It Could Happen Here - Vivek Ramaswamy, Nick Fuentes, and the Future of Republican Politics

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Robert and Gare sit down to discuss Garrison's fellow zoomer, Nick Fuentes, and what Vivek Ramaswamy represents to the insurgent right.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking music, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and

influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. welcome back to it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart and you can't spell falling apart without republican party or at least several of the letters falling a party you use that for that are also in this garrison hello how are you doing good over there isn't in atlanta yeah yes i i just got back from a visit uh in portland where we watched many upsetting things uh back to back we did watch a lot of upsetting things yeah probably the most upsetting of which

was the first of the 2024 republican primary yeah yeah boy it sure was nice watching those indonesian war criminals reenact their crimes really cleared cleared my uh my my mind after uh watching the republican debate yeah that was that was a really good palate cleanser so you know this is not uh the most timely thing because we didn't want to just like do a reaction podcast where we talked about here's what we thought about you know the vivex answer or uh anonymous white man number four's answer to you know these various questions i thought chris christie was very put together very very on topic. On message. Yeah.

No, we wanted to look at like wait for some polls to come out and actually kind of both talk about what happened and kind of what worried us and also how it seems to be playing with the base and the American voters in general. Because all of this matters because, again, the Republicans are, I mean, we are all a little bit the architects of collapse here in our lovely society. But the Republicans, they like to really pump that shit into a higher gear. So, you know, I think the thing that kind of stuck out to both of us most, and the thing that's been one of the primary kind of takeaways, the one of the main things people have talked about after the debate was Vivek's performance, Vivek Ramaswamy, who was prior to, I even made a little comment prior to it

that I didn't know much about him or think he was much of an entity in this, because, you know, in part because that's true. He was somebody who is just kind of coming onto the scene in politics. I wanted to talk a little bit about how he started that because there was some stuff I was unaware of here prior to him announcing his candidacy. He's one of these guys who kind of started because he comes out of biotech. He's a quote unquote entrepreneur. And specifically, he's the kind of shitty entrepreneur who has managed to get rich largely without actually contributing anything, primarily buying up patents for drugs in development that he profits on but then later are found not to work. part of where his fortune comes from. And he started kind of about a really about a year ago,

I think, trying to brand himself as a as a kind of political influencer, specifically through like social media. And he had been getting a lot of attention, like as a result of the success of his because he's one of these guys, he's good at using social social media he gets up to um you know he's at a couple hundred thousand followers when he announces his candidacy and prior to announcing his candidacy he had done well enough at kind of building a brand for himself that in 22 or 2022 early 2022 he and the daily Wire start putting together a contract and they want to bring him on presumably for like a frightening, like a deeply upsetting amount of money to do something that they haven't really done before, which is just kind of launch a like a show based around him that's like a news and politics show, which was a little bit different kind of than a lot of the deals that like they've had before, where it's more like, you know, here's Matt Walsh's podcast where he's going to, you know, try to get people killed. Here's Ben Shapiro's podcast where he's going to get angry at the Barbie movie. This was like, we're launching

a news and culture, like a news and politics podcast, and Vivek's going to be like the face of it, right? Yeah, with like, like attempts at actual like a political analysis, mostly from a libertarian perspective. Yes, yes. And so so that's the idea. And kind of midway through after, you know, a significant amount of time in development, and according to kind of what Jeremy Boring, who's the CEO of Daily Wire said, after they had spent a bit of money kind of working on sort of the concept for this, he backs out rather suddenly.

Boring later said his priorities were changing and we could have chosen to be aggressive about it. We did spend a little bit of money on the prep that we've been doing. So I think there's a little bit of bad blood there actually between them. But he bounces from this deal with the Daily Wire to announce his 2024 campaign run. And this seems to have kind of started in early part, like earlier on in this year, start of 2023, when he has this meeting with a small group of, who were described in this ABC News article as conservative operatives to discuss his exciting plans. I'm going to read a quote from that article.

