Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Tight Polls, North Carolina Governor’s Scandal, and Millionaires Are Renting Homes

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Scott and Jessica dive into the latest polling with a close look at key battleground states. Then, the North Carolina governor’s race takes a scandalous turn as GOP front-runner Mark Robinson faces backlash over controversial past comments. Finally, a surprising trend in the housing market: Why are millionaires opting to rent rather than buy, and what does it signal for the future of homeownership? Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.  Follow Prof G, @profgalloway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarlev. Jess, what's going on at The Five? What's going on there? Well, a lot is going on, but what was not going on with me on Friday was I was supposed to be on The Five, and I couldn't go in because I had such a bad allergic reaction to something that half of my lip swelled up. Do you remember the movie Hitch with Will Smith, he did the cyrano to bergerac like feeding guys good lines to get girls thing it i feel like such an elder millennial that's like 20 years ago anyway what did you have an allergic reaction to no don't tell me in case well i think maybe a lip bomb

really that i used that had papaya in it it It's unclear. I'm on steroids, which is the greatest invention. Maybe I guess penicillin is better, but steroids are really good. But anyway, I sent a picture of my face at 6.30 in the morning to the producer who wrote back, like, we will not be seeing you today. But besides that, on The Five, you know, we talked about Mark Robinson a lot. I know we're going to talk about that later in the episode. What's happening generally, though, with the show like that as a run up to election? Is it just like a ratings bonanza and people are all over it? Is it is this kind of your sweet? Is this the playoffs for you guys? you know, tried and true audience. But we saw Big Spike, Greg Gutfeld, co-host on The Five, had Trump on his show, Gutfeld exclamation point, for the whole hour. And I think that got like 5 million viewers. So people are definitely flocking in for election coverage. What was the least crazy and the craziest things he said?

Honestly, it was very low on the insanity i think because he was calm he was amongst people who like him and what was really great for the audience so greg's show nighttime show is in front of a live audience and they didn't know that trump was the guest so they showed up for a regular episode and thought maybe they'd see Brian Kilmeade, who hosts Fox and Friends, and they got an hour of Donald Trump. She's somehow a woman. Somehow she's doing better than he did. Yeah. But I can't imagine it can last.

And he talked about everything from all the old shows that he used to do, like going on Johnny Carson and Howard Stern, to some stuff about the campaign. And of course, there were things that I would have fact-checked. But he was at his most charming, I would say. And part of that was driven by a very good friend who's on the show, Kat Timpf, who's a libertarian. I think Kat's actually come on your Prof G podcast before when she had a book coming out a year ago. She has a new book even. She's prolific. But Kat is not naturally partial to Trump. She doesn't love his policies. And he was really clearly focused on getting her to like him and to be comfortable with him. And I saw a little bit of a different side of him. Did it work or was it creepy? Well, she's pregnant, so everything could look a little bit creepier. You know how weird men are around pregnant women. But he was on the other side of the set,

so it wasn't creepy like that. But you're just acutely aware of everything when you're 30 pounds heavier and with child. What I've told- I didn't find it creepy. I thought it was nice. What I've told my boys is that unless you see the head crowning, never reference a woman's pregnancy.

Do not mention it. Yeah, and also watching the head crown is also frightening in another way. But that's a whole other episode. All right, let's go on to something more cheery. Let's talk about the latest polls, a bombshell in the North Carolina governor's race and a surprising trend, millionaires opting to rent instead of buy. We're six weeks from election

day and the polls are starting to pile up. Over the weekend, we got an NBC News poll that showed Harris leading Trump 49 to 44 percent within the margin of error. So, I don't know, at this point, it feels like the polls are, I don't want to say superfluous, but yeah, who knows? Coin flip. Though Trump leads on the economy, inflation and the border. Then this point, it feels like the polls are, I don't want to say superfluous, but yeah, who knows? Coin flip. Though Trump leads on the economy, inflation, and the border. Then on Monday, new numbers from the New York Times-Siena College Bowl shows that Donald Trump is doing well across the Sun Belt. The tightest race is in North Carolina, where Trump leads Harris 49 to 47. Georgia and Arizona show a slightly wider lead for Trump. What's your take on these numbers, Jessica?

