The Chris Cuomo Project - The Top 3 Signs Trump Fears the Harris-Walz Ticket

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Chris Cuomo reveals the top three signs that Donald Trump is concerned about the Harris-Walz ticket. He explains how the unusual level of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris and her newly-picked VP, Tim Walz, the Trump camp’s desperate attacks against the Democratic ticket, and their actual preference for running against Josh Shapiro all indicate a significant worry for Trump. Join Chris as he breaks down what these signs mean for the upcoming election. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You want to know the three signs that Trump is very worried about the newly minted Harris Walls ticket? Good. I got them. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes in part from AG1. Listen, I've been using AG1 for a long time, long before I've been podcasting, and for good reason. It's one and done. One scoop, one cup of water, you're done. Second, I know that they are research backed. They reflect on studies, they have an in-house team that's constantly tweaking the formula. The studies are there, they're easy to find. And AG1 focuses on gut health and the health support that I need.

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with your overall health as well as your fitness goals, go to drinkag1.com slash CCP. I do and I recommend it to you. Check it out. I'm Chris Cuomo, welcome to the Chris Cuomo project. So here are the three big signs that Trump world is not happy about what the Democrats just put together,

especially as haphazard as it was, especially as how screwed up it was with how Biden was getting pushed up. The expectation was that Biden was getting pushed up and then pushed out. They were gonna be a mess. Harris is coming in. There'll be They were going to be a mess. Harris is coming in.

There'll be discord. There'll be a process. There'll be a crazy convention. And none of that happened. The Democrats actually did it right. And they're being rewarded for it. Now look, I wanted more process. I wanted to see these different voices.

The Democrats do have a bench. I wanted to see these four or five, six women and men kind of have it out on the issues, go to different places, come on all the different TV stations and make the case and then let the convention decide. That's what I wanted. I thought that would have been a better process, but it's probably not as smart strategically if you want to win. Why?

Because getting behind somebody, the sooner the better. And that's what the you want to win. Why? Because getting behind somebody the sooner the better. And that's what the Democrats decided to do. You can argue with it, but it's just weird hearing that argument from Trump land when they tried to rig the last election. You know what I'm saying? Anybody who's not gonna vote for the Harris-Waltz ticket because they don't like the process,

it seemed like it was rigged. Well, you ain't voting for Trump then because the guy tried to rig the last election. You know what I'm saying? So balancing the equities, I get why they did it. So now they pick walls. And here are the three signs that Trump land does not like that the Minnesota governor is now on the ticket.

The first one is how much they are hating the attention that Harris and Walls are getting. All those people cheering, they haven't heard that. That's not what Hillary Clinton brought to bear. That's not what Biden was getting. That's not even what Kamala Harris was getting on her own, and there was enthusiasm behind her. But that Philly crowd, their cheering was scary for a couple of reasons. One, again, Trumpland isn't used to hearing big crowds cheer for the Democrats. Two, that was in Pennsylvania. And the reason that the Democrats would lose Pennsylvania is why?

Underperforming or really failing to over perform in the population centers. Now as a throwaway, but something to keep in mind, whether or not the Democrats win the electoral college will be a function of whether or not they can over perform in the population centers in the swing states. They have to do better than they normally would in those population centers or they will lose. So is that a high bar? A little bit, but we're in a big grievance climate. And usually when you're in a climate of grievance and people are voting because of what they're mad about and against, it's bad for the incumbents.

Okay, so sign number one. The Republicans are like, what is all this attention? So they're bashing the media. The media, they're building her up, this is a love fest. What happened? Everybody hated Kamala Harris a month ago. Well, the media wasn't talking about Kamala Harris a month ago, or six months ago, or a year ago, right?

I mean, she was nowhere in this administration, so that's not really fair about the media. It's more fair to say it about the Democrats. Democrats were not polishing Harris' apple six months ago, but they are now. Why? Because they want to win and she's the best they have. The Democrats couldn't look past a sitting vice president that is a black female in the party of rewarding diversity and celebrating it. How are they going to go over her?