I'm going to run for president, Ramaswamy said on the call. Ramaswamy pitched himself as a candidate who could make serious waves in the Republican primary at the meeting. When met with some skepticism, Ramaswamy argued that his candidacy could also dissuade Florida Governor Ron DeSantis from entering the race, according to a source who was on the call. In the lead-up to his announcement, Ramaswamy would tell several other conservative activists that he believed that if he ran, it could stop DeSantis from running or impact his viability as a candidate if he did enter the race, sources said. His campaign has turbocharged Ramaswamy's social media presence, with his

number of followers on Twitter, known as X, nearly quadrupling, ballooning from a little over 236,000 prior to announcing his candidacy to now nearly a million followers just six months later. And so, you know, there's a couple of things that's interesting to me about that. One, that he sort of, he pitched himself as, I can stop DeSantis from running. And it's a little unclear to me if these are guys that specifically like hate DeSantis or if it's more they don't want him running against Trump.

They don't want like a fight between those two guys. Yeah, they want to postpone his political trajectory a little bit. And it was also, you know, before the debate, it was kind of looking like

because he was creeping up on DeSantis in like the last couple of polls before the debate, taking and beating him in a couple of states, which was interesting. It was kind of looking like it was working. And then in the aftermath of the debate, we'll talk more about polls later and we'll talk about other candidates. kind of either plateaued or lost a bit of support, even though a significant number of Republicans, most in some polls, think that he won the debate, which is interesting to me. Now, when you and I watched this, kind of the thing that concerned us was that we both saw him as sort of messaging to the Nick Fuentes crowd. And what I mean by that is young conservative activists who are

at least willing to dance with explicitly white nationalist ideas and who have some sympathies with the insurgent right, including with acts of violence committed by the insurgent right. And obviously Vivek, he's not Nick Fuentes. He's not a Nazi. He's not going to make jokes about the Holocaust. But he does talk about certain things in a similar way, particularly this idea of like the fact that immigration is altering our national character. He talks about – National identity. National identity. Is the thing he kept saying.

Yeah. Which is something you hear a lot, sometimes in more explicit terms, from these, like, basically these Nazis, right? So it's kind of a, he's taking this term and he's washing it a little bit. Yeah, I mean, throughout the debate, he definitely was, like, very quick to portray himself as, like, the most conservative person on stage. Whenever there would be a question about, like, how extreme are you on this topic? And they didn't phrase it that way,

but that's essentially what they're asking. He was the first person to raise his hand every time. He did it very enthusiastically. Many of the other people on stage had a lot of like half raised hands. We both noticed that DeSantis, before raising his hand on a certain question, looked both ways across the stage

to see who else was raising their hand before he raised his. But every single time, Vivek was the first guy to jolt his hand up. It was very intentionally positioning himself as the most extreme option on the table there. And it wasn't just, I think, the content of what he was saying that that made kind of parallels between him and people like nick fuentes or just kind of younger younger conservative uh like content creators and influencers it was also like the way he talked like the his his his speech pattern yeah how fast he was very high school debater yeah yeah it just it's it was reminiscent of all of like the horrible shit that i watch for my job

like whenever i have to like watch through a whole bunch of like like like zoomer conservative content creators it was it was that but now on the debate stage and this is something i even like kind of talked about in the last uh the santa's fashion wave thing is like where we are about to hit this big wave of conservative zoomers who are going to be starting to run for office, who were raised in this media environment. And they're going to act like all of these kind of commentators that we see on YouTube, that we see on Rumble, that we see on Twitch. They're going to be emulating that style. I want to put a pin in that because we're going to come back to this with some audio from Nick himself that expresses a similar opinion. with some audio from Nick himself that expresses a similar opinion.

But I want to note a couple of the things that he specifically expressed that we found very fashy and that I consider to be really concerning. Top of the list is the fact that he has openly stated his desire to bomb Mexico. That is a real problem. And the degree to which a significant number of folks on that stage weren't completely willing to put that off the table is deeply concerning. That's not great. Now, the upside is that maybe that's crazy enough that there's no chance independents will vote for it, but you never fully want to say that in America. There's no way to know. No way to know whatsoever. The other thing is that, you know, he has so Nick and a lot of these guys on the fascist youth right. They're huge into removing people from being able to vote.

