Tangle - The Harris-Walz CNN interview.
Episode Date: September 3, 2024The Harris-Walz interview. On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz spoke with CNN’s Dana Bash in their first interview since Harris replaced President Joe Bid...en as the Democratic nominee for president. The interview, which was broadcast Thursday night but recorded earlier that day, lasted approximately 27 minutes and touched on a range of issues, including border security, fracking and the war in Gaza, as well as how Harris’s positions on those issues have changed over time. You can read today's podcast here, our “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.You can watch the entire Tangle Live event at City Winery NYC on our YouTube Channel!Check out Episode 6 of our podcast series, The Undecideds. Please give us a 5-star rating and leave a comment!Today’s clickables: A quick note (0:40), Quick hits (1:48), Today’s story (4:03), Right’s take (7:05), Left’s take (11:07), Isaac’s take (15:09), Questions Answered (21:11), Under the Radar (23:14), Numbers (24:14), Have a nice day (25:02)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Help share Tangle.I'm a firm believer that our politics would be a little bit better if everyone were reading balanced news that allows room for debate, disagreement, and multiple perspectives. If you can take 15 seconds to share Tangle with a few friends I'd really appreciate it. Email Tangle to a friend here, share Tangle on X/Twitter here, or share Tangle on Facebook here.Take the survey: What do you think of the Harris-Walz interview? Let us know!Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain, one of the most moving and funny films of the year.
Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy
Award winner Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite
for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the
pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history.
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See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th.
Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,
a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond
Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web,
his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.
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Need help? Ask your bank about relief measures that may be available to you. Learn more at Canada.ca slash it pays to know. A message from
the Government of Canada. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about Kamala Harris and Tim Walls sitting for an interview with CNN. We're
going to break down what happened in that interview and share some reflections about it.
Before we do, though, a quick heads up that on Friday, we published a written version of our
reader mailbag. If you are a Sunday pod listener, you'll know Ari and I did some reader questions,
some listener questions that came in. But yeah, we did a much longer version with many more
questions in the newsletter. We got a lot of really positive responses to it. Some people
saying it was a great, thoughtful research answers, that this is where Tangle really shines.
Others saying they hope we do more of these in the future
and how fun the personal questions were.
This is just to say you should go read it
if you haven't yet.
It's up on our website, readtangle.com.
The headline is Your Questions Answered.
It's a piece you'll have to pay to unlock
if you're not yet a Tangle member,
but it's worth it and it's worth supporting us
because Tangle memberships support everything we do,
including this podcast. So if you're not yet a member, you should really go become one. All right,
with that out of the way, I'm going to pass it to John for our main story, and I'll be back for my
take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody. Hope y'all had a great Labor Day weekend.
Here are your quick hits for today. First up, over the weekend, Israel's military recovered
the bodies of six hostages, including an American citizen recently killed in an underground tunnel
built by Hamas. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis rallied across the country to push
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a hostage release
deal. Number two, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired his Air Force commander just days
after an F-16 fighter jet crashed and killed a pilot. Russia and Ukraine continue to trade
airstrikes, with Russia's latest strikes hitting the capital city of Kiev. Number three, after four
years, Oregon ended the decriminalization of
possession of small amounts of heroin, fentanyl, meth, and other hard drugs. Number four, more than
10,000 hotel workers across eight cities went on strike over Labor Day weekend amid contract
negotiations with some of the largest hotel chains in the country. And number five, Brazil banned X,
the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, after X failed to appoint a local legal representative as required under a new law.
We start tonight with the race for the White House and Vice President Kamala Harris in her first sit-down interview since capturing the Democratic nomination for president.
Over the course of 27 minutes alongside her running mate Tim Walz,
Harris fended off challenges to her policy positions.
And she tread a thin line between being a change candidate
and carrying on the legacy she's forged with President Biden.
To be sure, she did make some news, like saying she would bring a Republican into her cabinet,
something that's not been done since the Obama administration.
I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion.
I think it's important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions
are being made that have different views, different experiences.
And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my cabinet who was a Republican.
On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz spoke with CNN's Dana Bash in the first interview since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president. The interview, which was
broadcast Thursday night but recorded earlier that day, lasted approximately 27 minutes and
touched on a range of issues, including border security, fracking, and the war in Gaza, as well
as how Harris's positions on those issues have changed over time. Bash began the interview by asking Harris what she would do on day one as president.
Harris answered that her highest priority is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class.
She did not share specifics when pressed by Bash,
instead pointing broadly to her plan for an opportunity economy.
Harris's positions on fracking and border security also came up repeatedly.