You're a pollster. You get this stuff. What can we take from this? Well, I saw a very funny tweet that said, like, all data people are just going to have to figure out how to say the same thing differently for the next six weeks, which is like, this is a tied race with a slight advantage today in this direction. And like, let me figure out some forces underneath an undercurrent would probably be a better word for it. That'll make me have an interesting TV hit. So that's what I'm going to try to do with this. We should note with the NBC poll, what is special about it and a five point lead is a big deal. But the last time that they had a national poll, Biden was still the candidate, and it was Trump plus two.

So just as an encapsulation of how different this race is, something that I was paying attention to is obviously what's going on in the swing states. But they had the question of who represents change, and Harris is up nine points on Trump with that. And that's something that people say really matters and has been a question in all of this. Like, how do you become a change agent if you are the sitting vice president? And her highest tested statement from the debate was when she said, I'm not Joe Biden. And clearly people are feeling that. And they're saying, I know what Trump is like. I know what Biden is like. This is a new person. And then she also

was 20 points up on who has the better mental and physical capability. So basically by moving Biden out of the way, now everyone is actually paying attention to what Donald Trump is actually like. And they're not loving what they're seeing. Other big things like the lead on the economy has gone down a ton. He was over 20 points ahead. It's now nine points in the CBS poll. He's only up six points on the economy. So for all of this talk of Kamala Harris isn't really telling people anything, you know, she's not answering questions, and no one knows what she stands for, the results seem to indicate that people do know what she stands for. They know enough to say that she would be within six to ten points of Donald Trump on who's best to manage the economy,

which means they probably heard something. I don't know, what do you think about the results? Or say something fancy about a tide race. Yeah. It's really striking to me that there's such a thing as an undecided voter. I think there are a few things you could label yourself that out you as more of a village idiot than at this point being an undecided. Let me get this. You're like, it's a toss-up for you. You can't quite figure out. I think anyone who says they're an undecided voter at this point is a closeted Trumper and is pretending to be thoughtful. I just don't. It's for me at this point, and I don't, you know more about politics than I do. At this point, it's all about turnout. I just don't buy that anyone's undecided, that isn't a village fucking idiot looking for someone to interview them with a mic in front of them as an undecided.

How could you be undecided at this point? And also this criticism that she hasn't done an interview and we don't know her policies. She was a senator. She was an attorney general. She was the vice president. You know that basically she's center left. She's more conservative on law and order and economics issues than most people give her credit for. On Israel and Gaza, I think people are probably a little less clear on where she

stands. But you're clear on where Trump stands. Okay, you can be clear that he doesn't mind if a woman's bodily autonomy is taken away from her. But he was for TikTok or against it until he was for it. He was against tariffs until he was for them. I have a huge cohort of friends, and I don't want to say respected, but I understand it. They just think government is ineffective, and they just go in and vote for whoever they think is going to put more money in their pockets in the short run. And they think that's going to be Donald Trump. So they go in, they listen to everybody rage about Donald Trump, and then they say, hold my beer, and they go behind a curtain and they vote for Trump. But I'm just trying to figure out, do you really think, well, let me put this forward as a thesis.

Where her money will come in right now is the get out the vote part that's going to take place over the next eight weeks or whatever it is. That's where the money is going to kick in, I hope. But at this point, it's not about undecided voters. It's about turning out the vote. Your thoughts? Two-parted response. One requires you to have watched Bill Maher from Friday. I saw that. That was great. Oh, you did? Stephanie, she was great. So you just described Brett Stevens. For the last two weeks, I've been going on and on. I'm not sure if you did. So you just described Brett Stevens. For the last two weeks, I've been going on and on. Like, I can't figure out where undecided voter, where informed undecided voters are. I'm like, who's the person who has a list on their refrigerator of like, well, she said this and he's like, who is this person? And then I opened the New York Times

three days ago and it's you. Stephanie Ruhl says, I try to figure out who this person is. And here you are sitting next to me with a microphone in front of your face, right, on one of the most salient political chat shows that's in business right now, telling us you're definitely not for Trump, but you just don't get comical. Yeah, you can't vote for Trump, but you need to know her policies. I'm like, OK, what does that mean, boss? But it's also for a lot of these people who are highly educated and certainly capable of reading a website. All the policies are there. If you harbor a fear that she is secretly going to ban fracking on day 112 when there's no evidence of that, certainly from how the Biden-Harris administration conducted itself, or that she secretly hates Jews even though she's married to one who talks about it constantly, or that she's going to fund transgender surgeries for undocumented people

