The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 2744 - Why Some Voters Believed Trump And What Democrats Need To Do Next w/ Jamelle Bouie

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

It's Casual Friday on The Majority Report On today's program: The September jobs report is dismal as only 29K of the expected 90k jobs were added and the unemployment rate rises. Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett has an interesting spin on these numbers. Jamelle Bouie, columnist at The New York Times and host of the Take series on YouTube, joins to recap the week's news. in the Fun Half: A crazy grandma hijacks a Byron Donalds campaign event to beg him to prevent her children from cutting her off from her grandchildren NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani defines socialism to Theo Von. Dave Rubin agrees that every great world leader has committed war crimes. Trump voters in Oklahoma believe that Trump and Jesus will protect them from the Muslims. Victor Marx, the Republican candidate for Governor in Colorado, brags on podcast about slamming his wife into a door. all that and more. To participate in the comment section on proposed rule changing Please consider helping the Aldaghma family, they are the family behind Gaza Bakery, which provides bread and meals to displaced families, and Future Flowers Kindergarten, which gives children a place to learn, play, and experience moments of normalcy whenever conditions allow. On Sunday, October 4, Emma will be in Los Angeles doing a Bitchuation Room Live with Francesca Fiorentini at the Lodge Room. Get tickets here. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: ONESKIN: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MAJORITY at https://www.oneskin.co/majority SUNSET LAKE CBD: Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use the coupon code JustTreats26 to save 30% on all Sunset Lake gummies. This sale ends October 8th at midnight Eastern time Follow the crew on X @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's YouTube channel: https://ww.youtube.com/Th3Discourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here: https:/www.youtube.com/@avaraiza

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And now time for the show. Casual Friday. That means Monday is casual Monday. Tuesday. Casual Tuesday. Wednesday. Casual hump day. Thursday.

casual thurs. That's what we call it. And Friday, casual Shabbat. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Friday, October 2nd, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America. downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Jamel Bowie, calmness for the New York Times, covering politics, history,

and host of the takes series on his YouTube channel. Also on the program today, new job numbers out, they're dismal, unemployment rate increases, August and July numbers revised down.

Not what you wanted, if you wanted to make the case that you just need to give us a little more time. Attorney generals from three Republican states asked the Supreme Court to end shield laws, protection for providers who ship abortion pills from other states. Democrats drop $3 million into Maine highlighting Susan Collins' huge corruption scandal that nobody wants to talk about for some reason. Democrats start fundraising for Angie Nixon finally. This says Sanders starts to release funds.

Republicans start to abandon North Carolina and turn their lonely eyes to Kansas. Kathy Hokel names Letitia James special prosecutor in the Cornell rape case. U.S. deploys at least 9,000 more troops to the middle east. East, as U.S. imposes more sanctions on Iran, just a little bit of a preview of what we're going to see the day after the election. Donald Trump decides to start a land war. Judge dismisses DOJ's reflecting pool case against U.S. Olympian Georgia legislature trying to mess with Georgia voting systems as a predicate to potentially invalidate their midterm elections.

Sanders and Merkley in the Senate, AOC in the House, introduce a bill to crack down on flock cameras. And fun stat of the day, 90, more than 90 percent of the Republican running for governor in Wisconsin, Tiffany. More than 90 percent of his donations have come from three, people, three people, three people, three billionaire, wealth, to be fair, families, three of them, more than 90% of his donations. All this and more on today's majority report, Emma Vigland out today.

We will, uh, there's nothing like expecting your co-host to come in, uh, the next day and then be like looking at Instagram and seeing her. attacking you on all sorts of shows out in Hollyweird unbelievable was shocking and she had her hair up because

I don't know she was like in disguise or something like I wouldn't notice Sam's about to join the bulwark it's it's true sent a application in unbelievable she was on

on this guy Hassan Pikers show. Have you heard of this? Yeah. Like a Twitch streaming show. She was on the something Ped Save. I don't get it.

Oh, Pod Save. Pod Save America. Then she was on this show with that guy, the comedian guy. Tim Heidegger. I don't think him. Oh, no, maybe it was. him. He's, is he actually a

comedian? I haven't seen. I know he does a couple of characters. Like a satirist. It's like he, he's really just more like, he likes to, you know, he does skits. Yeah. He does skit things. I don't know. I don't know. He's a skittiest

or something. But she like, I thought she was coming back in today. And then I look out there, she's in L.A. Like doing like a circuit. What the, it's crazy. She could at least tell us. I mean, really, a little inappropriate. But now, yeah, I condemn all of those outlets, all of them.

Let's get into this. The new jobs numbers came out today. And, well, let's just let Fox tell you what they think about it. This is a Fox business, yes. they weren't terribly excited about the numbers. Yeah, the numbers do not look good. I'm looking at 29,000 jobs were added. That is well below expectations for 90,000,

and our unemployment rate jumps up to 4.2% from 4.1% the previous month. So remember, a significant slowdown again on some of these numbers that we're seeing in September, just 29,000. Last month, August was 162, and we were expecting 90. And again, that in part helps the unemployment rate jump up to 4-2 from a 4-1 in the previous month. Your early thoughts. Well, you know, again, looking at this through two lenses. One lens is, hey, the market is like, oh, boy, just a couple of days ago, maybe 48 hours, 72 hours, an October rate hike was on the table. Yeah, you're right. Not anymore, right?

