The Young Turks - Walz Annihilates Trump

Episode Date: October 19, 2024

Tim Walz rips into Trump for pretending to “understand” the working class. Trump claims Apple CEO Tim Cook called him to complain about EU fines, saying, “I got to get elected first.” Trump’s “Barack Hussein Obama” taunt completely flops at the Al Smith Dinner. Fossil fuel donors are giving record amounts to Congressional GOP super PACs." HOST: John Iadarola (@johniadarola), Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl), Francesca Fiorentini (@franifio) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK TWITTER INSTAGRAM TIKTOK 👕 Merch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Welcome to our trash revolution. I'm so upset. Oh my God. Live from the Polymarket Studio in L.A. It's the Young Turks. Free watching.

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Drop that. Nobody watching understands what just happened. What happened? You know what? I'll mention it in the social break. Stick around for the social break to find out the emotional psychological context of what just happened. I'm John Adirola.

Jordan Yule is in studio. Francesca Fiorentini is too good to make the drive. How is it going? One and all, Francesca host to the Fjuration Room. How are you both doing, Francesca, thank you for being here. I had a show, I had my show just before this that I hope everyone watches YouTube. com slash Franie Fio, that's where I was, so I'm sorry I'm not there. Jordan's not wearing a hat and I think we need to just mention that up top.

You know what? There's been something about Jordan since he got here that's been throwing me off and I completely forgot that that's what it is. He also is not wearing a hoodie. The combination of the two things, I'm honestly not sure if it's him. Well, when I was- I was getting ready and I was- was, you know, showering and my fiance says to me, you have such nice hair. Stop wearing a hat. If you love me, you won't wear a hat tonight. And it's like, whoa. If you're going to resort to

that, I guess I have no choice. Yeah. So he brought one just in case he decided at the last minute to wear it. But as of right now, he's not. And you do have nice hair. So good, good decision. Yeah, usually it's kind of a, you know, it's kind of a, the gentleman whose hair is are leaving ziz, who generally rock a hat. But you, Jordan, that's a lot of hair too. He does. It's too much. Yeah. Yeah. Well, too much hair, maybe too much news. Stick around to find out. We do have some interesting things to talk about. Tim Walls is taking some big swings at Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. We're going to be starting off the show with that in just a few. We're going to be talking about the Al Smith dinner, this traditional pre-election Catholic-focused fundraisers slash roast. And there were some good lines. There were some jokes and attacks that I think didn't quite hit.

So we're going to laugh at the good lines. We're going to laugh at the people making the bad lines. Overall, it should be a lot of fun for us. And then we've got a whole bunch of corruption in the latter half of the first hour. So everyone prepare yourself for that. But also coming up in the second hour, Yasmin O'Leon is going to be leading us. Sharon Reed, J.R. Jackson are going to be here. It's a pretty amazing power panel.

And I'm not going to say what it is about that's so different that might be like upping the game a little bit. But there is something different today. But don't worry, he'll be back next week. Okay, everybody, why don't we jump into our first story of what's going on with Mammy? Good luck on the unemployment line, John. Anyway, that's it. I want to get into carpentry, and I think now is the time in any event.

Let's jump into our first story, starting with this. When my mom looks for that Social Security deposit to be made in her bank account, that's how she's going to feed herself. That's how she's going to get things done. He doesn't give a damn if his Social Security check comes or not. So let's be very clear. If any of our relatives or anyone gives us this, if they tell us, will Donald Trump's understand us, that's he does not understand.

He does not understand. So that is obviously Tim Walz. He is in North Carolina. It is the first day of early voting there. North Carolina is a state that several months ago seem to have entirely slipped away from the Democrats. But now with Kamala Harris and with Tim Walz, it's. seems like a possible pickup and it would be pretty important for the Democrats if they didn't.

