The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Raging Moderates — Another Assassination Attempt, Trump Refuses Future Debates, and the Pros and Cons of Tim Walz

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Scott and Jessica discuss the second assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, how each presidential candidate has shaped up following the debate, the latest polls, and whether Tim Walz is benefiting the Democratic ticket. Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.  Follow Prof G, @profgalloway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Innovation Fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash innovation. This is a paid advertisement. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Darlow. Where are you, Jessica? I'm at home in New York. Not very glamorous. Really? But you've had the weekend of the century, right? Yeah, so just so you know, when I ask you a question, what I'm really saying is I want you to ask me.

Yeah, I get it. Didn't I do it well enough? No, that was perfect. It was like two seconds on me. That was perfect. And then right to you. Okay, good. That's right. Very good. I was in Scotland this weekend in Aberdeen for my 50th birthday. And I am now in Cap d'Antibes. And it's beautiful here. So I'm about two glasses of domain odd in. So anyway, I spent, you know, that's called a weekday. But yeah, I had an absolutely wonderful weekend with a bunch of actually a bunch of people I think you might know. Jessica, are going to do about 100,000 downloads in 24 hours, which means they'll probably do about 200,000 over the next 30 days. And I believe that means more people in our first week are listening to Ray Dream Moderates and are viewing 80% of cable news programming. So we're stars, Jessica. We're stars. Mostly you. I'm just here for the ride. Yeah, that's it.

Am I doing this right? Was that how I was supposed to get it back to you? No, it's really exciting. And also just kind of understanding the viewership or listenership versus TV is fascinating for me. So excited all around. And I'm glad that the listeners have found that what we're talking about is resonating with them. I have seen some comments that we're no moderates, but a moderate can be someone that votes for the Democrats, by the way. But we'll prove it to them over time. Today, we're going to talk about the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the aftermath following the presidential debate, and whether Tim Walz is benefiting

the Democratic ticket. So, all right, we're under two months away from election and things are getting more intense. The Secret Service is investigating another attempted assassination on former President Trump at his international golf club in Florida. The gunman, three to 500 yards away, had an AK-47 style rifle, a GoPro, and backpacks when law enforcement intervened. I know so little about this, Jessica, because I've been eating haggis and drinking anything within reach. Can you kind of break down what happened here and what you know about it? Well, you're behind most people, but we don't know a ton yet. So it's not that bad that you're just joining us on this one. We're going to find more in the coming days about it, and there'll be another Secret Service investigation into it. No idea how this guy was even able to get, I think it we could have the whole gun reform conversation about that.

His voting history is... I didn't know there were people like this that existed. He voted for Trump in 2016. In 2019, he was really into Tulsi Gabbard, which to me is also kind of like being into Trump. But then he wanted Biden to win, which worked out. And then he wanted a Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley ticket for 2024, which if you followed the level of vitriol that the two of them spewed at one another, you would know that that is maybe slightly more plausible than a Donald Trump Kamala Harris ticket, but not much. And the guy was just truly out of his mind.

We don't know yet what, quote unquote, inspired him. The New York Times interviewed him in 2023 and discovered that he was a nut. He was trying to go and serve in Ukraine, actually fighting with the Ukrainians. He's all over the place. I'm glad that the former president is safe. And I think it's pretty clear that he needs some beefing up of his detail, which President Biden said something about that this morning. And hopefully Congress will just pass something quickly to give him extra money for protection because it feels like this is heading towards being a trend. What do you think of Elon's now deleted tweet? He said, and no one is even trying

to assassinate Biden Kamala. And he put this out to his 170 million people on X. Now, what are your thoughts when a guy like that with so much reach says something like that? Is it Democrats overreacting and being indignant as we often are about everything? Or is it irresponsible?

Or is the answer just yes? Yeah, I think it's yes. And I actually found his tweet last week when Taylor Swift endorsed Trump and he said, okay, I'll impregnate you or something like that to be even nuttier and more offensive than this. Him saying, why is no one trying to assassinate Biden slash Kamala feels just on brand for someone who has a level of genius within him that I'll never be able to fully grasp even and has become so terminally online that he's incapable of having normal human interaction. And it fits in nicely with where I think a certain faction of the Republican Party is right now. And you notice it in the way that J.D. Vance has been talking or Donald Trump at the debate where he just started, you know, yelling things that he

