Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Trump’s Desperate $5,000 Bribe to Save the GOP Could Blow Up in His Face

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov mark Raging Moderates' two-year anniversary with a packed episode on one of the most significant news days of the year. On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks — and the one-year mark since the Charlie Kirk assassination — Trump and the GOP gathered for night one of the first-ever RNC midterm convention. Trump used the stage to make a remarkable promise: a $5,000 "Trump dividend" for every American adult if Republicans hold onto Congress.  Scott and Jess break down night one, react to the surprise cameo by Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, and weigh in on James Talarico doing counter-programming on Fox News, where the Democratic hope of Texas reversed some of his past controversial positions. Also, it’s the two-year anniversary of the launch of Raging Moderates. Scott and Jess revisit some takes from their very first episode. Two years in, how are they feeling about the show and where America stands compared to where it was when they started? And finally: Tomorrow marks 25 years since 9/11. Scott and Jess pause to reflect on the experience of living through that harrowing day. And for Jessica, this tragedy struck very close to home, as she speaks about openly and vulnerably here. For ad-free episodes, exclusive livestreams, and to connect with Scott, Jessica, and the Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And I'm Jessica Tarlov. All right, Jess, let's get into it. On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks and the one-year mark since the Charlie Kirk assassination, Trump and the GOP gathered for night one of the first-ever RNC midterm convention, Trump used the stage to make a pretty remarkable midterm promise pledging a $5,000 Trump dividend to every American adult if Republicans hold on to Congress.

Kalshi currently has the odds that Democrats take the House at 86 percent and odds of Dems winning both the House and Senate at 47 percent. Let's get a taste of night one. I'm the only one. I build the ballroom. No money, no tax. I don't want tax money. I don't want anything.

It's me and a gun's of patriots. They put up lots of money to build this. And what happens? I get criticized. It's the most incredible thing. I am not going to pay the same boy, it's not by the same boy, I'm going to continue it right now. And it's, by the way, drone proof, bulletproof, everything proof. Differts, extreme candidates won't rip that heart out of our chest.

They hate our culture. They hate what it means to be American. He was also somebody that hated eating meat. He ran a campaign to beat meat. He called it beat meat. I don't know what the hell he meant by that. But he was recently seen having a... Having a barbecue and eating a lot of meat.

Yes, I'm Senator John Fetterman, Pennsylvania. Yes, I'm a Democrat. Why am I here talking to you today? I'm always going to reject the extremes and socialism and that anti-American way of life. Hear me. What are you with me? Right back over my shoulder.

That's the iconic U.S. steel mill. And that's exactly the kind of thing that will work together and will work together and we'll work with President Trump. Vote Republican, and we will leave the world in our dust for generations to come. There'll be nothing like it. We're right at that year. You first.

I like can't breathe. You're laughing hysterically. Well, come on. It's like beat me. Hassan Pikeshung, Tim Scott having an aneurysm. In the online discourse about, you know, paging Kenan Thompson, you're doing. SNL for this weekend was incredible. Trump's so oily and miscolored.

Though I guess now it's clear he didn't actually die his hair dark. That was a thing from over the weekend that he had gone to like my color. That you got $5,000 which is like bribing people to vote for the Republicans. It was a good one. What else was in there? I just thought it was insane. I thought it was the expectation was this is going to be bad, right? This is going to be like an extended Trump rally.

We didn't even put Ken Paxton in. You can tell why the man does not go out in public. He's horrible. He's horrible speeches. I don't know. The whole thing. And Grindr went out, which makes sense because of the Hassan Piker banana hamick situation. Like, what is going on there?

Did Grindr really go down? Yeah, it goes down wherever the Republicans go. It's so deliciously ironic. Yeah, as much as I feel like I need to watch some of it, I have a tough time watching any of it. I found this mostly irrelevant. The thing I zeroed in on was this ridiculous offer of $5,000 for every U.S. adult. It's like, okay, I now, if I can't intimidate you by posting ICE officials at polling booths, I'll bribe you and say I'll give you $5,000.

if you vote our way. I mean, this is, and let's just go to the math. Well, let's talk about need and math. There are, okay, give, it's almost like a one-time universal basic income. It's embracing Andrew Yang, but it's not income. It's a universal kind of gift or bailout or whatever you'd want to call it. And the need is the following. 10% of American adults are in poverty. 15% of American children live in poverty. So if you were going to have some sort of targeted payment to try and level up people, you would give it to the 70 million children, not the 280 million adults. This would cost approximately $1.3 trillion. As always, absolutely no revenue plans. So this would be debt. This would be deficit funded. So what is this?