who are in prison, as per the ACLU survey that she signed in 2019, like, I can't help you. But I don't think that's who Bret Stephens is. And I have someone very close to me, my mentor, you know, has a very big successful job in finance, and he's not going to vote for Donald Trump, but every day sending me things. Why won't she answer this? I need to know this. I need to know that. And some of it is just like Stephanie Ruhle was saying it, like tough noogies. You're not going to get it exactly the way that you want it. And that doesn't mean that she shouldn't do more.

And it seems like they really are ramping up and that they needed that first four to six weeks when she didn't expect to be the candidate. You know, that really flies in the face of this whole grand coup plan. You know, Kamala Harris woke up that Sunday and was like, holy shit, you know, I could end up being president of the United States of America on November 5th instead of the vice president. But the discrepancy in standards to which these two candidates are being held kills me. And I find that I spend most of my time when you say, like, what's going on on the five?

That's what's going on on the five. That I'm saying over and over, she did this, she said this. You're ignoring this. And I get it. People are partisans. And I, you know, Trump has done some things that I probably haven't given him full due for. Like the Abraham Accords. Yeah.

It's pretty awesome. Huge accomplishment. And I was not as generous about it as I should have been because I don't like Donald Trump. And he got China right. That's the other thing I would say. I think he early recognized the asymmetry in trade between us and China. I would give him credit for that. But did he fix it?

Well, he's the first to kind of call them out. He, you know, announced the TikTok ban and then unannounced it. But he did put in place tariffs that the Biden administration has kept in place. Look, you're going to get some shit right. And he doesn't get credit for any of it. She won't get credit for anything she does for her critics. The thing that I find these folks saying they need more information, I would argue they're Trumpers and they're going to vote for Trump. I just don't. Anyone saying that, in my view, is either a closeted Trump voter and they want to pretend there's a legitimate reason not to vote for her, or it's referred anger. And it's anger around, and I have a little let her policies, she won't come out when she's the one who is challenging him to another debate, and he won't show up for that.

Yeah. I just, I don't believe that they're all closeted Trumpers. I think that your anger thesis is probably more what's going on here, that people are pissed off about the process, that? Like, they saw Gretchen Whitmer and Wes Moore and Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris and whoever else was going to throw their hat in the ring, and Josh Shapiro, of course. Then we might have, A, in their mind, had a stronger candidate, if they don't think Kamala would have emerged from that. I actually think there's a pretty decent likelihood that she could have come out the victor of a mini primary. But we got to a point where there was just not enough time to do it. And I think, you know, when politicians say something that just circumvents the truth and it feels to you and we're not politicians trying to hang on to our seats or anything like that. But it feels like one of those moments where you just say, just tell me the honest thing. It really wouldn't bother me. Like, stop saying there was an open competition. No one else threw their hat in the

ring. There wasn't an open competition. I happen to be fine with it and perfectly comfortable with what happened because I do think Kamala was on the ticket. And so the people were saying, I'm voting for an 81-year-old guy who is unlikely to finish his term anyway, so I have to be comfortable with the Kamala Harris presidency. But like, when Pelosi says, you know, anyone could have thrown their hat in, obviously not. I'm not saying that you called them up and said, don't you dare, but you weren't welcoming it. We'll be right back. I have something that's not in the script I would just love to get your reactions to because we were so busy at Pivot we didn't bring it up, which is actually kind of convenient given that it's a Vox property. But I'm curious to get your thoughts, if any, on a story that's kind of come and gone around Olivia Nuzzi and RFK Jr. and this quote-unquote digital relationship. I don't even know how to describe it, but I had a lot of thoughts

about it, and I tweeted about it, or I threaded about it, and I got some what I thought was really intelligent pushback. But I'm curious what you think of the whole situation. Well, what we know so far is that Olivia Nuzzi, who is a 31- 31 year old star campaign reporter at new york magazine and had written about rfk jr gotten to know him she covered the presidential race for new york magazine right in general yes but she had done a piece on him and she had also written what is widely regarded as the most consequential piece in nailing, putting the final nail in Biden's coffin, basically saying that every Democrat in Washington thinks he can't do this and it's not just voters that are uneasy, but there's this whisper campaign and, you know,

