No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Kamala Harris drives final nail into Trump's coffin

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

Kamala Harris leaves Trump out to dry by taking away the one strength he has left. Brian interviews US Senate nominee Lucas Kunce about Josh Hawley’s refusal to debate and why Missouri is suddenly up for grabs in November.Order Shameless: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/shamelessSupport Lucas Kunce: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/lucas-kunce-btcShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Kamala Harris leaving Trump out to drive by taking the one strength he has left, and I interview U.S. Senate nominee Lucas Coontz about Josh Hawley's refusal to debate and why Missouri is suddenly up for grabs in November. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. If you want to see desperate, it is Donald Trump having called some press conference to try and solidify his advantage on the one issue that he might have some hope of exploiting, and that's the issue of high prices, which is still plaguing him. Americans, although it's very quickly losing steam as inflation's fallen into the 2% range,

which means Republicans better hurry up if they still want to derive some benefit here. And so he stood up there at his New Jersey golf course, Bedminster, with a table full of cereals and eggs and rotting meats in the sun, and he did what he does, which is to promise fire and brimstone. He stood up there for 90 minutes, and he warned that prices would go up on everything by 50, 60, 70, 80, 100, 200, 500 percent, prices for food and energy and gas. He vowed recessions and depressions and crushing prices and destruction and mayhem. The whole, the whole gamut.

You get it. But there was one question that Trump was asked that I think exposed this whole sham. Thank you. I'm going to talk about credit card debt for just a second. You've got all these items. It's a record. It's a record. 48% up.

And many families using going into debt just to pay for groceries. What's your message to Americans right now that you can make America affordable again? Well, I would say my message to them. So he said, credit card debt is at the all-time high. It's never been like this. What's your message to America? How are we going to solve that? And what will they do?

You know what I think they should do? They should on November 5th or sooner, if it's early voting, which largely it is, which is ridiculous. We should have one-day voting, paper ballots. We should have voter ID, and we should have proof. of citizenship because people are voting and people are going on now without citizenship. But we should do it and maybe we'll be able to get that done to.

It's one of the things I want to do. But my message to them would be very simple, vote for Trump, and we're going to fix the problem. We're going to get it fixed. Okay, that was Trump being asked how he would fix credit card debt and his solution to credit card debt was to vote for Trump.

That was the solution. And so I think this kind of is an amazing tell because the whole point of this press conference was to exploit the issue of high prices and present himself as a better alternative to Kamala Harris. But the point is that he didn't bother actually thinking about a single policy. He just decided to say that things are too expensive and that they'll quadruple under Harris and fall by 99% under him without bothering to explain why or how. He had an entire press conference about a thing that he didn't actually spend any time thinking about. And it's the perfect

microcosm here because while this was about credit card debt, this question, it exposed his con for the entire event. He didn't explain a single way that he would lower food prices or energy prices or gas prices or housing prices. He just said he would and then promised death and destruction if Kamala got into office. This dude has so much disdain for his supporters. He thinks they are so simple and so stupid that he believes it's enough to just declare by fiat that anything will just be fixed if he becomes president, all the while not bothering to back any of his promises by a single policy or fact or plan. And so that was Trump showing his hand. But then Kamala Harris took it a step further and drove the final nail to the coffin here because she decided to hold her own event

the following day in North Carolina, a state, by the way, that she is now leading in, according to the latest polling, which of course, usual caveats apply. It's just a snapshot of a moment in time and not a predictor of the future, but clearly a testament to the insane momentum for her campaign. And at the event, Harris also said that it's her plan if she wins to take on high prices. But the difference is, and I hope you're ready for this, she explained how she would actually do it. She promised a tax cut for working in middle-class Americans by expanding the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. She promised to take on out-of-control housing costs by targeting those who collude to keep rent prices high or engage in price-fixing schemes or algorithms by firms that buy up homes.

She promised to take on high food costs by targeting the retailers who are raking in record profits by criminalizing price gouging. She took what Trump was so obviously bullshitting about and actually legitimized it. And so now the question becomes, if they are both promising to deliver on a similar agenda, who do Americans trust more to actually enact it? Is it the guy who demanded your vote by promising death and destruction if you don't? or the woman who laid out plans to enact these policies.