The comfort that the hawks on the FMC had been hiding behind was like, well, you know what, labor's okay, no problem there. So maybe this gives them a little bit discomfort. That's off the table from a Wall Street perspective. You can see futures are moving a little bit higher. But, you know, of course, we've got to go through this and get the nuances of it. Yeah, you've got to get some nuances out of that. So they're trying to spend this as well. The good news is the runoff.

way interest rates and the Fed freaking out because of inflation is now at least dampened by the fact that the economy is sputtering. So we have inflation that is just starting to spiral out of control and we're having a slowdown. Because remember, this is September. or was. And September is basically when people are starting to enter into the job market for Christmas. They had bragged about August numbers. I guess they hadn't read into it to find out that the August jobs count was revised lower by, I think, a close to 60,000. July switch from a gain to a loss as they were revised down, or those numbers were

revised down by 10,000. That is a revisions account for 60,000 fewer jobs than previously reported. And it's not like we're talking such big numbers that 60,000 does it. 60,000, I think, like, reflects more than a third of the supposed job gains we had over the summer. But they wheel out Kevin Hassett, and he's got a good explanation for this, except for it's not actually a good explanation. It's a good explanation, but it's not a positive explanation. Participation rate, the way I read it, half a million Americans came back into the workforce. Is that what the report shows? Right. Yeah. So there's so that people are seeing the strong

labor market and they're saying, oh, I need to get back to the labor force because I've got to make so much money. And that's one reason why the, oh, pause it. Let's look at some of that B-roll, granted, it's just their B-roll, those folks are making so much money at their call center job. Good. That's one reason why the unemployment just ticked, the unemployment rate just ticked in a different direction. A different direction?

A different direction than down. It went up. Going in an Easterly direction right now. Yeah, the direction, a different direction. We're not allowed to say up or down when we talk about. these numbers, except for there's no sideways, incidentally. Two years

into the deportation of people, and that are ostensibly because they're taking all the jobs or whatever, and yeah, that people still can't find work. Just to be clear, July numbers were 21,000 jobs added. It was revised to

negative 10,000. August went from 162,000 to 133,000. The unemployment rate went up, the participation rate went up by 0.2%, which let's just give, um, smiley the benefit of the doubt. What that means is, is people are trying to go back and get a job for Christmas. And when they got there, they found out there was no jobs. So that's the encouraging part. People wanted to get back to work. I'm going to make

so much money. Oh, I'm going to make so much money at Walmart. So the inflation, the unemployment rate popped up a little bit. And we should tell you that the participation rate is still below where it was in 2025, this in September of 2025, I should say, year over year. So things are going in the wrong direction. Which direction is that? You're just going to have to try and figure it out with a compass. Different one. Yeah, a different direction. A different direction than from good.

It's going towards bad. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's, like, economic rating in the polls is in the toilet. Because all you people that are talking about is affordability. What? You want a nuke to drop on your forehead? Yeah, you clearly don't care about national security. According to freight waves and the independent, 16 American trucking companies have entered bankruptcy this proceeding in less than the past 30 days.

Eight filed for chapter 11. One entered chapter 7 because diesel prices are so high. And they're telling you now, incidentally, yesterday I think it was new inflation numbers came out. And by new, what I mean is they're new, just recently. recently released and also calculated in a different way, which hide the fact that inflation, if you measured it like it was measured two months ago, went up. So that's where we're at in terms of the economy. And it sounds like Donald Trump has a plan to deal with it, and that is to attack Iran

after the midterms. So we got that going for us. In a moment, we're going to talk to Jamel Bowie, columnist for the New York Times, also host of his series of takes on YouTube, which I am actually a regular viewer. But first, a word from our sponsor, Emma Vegelin, who, you know, when she's not doing other shows, apparently really likes One Skin.

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and episode descriptions and at majority.fm. All right. All right. Quick break. Quick break. We'll be right back with Jamal Bowie. We are back. Sam Cedar on the majority report.

Emma Viglin out today. Real pleasure to welcome back to the program. Jamel Bowie, columnist for the New York Times covering politics, history, and the host of the takes series on his YouTube channel, which is takes by Jamel Bowie. Jamel, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me back. Pleasure to be here. Let's, I want to talk about, you know, I think maybe we'll touch a little bit on. on the what the polling says, it's it's sort of tough to measure, but certainly there's

indication that Democrats are, that Republicans are extremely in a defensive mode. Let's put it that way, whether justified or not. But you did a video the other day about what Democrats plan to do in the event that they take the House. and maybe perhaps they take the Senate. And you were critiquing, I think it was Tammy Duckworth. Yeah. And just walk us through your perspective, what appears at least to be her perspective and perhaps shared by other senators in particular, I would imagine,

and your sense of that. Yeah, what appears to be her perspective? And I do think this is shared by a number of other senators is that it's sort of a waste of time to take the majority if they take it, especially in the Senate, and then focus on various forms of accountability, aggressive accountability, aggressive attempts to, you know, discipline the administration, that kind of thing, impeachments, and the like. I think they maybe viewed that as a waste of time and that more of their time is better spent doing kind of constructive policymaking. And I'll say, I do the constructive policy making is important, and there are certainly plenty of areas.