Biden should be exiting stage left. And I think that came out July 4th, right, or July 5th, something like that. and now that it has been revealed that she was having a digital affair which is rumored to include racy photos very demure the word digital freaked me out I'm like does that mean she sticks her finger up his ass during sex like I didn't know what digital meant. So it's sexting and photos? What does it mean? It's on your device, as far as we know, which is different for RFK Jr., who usually engages in the actual digital. Goes analog. What is it, 37 times that he cheated on his wife that he detailed in that horrific diary that eventually led to her killing herself. She referenced it in her suicide note.

Yeah, but he said she took it back. You didn't hear that part? She wasn't mad at all. Very happy with how things turned out. So what's the backstory or part of the backstory that's also interesting to this, at least from the gossip standpoint, is that Olivia Nuzzi was engaged to Ryan Lizza, who is also a D.C. politics reporter. He writes Playbook now for Politico, and he left his wife for Nuzzi, 20 years his junior. And so there was a lot of, you know, online, the karma of you leave your wife for someone 20 years younger than she

leaves you for a seven-year-old, a seven-year-old Kennedy who has a brain worm. And, you know, it's just not your average Kennedy bear. But I, journalists... That was good. I just want to highlight, that was good. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Thank you. It doesn't feel ethically sound that she continued to cover the campaign like this. And the story that's coming out of RFK Jr.'s camp doesn't seem fully believable that she basically stalked him and he wasn't interested because this guy is a dog and he's been interested in everybody that's been interested in him over the years but people are really they're all over the place on this you know people defending her saying you know we all make mistakes too like are you effing kidding me that you went on and continued to care cover this race but i want to to hear what you threaded and what the thoughtful

responses were. So when I first saw this, I think I was a little bit triggered because the Clintons were sort of my heroes. And as I learned more about what went down with Monica Lewinsky, I just felt, I literally felt they didn't ruin her life because she has a nice life. I've become sort of like Twitter friendly with her. But they basically, it felt like such an abuse of power from him. And then them collectively kind of indicting her and disparaging. I just, it just broke my heart, the way they treated her. And this woman, Kara Swisher, actually did this fantastic interview with her.

And she said, what would your life have been like, imagine, had this not happened to you? And she said, well, it was obviously a very impressive young woman. I wanted to go get a PhD by this point. I thought I would have been married, maybe a couple of kids, maybe working in policy. And you just feel you're heartbreaking. Because can you imagine dating? Can you imagine getting a job when you're Monica Lewinsky in your 20s and 30s? And so I was a little bit triggered by this story because if you pulled up, if you typed in RFK that morning, there were 10 stories come up with 10 buttons or the pictures, whatever you call it. And eight of them were a picture of her. One was a picture of her and him. And the 10th was of her former fiance. And I thought, okay, if it had come out that Vice President Harris or Secretary Clinton were having a quote-unquote digital affair with a guy, it wouldn't be pictures of the guy. I thought the automatic reflexive reaction of media is to slut shame. And this was an easy one from her standpoint. She should be fired. In ethical lapse in journalism, you're not supposed to have any sort of relationship like that with people you're covering on something as important as presidential politics. You sit her down and say, you fucked up, you're fired. And people are fired for a lot less. She's trying to maintain a career as a top-level journalist.

I think she's so talented that she'll recover from it and probably move on. I don't think this is anything like the drama of the Lewinsky-Clinton scandal. But he, at the age of 70, is trying to convince us that he should get the nuclear codes. And yet the story wasn't at all about him. And now he is framing, I can see what their campaign's doing. They're trying to frame her as like a Glenn Close, Boiled Rabbit person that was so drawn to him because his charms. And so, wrote me and said, Scott, this is about, you know, journalistic ethics, and you're not giving, you're taking away her agency, just portraying her as this foe-y little Don, you know, this foe-y little, or doughy little foe that can't resist the charms of an older Kennedy. So, but I found the media's reaction really interesting, that they were very focused on her. And maybe that's because they're like, okay, this guy is a weirdo, so we expect this from him. But I found it really weird that the media immediately went to, this was her fault, and the story was all about her about her it felt like slut shaming to me