You know, Nick himself is basically a monarchist, right? Like he wants a Catholic monarch. He's like a Catholic monarchist fascist. Yeah. And by the way, this is not a fringe opinion. monarch is fascist. Yeah. And by the way, this is not a fringe opinion. Michael Knowles, who is one of the major personalities of the Daily Wire, one of the largest conservative news organizations in the country, has just recently went on a rant talking about all the benefits of monarchy and protecting freedoms, by which he means the property of rich people. Knowles is also a

trad Catholic. Yeah. Knowles is also a Catholic traditionalist. Yeah. And so these guys, you know, they both talk about that. And the thing that Vivek is doing that is sort of the more acceptable because you can't get up on stage yet at a Republican debate and talk about the need for a king. Right. You know, Nick being much more extreme and having the freedom to be more extreme talks a lot about repealing the 19th Amendment, taking the right to vote away from women. Vivek is not going to say that, but he did say this. Young people don't value a country that they just inherit. That's why I've said every high school senior, I believe, should have to pass the same civics test that an immigrant in this country has to pass in order to become a voting citizen of the country. If that 18 year old wants all the privileges of citizenship as well. This is deeply concerning for a number of reasons, including the fact that any barrier you're put to voting is going to reduce the number of people, specifically people who are likely to vote for Democrats who do it. But number two, like who gets to determine those tests? Well, we're already

seeing the way in which the state positions in states like Florida on education are fundamentally changing the amount of information kids are allowed to get. They also theoretically would have the ability to fundamentally change the nature of this test, you know, so that, you know, you have to express certain opinions and be inculcated in certain opinions in order to be able to vote. This is a real problem. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America from ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

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iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast On Thanksgiving Day 1999

a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba He looked like

a little angel I mean he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.

At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, a.ian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like,

every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Vivek, you know, concerns us both for this. Again, we will talk about his kind of popularity in a second. But I wanted to because when we both kind of felt, you know, this is a guy who has a lot of that Fuentes energy he's bringing. And so I looked like, what is Nick been saying about this guy?

And I found this video from a website you're going to hate called Zoomer National News, Garrison. Jesus Christ. It's a sub stack that just does different like. I think I've actually hate called Zoomer National News, Garrison. Jesus Christ. It's a sub stack that just does different. I think I've actually been on Zoomer National News before. Yeah, it's like a lot of clips from Nick's show and stuff. So we're going to start watching this Zoomer National News clip because there's a couple of points that he makes in the first couple of, first few minutes of it that I think are unfortunately worth listening to and

then discussing and then being unhappy. Yeah. The only person this is going to be good for is Vivek. It's bad for DeSantis because he can't confront Trump. It's bad for everybody else for the same reason. The only person it's good for is Vivek, who's going to get a bigger stage. The only person it's good for is Vivek, who's going to get a bigger stage. And that's what I wanted to talk about tonight, because it's interesting about Vivek. He's an interesting phenomenon. He's a child of immigrants from India. I think his parents are from India, and they moved to Ohio.

And he became a self-made nearly a billionaire i think he's got a eight figure net worth nine figure net worth i read on wikipedia he's got 950 million dollars so he's a self-made nearly a billionaire first generation asian immigrant who as far as i know didn't really have a much of a public profile or any kind of a political presence and just took the country by storm with a viral social media campaign. I think people just like what he says. At least that's what it appears to be. And he's been controversial. I think a lot of people like him. I think even people that don't like him have commended him on his campaign, which has been successful. He's competitive with DeS with desantis desantis had a bigger war chest than trump he had a bigger war chest than any governor any governor in the united states has ever had i think he had raised 200 million dollars in the last cycle and he had the support of the jews and israel and all his money

governor and back on his old is maybe the next best known politician in the race next to trump and governor of a major state and so in other words he's got all these advantages and this other guy who really started from scratch is now competitive with him and i'll say too it is unfortunate his, you know, I know that probably a lot of Republicans are not totally on board with, like, a Hindu Indian. And I'm not making any kind of comment on that. I think that's just how things are. Just like with Bobby Jindal or some of these other guys that ran. When I see an Indian guy running with a name like vivek

