The Chaser Report - Is Trump The Joker's Dad? | Chas Licciardello

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Chaser reprobate-turned-quasi-respectable-analyst Chas Licciardello from ABC TV’s Planet America joins Dom Knight to share all his thoughts on the US election, with plenty of detail that's too nerdy for TV. Why’s it so close? Did Kamala Harris’ assignment tougher than it seems? And why does Donald Trump never seem to experience any negative consequences for saying outrageous things? In honour of having Chas join the podcast, we've decided to go for a third as long as his ridiculously lengthy podcast, PEP, does.Find PEP with Chas and Dr Dave here, or on your podcast app of choice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Chaser Report. On yesterday's podcast, we had social professor David Smith, one-half of the PEP podcast. Today, it is the other half. Our own Chaz Lichidello from Planet America on ABC TV and I view. Hello, Chaz. The warm up is over, kiddies.

Time for the main event. Time for the main event. Yeah, yeah. Get that academic. out of here. We've got a guy who reads blogs in the house. This is going to get very, very detailed. Who needs experts? We're talking American politics here. No room for experts there. Now, look, when I first met you, Chas, you know, spent every waking moment filling your brain with charts and stats from 1960s to the current day. You know, every bit of minutiae in the US

election, I think, is a good replacement. We're going to try and delve a little bit deep in there because there's a lot going on. It's a mysterious point in time, and we're about to try and get at least some sort of a snapshot of what's going on to the extent that Chaz, or indeed anyone can know, and frankly, jazz is as likely given his planet-sized brain to know what's going on as anyone that's crack into it after this. Okay, so you're probably well across this. I only noticed for the first time, and I think it changed a few days ago, actually, that in the once upon a time completely correct, 538 election predictor, which doesn't even

have Nate Silver, the person that it invented working for it anymore. But anyway, it had Kamala Harris behind. for the first time. It did. Donald Trump, a 51% chance of winning. But the one that's really quite extraordinary, which I didn't know about until I just checked it, the real clear polling,

real clear politics blog, no toss-up state. So if they had to make a call on every state based on what was most likely, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, win 312 electoral votes versus 226. That is a landslide, really, in terms of the electoral college, which, as we all know, is insane. But anyway, putting that to one side,

What is going on? Is Donald Trump really roaring back? And if so, why? Definitely not roaring back, but... But roaring. Yes, he does tend to roar like a lion with a sore tooth. Donald Trump is definitely having a good couple of weeks. He is making ground.

In fact, I think arguably he is now in front. But it's definitely not a landslide. It is really, really close. I wouldn't be paying much attention to real clear politics. Or particularly the no toss-ups one because it's sort of like, an artificial constraint that's meaningless in a sense, is it? Absolutely. Like, the fact that there are, I mean, there are still seven states within a point.

Yeah. And when I say within a point, I mean the two candidates are within a point of each other, which means that the margin of error on those states, do you know what the average margin of error of the last few years in a state, in state polling has been? It's been four and a half points. Wow. Okay, so it could easily, easily be a situation where one candidate wins all seven states,

swing states, or the other candidate wins all seven states. Now, in that real clear politics, chart you've got there. They've got Trump winning all seven states. It could easily be the other way around and then Harris would be winning by the same margin. Yeah. And if there's one half-decent round of polls for Harris, right, it's all seven go the other way. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So the election's over. Donald Trump has one. But it is extraordinarily close. Now look, we spent quite a lot of time with Dave yesterday trying to get to the source of the closeness because it is kind of fascinating to have so many swing states that are that close to be within. If you

think about what that actually means in terms of people. It means that in seven states, admittedly seven somewhat similar states, or at least two groups of somewhat similar states, if you count them, it's on a total knife edge. The odds of that would seem to be quite small, except that David was saying this is actually reflective of a sort of broader issue of what's going on. What's your take on why the numbers? Because seven states to have that 1% margin of error, I mean, that does seem to me as an outsider to all this bizarrely unlikely. unlikely, but we are in a period of transition at the moment with American politics where one group of states is gradually moving from the Republicans to the Democrats, and another

group is gradually moving from the Democrats, the Republicans, and they're meeting each other halfway. So what I'm referring to there is you've undoubtedly heard about the Blue Wall over the last or 10 years. In particular, when we talk about the Blue Wall, we're talking about Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. They are the three closest of those states. Now, the Democrats used to own those states. Gradually over time, they're moving towards the Republicans. That's Trump certainly accelerated that process. But at the same time, we've got the, what they call the Sunbelt states, and they are

Nevada and Arizona and Georgia and North Carolina. They're gradually moving from the Republicans to the Democrats. And that also has accelerated during the period of Trump, because Trump has essentially owned the white working class demographic. for the Republicans, which is from the blue wall. From the blue wall. And the Democrats are gradually taking more of the college educated and the minority vote. That's the broader, broader trends.

But what's happened, interestingly, they met each other in the middle in this election. But they've started to reverse in this election as well. Like in the last year, you've probably heard about how Trump's been winning some black voters and some Latino voters as well. It's been winning them back. Because he's so generous to people of other races. That must be it. That must be it. And Carla Harris hasn't been doing quite so well amongst the white working classes Joe Biden did. So actually, they kind of passed each other these two groups of states and now they're passing each other back again, but they're still just stuck in the middle together.

So you got, rather than having three or four swing states, which you normally would have, you've got seven because you've got two groups of states that are passing each other in transition. So it's just a weird transitional period. And when you look at the next election or the election after that, the map will look. look nothing like this at all. The red and blue will look totally different because they are moving in very different directions quite rapidly. We're reminiscing yesterday about the days when Florida counted. Yes. Iowa or Ohio places like that that are now no longer, you know, engulfed with political reporters at this time. But just didn't, didn't Carmel Harris get that lovely Midwestern man who knows how to fix cars? He did a whole video where he was showing inside his car and how he fixed it and it just seemed so genuine.

Chaz, so genuine. Look, look, to be, to be fair to Tim Walls, I mean, nothing's very genuine when it comes to politics, but to be fair, Tim Wals, he is actually the first working class white person, working class person at all that the Democrats have had for decades, decades. The Democrats have all through the 90s and 80s and the Nauts and the Tens put up basically lawyers. That is a knife in Joseph Robinette Biden's genius. He's a lawyer as well. Calling him not working class. And he told you about his grandpappy in Scranton.

He's told us all. But basically, this is what Democrats do. They put up essentially college-educated, usually lawyers, to sympathize with the working class. Some of them came from there before they left. And then became lawyers. Great. Bill Clinton's a good example, right? Like, he was properly working class before he went to law school.

Yeah, and then went to Oxford. Yeah, exactly. But Tim Walls is actually the real deal. deal. Like, he's a guy who doesn't have any shares. He doesn't have any investments. He's just got a house. Yeah, he does seem surprisingly broke. Yeah. And he doesn't, he, his education is to the extent of a teaching degree. And he hasn't even written a sort of bestselling book about his roots, like J.D. Vance and Barack Obama that made him millions of dollars. What's he thinking? I don't know what he's thinking. But the reason why he was plucked from obscurity,

I mean, relative obscurity is because no one ever considered him a possibility. I think governor of Minnesota's... Well, like I said, relative... Somewhat obscure. Relative, yeah. Relative obscurity is because people never would consider him as a possibility because he's just not the kind of person who becomes a leader in a Democratic Party. So he actually is the real deal.