it felt like none of the lessons of the me too era were being remembered at all like when people in positions of power take advantage of them and there is an imbalance there's an age imbalance there's a power imbalance like rfk Jr. has been through worse than getting some bad press, right? Like, that's the worst that Olivia Nuzzi could do to him. And you can't get worse than dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park or the whale that he hacked the head off of that he's being charged like 37 grand for letting the blood and guts leak on his kids or whatever he was doing in that station wagon. So I did find that to be absent in it. And I said to my husband that it bothers me about myself that I don't know definitively how I feel about this. I know that there was a breach in ethics,

and I know that that matters a lot. Like, I get paranoid when I even say something on air and don't disclose that I know the person, right, or have, you know, come across the person at a party or whatever it is. Let alone, I'm going to go out and write, like I was saying, the seminal piece about Biden's fitness for office when I'm sending photos of myself to a guy who also wants that job. Now, no one took it seriously that he was going to get that job, and it looks like his effect is hopefully going to be close to nil now that he is not technically in the race anymore, though he's still going to be on some ballots, but is on Team Trump vying for the health secretary position. But I think you're right that she will have a future somewhere. And you see that people on the right specifically defending her a lot more than people on the left.

She'll end up at Free Press. Is that what it's called? Yeah, the Barry Weiss's outfit. I bet she'll end up there. She's very talented. Well, that would be a great landing for her. That's not even what I was envisioning. No, she's a talent.

She's a real talent, I think. Anyways, we'll see. So anyways, back to that. Thanks for the digression there. Let's get back to the polls. What do you think the candidates can do? If you were advising them, what can they do to shore up key battleground states at this point? Well, I think showing up matters.

And they are both showing up places that they need to, Kamala and Tim Walz, more than Trump is. J.D. Vance has been out there a ton, but there was a graph, an infographic floating around about how many fewer rallies Trump is doing, certainly from 2016 when it was breakneck pace. You know, it just was unstoppable how many he was doing. And then obviously it went down in 2020, but that this is really like a whimper. But something that I saw and that popped out to me in the numbers that show what Kamala can do or continue to do is that she's moving back to the right levels with Black and Latino voters, which was a real soft spot. And it seems like with Latino voters specifically that this message about border security and also things like home ownership is something that's really resonating with them, like talking to them not as a minority group. And I know this is something that you think about a lot, that people should stop presenting

themselves as a certain type of person and just as an American. And she doesn't talk about her identity. She doesn't say Black, Southeast Asian, et cetera. She's just going for it as, you know, someone with the same interests and needs and desires as everyone else. And I think that that is the way forward for anyone to be able to win this election. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think I like that. I think that's solid. What's interesting is the stuff or the data I've seen says that inflation remains voters' most important issue. And it sounds like that's the issue that is sort of probably most up for grabs, I would argue. And what's interesting is, and again, their perception is their reality. People see him as a businessman, lower interest rates during his tenure. They reflexively think he'd be better on the economy. I think she's made some real missteps around things like price controls. I don't think that makes any sense. A wealth tax, we talked a little bit about that. That didn't make any sense for me. But at the same time, his proposals around tariffs and being as anti-immigration as he's claiming, there's a few things that could be more inflationary. So I don't know. If I were her,

I would do a lot around inflation right now, saying, we need to break up these big companies. We'll bring prices down. She's talked about growth. What is the growth mindset around the economy? How do we bring specifically? What programs am I going to put in place to bring inflation down that economists would sign off of? Because when she says price controls all economists say is okay so i remember right out of college my buddy lee lotus said we should rent in santa monica because we can get rent control and i'm like yeah but those things never come up he's like yeah but we're two white yuppies so we'll have an easier time and i said why is that i said well all the people who own apartments in santa monica because they're rent-controlled, they get 50 applicants, and they always end up picking young white professionals. And I thought, okay, that's what happens when you have price controls. I mean, rent control just doesn't work. Price controls just don't work. If there's gouging during a hurricane, I get it. But the notion that you're going to tell a marketplace you're going to put

a cap on prices, That to me just doesn't work. I thought that didn't make any sense. But she has some very smart economic policy advisors. I would come up with some sort of acronym for the three things she's going to do to ensure inflation goes to its target level. Or maybe she just talks about the fact that, hey, I don't know if anyone's noticed, but inflation, core inflation is at 3.3, but inflation, overall inflation is at 2.5. The target is two. We've brought down inflation faster than anyone. Maybe they spend that on ads. I don't watch TV or ad-supported TV, so I don't know if she's running ads, but it seems like inflation is one of the last things. Tons of ads. Tons of them.