saw online or that he saw on TV, which a policy does not make or a true statement does not make. But, you know, Elon Musk, I think there's no better encapsulation of what he has turned Twitter into than that comment. And when he took it down and justified it, I guess, by saying, oh, I guess things that you say in private that are a joke aren't actually that funny out in the wild. Like, who was laughing at that in private. Yeah, I didn't. I'm of two minds, and that is, I think people should be able to say what they want. I find that people get very sensitive around, I don't know, jumping around this stuff when I don't think people are going, well, shit, I don't know. There's a lot of crazies around there. But something I've thought about is that, and I think it was my dad said this to me. He said, have you become more measured as your audience and followership has grown? Have you become more measured? And I said, no, I try to stay as authentic and as provocative. And he's like, you should become more measured. And I said, well, why do you say that? And he goes, because when you have more reach,

you need to be more thoughtful about the ramifications of your reach. And that kind of- Spider-Man, right? Right. That just struck me. And I thought, well, maybe he's right. Maybe I should be a little bit more measured or thoughtful. And not that that's actually- What happened to that? Yeah. We'll see. It's coming. It's coming. I'm curious, do you think, is there any evidence, the last assassination attempt, Trump had amazing political instincts. And that image of him pumping his fist in the air with blood on his face and the American flag above him, I believe that will likely be the image of the decade.

I just thought that was, I mean, that was incredible. And I do think he registered a bit of a bump. Do you think he's going to get a bump from this? No, I don't. I think that what helped in terms of the bump with the first assassination attempt is, first of all, the person got a shot holes away. But, you know, someone was unfortunately murdered at that rally. And, you know, Trump was bloodied from it hitting his ear. And then it went into the RNC. And I think the timing of that, you know, worked together, essentially, to create this martyrdom mood, which I was feeling firsthand being in Milwaukee. You know, there was an invincibility about Trump and the party that happened there.

This feels like an important point of discussion and something that we need to think about and how rotten our politics is, even if this wasn't necessarily politics motivated, but how dangerous it is for politicians, which is something that we're seeing across the board. But I don't expect, you know, Trump will be redeemed from a bad debate performance by a bump from this guy.

We'll be right back. Okay, moving on. Let's talk about the debate. 67 million people tuned in, 15 million more than the Biden-Trump debates back in June. Still plenty of voters didn't watch it. The polling data I've seen says the following. She won, and it kind of doesn't matter. What are your thoughts? Agreed. She won. The kind of on the more rosy side of it.

She needed to prove that she was capable of this job that she could look presidential and that she could open herself up to the public more than than she had and i might have frankly underestimated how much that was bugging people who were unsure or even were going to vote for her but wanted her to do a bit more work in terms of earning that vote. And it was interesting. I was listening to the Daily this morning, and they had undecided voters. They've been—it's actually really cool. They have, like, a long-term tracking study with these voters, following them through everything. You know, people through Biden, you know, being the candidate, not being the candidate, Trump assassination, the debate, et cetera.

And there was one woman who they interviewed. She's in her 40s, has two daughters. And she said, I'm still not exactly sure what I'm going to do. I was leaning towards writing someone in. But now that I saw the debate, I feel like I can make more of a choice, which she didn't say it was going to be Kamala Harris, but that was implied from what she was saying and her concerns about Donald Trump. There is that snap reaction polling that showed that for the undecideds, her favorability went up pretty substantially in the double digits. But there were a slew of polls that came out over the weekend. I won't bore everyone with like 40 minutes on polls, but what has been really important to see is she's crossing the 50% threshold in a couple of them. And these were all, you know, grade A or grade B pollsters. So not pieces of trash that people like to run around amplifying.

She's gaining like an ABC Ipsos poll. She's gaining with black voters, Latino voters and Gen Z voters, critical components of a win. She's not quite at Biden's numbers from 2020, but inching that way. And then I don't know if the Ann Selzer poll from Iowa permeated the haggis bubble in Aberdeen. The haggis bubble. That's good. Yeah, you can keep that. That's good. But it was a really big deal. So Ann Selzer is known to be one of the most accurate pollsters in the country. She had Biden down 18 to Trump when he had Trump

won by eight in 2020. And she just released a survey showing that Kamala is only down four. Now, do I think she's winning Iowa? Absolutely not. But it's a really important bellwether for how white Midwestern voters are feeling about Kamala Harris. And that then bodes well for Wisconsin and Michigan as well, and maybe a little bit of Pennsylvania. But that seems like it's going to be the real difficult piece of this puzzle for the Harris campaign. Cabuto, RFK Jr., and Frank Lund saying the debate likely cost him the election. How do you, do you think, I thought with something like that, I would have thought, and I guess it's not as bram, but you're, I mean, you're an expert in messaging and data. I would have thought that he should have said, I had a bad night. She was great. Congratulations. Check out our policies. I'll be a better president. She's a better debater. I'll be a

