The Texan Podcast - The One Right Before the Election: SMSS Ep. 8

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

On this episode of Send Me Some Stuff, Cameron and Rob cover all they can leading up to the presidential election — podcast and media appearances, immigration policy and polling, "Christian nationalism," and every other effort the candidates are making to reach the American people. We are less than one month away from Election Day — and the pressure is on.Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies - The Beltway BriefingListen for of-the-moment insider insights, framed by the rapidly changing social and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

I know it's very it's a bit more abstract. It's the vibes election. Maybe to quote a man who's run for several positions in Texas you know hell yeah we're gonna take your AR-15s right? All of the memes about Barron Trump you know that he's going to like a cavalry charge. Well he's got to finish his studies at NYU first before he does that. Hello and welcome in to another episode of Send Me Some Stuff. And I am joined today by our new regular co-host, assistant editor of The Texan, Rob Lauches. Absolutely. Good to be here, Cameron. Good to be here on send me some stuff for the first time i definitely was not on uh last month well for a for a good sort of transition podcast with you me and brad who has unfortunately departed send me some stuff and

he left some big shoes to fill so i'm hoping that i can really you know let's let's keep the train going as it were uh i'm not sure about the shoe size comparison there you guys are drastically different sizes very very different yeah no um no brad yeah it's more like you're talking about the metaphorical shoes because he yeah absolutely metaphorically speaking i i stand on the shoulders of giants literally speaking i do not but um i wanted to ask you because it's acl week and uh chanel ronan huge concert uh massive chanel r's Chanel Roan. Roan? See, that's how much. Chanel Roan?

I actually don't know. That's how much I know about it. All I've been seeing is my X feed be populated with posts from people at ACL, just super excited to be there. Tons of people were at that concert. But I've never been to ACL. Have you ever been? Neither have I. Never been?

No. I was going to go last year when I found out that my favorite band, my favorite contemporary band, Goodnight Texas, is going to be playing there. Yeah. And I found out about this in October, or it was like a few weeks before it started, and I looked at those ticket prices and I said, no way.

So I missed the chance to see Goodnight Texas in Austin live but you have to hope that there will be more opportunities well they have Texas in the name hopefully they do actually but their their founding members are from different states but like the town of Goodnight Texas is perfectly in between their two hometowns that's why it's called that okay but they do uh sort of country folk music sort of thing very good band that's fun yeah uh have you been to any concerts here in austin since you moved here i went to a concert by um a and it's an israeli uh group called duo mantar and they it's a one guy is a classical guitarist and the other guy's a classical mandolinist So it's a guitar mandolin very interesting put on by the Austin. I believe it's the Austin Chamber Music Association

Okay, and then I've been to one Concert at the Mohawk on Red River Street Yeah, which was the loudest experience of my entire life It was there was there was noise me I've not I was not familiar with noise music yeah I was you know it was kind of like a shoegaze there was some alternative rock okay there's a friend of mine who is who is playing in a couple of the bands oh nice and it was it was a great experience but I was very out of my element yeah and and I'm not familiar with a lot of the genres,

but when you see some guy who's screaming into the microphone and then putting his microphone up to the speaker to sort of create a feedback effect that creates a very high-pitched shrieking whine. I mean, I walked out of the Mohawk feeling like I had cotton balls stuffed in my ears. I could not hear. I had not had that level of temporary hearing loss since one party in college where I stood next to the speaker the entire night. And, like, this side of my – it was nothing.

I could not hear. It was like, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma. Yeah. Well, they're playing for a very niche audience, it sounds like. It's good music, but it's loud. Yeah. Moving here to Austin, I haven't been to any concerts. Going out to bars and stuff, you hear live music, but I haven't been to any concerts.

I went to quite a few before I moved out here. In Sacramento, the city actually held what they called concerts in the park. And so free concerts, super fun. And there's a lot of great Sacramento bands. One that I used to listen to a lot, and they performed at this concert in the park, Dance Gavin Dance. Have you heard of them before? Never heard of Dance Gavin Dance. Sounds fun, though.

Sounds fun. Yeah, it's kind of like a punk rock, sort of pop punk, sort of rock band. Really fun. But, yeah, I haven't been to anything here in Austin. I've got to look around, though. There's so much music everywhere. Absolutely. You can just pop in anywhere.

You know, you almost had the chance to hear Goodnight, Texas, because when we were all traveling to San Antonio for the Republican Party of Texas convention this year we were trying to decide you know who's gonna go in what car yeah and you asked me you said Rob what kind of music do you usually play in the car and I said oh like you know folk music stuff like that and you said I think I'll ride with Brad. And I still remember that. It's still smart.

So you'll have the chance to listen to it someday. The next RBT convention. That's a little insight for people listening, my snarky humor there. But definitely not hurtful at all. So we'll jump into the news here we got a lot of interesting stuff to cover we're gonna go over the recent media blitz kamala harris has gone on we're gonna talk about some updates to the haitian migrant investigations that have occurred in ohio we might get to some interesting stories that have come out over the past

few months regarding Dunn and Wilkes and the mainstream media's attention given to the rise or just sort the conversation around what's called Christian nationalism. We'll get into some some polling and maybe we'll touch on a recent debate between John Bolton and Vivek Ramaswamy they debated foreign policy and so if we have time we might get to that but let's jump in first here to this media blitz Kamala Harris has gone on. I'll talk a little bit here from an NPR article reading from it here. It's a string of media appearances that the vice president's campaign says is purposely gearing at reaching a wide variety of audiences on different platforms, especially as voting begins in many states around the country and election day inches closer.