And what are they focused on? Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime. As vice president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades. Fixing the border'm going to disagree with Kamala about certain things, but I'm going to tell you why,-net she's going to be better for your pocketbook. And on the price controls part, you know, she never actually said price control. What she is trying to represent, and I get it that maybe this hasn't been done effectively, is essentially antitrust enforcement. And you even saw after she started talking about it that some of the companies that she had mentioned, like the Walmarts of the world, the Kroger's, they dropped their prices, that there were, they were being artificially inflated because they could get away with it, right? They were basically pretending that the supply chain was still as shitty as it was in 2021, which is obviously not the case. And as people start to notice in their regular lives

that maybe it doesn't cost so much to fill up their tank, or maybe chicken is costing less when they go to buy dinner for their family, that that is naturally warming them to Kamala Harris. And then Trump isn't doing the work to be able to prove the case that he would be better if he were the one steering the economy right now. So that's how I see it in a best-case scenario for her on the inflation issue. So according to this poll, the things that he beats her on specifically, securing the border and controlling immigration, he beats her by a whopping 21 points. On dealing with the economy, he's up by nine. Dealing with inflation and the cost of living, up by eight. Dealing with crime and violence, up by six. Serving as commander-in-chief, she beats him by one.

Getting the country headed in the right direction, she beats him by four. Being competent and effective, she beats him by five. It's funny, I would think being competent and effective would be sort of, kind of be the halo around all of this. Anyways, we'll be back after a quick break to discuss the race for governor in North Carolina and an interesting trend in the housing market. Stay with us. All right, Jess, we're going to shift gears here. The race for governor in North Carolina exploded with a story that could have national repercussions. Mark Robinson, the GOP frontrunner, is in hot water after past comments surfaced where he compared himself to a black Nazi. And that's not even the most shocking part. There are also disturbing revelations about his activity on an online porn forum. Jessica, do you think this is more gossip than tangible? Do you think this has any impact? Well, basically his whole staff quit. So, yeah, I think it does have an impact. And he tried to say that it was AI and this was all fake, but I don't think everyone quits.

Oh, no, I didn't. I mean, an impact on the presidential race, not on Robinson. I think he's toast or I don't know if he's toast. Oh, yeah. Well, he was kind of toasty, at least before this happened. But I do think that it has an impact on the race and that these candidates like the Doug Mastriano's of the world and there was someone who pointed out which is funny that if you're an AG named Josh just stay in line so this is Josh Stein in North Carolina and it was Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania who ended up winning

running against these kind of Trumpy lunatics but I I wonder in a year like this, with so many important issues on the table, how much split ticket voting is actually going to happen? And the Harris campaign has been really focused on North Carolina anyway, obviously more so at this point. But what do you think the likelihood is that people are going to walk into that booth and say, you know, Josh Stein, for sure. Obviously, we can't have Mark Robinson, but Trump in North Carolina. I mean, in Georgia, they do this all the time, right? They sit with two Democratic senators and they love Brian Kemp and a lot of conservatives. Yeah, I think as I just hear you speak about it, I wonder if it

cements or buttresses a very negative brand association of Trump-Harris that they're weird, that this guy he's actively advocated for is kind of all caps weird, uncomfortable weird, and that this is sort of, you know, this is kind of case in point or par for the course, if you will, for the kind of people that Trump and Vance endorse. And then on top of this, North Carolina is in play, right? So maybe it is bigger. And as you pointed out, this might affect down ballot races in a key state like North Carolina. Yeah. I mean, that's the hope with something like this.