For a white guy. Now, I wouldn't have had a problem with that because I believe you do it on the merits, but they have defined themselves in a very specific way in terms of their priorities and principles. So they couldn't, they have to get behind Harris, they did and they're going all in. Makes sense.

So, Trump land's reaction to the attention is the first sign. Why? Because what you do in politics is not pay attention to your opponent. You ever notice how they don't want to say their name? You know, right? And the other side and the other guy and blah, blah, blah. And how the media always points out to you that they didn't use the name.

Why? That is a subtle or not too subtle nod toward the strategy and tactic of ignoring your opposition. Why? Because they don't matter. Because only you matter. You just talk about yourself and why you're good. You don't spend time bashing them. You don't spend time validating them. You don't even want to raise awareness that they exist. That's what Trump Land was supposed to do. They've done the opposite. Takes us to number two, how they're dealing with it. Trump is not telling you that he is better in any way. He's got his boy Vance, who is out there

literally following Harrison Walls around, shit talking them, and they are straight attack ticks. What I call attack ticks. They're on the attack with a set of tactics. Attack ticks, if this were Sesame Street. Attack ticks, attack ticks. This is what they're doing. Radical, radical, radical, radical, radical.

Walls is the most radical, the most lefty. I was on with this super conservative radio gab or Lars Larsson, and he couldn't say radical enough. He's the most radical, the radical, the most radical, so radical, it's radical. That's how radical it is. It's so radical, it's radical. Why? Because they're playing buzzwords to scare people. That's what they're doing. But something is betrayed by that desperation. Did you see, I'll have Greg put up Trump's rant on truth social. I have never seen a more empty, long-winded criticism than this one. He doesn't land a single blow.

It is a string of bad nicknames. He literally has all these words in this big post and none of it is why he's better. That is very revealing. The first thing you wanna do in politics, okay? Sure, the negative works. You're never gonna hear me say otherwise, all right? But when you're comparing, you don't just contrast. Here's why they're worse, here's why they're worse, here's why they're worse.

You say, man, this guy, Waltz, who she just picked, they'll never be able to do what we can. We're going to do this and this and they can't because Waltz doesn't believe in it and she doesn't believe in it and here's what we're going to do that they can't. None of that. Straight, radical, radical, radical, lefty, lefty, lefty. And then you start looking at the bases for it and some of it is really risky for the Republicans or whatever they've become now in terms of just being Trump's proxies. Well, like what? Okay. Saying that Walls left duty early, their insinuation is that when the Iraq war was coming, Walls decided to get out of the military.

Well, first of all, he was in the military for a long time, okay? Much longer than Vance. And last time I checked, Vance served the country. Respect. But he was a war correspondent, okay? He's not Dan Crenshaw. He wasn't out there, you know, trading bullets or anything like that. And again, I'm not Trump.

I'm not diminishing the service. I'm just saying if you're going to look down on somebody else's service, now we're going to look at your service. And I don't know that Vance, well, but at least he was at war. Yeah, but he was reporting on it. Okay? So him saying that like he's better than walls because of that. I don't know.

I don't know. And more importantly, Trump got out of entering the service with some kind of BS medical excuse like flat arches or something like that. So why are they bringing this up? Shows desperation. It is a sign that they are in a panic mode about this ticket, showing them attention when you're supposed to ignore the kind of attention is all negative. You're not saying why you're any better and you're picking criticisms that make you look weak. Now on all the other

policy things, you look at Walls and he is not out of step with Democrats. And I don't think anything other than an exaggeration of language puts him into this space of even far left, let alone radical, you know, to use that as an aspersion, right, because that's all it is, is an insult. Well, he says that socialism is just being neighborly. Hmm, not exactly. He said, and by the way, I think every time you say the word socialist, you're asking

for trouble in American politics. And I don't know why you would play with it, certainly as a Democrat. But he said one person's socialism is another person's neighborliness. What point is he trying to make? Don't give the word too much power, okay? Sometimes it's just about doing things to help others, okay? But it's such a loaded word that he set himself up for that criticism. Now, are his policies that way? Free health care for migrants. Now, a lot of Democrats

won't be bothered by that. A lot of Americans will, okay? And I think a lot of those Americans are independents. So that's something that they're gonna have to explain in an extension of a weak border policy or a posture of what is perceived weakness when it comes to dealing with the issues that extend from the southern border. Now, what do I think about it?