But I don't think they've used him effectively as the real deal. Ironically, J.D. Vance is much more like a democratic politician, in fact. This is actually a theme of PEP that's been going for quite some time. I think that J.D. Vance is actually secretly a Democrat. I think that if things have gone slightly different for him, he would have been running for the Democrats. I don't think he believes anything. I think he just says what he needs to say.

And his whole background is exactly like a Democrat, like who then went off to go to college and hang around with the right people, but then he chose the conservative path. So, yeah, I mean, that is the kind of person the Democrats would normally get, but Tim Walz is a different character. It hasn't really, I don't think it's really worked out for them.

An actual working class guy. Yeah, yeah. But, like, I mean, the truth is you need more than, I mean, people joke about, about, you know, DEI. He is a DEI candidate. He's a DEI candidate for the working class. Yeah. So, so what you need is you need more than one.

Like, like, if the Democrats double down on this or triple down on this over the, over the period, they might change the people who go for them. But right now, they're losing the working class in a array of knots. And I don't think it's Tim, Tim Walz's fault. You know what they need. He's been happy for 10 years. They need. They did a football team.

That's what they entire football team. And they coach walls to select the players. No, but look, this is part of the problem. And I guess it was working so well for such a long time, Chazzy, that, you know, what I say, a long time, it meant a week or two. But in the scale of this election, the Harris Switch seemed to be working so well. Tim Walls had this great kind of debut. The DNC went really well for them.

It did seem as though the switcheroo had actually really worked. And had the election been held, ironically, had the switcher happen closer to polling day, it may have been most successful. But it does seem as though it's run out of steam, right? Like, people don't really know Kamala Harris. And the excitement of, oh, she's not Joe Biden, was a sugar rush, right? I think they took a gamble the Democrats that, well, Kamah Harris in particular, I think is her style. Kamala Harris is not a risk taker.

She's never been a risk taker. And I think that she gambled on the idea of if she could just avoid making any mistakes, there would be enough time for her around the clock and win. And for a while there, it was looking great. And to be honest, she really hasn't made many mistakes at all. Surprisingly, given her first time campaigning, which was, you know, a mere four years ago. Yeah, although that was a tough one for her because I think, I'm not terribly surprised. She's doing better now than four years ago.

Because four years ago, the Democrats wanted, they wanted the Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren type. They wanted some with policy, really far left wing. Kamala Harris is not far left wing. Despite what the Republican say, she was posing as far left wing four years ago. That's not really what she is. That's quite funny. Like, she's been, if you look at her entire career, she has been campaigning as Law and Order person for 25 years.

Like, she's been that moderate Democrat beginning. But then she had to try and sell herself as the new Elizabeth Warren into that. It didn't work. That's so interesting. Yeah. In hindsight, because I remember, yeah, all the stuff about, you know, Medicare for All and all that. But it's, it is interesting.

I was listening to a biographical kind of podcast. I think the Dalit had kind of a long, deep dive into her life. And they're making the point that if you go back, for someone who has her history with, you know, sort of parents who are really quite radical, having gone to... HBCU. HBCU, okay, yeah.

So a place which, you know, has ties to the civil rights movement. You go there, basically, you're walking in the footsteps of sort of Martin Luther King or whatever. And to go from that to being a prosecutor to working, you know, with police is a pretty right-wing move. When you come from that origin, and apparently people in her family, We were like, sorry, you're doing what?

Given that they thought she was the, you know, the bright young thing who was going to follow that much further left path. Something that the right haven't picked up on, possibly because it doesn't suit their narrative, is she doesn't get along very well with her dad. In fact, I don't think they're even on speaking terms. I've heard that yet, 10 years. Yeah. So the right haven't made a thing out of that because that would, because they want to

make her out to be a communist slash Marxist. But in actual fact, she's too conservative for her dad. He's probably disappointed. Oh, God. Historically back, yeah, colleges and universities, HBCU, which I see here, the ones that were founded prior to 1964, so the ones really that were at the cutting edge. Okay, so she hasn't made huge mistakes, though, has she?

No, no, she hasn't. I remember talking to you about the notion that she was a generic Democrat, basically, which is whatever you wanted to see. Exactly. And that was a smart move because all through the year, while Biden was president, the polls showed the generic Democrat was just whipping Donald Trump, just Biden wasn't. And so they had the opportunity, and she took the opportunity to try and run as the generic

Democrat. And she took that gamble that it wouldn't wear off. But that gamble has backfired because now you get people in polls saying they don't know what she stands for. And they want more. And she intentionally did not do many interviews. She still hasn't on the press conference, not one, because she doesn't want to take risks. But you get to a point where the biggest risk is to not take a risk.

And that's where she's at. And that's why she's turning up on Fox News and taking huge risks now because she's trying to make up for this lost ground. And we'll find out if the timing is perfect or if it's just a little bit off. There's a little bit off. She loses. But I just want to be clear about something here, which I don't think people fully understand.

And that is that this was not an election that was hers to win. If she wins this election, she's stolen it. What I mean by that? Oh, Trump would agree. I don't mean physically stolen. I mean, metaphorically. No, no, we're voting machines. You know what they do.

What I mean by that is that if you look at all the fundamentals, and I don't mean, I don't mean like economic growth or something, I mean in terms of like people, for instance, people's view of the administration, how well they did. People hate what the administration did. The polling is terrible. When you look at the people's views on the Donald Trump's administration versus this administration,

Donald Trump's administration, in hindsight, has a favorability of over 50%. That is usually what would get you re-elected, right? Whereas Joe Biden's administration has a favorability of below 40%. It's interesting you say that, though, because the very odd Alan Lickman, who, um, the keys to the election. The video he made of the New York Times is one of the strangest things I've seen in a long time, as is his hair. But we don't want to criticize his hair.

It's real hair. It's real hair. Yeah, it's made out of it. People think it's a wig. It's real. I've seen it different lengths. It's definitely real. Sure, yeah. Okay, anyway. So this guy, yeah, he's doing exactly what you're doing.

He's basing it on sort of macro historical trends. Yeah. But no, it's certainly true that, yeah, the Biden administration seems to have been vastly unpopular in a way that, you know, Joe Biden is probably devastated by. And is that a macroeconomic thing? Or is that actually that you did a bad job in various ways? Well, look, in my view, I think the economy,

with the exception of inflation, has been very good over the last few years. And when you say with the exception of inflation, inflation hasn't been a problem for the last 12 months. But people are still have the same inflation shock. They haven't grown out of it yet. Things haven't gotten better for them. Of course. Of course, prices don't go down once they go up.

But also, if we're being fair, America's doing pretty well on inflation compared to the rest of the world. Sure. The entire world had an inflation shock at the end of COVID. Whoever happened to be carrying the can at that point in time lost their election. And like, and this is now Joe Biden's turn, or now Carmel Harris's turn, lose that election because they're carrying the can for inflation that occurred after COVID.

