The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Raging Moderates - The Final Week, John Kelly's Warning, and the Battle for Congress

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov dive into the final week of the campaign season. They discuss Kamala Harris’s star-studded rallies aimed at energizing voters, and Donald Trump’s push to engage younger male voters, including his recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. They also look at Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly’s warning about a potential second Trump term and examine the down-ballot races that could decide control of Congress.  Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.  Follow Prof G, @profgalloway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Go to constantcontact.ca for your free trial. Constantcontact.ca Hello, I'm Esther Perel, psychotherapist and host of the podcast Where Should We Begin, which delves into the multiple layers of relationships, mostly romantic. But in this special series, I focus on our relationships with our colleagues, business partners and managers. Listen in as I talk to coworkers facing their own challenges with one another and get the real work done. Tune into How's Work, a special series from Where

Should We Begin sponsored by Klaviyo. Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo. You know that feeling when your favorite brand really gets you. Deliver that feeling to your customers every time. Klaviyo turns your customer data into real-time connections across AI-powered email, SMS, and more, making every moment count. Over 100,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com.com. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarloff.

And you are literally the recipient of the biggest puff piece I have ever seen. For our listeners that don't subscribe to The New York Times or haven't seen it in your social media feed, according to The New York Times, Jess is the person on fucks that people love to hate, but they can't help loving. I have never seen. Show me the lies, Scott Calloway. I like you and I wanted to throw up in my mouth. Jesus Christ. Even the pictures were fantastic. I imagine if, I mean, granted, you're not as self-absorbed as I am,

or at least I don't think you are, I would have just- Trying to avoid it, yeah. I would have just wallpapered my house in that article. Oh my gosh, you must feel great. It's pretty good. My liberal heart was warmed, let's say. Oh my goodness.

And there's always these moments that break through out of the Fox orbit where my actual life knows what I do for a living and kind of can see it. So my text messages just full of like parents and grandparents of people that I know that are like, oh my God, you're alive and you're doing this cool thing. No, it was fabulous. They did a, it was a very generous article for sure, but I liked how much they captured about my background and also what I'm doing at Fox, and they had great quotes from my colleagues. I have zero complaints, and you told me

I would have a complaint, and I don't. But I got the puff piece of the century. Yeah, I was just, I was just, I knew it would be good. I knew it would be positive, but any kind of, almost any, especially in New York Times, feels like they got to find a couple of people to say bad things about you and they clearly couldn't find anyone. I'm not a white man, so I feel like I had that going in my favor.

Yeah, I was. I read it and I kept waiting for, you know, the line saying some people, she's, some people say she's whatever to, you know, or she gets a pass because it never came. It was just talking to all these Republicans who love you and all these Democrats who adore you. Anyways, congratulations. That's, that was really a nice, a nice moment for you. So today we're going to be talking about the final week of the campaign. John Kelly's warning about Trump's fascist behavior and the down-ballot

races that we have our eyes on. All right. So we are down to the final week. Thank God. Kamala Harris is pulling in A-list names to get voters fired up. Beyonce, Eminem, I didn't see that one coming. Bruce Springsteen, Spike Lee, Samuel Jackson, just to name a few.

Hillary Clinton did something similar back in 2016, but Harris's approach has been different. She's been calling herself the underdog all along. Whereas Clinton's campaign carried an expectation of victory. The rally in Houston with Beyonce was her largest yet. Let's listen to a clip. We are at the precipice of an incredible shift, the brink of history. I'm not here as a celebrity. I'm not here as a politician. I'm here as a mother. A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.

A world where we're not divided. Our past, our present, our future merge to meet us here. This and the clip that is really making the rounds and I would argue has been more powerful as the clip of Michelle Obama or first lady former first lady Michelle Obama. What are your thoughts going into the last week here? Give us your state of play around the race, Jess. week here. Okay, give us your state of play around the race, Jess. So I'm actually not having a huge anxiety day. So you caught me at a good moment where I'm pretty optimistic. So Xanax, Xanax for practice. I'm heavily drugged actually to get through this just casually on a Monday. So I've been trying to look at like the actual data versus the vibes.

And it's interesting because it's the inverse of how we started out. Remember that this was the vibes campaign, right? We were all coconut-pilled. Charli XCX gave us Brat Summer. And everyone was riding high on the fact that we felt like we had a chance. And now we have a lot of information from the ground of what's going on. And Jen O'Malley-Dell and the campaign manager for Kamala's campaign was on with Jen Psaki on Sunday.

And she said, we knocked on 1.2 million doors in battleground states on Saturday alone. That is mind blowing how many people are out doing this. And there are the Christine Baranskis of the world who are showing up in people's doors and Bradley Whitford and all of that is great. But there are just regular people that are out there jazzed to be doing this. And there are Democrats doing it and Republicans doing it. And that's giving me a lot of hope.

There was a pullout that was really positive, but I wanted to ask you about Beyonce. I wish she had performed. That I wanted to ask you about Beyonce. I wish she had performed, that's always the downer in this. And of course, you had 30,000 people because people thought they were going to a Beyonce concert. And I thought she was powerful and great and revealed herself to have political messaging

that maybe we didn't think that she had, and I loved it. But there was something that Michelle Obama said that I feel like you probably wouldn't have loved. So the clip that's circulating about what the implications of the Dobbs decision have, obviously incredible. But she says to men that they need to take the lives of the women, the lives of the women in their lives, she said it more articulately than I did, seriously. And it was in the same vein as when Obama kind of scolded black men in Pennsylvania before he did

his first big rally for the campaign a few weeks back. When he got a lot of criticism for, what did you make of that part of Michelle's messaging? Oh, I absolutely loved it. You did? Okay. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about, I'm writing a book on masculinity and I've been thinking a lot about what is an aspirational modern form of masculinity. And these words I come back to, provider, protector and procreator. When I think of protector, I think, okay, at some point in your life, first degree,

second degree, there's going to be someone in your life with an unplanned pregnancy. And the notion that you don't immediately go to protection and think, all right, I want people in my life to have options. Because the most mendacious thing about this bodily autonomy argument is that if you wanted to ensure it was rejected and women had bodily autonomy, all you would need to do is ensure that the rule was absolute. Because wealthy Americans, including wealthy Republicans, kind of know that if something, if an unplanned pregnancy happens to them or their niece or their daughter, they'll figure it out.