This is a quote from the Harris campaign official saying, quote, Vice President Harris is seizing this opportunity to reach voters where they are. Going on to say, underscores the importance of connecting with younger audiences, especially those who will play a crucial role in determining the outcome of the election. So an example, some podcasts she went on, she went on the Call Her Daddy podcast. She also did a 60 Minutes interview. She went on The View. She did an appearance on Stephen Colbert. She went on Howard Stern. So wide variety of different audiences she's trying to touch on. I know I sent you some clips and stuff from some of these. Did you end up watching any of the ones I mentioned? So I did watch the

about eight minute video that was released on YouTube from Call Her Daddy of Harris speaking with the host whose name I do not know because I actually, this might come as a surprise, I don't listen to that podcast regularly. I suppose I'm more of a casual fan. I did also watch some of the 60 Minutes interview. Alex Cooper is the name of the host. Alex Cooper, okay, good to know. For Call Her Daddy.

And then you and Stephen Col cobert i have not seen those yeah so uh the caller daddy uh podcast for those unfamiliar the only reason i know about it um i've never listened to it i just knew they were the podcast was first connected with barstool sports and then they sort of had a little breakup and call her daddy went on their own and the host really uh or the podcast more generally is focused on millennial women and it really targets that audience and is that what sort of things do they talk about in that interview they stuff i've seen they talked about abortion that was a Stuff I've seen, they talked about abortion. That was a very viral clip that went around

where the host asked Kamala Harris, is there any laws that are pertaining to control over men's bodies? And both the host and Vice President Harris were unable to come up with any law. But the response on X was pretty quick to point out that every man has to sign up for the draft. Yeah, selective service. Selective service. So I thought that was a very interesting little tidbit from that podcast, especially as I've documented and brought up in my last redacted is Harris has been unable to capture a large percentage of the young male audience.

So it's just interesting. She goes on Call Her Daddy that's focused on young women. It seems like she already has that audience sort of tied up in their voting habits. They're going to vote Democrat. What do you think about her strategy trying to focus on millennial women going on the Call Her Daddy podcast. If you're looking for a political podcast that goes beyond the headlines, check out the Beltway Briefing. I'm Howard Schweitzer, CEO of Cozen O'Connor Public Strategies. Every week on the Beltway Briefing, our team of former Republican and Democratic presidential appointees, Capitol Hill veterans and political advocates,

shares behind the scenes perspective that cuts through the noise. If you want the inside scoop, subscribe now to the Beltway Briefing here or wherever you get your podcasts. I think that you're right to say that, you know, that that sort of demographic is already going to break for Harris. It's not like there's, you know, it's not like I don't think anybody's expecting millennial women to go in favor of Trump this cycle or something like that. But I think it's trying to shore up support among people who would otherwise say, oh, I don't even know if I'm going to vote. Right. Because actually there's a decent number of undecideds, right? It's not big, but it might be big enough to turn the tide of an election. And I think there's also people who prefer one candidate over the other,

but they're just more pessimistic in general about saying, well, would this, you know, should I even vote for this person at all, right? There's a lot of young progressive types who are frustrated with what they view as Harris trying to moderate her policy positions as we approach the general election. You know, we say Harris is, you know, and we'll get into this when we talk about immigration a little bit, but Harris has tried to portray herself as being more sort of tough on the border, tough on illegal immigration, saying, you know, we're going to have border security and all this. And for some, for the more sort of ideological faction of any party, they're always frustrated to see candidates

moderate as they get towards the general. But the thing about the general, of course, is that you have to win more than just the people who were already going to vote anyway, right? You have to find a way to drag people in. If she was going to try and focus on the more ideologically captured progressive types, abortion is a big issue for them, but also foreign policy. That's fair. abortion is a big issue for them but and also for but also foreign policy that's what immigrants in as you as we've seen with a lot of campus protests and things the Palestine issue for them is really something they focus on and so I don't think going on color daddy's gonna convince any of the pro-palestine progressives who have been upset with Harris's position being pro-Israel

or Biden's position being more pro-Israel. They're going to break for Harris now because he went on Call Her Daddy. Well, so I think you're right about that because a lot of those young people, like those college students, a lot of them aren't going to vote anyway. A lot of them are very leftist in the sense that they're like, I hate the Democratic Party. It's a right-wing organization, right? But I will say this about this interview.

Abortion is a wedge issue that Brad's written about that Democrats in Texas and beyond are making a huge, you know, part of this election. You know, during the debates between Trump and Harris and between Vance and Walsh, they referred to it as the Trump abortion bans. Donald Trump is the guy who wants these abortion bans. He is responsible for them. And in general, polling shows that the average American is closer to the Democrats than they are to the Republicans on abortion issues, right? Yeah. So that's why I think what you said about shoring up that demographic to just get out to vote. Yeah.

There's probably a good strategy going on that Call Her Daddy podcast since it is so focused on millennial women. And millennial women care about the abortion issue at an outsized percentage as compared to other groups. But I'll say this as well about that interview is I didn't watch the full interview. See, I saw a clip of the interview. And all it takes nowadays is a good quote from that interview to go viral on TikTok or YouTube shorts. Maybe it could be repeated by like a mainstream news outlet. I mean, all that needs to happen is you need to put it out there and the information can go wild.

