the reports in Ukraine about Ukrainian friendly fire, which killed their own citizens. He was banned from Ukraine by the Ukrainians. He's done a lot of good reporting on Afghanistan. He himself is a former U.S. Marine. I followed him for over a decade. I remember covering the Pentagon and seeing him there. I think he's very, very talented. And so for him to quote him, he has written a piece out this morning, said, yeah, he said he was laughing when

he got off the phone with him because he thought he was in over his head, but he still quoted him and he put him in the story. So I'm like, okay, well, I think there's something. I think that the U.S. Helsinki Commission and the government need to answer questions about whether they directed resources and worked with this individual. Like I said, I don't want to say they were all in together. The International Legion of Ukraine literally denounced him earlier and they put out multiple threats saying, don't work with this guy. But his life's mission was apparently enough to get him involved with Afghan fighters who wanted to go to Ukraine. That seemed to be like the major conduit that he was trying to run and help here in Washington. So is he crazy? Absolutely. And we will get to that. But he was crazy enough, you know, to also bamboozle his way

into quite a few big level rooms here, I think. He also had quite a lengthy rap sheet. I mean, in addition, he, you know, in 2002, he was charged with having a weapon of mass destruction because he had a fully automatic AK-47. He had an AK-47 in this instance as well. So I also have a lot of questions about how he obtained this weapon, whether it was lawful. To me, it seems insane that someone with this previous charge and he had barricaded himself in somewhere. It was like a wild scene. 2002, he was in a fleeing the cop situation. He barricaded himself in 2002 and he was arrested.

He was actually charged with weapons of mass destruction charge in North Carolina. He had multiple traffic violations. And his son was like, as far as I know, he's only ever been arrested for a traffic violation. I'm like, all right, bro. He also barricaded himself in a room with an automatic rifle. With a fully automatic AK-47. That's not a traffic violation. I mean, to me, it's insane that someone who has that on the—

Like, to me, once you have that on your record, that's it. I would have to check the law. It depends where he bought it, too. I mean, this could also be a failure of a background check system. Could be. Yeah, that happens, too. Yeah, it's happened multiple times. There was a shooting back in, I'm forgetting exactly. I think it was somewhere in Texas.

It was a church, and the person never submitted to legally obtain a weapon. It was actually a huge failure of the background check system. So that actually could be interesting if he legally obtained it. If he legally obtained it as well, what the tie-in, who the funding was for this. It doesn't appear to have a job. I mean, that's kind of the weird thing about this man. He's flitting about, living on the beach in Hawaii, at one point bragging about skimpy girls

in bikinis around him from text messages that I reviewed, but then also appears to have had at least some funds to be able to travel back and forth to Ukraine, to Washington, multiple photos of here in DC in a suit and tie outside the Capitol, implying that he was meeting with people. Listen, there are crazy people all around the city. Some of them work inside the Capitol. So, you know, it's like, was he just fronting this entire time? Like I said,

I think that could be the case. They're also, the Secret Service questions here are abounding. You know, Ro Khanna's already calling for the director of the Secret Service to appear back in Washington. The acting director is actually currently down in Florida right now. But to have, as he says, two assassination attempts in 60 days on the former president is unacceptable. The sheriff actually opined a little bit on this. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. Well, you got to understand the golf course is surrounded by shrubbery. So when somebody gets into the shrubbery, they're pretty much out of sight. All right. And at this level that he is at right now, he's not the sitting president. If he was, we would have had this higher golf course around.

But because he's not, the security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible. So there you go. So it's about the actual security perimeter around that. It does seem absolutely crazy. I mean, I can tell you, actually, whenever I was on White House duty, often had to go to the golf course with Trump, and they had that thing locked down, man. So the first time that I heard this, I was honestly shocked because I'd seen a little bit of the security perimeter. Whenever Trump was president here, he would go to Sterling, Virginia and golf at the Trump National Golf Course, which is nearby. And I had to do that a couple of times whenever I was running pool duty, basically just sit in the car and wait for him to be done. But you get to see and observe a little bit of where it all is. Secret Service is always

tracking his movement. They're like, hey, he's on the eighth hole. Now he's going to the ninth hole. They've got a whole perimeter around that in terms of the people who are around him. So for him to be able to get within several hundred yards of the president with the long range weapon. Also, I mean, I don't think enough people are paying attention to the fact that they took a shot at him and they missed. Not only do they miss, he's able to actually leave the gun, get in the car, and drive away. So I'm like, well, then you don't have a secure perimeter, clearly, around it or something like that never would have happened. So Secret Service has got a lot of questions here. We haven't had

this many attempted assassination attempts, legit ones, on a former president since Gerald Ford in the 1970s, in the same, actually similar timeframe, I think it was 17 days, where somebody came very close to killing him twice. One of them was the Manson family. It's a crazy story. It seems clear, like, we need to beef up security around former President Trump. Like, he should have the level of Secret Service protection that, you know, a sitting president would have. Because, you know, the thing that is most troubling to me is in some ways this seems like a horrifying new normal. You know, once these horrible, terrifying, bad ideas get out there in the public, there's often a copycat effect. You know, you've seen this with school shootings as well. And you see it even with, you know, epidemics of suicide in areas. Once a bad idea takes hold, you know, there's no

reason why we should think that Ryan Ralph will be the last person who gets it in their head that they're going to take a shot at former President Trump or another high-level elected official. So, you know, to me, it's a no-brainer. Like I said, listen, they did their job. They made sure he didn't get a shot off. They were able to capture him through some of the fortunate good work of local law enforcement as well. But there's no reason why this individual should have been able to get even this close to former President Trump. And, you know, I mean,

that golf course, it's right there on the street. Right on the street, as we showed in the map. Yeah, you could see where he was was probably not a difficult place to get to if you just, you know, duck a fence or jump a fence or whatever. And you're right there within hundreds of yards of the former president and potentially future president. So, you know, it's wild when you realize how actually insecure all of these situations are, whether it's a rally, which you can understand is a very difficult situation to control, but there were manifest incredible failures there, or him just going out to do something he does quite frequently, play golf on one of his golf courses. It's the most predictable thing on the planet. You're like, oh, it's Sunday. Yeah,

Trump is going to be at the golf course. He's going to be golfing somewhere. He's like a clock. Yeah, I saw some people online like, how did he know he was going to be golfing? I was like, it's a day that ends in Y? Like, that's the majority of what he spends his time doing. I feel a bit this way, the way that I always do about TSA, where I'm like, this is all fake. You know how many hours of my life have been wasted by the U.S. Secret Service waiting in line for them to pat me down, taking people's nicotine vapes away at the White House, going through your bag and making sure your laptop is. Meanwhile, you're shaking me and everybody else who's ever come into the White

House down. I'm going to submit my social security number and all this other stuff, which I always thought, you know, fine, you know, I'm walking in to the White House. But now you get two incidents in 60 days. So I'm like, OK, jokers, what was all of that for? Was this all fake the entire time? This was, you know, it's like, have you just been wasting our time when you can't even do the very basics of your job? And as we covered after the first attempted assassination, a lot of that ended up being correct. You had the Columbia nightmare with all those agents. You had multiple incidents where people were able to get close to the president. Huge failures. There's some meltdown going on on Kamala's Secret Service detail.

This whole agency obviously just needs to be totally burned to the ground and reformed. Well, and that was one of the things we said after the first attempt, too, is there's an illusion. I had an illusion of like, you know, oh, the protection around these high-level individuals, these protectees, is going to be airtight. Like, there's no way someone could penetrate. And so it's not only us that notice, like, oh, this is not as difficult. It's not so hardened as we thought that it was. You know, it's unhinged individuals like Ryan Ralph, who also saw that and said, hey, I think I could do something here and tried to take matters into his own hands. So, you know, unfortunately, like I said, I fear that this could be a new normal. And so that's why there's no doubt in my mind, like the level of protection, the resources that are being dedicated to his protection in particular should be dramatically increased.

It's very scary. Let's go, as you said, we tease this now. Mr. Routh said. Everybody wants to know who this guy is. Yeah. Let's put this up there. He doesn't really fit. The only thing you could really pin him on is Ukraine.

Everything else, not really. So here's, for example, some tweets recently. He said, I would like to buy a rocket from you to Elon Musk. I wish to load it with a warhead for Putin's Black Sea mansion bunker. Can you give me a price? It can be old and used as not returning. Lists his phone number and aid.inukraineatgmail.com. He also asked Elton John if he would do a tribute song to Ukraine.

He also wanted one from Dave Matthews Band and several other artists. Let's also put the next one, please, up on the screen. This has got a funny summary. Ryan Routh voted for Trump, donated to Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer, Beto, Elizabeth Warren, and has tweets like this yearning for a Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy ticket, which is to say it's a bit hard to put them in a convenient little box. Certainly funny because you're like, really, Vivek? He was the only person who was even somewhat consistent about Ukraine. Yeah, that was interesting. The Nikki Haley part makes sense. Yeah, the Nikki Haley thing totally tracks. But Vivek? I'm like, what? I'm like, did you ever listen to the guy?

As usual, do not expect ideological cohesion and reason from somebody who tries to kill the president. Wow. Plenty of average voters have voting histories and interests that look like this, too. This was a crime. A lot of people would be guilty. Finally, we actually have some words from Ryan himself. He sat down with Newsweek for an interview. I think it was about two years ago or so inside of Ukraine talking about why he supports the cause. Let's take a listen. Please tell me who you are and why are you here? 56 from the US, from North Carolina originally, so I live in Hawaii now, so I flew all the way from Hawaii here. So the question as far as why I'm here, to me, you know, a lot of the other conflicts are gray, but this conflict is definitely black and white.

This is about good versus evil. This is a storybook, you know. Any movie we've ever watched, this is definitely evil against good. I mean, we're battling a situation here where the Ukrainians and the rest of the world are caring and kind and generous and unselfish and take care of one another. And it's just a matter of, you know, we need to stand up for that. That is the most important thing in the world is just to show human beings that we're kind and we're caring and that we take care of one another and that the world is united. And some sort of coherence there. Keep it together. He was doing a lot of interviews. The YouTuber actually ran into him on the street, it appears, in whenever he was trying to recruit people. He's like, I'm looking for people who want to

tear down the system. I'm looking for mercenaries. So, you know, clearly he had something going on within him. Like I said, I mean, my main question here is like, hey, did any members of Congress meet with this guy? I'm like, Ukrainian armed forces, to what involvement did you have with Ryan Ralph and the gentleman? Is there a grand conspiracy? I'm not saying that, but I mean, at the very least, it is, it revealed something to me about the Ukrainian cause. And also, I've been speaking with others. A lot of people don't, with all war zones, all, you know, crazy chaotic situations. Yeah. Weirdos flock to them. Yeah. Anybody in America who just picks up arms to go fight for free in Ukraine, there ain't something all together going on there. And, you know, there's something that clearly was involved here for them too,

shows their desperation for who they're willing to work with. It's also like people who have a fixation on being at the center of history. You know what I mean? So there's a lot of people like that. Yeah. There are a lot of people like that. And they, you know, flock to conflicts like this one or like others to try to, you know, be, live out whatever grand narrative idea they're trying to, they're trying to live out. By the way, for people who are just listening and not watching, in that video, he has his hair dyed. Dyeed, red, white, and blue.

No, half blue and half yellow, Ukrainian yellow. Oh, I thought it was an American thing. Well, he has an American t-shirt on, and then the hair is dyed Ukrainian yellow and blue, just to show you the level of commitment he had to this cause. I don't know. The thing I was thinking about is how easy it is to, like, trick the news media. I can't even really blame them. Like, you know, you set up a website, you set up an email address at ukraineaid.com or whatever, and you get a couple people. If you can get one person to quote you as a credible source, then most outlets that come after that are just going to look at it.

Oh, Semaphore quoted him. Newsweek interviewed him. This must be legit. And like I said, I mean, it takes, given the number of quotes they have to amass and churn out their pieces, like, it makes sense. You just go like, oh, well, so-and-so over at Semaphore, the reporter you talked about, he took him seriously. And he's a credible guy. Like, all right, if he takes him seriously, then I'm going to take him seriously. And next thing you know, he's built up this profile as if he's this like credible individual on the Ukrainian

cause. But he also could have been a credible individual on the Ukrainian cause. I mean, that's the thing I want to know. Did they meet with him? Did they funnel any resources to him? Not just the Ukraine, the U.S. I'm probably more interested in that because what we have been hearing for over two years is that every possible variation of grifter, of arms dealer, of sketchy individual is that there is a ton of money to be made in Ukraine and that it's a totally buyer's market. And if you look at some of the people,

like we've covered the arms dealer in the past, the guy who bought a yacht, who is criminally not even allowed to be in arms sales, but he's printing money off of Ukraine. Malcolm Nance, you know, was quoted in the same story about stolen valor that Ryan Routh was in Thomas Gibbons' episode. There's a lot of crazy folks, a lot of them U.S. citizens who are involved in this. And that's one thing. It's fine to be crazy. It's another when you put guns in their hand. Now, according to the stuff that I've seen so far,

it does not appear that he did actually fight for the Ukrainian cause. He was based either in Lviv or in Kiev at various different times with this international organization for volunteers is what he called it in terms of his meetings with the defense ministry. But yeah, like you said, it could be that he was fronting this whole time, but he could have used that to a certain end, like getting meetings with members. You know this too, getting meetings with members of Congress. It was like, hey, I was quoted by the New York Times, right? Yeah. Parlayed that into something interesting. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, I'm interested in the FBI investigation. Not that they'll ever tell us anything. I guess at least in this case, they took him alive.