And I would actually include this as being part of holding the administration accountable, where you basically say, yeah, we appropriated money for X, Y, or Z. And you're going to spend money on X, Y, or Z. I think that's totally appropriate. But where I get nervous is that I do think that given the president will still be Donald Trump, if there is a Democratic-Caucin Senate, that maybe the best use of their time is to use that authority to, yeah, engage in really aggressive accountability up to and including impeachment, if not of Trump, then of executive branch members like Pete Hagsaff, like, like, Stephen Miller and the like. I think that's actually really important. One of my guiding beliefs about public opinion at the very least is that the way the public understands

it is where there's smoke, there's fire. If they see no smoke, then they assume there's no fire. And a refusal to use authority to engage in aggressive investigations, the signal that sends to the public is there's nothing there worth investigating. And that's, I think it'd be catastrophic. I think it'd also be a betrayal of democratic voters who are turning out. There's already early signs that they're turning out in huge numbers where voting's already happening, who are turning out on the promise of accountability. people are very angry.

And I think it's incumbent upon Democratic lawmakers to not just understand that anger, but to respond to it using the power and the authority that they have. Yeah, I mean, the polling shows that the Democratic brand is not exactly gangbusters right now. It is an intense anger at Trump and the Republicans. There seems to me to be a like a third. thing that what she's talking about sort of, I guess office skates in some way, which is, I mean, she had mentioned in that clip that you highlighted, you know, working together for, you know, whatever it might be. Maybe it's the Save College Sports Act, which actually I thought

was a garbage bill anyways, frankly, but putting that aside. And I do think that if there's, you know, They can pass legislation like the War Powers Act because we may have a ground war. I mean, this isn't to say there shouldn't be any attempts to have any type of bipartisan. But it also seems as a way of precluding in the event that the Senate, the Democrats take the Senate, it also seems to be a way of precluding legislation that might be more aspirational, right? I mean, because they, it's an interesting era. where it's a easier vote for senators in the House to make on maybe some policy that their constituents have been screaming for because they know it's not going to get implemented

because Trump is going to veto it. It becomes a messaging bill, but it also becomes a marker in 2029 if we have a Democratic senator, I mean, excuse me, a Democratic president. And it's also going to be an issue in the 2028 elections. What's your sense of that? Yeah. I actually don't have a great sense of how democratic lawmakers are thinking about that. I do think that we'll see, we'll see both kind of messaging bills meant to signal this is what we do if we have a full trifecta. I would imagine that there's going to be, if there is a Democratic Senate, right? If November is like a big wipeout for Republicans and there's like real serious majorities in both chambers, I would imagine that. that there will be Senate Democrats in particular, but some House Democrats too,

who are not going to want to have messaging votes on, you know, just the kind of, let's say, Medicare for all bills that have, like, shown up over the past couple years, which no one's going to want to commit themselves, right? To sort of like a particular set of things. I mean, that's, I'll say, just to zoom out a little bit, That's what's interesting because to use Medicare for all as an example, that framing has like very quickly moved into the mainstream of the Democratic Party, right?

If El-Sahed wins in Michigan, then we'll have like, you know, a Michigan senator who ran on Medicare for all, which gives even more credibility to the idea because this is winning in like swing states. Winning in swing states. And we should also say, particularly in terms of Al-Sayette, there are some. you know, unique headwinds to his, well, honestly, like, we've seen the policies where there's a lot of, like, you know, so-called Islamophobia and that type of thing. And so if he wins on Medicare for all, that has even more, that means a lot more than it does, you know, even if Sherrod Brown were to on some level. Right. Right. And so that'll be kind of like the political backdrop. And I think there will be this conflict back and forth, how everyone would describe it, but between, let's do a messaging

bill that's like Medicare for All that is everything we could ever hope for in terms of like a statement versus let's do a bill that might actually look like something that we could call Medicare for All. You see I'm saying? Yes. Like the kind of, this is what an actual piece of legislation might look like and we're calling it Medicare for All. And so, like, I think that kind of conflict might emerge between pure messaging and actually what does this look like. And there, I think there will be like just interesting conflict because, yeah, I mean, do you think, I mean, are you of, I mean, I think like, you know, I, I now after 20 some odd years have become a little bit jaded about, you know, some of these things.

And I think there is a deep reluctance among at least part of the caucus. And I don't know if it's 60% or 40% of the caucus to be aspirational in that way, maybe because, you know, they're afraid or maybe because their donors don't like it or whatever it is. But they also don't want to come out. I mean, right? This is like the filibuster argument in many respects. and this is sort of like a freebie, but it's a freebie that sort of says it's a down payment on something and you may owe when you have the opportunity to actually pass it. Right, right.