And clearly, you know, that opposition research didn't just appear out of nowhere on that day. That was the last day that you could have gotten his name off the ballot. So the Democrats waited until exactly the right moment. process where you decide to post a comment on a porn site, I mean, the Black Nazi stuff, okay, I don't get it. But even before that, I know I'm going to comment on a porn site. Should that person be in a position of civic responsibility? No. So this is what I wanted to ask you about. So it's not just like as a commenter on porn site. Yeah. As a frequent guest on Nude Africa myself. But this was, you know, over many years and it included the fact that he's a peeping Tom. Like he's talking about fantasizing about the fact that he used to watch women in public gym showers and that he still fantasizes about it. So this is my question. If there was a conversation about Joe Biden being fit to serve six more months in his job when he dropped out, how is there not a conversation that Mark Robinson should be gone today? That somebody who did that and who harbors these kinds of beliefs that he has espoused even in this campaign about women, about reproductive rights, about race tensions. Like, why is Mark Robinson

still allowed to sit around? But we had to hear about, you know, Joe Biden can only sit on the beach in Delaware and can't walk up three stairs. I think America has decided that they'd rather have a pervert than someone old and feeble. And that is, to a certain extent, Donald Trump and Elon Musk and just, I don't want to say they've normalized weirdness around children and women and sex, but what have we not been exposed to? I mean, isn't everyone just sort of like, I've heard it, I've seen it, I don't care. And if the Christian evangelicals will vote for somebody who has been married, has five kids by three women and has been accused of sexual

assault by 28 women, okay, whatever. This guy's commented on a porn site. I really don't care. What is unforgivable? I think correctly, America, and I've been saying this for a year and was called an ageist, and that's accurate. I'm an ageist and so is biology. Let me put it this way. If it was Biden and Trump, I think hands down, the nation would have decided they'd rather have someone guilty of sexual abuse than an old, feeble man who came across as just like kind of not there. So I don't, I think America has decided that they'll tolerate that. But the way in which you age is actually so much more important in terms of the impact that it has on your life when you look at how people are perceiving you. You know, you would think that Biden was 95 and that Trump was 75. You got to give it to Trump. He just looked more robust.

And it's weird, Jess. People look at me and even though I'm 50, they can't believe it. They just can't believe it. All right, let's move on. No. Let's move on. I'm in awe of you. Yes, yes. Let's talk about something a little different, but just as crucial, the housing crisis. There's a growing trend that's kind of flying under the radar, and that's that wealthy people and the poor are moving away from homeownership. A recent piece in the Wall Street Journal highlighted how even millionaires are renting their homes instead of buying them. This is interesting. What

do you think this says about the state of the housing market? That is very bad. That's the nuance you get here at Raging Moderates. Am I a business professor yet? That's why everyone comes to the podcast. No, I think that there is, if I could do, you know that emoji with like the two hands holding each other when like two groups that you don't think belong together find common cause. That's the housing market right now for people who have a few hundred thousand dollars to be able to buy a home and people who have, you know, three to five million dollars to find a home. And I think part of it is a testament to how good the market is, that if you have your money, if your down payment is doing the work in a fund for you, that that's that makes you better off than this. There's crappy supply. And that's why one of Harris's pledges is to build, you know, three million new units. People can't find stuff no matter

what you're looking for. But I think there's also been this shift. And I've done a lot of research looking into this, especially with Gen Zs and millennials, but I just did a survey of Gen Alphas, so 13 to 17-year-olds, about what the American dream means. And home ownership is just off the table now. It's just not something, whether it means that they don't think they could ever achieve it or it's just different things matter to them. You know, they prioritize experiences over material items. When you talk to a young person about what success means, they're not leading with owning a home. But I know my parents did. It was a huge deal for them when they were able to buy their first home.

Did you? Was it a big issue for you? Well, I am in this category. I'm a very too high-end renter. We have enough money to buy a great place and could stay in our neighborhood, and we're zoned for an incredible public school and all of it. But I don't want to settle, especially for that amount of money. We worked really hard to save what we have. And we can be in an apartment that is gorgeous and perfect for us, and we have enough space for two kids and, you know, the little car that you can push around,

you know, like the little Bam Bam wheels thing. And our money is doing really well in the market, and I don't want to pull it out. Yeah. Yeah. I think you just summarized how a lot of people feel. The calculus is pretty straightforward. You look at the cost of renting or the kind of yield on a place. And in cities typically like New York and San Francisco, it actually is a much better idea to rent. Because while it might cost you $3 million to buy a really, you know, not even a nice home, an okay home in Manhattan, say that ends up costing you $15,000 or $20,000 a month in mortgage, insurance, maintenance, you'd be better off renting and putting the additional, the rents, the yields are really low. In other words,