So hopefully he'll have to go to trial or there will, at some point, there will be a plea bargain or some files released through the judicial system to learn a little bit about this. Some questions about the gun that he obtained, his own travel back and forth from Ukraine. But there was some weird stuff. You know what? I was joking. It's actually a good point, though. That is actually a good point. The fact that they took him alive is the best sign that there's no grand conspiracy here. Oh, fair enough. Right. Well, they took Oswald alive, too. Yeah, but that didn't last. Didn't last. Well, we'll see. It's only 24 hours in, right? Everybody can watch the TV. Very dark. Let's see what happens to this gentleman. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone,

I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her. And it haunts me to this day.

The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister.

There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating.

We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger.

This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us, and I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen.

To freedom! Angelica Ross. We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon. Hi, George! And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's turn now to the presidential race, and we've got a lot of new polling that's come in

since that presidential debate. Let's put this up there. On the screen, Nate Silver's general analysis. He says, today's update, after an Atlas Intel poll cut against what was otherwise strong day of polling for Harris, it is a highly rated poll, resists the temptation to unskew.

Still enough good data for her that the race is now officially in toss-up range. So he hasn't given us a latest update. The last one I saw for his projection was 60-40. So toss-up range, I'm assuming he's moving more to like 55-45 and whatever his latest projection would be. He said he considers anything over a 40% chance to be toss-up. I can see that. So 60-40, he still considers to be toss-up. But yeah, we haven't had an update since then to see if it's moved even more towards her. I think that's actually quite reasonable, especially considering, you know, again, if you had a 40% chance of something crazy happening, you would take it pretty seriously. Oh, yeah.

You would be like, okay, I think that's quite a very reasonable result. Let's put this next one up here. This arguably was the most important and it was release of this Iowa seltzer poll. This is one of the polls that arguably drove Joe Biden out of the race because it showed him so far down in the state of Iowa, which then translated to Michigan and to nearby states. So this new Des Moines Register poll actually shows Trump leading Harris by only four points amongst likely Iowa voters, quote, a far slimmer margin than the 18 point lead that Donald Trump enjoyed over Democratic Joe Biden in the late spring. So in this poll, they have him at 47 percent, Kamala at 43. RFK Jr. actually still getting some 6% here because it appears he's been unable

to get himself off of the ballot. Now, obviously, we don't know how that is going to split. And if you were to count all of those people in the Trump category, then certainly he'd be leading by quite a bit more. At the same time, they did this poll after he dropped out of the race. So maybe some people are just ride or die and they want to vote for him anyways. He's changed his tune in some cases. He said, and sometimes he said, if you live in an uncompetitive state, you should vote for me. If you live in a battleground state, you shouldn't vote for me. But regardless, a 4% lead in the state of Iowa, very far from the 18-point lead he had over Biden.

Yeah. from the 18-point lead he had over Biden and implies a tie specifically amongst the demographic that he would need the most in places like Michigan and Wisconsin and surrounding areas of the Midwest, which is why it was so important that Biden poll last time around. So in comparison, in 2020, Trump won Iowa. Everyone expects him to win Iowa. He's going to win Iowa. Let's be clear about that. This poll isn't about like, oh my God, Kamala Harris has a chance in Iowa. It's because this poll is so highly rated, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment, that people really pay attention to it. And why it was such a big deal that Joe Biden was losing the state by 18 points.

And it's the state that Trump won last time by eight points. So the fact that in this poll, Kamala has halved Trump's margin from his victory margin in Iowa last time around is a really eyebrow-raising result. And as you said, you kind of extrapolate out from that, like, okay, then how is he doing in these other states that are nearby to Iowa? But the reason why, again, this poll is taken so seriously in terms of Washington opinion is because Ann Selzer, the pollster, has such a unique track record of being incredibly accurate in the state of Iowa. You guys might recall back in the 2020 primary, when she polled the Iowa caucuses, it was a bad result for Pete Buttigieg going into the Iowa caucuses. And his team, led by Liz Smith, was able to basically poll the whole poll because they were so worried

about what that poll would indicate for them and what sort of narrative could come out of that because people do take it so seriously. So that's why, even though this is a poll of the state that no one expects Kamala Harris to win, why it's such a big deal post-debate that she's within striking distance here, only four points of Donald Trump is because it has such a track record of being incredibly accurate. So really interesting there. Yeah, RFK Jr. is going to stay on the ballot in Iowa. He's going to be on the ballot in a number of states because he pulled out so late that it was actually too late to get him off the ballot in quite a number of places. In North Carolina, he was successfully able to get his name off of the ballot, but it actually caused quite a lot of

problems for that state because they had already printed the ballots. They were ready to go out and start their mail-in balloting process. They're one of the earliest states in the country with all of that. So they had to delay that by several weeks and incur a significant expense in order to get his name off the ballot. Other states said, no, sorry, too late. You're here. You're going to be on the ballot. And Iowa is one of those. So we'll see whether that takes any votes from Trump at the end of the day in a state like Iowa or others where he remains on the ballot. But it is expected that he will be there in November. So Iowa, that was a big one. Let's go to the next one because this is actually useful just to look at a lot of the post-debate polling landscape. And so we have

here, quote, seven A and B rated polls post-debate. So ABC News and Ipsos, this had Harris up by plus six. That was actually very significant because that was Harris plus six amongst likely voters. Reuters, Ipsos, so they had Harris up by five. Yahoo News, YouGov, they had Harris up by four. You had others, YouGov, Times, YouGov, Harris four. Data for Progress, Harris four. And it was Atlas Intel, that's the one that Nate referenced a little bit earlier, that showed Trump up by three. So this was in the national election. Obviously, this is a little bit over the map when you include the Atlas one, but outliers certainly are ones that exist. And so it's actually better that they publish it so we can just consider and look at all of that. It's two things are possible. Atlas intel is correct. Everybody else is wrong. Or if you just kind of

look at the overall average of this, you would say there's a relative Harris bump here. Now, remember, she does need to win the popular vote by two to three points in order to maintain an electoral college victory. So you shouldn't be celebrating too much. You should also remember that Joe Biden was beating Trump by even larger margins in 2020 and 2016. So I guess really what I would say is I think that Nate's analysis of we're back to toss up just seems the probably best way to look at the analysis in general. There's been too much public polling now and a lot of ways that people have reacted since that show that Donald Trump did not do well enough in the debate to consider even doing it again. In general, I think that's a major missed opportunity, as I said, because why would you take somebody

who doesn't do well in scripted interviews or in scripted situations and just give her, you know, less or just give her the least amount of time, the best possible performance for her to be able to run on when she can continue challenging saying, hey, I want to do another debate. She's not, I think, forcing it too hard. She's probably pretty happy to be where she is.

But for Trump to be the first one to come out and just be like, there will be no third debate, I still think it remains a problem for him. And because 67 million people watched it on television, probably 80 to 90 million consumed the content overall. That's half of all registered voters in this country. And look, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we're just so polarized. People don't vote on that stuff anymore. But there's not a lot of evidence of that, considering the 2022 Roe versus Wade voting, where you had a lot of people who previously voted Republican who ended up voting Democrat or who had not previously voted. Same with Stop the Steal. There's been tons of major margins that do not fall within polarization metrics. So, for example, Josh Shapiro beating Doug Mastriano by such big numbers. John Fetterman

winning by a decent margin there. Carrie Lake getting destroyed right now in a lot of the polling that we see in Arizona. So you just can't tell me that there aren't at least some swing voters that are up for grabs. Yeah. I mean, even if it's just marginal, we're talking about a race that's going to be one on the margins. Yes. So no, I think it's a major strategic error for Trump to be like, no, absolutely not. No more debates, which is why I still hold open a possibility he may yet change his mind, especially if the polling becomes, you know, more consistently in the direction of Kamala Harris plus four, five, six. And, you know, what was noteworthy about the, in fact, can we put back up the graphic we just had, A3, up on the screen? Because it has not just the actual poll results, but then you can see them

plotted on a chart. I thought this was kind of useful. You can see where the debate is. And then all of the polls post-debate, save for the one, which again we shouldn't discard. It's important to keep track of that one. But all of the other ones are really clustered in a similar place. Whereas prior to the debate, first of all, the overall sort of like average of the polls was lower. And also they were scattered over a wider plot. So I thought that was interesting to see the post-debate result there. The other question with debates is, you know, it's not uncommon that there's a bump coming out of a debate. It's also not uncommon that that bump goes away. Two more points to make before we get to some of the other polling. Number one,

of all the various like electoral prediction models that exist now, Nate Silver's is the most pessimistic for Kamala Harris. The other ones all project her to, you know, have, again, it's like in the toss-up range, but like a 56 or 60 percent chance of winning the electoral college. Nate is a little bit of an outlier in terms of being pessimistic. Now, he's also the person who sort of like invented this whole genre. So, um, you know, I think it's worth taking seriously what his model is saying. And he was closer to being accurate in 2016 than a lot of other individuals, too, but just wanted to point that out. And then another thing that stuck with me that I saw someone point out online is, on the one hand, I think there's an appropriate skepticism of the polls of a potential miss, honestly, in either direction. One thing that is different,

though, because sometimes I start getting these 2016 vibes, which I think probably everybody has had at different moments. But one thing that's genuinely different between Kamala Harris's profile and Hillary Clinton's profile is even though Hillary was up more in the polls at this point, she always had a very negative favorability rating. She was underwater by 16 points on the favorability rating. She was like underwater by like 16 points on the favorability rating. Kamala is like even. And to me, that makes the scenario very different. You know, that was always sort of looming over the potential Hillary Clinton results is basically like, yeah, the polls say she's up, but man, people really don't like this lady. And that is not the same dynamic here with Kamala Harris, which I think could end up being significant. Certainly possible.

You know, it's just there's so many confounding variables. I really just think it's better to just like present all the info and be like you can make up what you want from it. I guess I could see it in all different ones. I could actually see a major Democratic miss that's unable to capture the same way that happened in 2022. That's the most recent polling miss that we have. They were off by five or so points. A lot of that was Roe versus Wade. There's been so much dynamic change in the electorate in just the last 90 days, you know, last 100 days or whatever for Kamala. That's a pretty, and that's the other thing.

Is that a problem for polling? I almost would forgive them. It's such a crazy scenario. It's difficult to poll only for 100 days and try to peg who exactly is voting or not and not be able to capture that. And I could do it the other way, which is that, look, it's very possible that Trump's strength is understated with all of this. You've got the whole likely voter problem of you've got people who are traditional Democrats who like answering polls. This is a big 2020 thesis. So that could have replicated that. Maybe we're unable to solve. There's some other interesting

stuff that points more in the Harris direction. Let's put this up there. For example, this is from the Financial Times. This is significant just because it does show some divergence on the economy. FT finds that Kamala, quote, better represents the interests of middle class. It says 49 to 36 for Kamala Harris small business see that's the one where I'm just like really is that really true 48 to 37 her passion is small business she said it yeah but you know small business owners are the most conservative people by demographic but you have to keep you have to keep in mind though this is a poll of everyone right so you're everyone, who do you think will be better for small business?

I think if you just ask small business owners, you would maybe get a different result because you're right. They do tend to be conservative. But this is like you're asking the entire electorate, who do you think will be better for these groups? Good point. So, yeah. Okay. So small business was, what is it, 48 to 37. Union members says 45 to 35.

Blue collar, 48 to 37. Union members says 45 to 35. Blue collar, 43 to 36. I will say that on Trump, I don't necessarily want to be where he is. They have him at 64 to 20 for large corporations on who they think he would be better for, and 67 to 19 on wealthy people. So that was the individual ones. The overall economy, I think that's kind of interesting. The respondents also of those who were more likely to trust Harris than Trump on the economy actually watched the entire debate. So that was fascinating. I would say overall, this is very, very favorable for her. So take it for however you want. I'd never seen her beat him on the economy, you know, this badly before. I would more put it as an outlier. But again, it could be one that you could look to and say, if Trump does lose the election on the margins by a couple of points and it's in these swing states, it very much could be because of issues like this, where if you feel, the thing is, the Republicans lost 2022, even though they had a huge margin on the economy.

Yeah, that's right. So that shows you that Roe and Stop the Steal can actually overcome even when you're winning on the overall economy. Yeah. Well, if you're just tied on the economy, that's bad enough. If you're tied here and you get this big Roe benefit there, I could see that being a big problem for them. So, again, I have no idea what's going to happen. I still think Trump could very easily win. But I would say there's certainly danger signs for him. And in such a close race,

you should just always be doing your best in order to try and, you know, go across the finish line. You were not the underdog, you know, throughout this entire thing. Now you're kind of putting yourself in a category where, look, a month from now, we could say, hey, things are not looking that great for you. Yeah. I think if she can even get in the ballpark with him on the economy, it's pretty devastating for him. And, you know, Republicans historically have typically that there's an instinct among the American public to just assume Republicans are going to be better on the economy. And then Donald Trump, that was always his core strength because, you know, he's the businessman, et cetera, et cetera. And you always point out Sager back in 2020. And when we're looking at the polls and saying to the Trump people, like, you guys are toast.