better president. Instead, he went into the spin spin room which i thought was almost a look a little bit desperate and is trying to recast it as no just ignore everything i won what do you how do you think i hope you blacked out for the last 97 minutes and here i am to tell you about they're eating the cats they're eating the dogs. I now sing that whole thing in TikTok form, which I don't have on my phone, but you can actually go on TikTok on your computer without inviting it into your life. You know, Donald Trump, his ego and his need for attention just kicked into high gear. And that's why he went into the spin room and kind of watching who the Republicans had versus who the Democrats had. You know, we had the best in class, Gavin Newsom out there, Josh Shapiro out there. But I do think that there is a case to be made for Donald Trump not hurting himself that badly in the debate for people who were looking for a clear vision from Kamala Harris and actually answering the explicit question. And we talked about that a little with the, you know, the first question was, are you better off today than you were four years

ago? And she didn't answer that. On immigration, now, I really, I agree with the answer that the bipartisan border bill would make a huge difference. Lots of conservative Republicans even agree with that. But like, Secretary Mayorkas is on with Ezra Klein on his latest podcast, and Ezra Klein is really struggling to get that answer to the question, why did you do nothing for three years? And for people who are going to vote on immigration or that's going to be in their top three, they want at least some sort of answer. If you want to say, well, we needed more cheap labor, I accept that.

Or we thought it wasn't going to get this overwhelming. I accept that. It's a tricky period. You're in COVID. Everyone's being held. Then suddenly the floodgates open. We were overwhelmed. We made X, Y, and Z mistakes. This is what we're doing to fix it. And so if you're someone looking for that kind of specificity, and like Bret Stephens, for instance, is someone looking for that, I hope he's going to end up voting for her in the end. But she didn't satisfy that itch for a lot of people. And that's why I think a second debate or town halls where I think she would really shine would help her case. So Trump is now saying it's not going to debate her again. Do you think that's a smart move? I think that they could both. It's weird. I'm a Pollyanna about many things in life, and I know that winning is the ultimate goal for everyone. But I do think that people, the American public deserves the best person for the job, and the best person for the job should be the person who can show up in a bunch of different forums, explain themselves, connect with people, have policies that satisfy the widest swath of voters. And so I think that he should, you know,

for people who are on the fence and saw him behave like a petulant toddler, he could do a lot better. And I think he could also interact with her better. There's a clip floating around on Twitter or X, whatever I'm supposed to call it, from 2016 when he was debating Hillary. And not only is his cognitive decline on full display up until now, but he's really kind of nice to her. It's been defective for a long time, many years, but the politicians haven't done anything about it. Now, in all fairness to Secretary Clinton, yes. Is that okay? Good. I want you to be very happy. It's very important to me. But in all fairness to Secretary Clinton. He says, I want you to be happy. I want you to be very happy. And it made me think back to the night that he won, which surprised him more than anyone. Remember, he told her, you come out and you say whatever you want, whenever is good for

you. There's no need for you to make a speech right now at three o'clock in the morning or whenever it got called. And he seemed much more humane in that version versus what we saw or continue to see right now in 2024. So I think he could help himself. And I think Kamala would continue to build on this goodwill that's beginning to burn for her. Your point is a good one, that if you want, that if you're going to try and present, or you think that you're presenting to the people that you're the person that should be presented to carry the flag in almost any context, or the most important contexts, I should say, around the world, that you should be subject to all sorts of formats. One of the reasons we've had such

exceptional people as presidents of the nation is we battle test the shit out of them. You know, Fred Smith was not going to be president. Rudy Giuliani, Herman Cain were all at one point leading in the polls. And as soon as they kind of got on stage and got started, people started battle testing them. Ted Cruz won Iowa. Ted Cruz won Iowa. As soon as we started power washing them and they went into combat, they just fell away. And that process does produce really impressive people. But what you said about as your lead up that Trump should do another debate, I would bet that a lot of people who are Trump supporters are saying, are we talking about Trump or Kamala? Because she has not opened herself to a lot of formats. I think that's totally fair. She did a local ABC Philly interview.

I think it came out on Friday. But she definitely has to. And I think, you know, Trump had wanted a Fox debate after the moderators who he said were in the tank for her, which I do not see that bias existing. But he says he wants, you know, it can't be Brett Baird and Martha McCallum.