Wealthy people will figure it out. And that's the most mendacious thing about this. So this is really a war on poor women, quite frankly, poor families. Seventeen-year-old black woman who becomes pregnant doesn't have a lot of education, single parent, maybe hides the pregnancy, doesn't have resources, can't be shipped to Atlanta for to terminate the pregnancy, doesn't have access to medical abortion. And her message was, if you're a man, how I read it, your job is to protect people, maybe not even in your direct sphere. That's your job as a man. You're supposed to protect women. And if you look at why women, generally speaking, and this is going to sound sexist, but there's research to show this,

why they're attracted to men, or one of the features they're attracted to is they want a man who physically, intellectually, and financially gives them the impression that when shit gets real, that man can protect them. Yeah. And this seems just at the very core of that. The dude, yeah, think about your own economic well-being, but your instinct, your muscle memory should be to protect. You're not protecting us right now. By not showing up and pushing back on this,

you are not protecting us. I thought that was the most powerful part of her speech. When I first heard it, I thought, yeah, exactly. Especially having gone through two pregnancies recently and given birth, it's one of the most fragile I thought, yeah, exactly, especially having gone through two pregnancies recently and given birth. It's one of the most fragile and frightening things you can do. You're one step away from a medical emergency for nine, 10 months straight.

And it is a miracle every time that one of these babies is delivered safely and that the mom is good and that the baby is good. So I totally get that. I took a step back because we're focused on getting men to support the Democratic Party in this last hustle here. And I wondered about that kind of 28-year-old guy who feels like the Democratic Party isn't interested in him or the 35-year-old guy or the 42, you know, whatever up to through Gen X, like the Gen Z's and millennials.

And I didn't know how that would sit with them. I hope that they heard it the way that you did because that's how I did, but I feel like I'm sometimes so clouded by my own estrogen that perhaps I can't see it clearly anymore. Well, just the idea, and I think it's important to remind young men of this,

your ability to be a provider, you want to be impoverished for the rest of your life, be the father of an unwanted pregnancy at a young age. Yeah. I mean, this affects you too, just being selfish. If you're a young man, one, you're going to have less sex unless bodily autonomy is restored. Think about the reason why, I mean, essentially men want to spread their seed to the four corners of the earth and women put up a much finer filter to try

and attract the smartest, strongest and fastest seed. I know that sounds reductive and crude, but I have evidence to prove this. And because of the downside of pregnancy is so much greater for women than for men, women are more selective when it comes to random sexual encounters. And if you ask young men, would you rather have more or less random sexual encounters that might turn into a relationship that might turn into a family that might turn into kids?

I got to think 90 plus percent of young men would think, yeah, I'd rather have more opportunity for sexual encounters. If women believe that the downside of pregnancy is I think 90 plus percent of young men would think, yeah, I'd rather have more opportunity for sexual encounters. If women believe that the downside of pregnancy might be they have to carry the baby to term or worse, they end up in an emergency room parking lot with sepsis because doctors are afraid to treat her,

you're gonna have less sex men. So I go to just very selfish reasons why men should be fighting for Harrison Bodely autonomy. And I don't think men have received the message. The thing I wanted to get your impression, I love unexpected surprises. And this is my new thesis on what I think is going to play a critical role in the election that no one saw coming. The October surprise, I think, is here. And it's the following, and I'd love to get your response.

Tony Hincliffe, who I'd never heard of, he's an actor kind of made famous, or excuse me, a comedian made famous by Joe Rogan, addressed the audience at the Trump rally in Madison Square Garden. And let me start off with, I was shocked by how many Trump supporters they were able to turn out in Manhattan. You know there are trains to Long Island that take you right in. But it's a big stadium and it was passionate. I thought in deep blue territory, it was really impressive that they turned out so many diehard, enthusiastic Trump supporters. So this comedian goes on to basically say, you know, there is this 50-ton, you know, island of floating trash in the Caribbean, and it's Puerto Rico. There's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah.

I think it's called Puerto Rico. There are 400,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania. Alone. I thought this comment was so, not only did it not land, and I think you gotta cut comedians a pretty wide berth. I'm very forgiving of comedians. But this seemed to illuminate the Trump DNA

in such a negative way. And that clip has gone viral. And if I'm a Puerto Rican who maybe was supporting Harris, but not that enthusiastic and wasn't going to turn out, I think she might get an incremental 10 or 15,000 votes in Pennsylvania, which might swing Pennsylvania, which might swing the election. I think Tony Hinchcliffe, and that's his name, Hinchcliffe, might be the October surprise that Harris fans were looking for. LW So I was following along to the rally via X, driving back from seeing Disney Jr., the live show. So we could talk about that another day. You know what? That would be a toss up for me, a Trump rally or the Disney,

I really wouldn't know what to do there. I struggled, hardcore struggled, went down to kind of, to Red Bank, New Jersey, total Trump country, to see Disney Jr. and my daughter, looking like she stroked out when she saw Minnie in person, which was adorable. Little kid dancing is so cute. But anyway, I'm following along to this MSG hot mess.