You don't have a chance. That was the number they would always point to. Yes, but he has this significant edge on the economy. And look, it wasn't enough. He still lost. But that was indicative of there is more strength for him here than we thought. So when I see these numbers, and yeah, it could be an outlier. We should also point out Financial Times we covered before, they have been asking who's

better on the economy. And their previous poll had Harris basically tied with Trump. This poll has her up by a little bit. So they've been seeing this trend for Kamala Harris as not consistent with some of the other polls that we've seen where he continues to have a clear edge over her on the economy. But like I said, if she can even narrow that gap and get within striking distance, that's more devastating for him, honestly, than almost any of the other polling data that I've seen because that's their bet. And she was able in that debate, because she moved the conversation where she wanted it to go, he got so distracted and enraged, et cetera, that he wasn't able to consistently land his points

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And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If he decides he's genuinely not going to do another debate, he's, outside of paid communications, not going to have a lot of opportunities to continue to land those points. And to the point about them, you know, not really hitting hard on the economy and getting distracted in ways that the Harris campaign wanted them to get distracted with, Harry Anton was pointing out over on CNN. Actually, the biggest search terms being associated with Donald Trump's

name now have to do with the eating, they're eating their dogs, eating the cats, eating the pets, Haitian situation, which we're about to talk about with Zed Jelani. But let's take a listen to Enten's analysis there. Yeah, what are the rising things that people are Googling along with Donald Trump's name? It's not what Donald Trump's campaign would necessarily want, right? It's eating pets. It's eating dogs. It's eating cats. Obviously, that was Donald Trump's moment on the debate stage. Of course, that's a Fagazi story. It's not real. It's fake. Yet he went after it. This is a disaster. Who the heck, if you're running a presidential campaign that you'd want your name being Googled with eating pets, eating dogs, eating cats? My goodness gracious. Well, I mean, maybe he thinks it's a win. I'll be wrong.

So they do think it's a win. Trump,, maybe he thinks it's a win. I'll be for all. So they do think it's a win. Trump, at least, thinks it's a win. He thinks it's a win. So does J.D. I'll save all my comments. I'm going to save all my comments. Say something now because we'll get Zed in the next one. So go ahead and just give us your top line thoughts on this.

I think that they are making the same mistake that they all made during Stop the Steal, which is they believe that anything that directionally points or causes argument around the issue that they think they are going to win on, like immigration, they believe that anything, anything is justified in talking about, in backing up, in not surrendering on in order to focus the conversation. Now, as I had said to them at that time, I think they're fundamentally incorrect because I think, A, lying to people is, I'm going to put morals out of it. Lying to people or saying things that are incorrect give you too much to be discredited on what people say. Then I don't believe anything that you say. So for example, stop this deal. Everyone was like, look, it's not about bamboos and Mike Lindell and all

of us. I'm like, well, Trump thinks it is, but they're like, it's about mail-in balloting laws in the state of Pennsylvania. I go, hey, bro, but that's not what people are talking about. You guys are saying that the election should not be certified because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court made a ruling on mail-in ballots. That's not the same thing that you're talking about. So you want to talk about Haitians? Let's talk about it all day long, about TPS, the legitimacy of migrant law, asylum, etc. I think that's a winning issue for Republicans, and polls show that. But when you start claiming people are eating pets and dogs, and then when you get discredited on that, and then even worse, you start to take anecdotal evidence as fact in and of itself. The current defense is my constituents say, listen, I'm going to give you news.

Most people who are interested in politics are stupid and weird. Like if you are at the local level, and by the way, I include myself in that. So if you are at the local level and you're calling your congressman, I've manned enough of these phones. If you have the time out of the middle of your day to call your congressman and complain, you're a freaking weirdo, 98% of the time. So we're just going to take these people's word? I mean, how many times do we see these bullshit election affidavits that were completely fake? Fake. You don't stop the steal. Oh, I saw this, blah, blah, blah. Fake. Did an investigation. Fake. Oh, saw this judge, literally looks at it, laughs, and throws it out of the courtroom. They see that as evidence of conspiracy, which is part of the issue. So, I mean, in general,

they have this idea of directional truth. Now, look, in their defense. Directional truth. For real, though. Such a dystopian concept. It is, but I'll give their defense on this, is that Trump tells small lies to tell bigger truths. Like he tells small lies about Haitians to get us talking about X, Y, and Z. And, you know, I have to take myself out of it. In 2016, when shit like this was happening, when he did the Qazir Khan, Access Hollywood, the judge, you know, all this stuff, I was like, there's no way this guy could win. And he still won. So maybe they are right and maybe their theory is correct. I don't think there's enough recent evidence to show that it's right.

I think it looks stupid. I actually think that what it does is it validates this idea of, well, anything – it validates like Russiagate. Oh, because we have Oleg Deripaska and a dossier that Christopher Steele put together that says X, Y, and Z, we spent two years as a country litigating that. And Democrats, rightfully, where I think we're eviscerated for believing that, you know, Donald Trump peed on somebody and there was a video of it. That's the same, you know, thing that you're doing here. We're like, oh, well, I heard from my neighbor's daughter's friend on Facebook. By the way, the Facebook lady is like, she regrets putting it up there. She's like, and she heard it from like somebody,

it was like third hand potential possibility. My top line is just, listen, you know, I think people are smart and I think they're actually a lot smarter than you give them credit for. And I think when you are telling lies and they see through that, they both don't trust you. And you know, this whole jujitsu, there's this high IQ jujitsu that goes on. I called it high IQ stop the steal at the time. I don't think it works. I just don't. I think that poll after poll after poll says the chaos and all this stuff around Trump is actually what people feel exhausted by. That's part of the reason he lost the 2020 election. Stop the steal was a huge hindrance to them in 2022. I see no evidence

that it will work this time. Listen, they're the ones running. So maybe they are right. And if they win, I'll eat it. But I don't know. I mean, at the very least, like personally, I think it's ridiculous and stupid. But listen, there's maybe enough people who the pets thing gets them thinking about the migrant situation. And that's enough for them to vote Republican. Again, I don't see any – I don't see evidence recently that that is correct. I think it's actually a really bad way to do politics. I also think, you know, for them, too, you're betting everything on the line here, guys. Like, if you lose, you're done.

Like, you're – think about it. In terms of being taken seriously as a party apparatus, I don't know. Trump is exempt from this just because he's like bigger above that category. But for everybody else, J.D. included, you're a young man, dude. You know, you got to live your whole life in this town if you lose. You're going to be one of those senators who's a lifer. You want to be like Josh Hawley, put his fist up and hasn't seen the light of day in four years? I don't want to be like that.

Yeah. So it's like, why? No, he's all in now. And there's no going back. Now you have no choice. There's no going back. It is genuinely over. Yeah. You either win, you or put it, everything. You either win or in my opinion, like sign up for the Holly category. Like enjoy. Yeah. Because I don't think it's a fun place to be. Well, we were talking about this on Thursday after our show. Yeah. And I said, cause we were, we were looking at the like polymarket odds on whether Trump was going to say cat.

Yes. At the rally. It was only 32%. He didn't say it, by the way. He said pets. But I said, he's going to talk about this because he thinks this is good for him because he can't tell the difference

between good and bad publicity. He thinks any intention on him is good. And it's been driving him crazy that he's not been the main character. So the public has developed some, and the media and the political class, everybody's developed some immunity to Trump's insanity over the years. So the things that send the media into a tizzy that worked in 2016, they don't work the same way in 2024, right? Like the, you know, she turned black thing.

Everyone was for one day like, what the hell? And then they moved on. And Kamala Harris very smartly was like, same old playbook. Who cares? Let's move on. Let's talk about you. So this is the first time he said something outrageous, disgusting, insane enough that it did send everybody into a tizzy. And so he likes being in that situation again where he gets to control the narrative. But yeah, it's not the same

as 2016 because this is, yes, it feeds into, I guess, a conversation about immigration. But I would argue it actually undercuts your position on immigration because you're not talking about this as an economic issue. You're not talking about this as a housing issue. You're talking about it in an incredibly, sorry, racist way. And so people look at this and go, oh, like, oh, that's what this is actually all about. So the framing on the issue is the polar opposite of what you would want. And number two, it validates the democratic frame of like, these people are just weird. Like they're just a bunch of weird freaks. And when they're Googling you with pets and dogs and cats and whatever, and you think it's

great that people are making TikToks, making fun of you, you don't even see that they're like mocking you to your face. You think this is wonderful for you. But the reality is that this actually just validates the democratic framing, the way they have wanted, the lens they've wanted to apply to you. So being the main character in this instance, not always the thing that you ultimately want. I don't know. The reason I'm just not willing to is I'm a cynical person, and I think that there's a lot of people out there who may like it. I think that there are people who really enjoy the media getting upset, and liberals. I think that, look, there's a decent enough evidence on the immigration question as well that a lot of people who care

about immigration don't care about economics at all. They're worried about demographic change. Those people already voted for Trump. Yes, but, you know, let's say, it's not even about swaying. It's about getting those people out to vote. Maybe that's enough to get them off the couch or their relatives. The immigration situation has been crazy enough

that, you know, maybe it's enough for them to forgive that or to think about this whole policy thing. Again, I don't see evidence for that, but I'm not going to discount that possibility. He has turned out people in a way- I'm going to forgive that or to think about this whole policy thing. Again, I don't see evidence for that. But I'm not going to discount that possibility. He has turned out people in a way. I'm going to discount that possibility. You know, the other thing here.

You did win. In 2016, he won. He won in 2016. So I can't put that out of the pipeline. He lost, but he's been losing ever since. Lost in 2018, lost in 2020, lost in 2022. This guy does not have the touch in the sense that he used to. And this will fit in with the conversation we're about to have about Laura Loomer.

His posture in 2016 was tabloid. It was sensationalist. It was New York Post, right? It was the tabloid, like finger on the pulse in a raunchy, over the top, obnoxious way. But yeah, finger on the pulse. Then in 2020, he's like Fox News Grandpa, which there still is a large appetite for in the country, right? Mainstream sort of conservative Fox News Grandpa talking points. That's good enough to get him close. Now it's like Truth Social or like, you know, the weird echo chambers on Twitter, listening to Laura Loomer taking advice from her as if she's a positive asset for your campaign. I just think he's completely lost the plot. And Dave Weigel

tweeted this, which I think is really true. He's like, sometimes you're living rent free in your opponent's head because you pissed your pants and they think it's really funny. Like not all publicity is good publicity. And we already know from the polls we just covered, this did not go well for him. Like it did not go well for him. The more people were familiar with the debate and things that he had to say in the debate, like the pets thing, the less inclined what has come out of that. She's narrowed the gap on the economy. She's even narrowed the gap on immigration and who people think would be better on that issue. She was seen as, she's improved in favorability. Donald Trump has fallen in favorability post debate. The polling has been almost uniformly better for her. So I sort of feel like the jury is already in with the data that we already have. And you can say these polls are all off. That's my point.

But we're looking at polls. We're looking at the trend line, right? And so even if you say a given poll is off in their methodology, if the trend line moved in her direction, that still is representative or reflective of a real change that actually happened, given that they're using the same methodology. But if he wins, what is he going to take away from this? What are him and J.D. going to take away from this? I mean, if you win the election, you know, and you pursue this, you get put back into the White House. I mean, I think that's frankly like we all need to grapple with that then. We're like, OK, well, we're going to have to have some 2016 ever conversations again about like, all right,

clearly there's something going on here. You know, people are I could also be, though, in spite of this, not because of this. Possible. When you win, all sins are forgiven. And so if you look at it and you think about it, if they win based on this, I would say it actually gives them the leeway to do whatever they want. They can say, listen, we've said this. We got away with this. Americans, when we told our directional truths, they listened.

So mass deportation, on the table. Any family separation, back on the table. We're not listening to the media criticism. We're not listening to any of this bullshit anymore. We're unhinged. And frankly, I don't think they would be wrong. If they do win the election, even when they were conducting themselves this way and all that, I think it tells you something pretty clear about where things are going. You may not like that direction, but it's very possible. So I guess I'm just, this is a test of political theories. My theory is that you should not lie to people, do the directional truth. My theory is that constantly trying to validate, you know, this partisan bullshit, like no offense, Christopher Ruffo, but this whole thing about

like, oh, well, some African guys, 45 miles away, barbecued a cat in 2023. I'm like, yeah, but that's not what we're talking about here. But that's not even potentially reality. But anyway, you paid $5,000. Yeah, whatever. Regardless of whether it's true or not, I'm just like, but that's not actually what he said. That's not what they said. They said X, Y, and Z. I mean, I think politicians should have to tell the truth. I think that when they say things based on quote unquote anecdotal evidence as, you know, as backing up allegedly, you know, I'll put it this way. Just because some of your constituents said that X, Y, and Z was true, you know, he's, JD keeps saying it. My constituents keep saying this is true. My constituents. Also, he hasn't produced evidence of it, go on. Yeah.

But even if that's the case. That's not a good enough standard to come out of your mouth. Like your extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have to be able to, and also as a politician, I mean, part of the reason that we don't live in a quote unquote direct democracy and we do live in a republic is this idea that the founding fathers had of mediation between the whims and the whims and the movement of the mob and considered people. That's specifically the entire job of the United States Senate is to cool the temperature of the country, to provide due diligence and deliberation around where things are. Now, throughout our history,

there has been deep vacillation between wanting the diligent, the professor, the Obama, and then the id, people like Donald Trump or many other populists, not even at the national level, at the state level too. So I could be, again, they could be right. Like they really could be running some sort of Richard Nixon style, 1968 silent majority. The media treated Nixon the same way. The problem I have is I read about Nixon. Nixon probably had like a 160 IQ. He might be one of the smartest people who has ever held the Oval Office. He was a lot more disciplined. He was a lot more considered. Sure, his morals weren't always there necessarily, but I think he was a very smart man, a very

calculating man. And in many cases, he was a very good president. So I don't see the same, you know, the same link between them. But they have a theory. And the theory has worked. I mean, anybody who can win the Oval, that's something. You know, that's something that I know because in that moment, I said, how could this man ever get elected? And he did. So I mean, it shattered my political consciousness for all time. I can never just sit here and just be like, no, I don't think it's going to work. Because I really believe I could be totally wrong about the way that I view the public. And I've been proved wrong on the show so many different times. The theory they have of Americans is deeply cynical. Yeah, but they might be right. Because, I mean, think about what they've incited in this town. Not just against the legal, by the way, Haitian residents of this town,

but against the whole town. You have the mayor, you have the governor begging for them to stop because now it's not just Haitians who go to those elementary schools that have been subject to bomb threats. It's not just Haitians that want to seek treatment at the hospital that's been subject to bomb threats. It's not just Haitians that are like under siege in this little Ohio town that J.D. Vance, by the way, represents as his constituents. It's this entire town. And so, yeah, their bet is that actually the core concerns that people have about immigration are not actually about housing, wages, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The things that you talk about, Sagar, that's not actually about that.