Now he wants Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram and Jesse Waters to do it. So obviously that's a nonstarter. But I think that Kamala should just come out and say, if he's not going to debate on Fox, I'm going to sit down with Brett Baird and myself and Brett will give her a fair interview. One of the worst interviews that has ever existed for Donald Trump was actually with Brett when he read off all the horrible things. All the secretaries, all the people who no longer want to work with him. Exactly. That four of his 44 secretaries are supporting him. Yeah. It's a very, very slim pickings over there, but she should do it. And it's a little selfish. I would love it if she came on the network that I work for, but it's also

where the persuadable voters are. And I think that, you know, Mayor Pete has really proven that out as being a good strategy for Democrats to show up. Gavin Newsom as well. Mark Kelly's been coming on. I think it's really good for a public that might not feel thrilled about their choices to see you showing up and doing the difficult things. Yeah, look, if you want to be part of the resistance, you have to go behind enemy lines. But the people you reference, Mayor Pete or Secretary Buttigieg. I should say Secretary Pete, or I should say Buttigieg. It's just so, Mayor Pete is so good.

Well, yeah, but him and Governor Newsom, they, I believe, in my view, they're better facing the opposing party than when they're on their own party because they are so outstanding at sort of very—I think when Governor Newsom goes on friendly TV, I think he's a handsome vanilla boring guy. When he debates Governor DeSantis, I think he tore him limb from limb and he's really good. I think the same is true of Secretary Pete. Vice President Harris hasn't demonstrated that ability to go behind enemy lines. And I think the people probably advising her aren't sure it's a good idea, because I think Brett Baier would be fair, but quite frankly, he's just going to put to her a level of questioning that I'm not sure. We don't know if she'd be good at this. We both believe she should do it. I'm not sure it's the right thing to do from a winning standpoint. Trump is terrible when he gets in front of an opposing party. He starts calling them nasty or starts insulting that network. I saw what I thought was just a cringeworthy interview. I love Dana Bash. I think she's very measured. I think she's great at what she does, and she interviewed Senator Vance,

and talking about this. Well, first off, just in case you're one of the 2% of people that haven't heard it, let's play the clip from Trump about locking up Fluffy and Zoe because they are under threat from Haitian immigrants. Let's play that. Look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States, and a lot of towns don't want to talk. It's not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame.

So Senator Vance came on and Dana Bash immediately said, look, this is causing problems in Springfield, Ohio, that this is creating a lot of unnecessary attention. It's bad for our economy. It's creating a spectacle of Springfield. We're worried it's going to be bad in terms of our ability to actually solve the problem. Can you please stop? And she said, why are you spreading baseless claims? And he said, well, when my constituents call said, you know, that's outrageous that you would accuse me of inciting. He went into the outrage misdirect. And I couldn't figure out if it was bad for CNN and Dana or bad for Senator Vance. But I feel as if Senator Vance and Linda Iaccarino literally have the worst jobs in the world, that they're the circus clown falling around, scooping up the shit of an elephant. They're like, okay, you go defend this ridiculousness. And he has to pretend that this is actually going on and it was a reasonable thing to say. I don't, is this a giant, should the Harris campaign continue to press on the ridiculousness of that statement or should they move on? I'm just, I'm almost getting a little sick of talking about it. Again, and I think I said this last week, you know, we're not really the target audience anymore for this. We can evaluate these things and I think our opinions are worth something and hopefully our many listeners agree with that. But

if you need to get out to sometimes low information, undecided voters, I think you do need to keep talking about these things. But the way that you do it is important. Like dunking on J.D. Vance, like he's been dunked on a lot and it's working. Right. His approvalz is in positive territory and Kamala is just barely in positive territory, but she is now. But I think that what Springfield. And these are legal immigrants that he said that he's going to round up and send to Venezuela, which is not Haiti. Last time I checked. It's close. It's close. But when you contextualize it in terms of how inhumane these people are in the way they talk about people of immigrants, people of color as well, that that's something that can be resonant to folks who are on the fence. run and the country is going to hell in a handbasket because of immigration and isn't really separating legal versus illegal immigration, you know, they're looking at the fact that the Harris campaign, and I referenced before, you know, Mayorkas being on and talking about what's gone on on the border for a while, that the Democrats don't seem to really have a cogent answer for what the solution is going to be. So for people who do live in places where, for instance, rec centers that are for low-income kids are being taken over as migrant shelters or have classrooms

that are being flooded with people that don't necessarily speak the language or ERs or all of these very real problems that are happening as a result of the migrant crisis, the fact that J.D. Vance and Donald Trump are even talking about it at all. Versus saying like. Oh you know we have a fancy bipartisan bill. Like a bill is not a solution to people. Especially when they know that the bill. Isn't going to be passed.