And I too, I wasn't surprised that he filled the arena, but I was talking to friends who were in there, including reporters who said, it's super common here. Everyone is really nice. It feels quite joyous, celebratory of everything that Donald Trump is as a showman and entertainer. And I totally get it. Like, he's a lifelong New Yorker. You come back, you sell out the garden. I mean, not sell out, but you know what I mean. You fill the garden. And I had heard Tony Hinchcliffe before, because he was part of Tom Brady's roast. And I thought he was hilarious, making fun of Tom Brady,

which is a little bit different than making fun of Puerto Ricans like that. And that was the first kind of set of clips that really stood out to me as concerning for the Trump campaign, because you saw the immediate backlash. So Bad Bunny was up right away, I think he has 45 million followers with a video that Kamala had cut for Puerto Ricans, posted that, then J.Lo, then Ricky Martin.

So within like 10 minutes, 115 million followers had been activated against Donald Trump because of this clip. And it was a reminder to a lot of people, and I think Ricky Martin actually used the old footage of Trump after Hurricane Maria, where he showed up and he threw paper towels at people who had just had their homes absolutely decimated. And I thought, okay, this might be, in your words, the October surprise of it, which is basically that Trump can never just stick with a good thing. Like, people think you're kind of human and that you kind of don't think these things. And because you want to have the raunchiest and the funniest guy here, and by the way, First Amendment protected, it was a joke I didn't find

that funny, I don't think we should be policing comedians in any way. But a comedy show and a political rally are very different. And you can expect if there had been a Comedians for Kamala event and you had John Mulaney up there, he wasn't going to be insulting people like that. He's going to be making fun of himself. Or even if you had someone more out there, like Dave Chappelle or Bill Burr,

they might make a few policy jokes. Like Bill Burr actually has this hilarious bit that he does about abortion, and he's a pro-choice supporter, but he basically talks about how it is murder and it's like a half-baked pie. He's like, you're not going to say that it's not a pie just because you only half-baked it. Those are all things that I can get on board with, but there's no way that they would have stepped over the line that far.

And then so you have the liberal supporters that come out, but then you see the conservatives like Rick Scott, the Senator from Florida who is in a reelection battle, immediately says, this is not right, this is not what I think of Puerto Ricans, Puerto Ricans are great people. You see other GOP officials. We're gonna talk a little bit about down-ballot races towards the end of the podcast. There's a guy, Dias Pazito, who's out in Suffolk County. He looks like he's gonna lose his

race, a Republican, former cop. I think he was the only vulnerable Democrat or only Republican congressman or woman from New York who actually showed up at the rally, he immediately has to say, what the F is this? I don't think this at all. So I think it was a complete disaster, not to mention then that Stephen Miller goes on to say America is for Americans and Americans only, to really bring the messaging home. But I'm sure that what felt like a joyous occasion in the aftermath, the Trump campaign put out a statement saying that it doesn't reflect their views.

Well, I'm sorry, it's pretty precisely your campaign's views if you pick the guy and the joke was loaded in the teleprompter. He didn't make this up. He wasn't riffing. Yeah. If I were Harris, I'd be taking some of that precious air time that they have blocked across every local news station and kind of the full employment act for local broadcast news stations in Pennsylvania and the swing States.

And I would just be running that clip that this is what the Republican party thinks of, thinks of our, you know, brothers and sisters here in America. That struck me as, wow, this can't, and this is a real, this is a significant population. And I would imagine that this qualifies as a population that A might not be, is inclined to vote for Harris. It strikes me this is really fertile ground and they just, they've just given us, us being Democrats

of the Harris campaign, a softball here. I wonder if this is going to be, especially in Pennsylvania, I had no idea, 400,000 Puerto Ricans. We'll be right back. Support for ProfG comes from Vanta. If your company is implementing a new security system or even just scaling a pre-existing one, it's absolutely critical that you demonstrate top-notch security practices and establish trust. Otherwise, even the best-laid plans won't get you very far.

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Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Meanwhile, Trump is making his closing argument, leaning heavily into a message of fear, particularly around immigration. He had a big rally, as we reference at MSG, with many of the same folks that appeared at the RNC. He also went on Joe Rogan's podcast, which I thought was very smart on the part of their campaign, which is huge, as Rogan has 14 million Spotify followers. It felt like an attempt to appeal to young, low-propensity

male voters. Let's listen to a clip. So I have a son who's very smart and tall, barren, right? And he knows all about you. He knows about guys I never heard of. He said, Dad, you don't know how big they are. They're big. You know, he told me how big. I said, who the hell is he?

Like Ross. He said, Dad, he's a great guy. I mean, guys that are doing... It's a whole new world out there. It's a different world. And I think... But, you know, he's a great guy. I mean, guys that are doing, it's a whole new world out there. It's a different world. And I think- You know, I'm on TikTok now. Congratulations.

And I've done really well. No, but you know the crazy, have you seen the numbers? Billions, like billions of hits. It's crazy. I'm sure. TikTok's a wild application. And I've gone up 30 points. A Republican is always down 30 with young people. I'm plus 30. And

I'm on TikTok. I think young people- They've had a huge impact. Young people are rejecting a lot of this woke bullshit. Yeah, they are. Young people are tired of being yelled at and scolded. They're tired of these people that they think are mentally ill telling them what the moral standards of society should be today. And people are upset.