Bash asked whether Harris still supports a ban on fracking, as she initially had in her 2020
campaign for the Democratic nomination. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president,
I will not ban fracking, Harris responded. On the border, Bash noted that Harris had been tasked
with addressing the root causes of migration and asked why the Biden administration had waited three and a half years to implement sweeping
asylum restrictions. Harris defended her efforts on border issues, suggesting her efforts to address
root causes had actually resulted in a number of benefits, including historic investments by
American businesses in that region. She also criticized former President Donald Trump for his efforts to stall a bipartisan border security bill
earlier this year, saying he killed the bill
because Biden signing a solution
would not have benefited Trump politically.
Walls fielded just a few questions during the interview,
including one over his comments
on his National Guard service.
When pressed by Bash,
Walls seemed to concede that he misspoke,
but added, my wife, the English teacher, told me my grammar is not always correct.
In the weeks leading up to the interview, Republicans had criticized Harris for eschewing
interviews or interactions with the press, and after the sit-down with Bash was announced,
many critics questioned why Walls was included. Harris campaign spokesperson Kevin Munez defended
the move, saying, for the last 20 years, every ticket, Republican and Democrat, sat for a joint interview.
The campaign also said that Harris would do a solo interview at a later date, but did not share further details.
Former President Trump said Harris appeared defective in the interview, remarking at a campaign rally on Friday,
This is going to be the next president of our country? I don't think so.
Harris, meanwhile, largely steered clear of mentioning Trump during the interview.
When asked about Trump's recent comments questioning her racial identity,
Harris called his remarks the same old tire playbook and told Bash, next question.
Today, we'll explore what the right and the left are saying about the interview, and then Isaac's take.
We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.
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Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,
a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond
Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal
web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.
Alright, first up, let's start with what the right is saying.
The right criticizes Harris' performance, suggesting she did not give coherent, substantive answers.
Some say the interview was a reminder of Harris' limitations as a candidate.
Others say Bash let Harris and Walls off the hook.
In the New York Times, Bret Stephens wrote,
A vague and vacuous TV interview didn't help Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris didn't hurt herself in the interview this week with CNN's Dana Bash.
She didn't particularly help herself either.
On the positive side, she came across as warm, relatable, and, to recall Barack Obama's famous 2008 exchange with Hillary Clinton,
more than likable enough, Stevens said.
Less positive, she was vague to the point of vacuous.
She struggled to give straight answers on shifting her positions on fracking and border
security other than to say, my values have not changed.
Fine.
But she evaded the question of why it took the Biden administration more than three years
to gain better control over the border.
A bigger weakness in the interview was the presence of Harris's running mate, Governor
Tim Walz of Minnesota.
He was transparently evasive in answering Bash's questions about his misstatement about his military service, false claims about a DUI arrest, and misleading
statements about his family's fertility treatments. If there are other lies or untruths in Walz's
record, the campaign ought to get ahead of them now, Stevens wrote. There was too much fluff in
this interview to lay to rest doubts about Harris's readiness for the highest office.
Tougher questions next time, please.
In The Federalist, Eddie Scarry said,
The CNN interview reminded people of what has always been true about Kamala.
There's a reason that Democrats in the media forced an amorphous,
ever-shifting concept of joy to be the animating force of Kamala's campaign.
This interview, containing not a single unexpected question,
illustrates perfectly why they've done so, Scarry wrote.
Kamala can't withstand scrutiny.
She implied that she's never been in favor of banning fracking, but when confronted with her position when she ran for president in 2020,
she skated past the question to only say that she has made very clear she's not in favor of it.
Kamala can't articulate an argument for herself.
Confronted with her on-record position to decriminalize unauthorized crossings at the southern border, she started talking about climate policy, Scarry said.
Kamala can't even fake a fundamental grasp of critical foreign policy issues.
The war in Israel is just one of two violent global conflicts to break out under the Kamala
Biden administration.
And in the almost year since it started, the closest she could come to explaining
her depth of understanding about it or how to bring an end to it was to repeat in frustration,
we have to get a deal done. In the New York Post, Isaac Skor argued CNN's interview showed how media
will work overtime to get Kamala Harris elected. Asked about her various flip-flops on various
issues, and energy policy in particular, she served up a word salad.
Climate change is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time, and platitudes.
The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed, Skor wrote.
But as full of dodges, obfuscations, and outright lies as it
might have been, a disaster it was not. Harris started slow, but the interview showed exactly
how, with a savvy campaign strategy and friendly media, she is capable of defeating Trump.