It's actually just like racist. We don't like these people because they're different and we want them out. And so we're going to play into that. We're going to lean into that. That's the bet that they're making. And I just don't believe that. I don't think most Americans want to see themselves as racist. I don't think they want to have their policy views or who they vote for for president driven by just like explicit racist fear-mongering. And so it's a little bit, it's too naked, right? It's too mask off. And this is what the conversation we had about the like Kamala Harris, she turned black thing too, where I was like, this is not going to work because it's too naked a racial appeal. And most people, you know, you got your people out there who are cool with that.

Unfortunately, that is a reality that exists and has always existed in America and probably always will exist. The overwhelming majority of Americans really do believe in, like, the best ideal, the melting pot. They don't want to see themselves as explicitly sexist, racist, xenophobic, whatever. And you're kind of stripping them of plausible deniability here with this whole Haitian pet situation. So that's why I think, to me, it's just very clear that this is a fail, that it's already a fail. And I'm not saying that it doesn't mean he can't win. But if he does, it will be in spite of this, because we already see the way the poll numbers have moved against him post-debate when this became the center of conversation. I'll give the counter. The counter is simple. The counter is,

is that rapid demographic change doesn't mean that you're racist. It means that you want control over that. You have an uncontrolled system. I mean, look- That's not what they're saying. No, no, no. But I'm saying, this is what what the this is. Look, if you get somebody to vote for Trump in spite of this on the immigration question, it's going to be this. All right. I got two choices. I got a candidate who we had more illegal immigrants enter the country under their terrain than a decade before. We have the highest level of the foreign born population since the 1900s. We have ethnic strife. Do we want to live in a balkanized America of ethnic enclaves in various different cities where half of these people don't speak any English? The vast majority of them are semi-literate. They don't have a high school degree. I mean,

by the way, these Haitians, these people are here under TPS, which is supposed to be temporary. They're not even supposed to be here forever. We don't actually even, some of them, I'm sure that's true for some of them. Some of them, the indication from the mayor and other authorities, they actually have been here for years. They moved into the town from other places because there were job opportunities. So the ones, okay, listen, but I'm saying that's a nitpick. When you call somebody a migrant, that's implies forever permanence. They're here under TPS, which is supposed to be, they're supposed to go back. So when are you going back? And that's part of the problem.

In America, we have an immigration system where you can just come here and say, oh, I fear for my life. And you get to stay here forever. Basically, even if the court tells you to leave, you don't have to leave. There's no enforcement. You're in a town of Springfield, Ohio. You're, what is it, 60,000 people. Your mayor and your leaders have decided to invite others. You didn't necessarily sign up for that. The federal government puts you there. And you say, listen, this is intolerable to me. I don't want to live this way. Now, look, my parents are immigrants, so this is complicated. But all I need to do is go back and read enough history where let's put yourself in the shoes of these waspy elites or others. And it's 1830. You're in this newly

industrialized economy, you're previously an agrarian society, you and your parents, you know, your family goes back to Jamestown or fought in the Revolutionary War, and now your whole neighborhood is Irish, and people are wasted all the time beating the crap out of their wives working at the factory. I mean, listen, is it legitimate to say- You're pulling out the anti-Irish bigotry this morning. Crystal, they passed prohibition because these people were drinking a liter of whiskey a day. Tell me about the Italians, the Jews. I'll tell you that's— What was the problem with them?

I didn't say it was a problem. They integrated. Okay, yes. After we shut down immigration for 50 years. But this is the point, is every single wave of migration we've had, like, there have been, you know, similar fear mongering about these girls and they'll never integrate and they'll never learn the language and they'll never be part of society. We're going to have these balkanized ethnic enclave neighborhoods,

et cetera, et cetera. And every single time, guess what? Generation later, they're just American. Their kids are speaking English. They're eating McDonald's. They're doing the whole thing. You talk to the people in the town, you know, not the ones that like, you you know, right-wing YouTubers were interviewing that were calling the Haitian immigrants, quote-unquote, sand monkeys. Yes, this was proffered as evidence that this was legitimate, you know, that this was a legitimate criticism. But if you talk to a lot of the people in the town, this was a town that was struggling, right? It was like the town that I lived in in Ohio where the jobs had gone away. They had seen a massive population, a depopulation. And that's death for a town.

It's death for the infrastructure. It's death for the tax base, the schools, everything. I don't doubt that there are entirely legitimate concerns about when a group, whatever group it is, wherever they come from, moves into the town, just like in Texas and Austin, right? And other places where white people have moved in and it's like, oh shit, the housing prices are going up, et cetera, et cetera. I don't doubt that there have been challenges there, but there have also been really positive things. You know, the pastors are saying, hey, the churches are full again. You've had a

huge community rallying around actually the Haitian migrants to the region. White people eating at the Haitian restaurants to show solidarity. All right, that I object. Haitian food is not good. Oh, Haitian. I'll move on. I disagree. Disagree.

Plantains? Yeah, whatever it is. I had it when I was in Miami. Disagree. Sorry. Disagree. But in any case, you know, I just you and I see this very differently. That's been very clear in our discussions before.

But to go back to just like the political point here, I just don't think that the reality for most Americans is that they experience in their daily lives the sense of like deep ethnic and racial strife. That's just not the reality. And Americans have complicated views on immigration. I think more complicated than the views in Europe, because we do have this conception and this reality as a nation of immigrants. And that is a core American value. So while it's completely legitimate to have debates about how many immigrants and how many can we process and what are the burdens on the resources, et cetera. This sort of naked racial appeal, I already think the data shows proves it's a bridge too far for people and it's not the way that they think about the issue. A lot of people like to think that. I don't necessarily believe it. I think that if anything,

pouring more all of these illegals into the country over the last five years has probably exacerbated it to a level which, as you know, I don't necessarily want to see. That's just my last counter, is that at the end of the day, you have massive foreign-born population here in the country. That has always led to major strife. Now, you can just whitewash 50 years of history, but that's not how people saw it at the time. People, you know, we were fighting World War I. The Irish population didn't want to fight because we were supporting the English, and they

were like, hey, we fled the English. The Germans were literally pro-Kaiser during World War II. We shouldn't have really fought World War I. Okay, fine. Okay, well, during World War II, there was a massive Nazi fifth column here in the United States because of the German population. Ask the SS, who had great files on all of our people. There is a problem. Now, does that mean that Japanese people should have been thrown in internment camp and Germans and all of them should have been racially discriminated against? No. What I'm saying is foreign-born populations at very, very high levels cause real strife inside of a country. by shutting down the border for 50-some years and restricting immigration so that all of those

people could assimilate, which led to the golden boom of the 50s, the 60s, and the 70s. It was only in 65 that the Immigration Naturalization Act changed after some 50 years of assimilative policy that was instituted. If you want to live in a society that you and I probably want to live in, more socially democratic, in Denmark, for example, if you're Muslim, you don't get to play the Quran. If you're in school, they're like, oh, you're Muslim? That's cool. We don't do that here. In France, same thing. You're not wearing that hijab, and they have major problems with that. If you want to live in a socially democratic country, a lot of the times they have deeply restrictive immigration policy, specifically over resource questions and over ethnic homogeneity. I'm not saying that everybody has to look the same. I think people should speak the same. So when people come here and

the vast majority of them are semi-literate in Spanish and they don't speak any English, it's a huge problem. Like you can't even pass a test to be able to enter under the most basic citizenship guidelines. No, sorry. You have to speak English to be able to come here. I don't think that's racist. You could call it that if you wanted. And that's part of the issue is that everything that gets described as racist or even talking about ethnic conflict or you, you know, everyone, I don't think it's racist to say that there were a lot of people here who were huge drunks. A lot of them were immigrants in the 1910s. We passed prohibition because of them, because America was so fed up and including women who were all getting the crap beaten out of them. You can whitewash that if you want.

Go listen to the people at the time who passed those laws. Like, you have to think and consider about what is legitimate and not. And so I don't think it's necessarily racist. Now, some people are racist. It's true. Again, the points about what should the level of immigration be over what period of time. I think it should be a lot more. You think it should be zero. Okay. By the way, I think we should shut the public does not support your position. But again, I think let 10 million people in. Hold on. Hold on.

I think those points are a fine debate for a country to have. I do not think it is a fine debate to rain down a, to invite a campaign of terror against a small town based on, yes, racist, neo-Nazi fueled, by the way, these were the people that originally were spreading the rumors, about Haitians eating pets. That is racist, okay? And that's my point. That's my point, is that when Trump, if Trump was making a case, and Republicans were making a case, as they were previously, about, like, too many and chaos at the border and crime, which, again, undocumented immigrants commit less crime than the native-born population and actually less crime than documented immigrants's put that aside. But again, when you're in that realm, you're talking about housing, you're talking about, you know, the issues in this. OK, but when you make a naked racist appeal that is undeniable, right, it's not even plausible on its face and it's just a lie, you are going to lose people and you're going to lose ground on the issue. And again, I don't even think this is my opinion. This is what the polls and the data show at this point. But, you know, to go back to the core of the debate here,

like this town is kind of a model example, right? I mean, this is an extreme situation. There's some dispute, by the way, about the 20,000 figure, but we'll put that aside. There was a significant influx of migrants to the town. There's no doubt about that. There's no doubt that there have been, I think, the issues with, you know, a lot of the Haitian immigrants there hadn't previously driven, and there's, like, you know, traffic accidents. There has been some increase in housing prices, although that has also been wildly overstated. There's been an increase in burden on the public school, in particular needing like second language learning. Like those are real concerns. But there also has been a huge increase

in the vitality and prosperity of the area. Huge increase in terms of the average wage. Again, I've lived in one of these towns that's dying and the population is getting sucked down. And it's a huge boon to have new population coming in, which is something conservatives recognize when it's Florida that's receiving the population and it's white people, right? Or Texas receiving the population and it's white people. But suddenly when it's, you know, Haitians, some of whom, again, have been here for years, suddenly it's, you know, a massive crisis

and a massive problem. And there's no recognition of any of the many benefits that do exist on the other side. It's not because they're white. It's because they're illegally here. They're not, though. The Haitians are not illegally here. They're giving TPS, which is a bullshit program. But that is different to say I object to the program. It's a program I object to is totally different from saying that they're illegally here.

They are not illegally here. They are here under false pretenses, number one. It's not false pretenses. Yes, because they're fleeing from a temporary situation and they never want to go back. It's a temporary situation that we are very much implicated, by the way, in creating over 200 years. Everybody in the world gets to come. But, Tucker, they're not there illegally. They're there legally.

They are, in a lot of ways, like the model minority group. They've got jobs. They're working hard. They're going to church. They're building community institutions. They followed the process that was set out for them by this government. They're here legally. And so, no, you look at it and, you know, maybe you can nitpick about, okay, but they, you know, some of them don't speak English or whatever. But it seems to me the primary difference, the primary difference in not recognizing any of the upsides of this population is that they're not white. You're totally right, but it's not about being white. It's about the fact that the factory owners love cheap labor. I was just talking to somebody who was down there as a reporter. He's telling me- They're making

good wages. Yes, they're making good wages, which is more than, or which is less than they were paying the native-born citizens. But that's why we should- The rich factory guy's like, oh, it's great. I don't have to deal with these white drug addicts. Let me take you out of it

because you support things like unions. But, you know, J.D. Vance has a 0% scoring record with the AFL-CIO. Okay. Trump is a union buster. That's not necessarily- No, no, no, but hold on. He showed up to the UAW. But hold on a second. Republicans only care

about things like wages and housing when they can use it as a way to scapegoat migrants. If you care about wages, which I do, then there are a lot better ways to increase the wages of the native born population than scapegoating migrants and lying and say they're eating pets. If you care about lowering the price of housing, making it more affordable, accessible, there are a lot better ways than scapegoating immigrants and saying they're eating pets. So I think their concern on this issue is not genuine. Again, this is not about you. This is about them.

Their concern on this issue is not genuine. And the reason I know that is because none of their other policy prescriptions or stated concerns have to do with those issues. But then how does their flip not apply to you then? What do you mean? Well, how does it flip saying, well, if you support mass migration but just because you vote for the PRO Act, how can you possibly be pro-labor? That's just not true. Of course it is. No, but it's not because the net effect is a massive flood. The primary problem for workers in this country is not immigrants. It's not immigrants. I mean, you should ask them, but first of all. The influx in population has increased our GDP. Now, I know. Yeah.