Your thoughts, Jess? Well, it was three hours, so I have many thoughts. I think net-net a positive for him to do that. Exposure is always a good thing, especially when he's weaving, I think that's the term he likes. At one point Rogan is like, you gotta weave a little less, right? Like I am actually trying to ask you something here. Obviously that stat he threw out is completely incorrect. The final Harvard youth poll came out and she's up 30 with young voters to be expected. And people should cross tab dive through the ABC poll from the weekend, which was really good for her, had her up four, but also performing better with black men and Latino men

than Biden did even. So we'll see if that ends up checking out. But one thing that Rogan did that I admired him for, and I also thought that the venue was so perfect for him to do this because it was not adversarial at all. He called him out on the BS about winning the 2020 election in a direct way, but also a comforting way so that Trump didn't feel like he was being accused of something necessarily.

Rogan just said, are you ever going to show us what you're talking about? And that's always been the problem that they tell this grand story of stolen votes and all these poll workers that were cheating and all of the inaccuracies and the frauds and blah, blah, blah. And they've never shown anything and people are going to have gone to jail, will go to jail for that. I mean, Rudy Giuliani owns nothing anymore. Those election workers in Georgia own his apartment on the Upper East Side as a result of all of this.

So I really appreciated that Rogan did that. And he said in his interview that the negotiations with Kamala's team are still alive, whereas Kamala's spokesperson said that it was a no-go, said it was due to scheduling. So obviously that's not the case. And I assume that she wanted some guardrails that he wouldn't offer,

but I think she totally should do it. She should have done that, 100%. Like what could happen to you? Is it, could it be worse than losing the election? I don't know, that seems like the worst. No, and he's, he, as an interviewer, one thing I do like about Rogan is, when I started podcasting,

I was used to think it was my job to have a gotcha moment. And then I realized Sam Harris said something that always struck me that he tries to present people in their best light. Yeah. And I try and do that now. And I actually think Rogan does that. He'll push back, but he doesn't try and have a gotcha moment. Brett Baer was trying to corner her. He started with some questions. He had questions that were gotcha questions with a follow-up thinking she would respond this way. And quite frankly, CNN does the same thing to

candidates who are from the right. He doesn't do that. She would have come out of this much more positive than as we've said. Trump going on Rogan reached more people than if he had gone on primetime CNN, MSNBC and Fox every night, every weeknight for a week. I mean, this guy, it really has changed the

complexion of the media landscape is these podcasts. I think it's a huge mistake for her not to have done that. And then I had this weird triggering moment when I was listening to that clip and that is he described his son, he said, so I have a son who's very smart and tall. And I thought, as a father, I would just never and tall. Like who cares?

I, that is like the last way I would describe my son. I wouldn't. Well, he's obsessed with physicality. It's just so weird to say that, you know, I have. I mean, he's like six, nine. He's like really tall. It'd be cooler if he was a basketball player and you say, oh, he's really tall, he's a basketball player.

Yeah. And he's at NYU and I'm happy he's there. I hope he has a wonderful experience. But I thought this guy just, his approach to fathering, I just found it so weird that dad would describe his son that way. Anyways. What did you, can I just quickly before we get off this? So he, I mean three hours again, a lot of opportunity to leave. But he did a lot of historical stuff. So he was wrong about which son of Lincoln's died. But he's talking about like McKinley and origins of tariffs. And I couldn't really follow a ton of it. But I wonder if that does make a low information voter think this guy knows more about what he's talking about than he actually does. That you can even like throw these names into it. Because you know how

sometimes when you're so overwhelmed and the zone is so proverbially flooded by things, that you just hear a few things and you assume that someone gets it or knows what they're talking about? Look, I hate to admit it. I didn't listen all three hours. I, and that, I, that's the reason I don't listen to Rogan or Lex Friedman. And they're kind of the original gangsters are both fantastic at what they do. And I've said, despite the fact, I don't agree with a lot of Joe's comments. Every podcaster should send a royalty into Rogan because he's

kind of busted open the medium. But on the whole, he, that was a big win for him because he put putting him in a relaxed atmosphere. He, it softens his image and he needs that right now. He comes across as the kind of guy, at least I thought Trump came across as the kind of guy. One, I thought he came across as old and eight old and not having any sense of history or clearly has,

not only doesn't fact check himself, but doesn't think anyone's going to fact check him that will have any importance that he can just say what everyone wants. But he came across as a guy you could grab a beer with. He came across, in my opinion, as more likable. He did at one point kind of laugh at himself. The data itself or the historical inaccuracies were just everywhere. Right. But it doesn't seem to matter and Van Jones had kind of the right, I mean, and Michelle Obama brought it up as well, but Van Jones did it first on CNN. You know, he's lawless and she's expected to be flawless.

This is the mother of all grating on a curve that is entirely different. It is just, I mean, she's just, everyone is waiting. And again, Michelle was so powerful. Everyone's waiting to parse every word she says on an interview. And then he gets up and says shit that's just blatantly wrong and weird and never happened or goes off on a crazy tangent or says, I don't want to answer questions.

Let's listen to music. If she did any of the things he does in any interview, it would be like Democrats and the press would be like, oh my God, she's lost it. She's lost. The Harris campaign has absolutely screwed up. Absolutely screwed up not going on Rogan. It would have been a huge win for the last thing he was going to do would be to go after the Democratic female candidate of color. He just wouldn't have gone there. And in general, Joe does try to give people some running room

and give them, in my opinion, he gives them too much the benefit of the doubt when he brings on a total fucking quack to say that mRNA vaccines alter your DNA. He doesn't say, well, is there any peer reviewed research that says there's any veracity to that statement? That, I don't know if you knew this, I actually pulled my pilot off of Spotify for a year. I was so triggered by the whole thing.