It can go anywhere, right? So it's, I think on one hand, you know, you think, well, she's already appealing to people that she would vote for anyway, but that information can be taken out of its original context and spread anywhere else. So did you watch any of the 60 Minutes interview? Well, I saw the part of the 60 Minutes interview where they, during the edited version of the interview, where they had taken one of her responses on one question talking, I believe it was about the Israel-Palestine issue, and they cut it and they pasted it

as her answer to a different question about the Israel-Palestine thing. So it was sort of they replaced the weaker answer with a stronger answer in in their attempt to condense the entire interview down yeah and that's what I wanted to talk about is Trump turned down the 60 minutes interview and Kamala Harris you know to her credit went on and but with 60 minutes doing this chopping and editing, again, it's just highlighting this nature of mainstream media that probably wasn't recognized a decade ago, but has really come into the spotlight in recent years, in the Trump years especially.

And so I just think that 60 Minutes doing something like that, just one incident of getting caught chopping up an interview can just ruin a reputation of an outlet. Because I was telling you, because we were talking about this in the office, if you were to ask me the reputation of 60 minutes like oh they do investigative work they course it's it's really thorough but they're around forever been around for a solution yeah but when something like this happens like how can I trust the stuff that they had shown previously I don't know if you had the same feeling

it's it's difficult think, because in, I mean, the problem is show business, right? Television has always been deceptive. I don't know if it's the right word, but there's always, it's always, what's the right word? Not stylized, maybe, but it is curated. Let's say it's curated, you know, to create the best effect, right? But in the age of the internet, in social media, right, you see a lot of not-so-curated stuff. I mean, you see there's a lot of authenticity online, and I think that for people who are getting more of their information

from the internet, I think it's actually, there's a greater expectation of authenticity. And so television by comparison looks, you know, very fake. It's like, oh, you're editing down the interview, you know, in like a two or three hour podcast that some people do, right? You know, there's no clips, they're not editing anything out. It's some guy on a grainy microphone, like looking into his laptop webcam and they leave all the awkward silences in and it's it's it's it's authentic yeah it's not as um it's not as professional but you also kind of get the impression that you're not there's no information present that you're not actually seeing yeah i think people are really craving that authenticity more now than ever.

And Harris, in another interview, the Stephen Colbert late-night television interview, at one point her and Colbert shared a beer on the stage, and it just looked so awkward, like trying to force. There is the forcing of authenticity in a situation like that where it just comes off so bad. And then you contrast that with someone like Donald Trump who goes on all these different podcasts and he's just himself. And people really see that. That's the funny thing about Trump is that his persona is already so, you know, flamboyant and campy that you kind of get this impression that he's kind of like this in private. You know, it's like it's Trump all the way down. Yeah.

You can't get more, he can't be more absurd than he already is. Yeah. He's already such a personality. But I remember there were a lot of comparisons online after her drinking the beer, which, of course, it's also funny because she kind of sips the beer and she's like, mmm. It doesn't look like she's enjoying it all that much.

Now, if she'd been having a Shiner Bock, that'd be a different story. But people online were just posting images of the cooking video, I think, that Elizabeth Warren made where she's talking to her husband. She's like, do you want a beer? She's like drinking her beer. And then Trump had the response to that video. Do you remember? No, what did he say? And he was like, why is she asking if her husband is there?

He's supposed to be there or something like that. Just Trumpian Trump. No, it's just the beer right it's it's the populist drink right it's like i'm a person of the people because i drink a beer yeah right yeah well it well it's interesting too because um trump doesn't drink no he does not doesn't drink doesn't do drugs i don't think obama drank either i think obama well i don't know if he did i know george w bush didn't drink um uh so no there have been yeah we've had some more recent kind of teetotaler presidents so it's been an interesting thing to see yeah well i watched a recent podcast appearance that Trump went on. I don't know if you know who Andrew Schultz is.

He's a comedian. Sounds familiar. I think you've told me about him. Yeah, he has a podcast called explanation of why he does the weave in his rallies in his rallies he bobs and he and he ducks and he moves all around topics yeah you've seen those videos where they show video of his teleprompter like when he goes off his teleprompter people know they go oh they pause the teleprompter so he can weave and then when he goes back to the thing they'll play it

again but you know his rallies are they're very interesting to watch because anything that he's thinking of at that moment is immediately going to be said yeah you know he's so uh he talked he talked about the weave he was telling stories about Don Jr., like inviting people over to Trump Tower and getting in trouble. It was just really fun, really interesting. The thing that I saw that was most important in the contrast between the two candidates and how they've been approaching both their social media podcasting tours they've gone on over the past month. But one thing I wanted to touch on, like I mentioned at the top of this section, is Harris versus Trump and how they're trying to target different audiences with their podcast appearances um we talked a little bit about how harris is trying to shore up that millennial

young female vote by going on certain podcasts but also targeting the older demographics going on established programs like 60 Minutes going on Stephen Colbert you know like those mainstream television audiences are much really appreciate being referred to as older for watching Stephen Colbert well you see late night television people you know are probably over the age of 35 probably in you, there's lots of studies that have been done that mainstream news broadcasts, the average age of an audience member is closer to 60, where a lot of younger people, you know, in the main demographic 18 to 35, are getting their news and entertainment from independent content creators. News influencers, right?

TikTok people. Well, yeah, TikTok or YouTube or things like that. And so if we look at someone like Trump in the podcasts he's been going on, like I mentioned, comedy podcasts, Andrew Schultz, he also went on the Theo Vaughn podcast. He's with that golf YouTuber too, right? He went with the golf YouTuber. He did that. You know, very male-centric audience there. He's gone on the Full Send podcast. He went on the Logan Paul podcast.