This is the equivalent of the government saying to you, Jess, you have two kids, I'm going to give you $5,000, a $5,000 preloaded credit card. But if you, you sign up for it, in 18 years, when your kids go to college, they're going to owe at 6% on the debt. They're going to owe $13,000. So on their 18th birthday, they're going to be given a $13,000 debt, which they cannot discharge, which even if you die, they still owe in the form of deficits. Would we, as a populace, sign up for that credit card knowing that our kids are going to inherit a much bigger debt that they can't.

escape. And the sad, sad part of this is the answer might be yes, because both Democrats and Republicans need to own the fact that the American population is not responsible when it comes to fiscal management of our debt. George Washington to George Bush, $7 trillion in deficits. George Bush to Trump, too, another $33 trillion. And while Republicans have been worse than Democrats, Republican administrations have added, on average, 2.8 percent of GDP to the debt, but Democrats have added 2.1. So while the Republicans are worse, they have both engaged

in bipartisan fiscal recklessness. And what's so sad about this is not only that it's stupid and immoral, passing debt down to your kids, but quite frankly that it works. If you were to summarize the last 40 years

in terms of our fiscal management into a bumper sticker would be the following. We can go to war and I'll cut your taxes. And that bumper sticker has worked. So I, that's what stuck out to me.

And then the second thing that stuck out was Federman. And I think the way I would describe Fetterman's appearance is optionality. There's always one or two people, whether it's Joe Manchin or Chris in Cinema, that realize by being on the fence, they gain a lot of leverage. And as much as Democrats don't like him,

as dangerous as the seat is, I think he gains a lot of leverage by threatening to go red. And that is they're going to try and, I don't know, placate him. He gets a ton of leverage. And also, if he's thinking, I want to stay in office,

I think he's toying with the idea of maybe flipping to red and seeing what his options are because that Wall Street Journal piece was really damning, basically saying that he's not interested in being a senator. He's basically derelict in his duties. So I saw it as continued fiscal irresponsibility that unfortunately appears to work with our current populace into optionality from Federman. I feel very immature that I thought we were just going to talk about Hassan Piker on the jump of us. Yeah, but no, no, I have. have real things to say to. I was reading, you know, Catherine Rampel at the bulwark. She compiled a list of all of the things that President Trump has monetarily promised us since he was

reelected. The 5K stimulus check via Doge, right? Your Doge dividend didn't get mine. The 2K stimulus check from the tariff dividend and they're paying more out than they took in in tariff revenues. $1,000 via a savings for expiring ACA subsidies, which actually in reality is just that premiums are up 100 to 400 percent, depending where you are. And then this $5,000, if they win the midterms, coupled with the statement he made on the tarmac heading to Dallas, where he guaranteed that the war in Iran would end right after the election and gas would go below $2. So, I mean, he's been a terrible liar his entire life. but we are reaching fever pitch territory. What's different about this set of lies

is that I sincerely doubt many people believe to them. Trump works as a salesman because he can still con people. It feels like we have hit a wall on that front. And there was no one who was watching that last night, even, you know, the lunatics with the American flag glasses in the audience, who thought, oh, no, I'm really getting $5,000. If all of this goes to play.

plan and Republicans keep the midterms, you know, your fiscal sanity, it would be nice. If people paid attention to it and thought about it, it is a bipartisan problem, though Democrats don't pay lip service to the idea of reducing spending the way that Republicans do. I mean, it's that much more egregious, right? Because they say, we're the dad, right? Like, you know, just show us your checkbook and we'll take care of things and we'll make sure, you know, everything's lined up and that we don't spend money that we don't have. And then Donald Trump spends like a drunk Democrat, basically. So that's what I think of when I hear that. And it's

just, it's not good campaign fodder unless you are running in a very, very conservative district, for instance. You know, no one wants to hear a stump speech about the debt and the deficit. But, well, I mean, maybe John Federman does. I think you're right. First Lady Obama said when asked if she'd be interesting running for president. She said, I don't think America's ready for a female president. And I agree with her. I think we should be. I don't think we are.

I worry it's an overdue conversation, but so far, no one appears to want to have it. There's not a single Democrat who has put a chart on an easel or on a screen that says, this is where we're going to cut spending, this is where we're going to increase revenues. countries don't go out of business or fail because they're invaded. They go out of business because they go broke. And the way they go out of broke usually is through massive inflation that creates revolution. And we are headed. Every fiat currency in history has failed because the political pressure in a democracy

to spend more than you're taking in and use the full faith in credit and sacrifices of previous generations that have afforded you with credit to keep borrowing is politically irresistible. And this has been true of Democrats and Republicans, and not a single candidate has so far said, okay, this is how we're going to. I don't think there's any way, when you're spending $7 trillion on $5 trillion, I don't think there's any way you could get it to five in one or even two administrations. What you could do is slow it down, reduce capital gains deduction, level it up, similar to what Reagan did to ordinary income, close a ton of the loopholes,