And now there's another survey. Out an F.T. survey. That showed Kamala Harris really closing the gap. On the economy. She was even up a point or two. That people get that she cares about. Average Americans. Middle class Americans. He's for the wealthy. But if you look at it on the immigration issue, he's still up like 14 points on that. And so whatever she's messaging on it

isn't resonating in a way that I think is going to move the needle in that direction. And for Nikki Haley voters who are the top, you know, up for grabs and top priority, they also said immigration was their top issue in the primary. And the campaign hasn't been that responsive to it. Senator Kelly said something I thought that was pretty, pretty interesting. You know, he said that Republicans aren't sincere about immigration and Democrats don't understand it. And what I take more of a, my sense is money always wins. And that if you wanna look at something, when I serve on a board and the CEO is behaving strangely,

or we can't figure out why store managers aren't collecting email or whatever, I go, let's go to the compensation. Let's just go to the money. Money always wins. It's around incentives. And I believe our lack of an immigration policy over the last 40 years has primarily been because, and people don't talk about this, people talk a lot about the morality of immigration and how

it's part of our DNA, and that it's good for America, and that 20% of the NASDAQ by market capitalization is from first-generation Indian Americans who immigrated here. So there's a ton of spiritual and chest-beating and flag-waving notions of immigration. I think the most beneficial or one of the most beneficial things about immigration is a subset of it, and that is illegal immigration. And if you think about undocumented workers, they come across the border, they pay Social security taxes, but they usually don't stick around to collect social security benefits. They are the most profitable immigrants in history, specifically undocumented workers. And all this bullshit about, and you'll find examples of this, of them being criminals, they actually commit crimes at a lower rate than citizens. And I think we've figured out this flexible workforce

that comes in, picks grapes, takes care of grandma at a lower cost, lower taxation, or lower strain on our social services, and that we haven't wanted to fix this problem because we make a shit ton of money from illegal or undocumented workers, and we're willing to pay the price of some of the externalities. Now, the point, you know, the question is at some point, does it become so out of control that it's no longer worth it? And I think a lot of people have decided that we've gotten to that point. Any thoughts? No, I totally agree.

My dad was a winemaker in Oregon. So, you know, dealing with the seasonal workers was something that was built into conversations that we were, you know, having around the dinner table and how also incredible these people were and what kind of bastions of the community they were. And I thought a lot about, do you remember there was a proposal that came out of the California State State Assembly a few weeks ago about giving loans to undocumented people to buy a home. And it became this lightning rod thing. You know, Newsom was basically like, I'm going to veto this no matter what. The politics are terrible. Nancy Pelosi was asked about it when she was on Bill Maher. But I was frustrated that it didn't get into the conversation

that, A, these were people who were paying taxes, like you said, as most of them are, and then they don't necessarily hang around to claim it on the backside of it, but that they were people who had to qualify by our federal mortgage rate standards. Like, these just weren't people streaming across the border where we said, oh, here's $150,000, go have fun. You know, these are people who were established in the community, had earned enough to be able to qualify for a mortgage to get on the property ladder. And I think that that's somewhere that Democrats can really lean into those conversations,

not necessarily in an election year where it's going to be distorted. And, you know, I haven't gone into the fine-tuning of the policy. I was just surprised to hear how it was being spoken about without all of the real information behind it or at least coming to light to make it a more fair and balanced conversation. But those are the types of immigration conundrums that I feel like the American public is ready to deal with. But when you have border crossings the way that it has been kind of before Biden's executive order, which I guess is now a couple months old and cut it, what, 55 percent or something like that, you know, if you see these images of people streaming in and Eagle Pass, somewhere that can only hold 10,000, 15,000 people, is getting thousands a day of people coming there, that no one's actually going to have that real conversation about the seasonal workers,

the people who work in your homes, who oftentimes raise your children and take care of your parents when they're dying with the level of empathy and care that I can't even fathom summoning from myself as someone who loved my father deeply. The people who cared for him, it was next level, like angel level stuff. And no one, I guess it's Mark Kelly's point, you know, no one really wants to be real about this, even if now the migrants are in Chicago and New York and Baltimore at higher rates than they ever had been before. I also think, and I'm by no means an expert on this issue, but I think it's unhealthy. I think we need to separate the border from immigration policy because, I mean, the majority of my understanding is about half or more of undocumented workers are just overstayers. They come here

legally on a visa and they just stay. And I think a disproportionate amount of undocumented workers get here on a plane. They fly over any wall that we're planning on building. And the other, I've always thought at the end of the day, if we were serious about this, it wouldn't be that hard to fix. And that is you use some sort of biometric program and any employer caught with an undocumented worker pays a $25,000 fine. And the moment you have on the demand side shrink up where people are like, oh shit, if I have five guys in my kitchen and if I get caught and I can't, and someone comes in and scans their eyes and says, this is an undocumented worker. You did not check.

