No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Kamala overtakes Trump on his STRONGEST issue

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

Kamala Harris finally overtakes Trump on the most important issue to voters: the economy. Brian interviews Congressman Jared Moskowitz about the Republicans STILL trying to impeach Biden and his message to voters in light of what Republicans have spent their political capital on in Congress. And the head of Vote Save America, Shaniqua McClendon, joins to discuss the upcoming VP debate and what Vote Save America is focused on right now.Visit Vote Save America: https://votesaveamerica.com/Shop 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 the difference between Harris and Trump as it relates to the most important issue to voters, the economy. I interview Congressman Jared Moskowitz about the Republicans still trying to impeach Biden and his message to voters in light of what Republicans have spent their political capital on in Congress. And I'm joined by the head of Votes of America, Shaniqua McClendon, to discuss the upcoming VP debate and what votes of America is focused on right now. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Something just happened in polling that I'm not sure that I've ever. seen before. On the economy, Kamala Harris is currently leading Donald Trump in multiple polls, 44 to 42 in the Financial Times, 48 to 45 in an echelon insights poll. Now, usual caveats polling is a snapshot of a moment in time. It's not a predictor of the future, but Republicans have enjoyed

an advantage on the issue of the economy forever. Granted, in my book, shameless, I discuss how this advantage is completely undeserved. In my entire lifetime, there has never been a single Republican administration that has left office with a stronger economy. than Democratic administration, that's left office with more jobs added than a Democratic administration, that's left office with a lower unemployment rate than a Democratic administration. But still this branding persists because, you know, because of stasis, right? Because they just beat their chest about how they're great on the economy and this absurd notion gets seared into everybody's brains over decades and decades, which is why what

Kamala Harris is achieving right now is amazing, because she's not just going up against a political party that enjoys strong economic branding. She's also going to head-to-head with somebody whose personal branding on top of that is that he knows how to handle business and jobs and money and the economy. But what she's able to expose is that behind that glossy veneer of that branding, there's really not much substance. And you don't need a degree in economics to figure out why what she's doing is not only more appealing to people, but will continue to grow the middle and working class in this country. So here are just a few examples of her economic plan. $25,000 for first-time homebuyers with 3 million new

housing units built, which, by the way, will bring the cost of all rent down if there's more units. Legislation to stop predatory investors who buy up rental homes and collude with each other from raising rental prices. A national ban on price gouging for food and giving the FTC and prosecutors the authority to go after companies who still do it. A $50,000 tax break for new small businesses with a goal of 25 million new small business applications in the first two years of her term, a $6,000 tax credit for newborns, and a restoration of the Democrats' $3,600 tax credit for middle and low-class families, all the while not raising taxes on any household earning $400,000 or less. It would take the best elements of the Biden administration,

which has already led the U.S. to the strongest economy in the world, a record high stock market, record job growth, while adding even more policies to help the middle class specifically. But it's when you factor in Trump's plan that really puts on full display. the extent to which there is only one serious candidate in this race. Trump's plan effectively amounts to just slapping tariffs on every item entering the U.S., with some tariffs as high as 200%. But what Trump doesn't seem to understand is that tariffs don't just mean the U.S. is suddenly going to collect extra money that magically goes into the general fund, right?

It doesn't get absorbed by the foreign business either. Tariffs are a tax passed on to the consumer, meaning the people who would pay more are Americans. Period. That's how tariffs work. There's no other way around this. It is a tax on Americans. Think about how many products you buy on a daily basis that come from other countries. Think about your clothes and your kitchen supplies and electronics and toys.

Now imagine what the price of those items is going to look like with a Trump tax of 10 or 20 or 60 or 100 or 200% on top of that. This guy's inability to understand the economy, to just see himself as a hammer and everything else as a nail, is going to send your daily car. skyrocketing. And the irony of all of that is that Republicans have spent the last year crucifying Biden over the worldwide phenomenon of inflation, which is now not only down to the 2% target range, but came without a recession. We never entered a recession. The disastrous economy that Democrats inherited from Trump was just handled perfectly by this administration, but still Republicans clutch their pearls over high cost, high cost, high cost, and yet now their party is going to voluntarily send cost to the moon all because their leader has like the business acumen of a freshman econ major who's about to fail out of school and they don't have the balls to say anything about it.