$2.5 trillion in loopholes, fund the IRS, the $750. billion-dollar tax gap, maybe raise the age on Social Security, lower Medicare eligibility, try and reduce health care costs. And you could construct a plan that says within two terms, we're going to get the growth in the deficit below the growth in GDP, such that the credit markets begin to recognize we are a strong credit again, takes down interest rates, which takes down our debt payments, and we start this upward spiral of fiscal responsibility. There is a narrative given a story here, and to me it makes a lot of sense. To me, I think I'd like to think America is ready for it, but people smarter than me running the campaigns or hopeful campaigns of Democratic

presidential candidates, no one has done anything. No one has articulated anything around, well, where would you cut? Where would you increase? Other than, other than the only thing we hear is tax the billionaires. They're not paying their fair share. and restore everything that was cut. And I'm not saying that it shouldn't be. Like, I want USAID fully funded, you know, people who worked in civil service to get their jobs back, et cetera. But there is this reflexive, I'm just going to undo everything that happened, which actually

forgets that in the first place, Doge was wildly popular on a bipartisan level, not Elon Musk doing it, but the idea that you would go in and clean up. which the Clinton administration did in the 90s, and it had widespread support. It's interesting, though, I mean, you point out that no one is doing this kind of on the national platform, but we do have a lot of governors who have done this stuff. Right. And that should be in their plus columns, right? You know, balancing budgets and cutting taxes.

I mean, Josh Shapiro talks about it. Yeah, Pritchgar, Shapiro. Yeah, Bashir, Westmore. So it'll be interesting to see, like, what level bullet point it is on the campaign. you know, if it's like five or six, you know, and by the way, we're actually grownups. And this is why we have bipartisan support. I wanted to add on the fetterman point. So when I first saw the video, I was pretty annoyed.

I'm not going to lie. Because I thought, like, this is a guy where, like, he barely shows up to his job, right? And we've seen those text messages. And, you know, some of it, I think, is unfair that your aid is leaking all of this stuff. but it's pretty damning material, right? Like, I don't want to go meet with veterans. Yeah, but what does that say when your own people are leaking, right? Well, totally.

I think there is a John's-Fetterman problem. It says you're an asshole. I know. If the people closest to you are shitposting you and think you're derelict in your duty, it's pretty damning. No, no, no, I agree with you. And, you know, we had him on when his book came out. And I talked to him, and his book is really harrowing

and beautiful stuff about his mental health crisis and, you know, wanting to kill himself and the support that he needed to be able to make it through that. And it feels like that person is definitely in there. But a lot of the evidence that we're seeing feels incongruous. Let's say, to put it politely. But so I'm angry, right? Like, John Fetterman can't show up to meet with sick kids or whatever,

but he can send in this video. He didn't go in person. That really would have been bad. But he sends in this video. And I listed in the content and I get it. He's friends with the McCormick's, right? He friends with Dave McCormick and Dina Powell, his wife. And Pennsylvania is a purple state, right?

And this is not out of the realm of possibility. You have a Democrat and a Republican. And it was interesting to see Peter Welch, the Democratic senator from Vermont, comes out right away, says John Fetterman is a friend and an important member of our caucus. It's a waste of energy to get spun up about his voting record or place in our party. He votes with us 90% of the time. Yeah. We need a big.

And this was what happened also with Joe Manchin. And it was always so frustrating to me because Joe Manchin, yeah, it's annoying, right? Like, you don't like whatever interview he's giving where he comes on and he shits on the party and says it's moving too far to the left. But you got the Inflation Reduction Act actually through because Joe Manchin reworked it into that skinny version, for instance. And he votes with you 90 plus percent of the time. And Federman released a statement saying, I'm a lifelong Democrat who votes overwhelmingly with my party. And should the Senate flip in November, I will still be the 51st vote that I ran on. He has said things that he has gone back on.

But I do think that he means that. And that he is just living in a little bit of a different era, not only in terms of how bipartisanship works, right? because it wouldn't have seemed strange a decade, two, three decades ago, certainly if a senator, you know, you had to split a dem Republican split and the person from the opposing party said something supportive of you. If you've worked on legislation together, right, to deliver for your community. You know, he's just fundamentally a liberal guy. He's married to a woman who was an undocumented immigrant when she first came here. But I think what you brought up about the power play involved in this, I think is really important. And that he is a strategic guy fundamentally.

He can kind of come off sometimes, like, he doesn't really know what's going on or he hasn't thought it through completely. But I like what you said about. Like, he's going to throw his weight around. And he's going to try to influence the party. And when he says, I don't believe in the socialism stuff, that he is also sending a warning to the party about how moderates or normie people feel about the DSA platform. And I don't think that putting, you know, Hassan and his skivies up is the right way to be making the argument about the threat of socialism, which I think was the point the Republicans were trying to.