So really targeting the young male demo. And because I think both the candidates recognize that the older generations and the middle-aged people, they're already going to vote and they're probably already politically informed. And so getting younger people out to vote could be, like you mentioned, that small percentage that could put either of them over the top since this is such a close race. Do you have that same sort of analysis or do you see things differently in how they've been choosing podcasts? Well, I think that the fact that they're choosing those kind of podcasts at all, right, indicates that they clearly value the votes of young people who are just, you know, as you said, less inclined to vote overall, right? They're thinking, how do I get people out? Because right now, I mean, you know, mean you know the polls it keeps going oh trump's over kamala on two oh she's over him on three right and it's

it's all like within this margin of error stuff i mean this is a really tight race it's this is incredibly close and so they need to mobilize as it's all really and that's the funny thing is i'm sorry for interrupting you right there but like it seems that nowadays you have there is less focus on trying to change voters minds from saying you voted democrat last election vote republican this election and it seems more about just trying to mobilize voters who already lean one way or the other you know there's not quite as much of an attempt to say we're going to draw in people from the other side saying, no, we're going to draw in the people who like us, but who don't really care to vote. Right. And I think this might be just a feature

of a more polarized American political scene than we had, you know, maybe 40 years ago. But I think that that's, it's really, it's a kind of voter arms race, right? It's like, who can just get more people out? I mean, this is what Trump did in 2016. He got a lot of people, and going back to that authenticity you're talking about, people said, he tells it like it is, right? He's a straight shooter, you know? This is all the classic sort of rhetoric about what Trump represents. And he's a straight shooter. You know, this is all this is all the classic sort of rhetoric about what Trump represents. And he got a lot of people to turn out who otherwise might have not voted in 2016. Yeah. And I I was listening to a different podcast where, you know, I the reason I'll do just an aside. The reason why I have the time to listen to all this stuff is because I wake up early and I work out in the morning or also work out in the evening. And so when I'm doing that, I like to listen to stuff.

No, that makes sense. And so I usually choose podcasts to listen to. And so like this morning, I was listening to a Joe Rogan podcast where he had on these, this couple, one who's a doctor, one who was a former pharma lobbyist turned like health activist after learning what was going on in the pharma industry as a lobbyist. And in this podcast, they were talking a lot about the pharma industry, of course, and like improving health of young people, the chronic health epidemic that's occurring with children. And what they brought up was really interesting because they were really promoting RFK early when he was running. But since RFK has withdrawn in some who have coalesced around Trump and It's really interesting to see that someone like RFK jr

Someone like Tulsi Gabbard who was a former Democrat presidential candidate now turned Republican a former Democrat presidential candidate now turned Republican endorsee. You know, just interesting how these individuals are getting behind Trump, positioning themselves as a insurgent party, not just for Republicans, but of the political system itself versus Kamala Harris and her campaign, who is really being endorsed by never Trump type candidate elected officials like Liz Cheney or what's the California Republican who. You're from California. You know better than I forget his name but um yeah like people who dislike trump who are republicans have endorsed her a lot many older republicans like

dick cheney older older republicans tradition of republican politics really the establishment versus outsiders is sort of what i'm getting at. And so it'll be interesting to see with this election if outsider insurgent candidates still have a chance in America versus more well-established candidates, more party stalwarts. And so I think it's an interesting feature of just the trump phenomenon overall because like you know people think he's authentic right but as we've just talked about everybody sort of seems to think he's saying something different he's like all things to all men right it's it's you know he speaks in parables. People think that he is, you know, he's either, he's America's health president, which, you know, if you've ever seen the description of Donald Trump's own personal McDonald's order, because of course, as you remember, in 2016, 2018, it was an endless, it was a feeding frenzy. Any article you could write about Donald Trump's personal life, anything you could say about how weird he was,

like Business Insider had an article on it. You have that. You have the people who view him as a, well, Christian nationalist types maybe. We'll get to that a little bit later. You have the people who are very much opposed to the war on terror and neoconservative foreign policy. It's just he has managed to build a coalition, as you pointed out, a coalition of the fringes within American politics, within right-of-center politics, but also drawing in people like—it was Gabbard, right? He was a former Democrat. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the really interesting thing to see is, will this phenomenon outlast Trump as a person? Because I think people

have a lot of personal loyalty to Donald Trump, but I'm not confident. I'm not confident, I will say, that the movement will outlast him whenever he eventually, you know, it's been like the longest eight years of everybody's lives. There will come a time when Donald Trump is not the center of American politics anymore. And what will fill that void? Yeah, well, maybe it'll be Kamala Harris for all, you know, we again, polls are neck and neck. It's, well, I think, I think Trump and the coalition he's built have kind of put a face on the disaffected American who didn't feel like they were being represented properly in government. And now that contingency of people is a lot larger than maybe the establishment thought it was.

I don't think you're going to be able to keep it quiet in the future. And I think... The question is, can you keep it united enough to be effective at anything? That's true. That's true. But will it be united behind another individual like Trump or will it be united behind a movement, just a general idea? That is yet to be seen. All of the memes about Barron Trump, you know, that he's going to show up in like a cavalry charge. Well, he's got to finish his studies at NYU first before he does that well speaking of a big issue that relates to this topic

immigration absolutely yeah let's get into the big immigration border security one of the leading issues of this election yeah so and it really was brought to the forefront, was it like a month ago now almost? But there was some, how did it even start? It was a viral clip, I think. It was some social media posts. Social media posts about Haitian migrants in Ohio eating cats and dogs. Picking up people's pets off the street. And it made its way all the way to the presidential debate where Trump said they're eating cats and dogs. That went viral