So look, I understand the allure of having a businessman in office. I get it. I also understand how it's attractive to hear somebody say that they will run the country like they run their business. The problem is the way that Donald Trump runs his businesses, most of which end in failure, right? Like Trump Airlines, Trump water, Trump steak, Trump wine, Trump, Trump, vodka, Trump the game, Trump University, go-trump.com, there's a reason that none of these are still around. It's because they were all rip-offs that all went belly up. They are not real businesses. He is not a good businessman. The guy literally owes half a billion dollars because the Trump org was neck-deep in fraud. The notion that Trump will run the country like he runs his business is precisely why he should not be elected president. And Americans clearly are finally starting to catch on.

Next up, my interviews with Congressman Jared Moskowitz and Shaniqua McClendon. Now we've got Congressman Jared Moskowitz. Thanks for joining again. Hey, Brian, how's it going? So I cannot believe that I'm saying this, but we've just had another committee hearing on the impeachable offenses of Joe Biden led by James Comer. There's an election in less than six weeks. That doesn't even include Joe Biden.

What on God's Green Earth is James Comer trying to do here? Well, finally, we've gotten to the... meat and potatoes of the Biden impeachment investigation. And by that, I mean, Comer has went on Newsmax, right, where he runs to, and has said to the Newsmax audience, which he had been basically lying to for a year and a half and Fox News, but he went to the Newsmax audience and said, oh, by the way, my job was never to impeach. What? We had impeachment hearings. Okay, they took a vote on the floor to open up an impeachment inquiry, okay? He released a 300-page book report, which was his dossier on impeachment, okay? And, oh, now my job wasn't to impeach? Is that what

happens? Like, when you're doing something, but you fail at doing it, you go backwards and you're like, no, no, we were never doing that. No, we have it all wrong. The goalposts just move once he realized he can't do it. Why wouldn't he just try and impeach Joe Biden initially, if the whole purported point before he came on the newsbacks and move the goalpost back, if the whole, if the purported point was to get rid of Joe Biden because he doesn't have the evidence because Joe Biden did nothing wrong. And he has Republican members who are like, we're not impeaching a president for nothing. There's actually a couple good Republicans who don't want to partake in this. So, you know, James walked himself into a place that does not exist. And so, but that's why I'm

going to continue to calm out because I'm not going to let him change the topic. I'm not going to let him pretend he's bipartisan, which he tried to do in the last hearing. I'm not going to I'm not going to let him just forget that he spent tens of millions of dollars and that he dealt with Russian disinformation and Chinese foreign agents and that he was having people testify in prison. I'm not going to let the American people forget that he weaponized that committee. He took it. He hijacked that committee and he didn't do oversight of the federal bureaucracy. He used it as a campaign committee.

Oh, and he failed, by the way. What has the point been of perpetuating a committee on how Biden should have been impeached if, A, there is no evidence to impeach him for, and B, there's no votes to impeach him with. Like, what are we doing here other than wasting taxpayer dollars? Well, it's a committee about nothing, right? I mean, that's literally what the committee is. It could be a great sitcom, a committee about nothing. Okay.

And look, you know, ultimately, I think Republicans saw previously when they did Benghazi and, you know, when, you know, they did, you know, the whole, you know, the other email stuff and they had hearings. I think they saw political dividends. And so the idea was, we're going to do this with Joe Biden. And two things happened here. One, they couldn't muster the evidence. They couldn't put on the same show.

They had a chairman who didn't know what he was doing, who wasn't good at it, who was getting his ass handed to him every week. So it wasn't working out in the same way these other hearings did. You know, that's number one. And number two is, you know, Joe Biden's not running anymore. So like when that happened, right? When that happened, I mean, that was, that took the win right out of their sales. They try to pivot to Kamala or Tim Walls, you know, like Tim Walls is some secret Chinese spy. Like I'm sure when people look at Gwen Walls, all they see is, yeah, yeah, that's that's a, that's a Chinese spot. It's just, it's just not, it's just utter nonsense. But, but yeah, and right now oversight, two years in, millions of dollars has nothing to show for the BS that Comer tried to sell the American people. And he, by. By the way, the other day in committee wanted to take credit. He's like, I don't know, Mr. Motskowitz.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall when you find out that Joe Biden isn't running anymore. Are you sure you want to take credit for that, Comer? First of all, it was the debate that did that, number one. Number two is, but I don't know that Donald Trump is real happy that Biden isn't running anymore. I'm sure you want to take credit for that? I mean, if you do, we'll make sure Donald Trump knows you're the man solely responsible for being Kamala Harris. Right, right. We'll parade Jim Jordan around as the person responsible on, you know, mid-November.

and see how Republicans like that. I do want to get to the Tim Walls of it all in just a moment. But first, I think it's worth noting here that this is the same Republican Party that came into the majority in the House on promises of tackling inflation and lowering gas prices. And to my knowledge, they've not advanced one single piece of legislation to actually do that. So what's the lesson here for voters as we head toward yet another election? Actually, your knowledge is pretty good.