But there are a lot of people on the ground who do feel that the party is moving too far to the left and are traditional Democratic voters. Yeah, there's – so with respect to Federman, Democrats will all say, as well Republicans, that, no, no, we respect moderates. it's a big tent. The reality is any senator who, in terms of their voting record, who says and also on the Republican side would be Susan Collins, whenever someone actually

reflects a moderate positioning, and that is, on occasion, in Fetterman's case, 4% of the time, I think Manchin, it was a small number of times, Susan Collins a small number of times, they get hate from both sides. The quote-unquote

respect that people claim to have for moderates in the middle does not show up in terms of actual opinion polls. People say they want a moderate as long as you vote with the party on every goddamn issue and sign up for the narrative promoted by the issue. I would argue it's not as bad on the Democratic side. Senators Bennett, Coons, Senator Warner, I think are legitimate moderates who command a certain amount of respect. But in a polarized world where algorithms want to play into our lazy thinking and tickle our sensors, It feels like the narrative, the orthodoxy, the comments, and the fundraising is all about how fucking crazy and polarized and extremists can anyone be.

It's been a race to the polls. So you could say in defense of Federman that he's been a victim of the fact that people actually don't want anyone ever to acknowledge anything on the other side. Having said that, I don't think he is, I think he's disabled. He had a massive stroke. and he suffered from severe depression, which, in my opinion, disqualifies you from being in the Senate. And I will get a ton of pushback, but my son has to pass a vision test to get a driver's license. Then we need proof of life from fucking Senator McConnell for him to be in the Senate.

Now, whether or not, you know, and let me backtrack here, suffering from, mental illness, creates empathy, good for you. But if you can't show up to maintain a basic level of your responsibilities, including meeting with the families of soldiers who have been killed or policemen who have been paralyzed in the line of duty, it says to me, you are not capable of fulfilling your role as a senator. And it just amazes me that we have decided the only qualification for being at the seat of power making these decisions is that you can get elected, which increasingly is about incumbency and how much money you can raise. I think we should apply the same cognitive test to Federman that should be applied to McConnell right now,

because my sense of Federman is that he is not well. If he's suffering from mental illness or depression, that's one thing. But is he physically capable of fulfilling his role? as Senator. Just as I think the same test should be applied to McConnell right now. These are very important positions. It is discrimination to not let someone at the age of 66 be an airline pilot, but we've decided, okay, we don't care. We're agist because certain things happen in terms of your gross motor skills that put other people's lives and well-being at risk. So we're going to discriminate against 66-year-olds. And yet in positions much more important, we've decided there's really no litmus test on cognitive ability, on physical capability, or whether you're

maintaining a baseline level of responsibility as a senator. I think you're going to get less pushback. I think you ended on a good note there with the point. And I mean, it's interesting because from the primary, John Fetterman's primary, I liked Connor Lamb in that primary and all of the progressives. And people like Hassan Piker have owned this that they were wrong. But they were like, you mushy moderates. You know, you like love the guy who he's from Purple District. Like he knows how to make Republicans and Democrats happy.

Like, we need a progressive fighter, blah, blah, blah. And like, they're pretty unhappy now because in the 10% of times that John Veteran isn't voting for the party is about Israel or in a large majority of it. You know, it's keeping the government open even when the party is trying to exact concessions that are for the benefit of America. like having your health care and about Israel and sending, you know, money for weapons, offensive weapons. So I, Conor Lamb egg on a lot of people's faces. And, you know, I'm curious as to whether Fetterman will even decide that he does want to run for re-election. It seems like someone who just doesn't really want to do this. And they always do. And they always do. I don't know. And it's not hard to give up big jobs. Do you hear that?

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Go to atio.com slash Vox and get 15% off your first year. That's A-T-T-I-O.com slash Vox. I wanted to, I was struck by the counterprogram. So there was a lot of Democratic counter programming. But Talariko's in particular, so did the big grocery drive. But he also did a ton of interviews. And he was on with a Fox reporter. So I wanted to show a clip from it and get your take on his decision to reverse some of his past positions.

During the 2021 hearing, you said there are six biological sexes. Do you still believe that standing here to me right now? No. I've missed the mark on some of my past statements. I will be the first to admit it. What I meant is that there are two sexes and then there's a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities. I obviously didn't say it correctly. There are not six sexes.

There are two. And I think the reason that politicians in that convention center across the street want to talk about six sexes is because they don't want to talk about $6 diesel. So just to nail it down here standing with me, you can confidently say there are two sexes, a man and a woman. Absolutely. So beyond the fact that I, you know, don't want to spend it. spend my day is having to ask about how many sexes do you think that they are there. I loved the six sexes because they don't want to talk about $6 diesel line. But he also talked about trans women in women's sports, you know, a few of the real hot button issues, culture war issues that he had made comments on in the past that were unsettling to some more in the middle, let's say, and didn't really paint him as a common sense kind of guy. do you think this is the right approach? Oh, James Salarico is giving cloud cover for us Democrats to pull our heads out of our asses around this trans issue.