I mean, that's where the, like the difficult thing is, is it even if you are inclined to want to vote for just a standard messaging bill, if you're the kind of member who like cares about the policy as well, that might give you some pause. right? Like, do I want to vote for a messaging bill that includes a policy provision that I know won't be able to actually get through in like a live bill, like a live fire bill, right? So that isn't like opposition to Medicare for all. That's sort of like, okay, well, if we're going to do this, what does it look like? And do I want to cast a ballot for something that actually looks like in my past? Or do I want to take in what is some sense a risk to vote on a messaging bill that doesn't have. have something I know I can pass, but does, like, sound good. That's an interesting.

Certainly there'll be members who are not going to want to vote for a messaging bill or whatever because of, like, you know, for donors, for all those reasons. But I do think that there will be this dance about what are we going to put in a messaging bill and what are going to be the expectations if we get a trifecta and health care is on the agenda and whatnot. That's why I think it's interesting that Medicare for All has emerged as sort of like a slogan everyone's okay with, but there hasn't yet been a lot of substance put to the slogan. I see what you're saying.

That's a great point. So there's another cohort of people who might just to make it very digestible, hesitant to vote for a Medicare for All bill that says on, you know, we're going to implement this within two months versus a Medicare for all bill that might involve like, five years of 55-year-olds buying in and 26-year-olds being covered and they don't want to lock themselves into something that is sort of like that sounds really good but isn't necessarily something you could implement in the same way and want to reserve the ability to vote for something that could actually happen and is good policy in that respect. Yeah, that is,

I had really contemplated that possibility too, that there could be that. sort of like somewhere in between the firebrands and the sort of a digging out. It's going to be interesting. And let's, what, what, why do you think, why do you think Tammy Duckworth feels this way? Like, like, you know, like I still think about, um, uh, Joe Biden, I think the biggest mistake, aside from like the Gaza issues in the foreign policy, but, but domestically, his biggest mistake was after the American rescue bill, uh, gets. or a law gets passed in February,

he then dilly dallys and invites the Republicans in on the build back better. Then it's Portman in cinema. And then all of a sudden, like those people who are against the bill, Joe Manchin goes from, we should do a $9 trillion bill to we should do a $15 bill. And because of that disease that seems to sit in the Democratic Party that people want to see a cumbers. in this era era, they don't.

So some of it, I think I have a couple explanations for it. Some of it I think is just Senate brain, right? Like I think the Senate genuinely just like messes up people's brains. And it's so small. I mean, think about it's 100 people, right? A hundred other members, their staffs, whatever. That's like a small kind of intimate group. And I do think something happens where you're just like, yeah, why can't I do something with my buddy who's on the other

Right? Like there's a real dynamic, that dynamic happening there. But beyond kind of like the weird and distorting effects of the Senate, I think that some of this is, and I understand this. This makes total sense to me. It sucks being in the minority in one of these chambers, right? It sucks being in the minority when there's an opposition party president, when you have all these things you want to do. Like you, if you have committee control, if you have agenda control,

well, why not do stuff? And why waste your time or in the, interview, waste your time on, you know, all these hearings and such about these people who are going to be gone in two years anyway when you could just like get to work on stuff. And I actually really understand that impulse. But I think it's an impulse to be resisted in part because I actually don't think you can do the constructive stuff you want to do absent the accountability. I think it's all part of a part of a piece. And I think that when it comes to signaling to the public and this is I think another thing Democrats are not don't quite understand as

fully as they should which is that the public doesn't so much care about your internal deliberations they care about what they see and so in terms of signaling to the public all the messaging bills frankly are just not gonna matter that much for like the typical voter they're not it's not gonna Trump's not gonna be signing anything so like okay you can go on you can do a cable hit or you can go on like a local radio station and talked about you've got a for X, Y, or Z versus it'll be national news. Yes.

If you're hauling up Stephen Miller, if you're hauling up Pete Hagezap into the Senate in demanding answers and, like, yelling at them. It'll be national news. If you use the fact that now you have majority control, you can create select committees. You can create standing subcommittees whose only job is to do investigations and just, like, create a churn of stuff that becomes part of the national conversation. Like that's stuff that you can do immediately that has an immediate kind of visible effect and that you can use to build a larger narrative, which is that this is a criminal administration and that if you want anything done, here's where it's all connected, we have to get rid of these people and allow us, you know, to do stuff knowing that we have revealed all this criminality.

Like in some sense, like I'm asking Democrats to behave like Republicans a bit, right? like the we remember the bengazi hearings right like something like that right yes except for there was there was virtually nothing there and they had like i think like four or five separate series of hearings over years there's there's there there was nothing there and and yet and yet they did it whereas for in this circumstance arguably took down Hillary Clinton i mean there's a bunch of butt fours in terms of her campaign but benghazi was a huge one that's where the whole acid washing the emails came from. Right.