Literally every single person who ran for office, well, who was running for re-election after that inflationary period, lost around the world. And Joe Biden's favorability has been terrible forever. Totally. And Kamala Harris is in the very awkward position where she, and perhaps there's a way of doing it, she hasn't figured out yet, but she can't break, right, with what he's done? So she's, they ask her, what would you do differently? And she owes the guy everything.

so she's panning into a corner. I think there are ways that she could deal with that question better than she has, but I definitely, I mean, she can't just start slagging him off and go, well, his immigration policy was terrible. She can't do that. Yeah, particularly as so-called immigration are, although I know she wasn't exactly,

but people think she was. Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. But I was going to say that on that note, the big issues in this election are inflation, are immigration, our crime, and our abortion. And the Democrats own one of them. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking three out of four.

Republicans own the other three. Whether or not that seems fair. And this is the thing during the debate with Harris and Trump was that when he was talking about that stuff, about the perfect economy that he had and all that kind of stuff, you know, I knew that it was more complicated than that. And I knew that there was,

a lot of it was tax cuts to billionaires and so on. But you could see that working, right? It was a pitch that he made well. And you could imagine the average American going, yeah, look, actually, pre-COVID. I mean, and you go, you can't like him for COVID. I mean, you can in a way. but, you know, things were pretty rosy for me back in, you know, 2019.

And to be perfectly honest, they're wrong. Like, when I say they're wrong, I mean, the figures now are actually as good or better than 2019, but then on the economists, I don't expect them to remember that. And to be honest, you know, Trump's a good salesman. He's always been a good salesman. That's been his thing. And if the thing he was selling was crap, it never hurt him at all. Totally.

That's part of the ability. Totally, yeah. But I was going to say that one of the key stats, that you don't hear people talk much about. But Gallup have been measuring this since the 40s. This is very Lichten-like. Go on. Here's a fundamental factor.

Is who is winning the main issue, according to voters? No one has ever lost an election since Gallup have been around since the 40s while winning the main issue. No one is ever. And in this election, it's, well, you can argue whether it's inflation or it's immigration, but it's one of them. And the Republicans own both of them. And so the point I'm making is not, I'm not bagging anyone out here.

I'm just saying that this was always going to be a tough election for the Democrats. And the fact that that Kamala Harris is even close is a testimony to, she's been doing some things right. Yeah, yeah. But it means that, that she had to do something special to win. And I think she just, in hindsight, she probably hasn't been special enough. But we'll see, she may still win. This is really, really close.

Yeah, we're not emphasizing. Not doing the post-mortem yet, but why isn't she winning? But my point is whether she wins or whether she just loses, that the, all things being equal, she probably should have, the Democrats probably should have lost this election by two or three points. So if we're being fair. So she's outperforming. Yeah.

Which Biden would perhaps have done worse than. I think he would. Yeah. It's hard to argue that. But also, I mean, look, if they were going to make the switch clearly a lot earlier would have helped at this stage. Yes. I mean, she really not just, and this is something day has been going on for a long time,

as I'm sure you know, the. way that Biden chose to keep her as vice president. She's been not only the obscurity of the vice presidency in general, but the last few vice presidents have seemed, maybe not Dick Cheney, who knew who was actually running things. But certainly, you know, Al Gore and Joe Biden himself were far more prominent partners than she has been.

Yeah, look, something I, Dave, that is one of Dave's Pep points. And I agree with him. The same which I've been banging on about for a long time was I, I said publicly many times on both Pep and on Planet America, that Bynch of stepped aside 18 months ago so that, well, 15 months ago now, so that he gave Kamala Harris the opportunity to be president. Yeah.

And to earn, you mean step down actually as president? As president. So that way she could earn her stripes as president. And she wouldn't be in this position right now if she had some kind of track record. No, absolutely. I mean, even if he'd stepped down as president when he handed over to her in a way, we would have had time to see her being presidential. And that's...

And then she could have... A powerful thing. And then she could have totally reformed the immigration policy. Right now, she can't criticize Biden. But she could have changed it. She could have. If she was president. And if she tried to change things and failed,

then you have a primary, a real primary. Yeah, yeah. And then it would have been someone else. But I feel like this was, this was... I mean, it seemed cute for a while when she took over in July. Oh, that's so great. And a couple of months to go. But I've always felt that it would have been best for,

not just the Democrats, but for America, if once it was clear Biden wasn't going to last, and I thought it was clear 18 months ago. Yeah, I mean, we've been talking about even our occasional conversations have been like, wow, he's actually really not in a good state. Totally. Not the debate. And not the debate's a whole other level of decrepitude.

Yeah, exactly. He's seen really just not himself for a long time. Yeah, just to be clear, I'm not saying even now that he's senile. What I'm saying it was obvious 18 months ago, he did not have the right. stuff to last under six years. It was really obvious. And if he, and if he, if he couldn't last six years, he shouldn't have been running for president because then, because every single person is watching him then going, you can't do it, mate. And so, and so I thought, anyway, my point is

that if Carman Harris had been given that opportunity to sink or swim 18 months ago, whether she sunk or swam, the Democrats and America would be in a better position. Well, this is the weird thing. She doesn't have incumbency. She has, she has a weird limbo where She's half pregnant. It's weird. That's an awkward subject, Jess. You don't. What are you,

JD Vance me very excited right now. Anyway, all right. So having said that, that's a great explanation of why she's in difficulty, why Trump's coming back. I want to look at the sheer nature of his just extraordinary inability to have anything that he does wrong affect him in any way. That is. In terms of the charmed life of the white man, there has never been a more charm than Donald

Trump. But before we go to the break, I want to ask you about what Harris can do from here. We still got time, right? This election's been on a very short time scale. If we wake up tomorrow when Joe Biden dies, not entirely impossible when she becomes president straight away, that might be, you know, an extraordinary game changer. But A, you know, what should she do? And B, is there actually time to do anything substantial on this circumstances beyond

anyone's imagining an assassination or whatever or a death or something, or even a war? I guess that wouldn't favour her. You know, if you were advising her, what's the play from here? Honestly, I think it's too late for any tactical moves at this point in time. Just hope? I think, yeah. The audacity of hope? I think, look, I think the last week or two, she's been doing the right thing.

She's been going, she's been getting out everywhere. Yeah, yeah. And she needs to keep on doing that. I think the advertising strategy has been excellent. I think it's the whole time. And I think they've got three times as much money as Trump has to play with, and they're using it. And I think that that is, and I think they're using it well. I really do.

So I don't, like, I think this is the kind of, the kind of moment when, you know, your amateur kind of quarterbacks like me like to say, oh, yeah, I know better than professionals, but honestly, I don't. I think they're doing a good job. What are the ads for those I've seen them? Yeah, okay. Well, look, the, the main thing they've been doing is they've been trying to be positive as much as possible with their ads.