Trans women should not be allowed to play competitive sports where there is money or scholarships on the line. And the small number of trans women that this would impact, if you're on the school board of a junior high school and a trans girl, wants to play volleyball, and you think it would be good for her and the team, have out it. I think sports are a wonderful way of building self-esteem. If you are, once you get to the point where college scholarships are on the line, much less money on the line, much less medals, I'm sorry, I wanted to play high school football. I didn't have the size. If you are not born with certain chromosomes, you cannot play competitive female sports.

That's where we will end up because it is a sane, rational positioning, and all this hand-wringing and political posturing that it's inspiring that we let a swimmer who has 6-5 show up and win a medal at an NC2A meet gives so much fodder. Take the cudgel away from the Republicans, and I'm sorry there probably are an example of 6, 8, 12, 15 transgender girls who went through transition pre-puberty. I'm sure there's some case studies of injustices. okay, sorry. Enough already. The WNBA needs to come out with a policy saying, you have to take a test, and if you were not born a woman, you cannot play in the WMBA. That's where it will end up. Get there now. Take away this cudgel and this talking point that results in a ton of moderates going, Democrats are fucking crazy. I'm going to vote for Republicans who then get an office and start decommissioning. and kicking transgender service people who have served their country honorably. I mean, what David Frum said applies here. If progressives won't enforce the border, fascists will. Enough already.

Trans athletes, in my view, should not be permitted to play women's sports. It's just enough already. And he's given cloud cover to the left. That was the big moment. He said, no, transgender girls should. not be allowed to play competitive sports. Someone on the left has finally come out and set it and taken away this enormous cudgel that has resulted in the demonization of the transgender community. And you brought this up that the key to taking the Senate, if we have any shot right now, is moving to

the center on cultural issues. Crime, cooperating with ICE, you brought that up, I had not thought about that. Yes, we're going to cooperate with ICE, get criminals out. Borders are not. optional. And they should be able to point to the fact that during Biden and Obama, many counts under many, you know, you could argue in many different periods, they were actually deporting more people. They were. They called them the deporter in chief. That was Obama's nickname. If we want to take back the Senate and restore the right and say to transgender women who have served their country honorably and put Harvey Milk's name back on that destroyer for serving honorably and being discharged under pure homophobic under the umbrella of a pure homophobia.

If we want to restore some level of dignity and rights to the trans and LGBT community, then we shouldn't be so fucking stupid on a small number of issues that are way outside of the mainstream and give racists and homophobes the opportunity to win elections. I thought it was a big moment when Tala Rico has given cloud cover for people. He's considered a very strong and progressive when he said, no, transgender girls should not be allowed to play competitive sports. That's a big moment and a turning point for Democrats that is way overdue. Your thoughts? Yeah, I agree with you.

I hope that it does give cloud cover for people. I don't even want to say that it's necessarily about, you know, this issue. And I happen to think this. I mean, it's an 80-20 issue. It's not odd to think this that there's a competitive advantage because of biology. But, oh, my God, I just totally, and it was like a good point as well. The cloud cover. Oh, God, it happens to you.

Just wait to your my age. It happens like, I don't remember what I had for breakfast. This is very, this is very. Because I'm like a mom. I'm actually getting scared that like all my friends are going through perimenopause. Oh, yeah? You don't really want to talk about this. I don't think that I am.

My favorite line with my partner is any time I get into an argument, I just say, is this the menopause speaking? And by the way, that really helps the argument. Yeah, you guys have a blissful marriage. Yeah. That really helps. It's a very constructive comment. Anyways.

I don't know what happened. We were talking about moving to the center on for Democrats and some cultural issues. Actually, what really surprises me, and I did not expect this even, you know, four, eight years ago, is that it's turned out that being fiscally liberal is actually much more acceptable to people than being culturally liberal. Because you thought it was the right? I mean, wasn't that always what you thought when we were having fights about like gay marriage, which seems so quaint now on a comparative basis from the kinds of things that we're talking about? But you were like, yeah, of course, if you're fiscally conservative and socially liberal, that's how you can win in these tough districts. And now it's

actually the opposite. I mean, our definition of what is culturally conservative, I think, has shifted. But that was something I didn't expect. I guess the rich have gotten so rich, and the elites are so against the little guy. And the culture of corruption is so pervasive that you have taken people who would be historically fiscal conservatives or moderates. And they're like billionaires tax. Trillionaires shouldn't exist. Maybe billionaires shouldn't exist. Like, you know, it's a very interesting transatlantic.

formation. And maybe I'm going to her pariamanibus. I'm saying to myself, don't say anything. And I, anyways, but- Well, we did kindergarten drop off today. So my estrogen first day is like, it's, oh my God, she was so excited, though. And when I'm saying, I'm tearing. That's nice. Yeah. I don't know. I think we did good that she was excited to go in. We'll see how she comes out. That's great. That's really nice. True story, my kid got rejected from seven of seven preschools, and that's why we left in New York. Unless this public school, they had to take her.