So here we actually have stuff, right? Like, it's not like you'd be drumming things out of thin air. There's like actual criminality that is pervasive. And I would argue that it's also an excellent venue in which to begin to formulate policy to communicate to people like what your policy is going to be for immigration, let's say. Right. I mean, like, like the what I think these past 18 months or two years or however long it's been with Trump has heightened for people on the immigration thing is at the very least they know what they don't want in terms of immigration. And I think it's quite clear that

people don't understand what they do have like what our immigration policy. They don't seem to understand any of it. You had a piece where you, I think the most recent one was why are there, like we're hearing now disaffected Republicans from Joe Rogan to people calling in on, you know, Laura Ingraham's show or whoever it is, saying like, I can't believe this guy is not the peacetime president or I can't believe he didn't. Where's our bonus checks? And how come the economy's bad? And I thought they were going to get rid of only the criminals in immigration. And you did a short, I guess video, I guess a vlog on why people believed Donald Trump. Talk about that because it does seem like some of it is a function of, I feel like there's a bunch of different things.

But it's also just sort of like certain ideas just didn't permeate their heads. Yeah, I think for Donald, for like the guy Donald Trump specifically, I do think so much of it is about, I mean, it's obviously he's affect, but like a lot of people read things like being casually racist as like a kind of honesty, right? Like, well, at least he's saying it kind of thing. Yes, he's authentic. He's willing to be racist in public. And, you know, we're all embarrassed to feel racist in public. And he's doing it there. And so that like reads as a kind of honesty.

And there's like, I think I said this in the video, there's like a cultural model for this, right? Like all of the family was a hit show and that's 50 years ago, but like that archetype is with us. All the Gen Zers are into Tony Soprano right now. Like the Sopranos is kind of having a bit of a resurgence. And Tony Soprano is like a version of that kind of character. Like that Trump fits into a well-worn cultural archetype. And I think that that actually really enhances the sense of, oh, this guy might be, He might be crude around the edges, but like he's basically being straightforward with us.

The other part of this when it comes to sort of more substantive policy is, and this is, I mean, you know, one thing the administration or the campaign did last two years ago in 2024 was allied this quite well, which is that most voters don't have a firm idea of particular policies. when they think about immigration, they basically think it would be bad, it's bad if there are criminals, bad if there are people who are doing violence who are stealing.

The, you know, my neighbor, who I think is undocumented, great guy, like him a lot, good kids, he should be able to stay. If I find out my neighbor, you know, cut the line, maybe he should have to pay a fine or something, but like he should be able to stay.

And like, I actually think people have like a kind of basically humane set of intuitions about this. If you've been here for a while, you know, do what you've got to do, but you'd be able to stay. And if you're coming from somewhere that's really dangerous, you should have a chance to be able to stay.

But otherwise, you've got to follow the rules and do it everything, do it everyone, you know, do it the way it's supposed to be done. The problem is at first, the American immigration system doesn't have like a set of clear rules. There is no line, right? There is no, there is no orderly process necessarily for people to follow.

And then second, you have, in this case, the Trump campaign, creating this image saying, oh, there are tons of criminals that have come in. And we're going to create an orderly process for all of that. And voters think, okay, that sounds, you know, he's talking tough about it, but obviously, obviously he's not going to do anything unreasonable. He comes in. We know, right, that, like, whatever he says, Stephen Miller wants to, like, do an ethnic cleansing. Like, we know that.

So that's what they do. And voters were like, well, wait a sec. I thought you were just going to do this more modest thing that I thought. And I think a lot of that is happening that, like, people don't necessarily understand that when you are electing a president, you are not just electing back die. You are electing a whole cadre of people. You're electing a whole coalition. And they have their.

own interests that they want to pursue. And part of what a presidency is is negotiating that and figuring out what actually happens based off of that large coalition of people that have been brought in. And although Trump reads, I think, to a lot of people as a basically straightforward, crude businessman who they don't associate with the kind of casual cruelty of a mass deportation regime. The fact of the matter is, is that like that's, that's actually what you bring in when you elect the guy. And I think the dissonance between Trump, the image that people have of him and Trump, the leader of this particular coalition, is partially what's had, like, partially

the sense of discombobulation you're having among Republican voters. Because, yeah, Trump says no Middle East wars, but all the people he's hiring are like Iran Hawks. So what do you think is going to happen. Right. I think it's also, it seems to me that there's also a similar dynamic as you talk about with the need for hearings. And the way that I have always articulated that is just from like a film perspective, you need a reaction shot to allow the audience to know how they should interpret what they just saw in the action shot. Like, is this a horrific killing or not? Let's cut to the you know, bystander to see the look on their face. If they're just walking down the street,

then there's nothing happened there. And it seems to me that particularly in the areas in which people felt hoodwinked by Trump, the no new wars, the immigration, I mean, obviously, and I should say, you know, with the necessary qualifier that a lot of us weren't fooled by this. But of course, but of course. I mean, I just need to say that I'm obligated.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But part of it is because you don't have a reaction shot that is filling the vacuum that is created between what people thought Trump meant and what he meant. Because, you know, you did not have Biden, for instance, in Iran, reinstitute the nuclear deal, which everybody thought he was going to do. That would have pushed, that would have filled a vacuum in many respects. there would be no, they've got nukes, they've got drug nukes, they've got, you know, whatever Trump is rambling about now, because we would have had a deal in place. With immigration, the last thing the Democrats did on immigration was in part like a deal sweetener that never really happened and then became the sort of full-throated, we're going to,

we're going to be just like the Republicans, but a little bit more humane in a very vague sense about immigration, that absence of staking out a position. I would also argue in terms of like transgender folks. Like there's a reason why they feel like they can, you know, J.D. Vance yesterday was talking about in Texas or Florida, wherever he is, like sending your kid to school and they come back as, you know, a different gender at age five or something because Democrats aren't filling that vacuum. I think that's right.