But anyways, enough virtue signaling. I think it was a win for him. I think it was a win for him. Definitely, and a good part of the closing argument, which obviously the MSG rally was, and Kamala will be doing this speech at the ellipse, clearly making, you know, protecting democracy at the core of her clothes. I personally would have preferred her to go to an auto factory in Michigan or even a hospital, you know, to talk about healthcare, the people who really keep the country going. But obviously this is a calculated decision that they've made.

I think that those persuadable, right-leaning Indies and Republicans are more into protecting democracy. But what do you think about that? I think you're absolutely right. I think one of the biggest mistakes we as Democrats keep making is that we keep thinking if we keep talking about what's wrong with him, it'll work. Yeah. That strategy has not worked.

She needs to talk about what's right with her. And that is the policy. Yeah. The policy around Medicare, such that your parents can die at home. The policies around lack of tariffs, the first home home buyers. She needs to play offense around why you should vote for me as opposed to why you should not vote for him. I agree with you. I think she should have made an economic argument at the end and talk about her policy. The other kind of news, and I'll obviously give you my view upfront, I don't think it's big, big news, if you will, is last week,

Trump's longest serving chief of staff, retired Marine General John Kelly, told the New York Times that in his view, Trump would govern like a dictator if reelected. Let's listen to some of the audio that was released. Do you think he's a fascist? Well, looking at the definition of fascism, it's a far-right authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized hypocrisy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy. So certainly in my experience, those are the types of things that he thinks

will work better in terms of running America. Well, I have a couple of questions here for you, Jess. First is, I would not agree with General Kelly's policies, I would bet, but it's just weird we can't get guys like that to run for president. I mean, he's clearly just so knowledgeable and thoughtful and measured. Do you think this is damaging for Trump that Kelly has come out and said this? I think it's always a problem if somebody that respected and we should be honest about this.

I mean, Trump's team, the ones who are still loyal to him have come out and say he hated him from the start. He has always been insubordinate, which is calling a four star Marine general insubordinate, but that he had an axe to grind and this is all made up and has gotten a lot of quite credible people actually to disparage Mark Milley and John Kelly. But I think it can't ever be good for you that you have people on the record. This isn't the murmurs campaign anymore. John Kelly sat down with Michael Schmidt at The Times and said this stuff on audio and Kamala can use it in that way and that can make it even more powerful. Because this was a fight I was having on The Five with my colleagues on Friday about the fascism thing.

They said, she's calling him a fascist. I said, no, John Kelly in his voice is calling him a fascist. And I do think if these late breakers, the only undecideds left are people that are partial to this argument that this guy doesn't care about the Constitution, he doesn't care how you vote,

and there's a ton of evidence that what they are doing right now, even in like what Tucker Carlson said in the MSG rally, that they are making it seem as though his win is so clearly ordained that anything but a Trump victory will be fraud and that you will have to rise up to take your country back. The groundwork for that is happening.

And I think we've been talking about this for weeks. That's part of the complacency as well with the get out the vote operation, you know, giving it to Scott Pressler and Charlie Kirk. You know, we're knocking on a million doors and they're listening to Rogan. It's a very different world in terms of how this is campaigning. So, not that I think it's always bad to be called a fascist, but I do think it stands that people, it's, you're hard pressed to move people about how they feel about Donald Trump at this point. The Trump campaign responded by calling Kelly's claims debunked stories and accusing him of having

Trump derangement syndrome. By the way, I've been called to, I've been accused of that a lot. Do you get accused of that? Yeah, I have TDS so bad. Everywhere, everywhere. Do I need antibiotics anyways? No, Leptards will be fine.

Don't worry. There you go. Meanwhile, Harris sees the moment to focus on democracy, targeting Republicans who may be wavering on Trump. I personally, unfortunately, I think this is a big nothing burger. I think people are so used to, I think four of his 44 former secretaries or cabinet members

are supporting him. The notion that these folks aren't supporting him is something that's already been absorbed into the ecosystem. I thought the most interesting part of this is I like a sexy Jake Tapper. I like him salty. Did you see him with Senator Vance? Yeah, and Mike Johnson the weekend before. Yeah, he was not taking it from Senator Vance. I thought, I'm really like, I'm like, Jake, you big slice of man. He had some of that like Tom Selleck fire in him.

I'm like, put a mustache on that guy. It was Philly vibes. My gosh. What did you think of that interview? I thought it was great. And I mean, when it's so clear now that the only way to be able to do this effectively is to use their own words against them

or people's own words. Like Mike Johnson the weekend before, Trump does the Arnold Palmer's big downstairs thing and Mike Johnson like, I don't know what you're trying to do. Tapper's like, okay, well, I'll just play it for you. Right. You just sit there and I will just play this for you. Just to watch people squirm. I think almost the optics of it oftentimes matter more than the words, where you see how visibly uncomfortable and you remember back to the early days of Trump. Even with people like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, where they just can't, like

their skin is crawling and you can see it under their suits, right? Trying to be freed from how bad this is. So I think it's a very effective way to interview and what you should be doing. I mean, Brett did it with Kamala, he did it with Trump last year or two years ago when he said, here's everything that people who worked for you said about you. How do you explain that?

Can they all be wrong? To your point that only four are still supporting him. But with eight days left, I worry that nothing matters except knocking on doors and doing souls to the poles and making sure that you're energizing the communities that need to turn out. And Kamala spent all day yesterday in Philadelphia. She went to church there.