This playbook of simple, scripted answers only works, though, because it was paired with Bash's
friendly tone and approach. She would press them once, but never really tried to pin either of them down
if they continued to evade uncomfortable terrain.
Bash really gave the game away when she asked,
with her final questions in the first interview Harris granted to the American people in months,
softballs about her niece and Walsh's son, Skor said.
If Harris's weaknesses are to be exploited,
Republicans and their standard-bearer will need to prosecute the case against her in a diligent and intelligible manner, because the media aren't going to.
All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying.
All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying.
The left is mixed on the interview, but many say Harris delivered a solid, if unremarkable,
performance. Some say Harris' messaging approach mirrors Biden's in 2020.
Others argue Harris' policy positions are still hard to understand.
In the New York Times, Michelle Cottle called the interview a solid first effort.
After all the hand-wringing about how Kamala Harris has been avoiding extended media interviews, the Democratic presidential nominee did a solid
job tonight in her sit-down with CNN's Dana Bash, Cottle wrote. Did we get a deep dive into Harris'
policy positions? No, we did not. But that was not the point of this interview. This was about
Harris introducing herself to Americans in her new role and proving a few basic things to everyone.
Her response was that her values have not changed, but her experience as vice president has given her a different perspective and made her appreciate the importance of achieving consensus.
You may not like that answer, but she was confident and unapologetic in explaining herself, Cottle said.
Harris needed to come across as serious and thoughtful and, well, presidential.
Mission accomplished. She was serious at times and even a bit salty, as she was when contrasting
the decency of President Biden with the utter indecency of Donald Trump. But she never seemed
nasty or even super angry, which was also vital, since women simply cannot get away with that like
men can. In The New Yorker, John Cassidy wrote,
Harris' political calculus takes shape.
Harris and her advisors clearly believe that being accused of flip-flopping
is a lesser threat to her campaign
than giving her opponent the ammunition to brand her as a radical.
They may well be right.
Many voters have a jaundiced opinion of politicians to begin with
and hardly expect them to display the constancy of a Carthusian monk. Moreover, there is no flip-flopper more unabashed than Trump, a former Democrat who
donated to Harris' 2011 and 2013 campaigns in California, Cassidy said. Stripping things down
to essentials, Harris is running on the same platform that Biden ran on in 2020 as an antidote
to the Trump insanity. Harris's unflustered performance
at Kim's cafe will have reassured Democrats that she is unlikely to trip, Cassidy added.
Harris demonstrated a determination to not get distracted by Trump's gibs and antics,
which she will certainly need to draw upon between now and November. In recent days,
the former president has staged a political photo op at Arlington National Cemetery and reposted on his
social media account QAnon slogans and sexist misogynistic remarks about the vice president.
He's flailing about. And Jacobin Branko-Marketic said Harris's CNN interview didn't inspire
confidence. That the interview had the level of hype it did was fairly absurd in the first place,
since up until this point, answering questions from reporters had been a routine, unremarkable part of a politician's job,
especially one vying to become president, Mark Hedick wrote. To the extent that all Harris had
to do last night was avoid the kind of potentially viral disastrous interview moments that have
plagued her in previous years, she passed this lowest of low bars. Even so, despite everyone
and their hamster knowing the question was coming,
Harris still doesn't have a good answer for why exactly she's done a 180
on a host of policy issues she championed when first running for president.
The Harris campaign so far has often seemed intentionally designed
to confuse observers about what kind of president she would actually be.
She wants to raise corporate taxes, but she's actively courting big business tycoons.
She hasn't commented one way or another on whether she'll keep Federal Trade Commission
Chair Lena Kahn in place after billionaire donors called for her ouster. Her chief foreign policy
advisor is a major proponent of the Iran deal, while Harris' insiders publicly say it's as good
as dead if she returns to the White House, Marketic said. Last night's interview will not
be reassuring to anyone hoping Harris would steer the country in a more progressive direction,
or even simply be a competent president. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take.
All right, that is it for it with the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take.