on TikTok. I'm sure everyone's seen those videos. And it's been a continued point of conversation because there is a lot of differing opinions on the validity of some of the claims that have been made. There's been some outlets, though, that have sent reporters into Ohio to try to investigate what's going on. One of those being Chris Ruffo, who sent a reporter out there. And I'll read a big section here from some of the reporting they did. And this is over on Chris Ruffo's sub stack. He writes, the best way to understand the migrant crisis is to follow the flow of people, money, and power. In other words, to trace the supply chain of human migration. In Chaparroi, we have mapped the web of institutions that have facilitated the flow of migrants from Port-au-Prince. Some of these institutions are public and, as such, must make their records available others to avoid scrutiny

keep a low profile he goes into some of the numbers from cbp some of the numbers from the ch and chnv program something we've reported on at the texan quite a bit um he reports here, quote, the White House has admitted 210,000 Haitians through its controversial humanitarian parole program, that's the CHMV program, which it paused in early August and has since relaunched. The program is presented as a, quote, lawful pathway, but critics such as Vice Presidential Candidate J.D. V, have called it an abuse of asylum laws and warned of its destabilizing effects on communities across the country. And the reason why I wanted to mention where Chris Ruffo points out J.D. Vance is because there was a bit of a controversy when he said something along the lines of, it doesn't matter if the story is true or false but um well i believe what he said was is uh somebody asked him like are you he was doing an interview i believe it was with dana bash i think so yeah cnn or abc i think it

was dana bash i'm not completely positive though and And at one point she asked him, you know, is this true, is this false? And he said, well, we are creating stories to draw attention to this issue. Yeah. And she sort of stared at him for a few seconds like, you're making it up? And he's like, no, I'm not making it up. When he said creating stories, he's saying, I meant that I'm drawing attention to it. You know, it's like they say our top story tonight right exactly exactly and so another outlet um that i read quite a bit

and i i send you their articles and you started reading them a bit i am 1776 uh they did a report on this as well i'll read from what they wrote here. Quote, the massive support apparatus, which has been extended to Springfield funnels and migrants, supplies them with housing, money, jobs, language, classes, transportation, ideological education, and indoctrination. Goes through a number of different organizations that are facilitating these migrants into ohio it says in partnership with the federal government and government linked religious authorities are priming haitian migrants for citizenship as ready-made voters and activist foot soldiers of the democratic party obviously they're a little bit more spicy and how their analysis but

but that's been a so there's a few things there it's the partnership between federal government and nonprofit organizations that are helping to facilitate the migrant crisis that is occurring, not just in Springfield, Ohio, with these Haitians, but across the country. Something I've mentioned in my previous reporting on the border, there's lots of reporting on this about federal government funding going to these NGOs that are helping facilitate the migration of people up through South America and Central America up to the border. And then once they're even into the interior of the United States, providing housing, food. And it's this difference really of a ideological approach to immigration.

This has been a huge deportation of illegal immigrants. Questions surrounding how that's actually going to occur. He said he's going to use local law enforcement to help with this. But then on the other side, Kamala Harris, as the current vice president, has shifted her position a bit on the border, being a bit more tougher, signaling, oh, I was the Attorney General of the country's largest border state in California. She's a cop, right? That's the thing. She's Officer Harris. But as we've seen her comments from when she ran back in 2020, she was much more progressive in how she approached immigration and the border.

So a transition in that approach, it's just... I think it's worth pointing out that this time around, she did not have to go through a primary process, which means she did not have to put out a bunch of sound bites expressing like very progressive talking that's and in an election where it's actually pretty close that's probably helping Harris more than it's hurting her in the sense that she doesn't have all of the because imagine if there had been a primary I mean she would have had to you know she would have had to describe herself as the most he's the

good progressive Democrat. Well, that's what she did in 2020, right? But running against Trump when immigration is a top issue for voters, you have to be a bit more moderate in your rhetorical construction of how you're going to approach the border. Another interesting thing that I in 1776, which I read there, is how illegal immigration or this sort of gray area of asylum-seeking migration being used as, quote, ready-made voters and activist foot soldiers for the Democratic Party. That's been a huge talking point for many on the activist right, online right, who say the reason why Democrats are so loose in how they are approaching the immigration issue is because they see these immigrants or illegal immigrants as being voters for the Democratic Party they see they're able to grant them citizenship they will vote Democrat and it will shore up a future

Democrat establishment in the long term. Do you see that as something that has some validity to it? Or do you see it that, because polling recently, as you think about that, polling recently has shown Latinos moving more to the Republicans in recent years. So I'm not sure if you see it the same way or if you see it any differently. What's your thoughts? So I have been, you know, I mean, this claim has been around since the mid-10s, right? When the, really, when the Syrian refugee crisis started in Europe, right? And then that led to a massive global conversation,

actually really the whole Western world, about immigration and asylum seeking and taking in refugees. And you were starting to see these kind of claims that politicians were in favor of these massive or of mass immigration on the basis that they could create a new voter base. Now, I believe that if somehow this is all confirmed true and the Democratic Party creates essentially a uniparty state because they have all the voter base, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party cease to exist. The Democratic Party would immediately split into two parties. Like it's, you know, there's not going to be some kind of, all that would happen is that the parties would split up into different parties, you know, competing over different issues. But even then, I don't believe in this idea that everybody coming over is going to be a Democrat 100% of the time.

You know, as you pointed out, Latino voters are, especially Latino young men, and I believe black young men also, are trending towards Donald Trump. So, you know, I think that there are some people who probably believe this is happening on the right, and there are also people who probably believe this is happening on the right and there are also people who believe it's happening on the left because they have a very sort of deterministic view about the groups that necessarily vote for parties but yeah the Trump phenomenon has shown that that should not necessarily be taken for granted so I am I am more skeptical of this idea that that that that whole idea would would even work if it is indeed a real idea. But I also wanted to bring up something you brought up about when we talked about J.D.