I don't know, and it doesn't really matter. It matters what you think about it, okay? And how they make that case. Oh yeah, he also wants everybody to be transgender. He wants to put tampons in the boys' room. Again, no. And I understand why parents say, look, let me teach my kid about transgender

and what it means to us as a family and what our disposition is towards it. I believe that there is a privacy aspect to this. And people are not wrong as parents to say, I wanna know and I wanna write and I want a privilege of having a hand in what my kids are told is okay. And I understand why some may fear that there are educators who will want

to make your kids be transgender. They used to say the same thing about being gay. That they're gonna make them gay. I've never put a lot of weight in it, but I do get why it is a concern for people. All right. Now, I may not agree with something, but I can understand why it's a concern. I don't agree with their concern, but I understand that it's a concern.

The bigger point is that that's not what Waltz is doing. Waltz had policies that are, again, are not going to be foreign to most Democrats, which are a bundle of policies to give kids, regardless of their identity or how they identify, equal access in the educational environment. The policy is that if you're a female who's transitioning to male, but you're still biologically a female, what happens when you go into that boy's room,

because the law is that if they say they are male, they have to use the male facility, but they're still biologically female. And what if they are menstruating? That's why he's applying the tampons. Now, the answer is don't let them do that. All right, he made a different choice. Let's argue about it and let the voters decide

which way they like it and which way they don't. The law accommodates accommodation. So then you don't have to just have an election, but you need to change the laws. But I don't think that it's a boogeyman the way the right wants it to be. I get that transgender and identity politics is very polarizing, but I don't think that Governor Walz is trying to do things that Democrats have never seen done before and they're going to think he's radical and that Independents will see that this guy is an outlier within his own party. I'm not seeing it Nor is that the case when it comes to his energy policy. Look the Democrats overshot the mark on

Expanding our energy palette and they overshot the mark in terms of how to shut down oil and gas and kind of forcing people. It is a problem every time you force Americans to try to do anything. We are not a compliant people. Okay, we all live that during COVID. So the infrastructure isn't ready for all of these renewable energy sources that they want anyway. And everybody should be coming around to the idea that you need everything on the table. You need fossil fuels, you need renewables, you need new technologies, you need all of it. And most of all, you have to, they did infrastructure and this is addressing some of it, but not all of it. Our power grid can't handle the energy that everybody is trying to make. Okay. And I'm sure you've heard this.

I'm sure you've had an electrician at some point say, do you know if everybody had an electric car and your block could probably blow out the transformer? We need to upgrade the infrastructure to really have any of this argument be anything other than academic. So is he aggressive on it? Yeah, he wanted clean energy only in his state.

Now I don't know how radical it is to give yourself 25 years to get to something, right? He'll be long gone as governor by the time that happens. So again, I get the criticism. I don't know that it's gonna paint him as radical. So these tactics, I don't know that they really work, especially when you're looking at walls. Like there's nothing radical looking about him.

He looks like, you know, Santa's cousin. You know what I mean? Like he's a white Midwestern guy who works on cars and was a farmer. And it was interesting, you know, this conservative guy was saying, oh yeah, but he totally reinvented himself. You know, he was a conservative and then he switched.