They've been, they've been. She's a joyful warrior, she hasn't been joyful, but they've been trying to put forward policies and popular policies, all their policies. policies are very popular. Like, they certainly have, have, have, have poll tested their policies. We haven't talked about this, but this is what they've been doing, interestingly, is, yeah, that she's had no policy except for all these little nuggets that have come out, but some of which are quite out there, like legalising marijuana. Yeah. All these big grants for small businesses, particularly black owned, small businesses, like, whatever. Like, there's, there's quite a lot of

pretty, I mean, they're, they're kind of thought bubbles, but they're pretty substantial ones. Like, they're meaty. Even the policies that I hate, I have to acknowledge. a popular. Like I always hated her price gouging policy. Her, her, her, her, we'll crack down price gouges. Because honestly, that's... Because you like price gouges. I'm very pro-price gouges. That's not the reason for inflation. And her acting like that's the reason for inflation is just not very convincing. But it's super popular. I know why they're doing it. And so it's rational. They're trying to do it here, but, yeah. It's, um, so, so, yeah, so that's the first thing. They've been, they've been running a hard policy. But also, they've been micro-targeting

the hell out of their ad strategy. I was looking at just now. There's only been, sent to 18 to 24 year old black people in Arizona and it's on Snapchat and it's sent to these people on Snapchat and what it shows is a black woman on a date and a guy and she asks him about about politics and he's ah I don't vote and then she just leaves the date and like and and the the subtext the very obvious subtext is if you don't vote you don't get sex right which I think is a I think it's a great that's a great strategy that's a great strategy for 18 to 24 year olds peer group pressure. It works. And that's the kind of micro-targeting they've been doing. And I think that's smart. And like I said, this stuff costs money, but they've got the money.

I certainly do. Yeah. So look, I honestly think that they're doing a pretty good job right now, in my view. And I would like to see her, okay, the one thing I would say that Carol Harris could do that I think she's done a bad job of is there are, she keeps on getting asked the same five questions in every interview. She doesn't seem to have prepared answers for some of those questions yet, even though she's been asked them for a month. I don't know what she does with her prep. Like, when she came out for the debate, she was prepped for everything. She was so ready for that debate.

When she goes out to her an interview, she's struggling. She's just like, she's drowning in water. And when people talk about the word salads, that's her just trying to work out what the hell she's going to say. She's just seen there bluffing for a minute while she's trying to think of what the hell she can say. Yeah, I've seen a few clips like that. And it's not as though they're real left field questions that no one we're prepped

for. Yeah, it's stuff like what's the difference. you and Joe Biden or what, you know, what are you going to do about immigration or what, like what are you going to do to reduce prices? They're the same questions every time. And she doesn't have prepared answers. Well, I would have done a month ago, but I'll definitely do now, is I'd pull her aside for six hours and go, here, memorize these answers and then give them when people ask you the question. And this is also a thing that, as has been pointed out, a primary process is very good at schooling you want because to emerge from the primaries,

you've already been through that endlessly in a sort of off-broadway setting with the other candidates, right? Totally. Totally. That is one of the advantages of primaries for sure. Okay. Yeah.

So Carmel Harris, we're not going to write the post-mortem yet, but it's also worth noting that the ask was a big one. Yeah. And because it went so well so soon, I think people kind of lost sight of, hang on, you're changing the president. She can't say anything negative about Biden, who, by the way, seriously enough,

given that she needs to win the blue wall, I'm surprised he's not out there campaigning. Maybe they don't want him to. Maybe he's physically unable to, but... Yeah, look, I can see arguments either way. But those, like, surely at least, the whole election's about Pennsylvania, this guy, I believe the man's from Scranton Chas. I don't think, I think his campaign days are behind him, to be honest,

which is one of the reasons he shouldn't have been running in the first place. Well, he didn't last time, ironically. He stood in a basement. Yeah, and his favourability ain't great. So I think there's logic to that. I mean, look, they're saying Bill Clinton and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania. So, yeah, yeah, love, yeah. Yeah, so Bill Clinton is as good as, I think he's better than Joe Biden in that area at the moment.

And they're saying him out. And isn't he younger? He is actually. It's amazingly. And looking really old. Yes. So I was just going to say one thing. Before we move on, let me just to say one thing.

When you're talking about what happened early on when everyone got excited, I think people have a tendency to think, however things are going is how they're going to keep on going. Yeah. And when she first jumped in, there was this massive climb in the poll numbers. And people were just could, we're just projecting forward. and going, well, this rate, by election day, she's winning, she's got 95% power of the vote. Exactly.

But that was never going to happen. Like, and it was noticeable to me, and not just me, lots of people, not just me, that as soon as she got to basically levity, she, so, yeah, a parody, sorry, parody, not levy. Parity, she just stopped laughing. She loves the joy. But since she got to parody, she just stopped rising. Yeah. She never got ahead of Trump.

She got, like, she got like two points ahead in national, in the national, maybe three points ahead in national. but that's not enough. Like she never got to that five, six point margin when you start to get comfortable. And so, yeah, but she just needed just that little bit more. But anyway, what you were to say? And let's, you know, let's just,

and she hasn't been making a deal of this at all. But it, she's, you know, she's a South Asian, African-American woman running in a country that's never elected a member of, you know, any of those groups except for Barack Obama before. And Barack Obama looks more special with every candidate that comes afterwards in terms of sheer skills and electability, right?

Like the guys are once in a generation later. That's true, though, once again, as you say, it hasn't been mentioned much, but when I was mentioned it now, the Indian thing ain't a disadvantage. Like, there are some, there are a lot, one of the states where there are a lot of Indians, Pennsylvania.

Yeah, that's actually really interesting because, you know, I have some kind of relatives over there and, yeah, they have not forgotten that there is a South Asian candidate in the race. So, you know, that could be very – and I guess final point on that, and I put this to Dave, too, is are they actually polling, A, people who are going to vote and B in a scientifically valid way, right? Because who's bothering to answer polls is what I always wonder about. And whether the action – and I know they try to adjust them scientifically, but I could entirely believe that we'll end up, you know, in a weeks, in a couple weeks time going, wow, those polls were bullshit in whatever direction. I could believe a Trump landslide or a Harris lands.

Yeah, look, one thing which pollsters always say, I mean, it's the pollsters who keep on telling people this, and no one ever listens to the pollsters when they say this, is about 0.8% of people respond to polls. Okay, so that's not, that's a very, very small representative sample. Yeah. And one of the criteria is, do you have time? Yeah. Yeah. And the pollsters are very, very good at adjusting for their samples. They've been doing this for a long time.

But the main issue for me is not that. That's not the main issue. I think pollsters have nailed that adjusting for different representations. I think the bigger question is how do they decide who are likely voters? Because if this was Australia, all they would need to do is just balance that at demographics and then they're fine. Yeah, because everyone's got a vote. Yeah.

But in America, there's another question, which is who is likely to actually vote and who is not? Because the people who aren't likely to vote don't count. It doesn't matter what they think. And so when you ask people, you might think, oh, that's easy, just to ask them if they're going to vote. Turns out, history suggests, when you ask people for they're going to vote, about 30% of them don't vote, the people who said they were going to vote. Yeah, well, that's not surprising because they're like, oh, yeah, I'm going to go stand out for six hours because you don't want to feel like a dick.