as an owner, you get really low yields on rentals. And people say, well, that's bad because that doesn't increase housing stock. People don't want to build. But as oddly expensive as50,000 and it has a big yard and everything, you're better off buying than renting. But increasingly's another reason why not as many young Americans are connecting, hooking up and having children. Because I do think buying a house is sort of, you don't really invest as much in a place you're renting. And buying a home for me was like, let's invest in something. And it's sort of like saying we're not engaged, but we're kind of committing to each other because we're both going to be on the mortgage. I think a lot of the, it's had all these unintended consequences. I'm fascinated with the housing market. And that is one of the reasons I think travel stocks and Live Nation and event and experience stocks have boomed

is because I think there's a lot of people your age and younger who have essentially pre-kids, they were saving for a home. This is what I did when I was young. You just get a girlfriend, you start saving for a house. That's it. You start saving for a home. This is what I did when I was young. You just get a girlfriend, you start saving for a house. That's it. You start saving for a house. And now I think a lot of them have said, you know what?

Fuck it. Let's just go to Thailand to get an Airbnb and go see Taylor Swift. And travel stocks and Live Nation and attendance and the tickets to go see Adele and Taylor Swift went to two, three, four grand because I think people just decided, I am done trying to pursue the American dream in the home of real estate. And if you want to look at a market that appears to be due for a correction, it's the housing market. And it's fascinating that wealthy people who generally know how to do math have said, no, buying's not the way to go. I totally agree. I think there's also the psychological component of what people want to define them, you know? And it used to be that you would lead with, I live in this neighborhood, right? It matters that I'm raising my family here. And I don't think that's the same kind

of thing now. I think it's stuff that you were saying, like vacations, the moments that you share with people who matter, the kind of trips that you're taking, the kind of outside the school room education that you're providing your kids with, the type of people who sit around your dinner table, whether you own the home that that table is in or not. I'm excited that my daughters are growing up around people that are wildly interesting and doing cool things with their lives more so than I care if they own their apartment in Brooklyn Heights. so much. And obviously, the rates contributed to this a lot, but it's almost like it gave people a bit of a break to take a step back in a moment where it wasn't going to be smart for you to just continue to pour money into this, but to really take stock of what kind of lives they want. Or maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better because I couldn't get the apartment that I wanted. But I do think that people are being a lot more thoughtful

about what peak life looks like. And it just doesn't look the way that it did even 10, 15 years ago for them. That's really fascinating. I love what you said, raising your kids around really interesting people. I think that's nice, Jessica. Good for you.

Well, I hope you'll come over. That's why I'm not there. around really interesting people. I think that's nice, Jessica. Good for you. Well, I hope you'll come over. That's why I'm not there. Meet the little rugrats. You said interesting people. Yeah. No, no. Here's the thing. I don't like people.

That's the only thing. But I'd like to meet your kids. I would never have guessed that about you. I would like to. They're really cute. I got good ones. I can't imagine that you and your husband produced. You guys are such like, I don't know what the term is, thoroughbreds. I'd like you to have 4,000 kids and then I will take them and invade Australia.

I will be king of Australia and your children will be my warriors. Anyways, that's all for this episode. Jessie? Oh, I want to say something. I'm going to be on a panel at the Paley Center. I was about to bring it up. Oh, okay. I didn't know. So thank you. I want to play it. Yeah. You have a panel coming up on Wednesday at the Paley Center. Jess, what's that all about?

Well, Scott, it's about the election and covering the election and also the impact of AI and, you know, what voters are seeing, what can you trust, what can't you trust. I'm super jazzed. Margaret Hoover, who I'm kind of obsessed with, is on the panel as well. And a lot more people. Christine Quinn's on the panel. The president of Manhattan Institute is on the panel. Anyway, it's gonna be great. If you are in New York, I think it's sold out. But check. Maybe it isn't. Would love to see you there. But I am just so honored to have been invited to be. That's nice. What's the date again? It's on Wednesday? Or this Wednesday? Wednesday, September 25th.

Oh, good for you. Yeah. Well done. Thanks. Our producers are Caroline Shagrin and David Toledo, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. You can find Raging Moderates on the Prop G Pod every Tuesday. Jess, have a great rest of the week. You too.