There is, I mean, there has been, obviously, I think, among moderate, centrist, democratic strategist, democratic strategists, pundits, that kind of thing, this idea that the proper orientation for the party, the mainstream of the party, is this sort of like chase, chase public opinion and chase what people seem to be communicating in public opinion surveys. I'll know, I think this is sort of like, you know, no one's saying that when it comes to AI, like the public is very sort of like, I don't like this. And you don't hear these people saying, you know, you got to stand against status and there's an AI. So I think there's, I think a lot of this is just like a stalking course for personal preferences. Yes. But to the extent that it isn't, if I extend a little bit of good faith.

This belief that that's how you reach the typical voter, the median voter, the voter in the middle is by, you know, appealing to them on these 80-20 issues and the 80 part of it. And the way this reading goes is that's sort of like why Republicans have been successful is they've been like reaching voters on immigration. Immigration is an 80-20 issue and Republicans are in the 80. You know, transgender rights, 80-20 issue and Republicans are in the 80. But I think it's like wrong. First, it's wrong because public opinion is not like the weather, right?

Like it's not actually something that you can like easily include, you can't easily discern weather, but like you can tell if it's sunny or not, right? You can tell if it's raining or not. And it's not like that. How, what the public thinks about a given issue is structured as much by the framing of the issue, the way you talk about the issue is anything else. It's structured by the fact that for many people, the first time they're actually thinking about the issue is when you ask them about it.

Like, you are in the act of asking what do you think should be the country's immigration policy? How do you feel about transgender girls in sports? People are in that moment formulating a sense of, oh, this is what I may be think, but it's not strongly held. It's often quite loosely held. So you have like a public opinion, which is often loosely held, which is often influenced by framing and all these things. And that's not, oh, that's just not a reliable basis for trying to develop a message.

I think that the better approach is first to figure out what are. your values. What do you think ought to happen? And then essentially, like, make that case to the public, attempt to bring the public around to you. And, like, use public opinion to sort of figure out what the public's values are. So in the case of immigration, like the public's values very clearly are, they want fairness. That's what they care about. They think it's unfair if someone cuts the line, so to speak. They think it's unfair if someone's just kicked out and they've been here a productive member of society for 20 years. They want something that is fair. And so that's what you zero in on and you don't necessarily have to play the Republican game if we're going to be so tough. You can just

be like, we're going to be fair. And this is what we think fair means. And if you want a fair immigration policy that looks like this, this is who you should vote for. I think you can tell a similar story with transgender girls in sports. People, first of all, I should say, hardly anyone actually cares about this that much. If you look at the polling after the 24 election when it comes to sort of like, what's your top rank issue? It was like 4% of people were like, yeah, trans girls in sports are the thing I care about the most. It's a very low salience issue. But to the extent that you have to say anything about it, it's a question of people, I think, are concerned about fairness. And so you say, you know, we should have a fair policy that ensures that everyone gets to play sports. And you move on.

But you don't have to chase. I don't think you have to chase what a crude reading of the polls say. And I do think that you have to be able to articulate something that is, like, distinctive from what Republicans are saying to borrow from conservatives 50 years ago, a choice, not an echo. I think that's right. People want a choice. They don't want an echo.

And they want a choice knowing that you have articulated a set of values that are, like easy to understand. To use an example, one of the things that's striking about Zohan Mamdani is that he's constantly talking in terms of values. And so even voters who aren't necessarily certain about the substance of the policy say to themselves, well, I trust this guy is for me. So I'll give him a shot, right? I don't know if I think the buses should be free. But I trust this guy. I think he genuinely. wants to make things affordable, so I'll give him a shot. And if Trump was able to do anything, I think there was a sense in which for a lot of voters,

he like kind of captured their values. And so they did discount substance. They were like, I think this guy is going to be on my side because he's rich and he cares about business and he wants me to be rich and all these things. And I'm just going to go with that. And I think a lot of Democrats have a hard time kind of. of like capturing this like nuance of how things are actually working where it isn't again just to loop around it isn't oh the Republicans are matching exactly my beliefs and so as us as Democrats

need to propose policies that are close to that but not not as like cruel or whatever it's closer to I can clearly understand what the values of these people are and so because they align with mine, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I think that's, I think on the, on the how essentially to get there. I mean, I would say that just, you know, in terms of your argument about the people's opinions, we can just look at Republicans in marriage equality over the course of the past 25 years. And it just, it goes like a roller coaster based upon what the, the Republican Party has

decided is going to be their, their push. And I would also say that, like, you. Like, the reason why Obama, I'm convinced one Iowa in 2008 was because he started talking about Social Security being perhaps in danger. Ultimately, he offered a cut to it down the road in office. But he signaled to people in Iowa, like, I'm paying attention to Social Security in a way that they were like, oh, that's important to me. And without any sort of sense of what he was going to do.