Hold on. Well, that's the point. And that's why I support the policies that I support to make sure that when the GDP increases, that those fruits, that increased productivity is distributed more generously among all working class populations. So there are much better solutions to housing and wages than scapegoating immigrants and lying and inciting like a racist hate campaign against this town based on a third-hand Facebook account of someone eating a pet. Look, and the pet thing, it's not fair. Nobody's defending the pet thing here. I know you're not defending that. But I'm saying that whenever it comes to the legitimate concerns about like, oh, the factory owner and the mayor likes it. Listen, since when have we ever trusted factory owner, rich people in town? This was a Democrat. Hold on. This was a democratically elected mayor. Yes, sure. They have a chance to vote him out of office and they

don't because the town has been in certain key ways, not every way, but in certain ways has been improved by the fact that you've had more jobs, more vitality. These immigrants who are there legally are contributing to the community, are paying their taxes by all accounts, are, you know, by and large, minding their business and doing their thing and being good neighbors. And that piece that there's, yes, there are, I'm not going to deny that there is like, going to deny that there's friction and there's growing pains, and all of those things are real. I'm not dismissing that. I'm not saying that you're racist if you think that. That's, I'm sure, a reality. But you also can't ignore that there have been benefits to having this population there,

just as there have been benefits of the white people that moved to Austin or that moved to Florida or wherever. That created additional vitality for those areas too. Well, the fundamental difference is those are legal U.S. citizens and these people are not. Now, maybe these Haitians are here. They are there legally. Well, okay. Well, we'll see. You know what? When we legally are required to send them back, I hope that we also do. But second to this is the simple question around managed change, managed demographics. They came here on an unregulated system where anybody in the world who shows up at the southern border and says, I fear for my life, gets to stay here for years on end and gets a work permit because the Biden administration releases them into the country. Trump did it too, so he's not off. So did George

W. Bush and the rest. I think that's wrong, especially whenever people who aren't so conveniently at the southern border have to apply and pay a lot of fees, you know, to take a freaking English test. And, you know, some other guy from Guatemala gets to come here. He doesn't have to take anything. He gets to work illegally on the back end. But this is the big question. Now, as I said, if Trump wins, I think it will be because of this. I think enough people will look past that. You may call it racist, but they'll say, look, enough. Wait, wait, wait. Do you not think it's racist? What, the Haitian thing? The pets thing. I mean, like, listen. Sager. Okay, when we say racist, what does that mean? Sager. Well, I mean, this is the issue. This is uncomfortable territory.

It's not uncomfortable. It's very clear. Well, as Marianne this is the issue. This is uncomfortable territory. It's not uncomfortable. It's very clear. Well, as Marianne Williamson said, what, are we going to ignore that there are, like, weird practices sometimes in the Haitian community? Like, I'm not saying— You know, a majority of Haitians share the religion of J.D. Vance and are Catholic. Which are—yeah, okay. But there's Santeria, which is a well-documented thing and has had a long time in Caribbean communities. To take a third-hand lie and smear an entire community with it. Yeah, I think that was wrong. That is the definition of racism.

I mean, listen, I- look, I'm just- Tell me your definition of racism and how it does not apply to the situation. The definition of racism is explicitly being biased against someone purely because of their race. And I don't necessarily think that that's where we're at here. Now, do I think that we are in a situation? I mean, look, is it biased? Is it? I'm trying to think of the ways. And look, people could say, oh, he's twisting himself into knots.

It's just because my barrier for like what I call racist is high because I think it's a very misused word and frankly kind of stupid. But sometimes you got to call a spade a spade. I mean, I think if they said because they're black, I have a problem with them. Yeah, I'd be like, yeah, that's racist. But, you know, to say like, oh, there's an issue here in the Haitian community specifically. When you take an issue and you smear an entire community with it, and which was not even true. It was just a lie. Yes, it's not true.

I mean, that's like textbook racism. And yeah, the term gets strenuous, but sometimes it applies. And it applies pretty clearly here. So, you know, to wrap up, and perhaps since we are going to talk to Seth about this as well, and we've got to get on to the rest of the show, and we're going to have more conversations about immigration, et cetera, which I know you all appreciate, and I enjoy exchanging with you on this as well. But to wrap it up, the reason that I think this is a clear political fail, the whole pet thing is a clear political fail for Trump is I

just don't think that Americans are this racist. I just don't. I think that they see this as disgusting. I think we have the polling that shows they know that it's not true. They know that it's a lie. People don't like being lied to either. And so, you know, whatever valid concerns there are about immigration, sure, fine. You're actually undercutting your position on that by front-loading with just like this explicitly racist, neo-Nazi-backed lie. Without taking your words, I will say I think it's a mistake to generally wager her whole reputation on this whole Haitian thing. I'd much rather have a lot of the talk that I just gave around demographics and management and all of that.

But, you know, at the same time, listen, I mean, they're the ones who got themselves elected. Maybe they know something that I don't. I'm not Pollyanna-ish to believe that everybody thinks about these things the way that I do, or the so-called better angels. I think a lot of that is fake, to be honest. And so we'll find out on the ballot box. And if they win, I actually do think a lot of it is, basically all of it will come back to immigration. And if that's true, then I think liberals should ask themselves a lot of questions. Now, if they lose too, we should also talk a lot about too,

about the way that we, when you can be on a winning side of an issue and how you screw that up and there's probably a lot of evidence here if they lose the election on this

and I would hope that they take that away if they do lose but knowing them, that's certainly not what's going to happen. Not on the table. Over the past six years

of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter.

She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people.

Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person. ouch, and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community

stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us, and I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers

like Bob the Drag Queen, Angelica Ross, and Gabrielle Yoon, You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen. To freedom! Angelica Ross. We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon. Hi, George. And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At the same time, there has been a new war declared by Donald Trump.

Let's put this up there on the screen. He declares yesterday, quote, I hate Taylor Swift. All caps there on Truth Social. It is unclear currently what exactly prompted this. His initial reaction to the Taylor Swift endorsement of Kamala Harris after the debate was that he likes Brittany Mahomes much better. That is Patrick Mahomes' wife, who it appears, I don't know if she's posted pro-Trump content. She, like, liked something on Instagram, maybe? These people are so ridiculous. Come on.

Anyway, so Brittany Mahomes likes some pro-Trump stuff, and Trump says, I'm actually more of a fan of Brittany Mahomes. Okay. Well, let's put this up there on the screen. The Democrats responded to this, also bringing in some Taylor. This is incredible. This is real, by the way. It says,

Donald Trump's week of whining and spouting conspiracy theories has voters on both sides of the aisle ready to forget that he existed, all caps. The American people want out of the woods of the chaos and division of Trump era, leave behind the blank space of Trump's broken promises, and begin again by electing Vice President Harris to ensure America's future opportunity is long-lived. Voters know all too well how dangerous Trump and his Project 2025 agenda will be if he wins. This November, we can make sure this is the last time we have to deal with this endgame of jacking up taxes on the middle class for putting away American freedoms. Together, we can turn the page on Trump era and write a new chapter where all Americans breathe easy, knowing we have strong leadership of the helm. We can make sure the story of us is one of progress and show Donald Trump we are not going back to December of 2020 like ever. So, Pep, for those who didn't get, there were a lot of Taylor Swift references inside of that one.

You only have to be a weirdo like me to understand every single one. In terms of what this endorsement actually means, very likely he could be reacting to this. Let's put it up there on the screen. There has now been some four to 500% increase in voter registration. Now, keep in mind, this also happened after the debate, so we can't singularly link it to Taylor Swift. We do know that in the 24 hours after she posted the link in her Instagram story, some half a million people did visit vote.gov. We don't know the exact number of people, but exactly 405,000 of those people were referred directly from the Swift Instagram page. Quote, such a number dwarfs the website's usual traffic, which averages only some 30,000 visitors per day. According to Target Smart,

it has led to that increase in voter registration, somewhere between 9,000 to 10,000 people per hour, Crystal, signing up. So declaring war on Taylor Swift, probably the most beloved pop star in the United States, possibly the world, most popular figure specifically amongst women, the demographic that Trump is suffering the most with. Not a smart strategy. I guess I could just put it that way. No 4D chess on this one? Oh, there's no 4D.

I mean, I don't think there's 4D chess on any of this stuff. I think a lot of it is stupid. It's just like gut reaction. It's period. Yeah, it's like, oh, she doesn't like me, so I don't like her. I'm like, okay, let's see how it works out. Listen, I could be totally wrong, you know, but even other Republicans are like, hey, this is a really bad idea. There's no reason.

Luckily, you know, Taylor herself, she's not trying to get too political. If you read her post, she's like, do your own research, vote for whoever you want. But I'm supporting Kamala. It's unlikely that she'll do anything. Maybe Travis Kelsey or any of that will get involved. or whoever you want, but I'm supporting Kamala. It's unlikely that she'll do anything. Maybe Travis Kelsey or any of that will get involved. But I guess the real point and why it's dumb is just, it's the ultimate tabloid headline. This is the type of thing that actually penetrates. It's like this impacts, right? This is the type of thing on TikTok, on Instagram, you're checking

out at the grocery store and you look at the magazine thing. You're just like, Trump declares, I hate, it's so clippable. It's so so soundbite-ish and that's part of the reason I think it's stupid it feeds into what is he doing this time like oh he said what you know because it's not Mika Brzezinski we're talking about here this is Taylor Swift this is the most popular lady in the United States yeah this is the last vestige of the monoculture that we have here so yeah why well you know why but I mean the reason is because it's Trump. This is what he does. I mean, my hot take about the Taylor endorsement was that it probably won't matter. And my hot take about Trump saying, I hate Taylor Swift is that it probably won't matter.

But that doesn't make it a smart idea because there's certainly a possibility that it could matter on the margins. And the other thing is, I don't know if you guys, we mentioned on the show, but I don't know if you guys saw this. There was this whole a while back, like fake AI generated campaign to pretend like Taylor Swift had endorsed Trump. And of course she hadn't, and she never intended to endorse Trump, et cetera, et cetera. And if she ever had a thought of staying out of this race, which she's not a particularly political person, she has weighed in before, she has endorsed Democrats before. But you know, if she ever had a thought about staying out of this race, that door was really closed for her by that fake Trump

campaign, because then you just feel like, like, I got to set the record straight. You know, I have to come out and say something because of, and then I think the whole childless cat ladies thing also apparently got under her skin based on the way that she phrased it. She does love cats. Her endorsement, she is a childless cat lady. She has three cats. She felt personally attacked and made a point of that in her endorsement pose, you know, with the pose with the cat and signing it childless cat lady, whatever. So if I were to make an argument that this matters,

it would be that, as you were saying, Sagar, she hasn't like overly inserted herself into the race. But if he's out there tweeting provocations and being aggressive, you know, I hate Taylor Swift. And if he continues to go in on that, then maybe that forces her to be more engaged. Maybe that pushes her to be, you know, more overtly political, to cut some ads, to appear at some rallies, whatever. The other thing that just not that we could ever get into Trump's psyche, but he definitely did like Taylor Swift previously. The way he talked about her, there's a famous video too of him driving a car with Barron in the passenger seat, listening to Blank Space.

So we know he has enjoyed her music in the past. And he got asked about her kind of recently before the endorsement. And this is what he had to say about how he felt about Taylor Swift then. What do you think about Taylor Swift? One of the most famous people right now. Yeah, I think she's beautiful. Very beautiful. I find her very beautiful. I think she's liberal. She probably doesn't like Trump, but I hear she's very talented. But I think she's very, I think she's very beautiful, actually. Unusually. Unusually beautiful.

Yeah, I mean, usually he has the sense. So he never attacked Oprah, right? He never attacked, because he always respected Oprah. He was one of the only people he ever feared. Reportedly, Michelle Obama. Taylor, you know, that's the similar one. This is like the tabloid part of him. He respects celebrity. He respects celebrity power.

He does know, you know, how popular some people are. And, you know, then in terms of there's one thing to say it doesn't matter, which I think actually is fine. You could say that. It's a legitimate opinion.

It's just another to be like, I hate Taylor Swift. And it's like, for what possible reason? It also makes you look like kind of childish yeah childish exactly it gets centered around what me I actually think one of the most potent democratic attacks is he cares about himself and not about yeah that's what it all feeds into and

just yeah everybody mag out there's like there's a strategy behind I'm like no there's not guys there's not you know just how can you still say that, you know, after all this time? There's no 4D chess. He's just capriciously saw something, decided to tweet it, and there's no thought or anything behind it. Now, will it matter? It will be the end result? Probably not. But it's just like, why? It's not a smart play.

Definitely not helpful. Yeah, there you go. For sure it's not helpful. Is it like, you know, super damaging? Who knows? But definitely not like a really savvy strategy here. Yeah, exactly. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing.

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All right, to continue the pets conversation, we're happy to be joined this morning by a great friend of the show, Zed Jelani. You guys all need to go and subscribe to Zed's newsletter. What is it called? The American Saga? Is that the name of it? Yeah, exactly. And I have the URL, just theamericansaga.com. So I'm sub stack. Amazing. Everybody should definitely check that out. So Zed and I were able to provoke the ire of Vice Presidential Candidate J.D. Vance. We'll get to that in a moment. But Senator Vance was on the Sunday shows making his case for sort of acknowledging that the Haitian pets lie was maybe not true, but also giving quite a noteworthy explanation for why he continues to lean into it. Let's listen to a little bit of how that went.

My constituents have brought approximately a dozen separate concerns to me. Ten of them are verifiable and confirmable, and a couple of them I talk about because my constituents are telling me firsthand that they're seeing these things. So I have two options, Dana. I could ignore them, which is what the American media has done for years to this community, or I can actually talk about what people are telling me. And of course, many of the things that the media says are completely baseless have since been confirmed. For example, I was told, Dana, by the American media, that it was baseless that migrants were capturing the geese from the local park pond and eating them. And yet there are 911 calls from well before this ever became a viral sensation of people complaining about that exact thing happening.

First of all, the Clark County Sheriff and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources reviewed 11 months of 911 calls. They only identified two instances of people alleging Haitians were taking geese out of parks. They found zero evidence to substantiate those claims. But you're not just a bystander. You're the senator from Ohio. So instead of saying things that are wrong and actually causing the hospitals, the schools, the government buildings to be evacuated because of bomb threats, because of the cats and dogs thing. But I want to start with something you said, which I think is frankly disgusting and is more appropriate for a Democratic propagandist than it is for an American journalist. There is nothing that I have said that has led to threats against these hospitals, these hospitals, the bomb threats and so forth. It's disgusting. The violence is disgusting.