ramaswamy let's not pretend i think that's that's also a disadvantage for him probably because the republican voter base is all white it's 90 percent white and i know that they're they undertake great pains to convince the world they're not racist but or xenophobic or something like that but you know i'm sure they are not in love with that idea quite frankly i'm not in love with that idea i want a christian to be president not a hindu and i also would prefer a president whose name i could pronounce like joe biden not vivek ramaswamy now Now, that's quite a line from Nick. I think what he's actually saying there,

like, I think that's a joke, right? That's quite a line from Nick Fuentes. I think he's making a little bit of a bit there. I don't think he, but, and that becomes a little bit clearer a bit later on because he talks about, you know, he's talking about their kind of both how impressive, you know, objectively the success of Vivek's campaign has been and how it points to

the fact that he's done some stuff right, even while he's saying, I don't think he can win with the Republican voter base the way that it is, which I think is, you know, partly shown by kind of some of these polls that have come out showing him losing support. But he comes in a little bit later, a couple of minutes later, and he talks about why he likes Vivek, what he finds intriguing about him. And I think that this is kind of valuable to hear. It's really more like an advertising pitch. It's like a marketing pitch. It's the perfect stereotype of like a canned used car salesman political pitch. That's what they're all like.

Mike Pence, Chris Christie. You could say they're like full of shit. Like that's how I would characterize it. They're like another full of shit, conventional, polished politician. And they also all went through the steps. They're won statewide elections. You know, they're all governors or senators. Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Burgum, DeSantis. They're all governors.

Tim Scott's a senator. And they have that canned, full of shit, polished political thing. Both Yang and Vivek, not only are they not white, they're Asian, children of immigrants, but there's also something that characterizes them that they're kind of like a new type of campaign where it's super smart. When you listen to Vivek, it sounds a lot more like a podcast. It sounds a lot more

like a polemical commentator like me or like Tucker or like whoever, like Alex Jones for that matter, although that's a specific sort of thing. But maybe you understand what I mean. They're almost talking like they're talking to American people who have a higher IQ. Sure, sure, buddy. Your average podcast listener, your average high IQ podcast listener. They sound smart, like a podcaster, right? You know?

We all know that about podcasters. It's super interesting that he made the exact same observation that we did. When watching the debate, we turned to each other and he's like, oh, he's doing Nick Fuentes. Yeah, and Nick Fuentes has a similar idea about him. Yeah. So, you know, I think he really does worry me. You know, as we've stated, his polling isn't better in the wake of the debate. Yeah.

But his personal brand has never been better in that he's everywhere. Every big network's been having him on to talk about shit. Like this has increased his visibility, not just on social media, but as a political commenter and kind of the things that he's saying, because they are so much more extreme than stuff, you know, even a guy like Pence was willing to say, I think that's a real problem.

I think it's a problem that's going to be with us for a while. Cause he's very young. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like based on some of the poll stuff, like I'm not worried about him as someone who I think will be president. That's not my concern. My concern is how he's going to be both influential and he's yeah, he's setting himself up to be influential. And I guess even even more so

it's he's like an indicator of what the future of the GOP is going to be. And that's the big thing that is like causing me concern. It's the type of thing I've been thinking about more and more the past year as we've had our first wave of like Zoomer candidates and also, you know, millennial candidates that are starting to fill up offices. Yeah. And I, you know, I looked into, I went to Nick's telegram too because I kind of wanted to see is there more that he's been saying. And he has actually been sharing a lot about Vivek. One of the things I found was just like