Oh, you mean like JD Vance, who hated Trump, and now is the muffin top kisser? He didn't do the same thing? See, that's the problem with the two-party system is that they'll shit all over the other side and they're guilty of the same damn thing and they hope you won't know it or that you'll think that one side's shit

smells worse than the other. And I just think it's such a low return on your investment. I just think we can do so much better. So the three signs, first one, they're freaking out by the amount of attention. Second sign is how they're reacting to that and trying to paint these two as just radicals, and not really drawing any lines of distinction about how they're going to be better for the country than those two would be. Now here's the third one for me.

This may be a little subtle, but for me it's a sign. They wanted someone else as the running mate. Now, I think that why Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania didn't get the selection is a relevant discussion. I don't know that it's because he's Jewish or because of his position on Israel. I don't know that it's because he's Jewish or because of his position on Israel. I don't know that it wasn't because of those things either. There's reporting that says he didn't gel well with Harris or that there was something in the vetting that they didn't like.

All right, here are my questions. If that's the case, why were they trotting him out as a favor? Why were they not disabusing the media of that notion? If they say we weren't trotting him out as a favor? Why were they not disabusing the media of that notion? If they say we weren't trotting him out, first of all, in my experience, they were. Second, if they weren't, why weren't they saying back off Shapiro? Third, why did they have him as such a big player at the Philly event where they were with Waltz and Harris?

Why? If there's something wrong with this guy, whether it's the Me Too allegation story that he allegedly may have helped cover up or whatever it was, or that he didn't gel with Harris, well then why did you allow him to stay up front so long? It raises suspicions about what changed. What changed? And I think that's a legitimate discussion. Why? I don't want to hold the Democrats to a different standard of how they vet and how they pick somebody than the Republicans, because the Republicans literally go for the lowest common denominator, right? Trump wanted the evangelicals,

he went for Pence. Trump wants a kiss-ass now who can go out and preach magna to everybody, so that's what he went with. So I'm not impressed by their process. So why would I hold the Democrats to a higher standard? Well, one, because they said they were going to have a higher standard and two, because I think the Republican standard sucks. So in judging the Democratic standard, I won't want to see it be better. And was it better? I don't know. That's for you to decide. But I don't think that it's a dumb smear for me to ask the question whether or not his faith was relevant or his position on Israel was relevant given the posture of the far left of that party. Because something seemed to

change. Why? Why was he ever a favorite? If it's just that he didn't jail, there was a problem in the vetting. It just doesn't make sense. So it's worth a conversation. Why? Because if what it turns out is that his position in Israel and or his faith made him an unsafe choice if you want to win, that's a sad commentary on the state of play in our country. And what's also sad about that is that I would agree with that assessment. If the Democrats decided we got a better chance of winning if we don't pick Shapiro because he's Jewish and or because of how aggressive he is on Israel, that's sad that that's what makes somebody safe or unsafe. So I think it's a conversation

worth having. And I don't know that it was about those things. And I don't know that it wasn't. Yes, there's some reporting that suggests that it wasn't, but I don't know that that isn't just explaining away. I don't know that that's genuine and I don't know that it's just part of it. I don't know. So I think it's worth the discussion. What is absolutely a sign of Trump's concern about it is that they're saying they should have picked Shapiro.

They should have picked Shapiro. You know when you do that in politics? When you're afraid of who they picked and you wanna to undermine confidence in the current pick. And I think that Walls is a curveball for them because he plays to what they say they are. It is hard to look at Walls and say that he's a radical. No, yes you can look at his policies. They're not going to seem like that to Democrats. This guy is a farmer and a teacher and a football star and a local guy.

He works on cars. He's got really good understanding of mechanics, by the way. And you can say, so what? It matters to me. As a guy who likes cars, and I think there are a lot of guys like me in the country, I actually respect that more than what I learn about most politicians. And I think he's really relatable to people. He reeks of Midwestern more than Vance does. And I think that's really scary to them. So three signs that Harris-Waltz has Trump land really worried,

one, how they're reacting and giving acknowledgement to all the attention and enthusiasm that the Democrats have, which we haven't seen probably since Obama, okay? Two, because they're supposed to ignore it, remember, and they're not, and if they're not ignoring it, that means they're impressed by it and they're responding to it. Two, how they're responding to it.