We condemn it. We condemn all violence. Senator, this happened after you and President Trump were on the debate stage, said that cats and dogs were being eaten. You asked a question, Dana, and I'm going to go ahead and answer it. After that, they were. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do, Dana. If I have to create stories, he says, to get people to pay attention to this, then that's what I'm going to do. It seems like a pretty extraordinary admission, Zed. Yeah. And I think if you watch the rest of the clip and what he's talking about, basically he substantiates that by saying that he has had constituents call in saying they've heard rumors about other people's pets being taken and so on and so forth. So we would use

those calls to create the story to draw attention to this legitimate issue. I mean, the problem with that is, you know, you're a U.S. senator, right? You're not someone trolling Facebook for rumors. You're not taking information that hasn't been substantiated by anyone, whether it be a reporter, whether it be police or local officials or even local NGO. You know, you have to be responsible with how you respond to those things. And the reality is not one person in that town has stepped forward and said, my dog or my cat was eaten by somebody, by a Haitian person or anyone else for that matter. Because then you would end up filing a police report. There would be a press story about it and they would catch whoever was responsible. They would make an arrest, so on and so forth. The way that these urban legends spread through communities is usually that somebody says, oh, my neighbor lost their cat. It could have been a coyote,

but it could have also been an immigrant. And someone posted on Facebook and people say, oh, the Haitians are eating cats. I've heard that. Oh, you've heard that. We've all heard that. Over the weekend, I heard that 40 years ago in the Atlanta area where I live, when Koreans are moving in, there were rumors about cats disappearing, right? Because in Korea, you know, dogs in the Far East is probably the only place in the world where there is some common accepted practice of eating cats and dogs, even though it's not that common among the people. And it's kind of fallen out of fashion for a lot of people. And it's actually almost impossible to find a Korean American or Chinese American who would do that here in the United States. But that's how these rumors spread and start. Right. And I think, you know, if Vance and Trump want to know how politically salient it

is that they're doing this, YouGov did a poll where they found only nine percent of Americans think it's definitely true. Right. So for the first time, the Republicans are kind of losing an immigration debate in the past three years. Right. So was it really the best move in the world to rely on Facebook rumors here? Well, Zed, you got tangled a little bit with the vice presidential candidate. B2B, please, guys, let's put it up there on the screen. Zed, you tweeted this.

Springfield was declining for years until they saw an increase in jobs and growth driven by people moving in. That means more wealth, healthier budgets. Are there no upsides to immigration in your view? What about Usha's parents? Should they have stayed in India? JD replies to you, dude, I've always liked you.

So maybe this should be a longer conversation, but come on, are there no upsides to immigration? Is a radically different question from should we drop 20,000 people from a radically different culture in a small Ohio town in a matter of years? He goes on significantly, but if he were here today, what would you say to him?

Well, look, I actually relate a lot to J.D. in some ways, right? We have a similar life story in a few different ways. I mean, for one, I think that some of what he's voicing is probably his actual view, right? I mean, they're all politicians. They're all trying to win an electoral race. But I think that his life's trajectory kind of suggests that maybe he really seems to believe what he's saying. He's someone who grew up in a town where I think his parents and particularly his grandparents were from a culture, a subculture that he saw was dying. I think when he wrote his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, he analyzed that in sort of a personal way.

Right. He was kind of letting out his trauma or his childhood experiences. He kind of blamed the people around him. He blamed kind of letting out his trauma or his childhood experiences. He kind of blamed the people around him. He blamed kind of cultural tendencies, so on and so forth. Once he got that out of the system, I think over the next few years after that, he started to look at it in a more sociological way, right? He said, well, why were these people engaged in these counterproductive habits and cultures? Maybe there's larger problems with globalization, with job flight, with the easy access to drugs and counterproductive materials. And I think he started to make more of a political analysis about it where he sees himself as representing those people.

And part of what he did is, you know, he moved back from the Bay Area. He had gone to Yale Law School, made money out on the West Coast. He moved back to Ohio and he tried to say, I need to represent those people. I need to be a voice for them. And look, I mean, it's not that similar of a story for me in many ways. You know, I was born and raised outside of Atlanta and went to DC for a long time. And eventually I fought the con to come home. And so I came back here, you know, a couple of years ago. And, uh, you know, a lot of people I grew up around were, were white folks and a little bit

poor and working class places like Mableton, where I was born. And, you know, a lot of them flew their rebel flag. Right. But also my parents were immigrants. So, you know, I knew Indians and Nigerians and Mexicans and people from all kinds of backgrounds growing up. And, you know, you could say those people, those are different groups of people. But there's something all those groups share in common. And I want JD to hear this is that people look down upon them. Right. People say, you know, they're poor, they're educated, they're backwards, they follow weird customs, cultures, traditions, and religions, that they're always going to be in that station. But everyone I knew, from white folks flying the Confederate flag to African Americans to all these,

you know, migrants and immigrants who were coming into the area, you know, all of them were working to try to improve themselves and better their families, right? And, you know, I think when J.D. makes arguments about, you know, housing prices or about, you know, logistical issues, traffic, health care costs, so on and so forth, those are all fair things to say about the growing pains of immigration. I mean, those happen in every circumstance where large numbers of people are moving in. It's happening in metro Atlanta and in Cobb County right now where I grew up. I mean, those are largely not even immigrants from the rest of the world. They're from the rest of the country, though.

And we're having issues with transit, with traffic, with infrastructure, so on and so forth. Those are all fair points to make. But I think when he starts making it a cultural argument, you know, I think in some of his tweets, he talked about how these people are from a very different culture, right? And I think that, you know, allays into what he's talking about with the animals and the pets. You know, it's kind of suggesting that these are kind of like an alien group of folks. They're not compatible with us here in the United States, that they somehow have some kind of inferior or backwards attitude. And look, that's, J.D., that's exactly how people talk about your

ancestors, about Scots-Irish, right? Like, where's the term cracker come from in the U.S. context? You know, it was a term used to derogate poor people, Scots-Irish, largely in the South, who were seen as just following alien customs. They were ill-tempered. They were quick to fight with each other. They were very backwards. And they could never make anything of themselves. Of course, you know that's wrong, J.D., because you're a U.S. senator now. You went to a law school. But when you were growing up, I'm sure plenty of people looked down upon you. And they said that you're just, you know, you're white trash, you're backwards, your family's all messed up. They could list a million different ways of things that were wrong. But you knew that you were worth more than that, right? And I think that's a lot of what I would say about these people. You can't judge them, I think, in this way that kind of makes them in this category where

they're never going to make anything of themselves because the reality is, look, Haitians have been in the U.S. in large numbers since probably the 1960s. There's like half a million Haitian Americans in Florida, right? And I don't think Florida Republicans are going to be quick to demonize those people because it would be politically toxic for them to do so. And I don't think it's going to be any different from these people moving into Springfield, right? Springfield was losing population for a number of years, right? I went to grad school up in Syracuse. I was there for 12 months to do my master's. Syracuse and a lot of those upstate New York towns, all those Rust Belt towns, deindustrialized towns, were in a debt spiral because people moving out meant that you had not only fewer jobs, but you also had fewer, you had less tax revenue,

right? Meaning they couldn't fund services, meaning that they couldn't keep a lot of the city going as people continued to move out. So they were constantly trying to get people to move in. And that's what Springfield did around 2014. They started a campaign and said, hey, people need to move here, along with a bunch of other towns in Ohio, by the way. And they found some success by having people from the rest of the country, people from other countries, start moving into Springfield, start taking jobs, start working, providing revenue, economic growth. I mean, look, it's true that a lot of big employers and big business want immigrants to come to the country to loosen the labor market, sometimes to lower wages to give them more of an affordable deal. But that doesn't really mean that in every circumstance possible, you know, immigrants are bad for your community or bad for your country, right? And a place that's dying, that needs people to come back, it needs people to come from

anywhere to come there and develop and start actually, you know, not only bring new jobs, but also tax revenue, new construction, housing, so on and so forth, it's not really a bad thing to have people moving there and actually rejuvenate the place. And of course, there'll be growing pains in doing that, but a mature way to respond to that would be to go to that community, understand their needs, and talk it out rationally, right? Rather than turning it into a giant political circus that has, unfortunately, now these racial overtones. Yeah. Zed, your response was very compelling and also very diplomatic. Mine was a little less so I can put it up on the screen. What J.D. said to you kind of irritated me because now that he's provoked this whole, you know, outrageous racial panic, he wants to say, oh, let's have a nuanced

conversation about housing, which is my point here. I said, when you insist on spreading neo-Nazi-fueled smears about immigrants, which these pet cat dog lies were fueled by literal neo-Nazis, leading to bomb threats kind of closes the space for this intellectual discussion about pluses and minuses of immigration that you're now retreating to. Dude, he didn't like that very much. He says, crystal ball, I really hate neoliberalism. I'm a populist. Also, crystal ball, anyone who doesn't think 20,000 cheap laborers should be dropped on a small Ohio town is a neo-Nazi, which is not what I said.

But in any case, I would also say someone who has a 0% voting record with the AFL-CIO and who owes his position in significant part to a billionaire backer maybe doesn't really have a lot of leg to stand on with regard to populism. But putting that aside, Zed, I'll bring you in for the diplomatic response here. You know, when you lead with the very racial angle that's just about culture and is also just a total lie and not about any of these more legitimate topics of conversation, I don't think that helps enable that broader, more nuanced potential theoretical conversation that he now wants to have after initially starting this panic. Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right. Like, look,

if someone was trying to talk about, you know, Israel is a topic that's been all over the news the past almost a year now, and they started with an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, right? They can't really fall back and say, well, look, I just want to have a conversation about foreign policy. You know, you need you need to be careful about how you engage these things. And I think this is something the Republicans are learning, because like I said, this is probably the first time in during the Biden administration that were there really losing an immigration debate where they said something that people just don't believe that make them look, you know, like they're trying to start some kind of racial or cultural conflict rather than deal with the very real challenges of, I think, you know, increasing levels of immigration. And at the same time, you know, I want to say something about, you know, he questioned your posture as a populist. I mean, the reality is

that the history of populism in the United States and to some extent elsewhere, but I know more about the United States, is that when we develop these kind of us versus them frames, you know, immigration and race and culture does get drawn into that at times, right? So like I'm reading this book about Tom Watson. Tom Watson was this great, you know, Georgia populist, right? And the first half of his life, he was fighting against convict leasing, which was like 90% black in Georgia, which is like slavery by another name, you know, used by many of the richest and wealthiest politicians in Georgia to undercut wages and also just to expose prisoners to brutal conditions. I mean, far worse than prison labor today. I mean, it basically was slavery. But in the second half of his life, he became basically an outright white nationalist,

right? And he, you know, he was against African-Americans and so on and so forth. I mean, this is a guy who went from organizing bands of men to protect blacks from lynching to advocating for those very same things in the second half of his life. And like, that was all part of the populist tradition in Georgia, right? You could mobilize people against the landed gentry and the big farms and being agrarian populist. But also you could say, hey, we have a white interest against black folks, against Jews, Catholics, so on and so forth. And I think, you know, Vanstead needs to consider that trajectory for his own life. Right. Does he want to fall into that kind of dark side of populism? Does he want to be someone I mean, questioning illegal immigration,

talking about border security, all those things are valid. And that's always going to be a case. It's always been the case in American politics that those things are hot topics. Republican Party in particular has always been very active in talking about them. But when it comes to actually suggesting that, you know, this latest wave of immigrants, whoever coming to the United States, in the case of the Haitians, they are illegal. They have legal status under TPS, you know, this latest wave of immigrants, whoever coming to the United States, in the case of the Haitians, they are illegal, they have legal status under TPS, you know, that they're somehow incompatible with our values, with our culture. At that point, you're kind of

chopping up people who are just trying to work and get by and pitting them against each other, right? And, you know, you want to talk about big employers and what they do to undercut wages and why they advocate for looser immigration. That's all fair and good. But once we start having a conflict between people from varying ethnicities and ancestries and cultures, I mean, look, one of Donald Trump's worst moments on the debate stage is when he stood up there and said he didn't have a health care plan. He had a concept of a health care plan. Somewhere in this country right now, a husband and wife are talking about how they can't afford a life saving procedure or how they're facing bankruptcy and tears are streaming down their face. I mean,

J.D., spend a little bit of time talking to your boss about how he's going to address that problem. I mean, there's so many problems you can address in this country without pitting, you know, the latest poor guy who arrived on our shores and just trying to make a business for himself and a life for himself and a family in Ohio, right, against another person who's also trying to do that, right? And that happens to be the case in Springfield. So Zedd, let me push you a little bit. And let's think about this. Donald Trump passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. He abandoned a lot of the so-called like economic policy that he ran on if he ever believed it in the first place. And he got 10 million more votes. And in fact, if you look at a lot of the political science research on immigration and others, some of the people who vote for him on immigration don't care about the economic concern. So maybe in an era, and Chris

Leonard's had a massive debate on this, maybe in an era of rapid demographic change, the cultural argument is actually the one that resonates the most with people. So, I mean, you may think it's immoral or you may think it's wrong, but what is your confidence that it is the political loser that you believe it to be? Look, I think it probably depends on where and when you're talking about. Particularly in Europe, I think that there is a represent, and actually I'm going to write a story about that because there was a good paper on it. There is a representation gap between public officials and the general public. The general public does think immigration is happening too quickly. The pace of change is too rapid. And they tend to, I think most of their backlash is about

culture. Eric Kaufman, who's a kind of a political scientist, a little bit conservative leading, but very fair and honest, has said that in the survey work, that's what they find. It's not really about economics, not about logistics. It's about culture. People think their culture is being replaced or under attack and that it's dwindling compared to some kind of foreign culture, which they don't really like or understand. That's particularly the case in Europe. In the United States, some of the immigration backlash, probably most of the immigration backlash, honestly, is dealing with those factors. I don't think it really shows up as a political winner overall. I don't think there's a ton of evidence that Americans believe that their culture overall is being overwhelmed or somehow subsumed or replaced by foreign cultures. Not just because there's a differing nature in the nature of the countries. The United States is not founded on ethnicity. It's not founded on one religion or creed, really.