She crisscrossed throughout all the neighborhoods, some very emotional and sweet scenes of women embracing her and crying, feeling like it's not going to be okay this time around, especially because he's a lame duck. There's no third Trump term. Well, I mean, knock on wood. Liz Cheney would say, we probably try to find a way. But people have this feeling of desperation that there will be no guardrails and you will get no John Kelly's that will work for him again. Mark Milley's sipping Corona's on a beach somewhere, right? He's like, I am done with this.

And so who will staff this government? Stephen Miller and Tony Hinchcliffe? Yeah, I agree with you. I think at this point, I love that soul, so the pole's feet on the street, if you will. All right, Jess, let's take a quick break. Stay with us. Everything about music is secretly a story about technology, how we listen to it from vinyl to iPods to Spotify, how we make it from pianos to computer plugins to AI prompts, how we discover it from music blogs to TikTok.

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Stripe make progress. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? progress. and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Welcome back. So far we've focused mostly on the presidential race, but control of the House and Senate is also on the line and could have a huge impact on whoever wins the presidency. Let's dive into the Senate.

Do you think the Democrats can hold onto the Senate? Which key races are you watching? So no, I don't. I'm resigned to it. John Tester is fabulous, but feels a little done, even with that crazy story that Chihi, who is running against, lied about where he got shot. He said he got shot in Afghanistan, but it was actually in a parking lot, like outside of a national park, which you would

think would be completely upending. Right. Yeah. That's kind of a key feature of being shot. I was shot in combat. No, I was shot in the parking lot. Right. And we're talking about Tim Walz and the stolen valor, right, of not filling out the right paperwork on time. One of the races I'm really interested too on the Senate. So Colin Allred has been running a fantastic campaign. And I feel like we say this regularly, like this might be the time we get rid of Ted Cruz. And I don't really think that, but Colin Allred is doing so much better than Beto did with this. I think it's also just who he is lands better with people. And he's taking on the culture war stuff so brilliantly.

I don't know if I mentioned on the podcast before, but he cut an ad saying he's not for trans women in women's sports. He's just like, I play professional football. This is ludicrous. You know, Ted Cruz is trying to say this about us. And a fun fact actually, the number one issue that Trump has been advertising on is anti-trans issues. The economy number five, trans stuff number one. So clearly they think they can win a culture war election. McCollin Allred is within striking distance.

Some polls like two, three points behind. Big deal, Kamala is there. He showed up at that rally, spoke as well. So Beyonce Allred and Kamala, do you think there's any shot or we just keep fantasizing about a world without Ted Cruz? Well, the survey conducted by the New York Times and Senate College shows that Cruz leads with 50% support to 46 for Allred. So it's technically still in the margin of error, but it feels, it feels marginable that, or there's a marginal shot here for Allred.

I Cruz just strikes me as the, the vampire of the Senate. It just, we can't kill the guy and he, he just feels Texas seems to like him. And the thing is, if Allred lose, my sense is Allred has ran almost a near perfect campaign. Yeah. The few times I have seen clips, I thought, wow, was this guy good? And Cruz just looks so off his game, like trying to

respond to these things. He's put them on his heels every time they get together, he's had a central casting, he's thoughtful, he comes across. I would have thought that it, the bottom line is heals every time they get together. He's had a central casting. He's thoughtful. Uh, he comes across, I would have thought that it, the bottom line is if all red can't be Cruz, I'm not sure. I think people are just going to give up. I think people are going to Democrats are going to wait till he dies. Cause he, I think he's run.

Or he just needs a bigger podcast deal. The guy wants to be Joe Rogan more than he wants to be a Senator. The other race I want to talk about, and I think if you don't know about this guy, you are going to love him so much, is what's going on in Nebraska. So there's an independent guy named Dan Osborne. He is a veteran, he was a labor leader, a mechanic who was running. He has been a registered independent his whole life. Deb Fisher sitting Republican, Senator Senator two term, Dan Osborne in the New York Times, CNN poll from Monday is within two points of doing this.

Now, Mitch McConnell last minute is having to send in a ton of money, but Dan Osborne, I loved this quote and I thought like, does this guy listen to Scott or does Scott listen to this guy? He says, you know what I think it's going to do, this is if he wins, if Nebraska does the right thing and it elects a mechanic to the halls of power, the rest of the country is going to say, Holy crap. Did you see what Nebraska did? And it's going to tell people who are nurses, teachers, plumbers, carpenters,

bus drivers, other mechanics that you don't have to be a self-funding crypto billionaire to run for office. Yeah, he's very strong. He's that might be, that might be the best. I've already decided that the morning of the sixth, I'm just going to keep refreshing the results on Lake Gallegos just for my own, just to make myself feel better, just to feel good. Uh, cause it looks like, it looks like she's on her way to defeat.

Yeah, well Ruben Gallegos has run an amazing campaign too. We should, I mean, he's running against the lunatic, but he's done a good job like Alred as well. I think he's run a confident campaign. She will lose this election. I mean, A, she's not qualified, and B, she's batshit crazy. But anyways, that would be the race you mentioned in Nebraska, that would be super exciting.

I'm really disappointed about Senator Tester. I think he's been a really solid, I think he's, I think he's done a great job of again, another moderate where there's just no home, home for this person. I think he's done a fantastic job and has a really been a great Senator. So let's get right to it.