They've accomplished none of that stuff. And in fact, they had more hearings on gas stoves than they did in Afghanistan. Yeah. And trying to learn the lessons there for the Gold Star families. What they did here is it started off in chaos when they couldn't elect a speaker. And from there, it spiraled downwards. They never were able to get back together. You know, they impeached the cabinet secretary.

That hadn't happened 150 years. That really helped lower cost for the American people. Yeah. They've helped multiple people in contempt. That's really, you know, getting the, the president. price of food uh price of food down and helping with gas prices you know and then they did this you know dishwasher safety bill your dishwasher price bill you know save our dishwashers or you know help our gas stoves or you know don't lose the refrigerators i mean you literally it's as if the onion was

running the policy uh coming out of my colleagues from from across the aisle because if they wanted to write if the onion wanted to write these bills or the baby wanted to write these bills they would look exactly how they were written by my colleagues. And so this is not just my opinion. It's why Congress has a 17% approval rating. It's why Republicans have said, we did nothing, this Congress. They know it, we know it. The American people know it.

Just a total waste of time. They were also slow to help with foreign aid when we could have done that, both for Israel and Ukraine, super slow to do that. There really isn't a win that they could point. to at all. They formed the COVID Select Committee. They did nothing with that. They formed the Chinese select, the China Select Committee. They did nothing with that. No accomplishment. The weaponization of government subcommittee, which really blew up in their faces when Joe Biden's own DOJ prosecuted Bob Menendez, Henry Quayar, and the president's own son. Yeah. And so just this whole thing has

just not worked out for them. So, you know, what's the lesson learned here? The lesson learned is if If you want to take Congress, and instead of legislating and doing good by the American people, you want to turn it into a political arm of a campaign for two years, it's not going to work. Okay, so I had mentioned before I want to talk about Tim Walls and China, another hearing that occurred in which Republicans have decided to use their time well, again, not to lower costs, not to add jobs, not to cool inflation, but to try and pin Tim Walls to the CCP. Can you speak on how that effort went by Republicans? Well, I mean, they're failing downwards.

I mean, literally, I mean, just like things have gone so poorly for them in oversight and the chairman with all these fake foe fictitious, you know, nonsense that they've done here. You know, Tim Walls gets picked. He's a pretty obscure governor. He was served in Congress, had a lot of bipartisan relationships. And they're like, okay, well, the Biden thing didn't work out. So we got to pivot, right? Tim Walls, he, what's the evidence that we have on Tim Walls? uh well sir we're told that he has been to a panda express and really likes the orange chicken

they're like great investigate that yeah i mean that's the evidence they have and the best part about it is is like well he has said positive things about china in the past excuse me okay donald trump was literally sending shing ping love letters and he had a bank account open in China in the beginning of us presidents. I love President Xi. He's strong. He's a great cuddler. Okay.

He moisturizes his hands. You know, I mean, just like Donald Trump just doting on the guy. You know, he runs that country great. We should run it like China. Maybe we should do the same thing. You know, and they then, like the hypocrisy of it, like, oh, let's talk about that Tim Walls visited China. Listen, there's nothing there.

Zero, zilch, not it. It's why they're, they actually. abandoned the hearing that they had. They tried to pretend like it wasn't about Tim, right? And then they just like, they brought it up a little bit. You know, the chairman again went on Newsmax and was like, oh, that Walls family, they're super scary. I mean, Maria Bartonromo like choked on oxygen when he said that. Like, what are you talking about?

They're super scary. They looked like middle America, right? They looked like normal people. The guy was a moderate in Congress. The most famous picture of Tim Walls is him surrounded by school children when he was giving them, when he was making sure that they had free school lunches. I mean, the audacity to feed people. Yeah.

Okay, so the newest update right now is that Congress looks like it will pass a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open. Oh, who could have seen that coming, Brian? Who could have seen that coming? What was the holdup from Republicans? Because it wasn't that easy. It's not like we just fell into a clean CR to keep the government open. Same show, different episode, right?