Vance, you know, this whole creating stories issue, right? Did he mean that he was lying or did he mean that he was creating a story as in what media reports as stories, right? During the vice presidential debate between Vance and Tim Walz, he got into a, it was a very polite debate. It felt kind of like how most debates sort of used to feel like before, but in the before times, right? But there was a debate between, a little tiny debate between him and one

of the moderators when she mentioned legal asylum seekers. And he said, now, hold on, not all of those people are authorized by law. You know, they have, they come in through this asylum process on the CBP One app. And she said, yes, Senator Vance, thank you for describing the legal process. And he said said it's not a legal process Right. Yeah, and this is I think one of them this is issue. We've struggled with at the Texan is Describe how do you describe people who are coming in? Massive numbers on asylum claims that you believe to be you know if for example conservative Republicans believe that a lot of those asylum claims are

Kind of fraudulent, not like legally fraudulent necessarily, but you know, that these people are not, they're ultimately economic migrants, right? They're not seeking genuine asylum in the minds of these conservative Republicans in the way that the asylum laws are supposed to be for people who are actually fleeing like concrete, for example, religious or ethnic persecution. So is allowing anybody to claim asylum, like, is that authorized by law? I mean, this is the trouble, right? It's, there's a debate over whether or not a lot of these people are even legal or illegal immigrants. There's this massive debate over that. It's, it's, it is a, it's a characteristic feature of politics nowadays that it's not just

a debate over, you know, is X good or is X bad, but is it X or is it Y? We can't even agree on the issue we're talking about here because is this legal immigration because the federal government is allowing them to claim asylum en masse or is it illegal immigration because the federal government is sort of skirting the law in order to maximize the number of people who can come in that's a subjective debate yeah and it's something that like you said we don't have a whole lot of clarity on but it's really an issue for voters that at least in my estimation could really swing this election is who is going to align most with which candidate is going to align most with the public sentiment and it seems like according to recent, voters are favoring a large deportation effort. Yeah, let's get into some of this polling.

What do the numbers show? Well, let me see here. Do we have it pulled up? Yeah, we do. I believe we do. So this is from a Scripps News Ipsos survey. A majority of Americans support the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. 54% of respondents said they, quote, strongly or somewhat support the policy, including 86% of Republicans, 58% of independents, and 25% of Democrats. The poll, which focuses on the most talked about immigration policies of the

2024 campaign, showcases major partisan divides between voters on how to address one of the biggest topics of the presidential race. 39% of respondents called immigration a top issue for them this campaign, second only to inflation, which topped the list at 57%. Trump has a 10 point advantage on who respondents think will do a better job handling immigration. And immigration, you know, is what really propelled Trump in 2015, 2016. So the fact that eight years later, it's still a big topic is... It's wild to think about, isn't it? Yeah. Trump's three biggest issues, I think, all had to do with how the U.S. relates to other countries, right? It was immigration, trade, foreign policy, right? It wasn't really domestic policy because in the domestic policy stuff, Trump doesn't really differ from the average Republican a lot of the time, you know, on basically saying cut taxes, cut regulations.

You know, he might be less socially conservative than the average conservative Republican. But, yeah, it was all about, and that's still the problems we're having right now. Russia, Ukraine, you know, the whole, the border. Trade has kind of dropped off as an issue. I think a lot of people actually nowadays, Trump kind of did impact the body politic, I think, in being a lot more skeptical of China and saying we are not going to have like a normal friendly relationship with China. Well, maybe more skeptical of the globalized free trade that America has promoted. And I think across the, because the Biden administration kept, kept a lot of those tariffs, a lot of Trump's tariffs. Yeah. So that's one issue where I think

you can argue that Trump has shifted, yeah, shifted the political zeitgeist on, on the trade issue. Even though there's still a lot of individuals, both on the left and the right who want to promote the more free trade policies and agreements that we have with other countries. But there's also a lot of the left and the right, both the left and the right, who are opposed to free trade policies because they view it as harmful to workers. It's an interesting. Yeah, exactly. We see the Teamsters not endorsing. Not endorsing the Democratic candidate. Very interesting there.

I mean, they spoke at the RNC. Yeah. That's crazy. If you could tell somebody that 34 years ago, they'd tell you you were crazy. Well, and I think a lot of it has to do with immigration because immigration, it affects trade policy. It affects workers. It affects manufacturing. It affects crime. It really is the one issue that impacts every other issue, which is something I think a lot more people are starting to realize. One thing before we move on, I was looking into this the other week. I haven't mentioned it in any of my newsletters or any of my reporting, though. I did mention the shift of Latinos towards the Republican Party in recent years, especially during the Trump era. Muslims have actually shifted a little bit towards Trump. We actually saw the mayor of the only Muslim-run city towards Trump. We actually saw the mayor of the Muslim, the only Muslim-run city

endorsed Trump. And I thought to myself... This is in Michigan, right? This is in Michigan. And I thought, this is really interesting because there is also a story I see here from six days ago, Georgia's Muslim voters withdraw support from Harris. That's from Fox 5 Atlanta. So this was the other week. I thought to myself, why is this happening? Yeah. So I looked into it a little bit. Apparently, Trump's daughter, Tiffany Trump, is actually doing a lot of advocacy on behalf of Trump in these Muslim communities and I thought what a very interesting twist to this whole thing as

a big controversy surrounding Trump when he initially was elected was the Muslim ban quote and so but the shift eight years later is occurring but you would have told someone you know 30 years ago that the Teamsters would be breaking away maybe from the Democrats they would have told you you were crazy if you would tell people that Trump was gaining ground with American Muslims eight years after 2016, I think people would have told you you were stone cold insane. Yeah. They would have said there is no way. But only Trump can do something.