So he's there and he's making some strong attacks against Donald Trump and also J.D. Vance. We're gonna be covering all of that. The focus really is Donald Trump does not understand regular people. He does not understand their struggles. He doesn't understand their life. And that should probably go without saying Donald Trump was born a wealthy man. He has been wealthy his entire life. He has never lived a normal life economically in terms of work, in terms of pay, in terms of the struggle. But Tim Walls, I think, is a pretty good messenger for this. And so we're going to cover a little bit more of what he said.

But let's start off with him talking here about Project 2025. But I want to be fair, not everybody thinks the same way do he do. And Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have a little bit different ideas. And I'll tell you what, they know exactly, they know exactly what they're doing with Project 2025. I was telling President Clinton, Donald Trump today is coming out. He's pretty worried about this. He said, no one associated with Project

2025 will be in my administration. Every damn one of them were in his administration. Every one of them. J.D. Vance says, I don't even know what that is. He wrote the foreword to the architect's book who wrote it. I've never written the forward to somebody's book,

but if I did, I'd sure the hell remember who they were. And they wrote that thing. I guarantee you that. So look, here's what's in that thing. Here's what's in it. Take away the Affordable Care Act. And look, this is the time now to talk to your neighbors. Talk, hell, talk to your relatives who are voting the other way or your brother, whoever might be.

We all got them, but they will tell you, well, I just don't like Donald Trump's character or some of the things he says. I like his policies. This is where you jump in and say, which policies? Taking away your health care, they, he said he had a concept of a plan after nine years. Then Vance tried to explain it. I told J.D., you should go back to the concept because your explanation is terrible about what it's going to do. You know, I think Tim Wool's got a lot of criticism coming out of the debate. Like he had gone into the debate, everyone expects he's good at doing media.

The debate didn't go so well, but he's a pretty good messenger, I think, overall. I liked a lot of those lines. The concept thing was good. The forward thing was good. It seems weird that at this point, he still hasn't written the forward to a book. Let me just offer my novel Shadow of the Mouse Thief is probably not what you were expecting. Middle grade fantasy, it's about a mouse going out adventure. but I wouldn't say no if you wanted to write the forward.

In any event, we're going to turn to Social Security in a moment, but what do you think so far? You know, on the debate point, what we saw was the misstep by the Harris campaign holding walls back. What we just saw was the walls we saw in the weeks leading up to his announcement and in the immediate aftermath. He was fiery, he was dynamic, people liked him. And then out of nowhere, he just disappeared. They, you know, put him in the basement, I guess, like Biden, and they held him back. They clipped his wings. They, oh, don't say the weird thing.

Stop with the weird stuff. No, this clearly works is why people wanted him to begin with. And you're seeing that. Now, on the debate stage, this was in this period where they were trying to refine and think through every single little thing that he said. And he came up, he came off wonky. He stumbled. He was cold.

Vance, who had been making the rounds in uncomfortable interviews for weeks. knew how to deflect, knew how to answer the tough questions, knew what to say and what not to say in moments where he could be cornered. With the exception of the very last question about who won in 2020, I think Vance outclassed him, but here he is, Wals is back to his original form, which is great. They need this in the final stretch. Yeah, and way to use your white privilege, dude, okay? Just like coming out with the BS, you know, S-H-I-T, he said it.

Like, if Kamala Harrison said that, I'd be like, oh, yeah, right? super unpresidential. But of course, every time, like, you know, and this is what the right response to. Let's be honest. Like, I agree with Jordan. I mean, luckily, nobody remembers the vice presidential debate, so it doesn't really matter. But, you know, the whole, like, well, we've got to play nice, nice. Honestly, a lot of the, like, so-called alphas really do respond to someone who's just going to be forceful and tell it like it is. And you see, you know, the politics are different. But Tim Wall's right there, especially very disheveled, kind of on his like, give no more F's vibe, gives a lot of Bernie.

And I think that's why people like Bernie. Because like, I'm just going to explain something very directly to you. And I'm not going to couch it in consultant speak. And I think that's when he shines. And I really do love, especially that line of the substance of what he said, which is don't just focus on his character. Actually, his policies are also bad, which we don't actually really follow a talk about. Even Kamala Harris doesn't really talk too much about how bad.