Like, let's not, let's go backwards for a second. Why isn't Kevin McCarthy speaker anymore? Oh, I know why. he did a clean CR with the Democrats. Okay, well, let's create chaos and get rid of him. And then, you know, Speaker Johnson comes in. And what does he do? Well, he's got to have a CR vote.

He goes to his Republican colleagues, and they're like, we're not keeping the government open. So he puts a clean CR on the floor, and we do it with the Democrats, right? And we do exactly what got Speaker McCarthy removed. We do it again. Now, here we go. Third time around, third times of charm, right? Here we go.

Well, let's try to do it, you know, with, the SAVE Act. Let's try to really partisan up keeping the government open. And real quick, talk about what the SAVE Act is. Sure. The SAVE Act says that illegal immigrants would not be able to vote, which is already the law not by statute. So let me ask you this. I want to play devil's advocate here because the criticism from Republicans is, okay, well, if you're not opposed to it, then why don't you just pass it? Okay. Well, first of all, it's already in the Constitution, which is a higher document than statute. So let's start there. Okay. Number two is they didn't just do that. They then add in all sorts of other stuff that had

nothing to do with the top issue, like giving individuals the ability to go sue, you know, elect election supervisors who are going to tally votes, giving every American the ability to go sue, which, by the way, would not only increase litigation, but would actually keep us from ever getting a result. Everything would be in court. Okay. And so that's why they were literally trying to destroy how people get elected in this country. And that's one of the reasons why Democrats didn't go along with the other myriad of nonsense in there. But don't listen to us. They couldn't pass it with their own members. Republicans rejected this idea. They couldn't pass it. And not one or two. By the dozens didn't vote. Didn't vote for that. In fact, if you're watching, you know,

they had members voting for it. And then they saw that it was going to fail and they were switching. Oh, well, if it's going to fail, we'll vote no. Okay. So, so. Well, hold on. We're not done, Brian. We're not done. And then you had Donald Trump coming out and saying, shut it down. Shut it down. So now members are like, oh, well, you know, the mothership has beamed down the instructions. Right. Okay. So what do we do? So meanwhile, the CR fails on the floor. Very embarrassing. Usually doesn't happen. But, you know, things like that have happened here now in Congress that we've never seen before for the last two years. So guess what we do? Well, let's run the playbook again that Republicans have complained about working with the Democrats to keep government open.

We're going to be voting on it, you know, this afternoon. It's going to pass on a bipartisan basis, probably with more Democrats. Republicans having to run to us to be the adults in the room. We did it on the debt ceiling. We did it on government shutdown. We did it on Ukraine. We'll continue to do that. But just, I mean, really embarrassing for the speaker.

And so what are the implications now for Mike Johnson? Because, again, to your exact point, this is the precise reason that Kevin McCarthy was ousted a speaker. And so is it just, do Republicans just accept the fact that for the same reason, that they got rid of Kevin McCarthy, that they're just going to have to swallow? Oh, they can't wait to get out of here. They can't wait. They're going to do this vote. They're the run to the camera. They're going to bitch, moan and complain about what just happened. And then they're going to get on their flight and go home and we'll never going to hear about it again. Right. Okay.

So I want to switch gears here now to the upcoming debate between Tim Walls and J.D. Vance. What are you looking out for with regard to that debate? Well, I'm interested to see the setup. Do we know, are they standing or are they sitting at desks? Are they laying down on couches? I'm interested to see how they're setting it up. Do you know? I believe couches are off the table for obvious reasons. Got it. It must have been part of the negotiations.

Yeah. So what am I expecting? Okay. Listen, I think JD's going to be good. You know, he's not done himself any service since he's been picked. I think he's been dramatically underwhelming, not just for Democrats. I think Republicans have been shocked how poorly he's performed on the road. But I actually think he's going to do fine in this setting, in a debate setting.

okay but at the same time tim walls has shown that he is very good with communications yeah okay he's a better communicator than i think people knew of him and i don't know that jd is going to be prepared for that someone who can actually talk to the camera talk to middle of america right and be able to communicate the way that people can absorb and digest a message uh and and listen when jd says something strange which is very possible i look for tim walls to look at and go, man, you're really weird. Yeah, that's a good, it's a good call. Let's hope for J.D. Vance's sake that there's no ordering of donuts involved in any of this.