They had to take her. Yeah, that's what you get. That's what you get when you're an elitist douchebag like myself and apply to seven schools. Well. Anyways, what is unhealthy also about the Democratic position, if Democrats want to restore their credibility with the quote-unquote working class, the working class does not believe in demonizing success. Right. They're actually quite culturally, they're more conservative. and also they don't believe billionaires should be taxed out of existence.

Something that is core to American values and distinguishes us from Europe is that we believe it's okay to have a certain level of inequality, as long as as as a whole, we're all doing better. Yeah. Whereas Europe would rather be more equal, even if it comes at the cost of the whole doing less well. We celebrate success in the United States. Now, you add in really bad behavior and the spokespeople for the bill. billionaire class, you know, trafficking, underage girls, talking about how AI is going to kill us, but we're not responsible. And generally just being awful people, it feels like the billionaire brand

is the worst managed brand in the world behind AI in Israel right now. And the people they've chosen to represent billionaires are like Mr. Wonderful talking about data centers or Elon Musk, whose kids are shit posting them and is being sued by his, one of his former baby mamas. It's as, okay, at some point, they're just going to need better spokespeople. But the class warfare represented by some of our leadership in the Democratic Party turns off a lot of the working class because it's like, well, okay, I think Senator Warren is worth something like $7 or $10 million. Does that mean she's 10 times worse than a millionaire, but only 100 as bad as a billionaire? And by the way, she's made her millions, she's accreted

or gathered her millions while she's been in the Senate. And she keeps complaining about tax rates being too low, taxes have gone down during her tenure, including when they controlled all three branches of government. Americans like success. Americans don't want to demonize billionaires. What they want is a progressive tax code that is fair, and we don't have that right now. It has gotten so out of control with the regulatory capture, the tax rates on corporations being at all time low as a percentage of GDP, whereas wages as a percentage of GDP are an all time low, it has gone way too far. So come up with a progressive tax structure, come up with means of cutting costs, come up with means of restoring some sort of fiscal sanity. But don't, this notion that you can't be

a billionaire unless you've crawled over people, that's just not true. I have found as someone who knows a lot of billionaires, on average, they're really high character people. Because the best way to become a billionaire is to be born rich. But if you're not smart enough to do that, The second best way is to be really fucking talented and a high character person because people want you to win. And they put you in a room of opportunities when you're not in it. I have found the exact opposite of what the far left likes to believe and normalize. There's this cartoon of billionaires being Monty Burns that they own the nuclear power plan and they're horrible people. That has not been my experience.

And I think almost every real litmus test of the character and generosity of most very wealthy people. is totally counter to that. And the working man and woman, even in unions, they themselves are comfortable with a certain level of inequality and are uncomfortable with this far-left notion that we should tax them out of existence, that billionaire should not exist. Because one of the wonderful, somewhat illusory things

or weird things about Americans is they believe they have a greater shot of being in the top 1% than 1%. They believe there's a much greater likelihood they'll be in the 1% than a 1 in 100 chance. So where we screw up is that America is actually quite fiscally liberal. It's much more culturally centrist than a lot of Democratic candidates have accepted. Support for the show comes from CoreWeave. Everywhere you look, AI is expanding what we thought was possible and at the center of it all is CoreWeave.

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Try for free today at Odu.com slash Vox. That's ODO.O dot com slash Vox. Support for the show comes from Delta Airlines. Every athlete at the top of her game knows that greatness isn't just a destination. It's a grueling, lifelong journey. It's built on early mornings, silent sacrifices, and an unwavering drive to outclimed the achievements of yesterday. That is the journey of a WNBA athlete, and Delta is there every step of the way. Delta is proud to host these competitors, providing charter flights for every WNBA team,

to elevate their travel experience and champion equituary. on every leg of their trip. Keep climbing with Delta Airlines, the official airline of the WNBA. Today marks two years since the launch of Raging Moderates. So we thought it'd be fun to take a trip down memory lane to the very beginning

and hear a little taste of what we had to say on our very first episode. And the producers have put together a mashup. Jessica, we're raging moderates with emphasis on the term raging. What does the term moderate mean to you? Moderate just means

anything that's around the center. That's what it is. Around the center of an issue. Yeah. I like to think it means we're not part of a cult. Occasionally we could acknowledge the other side. That works too. I mostly just want power.

I'm hoping that we aggregate so much influence up and down ballot. I think you have enough power already. Harris and Trump are neck and neck. I'm fundamentally depressed that this is a neck and neck race. I feel like every time Donald Trump's on the ballot, you just think how is it possible that this could be close, and yet it is. I've heard a lot of fears that polling constantly underestimates Trump because there's a lot of closeted Trump voters.

Do you think that people are no longer embarrassed about endorsing Trump and they're no longer closeted? I mean, he's lost a lot of elections. He won in 2016, but since then he's been a big drag. This is the crescendo moment of the Trump era. And I think that people are out there for it. I wonder how much of this is the media wants to Jones up a closer race and make it seem more heated and tighter than it is.