Vivek has called specifically for Fuentes to be unbanned from Twitter. Nick is one of the few people Elon is like, I am not willing to truck with this motherfucker. Keep him off of my website. And Vivek is really not okay with that, which does point to like, you don't specify that. Like most Republicans kind of prefer to believe,

pretend that Nick doesn't exist in public. So the fact that he's going to bat for him like this does point to the fact that he sees value and he sees a political future in the people that Nick speaks to for himself, right? He thinks this is a profitable thing to be in. He's very aware of this side of the political internet. He knows what their talking points are. He's familiar with how they speak. He's able to understand that this is an actual political contingent. They may not be as reliable in showing up to the polls,

but it is, you know, as more and more boomers die off. Sorry. No offense. Some offense. These are the people that are going to, you know, start filling in the voting gaps. The other thing that he shares a lot from Vivek, and there was specifically a clip from the debate

where Vivek talks about cutting aid to Israel, right? And obviously Nick being the guy. I'm sure Nick's very pro cutting aid to Israel. Here at Cool Zone, we're not pro the Israeli state, so I'm not against that from a certain point of view, but I'm not for the same reasons that Nick Fuentes is. Very different reasons. Very different reasons.

Yeah. Than Nick Fuentes. But it is worth noting that like that's another reason why Nick likes this guy, right? Sure. So, yeah, that's kind of the core of the Vivek stuff I wanted to talk about. The next thing to bring up is sort of how shit polling after this. Now, as we've noted, there's been like – I found an MSN article that was – I believe it was actually just them republishing a Washington Examiner article. Great. Love to see it.

Yeah, really solid to hear that. Washington Examiner is kind of a right-wing rag. They analyzed five polls taken just before and after the debate. Trump saw a decrease in two of those polls and no change in the other three. That makes sense. This decrease, it's not insignificant. The two polls show him both,

show him down something like six points, which is not nothing, right? Yeah. But that he's still up by around 40. So it's also not like a sea change, you know? It does suggest a couple of things. One of the things it suggests is that there is value to him, especially since it looks like he has lost some of his ability to message

and some of his ability to rile people up because of the way social media has changed. He doesn't really use Twitter anymore. You know, he made a post recently, but- He made the first post in years. Yeah, got Elon very excited. But he can't really, and he loves to rant on Truth Social, but it doesn't break through the same way stuff on Twitter did. And it's possible

nothing on Twitter can break through that way anymore because of how much changed it is. It's not the same Twitter that he rose to power on. It's not the same Twitter it was in 2015, 2016. Not even the same Twitter it was in 2020. It has been severely

altered as a platform and how it affects real world events. I think the thing that you're seeing here is that he does have his core, which is a third or more of the GOP who will be ride or die for the rest of their lives, presumably.

But there is a softer chunk of support that is eroded by the fact that he's not in the limelight, the fact that he wasn't up there slinging mud and arguing and talking with these other candidates. And so, yeah, this is kind of a thing. It's probably a mistake. I'm not saying a mistake from a point of view of being good for the country, but a mistake in terms of like his campaign that he wasn't up there, which is kind of worth acknowledging and probably worth continuing to study. And it may be – it may have the effect of pushing him to take part in some of the other debates. DeSantis has said he thinks Trump will be at the third debate. Who knows? It's DeSantis has said he thinks Trump will be at the third debate.

Who knows? In terms of how everyone else did, DeSantis went up a little bit, about a two-point bump, which is not terrible, but it's also not significant, especially given the size of Trump's lead. It's not the kind of – given the amount of cash burn he's been going through, it's not the kind of raise he needed to keep his campaign viable. It was. He did not do a performance that people were kind of expecting him to do. I think everyone kind of assumed he would try really hard to come out as the as like the obvious front runner. And he kind of flopped at the debate in at least in my opinion. He came off as very like muted, very like low key. He didn't he didn't really say much one way or the other.

He was so obsessed with what other people like, like trying to make sure that what he was saying was OK based on what everyone else was saying on stage. It was very weird. It was very weird and not the kind of energy that suggests I am building a political machine, right? Yeah, no carry me into office. building a political machine, right? Yeah, no.

That can carry me into office. Pence went up by about four points to 7% of voter support. Nikki Haley jumped about five points. And I would say, I think DeSantis and Pence and probably Haley are in here because they really think they can win. There's a couple of those governors and stuff whose names I've, I've already forgotten that.

So maybe they felt that way too. Bergman is like, everyone knows Chris Christie is not going to be the president. Like we all know this. He's not really right. He's running to get a TV show on MSN, right? Maybe a book deal too.