Totally. So there's a lot of guest work in who's a likely voter and who's not. One of the things they use to determine if you're a likely voter is your past record. What that means is if you didn't vote in the past, you're unlikely that you consider the likely voter, which means if you, these candidates, all they're doing is trying to win, is trying to win new voters, right? Yeah.

That's what they're trying to do. If they succeed, let's say Kamala Harris, under the table has been gradually bringing around, say, two or three percent of the people who didn't vote last time to vote for her. You would never know because they won't turn up in polls. And that is plausible,

A, with youth, I think dramatically. B, with particularly women of color, like to a huge degree from what you hear. Yeah. And then it could go the other way too. There could be lots of people who are excited. about Trump who would know about it? Well, one of the things about Trump that Trump particularly

appeals to, which is new, are low propensity voters. People who normally don't vote. I normally wouldn't, but that guy is so exciting. Yeah, like, I mean, we joke about the conspiracy theorist stuff on Trump, but being the candidate of conspiracy theorists, it wins you low propensity voters because those guys normally don't vote because they're discouraged, right? And guess what? The two people who are most associated with conspiracy theories, a Donald Trump and RFK Jr. And they're on the same team now. So he may well win a whole bunch of low-pernancy voters that we don't know about

and they will not come out in polls. If they're polled, they would be regarded as unlikely voters. So we just won't know until election day. That's not the pollster's fault. It's impossible to be able to tell. Yeah, because the government stopped us. It's all a conspiracy. Okay, let's take a moment to make some money

and then we'll look at the Trump side of the equation. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. This is a short episode by your standards and a long one by ours, Chasper, it's enormously enjoyable. And we have found, this is the embarrassing thing about the Chaser report, is we have found this. That's quite clear, and I can admit it this far into the podcast, that when we talk about US politics in a fairly straight way, those episodes do really well. Sure. And whereas the ones with the jokes a bit more and the, you know, satirical angles. You don't do terribly, but not as well as just, you know, very straight analysis of the election,

which I guess goes to show the audience is either interested in the election or doesn't actually like us that much normally. This is the reason for the last five years of my career, though. Yeah, no, who knew this stuff was interesting? Anyway, on to Donald Trump. And I want to start a little bit sideways, because we touched on the Elon Musk effect a bit with Dave yesterday, but there's more to it. And you were telling me some stuff that I wasn't across in terms of exactly what the guy is doing. It is extraordinary just to how many crazy, bizarre things Elon Musk managed to do

while posting 100 memes on his stupid platform every single day. It's incredible. The man's a CEO of multiple listed companies. How they even allow that without sacking him is extraordinary. But anyway. Honestly, Joe, let me just jump in here for a second to say that if those who think Dom is exaggerating when he says 100 memes a day, you are not. Because I have had the unfortunate job of having to try and find stuff on

Elon Musk's feed at times for my show. And it's impossible to find anything because I literally, like, it is, you're right. I counted one day, he tweeted 120 times. Yeah. It's just impossible to find anything. Yeah. And the way that the app works now, the for you tab is obviously the, it's just the Elon tab, right? He's bought his own default view anyway.

All right. So he has been, as we know, enthusiastically boosting Trump. I don't entirely understand why. I mean, I do on one level because the guy's. inverted commas free speech libertarian whatever but for a man who sells electric cars it is a little bit strange um he's his recent kind of tilt in that way but it's part of the whole moving to texas and all that kind of stuff thing okay look i can give you a few explanations on that the first of which is you're right that it seems strange for an electric vehicle seller to to be pro trump but trump is

offering him something which which the democrats would never offer which is a complete lack of competition. Yeah. Because Trump, Trump is basically trying to create a situation where China can't import cars at all. Yeah. And they are Elon Musk's competition. He's not, he's not getting competition from Ford or from GM as far as General Motors

as far as electric vehicles go. Yeah. And Trump will stop that competition. So, so it actually suits Tesla just fine for Trump to be present. That's true. And it's worth noting also that, um, the extent of the subsidies, you know, tariffs in general are very old-fashioned policy. But curiously, in Australia, you know, they sell cars for something like cost

because the subsidies are so great from the Chinese government. But that's a bit of a side of way as well. What I was going to say is, well, I think a lot of people don't realize about Elon Musk is that this is not new. People think that this is just the last year that he's just suddenly just flipped out. This is not new. He's become very public about it in the last year. But in 2022, in the midterms, he was the largest contributor to a group called Citizens

Sanity, who, if you're a real nerd about American politics, you would be familiar with that name because they ran the most hardcore ads in the 2022 campaign. Oh, okay. These were hardcore anti-immigration ads, like really hardcore anti-immigration. And that was his thing. He funded it. And we didn't know that because with Super PAC funding, it becomes, it's very secretive. You only find out ages after the event.

And we only found it out quite recently that he was the person behind that. We do know, jazz, that amongst the most. vehement opponents of migration are migrants. So as a child of the Italian community of the who arrived in the in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, I'm very aware of the pulling up ladder phenomenon. Just remind me, is Elon Musk eligible to run for President of the United States himself? He's not, I'm afraid, because he was born in South Africa. Making him a...

A migrant. Yes. Oh, yes, yes. He's a migrant. Well, not just that. You know that you might not know this. Maybe this is why you get me on to tell you these kinds of things. That when he first came to America, according to his brother, Kimball, their immigration,

their migration status was, shall we say, dubious. So certainly Kimball is very open about the fact that he was an illegal immigrant. And he insists that Elon Musk was an illegal immigrant. Elon says, no, no, no, no, no. I had a student visa. It's a little bit grayer than that. This reminds me of one Melania Trump, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, well, there is that as well. So, I mean, so there's a bit of hypocrisy there. But the reason I brought all this up was to say that Elon Musk has been obsessed with immigration for some time. And so I don't think it's about wokeness, even though he says it's about wokeness, I think it's about immigration.

But it's also, I mean, as I say, this is a, as as someone who's followed Tesla quite closely, it's part of a general kind of, like he's long left California behind. Yeah. Moved to everyone to, made all of his staffers who like California move to Texas and so on. One more thing I would add, which I think is in terms of the origin story of this particular

hero slash villain, I would say that the other thing that happened in 2022 was his son becoming his daughter. Yeah. And he doesn't seem to have gotten over that. And so I can see how he could become obsessed with wokenness in a big way after that as well. Yeah, I don't think Elon's daughter's a big fan of Elon either. But the other fact that just briefly, I don't want to make this a must cast, but he's crypto.

I mean, he's whole, he's been such a long-term booster of all things, crypto and particularly fucking doge coin. And all the terrible memes that that involves. Yeah, and that's going, again, going three or four years, if not more. Honestly, I think, I think my analysis of crypto politics is that crypto basically own everyone. Yeah, so. Harris is kind of, well, I mean, if you believe Anthony Scaramitia, I don't think he'd be even supporting Harris the way that he used had she not changed her stance on crypto.

Yeah. Because there's people with lots of money who can't be traced, perfect for superpacks. Yeah, 240 million dollar superpacks. They tend to win support, I find. All right. So Elon Musk, we know he's been handing out these bizarre million dollar payouts. David talked a little bit about some of the problem with that yesterday legally and fact that they may be switched off surprisingly soon rather than going through to election day.