Is it the guy who already promised a populist agenda once and instead gave himself and his donors a tax cut? Or is it the woman who's been part of an administration right now that's already been looking out for regular Americans and has delivered on $35 insulin, $35 inhalers, eliminating junk fees from banks, forcing airlines to give automatic refunds for canceled flights? Like, we have the luxury, or the gross misfortune,

depending on who you're talking about, of being able to judge both of these candidates not just on the promises they make, but what they've already done in office. Trump may have been able to fool the rubs who believe him before with empty promises of prosperity only to leave office as the least successful president in modern American history,

but it's not going to work again. Kamala knows that, which is why she's going in for the kill. And if the polling is any indication thus far, Americans clearly believe her over Donald Trump. Next is my interview with Lucas Coontz, but first, my book, Shameless, is officially out. It's garnering a ton of attention right now from Pod Save America to Medi Hassan, Don Lemon to Jen Saki, Morning Joe to Midas Touch. The entire spectrum of the media is covering this thing. So if you haven't yet had a chance to order your copy, please grab yours as soon as you can.

Also, my only shot for the New York Times list is this Wednesday, so if you can grab it before then, you'll help me in my effort to try and make this list, which would be. amazing. You can click the link in the show notes of this episode or go to Brian Tyler Cohen.com slash book. And thank you. Okay, here's my interview with Lucas Coontz. Now we've got the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Missouri running against Josh Hawley, Lucas Coons. Lucas, thanks so much for taking the time. Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian. I love being on here. Lucas, you are running against the least popular incumbent running this entire cycle. So first off, congrats on winning the primary, so it's official. And yet now, Holly seems to be doing what he does best, which is running away.

You've agreed to five debates with him. Holly refuses to do any. What's the guy so afraid of? You know, I think he's scared of his own tail, man. I mean, here's the deal. He's scared of his record, right? And so for the background on that, yeah, we said we'd do five debates. We wanted to do five debates.

We've agreed to five debates. We even proposed one on Fox News so the guy could feel comfortable, right? We said, we'll do it on national Fox News, prime time. Fox News expressed interest. They found a potential host and, you know, Prickets from the Holly team. And so, you know, what it really is is the guy doesn't want to answer questions about things like

why he refuses to protect in vitro fertilization, why he refuses to protect contraception, why he's one of the few co-sponsors of a nationwide abortion ban, you know, why he doesn't bring any money back to the state, why he robbed Missouri taxpayers in $250,000. I mean, the list of things, the guy would actually have to answer for is really long. And so he's instead tried to just do fake attack ads

against me on TV. He just put a million up on TV against us, and he's going to try to lean all those instead, I guess. What's especially weird is that six years ago, Holly tweeted, I have again accepted an invitation to debate Claire McCaskill. This makes seven, and Claire McCaskill is, again, dodging. Senator, you've got to earn this. So tell me, Lucas, is it not necessary to earn it anymore in Missouri? Well, I think what happened is, you know, on January 6th, the man must have really embraced and found his inner coward, and he just can't seem to let go. of it, right? And so here we're just seeing that again. And yeah, I mean, obviously, I think

you should earn it. I think you should come out. I mean, the two basic jobs of a U.S. senator, like before any legislation or anything else, is one, to bring money back to your state, identify projects and bring money back. Another thing you wouldn't want to answer to, because he's brought $0 back in your marks to our state, like pretty crazy. And the second one is Demetia constituents and the people you're supposed to represent. I guess he just prefers the lobbyists out there in D.C. Well, if you have one simple, message to Josh Hawley in light of all of this that, say, viewers might be able to clip and post online and tag Josh Hawley in. What would you say? Yeah, dude, man up. Let's let the voters know

about ourselves if you're not, you know, if you're proud of your record, you think you should be U.S. Center, stand up on it. I'm happy to get out there and put my contrast against you any day, including on Fox News, man. Holly's promised to launch what he calls a Christian nationalist crusade in 2025 if Republicans are in power. Talk about what's at stake if he's successful. is a control power narrative in reality really for a lot of us. I mean, the man wants to control us in the bedroom. He wants to control us in the doctor's office. He wants to control us in the workplace. And he's shown us what Christian nationalism means, right? Means for him. It's in 2013, he wrote an article where he compared in vitro fertilization and contraception to abortion.