So I don't know if it's possible for an interview like this to have less than detectable impact,
but if it is, I think that is basically where we are. A few weeks ago, we published a piece on the
2024 race becoming a toss-up. In the My Take section of that newsletter,
I alluded to the fact that Harris was going to do an interview in late August. Here is what I wrote
then, quote, whenever she does take a tough interview, and that could be soon, she is going
to be challenged on her record. She'll be asked about her flip-flops, her role on the border as
vice president, the Biden administration's record, and what she really believes now. One of three things will happen. One, she'll step on a few rakes, remind us why
she struggled so much in the 2020 Democratic primary, and bleed some support. Two, she'll
show that she is the refreshing and engaging candidate, giving us something new and the
enthusiasm for her will go into overdrive. Or three, she'll have some gaffes and some great
moments. Each side will cherry pick those parts and the race will not actually change much, end
quote. I think it is safe to say that we are living in reality number three. Kudos to Tangle
Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, who actually suggested including that bullet point, not just
as an option, but the most likely option, which he was correct about. I don't think Harris nailed
it, as some liberal commentators suggested. I don't think it was a disaster, as many conservative
commentators suggested. The whole interview was a predictable shrug. In fact, we predicted it.
In our Sunday podcast from two weeks ago, Ari and I guessed several questions that were going to be
asked and guessed how Harris might answer a few of them, and we did a pretty good job. I'm still waiting for someone to ask Harris how she will govern differently from Biden,
but she'll probably have to answer a few more questions for us to get those answers. Some of
Harris's responses in the interview were very smart. For instance, she didn't take the bait
on the question about Trump saying she turned black, instead saying it was the same old playbook
from him, and then moving on. I thought this was the perfect way to handle it. Voters aren't interested in that stuff right now,
and Harris made a conscious choice to just say that's Trump being Trump and then keep the
interview going, which is a very effective way to both call out his character, dismiss a silly
claim, and stay focused on her own campaign. Some of her answers were smart politically,
even if they require favorably
reframing history. For instance, when asked about Bidenomics, she defended the president's economic
agenda by emphasizing that they inherited a crisis where hundreds of people were dying a day from
COVID and the economy had crashed, therefore they spent most of their first term addressing multiple
crises. It is true that the economy had crashed and thousands of people a day
were dying of COVID when Biden and Harris came into office. But it's also true that in January
of 2021, Trump was already leading a recovery. The unemployment rate had been falling for months
and the global economy was already bouncing back. So they inherited a less than ideal situation and
certainly a far worse one than what Trump inherited from Obama. But you could also fairly say that they didn't just inherit the crisis, they inherited the
recovery effort as well. And, of course, people continued to die of or with COVID under Biden and
Harris. Some of Harris's answers were unhelpful. For instance, she had no real explanation for her
change of position on fracking, except to say her quote-unquote values hadn't changed, that she did not move to ban fracking as vice president, I'm not sure how
exactly that would have worked, and that she has seen we can have a clean energy economy without
banning fracking. That last part seems like the real answer, and I'll tout again that this is
actually the answer we thought she'd give, but she took a while to get there. I think it's safe to
say that Harris isn't going to ban fracking, but she hasn't clarified why she changed her mind from four years ago.
This, of course, is part of why she battles questions about her authenticity.
Some of Harris's answers were just bad. On Biden's Israel-Gaza approach, Harris effectively
said she would not do anything differently from Biden, and then insisted there would be no change
of policy because they have to get a deal done to end the war and get the hostages home. That answer may
sound nice, but it's a total contradiction. The current policy has not produced a deal in 11
months. This ultimately embodies what is going to be her biggest challenge as a candidate.
She needs to simultaneously champion the good things about the Biden-Harris administration while also promising to offer something new. She needs to promise to get
things done while also explaining why those things haven't happened in the last four years.
She needs to back the current president while also explaining how she is going to be different.
It is an incredibly difficult line to walk, and I'm not entirely sure she has a good plan in place
yet to do so. As for Walls,
I was not one of the people who thought it was a bad look for him to join Harris for the interview.
Presidential candidates do joint interviews with their running mates all the time, and Harris and
Walls are on a compressed timeline, so it makes total sense to me that he'd be there. Still,
while Walls has been a very good surrogate who has tapped into a quote-unquote we-are-the-normal-people vibe that is connecting with voters,
I didn't think he helped much in the interview.
Bash threw him some very predictable questions about misrepresenting parts of his record,
and he did not offer a great explanation,
instead suggesting that he simply misspoke and that his wife has always told him he has trouble with grammar.
In retrospect, it may have been a better decision for the optics to let Harris go out there alone and then have Walls join her for an interview later.
After watching the interview a second time, if I were grading the three participants,
this is how I'd mark them. Walls gets a C-, Harris gets a C, and Bash gets a B-. It's never
great for a campaign when the interviewer gets the best grade, but it's not a disaster when your
candidates are pulling down Cs either.
Ultimately, I don't think this is going to go down
as a meaningful moment in the 2024 race.
We'll be right back after this quick break.
Oh, that coffee smells good.
Can you pass me the sugar when you're finished?
