Tangle - The Harris-Walz CNN interview.

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

The 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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Starting point is 00:00:00 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.
Starting point is 00:00:34 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+. Got a mortgage? Chances are you're thinking about your payments right now. 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
Starting point is 00:01:50 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.
Starting point is 00:02:28 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,
Starting point is 00:02:44 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
Starting point is 00:03:32 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.
Starting point is 00:04:32 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
Starting point is 00:05:04 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,
Starting point is 00:05:57 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
Starting point is 00:06:40 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,
Starting point is 00:07:02 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,
Starting point is 00:07:41 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. Working in the trades is intense. It can be stressful and painful. Some guys use drugs and alcohol to cope. But when we ask for help, or we see someone struggling with addiction...
Starting point is 00:08:34 Our silence speaks volumes. See how you can help, or get help, at Canada.ca slash ease the burden. 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+.
Starting point is 00:09:12 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.
Starting point is 00:09:48 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.
Starting point is 00:10:16 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,
Starting point is 00:10:51 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.
Starting point is 00:11:22 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
Starting point is 00:11:57 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
Starting point is 00:12:41 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.
Starting point is 00:13:24 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
Starting point is 00:14:01 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,
Starting point is 00:14:45 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
Starting point is 00:15:16 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
Starting point is 00:15:57 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.
Starting point is 00:16:34 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,
Starting point is 00:17:08 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
Starting point is 00:18:00 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
Starting point is 00:18:45 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,
Starting point is 00:19:29 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
Starting point is 00:20:05 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
Starting point is 00:20:53 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
Starting point is 00:21:35 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
Starting point is 00:22:14 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,
Starting point is 00:22:53 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?
Starting point is 00:23:26 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.
Starting point is 00:23:39 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,
Starting point is 00:24:09 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
Starting point is 00:24:29 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
Starting point is 00:25:09 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,
Starting point is 00:25:45 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
Starting point is 00:26:25 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.
Starting point is 00:27:14 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,
Starting point is 00:27:39 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.
Starting point is 00:28:17 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
Starting point is 00:29:02 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.
Starting point is 00:29:42 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.

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