I guess it's possible. That's part of Haley's ambition too. I don't really, I don't have as great a sense for what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's how they are all treating Trump is interesting because they're also all like kind of auditioning to be vice president. But some of them don't want that job because they're being like very like like anti-Trump on stage.

But most people were kind of most people were soft to Trump. Yeah. And I think Vivek was both auditioning for like the future of his political. I don't think he reasonably expects to be president this election. I think he may think he can win that in the future. And I think he sees this as, look, I'm young and I'm going to start building. And if that's the case, then he has done the first thing that he would need to do to be a real candidate one day, which is make a national name for himself as a guy in politics. I think he may be auditioning for vice president. And Trump recently commented like, yeah, you know, I'm not

against the idea necessarily. Yeah. He said he was like impressed with his performance at the debate or something along those lines. Yeah. And I mean, the immediate reaction from almost every kind of big, like influential millennial Gen X kind of right wing content creator person, they were all saying that Vivek like very clearly won. Yeah. Like all of the Daily Wire people were very pro Vivek and kind of riding that train. Vivek and kind of riding that train. Musk recently,

even, even, even, even before the debate switched sides from, from being the DeSantis guy to being the Vivek guy. So it was a lot of, a lot of like the intellectual dark, right type type stuff of like, like online tech conservatives.

And they were all very quick to jump on the VEX train. And based on his performance at the debate, they were happy with his overall demeanor and messaging. Yeah. And yeah, so again, as it kind of stands, has anything changed? Well, yes and no. Like the overall sweep of the primary, Donald Trump is so far ahead that it does seem unlikely that he's going to lose.

But we've also seen it's possible for him to bleed support. And if you remember far back to 2015, 2016, when he was in these debates with the other Republican candidates, he didn't really bleed support. Like he was very consistently moving forward. So that is interesting. That does suggest some things about how the situation has changed. And, yeah, it's also interesting. Polls kind of show that voters did, and maybe one of the reasons why Vivek's performance didn't boost his campaign overall is that he entered into it with the highest expectations of any of the debaters among Republican voters. you know, in the speeches and stuff he's been given before, he's a debate guy. Like, that's obvious about him anytime you hear him talk. So I think people were expecting him to do well. And so maybe it didn't, you know, if people are expecting you to perform well,

and then you win, it's not as impressive as, you know, if you kind of come out of left field there. So maybe that's part of why he's not seeing stuff. One of the things that's interesting to me is the stuff that was talked about at the debate compared to what actually Republican voters care about. The thing that came up first in the debate is the thing that is number one, getting inflation or costs under control. Obvious that that's going to be top of the list for a lot of voters. 44% of Republicans consider controlling immigration to be a primary concern, which did come up a bit. One of the things that pissed off a lot of the Daily Wire crew is the

fact that there wasn't really a lot of talk about wokeness or trans people during the debate, because that kind of shit is not like fighting liberalism and wokeness and President Biden, it all gets kind of lumped together. About you know of the electorate that's their their big concern uh among republicans um it's primary for it's it's primarily for like online clicks and for driving engagement on whatever facebook thing you want to do to harass the school board it is not the the uh the prime focus of the presidential race. Yeah, and like issues

with trans people and stuff on its own does not come up here as like a major, it's nobody's primary concern among Republican voters. Like it's these weirdo freaks on the internet, which isn't to say that like

they have good attitudes towards that, but like, yeah, it makes sense that that's not going to be what you put front and center in the debate. One thing that's interesting to me is that both election security and limiting abortion, which are huge issues and were big parts of the debate, are very much minor sideshow issues for voters. About 10% of voters consider, of Republican

voters consider election integrity their primary concern. About 6% consider it limiting abortion a top priority, which is teeny, right? Like it's not a popular thing. They just have to, because of that hardcore of the base, they have to signal for it. Vivek was the only person on stage to claim that climate change is not real. Yes, yes, yes, which was interesting, especially as this hurricane batters Florida. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother, trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet

when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're gonna get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And that's that's deeply negative, too, right? The complete denial of reality. It doesn't take long. And Vivek did not do this, but it's not a long journey to go from, I don't believe climate change is real, to I think those fires were started with lasers from space, you know, and versions of that, right?