It's founded more based on there was a set of Northern Europeans or WASPs who founded the U.S., but each wave of immigrants who came in, you know, successfully assimilated and while at the same time somewhat changing the culture at a pace and rate that I think has generally been accepted by Americans. You know, you mentioned, for instance, that like Trump increased his minority votes, but I think part of that also is in 2020, he barely talked about immigration relative to 2016. I think he had shifted to other issues. I think things like him really against COVID lockdowns probably appealed to a lot of people who maybe don't really particularly mind immigration, don't particularly mind, you know, a more diverse culture in some ways, but maybe were aggravated by democratic, you know,

bureaucratic demands in one way, shape or form. I do think, Sagar, what you're describing probably is very powerful in the Republican Party at this moment. I think a lot of them probably would crack down even on legal migration, which I think is part of their complaint about the Haitians and about TPS. But I'm not so sure it's such a winner overall. Like, I'll give you an example. My governor here in Georgia, Brian Kemp, like he made a point to go and campaign before first and second generation immigrant communities. So like he went to a Diwali event outside Global Mall, which is this big like, you know, South Asian, Indian and Pakistani shopping center in Georgia. And I don't think he said anything beyond, you know, condemning illegal immigration, the same wrote things as everyone else. And the guy is sitting on a 61 or 63 percent approval rating. And I think John Ossoff probably lays awake at night hoping the NRC does not

recruit him for Senate because, you know, a state like Georgia, Old South, you know, used to be a cradle of Confederacy is also a state that's rapidly changing. And yet, you know, you go to a small town. I do improv comedy in a small town that voted 75 percent for Trump. And yet, you know, every every street corner is an immigrant. There's a Hispanic festival happening. You know, you know, half my team is Asian or black. Right. Like that's a Republican county that I'm in. Right. Like I think for the most part, people in this country are accepting of those things.

And the people in the middle, what they don't like is lawlessness. They don't like chaos. They don't like border towns being overwhelmed and then people being shipped this way or that way. And they feel like disorderly, right? Like people are being put upon. I think that's what they dislike. But America is one of the last countries on earth. I think we're going to get away with this argument that like, you know, you can't have anybody but wasps in the country. We're not that kind of people. I don't think that really gets to who we are as Americans. And that's where J.D., I think, is making a political misstep here. And even if he feels that way, look, dude, this country is going to be 60 to 70 percent white for your entire lifetime, dude.

You've got to get people to have more babies. White folks have got to have more babies. That's not my fault. They're not having more babies. I think even J.D. has said this at one point, that they need to have more kids. So like work on family policy to get that achieved. But you don't have to worry about being, you know, your culture being wiped out. I'm less than 1% of the country. My culture, my culture is very strong. Our families are very strong. I feel very secure in it. But that's partly on me, right? It's partly about how I engage to preserve my traditions and my culture. And, you know, I think J.D. has every right to do that with his family lineage going back to eastern Kentucky. Zed, to bolster your point, you know, you made the point about the governor, the Republican governor of Georgia, the Republican governor of Ohio also

came out and said basically, like, stop doing this, you know, stop doing what you're doing. And he also is, you know, quite popular in the state of Ohio. Won election handily last time, you know, actually outperformed J.D. Vance by quite a significant margin. I think he also didn't have as strong as an opponent as J.D. Vance. But to bolster your point about the politics of this, put B3 up on the screen. It's not just some of the aspects that you point to that I think Americans don't like. I think they also don't like being lied to. And an overwhelming majority of Americans, you know, huge gap between those who think that this is true and those who think that it is false. So majority, 54% say this is false.

26% say that it is true. A majority of Trump voters do buy the Haitian pet lie. Effectively, no Harris voters buy it. And then the independents, it was quite lopsided in favor of, no, this is a lie. If you look at men, 54% say it's a lie. If you look at women, 55% say it's a lie. If you look at women, 55% say it's a lie. So yes, within the Republican base, they buy whatever it is that Trump wants to sell them, but they're already voting for Donald Trump. And more of those, you know, swing voters, independents, et cetera, they see pretty clearly through the game that they're playing here. Yeah. And look, I think that I'm not someone who's saying that like any skepticism

towards immigration, particularly when we're talking about the lawlessness that happens, you know, at the border with drugs and crime and guns and gangs and so on and so forth, it should be taboo. Obviously, it should not be taboo. And I think when you do the same polls of Americans about those issues, they're very concerned about it. And it's a perfectly legitimate thing for the Republicans to address and bring up that Biden has failed to handle a lot of that properly and create a more orderly immigration system. I think where they're, like you said, I think where they're really kind of falling off is by creating this kind of cultural conflict between saying, you know, like, okay, I'll give you guys an example, like Douglas Murray, right? He's like this kind of posh right

wing British commentator. You know, after there were some riots in the UK. Yeah. Right, very much so. After there were some riots in the UK, there was a stabbing, actually. I think it was by an African migrant

who was of Christian background. For some reason, someone sped a rumor it was Muslims. So there were all these riots aimed at mosques and the Muslim communities. And then Murray comes up

and says, look, this is the result of, you know, you don't let us talk about immigration. What do you expect? Blah, blah, blah. And it's like, dude, every election in the West, particularly in Europe, for the past 10 years has been about immigration. It's constantly all over the news, Daily Mail, so on and so forth. But I think really what he means, the frustration he's feeling is you can't just say that, well, why don't we just keep our countries white, right? Like, that's probably what he feels. And I think that there is a faction in the Republican Party who feels that way. But my counter to that is that that faction, I think, is very online. Like, they tend to be

people who have prestigious positions at think tanks who tweet a lot and put out white papers. But in the actual world of Republicans, you know, you go to Florida, Texas, Georgia, you see diverse communities, you know, voting Republican. You see people in very small towns in rural parts of the country welcoming, you know, Tejanos and people who have roots who are one or two generations removed from the United States and from European American culture, right? I think in the actual world, there isn't quite nearly as much hostility towards these things as you might see among certain right-wing influencers, among the Charlie Kirks of the world, among some of the people maybe J.D. follows on Twitter or on social media. And I think the

Republican Party needs to calibrate for that if it wants to survive. And I'm not doing the 2012, you know, autopsy saying they have to be 100 percent pro legalize everybody, lose immigration policies, so on and so forth. But they do have to avoid being racist. Right. They have to avoid being racist and they have to avoid looking like they just want the country to be full of white folks because that's not the country anymore. And a lot of people who are curious about voting Republican, who agree with Republicans on taxes, who agree with Republicans on social policy, they want, you know, strong police. They're kind of skeptical about abortion, the morality of abortion, particularly a lot of these Latin American immigrants are. A lot of people want to vote Republican. They're not going to vote Republican if they feel like they're being insulted every day.

Right. Or someone's going to spread some racist theory about their group every day if they're putting those kinds of people into power, right? And that, I think, is the line they need to kind of straddle. And I think Vance needs to understand this, that a lot of what he's saying about global capital, a lot of what he's saying about families and how hard it is for his family are true. And they resonate very well with people for good reason. But man, you got to take race and culture out of it, right? You got to understand that a lot of the conservative cultural values you value are the same ones probably a lot of those folks coming into Springfield from Haiti value, right? They probably value strong families. They're probably kind of skeptical about abortion. They probably want good policing. I mean, I haven't heard about

any big crime wave as a result of these people, probably because they're sick of that from where they came from. They're happy to be in a country with a rule of law, with police, where criminals do get punished, where if somebody ate a cat, they would be punished for it, right? We'd all hear about it. We'd all know about it. We wouldn't have to rely on this blurry video that Chris Rufo is sending around, you know, like UFO Bigfoot style, right? Well, we're going to find out if you're right or not, Zed. I'm very curious. I'm of several minds about it, as we've talked about for ad nauseum now at this show. Really appreciate you as always. Thank you for coming on and we hope to see you again soon. Great to see you, Zed. Thank you. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone,

I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband. It's a cold case. I've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator

to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter.

She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her,

is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeart M. Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest.

And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us, and I don't want to just survive.

I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers, like Bob the Drag Queen. To freedom! Angelica Ross. We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon. Hi, George.

And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So there's been a lot of discussion about an individual who appears to be a major advisor to President Trump. That would be Laura Loomer. And I'll save it for Sagar to explain who this lady is because she could probably do a better job. Maybe you should do it so she doesn't Loomer me. Well, okay. So let's go and put her tweet up on the screen. This is just some of her recent work where she even got a visibility limited warning for hateful conduct from Elon

Musk's Twitter. She says, if Kamala Harris wins, the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated by a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand. You get it, guys? Because Kamala Harris is half Indian. LOL, isn't that funny? This is also the lady that went on Tim Pool's broadcast and called for Democrats to be executed for treason. He actually took down the episode because of her calling for the murder, mass murder of Democrats. So this is the person that we're talking about here. And, you know, this is something that I've been talking a bit about, Sagar, is 2016 Trump,

tabloid Trump, 2020 Trump, Fox News Trump, 2024 Trump is like truth social Trump. And there is no better emblem of that evolution, in my view, than his association with this person who's been flying on his plane and he's, you know, always like lauding her and touting how smart she is and how insightful, et cetera, et cetera. You asked me earlier in the show, you said, what is racist or not? And I think that's pretty clearly racist. By the way, if you want to know the reason why, it is because specifically about linking the practice of race to the well-documented love of white nationalists, which is talking about how Indians, quote, eat curry and always smell like it. What did she say in terms of the link? Anyway, I won't even dignify it. But continuing, I think, with this vein is funny to me. It is recognized now that these people around Trump are a problem,

specifically by others who previously would have backed these people up. So Marjorie Taylor Greene being the prime example for me, because she then begins attacking Laura Loomer. Now the thing is about Loomer, she's been banned and unbanned from social media for like the entire time that I've been involved in conservative circles. She's one of those people who,

she calls it getting Loomered, that was the joke I was making earlier, where she would stick a camera in your face and ask you a question. I mean, she is, I think, best described as like a genuine like apparatchik. She recently, after Elon bought Twitter, has been back on Twitter and she's been fighting and beefing.

She's very, very pro-Trump. The only topic I've seen her engage with like outside of Trump is on Israel, where she debated Dave Smith earlier for Zero Hedge. Just putting that out there. She's extremely

pro-Israel. It's like a key issue for her. So that's Loomer, I guess, in a nutshell. She's always been

kind of a right-wing provocateur. I remember seeing her at CPAC and they banned her and it was a whole lot. She ran for Congress. She lost.

She ran for Congress and she lost. I mean, she's, you know, pretty overt with her biases and her just insanity. I don't even know how to describe. I mean, she just genuinely is like she takes the Trump posting to its most logical conclusion. And what I mean by that is like Trump can never do any wrong. Trump is always good. Like Trump must be protected at all costs. So she leverages that. She'll back up basically anything that the guy says. Yeah. Or it's always like an attack dog on the left. So that's why they love her. And she's viciously anti-DeSantis too. Very anti-DeSantis. Which shows you it's anyone who is oppositional to Trump at all. Yeah. And so that's important because what that means is that Trump feels the most comfortable

with people like her and others who are around him. Everybody around him has to validate him at all times and has to constantly manage his personality, which is why I actually thought that Marjorie Taylor Greene breaking with Laura Loomer was interesting because Marjorie previously would be one of those people who would – you know, she's very close with Trump. She's always backing up Trump. They've split maybe only once publicly on the whole Kevin McCarthy thing, right? But that's basically it. So when she then started to attack Loomer, I started to pay attention. I said, this is interesting because she thinks, clearly Marjorie thinks that Loomer

is a bad influence on Trump, shouldn't be around Trump and is bad reputationally for him. See, I feel like it's more petty interpersonal jealousy is what I actually think it is because Loomer has his ear, you know. She may have some other parts of him, but we'll leave that speculation to others. They've been very friendly with one another.

And I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is jealous of the access that Laura Loomer has right now. In any case, after the Curry tweet, Marjorie Taylor Greene decided this was a bridge too far. She put out a Twitter post and she also went to the cameras and denounced Laura Loomer. Let's take a listen to what she had to say. This is such an important election. I don't think that she has the experience or the right mentality to advise. Very important. I'm not involved in their conversation, so I can't weigh in on that. But I do know this, that her rhetoric and her tone does not match the base, does not match MAGA, does not match most Republicans I know. And I am completely denouncing it. I'm over it. And I would encourage anyone else that matches

her statements to stop. So this triggered one of the messiest Twitter fights I've ever seen. I'm not going to read all of this, guys, but we can put this up on the screen just to show you how ugly this got and how fast. Laura Loomer tweets in part, Hey Marjorie Taylor Greene, remember when you destroyed your family so you could have sex with a zangief? I don't know what that is. I don't know what that is. Cosplayer. Tell me again how you and the Arby's in your pants

are representatives of the GOP. And it went on from there. So, which also I wanted to put up because to give you a sense of Laura Loomer and who she is and how she operates. She'll go for anybody. So, yeah. And Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn't the only one who came out.