You did not call us. Five times 25,000, 125 grand. In my opinion, the whole thing's over. Yeah, but is that the result do you want people who are busting their asses working in the kitchens at the restaurants that we all go and sit in to be thrown out? Oh, I want to be clear. I think this is a boon to the American economy. I'll use a personal example. I was renovating a house.

And, you know, I was trying to fix up a house, didn't have a lot of money, and had trouble finding people to do a certain job. My general contractor said, come with me. We went to this local 7-Eleven, bunch of undocumented workers, I assume, rushed the pickup. He asked some questions in Spanish. Six guys jumped in, went to the site, went to the construction site. These guys worked around the clock, went to the construction site. These guys, like, they worked around the clock, around the clock. They each had a specific skill. I mean, Jesus Christ, this is like the most unbelievable workforce I have ever seen. And I thought, this is, no wonder people are turning, you know, a blind eye to this, because this is just such a

flexible, efficient workforce. I absolutely think these folks do great work and deserve more empathy. What I'm saying is I just think it's cynical, all these calls for border protection. I take it back. You're not a bad person. If for whatever reason, rationally or irrationally, you wanted to stem the flow, just punish the employer. Because once demand dries up, but that's never an option because those are nice white Republicans employing those people. We don't go to the source. drugs out of prison, the notion that you're going to keep talented, resourceful people out of opportunity and economic well-being because of some fucking wall or some sort of border control, there's no way you would have to. It strikes me if we ever got serious about

quote-unquote undocumented workers, it would be a lot less complex than people think. It would be going after the demand side and just punishing and punishing the employers but no one wants to talk about that because those are good americans anyways i i don't think we're serious about this problem well we're definitely not and we're going to lose elections because of it or democrats are i mean it was one of i think the strongest arguments for putting mark kelly on the ticket you know i mean he has the best bio ever. And Gabby Giffords is, you know, otherworldly, impressive and inspiring. I mean, we would have lost potentially lost the Arizona Senate seat. So I think Chuck Schumer lost his mind about that. But having a Democrat that is

conversant in the mechanics of immigration, like you say, from the border, but also what happens once they're here and what life looks like from a humane and kind perspective, but also a realist perspective, I think would have been of huge value. And, you know, I know we're going to dip into talking about whether Walls, you know, has panned out to be the best choice for all of that. You know, if you're talking about immigration, I'm picking Mark Kelly 10 times out of 10 over Tim Walz in terms of talking about it. Well, he's on the border and he speaks eloquently on it.

Let's use that. So by the way, just as I was saying it didn't matter, I'm now looking at some polls that our producer Caroline pulled together. And we have New Reuters Ipsos national poll shows Harris leading by five points, 47 to 42. The Economist poll shows Harris up by three, 49 to 46. A CNN flash poll, a majority of debate watchers

say Harris outperformed Trump. Yeah, we know that. But it does look like, my understanding is she has to solidly get more, she has to be up by two or three points to win the electoral college. Yeah, that's right. And I know you had Nate Silver on and his probability forecast is a bit of an outlier now, but he has some new numbers up about the odds of many different things happening. But what's so sick to me about our system is Republicans don't even try to win the popular vote anymore. Like the idea of trying to win a majority of voters is out the window. And it's just a game of chess, figuring out, you know, what states you can cobble

together for this. And Kamala, yeah, in two points, I would still be sweating going into election night if she was three or four points. People would feel a lot better about her odds of winning the Electoral College. But I should say the Fox forecast came out at the end of last week and two pivotal states, Georgia and North Carolina, which were lean Republican, are now toss ups. And the Harris campaign is very serious about North Carolina. I mean, they've shown a capacity to win Georgia before. And I think Trump, you know, whoever gave him his come to Jesus moment about being nice to Brian Kemp, you know, finally got through on that one. But North Carolina would be a fascinating pickup for Democrats. And that's where money comes in.