He wants to take those away, no protections for them. He worked on the Hobby Lobby case to make sure that your insurance provider wouldn't have to cover a contraception for you. Like that's literally because of him and he wants to take it all the way in 2000, you know, if he gets another six years in 2024. I'm even crazier to you. I can't believe we're talking about this. But he wants to end no-fault divorces so that people are stuck in dangerous marriages. Like it's really a situation where he just wants to take away everybody's rights and everybody's power so he can collect it all for himself and, you know, probably wants to be president or something off that. I don't know. I can't imagine people would pick him for that, but it's just, it's really scary

to think here in Missouri, we have a U.S. senator whose entire ideology is around taking away our control, taking away our power, and deciding how we get to live. Talk about that, because you look at Missouri and a lot of people think red state, right? But talk about the difference, the dichotomy between the control agenda that Josh Hawley is embracing right now and conservatism as it exists in the state of Missouri. Yeah, I'm glad you asked. I mean, this is a freedom-loving state. And we just want, what we want out of government is for it to invest in us so that we can make our own decisions and, you know, take care of one each other, one another. And the example I'd like to give

of that is, you know, my parents got married young. They were 19 and 22. They had four kids. They were like Catholic and following the rules and all that. And when my littlest sister was born, the fourth one of us, she had to have a heart surgery immediately. And, you know, My parents were in a working class paycheck to paycheck situation. We went bankrupt from that. And we made it not because of country club politicians like Josh Holly, but because the people in that neighborhood who really had no more money than we did, still had the resources to take care of us.

You know, they passed the plate around in my mom's prayer group for us. They brought more food by the house than we could eat. They took me and my siblings into their homes while my parents were at my sister's surgeries for weeks on end. And like, that's the strength we have in our communities when they're invested. in. And Josh Holly refuses to invest in us. In fact, as our attorney in general, he led a lawsuit that over time away away from 200,000 Missourians. Why didn't we use to take care of each other? He guided the division that kept us safe from the big corporations who funded his campaigns

and things like that. And so it's just, you know, Missourians have seen that and they want to take power back. And so what you've seen is some fat ballot initiatives over the last couple of years doing that. You know, Josh Holly was a big supportive right to work, the anti-union legislation. On ballot initiative, we overturned that 68% to 32%. We expanded Medicaid over the state legislature. We increased the minimum wage, $5 over the federal level. People are always surprised to hear that out in Missouri, we increased that on our own on ballot initiative, $5 over the federal level. And we made it, you know, we made it legal so we could smoke weed on our backyards without getting harassed, right? Like, we've done all those things on ballot initiative. And really

exciting for us this ball is there's an initiative petition, constitutional amendment on the same ballot as me to enshrine the right to basically codify Roe versus Wade and enshrine the right to our Constitution. We're going to take our back there. We're going to do it right here in my election, too. Lucas, to that point, we've seen this election cycle that Democrats are taking back a lot of the themes that Republicans have been co-opting for years and years. I want to play an absolutely kick-ass ad that you released with your campaign just recently. I'm Lucas Coontz. Growing up, my sister was born with a heart condition and my parents went bankrupt. We got by with the help of neighbors and church friends.

Their support and a Pell Grant got me through school, and I became a Marine to serve and protect everyone who took care of me. I trained with Border Patrol on our southern border, led a police training team in Iraq, oversaw Afghan police, and prosecuted violent criminals and drug dealers. But then I saw bought off politicians and their corporate donors waging war here at home, deciding how we get to live, getting rich, stripping towns like mine for parts. No one protected Missouri from them. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Lucas Coontz, and that's my mission now.

Put me in the Senate and we'll break the grip of corporate power. Outlaw, stock trading by judges and politicians, rebuild and invest in Missouri and protect our freedoms, the freedom to live our lives, to control our bodies, to raise and protect our families. I'm Lucas Coontz, and I approve this message. Because that guy doesn't exactly seem like the radical left-wing communist that Republicans try to caricature Democrats as being. What's the message that you're trying to send to Missourians amid the deluge of disinformation out there? It really is. Like, I'm one of you. I'm an everyday Missouri. And I grew up in a situation where my parents went bankrupt for medical bills.