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
What are you doing?
That's salt, not sugar.
Let's get you another coffee.
Feeling distracted?
You're not alone.
Many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with mortgage payments on their minds.
If you're struggling with your payments, speak to your bank.
The earlier they understand your situation, the more options and relief measures could be available to you.
Learn more at Canada.ca slash it pays to know.
A message from the Government of Canada.
Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,
a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown.
When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime,
Willis begins to unravel a criminal web,
his family's buried history,
and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th,
only on Disney+.
From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain,
one of the most moving and funny films of the year.
Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg
and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin.
A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins
who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother.
The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions
resurface against the backdrop of their family history.
A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year,
garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th.
All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered.
This one's from David in Seattle, Washington. David said,
As Tangle succeeds and expands, which I hope continues, how big of a priority is it to get
into breaking news yourselves? I understand it's difficult to be first to report something without
great connections, and those connections often require a lot of time and or quid pro quo-ish
favors, which would conflict with Tangle's goal of being unbiased to build. Would you try to hire
an established reporter with breaking news chops? If so, how would you ensure they would with Tangle's goal of being unbiased to build. Would you try to hire an
established reporter with breaking news chops? If so, how would you ensure they would fit Tangle's
mission? If not, why not? So I really appreciate this question. We're not angling to get into
breaking news, but we will continue to expand our original reporting. For example, recent
editions like our Project 2025 breakdown, new series like The Undecideds,
and one-on-one interviews with people like Haviv Gur and Representative Ken Buck, the Republican from Colorado,
are all examples of content that we'll be leaning into as Tangle evolves.
Projects that involve detailed analysis that you won't find in other outlets.
Breaking news is a resource and people-intensive undertaking, and we'd have to scale up Tangle significantly to do it well. That would probably mean soliciting outside investments and pivoting away from the
newsletter's focus on commentary and debate, which we don't want to do. I've said this before,
but my goal has never been to grow Tangle into an enormous newsroom like CNN. Instead,
we want to maintain a small, close-knit team that does a few core things really well.
The nature of breaking news
isn't inherently incompatible with our mission, but there are plenty of breaking news journalists
who do the job skillfully and without obvious bias. We're focused on creating a space to consume
balanced reporting, improving political discourse, and growing the Tangle community, so breaking news
just isn't a priority. That being said, if a scoop ever does fall into our lap or we go hunting for one and get it, Tangle readers will, of course, be the first to know. All right, that is it for
our reader questions. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you
guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under-the-radar story for today,
folks. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, which tracks border encounters and releases them the following month,
reported a decrease of 25,000 encounters for July, a 19% drop.
The surprise decrease comes amid a recent trend of migrant encounters increasing in July and August in previous years.
However, after five consecutive months of decrease, arrests for illegal southern border crossings
are expected to rise slightly from July to August.
CBP also tracks arrest totals,
and the agency expects arrests in August
to total about 58,000.
Taken together, the figures indicate
that border crossings could have bottomed out,
but the next round of CBP data in October
will provide more clarity.
U.S. officials have largely attributed the decline
in crossings and arrests to Mexican authorities, increasing their enforcement. CBP publishes its
data online, and PBS has this story. There are links to both in our episode description.
All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of days between President Joe Biden announcing his exit from the presidential race
and Vice President Kamala Harris's interview with CNN is 39.
The number of viewers for Harris and Wallace's CNN interview was 6.3 million, according to Nielsen.
The number of viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 was 1.2 million.
The number of times Harris mentioned former President Donald Trump by
name in the interview is three. The number of times Harris mentioned President Joe Biden by
name in the interview is seven. The number of times fracking was mentioned in the interview
was 11. The number of times the southern border was mentioned in the interview was 12. And the
number of times Harris said her values had not changed or did not change in the interview was five.
And last but not least, our have a nice day story.
According to the Energy Information Administration, solar energy made up 60% of new electricity capacity in the first half of 2024 in the United States. Other renewable energy sources have also
been increasing, including battery installations accounting for 20% of new electricity additions, with wind and nuclear power also contributing.
Optimistically, the second half of 2024 could see an even greater increase in the use of
renewable energy, leading some to estimate that 96% of the United States' new electricity
capacity could be emission-free.
TechSpot has this story, and there's a link in
today's episode description. All right, everybody, that's it for today's episode. As always, if you'd
like to support our work, please head over to retangle.com and sign up for a membership. We'll
be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off.
Have a great day, y'all.
Peace.
Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Law. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kedak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady.
The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media
manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. If you're looking for more from Tangle,
please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.