But, Chaz, you were saying that he's also kind of micro-targeting all kinds of messages. So what is that group of he's doing? Because Dave was saying that quite a lot of the people, people in the kind of ground campaign out there going and handing out the door knocking and so on. We're probably not doing the greatest job. They're a terrible job compared to the Democrats. Yeah. But we also know he's very good with data and quite possibly being quite brilliant with how

it's being used. So what's actually happening? Well, what he's doing is he's using his money and he's got a lot of it to use. And there's a, there's another super pack, not the America pack, which is the main one that people know about. How was that name available? I know. I know.

Well, the question. also is how is the America Twitter account available and the answer was it wasn't available. He booted the previous occupant off so he could take it. I'm quite confident that that wasn't a problem, yeah. When I saw that I thought oh yeah this is. But yeah but the America pack is one of the most people know about that's the main pack that's giving out

millions of dollars, etc. But there's another pack that he's involved with which I believe is called Coalition for the Future Pack I think it might be. It's off the top of my head. I've got the name wrong. There's an F and a C there, and then in the P, if you look it up. It might be FCP. It might be future coalition pack. Look it up while we're talking. Anyway, they are a very secretive pack, which people don't hear so much about. And that pack is entirely about micro-targeting people, not unlike what I said before, Kamala Harris's team are doing. But the difference between this and Kamala Harris's team is Kamala Harris's team is doing

pretty straightforward micro-targeting, right? These guys are doing dirty tricks in micro-targeting. What I mean by that is they are simultaneously. In Michigan, which has a very, which has the largest Muslim population in America, they are micro-targeting Arabs and Muslims with ads, positive ads, very positive ads about how much Kamala Harris is a friend to Israel. And just how she's always been there for Israel and she loves Netanyahu. And she's always there to give them more weapons when they need. She's their best friend, the Israelis. Obviously, he's trying to turn is trying to turn the Arabs and the Muslims against her with these ads. But at the exact same time, the exact same pack is running in Pennsylvania

to micro-targeted Jews and Israelis, Israeli-Americans, that she's the best friend of Palestinians. And why is she always helping out the Palestinian protesters? And why is she so friendly to her mask? And like at exactly the same time, running both sides of the issue to the different demographic groups in the various swing states. And it's kind of a real evil genius about it.

Future Coalition Pack is the name. That's in future coalition pack. And full credit to Jewishincider.com, which is called this out, by the way. There's another even more sinister one. I've only seen a couple of reports this. I don't know if it's true. This might be,

this is OpenSecrets.org, which I don't know if it's in any way reputable. There's an even more sinister one, which is a dark money group called Building America's Future. Yep. Which has received more than $100 million from Elon, And apparently, and other donors, apparently what they've done is register with Project 2028.

And Project 2028 is a pretend pro-Harris agenda, which they've, you know, a super liberal agenda. So they can tell people that Harris has a secret plan that she's going to put in place. And so empowering undocumented immigrants, expanding Medicaid to undocumented immigrants, a quote undocumented immigrant to the backbone of our country and by removing barriers we unlock incredible potential Amala Harris believes that every person deserves access to basic healthcare.

So it's, you know, this sort of stuff must be going on massively all these fake websites and stuff. We are entering a dangerous period for American democracy which people have predicted for a long time where when you get, like until now, the rich guys who like to dabble in politics have been pretty straight down the line. Like they've been funding like, you know,

Different groups have funded different people. Casino Barons and stuff, but at least you know about it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, like, like, I'm not saying that you, like, people aren't fans of the Koch brothers, for instance. But that, but, but, yeah, they fund people who they support. And that's it. That's what they do. And it's there all gotten money from gambling, so they can do what they want with it.

Because we're entering a world now where the rich people and Elon Musk is primary amongst these rich people are prepared to do anything. And if they're prepared to do anything, they don't really have any standards at all and what they're going to do, money can buy you a lot. a lot. It really can. Certainly a fake website. Yeah, like the megan dollar giveaway that you described with Dave before, I'm not sure I don't know what Dave told you and what he did.

I'm sure he told you about the ins and out of the law. But what he might not have told you, maybe he did. If he did, I'm sorry if I'm repeating this. But this points to the issue. The point is, even if Elon Musk was breaking the law in the most obvious way, and I think he actually is, in the most obvious way, the way you enforce that law in America is not the police turn up and arrest you and put handcuffs on you. The way you enforce that law, when it's election law, is it needs to go to the Federal Election Commission.

Did he mention this? Not in great detail. Okay. The Federal Election Commission is a body that's job is to determine when people have breached election law and to pass a judgment on it. And then you can get referred to for prosecution. That body has three Democrats and three Republicans. So they're always deadlocked. It takes three years, four years to hear a complaint.

And when it's finally heard, it's a tie. And nothing ever happens. which means if you're a rich person, you can do anything. Yeah, and I've read this separately and that, you know, there might be a fine or something in years to come. Maybe. At most. Yeah, at most.

But yeah, and so basically, like, in fact, in Elon Musk's situation with a million dollar thing, he would be hoping that someone would arrest him because he knows nothing's going to happen to him and it'll be great publicity. And like, and so we're in, anyway, we're entering this situation and it's a problem this election, but it's going to be a bigger problem next election. Because, you know, there are going to be some left-wing billionaires. who are watching what Elon Musk is doing, and they're going to copy it.

And increasingly over time, we're going to have a situation where it's, where American policy, we talked about American politics like it's all oligarchy, but it will become real oligarchy soon, where it's just rich guys against rich guys. And that's not a good situation. That's what I have concern about.

And genuinely, guys. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is Elon Musk. Do you think this is making a difference in terms of the polls? Or do you think, I mean,

it seems as though, you know, people's minds have pretty much made up. I don't know what difference it's making. all this energy and effort, because it seems as though Trump's near magical hole on a vast swath of Middle America is just completely unbreakable. Honestly, I think all this stuff's too late. Like I said before about Carmel Harris, I think most people have made up their mind.

Most of the people who are understudy this point in time aren't going to vote. So I think that the, like on the margins, it might make a difference. Remember, like this is likely to, it might be 20,000 votes here, 20,000 votes there that makes a difference in this election. So I'm not ruling it out that it could make a difference. but the chances of any of this making more than 0.1 or 0.2% of a difference, I think, is quite slow. Yeah. But, I mean, at this stage with Trump, we've had yet another situation, true to type,

where he really hasn't had the sort of strategy that anyone rational advising him has wanted him to follow. He's putting it all on immigration to a fairly absurd degree, which, again, might just be an example of his sort of instincts being in line with the average American. I've always viewed him as the kind of theoretical maximum of various sorts of Americanness. Like the whole thing of being brash, of just refusing to take no for an answer, you know, just charging ahead, insensitive to whatever goes on. Like if you imagine the sort of stereotype of the American tourist abroad times a million

that's Donald Trump, plus the sort of 80s celebrity, plus the supermodels, plus the burgers. I mean, it's just basically he is somehow the quintessence of, you know, 1980s, cheesy, Americana made into a man full of burgers. Yeah, look, if in the 1980s, if there was a football team called the business people, Donald Trump would have been their mascot. It's just a fact.