The tactics. They haven't been able to put together yet why they're so much better. It's just be afraid of these radicals, be afraid of these radicals. And I'm telling you, when you pitch it all in the negative, you're worried that better ideas won't sell. And that is frightening in a campaign. If all you have is that the other guy sucks, and well, what will you do and why are you better

and you're silent, that's scary. That is scary and that's where they are right now. And the third one to me is that they keep pushing that it was a bad choice, you should have picked someone else, it should have been Josh Shapiro. And the reason they're doing that is they would have rather run against Josh Shapiro. Why? I don't know. I don't even know that they would have been right about that. I think having the governor of Pennsylvania who's so popular within his own state and such a

great arguer and advocate would have been a real problem for Trump land. And he's on the right side of the Israel issue, which they're trying to paint the Democrats as not being. So what are we supposed to believe? They're a fair broker and they actually did think Shapiro was better even if it was worse for them. I don't buy it. These people lie when the truth is a better story. So why would they be being truthful now all of a sudden about something that actually matters to them? So the way I see it is maybe they invested in the Jewish thing and that that would be helpful to them. A black woman and a Jewish guy. I mean how weird is that for America because that's our new word right weird Right, you're weird. They're weird. This is weird. I'm weird, you know, by the way, I'm okay with weird

What I'm not okay with is a rational conformity. You know what? I'm not okay with Defining what's normal. Okay? I'm okay with oddity. I'm okay with eccentricity. I'm okay with people being different. I'm okay with them being unusual, even weird, like foreign to me. Like what is that about? I don't even get it. But maybe I will get it. Maybe I'll like it when I get it. I'd rather have that element in the mix, the unknown, than forced conformity. Then you being preached to and indoctrinated about how you're supposed to think or what you're supposed to be or how it's supposed to be. That bothers me.

Scare me? No, because I'm not susceptible to it. But I'm worried about who is. So three signs that Trump is absolutely not happy about the Harris Walls ticket and just wait until he sees the next polling. Wait a minute, I thought we don't care about the polls. I don't. I said wait until he sees them, not me. They're just snapshots of a moment in time.

Harris is still in honeymoon mode. It's gonna change. Why? Because that's the job. The job is to start balancing the coverage. And by the middle of September, the honeymoon will be over, I promise you that. And polls will start to matter more

because you'll start getting likely voters and you'll start getting what the trend is. And whenever you're doing analysis, trends are your friends, right? But right now, they're just fodder for the media and to hype headlines. But when Trump sees them, he's not gonna like it. And I would expect him to start blaming. And I would start to start getting a little bubbly,

bubbly, bubbly of maybe Vance was the wrong pick. Maybe Vance doesn't get it. Maybe Vance isn't as strong or as smart. They will blame anyone around Trump because Trump cannot take responsibility for anything. So you see the three signs that Trump is in a worried state about the Harris Walls ticket. The question is, what is he going to do about it that gets him to a better place? And the even better question than that is, who will make the right moves now that the race is really on, now that the game is really on?

The teams have been assembled. The Democrats are going to have the first advantage because their convention is going to be a big event that's going to get a lot of coverage. Who will make the right moves? The teams are assembled. The reaction from Trump is a sign of weakness. What do you think? I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you for joining me here at The Chris Cuomo Project. Thank you for subscribing, following, checking me out on NewsNation, 8P and 11P every weekday night. I got a sub stack. If you want this podcast, ad free, five bucks a month. And you get all of my long COVID doctors expertise about what she's learning, what she's seeing, how she's trying to drive longevity while treating long

COVID, how she's treating me, my efforts to get myself to a better place, my walk and talks are only on that substack. So if you're into philosophy, self-help, this stuff is there. All right? My friends, the problems are real. So are the solutions. The biggest one, got to stay together. So let's get after it.