Finally, let's finish off with this. What were your thoughts on hearing that Donald Trump would decide not to debate Kamala Harris a second time? I agree with that decision if I were him. I mean, if I'm Donald, I'm like, we're not doing that again. Yeah. I mean, so like, yeah, if I'm him, I'm like, yeah, no, no more debates with her. Okay. I mean, give me a break.

But obviously, it's not good for the American people. You know, if I'm Kamala Harris, I want to have a debate like every Tuesday between now and the election. Yeah. Right? Because I think the one thing the vice president

and this campaign understands is just let Donald be Donald. Expose it, show it, let him be Donald. Don't interrupt him from being himself. Yeah, just let him talk. Don't interrupt him to be himself. Just like, you know, give a mouse. a cookie. And then like let it, let it happen from there. Donald will do all the work you need,

right? And I think that's really what we saw in the last debate. Literally, I have never seen a campaign come out and say, here's our strategy. Our strategy is to get under Donald Trump's skin. We are going to telegraph our strategy to the world. And the other campaign goes, we know their strategy. They're going to try to get in our Donald Trump skin, and we're never going to allow it. We have a protective bubble around Donald and his skin. Okay. And then on immigration, on his immigration, on his top issue, she goes, and people are leaving your rallies. And boom, plan launched.

Hold on. The defensive bubble shattered. And all of a sudden Donald Trump diarrhea of the mouth, they're eating the cats and the dogs and the pets of the people. okay, and we're off to the races. And that was the end of the debate right there. Now we've got the head of Votesave America, Shaniqua McClendon. Shaniqua, thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me. So we likely have one final big political event to look forward to that it's the vice presidential debate. What does success for Tim Walz look like and what does success for J.D. Vance look like. Oh, gosh. I feel like the bar is so low for J.D. Vance and he still will not hit it. I think he has to, not to be cliche and use the word everyone's using,

but he just has to not be, like, weird and condescending. He always finds himself saying things where he's putting his foot in his mouth. And I think he does that when he's alone in a speech. And so I think he's really going to stumble into that when he's trying to kind of spar with Tim Walls. I think Tim Walls just has to keep showing people who he is. Once people see him, they really like him. He feels like, I mean, he was a coach. school coach, but he just feels like someone who's been present in people's lives before. So I think

he just has to talk about what he's done in Minnesota, let people know he's a good guy and he'll do fine. Doesn't it seem that Tim Walls, his strength is kind of in stark contrast to the biggest weakness of J.D. Vance, just as a human being is bizarre. And Tim Wals is so likable. He is the epitome of normal. Like, he is the normal guy. And so doesn't it seem like the more, basically Kamala Harris found the one guy in Tim Wals who would exploit the most J.D. Vance's biggest weakness. Yeah, I mean, quite literally.

I mean, he's just, I mean, like, all-American. Like, everyone knows someone like Tim Wals and they've encountered them in their lives and they really like them. I mean, even think about, you know, when J.D. Vance went to the bakery and was telling the person at the counter that he's, like, running for vice president,

Tim Wals can go into any room and people just want to talk to him because he knows how to actually engage with people, like a person. I love that all you have to do is say when J.D. Vance walked into the bakery and it was such a disaster that him just doing the innocuous task of entering a bakery just to like buy a donut was such a mess for this guy. We've all done that before. We've all done that before and it's gone a lot better. Right. It's just like the simplest. It should be like the biggest like non-event of your entire life. but Jady Vance is such a bizarre human that he even turned that into a disaster for his campaign. To that point, then, do you think that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will debate again?

I'm starting to feel like we're not going to see it. I know she can get under his skin pretty well. And when he feels agitated or called out in a way, and they've been calling him, you know, a coward and afraid for not debating her, he normally takes debate. But for some reason, I don't think he's going to do it this time. He knows he lost. And I think he's probably not going to step into that again. Well, if he knows he lost, I mean, he has the most fragile ego in the world. And so if he knows he lost, is that how he's going to let himself, just to play devil's advocate here? Is that how he's going to let himself go out? Just having, I mean, I know he can try to rewrite history and pretend that he won and try and convince the rubs and his base that he won. But he knows he lost. And is that going to be the lasting image he allows his campaign to have?