But then somehow this particular persona, which he, there's no one like him really, since the 80s who's embodied that, it just seems to, particularly for men, you know, oh, he slept with a porn star, awesome. Oh, he you know, it just seems as to that whatever he does, there is, he's somehow

fate has given him a completely bulletproof, consequence proof, I mean, with the massive caveat of having lost the 2020 election admittedly, but that probably was the result of the fault of COVID, as bizarre as that was. He's just being given by the universe, a political bulletproof fest, the likes of which we haven't seen before, and probably won't see again. It's, it's not fight. It's, it's, this is evolution. That's what this is. Like, what I mean by that is the actual definition of evolution. Yeah. Like, is that with natural selection, What happens is it's not like people, like a giraffe, strains to make its neck longer.

What happens is you have conditions which are particularly suitable for a creature with a long neck to reach leaves. And so the creatures with a long neck thrive. Now, we have a situation in America where leading into the Trump era where there was extreme polarization. And people who had a particular ability to make the other side angry were going to earn the undying loyalty of their base. And in walks Donald Trump with a particular ability to do that. And he's like the giraffe with the long neck. Like the condition suited him perfectly. You could probably make some argument.

You could probably make some argument for Obama too, right? Yeah. I mean, the extent to which the right went absolutely apshit over Obama, maybe Hillary Clinton as well. But I still remember, I mean, the extent to which they hated Obama was remarkable. And Trump's kind of like the same, right? He's just, yeah, as you say, it's not that he's developed. this thing. He was ready to go at a time when he fit, you know, he kind of fit the, he was the

key that fit the lock at that moment. Exactly. I'd say Obama had more than that. Like in I mean, I think you're right. Obama drove the right crazy like no one else could. And I think the Democrats love that. The Democrats loved that. Yeah. That Obama would get up and just slay them without even, without, like, slay some tea party guy without even breaking a sweat. And he'd do it with a smile on his face. And they were like, oh, this is perfect. We love this guy. So there definitely was that aspect of Obama. But I think the, reason. I think Obama was the right guy at the right time for Democrats for all kinds of reasons. Yeah, yeah. And he had a skill set, obviously. Totally. So I get, yeah. And then he, but then that was

another aspect of him that he drove the other side crazy. And so I think that is true. But yeah, that is basically, in Donald Trump's case, that's his whole bag, essentially. Yeah. That he drives the other side crazy. And it means that, it means that he's got that 40% of, you know, Republicans who hate Democrats locked up. They're not going anywhere while, well, while he's around. But there's also a massive appeal. And this probably isn't, maybe it is said and I don't hear it.

But the idea that you can say whatever you want in America, which values his concert to liberty so much, to so often say things that are poor people, that delights a lot of Americans day on day, you know, on cable over again. Like even though when the rallies, it's all the same stuff. It doesn't say anything new.

It's the same word salad, you know, rehashed slightly. It's like he's been in there with the tongs briefly. But people absolutely love it. I think something that people don't understand why Donald Trump is popular in America, which is a lot of Australians, don't fully get is that Americans have had many generations, possibly ever, of, yeah, possibly always, of politicians who act like they represent their base, but don't actually represent their base. We just talked before about the Democrats pretending to be working class, right?

The Donald Trump is unambiguously. No one can deny that he is his base. Now, when I say that, I don't mean they're all beginners. No. What I mean is, you know he genuinely likes McDonald's. You know that. You know that he genuinely will sit down and watch some John Claude Van Dam movie and get off on it.

This is the happiest he's been. The thing where he went and was shaking extra soul on the chips. I mean, you can imagine him going, why didn't I do this sooner? You know that he's addicted to Fox just like your grandfather is. I mean your person. I mean the person listening in a home. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure your grandfather, listener, is addicted to Fox,

just like my parents are addicted to Fox. And everyone's 70-year-old parents and grandparents who are addicted to Fox. Yeah, and doesn't like wokeness. And, yeah, like, he is them. He is that person. He's in the talkback radio. He is into, he's into the stuff they're into. He's into raves on Twitter.

When he acts like an, like an absolute ninkin poop on Twitter and it drives me crazy, his base are going, he tweets like me. Like, he is exactly. them. He just is them. And they know that when he goes, he's not going to be replaced by someone who is like them. He's going to be replaced by some like DeSantis, who is pretending to be like them. Or JD Vance. Who is pretending to be like that. Or even Donald Trump Jr. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Donald Trump is just this, just this perfect storm of someone who totally represents them, totally can do what they want and the only thing they want. They don't care about policy at all. They don't care if he understands economics. They just want him to make liberals angry, and he can do that. He will deliver that on a platter. And on top of that, he also happens to be someone who can cut through the clutter in a way that all their other politicians can't.

He gets attention in a way no one else can. And he is entertaining, is the thing that he gets no credit for. And no matter, exactly. And no matter how angry he is, he does it in a way that seems light. even when he's really dark, he does it in a lot. Like, J.D. Vance, he glowers when he gets angry. When Donald Trump gets angry, it's still kind of funny. Like, it's just, he never stops being ridiculous.

Maybe it's the hair, maybe it's the makeup. Otherwise, he never stops being a clown. Never. Look, and that takes the thread away. Part of the reason, there's not an considerable relationship, a resemblance of Dr. Ronald McDonald, like. Yeah. I was going to say, like, a future nominee, Vance, or whoever,

when people start going, he's going to be a dictator, people will be scared of that. Yeah. But people just aren't not scared of Trump. The scary campaigns do not work. Because no one believes he's going to do this. They believe he's just going to be the same. Yeah.

And he always is the same. Yeah. And so I think that that is why he's a, he's a perfect storm for Republicans and against Democrats. And that's why they're going to ride that train as long as they possibly can because they know it. They're not idiots. As much as everyone thinks that people who vote for Trump are idiots,

they're not idiots. And they know that he is a once-and-a-one. a lifetime for them. So they're not going to, they're not going to lose him while they can. They don't want the show to end. Yeah. So, look, every chance of a second Trump term, are all of the harbingers of doom and gloom in the end of American democracy and whatever, arguably it'd be worse for American democracy if he loses, because then he'll, you know, unleash hell. I promise you, Dom, whatever happens in this election, next year is going to be rough. Because if Kamala Harris wins that election, this is another thing that hasn't been talked about

much. If Kamala Harris wins that, election, there's a very little, very small chance that the Democrats will win the Senate. And if the Democrats, if the Democrats don't hold the Senate, but they hold the presidency, the Republicans, they're going to need the Republicans to appoint any cabinet officials, to pass a budget, to make anything happen. And they'll be saying the election was stolen. Number one, they definitely say that. But number two, this is what some people haven't thought about.

Do you reckon Kamala Harris is going to have those charges dropped from Trump? No way. He's going to jail them. If Trump to lose this election, the Florida charges are going to get, they're going to work out a way to get them back in court, the Marilago charges. Those charges are going to stick. Like if, if, oh, yeah.