Which is deeply concerning to me. But yeah, that's, you know, the Republican debate Versions of that, right? Which is deeply concerning to me. But yeah, that's the Republican debate and Vivek Ramaswamy. That's kind of our thinking on him as he embraces Nick Fuentes' thought. Boy, I don't love saying that. Yeah. No, but my main takeaway from this debate

was that this was based on Vivek's performance. I'm just going to cut out, have Daniel cut out from that. My main performance, my main opinion was this was based. And then, yeah, there we go. Garrison's debate analysis. Thank you. No, please, sorry. My main takeaway based on Vivek's performance was that this really was like the first glimpse of the types of like long term results of the alt-right era.

Yes. In like actual like organized politics. Yes. wave of zoomers and millennials who are, you know, between my age and Robert's age, who are going to be running for office in the next 10 years, who were heavily influenced by the online alt-right era. Um, and that's very worrying. I mean, we saw a little bit of that with DeSantis' campaign staff sharing Sonoma videos, um, videos that were approved by like a lot of people in his staff. It wasn't, it wasn't just one guy we we have since found out that those videos were like approved like in in a in a in like a specific like propaganda like chat that these people had i think i think on signal yeah so like it is it is it is part of

like this this this wave that we're just starting to see glimpses of here um and it's not great no i mean no it it it remains to be seen, like if these things will actually like pan out in elections, though. I mean, like, it doesn't seem like the Vax is going to do very well as an actual presidential candidate during this race. Previously, when Republicans have kind of ran on these very kind of online topics, like back in the 2022 midterms, it failed to give them kind of the return on investment. So we'll still kind of see how kind of viable this strategy is. But I mean, we're only going to have more and more Zoomers

and millennials running for office. Like it's, as we saw today, Mitch McConnell's literally disintegrating before our very eyes. More and more of these kind of old guard of neocons or Trump guys

are going to age out in the next 10 years, 20 years. And, you know, it's going to, we are really going to see this new wave of politicians come in.

It is interesting how much of Gen X just has not been a generation that occupies office. No, well, again, Garrison, you have not watched enough Mike Judge cartoons, but that was made very clear in the cartoon Daria. Okay, yes, that is true. Yes, so I think, so I kind of want to end,

I think the, nope, that was not Mike judge. What, what was I thinking? Why did I say that? I'm on, I, I, I'm a, I'm a fool. Oh, wait, it, cause it's a spinoff of Beavis and Butthead. Yes. That's why.

Okay. All right. I solved that mystery. Thank God. Now the mystery I haven't solved. And, and the thing I want to bring you to is like, we've said, I don't, I don't think either of us think his presidential campaign has an electoral shot. But what about him as VP?

Do you think that's likely? Because personally- There's certainly a chance. There's a chance. Trump has indicated that there's a chance. I believe Trump said he's a very, very, very intelligent person. He's got good energy and he could be some form of something. Great Trumpian dialogue.

I'll tell you, I think he'd be very good as vice president. Yeah. Which, you know, I think the fact that his overall numbers aren't trending up might hurt him in that. Although maybe it'll make Trump feel more secure that he's not going to like take anything from him. You know, although maybe the fact that he has gone so viral would, would upset Trump because he kind of seems to have preferred having a non

entity as his VP. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. Cause it is like, yeah. My previous prediction was that he would try to get Herschel Walker. That may be kind of out of date now, but that is certainly another one of these guys that,

that could be in line. Certainly out of, out of everyone else on the debate stage, he was, I think the most, the most Trumpian and the most like Trump friendly guy. Um, the, the, the one other, uh, uh, election kind of restriction that he proposed that we have yet to mention is to raise the voting age to 25. Yes. On top of having those civics tests. But yeah, I mean, I think it's possible, but it's a little too far out to say for sure.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, that is, I think, where we're going to bring her to an end for the night. Yeah, this has been It Could Happen Here. Until next time. It certainly could happen. It certainly could. You know, stay a little concerned.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of riot. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.

Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds

and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme,

and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.