Only somebody like Donald Trump can be the exception to the rule every single time. Every single time. It's bizarre. It's absolutely bizarre. So we have a few minutes left here. I want to jump on one last topic before we wrap up. This is something that's been reported on for months now, is the idea of a rising faction of Christian nationalism in the country. We saw the Wall Street Journal do a profile piece on Tim Dunn. We saw now ProPublica did a piece on the Don Wilkes Alliance and the amount of money

they've been pouring into not just Texas, but also at the federal level and national races. This is something you've kept your eye on a little bit. Tell the people a little bit about this ProPublica piece. What was some of the stuff that they mentioned in there? Yeah, so the headline of this piece is, a pair of billionaire preachers built the most powerful political machine in Texas. That's just the start. I love these modern two-sentence headlines. It's like X, period, then Y, you know. It's just a very interesting phenomenon now of, of course, the fact that online news

outlets, unlike newspapers of old, don't have to worry about saving space on the page anymore. You know, they, they can, they can say stuff like this, but yeah, I mean, this piece, it's a very interesting sort of look at the life of, of the lives of Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes. And, you know, it's coming at it, I think, from a more skeptical perspective from ProPublica published with the New York Times magazine, which is not a Christian nationalist publication of all the things you can say about it. I think it is not that. I think it is self-consciously not that. But it's one of the most interesting things that I noticed here in this article is they link to a little poll about Christian nationalism in America.

And some of these questions I thought were interesting. So, for example, one of these questions asks, the U.S. government, you know, it asks, do you completely agree, mostly agree, mostly disagree, completely disagree? And one of the questions was, the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation. Now, only about 10% of Americans in this poll agreed with that, right? The majority of people, 70% of people said no. But something interesting here is that support for these kinds of ideas tends to rise if you phrase it as, for example, U.S. laws should be based on Christian values. Or if you say, if the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a

country anymore. Support tends to rise for those. Now, it's still in the minority. It's still less than 50%. But while most Americans, you know, believe that the United States is a secular – should have a secular government, there's a tiny – I mean you can find anybody to really say anything in a poll, right? You always get some small portion of people who will say yes to almost anything. but I think it's interesting to see that when it's phrased as saying you know should the U.S. sort of respect its cultural foundations on Christianity a lot more people are willing to say yes where if you frame it as you know should we have a Christian government should Christians be the only ones with political power support tends to drop a lot further lower than that it's an interesting thing because this is also a big issue, you know, leading into the election. This is a big criticism being made about, you know, about Donald Trump is that he's the sort of leading this vanguard of a Christian nationalist phenomenon. Well, a very

small percentage of people think that. Yeah, that's fair. But it's, I think it also represents this phenomenon. Trump is, Trump is everything to everyone. People can see there are people who believe that Trump is the leader of a Christian nationalist movement, and that's a good thing. Well, people on the left and right, yeah. It's like a horseshoe here. There are people who say, yes, Trump is a Christian nationalist wannabe dictator. On the right, and they're like, and that's good. There are people on the left who say that's bad. So that's, I people on the left you say that's bad yeah so that's i think interesting to see but um you know it's it's but it's like anything if you did

any sort of research on trump as the person or any of his past is like this is not who this guy is this is an interesting phenomenon is the way that evangelical Christians generally, you know, Trump is like the most favored candidate among this group, which is a very large group in the United States. And seeing the, this is something, of course, that, you know, baffles a lot of liberal commentators who say, you know, how is it possible that Donald Trump, a man who in their minds, you know, they say he is, he has, you know, no morality whatsoever. How could he possibly appeal to this group? Of course, if you go by the idea that evangelical Christians believe themselves to be a group that has kind of been left behind by American society, then it makes perfect sense because that's the people that Trump appeals to as he says, you know, he says, you know, oh, I'm here for you, wherever you are, the little groups that you feel like you've been forgotten, I'm here for the little guy. And, you know, you can debate whether or not he is there for the little guy or isn't, but you know that that's what he says and that's what

his supporters believe. So that's been an interesting thing leading it. It's funny how we're hitting all the big election pieces because by the time the next Send Me Some Stuff comes out, the election will be over. That's crazy. So, I mean, these are the big issues here is the sort of it's, you know, the soul of America, immigration. Yeah. Well, really interesting stuff. Like you mentioned, this podcast is going to be, by the time we record again the election will be over yeah um do you have a prediction for how the election will shake out but you know you you don't

have to give your personal opinion about which way you want it to go which way do you think it's going to go based on what you've seen um polling stuff you talk about with your family or friends stuff you've seen online how do you think it's gonna gonna go so i'm gonna give you a non-answer i'm gonna say this after the uh trump biden debate went very poorly for Biden, I thought, oh man, Trump's got this in the bag. After Trump got shot, I thought, oh man, there's

no way he loses this. After Biden dropped out and I thought, oh, is it going to be a contested primary? I mean, this is, I thought there's no way really Trump loses this at this point. But then, there was no contested primary. I mean, this is, I thought there's no way really Trump loses this at this point. But then there was no contested primary. Support for Kamala Harris just rose up like that. You know, as we were talking about this in the office saying, you know, there are a lot of phone calls going on behind the scenes right now of people trying to say, you know, you've got to announce