Did he conceal the documents? Yeah, pretty much. And when you do what he did with those documents, you go to jail. So he's, I'm telling you, if that goes to court, he is going to jail. That will go to court if Kamala Harris wins. And then can you imagine how nuclear the Republicans are going to go? If they hold the Senate at the moment when Trump is seriously looking like he's in trouble of going to jail, they won't give Carmen Harris anything.

The whole place is going to shut down. And it's going to be quite ugly either way. I'll tell you one thing. I reckon she does if, just to make a completely unjustified, bold claim. Yes. If she wins the election and he's, because isn't there sentencing for one thing or one more thing before the election? There is, yeah, there's sentencing for, not before the election. be after the election. But before he's inauguration, they'll be sensing for the New York

charges, the 34 felony. So it's entirely possible and that, I don't know that there's state charges, but she pardoned in return for him not contesting the election. Wouldn't that be interesting if she goes, Donald, blanket pardon, to the extent that she can if you just suck it up? It's possible. Look, here's what, here's what tough for Calma Harris. If, if, like I just said, if she doesn't pardon him, her presidency will be just hell. It'll just be hell. That will destroy her presidency if she doesn't pardon him. She does pardon him. The Democrats will turn on her in such a big way. You think so. Because the Democrats have been waiting for this forever. They are sick to death of Trump getting away with things. Trump

gets away with everything all the time. Yeah. As part of the evolution. And if the one time, if the one time they got him on something, which he genuinely deserved to be punished for, which is the documents case in particular, if that one time they got him, Kamala Harris didn't kind of harness pardon him and let them off, they would be so, it would be Jimmy Carter again. I know people don't understand American, ancient American history like that. The problem for Jimmy Carter, I'll just explain like one second. The reason why Jimmy Carter was such a failure as president was because in the 70s, the Democrats owned everything and he was trying to shake up the place.

So he basically took on the Democrats. He was a Democrat president taking on the Democrats in Congress. And that did not work. Wow. When the same party takes on each other in different branches of government, the whole place just turns to shit. And that would be what would happen. If Carmaris pardoned Trump, the Democrat Congress, the Democrat base and the Democrat Congress would just turn against her. And so she's got tough decision.

Like, either way, if she wins, she's got a real problem, unless she can somehow sneak out that Senate. She just needs 50 seats in the Senate. That's all she needs. But if she doesn't get that, she's got, I think, the toughest decision in. in my political lifetime. And if Donald Trump wins, a tough year, the whole idea of him coming in and actually succeeding in doing what he wanted to do last time

because he understands the system and has allies who actually do, is that what happens? Does he actually become an effective version of what we saw last time in terms of achieving his goals? Or is he still bumbling infrastructure weak guy who just enjoys the limelight? Well, number one, whether the Republicans win Congress

is going to be a key factor in that. But let's say Republicans win Congress. The House and the Senate and Trump is the president, then, well, the filibuster still exists in the Senate. They'll probably get rid of it because I think Trump does not want the filibuster. But if they don't get rid of it, then I imagine it's not going to be too dissimilar to the first time because there's only so much you can do without the Senate.

I think they'll get rid of it. In which case, look, I think it'll be a bit different because without the filibuster, he can do a lot of things. If he has United Congress. I mean, the other thing is what he learned in his first term is that you can break the law, and it takes a long time for the Supreme Court to rein you in. If they do it all. Yeah, yeah, he did this a few times.

Like, for instance, he funded the wall totally illegally out of funds from a completely different pot. And it took the, it took like two years for them to crack down on that. It's like, so he can get a lot done quickly if he wants to before he gets stopped. So potentially, look, it depends where you appoints. Like, I think, bottom line, I think if he gets everything like he wants, United Government gets through the filibus, it can do whatever he wants, I think he he'll be able to do a lot more than he did in his first time.

And second, but that remains to be safe. Final question, Chazzy, mental decline. He's clearly, you know, on the downslide. The swaying and the dancing and the music. He's probably exhausted. Are you asking, do I think he's in decline? I mean, is this a factor? Oh, okay.

I look, I think that the, I mean, obviously I'm not a psychologist, but. Never stops anyone before. Well, what I would say is, I'd say, the concerns about Trump and his age are different to the concerns about Biden. Oh, clearly. The concerns about Biden's age was they just, he was just running out puff. And he's like, he just running out tickets. There's no concern about Trump running out tickets.

What there's concern about with him is that he is a losing touch with reality, if he ever had it, but he's really losing it now. You know, imaginary conspiracy, whatever. And he's losing impulse control. That to me is the scarier form of age if you're a, if you're a president. Because he said that he even had it to begin with. Yeah. So, so, so, because that means you, that means you don't run out of energy to do impulsive things.

So, yeah, I think that's probably a concern. And one of the things we're talking to getting away with, actually was just talking to someone about this today. I can't believe how people have just accepted that he's just not going to hand over his medical record. The guy's 78 and he's not going to hand over his medical records and he's not even copying crap for it. Like he...

It's not even on the agenda. No, no, like there was like one day or two days where I was in the news. There's Kamala released hers and... Yeah, yeah. Now, if people get worked up about the press not doing their job and go, why don't you make this a big story? Like, I think often when they do that, it's over stupid things, like the music swaying thing.

I didn't think that was a big story. But things like the medical records, to me, that's what they should get worked up about. If I was in the, if I'm in the media, I'm talking about every single day because that to me is exactly the kind of thing that is. Yeah, that is scary. Yeah, that just would not have been acceptable before five years ago or, sorry, 10 years ago. And the odds, there's something seriously wrong with the guy physically. Yeah, I don't mean mentally. I mean, like, he's hard.

Yeah, totally. I mean, when he didn't, when he didn't, when he handed over that ridiculous medical assessment in 2016. I love that. Yeah, like that was about him being the fittest prison ever of all time or whatever. Like that, that was comical. I think that was slightly less serious because. Oh, it was a long time ago. Because, yeah, because he seemed extremely healthy at that point in time.

Yeah. Now, oh, no one can look at him now and not say he looks really worse for wear. Like really worse for him. He's looking, he's looking a bit like Joker. now like Joker's dad. Like he's looking bad. Joker's dad. There you guys. I think we just found the title of our episode. So, so that's pretty bad. And like, yeah, but to answer your question in a nutshell, am I concerned about his decline if he becomes president? Yes, I am. J.D. Vance, and for those who say, oh, he's just a stalking horse for J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance is not taking

over for one day of Trump's term. Let me assure you of that. He ain't going anywhere. He's there for the whole four years, whether you like it or hate it. Yeah, I'm a little concerned about what that last couple of years might be like. You're not going to be out of a job anytime, so you know, he, Chas. No, I'm not. There you go. If you want the three-hour version of this, as ever go to PEP with Chaz and Dr. David's triple the length of this. Just getting started, although in that one, both people know what they're talking about.

And, of course, Planet America on ABC TV. But you know that because you've made it this far. Yeah. If you have made it this far, by the way, I'll personally congratulate you. I'll give you a million dollars. Email, email a podcast at chaser.com. dot a u to gloat and the password is what all the password be joker's dad sure okay all right catch you next time thank you chese thank you done