They now have the money to sort of put in field offices and go hard after states where they maybe only have a one in five chance of winning, but they have a one in five chance of winning. It feels like this is where those hundreds of millions that she's out raising him right now would be really powerful. Stay with us. I think one of the biggest problems in America is that we have minority rule. And that is, you know, 20% of our population has 80% of the senators. Whether you look at gun control, I mean, there's just, whether you look at the majority of Americans favor bodily autonomy, we really do have minority rule on some of the most important issues. And I would argue, I think a lot about marketing. The three best marketers in the world by sector or groups, first and foremost, the best marketers in history were the tobacco guys. When your product's primary benefits are death, disease, and disability, and you've convinced

people that it's cool, and you sell a product at 96 points of margin. Unbelievable. Actually, I'll do four. My industry is the only industry in the world that can charge a six-figure price tag at 97 points of gross profit margin and artificially create scarcity, becoming forces to cash system. In some, we're sort of mendacious fox that wake up every morning and say, how do I reduce my accountability while increasing my compensation? I know despite sitting on the GDP of Costa Rica, I'm only going to lend 1,500 people because it makes me feel good about myself. We're the best marketers in the world. MIT, Stanford, Harvard are the best brands in the world. It's not Apple. Number three would be the industrial financial complex. Anyone on CNBC, hedge funds, mutual funds,

it's all a total fucking grift. If you took every single hedge fund, mutual fund, 401k, everything you're in, and you added it all up, it's exactly underperformed the S&P by the amount of the fees. We should all just put our money in low-cost index funds. The entire financial industrial complex is a giant grift, but they put some old guy in suspenders in the Wall Street Journal and CNBC, and we're under the impression he actually understands which way the market is going to go. Spoiler alert, he doesn't. And then my rounding it out, the fourth best marketers in the world are the Republican Party, who, as far as I can tell, spend 70 or 80 percent of their energies representing the top 1 percent in corporations, and yet every year get about 47% of the vote. That is an incredible feat to convince these people that, yeah, we're for you, when really at the end of the day, who they really represent are corporations and the uber wealthy. Anyways, that's my TED Talk around marketing. Any thoughts, Jessica? I agree with it. And my question would be, do you think that the Republicans are really that good or that the Dems are really that bad? Yes. I think that's the correct question. So just as we wrap up here, let's touch base on Wallace being the VP pick. We had Nate Silver on the Prophecy Pod, as you referenced a few weeks ago, and he thinks that we should have picked Shapiro. By the way, I was really hoping for Shapiro. And looking back now, I actually think Walsh was the right choice because I think capturing younger men around sort

of this aspirational vision of masculinity is serving them really well. Republicans argue that Walz has pushed a very progressive agenda in Minnesota, whereas Democrats see him as someone with strong Midwestern appeal who connects with everyday voters. What are your thoughts? How would you evaluate Walz's performance so far? So I'd bifurcate it into two buckets. So one is the feels bucket, and then one is like the practicality bucket. And on the feels, I think that he's been a fantastic partner for her. And I don't want to make this about gender, but I think that a female candidate for president, especially one who has been shaky in the past and has had a tough time with the press. You know, she wasn't successful in the 2020 primary, obviously, to get the Democratic nomination. I think it matters a hell of a lot that she picked the person who she felt supported by, who she connected with, who's, you know, as a couple, her and Doug connected with, you know, Tim Walz and Gwen Walz. And I think that

she does better when she feels good about herself. And you saw that post-debate. If you watched, she did a rally, I think it was in North Carolina, the day after. And she was loose and fun. And there was substance in it, but there was a joy, and not in the we're coconut pill joy way, like a genuine joy in doing this job of campaigning to be able to be commander-in in chief. And I think that Tim Walls is a huge part of that. In the practicality bucket, I already referenced the fact that his favorability of the four people that are vying for these jobs, so Trump, Kamala, J.D. Vance, and Tim Walls, he has the highest favorability by far. I mean, some polls even have it, you know,

at 11. I think one had it at 14. And what Republicans are throwing at him, you know, oh, did you hear that he was an assistant coach and not a coach? Like, that stuff is not sticking. I think the military conversation about, you know, whether he retired a commander, major sergeant, I think is the term, or not, you know, that was resonant with some people especially in the veteran community but he has such a solid record that isn't necessarily progressive like he runs the sixth best state in the country to do business in that doesn't seem like a socialist to me it's a great talking point i didn't know that oh you i lease it to you or i just i just know the prince was born and raised there i don't know that is also important um and I'm sure they will let him use the music for it. But if you go back and look at his re-election in 2022, that was after the summer of Black Lives Matter, the riots. All of the issues with defund the police. And he won by eight points.