I think so, because the extension of he knows he lost is he knows he can't win. Like, she's just going to keep mopping the floor with him. And so you only want one of those, you know, on the record, not to. Well, Trump has repeatedly tried to make this election more broadly a referendum on Kamala Harris's race, even going so far as it suggests that she's not black, all in an effort to bait her. And obviously she doesn't bite, which I think on this specific point is a bit reminiscent of Barack Obama's strategy, where, you know, these candidates are more focused on making the election about us, about Americans more broadly, as opposed to just the candidates themselves. I'm curious to hear what you made of her decision

not to bite on these baiting efforts by Trump. Yeah, I mean, I think it was really smart. As we've seen in the past, whenever Democrats kind of take the bait when he's doing these ridiculous things, it doesn't work out for them. It does not, you know, I mean, even with Barack Obama,

he released his birth certificate. No one stopped. They didn't stop questioning whether or not he was an American citizen. It doesn't buy you any goodwill by by humoring. these efforts. It just allows the conversation to keep going, but she just ignored it.

And now he looks really silly. I mean, he's not even bringing it up anymore. It was a debate where the moderator asked him about the comments he made about her race. And he was like, if she says she's black, you know, that that's fine with me because I think he knew there's nothing else to do there. Right, right.

And I thought that was especially ironic because, you know, he was so willing to talk a big game when she wasn't there. And even on stage at the National Association of black journalists, which unto, I mean, he was in front of all of these black journalists. So even making that claim in front of, in front of them, like, how humiliating for him to do that. And yet still he did it. But when he was face to face with her, suddenly it's crickets from the guy who had the opportunity to make the same claim that he did just a few weeks earlier.

He wouldn't even shake her hand. She had to go up to him and shake his hand. And it just makes me think about when she was in Georgia. And she said that line, you know, if you have something to say, say it to my face. then he's not. Apparently he wasn't willing to do that. So there is a ton of polling right now, all of which offers some confirmation of pretty much whatever you're looking for.

If you want to see Kamala Harris down in the sunbelt, that's there. If you want to see her up five points in Pennsylvania, which is largely believed to be the tipping point state, you got that too. So what are you looking at when it comes to polling? Like how do you filter through the noise? Yeah. I'm trying not to, you know, be one of those people who's like, oh, North Carolina looks good. so I'm happy with it. I'm from North Carolina, so I'm always biased. But just, I mean, looking at

everything, I think if you look at averages, that's definitely a better way to kind of see trend lines. All the polls are different. You know, pollsters do their best to have the best sample as possible. But at the end of the day, it's not going to be perfect. It's not going to be what we actually see when people go vote. So I just like to look at polls as what they're telling us in that moment and how much more work we have to do. You know, if the poll is saying Vice President Harris is up two points and the margin of barriers like three to four points, then we don't really, you know, all we know is is pretty much a tie. And so we should be working toward knocking on more doors, making more phone calls, just talking to more voters so that we can start to change their perception of her

and increase her share of the polls. But at the end of the day, I know this is cliche and people say it all the time, but the only polls that matter are the votes on election day. And so that's what we have to focus on. So we need to get people out to vote. Now, that's a pretty natural segue here into Vote Save America. I've been a huge fan of Vote Save America since it first launched. How many years ago was this? Six years. Six years ago now. So what are your efforts at Vote Save America focused on right now? Yeah, we're focused on a lot of things. You know, it's interesting. Last year, when we were coming up with our strategy, we knew how people felt about Biden. So we put a lot of our focus on down-ballot races. Our thought was if we can just get people to come out because

they're excited about down-ballot races or ballot initiatives. And just have like a reverse coat-tails effect. Yeah, you know, our thought was they're not going to show up for all of this and then not vote for Joe Biden while they're there, which honestly, I know I just said what I said about polling, but maybe that's not the case. People were really frustrated. But now that Vice President Harris is the nominee, we've actually been able to expand the work that we're focused on to everything.