And I do think it's tighter than I would have thought. Trump is basically at his ceiling. No one says, like, I don't know where Donald Trump stands on the issues. Old men are going Trump. Young women are going Harris. I think the overlooked crowd here is young men. It's not that they're moving towards the Republican Party. I think they're moving away from the Democratic Party.

And the thing that just blew my mind, Jess, was I went on the DNC.org website. And it has a section that says, who we serve. and at list 16 demographic groups, everyone from the disabled to veterans to immigrants. The only people they didn't list were men. And I think that's how a lot of young men feel. They just, quite frankly, don't feel seen by the Democratic Party. Donald Trump just has a list of his policies. And some of them are like, deport everyone.

Well, how are you going to go around and find 15 million people that you're going to throw out of the country? My prediction is that he wins by virtue of the fact that I think expectations have been set so high for her. and so low for him. I don't think she's battle-tested. I think she's out of practice. Anyways, we shall see. Well, I hope you're wrong in the nicest possible way. I hope I'm wrong as well.

I mean, that sincerely. Jess, let me just say that the 24 months with you, it seemed like 23 and a half. It has gone really fast. It has gone really fast. The two-year did sneak up on me. Yeah. But I feel like we look really different.

Really? I think you look exactly the same. I hope not. I mean, I just had a baby. I'm looking more and more likely alien from close encounters of the third kind. No. You watch. It'll be nice.

In 20 years, you can just trust me on this. You just start leaning into the ugly. You just sort of embrace it. I don't know how to segue. No, well, can I just say that this has been awesome and a really wonderful and unexpected part of my life and very thankful for it. And it's actually good looking back to see that we didn't sound like lunatics who were like living in Brat summer and saying this is all going to be all well and good. And, you know, Harris can pull this out that we were clear-eyed about what was to come. And something that I enjoy about the show, I'm going to enjoy a lot of things about the show. But I feel like we are pretty self-reflective and like to call balls and strikes about things that we even get wrong. And. sometimes you don't have space to do that, especially when you do TV all the time. You know, you just have your 30, 60, 90 seconds or whatever it is. So this has been an amazing forum for me,

personally, to be able to really work through things in the course of a long-term raging, moderate relationship. And that's been a huge value to me. So thank you. Thank you. And I'm just some behind the music here, just sitting to the program itself. You are one of maybe two or three people I have ever worked with that full stop, everyone loves working with. Literally, everybody loves working with Jessica Tarlov. You are pleasant, you are smart, you are a professional, you show up with data, you're easy to get along with, you're innovative. People love, to a person, people love working with you. So thanks for being a culture carrier for the organization, and you just make everyone's workday a little bit nicer. So in addition to the fact

the show has been a success, you have been a really nice addition to the culture kind of behind the scenes. You are just a wonderful person to work with. So let's move on to 9-11. It is the 25-year anniversary of 9-11. And I just wanted to reflect on it for a moment. imagine you were in high school. Is that right? Yeah, it was my senior year of high school, where you're the class of 9-11. So, as I'm famous for doing, I'm going to turn this back to me. I was living in New York. I had just split up for my wife, and she called me, we're still close friends and we're close friends then, and she said, can you come over? She had an apartment with a deck overlooking downtown, and I said, sure, what's up? And she said, the World Trade Center is on fire.

So me and my friend Greg Shove, who was staying with me at the time, went over and we're on her deck, and the World Trade Center was on fire. And then we saw a plane flying way too low, disappear behind the other tower, and then an explosion come out the front of the tower. And that was the plane slamming into the second tower. And at that moment, within a few moments, you realize this was a terrorist attack. and all three of us had much different reactions to that moment. But over the course of the next, I think it was 50 minutes and 108 or 50 and 78 minutes, I saw something I don't think I will ever see again. And that is, I remember when watching the towers come down,

I could feel the heat from the implosion of those towers and thinking, I will never see anything like this again. It felt like something out of a sci-fi movie, a Star Wars movie. If you didn't know what was happening, it didn't look real. It looked CGI, and then a sea of people started flowing up the river that was 6th Avenue. And actually, the largest maritime evacuation wasn't Dunkirk. It was ferries and boats that transported a half a million people from lower Manhattan away to safety. And then just some couple, a few observations of being sort of an accidental observer to 9-11.

there was a moment on the radio where they said 18 planes are unaccounted for. And all of a sudden you thought, am I in a tall building? I mean, you weren't thinking rationally. You're like, should we go down to the ground? Some other observations. It was the first time that I think ever Manhattan was closed. You were not allowed to leave or come in. And what was really striking about it was the city went dead quiet for three or four days.