He paced ahead of Biden's margin. He's from a Republican district, isn't he? Originally. Didn't he win a seat? His congressional district. Yeah. And like, I think that people just can't believe that the guy whose students staffed his first campaign

taking on a serious right-winger is a bad guy. Now, Josh Shapiro, you know, and I think we talked about this maybe in person and not necessarily on any podcast venue. Josh Shapiro was great at the DNC. I expected to be brought to tears, right? Like by this Baruch Obama situation. And I found him to be incredibly compelling.

Baruch Obama, you're good. That's what we call him. No, no, it wasn't me. The other Jews came up with that first. But, you know, if this somehow comes down to Israel in some way, you know, Tim Walz wrote a master's thesis about being able to teach the Holocaust better to make sure that we never actually go back to a time where something like that is possible. But, you know, if you hear it from a Jew, it often sounds better. And that Josh Shapiro has that and he's tight and he's really good.

But at the end of the day, it didn't seem like he really wanted that job. And you know what it's like. You've employed thousands of people. If someone is not into the job that they have, can they really do it at the level that you need when the stakes are this high? And Tim Walls wants that job so bad. So what I've heard, I mean, this is all hearsay. I don't know. I heard on the Friday before the pick, he had it because, quite frankly, winning Pennsylvania would probably, it makes the path to presidency for her pretty, like the landing lights would be on. He's very popular in Pennsylvania.

He would inoculate her around the kind of Israel issue. And also, I think he was just primed to be an attack dog, which the VP is supposed to do, because he's already filed suits against Trump on election interference. Yeah, so he was kind of ready to go. I think it comes down to ego. I don't think she wanted someone who wanted her job. He doesn't want that job. He wants to be president. And I think she was very drawn to walls. And I also heard that a lot of people in the far left were very uncomfortable with Shapiro on call then. But let's talk, what are your predictions, just as we wrap up here, what are your predictions for

the VP debate that's supposed to take place? I think it's on October the 1st. What do you think is going to happen? I worry that they're going to talk past each other, which I think was a little bit of the problem for people with the Harris-Trump debate. He's a great moderator, right? Who's moderating it? Do we know? Oh, I don't. I should know. I just hope. My really strong suggestion is that it's that David Muir guy again, except he does it without a shirt on. Jesus Christ, that guy's dreamy. What's that his name? David Muir?

What's his name? Yes. I saw him at the DNC. Wow. He's dreamy. And I watched as he walked by. I said this on Pivot, and I hate to recycle points, but I do it a lot. I think Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise would have both been Academy Award winners

in their 20s and 30s. Him, Tom for Born on the Fourth of July and Brad Pitt for this odd movie called 12 Monkeys with Bruce Willis, where he played a mentally ill, a son of a rich kid who ends up starting a global pandemic. They're both outstanding actors, but they're so good looking that it diminishes people's perception

of their acting skills. I think that guy, Muir, whatever his name is, I think he's just too hot to be taken seriously as a moderator. I think he's so good looking. Well, I agree with the good looking part, but you don't think he was taken seriously?

And Lindsay Davis, also beautiful. Well, I think he's had, in a weird way, I think he's had to work harder. I thought they did a really good job. I'll be curious. Well, now they're saying that they were fed the questions. There's always some conspiracy theory. And it's like, if they were fed the questions, she would have answered them.

I don't understand how you're drawing a line between those things. I agree with you. That's going to be a food fight. In the next one or two weeks, any things you're following or thinking that are important in terms of this race, it feels like her momentum continues. What do you think in the next, any thoughts about what's coming up that'll be a big pivotal point other than the VP debate, which I think will come and go. I think it'll be entertainment. I'm not sure it's going to have much of an impact. I'm really focused on getting black men in particular back into the coalition, you know, the threat of losing them

to the couch or whatever one says. And then I'm interested as well in the conversion on these Republicans for Democrats now. So the democracy voters, you know, who Liz Cheney is talking about and the Harris-Walls campaign is definitely doing a big push for them. But that is a tricky cohort because those are people who are maybe bedfellows for a couple election cycles, but odds are are going back. So how do you get them for 2024? And then how also do you make your tent big enough to keep them around in the longer term? What about you? I like it. I like it. That makes sense. Okay, so that's all for this episode. Our producers are Caroline Chagrin

and David Toledo. Andrew Burrows is our technical director. You can find Raging Moderates on the PropGpod every Tuesday. Again, you can find Raging Moderates on the PropGpod every Tuesday. All right, Jess, we will see you next week. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in.