So we talked a little bit about the Senate. What do you think about Congress? My excitation, I'm knocking on wood. I don't know if this is real wood or fake wood, but I knocked on it, is that we'll take the House back. And it's cool to be in New York, even though I went and voted on our first day of early voting on Saturday, got my kids those future voter stickers. But my seat doesn't matter, I'm in Dan Goldman's territory, but a few really exciting races in New York. Arguably, we're the ones that lost it a couple years ago,

you know, when George Santos was even able to take a seat. And so I already mentioned Anthony D'Asposito, who's running, I think it's New York 4. He is down, he hired his mistress and his fiance's daughter to work, I think both of them in the same office are very strange. At the same time? I think so. Wait, Mormon?

Oh, that's wrong. That was wrong. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, that was wrong. I actually was going to try to gloss over it, but you repeated it twice. So he seems to be down pretty significantly. Mike Lawler and Mondaire Jones, that's an interesting race that has a blackface component from Mike Lawler dressing up as Michael Jackson, Mondaire Jones, you know, part of the squad. So that tension going on.

John Avlon running out in like the nice, fancy part of the Hamptons and then also more rural Suffolk County has been fascinating. He was down only four in the latest polling and Mark Molinaro upstate, he only won by 6,000 votes as a Republican. So there's potential to take that back and that's a rematch as well. Yeah, it's going to be, does it give you any comfort? And I don't want to be a defeatist, but say Trump does emerge as the victor here. Given the map, which was terrible for Democrats this election and would be much better in

2026, and given that traditionally a midterm election typically swings way back towards the party that didn't win the presidency, given that it'll probably be kind of a pretty wonderfully intransigent government, which is the reason we have three branches, regardless of what happens. Do you think Democrats would have any comfort knowing that most likely 2026 might be a pretty good opportunity to take back control of the Senate and the house if there's a Trump victory? I mean, sure. Yeah.

Like, you're really grasping at straws. I don't think that you can say to any Democrat with a week out, like, will this make you feel better if Donald Trump is the president? No. Nothing will make me feel better, at least for a really long time. Winning is great. I would love to have the opportunity to take back the Senate. I hope that it's just a small margin on their side and that they need JD Vance to be breaking all the ties and things like that. But no, I think that people have woken up. You remember as Recline reported after he did the first shot across Biden's bow where he said, you should go out. Then we had the State of the Union. Then he said, oh, maybe I was wrong. Then he was like, oh, I saw the debate.

I definitely was right. But he said that he was getting the sense that Democrats actually weren't that scared about another Trump term, that there was a lot of bluster. But in reality, they'd worked with him before. And there even Bob Casey and Tammy Baldwin have cut ads talking about working with Trump, which obviously signals that they are in a tight races, but B, that they don't think that this

is absolutely the end of the world. I feel like the energy now is where it should be and that people aren't being as lax as they were about the Trump threat. Do you feel like the energy is at the level that it should be? So this goes into, uh, I mean, we can't, we have to have a, we, each of us has to have a prediction here or something resembling a prediction and more so than our prediction for the candidate. What is the underlying element or the surprise that might happen here?

And I think the energy is very positive for Harris right now, other than, and this, you know, confirmation bias, full disclosure, there are 10 more, 10 X the number of feet on the street, getting people to the polls, Democrats versus Republicans. This election is becoming so tight and the geographic coverage is so tiny in terms of what's going to decide this. It isn't even a small number of swing states. It's a small number of swing counties that I think those feet on the street, this might

be the election of podcasts and of feet, of the most analog thing ever. And that is knocking on a door and saying, the election is today, have you voted? Or it's tomorrow, have you voted? I remember when I was in San Francisco, they somehow knew I hadn't voted and they knocked on my door three times. I mean, they literally shamed me. I was going to vote, but they would, they shamed me into like, they kept showing up saying, you haven't voted yet.

Now is the time. Let's go now. Do you want to go now? Here's some coffee. Can I hold your hand? Like, you know, and I do think that that might carry us over. And then my, and I'll turn this back to you. And then the other thing that I think is the October surprise here, I think you're

going to hear the name Tony Hinchcliffe a lot more in the next eight days and 400,000 Puerto Ricans in the swing state can't feel good about the Republican Party right now. I saw this thing and I thought, wow, that is just, comedy is the art or art is the ability to get away with it, to say something. I tried to do this, you try to do it occasionally on the five with humor and that is to say something that pushes the envelope but you soften the beach with comedy. And this was the art of not getting away with it.

He said something blatantly racist and it fell so flat, it didn't land so hard that it was the worst of all worlds for them. It feeds exactly into the fear people have about this administration. And clearly nobody did the math and said, you realize this is a big constituency in the most important state. So my prediction is that I do like what Michelle Obama said about men need to move to protection and are you there to protect us? two, the feet on the street, and three, I think this Tony Hinchcliffe debacle

might, if it gets 3,000 people, I mean, that's literally what we're down to at this point. I think those three things are going to potentially, I'm predicting this is not only going to be a win for Harris, it's going to be a decisive win. And that is a huge proximity bias. This is me trying to tell myself, I think I can, I think I can. I'm a brave strong, when you see those TikToks of the four-year-old girl jumping off something and she's like, I am courageous.

I'm strong, this is me. I love that girl. Trying to keep myself saying, but that's my prediction. What are your thoughts eight days out? So I am, like I said, I'm having a more optimistic day and my emotions are all over the place, not to be too female about it, unsurprisingly. I have highs and lows,

and it usually depends on my blood sugar. We have those too. No, I know. I just turned to alcohol, But anyways, go ahead. Yeah, I'm trying to avoid that. It's just not great taking care of a baby that way. But we could get there. My prediction is that the shy voter of this election is the right-leaning person.