I know what that's like. I got to go to college because people in town gave me scholarships. And I got a Pell Grant, which, funny enough, Thomas Eagleton, our former senator here in Missouri, worked with Pell to create. And I, you know, that's the type of investment we can actually get from U.S. senators who care and understand everyday people. And so I want to, you know, I want to remind all of that that I've spent my entire life trying to pay that back. I became a Marine to serve and protect everyone. I deployed to Iraq. I deployed to Afghanistan twice. Like, I did my job outside the wire. I did I did what I thought was necessary to pay everybody back. And while I was overseas, yeah, country club politicians like Josh Hawley literally waged war on the neighborhood. that I grew up in. And it's just, it's falling apart because guys got guys like him don't care about us. They only care about their own power. They refuse to bring money back. And they really, really do attack our freedoms. I mean, you know, they claim to be the, you know, he claims to be a free to love in person, but he wants to take away everybody's freedom, everybody's choice, and everybody's opportunity. And finally, uh, people are starting to realize that that's the

case. And this ball, we're going to take that power back. You know, I know a lot of people are watching and listening and thinking, Missouri, you know, we've got to defend seats in Ohio and Montana. How can we focus on Missouri? What's your response to them? Josh Hawley only won by 51 with 51% of the vote last time. Very close race. And that was back when he was just, you know, our former U.S. Senator Jack Danforth, very respected moderate Republican year. He was his golden boy. Jack Danforth propped him up, created him as an entity. And Jack Danforth has since said that Josh Hawley is the worst mistake he's ever made and that he doesn't want him to win this election. Josh Holly has lost his base. He's a he's a weirdo in a creep now. People

see that he's just after them. He wants to decide how we how we get to live, which is why, as you mentioned earlier, he's the least popular U.S. Senator of reelection this year. And it's just a super exciting opportunity here because we have my race to take that back. We're going to get great turnout from the initiative petition to enshrine the right to codify Roe v. We also have a minimum wage and paid sick leave amendment on the ballot. It's just, it's, Missourians are so hungry to take their power back and they're actually going to do with this election. And, you know, The other thing I would say is this is a state where people will cross over the aisles. And so the best example I can give is the last time we had a U.S. Senate race with the presidential race here was in 2016 when Jason Cander, another veteran like me, he's an army guy, was on the ballot.

And, you know, he was running against a long-term popular incumbent named Roy Bloods, who was more popular than Josh Holly is, had way more money than Josh Holly has, better connections. and, you know, despite the fact that Trump won that year by 19 points, Jason only lost by two and a half. Trump's not going to win by 19 points in the state anymore. Like, we have the wind behind our back. It's looking really good. And, you know, we get the Jason Canter voters. We're going to win this thing.

How can we help you campaign? Well, you know, please help spread the word. If you got friends and family in Missouri, please send them this clip. Let them know that you saw us on here. It helps spread the word. We're at Lucas Coont's M.O. on Twitter. Lucas Coontz M.O. on Instagram, on Facebook as well. And, of course, if you can donate, it's Lucascoons.com. You know, he just started, he just did a million dollar ad. It's, it's all

negative because he's scared. You know, he's not talking about himself. He's going after me. It's actually ludicrous. He's saying that I want to outlaw everybody's pickup trucks and steal their keys, which is just like absolutely crazy, but he's got nothing to go at us on. So that's what he decided to do is just make stuff up. I mean, that's what these guys do. we're here in Missouri, the front line in the fight for democracy, and we need your help. You know, up until 2017, five out of our six statewide elected offices, we're Democrat help. So it's like people have already voted for Democrats before. They just need to be reminded how bad Josh Hawley is and hear my background. If you can help us get that out there, we're

going to win this thing. Right. They just need the right candidate, and that's exactly what you are. For people watching and listening right now, Lucas is the real deal. We would be, you know, it would be best case scenario to have somebody like him in office. So, Again, for folks watching, please, if you can, donate, help his campaign out and spread the word. Lucas, thank you so much for taking the time. No, thanks for having me, Brian. Thanks again to Lucas. That's it for this episode.

Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channel. or you can go to bryantaylorcoen.com to learn more.