Lastly, let me just ask you this in interview because it raises an interesting question. That hesitancy to work from values first that we don't see in a momdani, is it because their value system is either absent or one that they're not quite convinced will jive with, let's say, Democratic primary voters or a wider cohort? Yeah, that's a good question. Like, I don't know if I have an answer to that. Part of me, I'm always interested in, like, what is like this, you know, you can take to the larger sociological background of American politics. Like, who are we selecting for it or run for office, right? Are we selecting for people who are just able to, like, raise money very well, which is often

the case, right? So you're really good at raising money. And, you know, that gets you in. And then you don't really have to think about it to other stuff. or are we selecting or are you selected for charisma like what are we selecting for it's it's been interesting to watch in this cycle a bunch of candidates who are doing this values forward way of campaigning talarico in texas adam hamilton in kansas um uh uh who else um something like a guy dan osborne you could say are sands in iowa running for governor

I mean, there's a whole host. L-A-N Michigan, as we mentioned, like all these candidates who, who honestly, it's sort of like their policy platforms can be even somewhat vague. But what isn't vague is, like, their specific values

that they're communicating to the public. And the contrast they're making with their opponents, often on this question of values. And I don't know what has prompted the emergence of this style of candidate. Maybe it's just circumstance, right?

But I do think that there is this real generational difference, cohort difference within the Democratic Party between Democrats of 15 or 20 years ago who are very uncomfortable talking in this mode and more recent Democrats, Democrats of the Trump era perhaps, for which this is like a mode that they're comfortable in. John Assoff, I think it's a good example of a guy whose re-election campaign is so much more about like values. than it is like any particular sort of policy ideas. Like he talks about, you know, I want to lower prices and everything. But the centerpiece of the campaign is that not even that you like my values, but their values are rotten, right? That's the campaign.

I don't necessarily have an explanation for why that is. But I do think, and especially depending on how this year, how these elections go, this is something that, you know, Democrats everywhere should pay attention to, should take note of, take stock of. And if it proves to be, if these candidates prove to be, if they win, if they prove to be quite effective, I do think it provides a model for going forward. One that, you know, is selecting for people who first and foremost simply know how to talk about what they believe. And you mentioned at the beginning of our combo, you know,

the Democratic credit brand is quite low. And I think the, for lack of a better term, like the midwit explanation for this is all about sort of like, oh, voters don't like Democratic policy. I think that's dumb. I think the explanation for it is, first, Democratic voters feel like they belong to a party

of like whims and losers and they don't like it. And I think that the maybe more general view is that people just don't know what the party believes. They don't know what the party's values are, which first, allows the other side to define those values for you to say, oh, this is what they believe. And second, it robs you, you know, as of an opportunity to, to communicate forthrightly, like, what your vision for the country is going to be.

And that's, you know, what this recent crap of candidates are able to do, I think, is circumvent that by, like, having clear values and being able to communicate what their vision is. and I think that if there's any path for the Democrats to like actually regain popularity, it's going to be if the party itself is able to say clearly this is what we believe, this is who we are, this is what we want the country to look like. And we want your trust to get there. Less about we're going to give you, we're going to do all these, this, this tax subsidy for X, Y, or Z. This is what we're good.

This is what we think the country ought to be. and give us your vote to help us bring you there. I'll say, obviously, there's some synergy here with, I think, more progressive ideas because it's easier to be able to say, we think everyone deserves health care, and we're going to use Medicare and Medicaid to make sure everyone has health care.

We believe everyone should have easily available child care, and we're going to do what we can to provide that. So I think progressive ideas, there's a lot more synergy. Like, it's hard to say, you know, housing is a human right, and therefore here's a tax credit. Like that there's a, there doesn't quite job. Yes.

It doesn't quite job. But even still, I think that what we're witnessing in terms of the public's perception of Democratic Party, all these things, is just that for a long time, Democrats have not been able to articulate what it is they actually believe. And it's left a vacuum for other people to fill. I know you got time constraints and we'll end it there. But in the future, I would love to continue that part of the conversation because I think there is a there's an operative aspect, an operations aspect to that relationship between progressives

and those value stating and the implications for the infrastructure that promotes candidates and creates candidates and whatnot. And also want to talk about we're going to need some reconstruction, I think, in the coming months. And nobody talks more about reconstruction than you do. And I would love to have that conversation. Jamel Bowie, we will link obviously to your pieces in the New York Times and to your takes series on YouTube. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

All right, folks. That's it for us in the fun half of the. or I should say in the free half of the program, we will move to the fun half of the program, and Fridays get pretty crazy. So, buckle up.

You will not believe what Donald Trump said this time. Things are going to be crazy. Actually, I have to say, I got his, um, the transcript. There's nothing funnier than reading him.

Of his interview, Time magazine, it's huge. And really what I'm just thinking is... We should start making our own electric. They're doing drugs and nuclear. I may just like just randomly pick a page and just start reading from it. I'll just do one right now. So the Time magazine asks them,

there were reports after the hooty attack that Saudi Arabia I have no idea what this segment is I'm just going to pick one because I think he's insane in all of them attacks that Saudi Arabia wasn't pleased that the U.S. didn't come to its defense what's your relationship with the Saudis right now good good I've done a lot for Saudi Arabia I protect Saudi Arabia if I wasn't president Saudi Arabia wouldn't be here right now neither would Israel they'd be wiped off the face of the planet I do a lot for Saudi Arabia. My relationship with them is very good. I like the Crown Prince.