for Kamala Harris. We got to present a front of strength here. We can't look weak because we're trying to beat Trump again. We can't let him back into office. So I started going more towards the perspective of thinking, oh, you know, Harris, because Trump, of course, won 2016, lost in 2020. And so now I'm thinking, okay, well, maybe that trend will continue. So for a while there and you know it's maybe in the fall september october i'm thinking all right maybe it's going to go back to harris i just don't know anymore all the polls they keep their neck and neck they're absolutely

so that's my non-answer is they're absolutely neck and neck um i'll get i'll give my answer I think Trump is going to win mm-hmm this is based on recent polling I've seen you know it is we're recording this on October October 10th pulling even though it is very close you know whatever pull you look at it's Trump is good in a lot of these battleground states he might be up by one or two but in some other polls he might be up by two or three maybe harris is is up one point but in the aggregate it's showing trump is leading in a lot of these polls well if there's one thing we've learned—I'm sorry, go ahead. And I think with internal polling with the Democrats, with the Harris campaign, it could be showing the Trump lead is even larger than we might expect. this to you before but if we if you do a close analysis of some of the stuff harris is saying in these interviews she's been giving recently if you take gun issues for example yeah you know democrats have been adamantly against um guns wanting to institute gun regulations red flag

laws whatever it may be to quote a man who has run for several positions in Texas, you know, hell yeah, we're going to take your AR-15s, right? Shout out Beto. But recently, Kamala, she said on the debate stage, she said on interviews that she owns a gun, that it's a Glock. And she shoots someone in self-defense. Yeah. And so.

To walls. You know, I'm a hunter. I'm a hunter. Yeah. So those are more moderate to right-leaning positions. And if the internal polling the Democrats had showed that they were leading and or even leading by a substantial amount they wouldn't need to signal those right-leaning opinions but if they're if their internal polling is showing they're down or the race is really tight and they're down by small percentage points and they need to swing some voters to their side, they're going to start coming out with more right-leaning,

more moderate-type positions. So I think that's something that I've sort of picked up on. And I just think the energy, I know it's a bit more abstract. The vibes. It's the vibes election, right? Well, I think the RFK endorsement is going to be really important. There was quite a few people when he was in the race, he was garnering 18 to 20 percent sometimes in these polls when he was included. And if those individuals shift over, because the RFK supporter was a staunch RFK supporter.

And if he's able to flip those to being Trump voters, then we could see Trump winning by a large percent. It's possible. Winning the popular vote, maybe. No. I remember in 2020, when I was still in school, I was at a watch party and there was a guy who was walking around making bets with people. He said, Trump's going to win the popular vote. And I was like, how much do you want to bet? He said, $50. He made multiple of these bets with people. So it was, yeah.

If you're watching this, you know who you are. But but yeah, I mean, the other thing, of course, is one of the most interesting features about this election that we've never had really in in living memory is that both candidates are kind of incumbents in that. But they're also kind of not in that Harris of course is trying to jump from VP to vice president so she's part of the administration that um that that is currently in charge but she's also having to play this she's kind of having to dance this dance of saying well I am not I am not all of the bad things you associate with these last four years, but I am all of the good things you associate with these last four years. But then you have Trump who, you know, lost in 2020, but public opinion might have shifted

now. There were a lot of people who said, you know, you know what, I'm done with Trump. Maybe I voted for him in 2016. Don't like him anymore. I, you know, I tried him out and now I'm sick of him, right? I know people in my life who are like, you know, voting for him in 2016, can't do it again. You're right.

I'm done with him now. But after the, after the past four years, it's possible that their opinions could have shifted back around. So it's, it's, I'm still not convinced. I won't, I can't fall one way or the other. As I see it, the coin is still in midair. I don't know which side it's going to land on. But, yeah, no, it's – it'll be something.

It'll be – you know what it'll make for? It'll make for great fodder on the next episode of Send Me Some Stuff. It definitely will. And I think – We'll have lots of articles to share. That's what this is all about, right, is saying take a look at something cool that i found take a look at this take a look at that you know and it's a good springboard for for a very interesting discussion yeah and election night is going to be crazy because if it truly is as close as people

are expecting it to be we might not even have a decision until a week later. Who knows? It'll be like you go to bed at 2, you wake back up at like 5 or 6 and immediately get back to it. Because, you know, I mean, besides the presidential election, we've also got all the local stuff coming out. Colin Allred, Ted Cruz, that's an entire other issue. That would have been a whole extra 30 minutes of the podcast at this point yeah we've got that debate in what what is that October 15th yeah next week that will be yeah so that'll be if you're

why when you're watching this now on Monday that'll be tomorrow yeah on Tuesday October 15th that's that'll be very exciting to see because Colin Allred is kind of facing a similar problem with Kamala Harris in the sense that Trump and Cruz are both well-known figures with perhaps low ceilings of favorability, but voters are struggling to sort of know what do Harris and Allred want to do other than saying, I'm not the other guy. Right. That's the challenge. Yeah. Well, we covered a lot today.

Absolutely. Didn't even get to the Ramaswamy-Bolton debate, but. Certainly worth a watch. It's available on Vivek Ramaswamy's X account. So the full hour and a half debate. It's an interesting conversation between somebody who has really been in the foreign policy world for a long time and This you know kind of outsider guy who's who's represents perhaps the opinions of younger people who are more skeptical of that It's just an interesting debate to watch. It was very interesting. Absolutely, but

I think that'll do it for us here. Thanks for tuning in everyone You can read all of our articles, newsletters, listen to all of our other podcasts on thetexan.news, and make sure to send us some stuff. I like that. Maybe we'll talk about it next time. Until then. Absolutely.

Peace. Thank you.