I believe Tom Tillis was also, North Carolina Republican senator, was also coming out against her. Trump, this became enough of an issue because it isn't just about these messy beefs, but this is a genuine question of who has Trump's ear? Why is he engaging in some of these seemingly insane tactics and indulging some of the seemingly insane conspiracy theories that he is indulging seemingly to his campaign's detriment. So he got asked about it out on the campaign trail. Let's take a listen to his response. Any Republican colleagues or your allies who are concerned about your close relationship with Laura Loomer? Well, I don't know what they would say. Laura's been a supporter of mine,

just like a lot of people are supporters. and she's been a supporter of mine. She speaks very positively of the campaign. I'm not sure why you asked that question, but Laura's a supporter. I don't control Laura I can't tell Laura what to do. Laura's a supporter. I have a lot of supporters. But so I don't know what exactly you're referring to. That's okay. Yeah, please. I just don't know. Laura's a supporter. I don't know. She is a strong person. She's got strong opinions. And I don't know what she said, but that's not up to me. She's a supporter. She's a supporter. She's a free spirit. I have a lot of supporters. Yeah, but not all those supporters are riding on your plane with you and going to the 9-11 memorial with you and whatever. Yeah. She's been pictured with him now several times. Let's put this up there on the screen. Like, for example, we have multiple photos of them like hugging and being around each other. She's made herself like a permanent presence at Mar-a-Lago.

So it just demonstrates, again, the same problem that Trump always has where he will surround himself with the people who not only tell him what to hear but like his most loyal people. He believes that loyalty is the chief and the most important virtue for those who are around him, people who always defend him, especially whenever things get bad for him. He did this during Access Hollywood. He would retreat. He would surround himself whenever he was president, and he would say something, Charlottesville, whatever. He would retreat again to, like, his closest people who would always be willing to back him up. Part of the reason that he loves Jesse Waters and all these Fox News other people is because they'll always defend him, Greg Gutfeld and others. And Loomer fouls in that category, I think, of the people who fly with him around on the plane, always tell him that what he's doing is good, backed him up on

Stop the Steal or any of the other stuff. And Trump is the most comfortable there. And frankly, it's one of the worst things about him, right? Because that means that he's never actually getting checked by anybody who is around him. And in general, And in general, you know, on a long enough timeline, these people end up triumphing in his personal orbit. Although sometimes he does listen, you know, remember this too, he also personally has no loyalty. So if she does become a problem, he will despise her or he'll never see her again,

which I could also see happening. Do you think that he will listen to the criticism and distance himself from her? I don't know. I mean, I haven't seen a report that she's been around him yet. But at this point, like looking at where things are,

I don't think it's reached like a critical mass level yet. But for him, sometimes the bar is if I even have to take a question about it, you're done. You know that this association is driving Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. Oh, yeah. Crazy.

Yeah. Well, they also hate that because that controls, that diminishes their access to the candidate. Because these are exactly the type of people who will be like, don't listen to your advisors,

don't listen to whatever. Everything you do is amazing. And they're like, okay. Well, and you can see, you know, in the debate, right, the first 15 minutes of Trump are like the Chris LaCivita 15 minutes. It's, you know,

it's hitting the points on the economy. And the last five minutes where he suddenly remembered, like, oh my God, I'm supposed to say, like, if you were going to solve these problems, why didn't you do it? And here's the issues. And in between was the Laura Loomer influence. And that's what ends up. The problem is, even if you only have a dash of Laura Loomer, which there was more than a dash in that debate performance, but what is the thing everyone's talking about after it? It's pets, right? They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, they're eating the pets. And so you only need, you know, an instant relapse to Laura Loomer mode. And I, you know, it would not be surprising at all if she was the one

that was talking in his ear right before the debate about that. And then that's what comes down. And then that becomes the moment. So in any case, interesting drama, interesting infighting, playing out, turf wars playing out. And I think also indicative of the fact that they don't feel like things are going particularly well for them right now. They feel like the polls should look better. You know, I think obviously he could win. There's no doubt about that. The polls are very close. The electoral college is even closer. But I do think they have a sense that things are not going the way they want them to go.

And when that happens, then you start to get all these like ugly, messy fights too. That's a good point. All right, let's move on. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

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

bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough.

Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest.

And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen.

To freedom! Angelica Ross. We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon. Hi, George. And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So AOC and Jill Stein have been feuding.

Jill Stein, of course, being the nominee for the Green Party. And in the midst of this feud, she has now gone on The Breakfast Club and had pretty, like, pretty heated exchange with Democrat partisan Angela Rye. Let's take a listen to a little bit of how that went. And it is the talking point of AOC the other day, who is taking her marching orders from the DNC. This is exactly what they say, that we are only running for president. Women of color as parroting talking points instead of us looking at basic math. The one thing that AOC has done that you haven't is win some election. How many voting members in the United States House of Representatives, Republican, Democrat and Independent, how many total? How many total are there? What is it? Six some? No, it's 435.

But I would like to respond. This is the framing of the empire and the oligarchy and white supremacy and colonialism, which wants you to feel that resistance is futile. This is about voter blaming. No, no, no. What you're not going to say is that I'm ever parroting anything at the hands of white supremacy. This is something that's very different. This is me asking you again. It's a binary choice in an election. I'm just pointing out that these are the talking points. No, it's not a talking point. These are the same talking points that the DNC uses.

This is not DNC talking points. This is my research. And sadly for you, the research says you have never won an election. All right. So lots to say about that piece. I also want to show you those were some of the pieces that were being shared by liberals who are on the. Yeah. I mean, listen, you should know how many members of Congress there are. That is legitimately embarrassing. The piece that Dr. Jill Stein herself wanted to share. Let me go ahead and show you now where she talks more about, you know, her point of view and why she believes that you should vote for the Green Party. Let's take a listen. Every vote cast for our campaign is a vote against genocide.

It is a shot across the bow of the endless war machine to say that we, the people, are getting organized. We are moving forward. We are growing. We have organization and infrastructure that we have never had before. We've never been able to break through like we are now because Greens have been ahead of the curve on a lot of things like climate change, on reparations, on health care as a human right.

And I do think that is one of the most compelling arguments you can make for the Green Party is, number one, Trump and Kamala Harris, like Kamala Harris is vice president to Joe Biden, both of them are pro-genocide. So as just like a moral issue, there are certainly a significant number of people, especially Muslim Americans, who just say, I can't support that. I don't care if you are lesser evil, whatever, I just can't support it. And then the other piece that I think is her most compelling argument is like, listen, we, by being out there as a sort of protest party, we have pushed the conversation on this set of issues around climate change, around reparations, around, you know, sort of pushing the Overton window of what can be discussed in American politics. And I think that's legitimate. I think there is a real case to be made for that.

To get back to a little bit of the AOC part, here's part of the argument she's been making against Jill Stein. She says, nobody needs talking points to know Jill Stein hasn't won so much as a bingo game. If you actually give a damn about people, you organize, build power and infrastructure and win. Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of Minnesota, also going in on Jill Stein for some reason at this point. He says, if you've ever been annoyed by politicians who only show up at election time, then you've got to be annoyed with Dr. Jill Stein. She claims to be an unconventional alternative, but she's nauseatingly conventional. She shows up every four years making lavish promises but has no record of producing anything except Republican victories, hard pass. And the last thing I'll share with you, which could be a key to why you see, you know, Democratic attacks against Jill Stein,

not just from Keith Ellison and AOC, but from others as well at this point in time. Let's put this up on the screen. Polling suggests that she's doing quite well among Muslim American voters. This is from the Council on American Islamic Relations. It shows her, this is Yashar Ali who is tweeting this, shows her getting a solid share of their votes

in key battleground states. So in Arizona, you've got Jill Stein actually leading the field among Muslim voters, 35%. Also in Michigan, critically, 40% she's winning among Muslim voters. Pennsylvania, 25%. Wisconsin, 44%. Again, that's another state where she actually leads the field among Muslim voters. So, you know, as a percent of the population, you're talking about a relatively small slice, but small slice could make a difference in some of these key states. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know exactly what we were talking about the motivation here. Keith Ellison and AOC. I mean, the problem for AOC and Keith Ellison is that they're the exact people who rose up against this like party line talk and now are enforcers of it. So in my opinion,

you actually have less credibility. So like the people who attack Jill Stein, who are just democratic apparatchiks, I'm like, yeah, that's fair. Like, you know, it's like you people believe that the party is a solution to everything. But AOC, you know, went on the DNC stage and said Kamala was working tirelessly for a ceasefire. As in trying to, like, fool Gaza voters into voting for Obama. I'm like, that's bullshit. You know, like, you are trying to message to people incorrectly and lie to them. And Jill Stein is telling them the truth. I don't think there's, or at least the truth in the way that they believe it. And if that's something that

let's take the election out of it, AOC would probably be on Jill Stein's side if there was no Cuomo, there was no Trump, or there was no election. Like let's say this was happening in 2021. I'm not so sure that she takes the current posture that she is right now. And the stakes weren't as different on other issues. So that's where I kind of have an issue, where you previously ran against the system, now you're a systemic enforcer, and you're actively using your old image as a revolutionary to go after a Jill Stein and a third party. I think that's wrong. I think that at this point, I mean, I just, I think we need to see AOC has decided that she is going to try to work within the system, right? That's her political, she previously had a different political theory of change, which was much more adversarial. And she

does not hold that theory of political change anymore. At least she does not act on that theory of political change. So I guess I don't see her that different from any other Democratic Party apparatchik. She is a Democratic Party partisan. But you and I follow this day to day. Oh, yeah. The average person is not going to do this. Yeah. I mean, I guess what I would say is a few things.

Number one, I don't think that this is an intel—I don't think this is 4-D chess from AOC. I don't think this is an intelligence strategy because people who have very genuine, extremely legitimate moral concerns about voting for a candidate who supported genocide, like if you're just yelling at them and shaming them and how could you, and they're just, you know, Jill Stein's an idiot, et cetera, et cetera. Like, I don't think that that's an effective pitch. I think you're more likely to harden them against the Democratic Party or harden their commitment to voting Green Party. So on efficacy, I think it's foolish. There's something about this conversation that I've been thinking about that really kind of drives me crazy on both sides, which for Dr. Jill Stein, I understand

her position too. She's trying to win votes for the Green Party and that's her job. And she's going to go out there and make her case and make the most compelling case she can as well. But there's a discourse to do as a lefty is to vote for the Green Party. There's a lot of certainty and a lot of like moral outrage around this. And I think it is more likely that there just is no good answer here. Like you're kind of checkmated. That's how I feel. Like on the one hand, I think there are a lot of very compelling and troubling reasons why I do not want to see Donald Trump back in the White House. I think those reasons have been on full display over the past number of weeks. I think he would be worse on Israel, even if that is like the narrow lens of your focus. I think there's something powerful in like the French model of this sort of like anti, you know, right-wing coalition, or you could say anti-fascist coalition that came together to

defeat the right-wing party there. But ultimately, also, you're asking people to do something that is morally very difficult and that doesn't move you away from the fundamental dynamics of lesser evil voting over a long period of time. But it also is not clear to me that a vote for the Green Party is any sort of a magic bullet either, like a silver bullet either. Because the point of, look sort of a magic bullet either, like a silver bullet either, because the point of, look, you have been running this strategy for a number of years and it hasn't disrupted the duopoly. Like the result of you getting a significant number of votes in 2016 was the Democratic Party crushing the left and moving further to the right. So it's not like

that strategy has paid off either. So I think in these like electoral calculations, in some ways it's a misplaced focus. The better place to focus is probably on, you know, building a powerful labor movement and those sort of, you know, democratic organizing. Because I don't think either one of the answers to the narrow electoral question are particularly like the answer or a good answer. Yeah, fair. But then it's about strategy too. I think Jill Stein was the one operating in the way that she's supposed to,

which is I'm trying to win votes. The AOC one is a negative one of like, no, you shouldn't because this is, in general, I think that comes back to voter shaming. Yeah, I agree. I think voter shaming is bad. I think especially in a democratic system. I think it's bad and I think it's counterproductive. Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

But there is also a lot of voter shaming that goes in the other direction, not from Jill Stein, but of people who are weighing this calculation and in the balance want to vote for Kamala Harris. There is a lot of voter shaming at them as well. Oh, okay. Well, fair enough. Well, that's kind of stupid too. Yeah. Look, shaming people because of how they vote is dumb, very counterproductive, and historically does not work. It makes people dig in even more. And in general, you're just not – you know, somebody asked a question recently, and they were like, should news commentators have to disclose who they vote for? And it actually made me realize, I'm like, who you vote for actually does not tell you all that much interesting stuff about you.

For example, if Dick Cheney is voting for Kamala and AOC is voting for Kamala, do those two things give you an accurate representation of their false views? Some people could say yes, right? But I don't think actually it is. So instead, you need to look at issues and various reasons why, let's say, Muslim people are going to be voting for Jill Stein. you might be making a pretty damn good case. And if the case is telling them a lie, Kamala's working tirelessly for a ceasefire, instead of, hey, Trump will be way worse on Israel. I mean, that's actually not a bad case, right? Yeah. I mean, sometimes the negative is

important. It's an honest case. It's very important. Yeah. For example, if you're a pro-Trump or if you were one of those people who was like, I wanted Trump to do X, Y, and Z, the common retort from the right is like, okay, dude, but Kamala is going to be 10 times worse. And you know what? They're not wrong. That's a fine enough case sometimes. I don't want to live that way, but that is true. And same true on the Israel issue. But then you should be saying that and not she's doing the best possible job that she can because that's bullshit too. Yeah.

And that's what bugs, that's what actually bugs me the most. Yeah, I agree with all of that. All right. Wow, long show today. I hope you guys enjoyed it. We have plenty, we actually had to drop some stuff

so we're going to have even more tomorrow. We've already basically got a Tuesday show ready to go for tomorrow. We'll see you then. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend.

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