It's not the Trump voter that we had in 2016 and to a lesser degree in 2020, but the right leaning person who casts a country over party vote. And there's been a lot of very good journalism from interviews about how many people are saying, I just can't do it. I just can't vote for him in this scenario. I don't love her. I don't necessarily think that I know her that well. And it does keep coming up consistently that not having

a good answer on immigration, even if immigration is not your big issue, is something that is very bothersome to people. And for me, die hard, die hard Dem, I feel that way as well. I don't know how they haven't figured out something better to say about that, but that people are just going to go in the voting booth and quietly do their business and vote for Kamala. Kind of what Brett Stevens articulated in his, you know, in the conversation with Gail Collins last weekend when he said it. So I think that in general,

black and Latino men in particular will quote unquote come home, that Trump will perform better than he did before, but it won't be these kinds of huge realignments that we had been seeing. But Kamala wins. There will be a much needed autopsy on who the Democratic Party is. Because if we manage to pull this off, if she does win, because we will have won this on the votes of people who are not ours for future elections. If they run a normal Republican again, if it's Glenn Youngkin or somebody, they're not with us anymore. And we need to do a lot of good, long, hard thinking about how we have been messaging to men, to minority voters, in some cases, even to women. You should always have the highest goals possible. And I think that I don't want to let, you know, perfect be the enemy of the good. I hope

that we have done good enough, but Liz Cheney is a rental. We do not own Liz Cheney. And I think about that a lot. It's funny because I think if Trump wins, the Republican party is literally going to need to be totally reconfigured. That's what my husband says. He's like, it needs to be blown up. Where are they? Yeah. They would literally have to go, they're like, okay, the verdict is in. There's no, you know, turning chicken shit into chicken salad here. This guy is basically taking the Republican party down when a lot of their

issues seem to resonate and like we kicked out all the old line Republicans. Who are the new Republicans? It's JD Vance. JD Vance really is the future of the party. That's really interesting. That's really interesting. So I want to read some, just as we wrap up here, I just want to read some of your quotes. I'm there to represent at least of the voting public the majority of Americans, Ms. Tarlff said over a recent breakfast. We, she meant Democrats in 2020, got 81 million votes. There are more of me than there are of them. Her goal, she said, is to inject a Democratic perspective into the Fox bloodstream while showing viewers that ideological foes can still

get along. I also want to win elections said Ms. Tarloff, who got her start in politics working for Douglas Schoen, Shane Schoen, a Democratic pollster. And I think that being on the Most Watched show is the best place to be. And then you literally, at some point, I mean, I really do like you so I just kept smiling. You think my mom wrote it? Oh my God. I got a lot of do like you, so I just kept smiling.

You think my mom wrote it? Oh my God. I got a lot of texts like that. Did Judy write this? Jesus. Yeah. It's just... But that's, I don't know, I've made this case, and I think I persuaded you a bit about it. The undecideds are the ones watching Fox,

and that is an important reason to be there. But people want to tune in to see real conversation and to your souls to the polls point. There are more of us. I feel like we run as if there are only like 10 of us and there are a kajillion of them. There are more people that agree with our point of view. So we should be a little bit louder about it and have better media strategy, which we do not. I mean, the right crushes us in terms of that, even though we quote unquote own the culture.

No, this thing, yeah, I just can't get over this. Even that picture, that's a, I don't know if I like the orange tank. I mean, it's a lot of hair and makeup, but it's good. I don't know if the orange tank pantsuit is what I would have gone with. Really? That is literally, I mean, you look great, but I'm not sure I would have that color. So then don't bring me down, man. That was a great suit. That is a pastel power suit if there ever was one.

That is a Secretary Clinton suit. Mm-hm. Well, you know how I feel about her. 3D printed doll. Your profile was insanely nice too. Oh, mine was a head piece compared to this thing. Literally, this is, if you ever run for president, this will be seen as like the launch article.

Oh my gosh. Anyways, with that, we're gonna wrap up here. That's all for this episode. If you have not read this article and you wanna see what it's like, what a puff piece is like from everyone's new favorite Democrat, Read this article and you want to see what it's like, what a puff piece is like, uh, from everyone's new favorite Democrat, Jess Tarlov. Go and just type in the New York Times out, type in Tarlov.

That's T-A-R-L-O-V. And you're going to see what it's like to be on the receiving end. And how good the suit is. Also, yeah, uh, the 27th was our one year anniversary when we were on Mar Together and this piece came out that day. It was a symmetry. I'm so glad you remembered. I'm so glad you remembered. My husband did, weirdly.

He's like, we were on Mar. He didn't say we, he does not think we. He said we were out in LA for Mar and you met Scott a year ago today, two years ago. It's our one year anniversary, Jess. Yeah, it's been amazing. Who would have thought we'd be here making probably incorrect predictions about all things? Yeah, Trump's definitely gonna win.

Yeah, we're gonna see. All right, that's it. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and David Toledo. Our technical director is Drew Burrows. You can find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday. That's right, Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday. That's right, Raging Moderates has its own feed.

Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Jess, have a great rest of the week. You too. Stay stable. Support for this podcast comes from Stripe. Stripe is a payments and billing platform supporting millions of businesses around the world, including companies like Uber, BMW, and DoorDash. Stripe has helped countless startups and established companies alike reach their growth targets, make progress on their missions, and reach more customers globally.

The platform offers a suite of specialized features and tools to fast-track growth, like Stripe Billing, which makes it easy to handle subscription-based charges, invoicing, and all recurring revenue management needs. You can learn how Stripe helps companies of all sizes make progress at Stripe.com. That's Stripe.com to learn more. Stripe make progress. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. It's not always easy to harness the power and potential of AI. For all the talk around its revolutionary potential, a lot of AI systems feel like they're designed for specific tasks, performed by a select few.

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