no honking, no yelling, no talking. Everyone was sort of just processing what had just happened. And occasionally you would see someone walking down the street on a cell phone sobbing. Like clearly they'd gotten bad news, some other things. I went to Washington Square Park where there was a memorial for the victims. And it was the gathering place where relatives and loved ones of people who were missing would gather to hand out flyers to try and find their loved ones who were missing. And you would see a couple, or you would see a wife who was searching for her husband. I'm thinking one whose husband worked to Canter Fitzgerald. And there were literally eight or 12 of her neighbors with her, walking around with her, handing out these flyers with a guy's picture. And all of the friends knew that this guy was

gone. Yeah. But they were, you know, they were doing it out of respect. It was the first time in history, U.S. airspace was closed, and 38 planes were diverted from U.S. airspace into Canada, and the town of Gander, population 10,000, took 6,000 Americans in, and for several days did their laundry, watched their kids, got their prescription medication. And then, by the way, the Canadian troops followed up. no questions asked, into Iraq. I would argue right now that Canadians have demonstrated more fidelity and regard and concern for Americans than our current president.

The notion that we are at war economically with someone who has been such a great friend to us in our time of crisis is immoral. It is literally repugnant. And then the story trying to bring it back full circle to the midterms that really moved me was the story of Flight 93. So Flight 93, they actually had phones. And they figured out, they found out that at this point, the World Trade Centers had already been hit

and that they were, in fact, on a suicide mission. And to that point, when a plane had been hijacked, they were told not to do anything because most passengers survived. They took off for Havana or landed and made demands, and the passengers survived. Not this time. And the passengers basically realized

they were part of a suicide mission to, and then the plane was headed to Washington to crash into what they probably thought was the Capitol. And so they decided that they were going to, and there's tape of this, there's a famous audio recording of a guy saying, let's roll, where they, three of them, three of the bigger guys decided to load up, they think a food cart with liquid and heavy items, and they crashed through the cockpit door and tried to regain control of the plane, recognizing they were probably going to die, which they did. The hijackers took the plane down into a field, but it was diverted from its original target. And the thing that struck me about it was, you know, think about this decision they faced, right? Well, we could just hope that things

are going to work out. Or we could do something about it, recognizing doing something about it probably means almost certain death. And the way they decided the construct they leveraged to make this decision, they voted. At that moment, when I heard that story, I had taken so for granted the construct and the concept of voting. And so I want to bring this back full circle to, it is insane that we have a government that is treating a friend and an ally the way we are treating Canada. And two, what a privilege it is to be able to vote. Any other thoughts, Jess? Yeah. I mean, I loved all of that. And it's a different spin on the story of Flight 93 that I think is really important and salient.

I take great comfort in hearing other people's 9-11 experiences because it grounds us in this communal experience that was not just New York, but became a national and then a global experience. just that we banded together in the wake of this against a common enemy and that our allies, it was no questions asked. But 9-11 is very meaningful. I grew up in Tribeca. We were evacuated. I served meals to first responders. We opened our home to them. They came and used the bathroom there. I've vivid memories of fire trucks from all over the country being parked on my block. And my dad was in Los Angeles at the time. And like you said, the airspace closed, so he started driving home. And he got to Las Vegas before he could reach my mom.

And the terror that he felt, the anxiety, like, where are my girls? And, you know, he died of a 9-11 cancer. So it's just, you can't believe that it's 25 years. And I'm so thankful that. Mom Donnie is releasing these documents about what happened and what was actually going on with everyone's health. Sorry, I'm done. Anyway, it's very sad. I didn't know about your dad.

Well, you got to read my book in time for the Y. My understanding is more people have passed from the airborne illnesses post-9-11. and then I actually died that day. I didn't know that about your father. I'm very sorry. Thanks. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, I had the CEO of AMB, which is this big REIT, real estate guy, a guy named Pamid Mogadam, he called me. I think it was the day after. And he goes, you got to trust me on this? He's like, don't go down to the pile. And I said, why? Because you could go down and volunteer, as it sounds like you and your family did. He said there's millions of tons of pulverized glass, asbestos, and chemicals. And he goes, you don't want to get anywhere near downtown right now.

And it was just funny that he knew it. But our health and human services, I mean, Christina Todd Whitman really fucked up. Well, and she's conspicuously quiet now that they're releasing these. And the past mayors should have put the documents out. Like, it's crazy. Yeah. The 9-11 fun community is incredible. And like the social workers, like my mom preferred the grief groups and social workers there to the Sloan Kettering stuff because it's just everybody knows what it's about. You know what I mean? And you're there for the same reason and the same kind of tragedy. But there are a lot of people who I think should be held criminally responsible for the damage of this. John Stewart was talking about it yesterday with Mom Donnie standing behind him. And the fact that

like whatever you think of mom, Donnie. I look at these like 9-11 families, the ones that don't want him there. And I'm like, this guy is actually trying to create some transparency. You know, it just sucks. Well, that's maybe not a great place to end it, but we are going to end it there. Jess, have a great rest of the week. And again, I think all of our listeners are very sorry about your dad. Thanks.

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