And so we've been sending out, if you sign up for our organizer else program, we've been sending out emails where people can volunteer in battleground states. And a lot of those states, especially like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, North Carolina, those are states where there are races up and down the ballot, including the presidential being a competitive race. And so you have coordinated campaigns that are making sure when you're calling or knocking doors, you're talking about everyone up and down the ticket. So we're pushing people into those. But we've also been donating a tremendous amount of money to organizations on the ground who are helping state Supreme Court candidates, which we've seen the outcomes of decisions that go through

those, state legislatures who have pushed greater restrictions on abortion. And in some states, when we are able to have enough Democrats, they've codified some of the laws we used to have at the federal level. So we're focused on everything. And there's like something for everyone to do at Vote Save America. So what specific activations do you have? Like when people donate to Vote Save America, and that goes to folks that are in the field. What are they actually doing? Yeah. So we have a program called the Anxiety Relief Program that has been just instrumental. We actually launched it in January. And we started raising money. It's a monthly recurring donation program. And the reason we call it the anxiety relief program is because people get anxious about

where to spend their money. They get a lot of emails, screaming at them, telling them the world's going to, you know, burn up if they don't donate. And so we tell everyone, let us do this. that they donate to us and we distribute that money. So we've been giving money out to organizations since February. And something that's really important about political giving is that it come in as early as possible so people can make those decisions. So when that money comes to us, we talked to groups to see what they're doing. Earlier in the year, we were really focused on things like organizations, like one organization

in Ohio, Republicans have purged a lot of people from the voting rolls. So we gave them money so they could start re-registering those people so that by the time we got to right now, those folks were already registered. And then in places like Milwaukee, power to the polls, they've been, I mean, all year, but in the beginning of the year, they were having deep canvassing conversations with voters, particularly in Milwaukee and black communities. Something we hear a lot from voters of color is politicians come around when it's time for a vote and they don't hear from them otherwise. And so these conversations happening all year allow us to know how do these folks feel, what's important to them, communicate that to the campaign.

but also staying constant dialogue with them. And that work's not going to end after Election Day. These groups can use these resources now and in the future to continue their work. I'm curious, what state specifically are your efforts at Votes of America focused on? They fall into different categories. So we have our presidential battlegrounds, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina. Is it Nevada? Oh, Nevada.

Yes, thank you. And so those are all of, in Georgia, are there. the presidential battlegrounds. And then we start to look at the Senate. And so that includes Ohio and Montana, not two states that we're going to focus on for the presidential, but we'll focus on for the Senate. Michigan also has a Senate race. Wisconsin has a Senate race. Arizona has a Senate race. So we're focused on those states that have competitive Senate races. And then I will not try to list all of the House races that are happening across the country. But New York and California are two states that we're really focused on for house races because they have a handful in each one. And we only

four, we're only a four person margin to take those. And then ballot initiatives. There are valid initiatives in Florida, abortion ballot measures in Florida, Arizona, Nevada. So we're really focused on those to make sure that whatever pulls people out, that they come out for those things. And the governor's race in North Carolina and New Hampshire, but especially in North Carolina, focused on those as well. Yeah, suddenly has become quite important to make sure that Josh Stein wins the gubernatorial race in North Carolina. I'm curious how you're thinking about the Senate races in Texas and Florida right now, given recent

polling in Montana, which has shown Shihi leading John Tester, but also closer polling with Ted Cruz and also with Rick Scott. Well, actually, Florida and Texas are two states that we, we have invested in, but we see it as long-term investment. So we've been investing in infrastructure there, getting people registered to vote, giving organizations money so they can have long-term conversations with voters. But right now, and we've invested in state legislature candidates, but we haven't been investing in those statewide opportunities yet because they are really hard. They're really expensive. And the Senate rates in 2022 in Florida was, I mean, an absolute blowout, unfortunately, for Val Demings. And so we try to be really mindful about what we're doing with our donors' money so that it can have the greatest impact. And so we'll continue to keep an eye on those. And if it feels like in the last moment, a surge of support from us can be helpful, we will do that. We're also looking at the Nebraska Senate race where, you know, things are closer than expected there. So we keep an eye on everything

and adjust our resources accordingly. It's smart to be mindful so that we don't have like an Amy McGrath situation where all of a sudden she's, you know, donate millions and millions and millions of just to see a Democrat lose by 20 points. Where can people donate? Yeah. If you go to Votesaveamerica.com and then on the right, sorry, the left side of the page and the drop-down menu, you will see a donate button. Or you can just go to Votesaveamerica.com slash donate.

And we have a few options there for different ways you want to support. They're all impactful. But if you want to choose the House, Senate, or are interested in donating to state legislature candidates, you can do that as well. Awesome. And I'll put that link in the show notes of the episode. Senequa, thank you so much for talking. in the time. Thanks for the work that you're doing at Votesave America.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for all the work you're doing. You reach a lot of people and they listen to you. Thanks again to Shaniqua and Congressman Moskowitz. 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 and a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels or you can go to bryantaylorcoen.com to learn more.