My relationship is very good. But remember, if I weren't here, there wouldn't be a Saudi Arabia. There wouldn't be in Israel. There wouldn't be various other countries also. And they would have, at the right time, for them, started hitting our cities before we blow them to pieces. What can I say? But I do a lot. I do a lot for everybody.

But the Middle East is, it's been a mess. for years and years. Look what I did with the hostages. We got all the hostages, both living and dead. But before the living and dead, I got all of them. That was 28 left, living and dead. I got them back. We could do this for hours. We could do this for hours. Saudi Arabia seems to be doing great because of what Trump's doing. Very protected, sir. Thank you. Our pipelines are exploding. Airport was bombed. Meanwhile, I know, I just say this too as a public service. The debt collective posted it this the other day.

The Department of Education has been incentivizing people to switch out of the save plan onto a more expensive plan. Save plan is a repayment plan for the Education Department for student loans. Remember, in 27, they plan to eliminate student loans for like a dozen and a half majors or concentrations of study or degrees, I guess. Anyways, they're trying to incentivize people to switch out of the save plan and onto a more expensive plan. How do they incentivize you to move from a save plan to a more expensive plan? They say they would reduce your interest rate by 1% if you enroll by auto pay by September 30th.

And now they've just extended the deadline to December 31st. What this means is student debtors who could have stayed on the save plan and been in a forbearance with no payment due were tricked to leave the save plan earlier than they needed to in order to get a lower interest rate. But now that deadline has been pushed and there's speculation that they're going to keep pushing this as a way to get people off the save plan and out of forbearance. like the the level of fuckery associated with what they're doing with our government I know people who have IRS refunds

I mean that there is just fallen into the netherworld they have no like we're in October they filed in April they had severely overpaid and because they had anticipated more money coming in. They didn't get it. And you can call the IRS and be on hold for literally

a week now. I heard it's just one guy. It's pretty close. They certainly aren't auditing wealthy people anymore according to the data. Also, yesterday was October 1st.

Maybe you covered this, but just a reminder, the big beautiful bill came in and cut Medicaid and snap by 4.5 trillion dollars excuse me uh we're cut i should say to provide for four point five trillion dollars in tax cuts for billionaires and corporations um you're going to have hospitals all across the country start to shutter as medicaid payments uh decrease in the tens of billions maybe hundreds of billions rather actually over the course of uh the next 10 years snap cuts uh cutting billions

off of food assistance. So big, beautiful, doesn't necessarily mean what you think it does. Hey folks, you can support this program by becoming a member. Go to join the Majority Report.com. When you do, you only get the free show free of commercials. You also get the fun half. See that?

I put all the sad stuff in the first half today so that we can only have fun in the fun half. I do have a late submission from him too. Really? All right. Well, we'll get to that. Just a reminder, we do not lock out anybody for financial reasons. So if you want the fun half of the program, but you don't have the funds for the fun half of the program, send us an email at majority reporters at gmail.com, put in the subject line, fund half. And have some patience. We don't have internal mechanisms for. really anything. I was just about to say for this, but then I was about to say, like, really for anything. My plate's full. Yeah, we've got to figure out some way of like, even invitations. I also, like, I won the clearinghouse sweepstakes. Publisher's clearinghouse. And didn't, I didn't find out until like a year later, because they sent

it to majority reporters at gmail.com and then it was too late to collect. Wow. I like that you just realized this. 20 years in. There's no mechanism. is it for this. Also, just coffee. Dot co-op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate,

use the coupon code. Majority, get 10% off. You can buy the majority report blunt. Matt. Yeah, 3 o'clock today

New Jacobin show taking a question and answer. So there's a Jacobin post on the Jacobin AV Twitter, Twitter X. page, I guess, that you can respond to and to ask his questions will be taking questions live. So check that out.

Wow. Doing an AMA on X. Well, on YouTube, but you can ask the questions on X or in the chat, I suppose. All right. See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now.

But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for, hold on for a second. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey.

Matt. Who fun pack. What is up? Everyone. Fun. No, Miqui. You did it. Fun.

Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Fun crap. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false.

No, I'm sorry. Women's... Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this? Seven a. Yes.

Yes? It is you. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

I'm going to guess how life. Libertarians. They're so stupid though. Common sense says of course. Gobbled euk. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge met.

I'm positive and quivering. I believe 96 I want to say. 857. 210. 35. 501. 1 half. 38.

911. for instance. $3,400, $1,900. $6.5, $4, $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making think less. But let me say this. Poop. You call it satire. Sam goes to satire.

On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. Hi, folks, folks. It's just the week being weeded out, obviously. Yeah, sundown guns out. I don't know.

But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled folks. I love it. I do love that. Look, got to jump.

You got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o'clock. We're already late. And the guy's being a dick. So scroom. Sent to a gulaw?

Outrage. Like, what is wrong? wrong with you. Love you. Love you. Bye-bye.