Trump's policies are. Yeah, it's a great point. There aren't that many of them. I mean, like certainly not that have been promised coming up. It's one of the reasons people are turning to Project 2025 to understand his agenda, because he doesn't talk much about his agenda. You know, he talks a lot about how scary Guatemalans are and people from El Salvador and Haiti and all that, but other than that, not a lot of policy. And so, yeah, no, I think a lot of those points were very well done. Now, let's turn now to the comments Wall's made about Social Security. Look, Donald Trump called Social Security a Ponzi scheme.

J.D. Vance said it was the impediment or the roadblock to fiscal sanity. Social Security doesn't add to our national debt, and we damn sure pay into it. So when my dad dies and I'm a teenager, I got a little brother in elementary school, a stay-at-home mom, it was Social Security survivor benefits that kept our family alive, kept us going on it. That's smart. So look, we hear this. And this is a tough state. We know how to do this stuff.

So when they tell you, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Damn happy to do it. We just didn't have any boots. So Social Security is the boots. I guarantee you, if I would have had $400 million, I would be in better shape than he is and wouldn't be bankrupt. Nice little hit there at the end. Again, to Francesca's earlier point, like, yeah, he really has dispensed. with thee, like, oh, you know, there's a lot that we can agree on sort of thing.

And I think that that marries well with Harris's turn to focusing more on Donald Trump's fitness for the presidency, how unhinged he is, how unchecked he'll be, all of that. But there, Walls is using, like he's mocking Trump, he's trying to trigger Trump, but he's also talking about how important these policies are and how both Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have a history of questioning whether these sorts of policies should ever exist. And we already know that like Senate Republicans are like never stop thinking about killing Social Security. All they really need is someone in the White House to play ball.

And so I think people should really be worried about this particular ticket. What do you think? Well, Francesca, let's let's let you go first. Oh, okay. Well, thank you. No, no, I always think is better when you're in the room, but it's all good. No, okay, I love that he's kind of proving J.D. Vance's point, which is and Donald Trump's point, I'm just like, yeah, if you didn't have social security, you would be dying in poverty and

you wouldn't be running as vice president. Damn it. That's why we need to get rid of social security. It's like perfectly encapsulated. What I also like about walls and his attitude here and really focusing on the substance is that room is small. I mean, it's a gymnasium of school. He's talking to organizers.

These are people who in the next few weeks, whatever it is, 18 days, 17 days are going to be knocking doors. They're going to be like working poles. They're going to, you know, boots on the ground. This is the work they're doing. So he's got to fire them up. And I love that he's doing it in such a substantive way that really speaks to their intelligence and not just ra-raying them, which I think too many candidates do. So if I were an organizer in North Carolina, if I were making calls, which a lot of people are, that would really energize me to get on the phone and do so. So I think Walls is probably the best messenger for undercutting Trump's commitment to the working class. That's something he's rode, obviously, in 2016, to victory on, and there are a lot of people who believe him because he still somehow portrays himself as an outsider.

And I think correctly, although he is part of it, frames the political elite in both parties as abandoning workers. And that's why you've seen shifts in places like the Rust Belt. over the years and shifting more conservative towards Trump because he can exploit a working class first message, never delivering on it, of course. But one of the main culprits, if you remember that clip, he was flanking walls. It was Bill Clinton. I mean, Bill Clinton's trade policies, NAFTA decimated the working class in places where I grew up. People don't like him. Don't trust him. That's why they didn't trust Hillary. And I'm, I still think Hillary would have been a slightly better alternative to Trump on some things.

I don't know. She was pushing the TPP that would have further decimated areas like the Rust Belt. In post-industrial America, they have a distrust for people like him. So I think it undercuts the message just aesthetically. He's not obviously not front and center in that. Looks like he did speak. But when you see some union workers across the country, not all, of course, I don't even know if it's a majority, but if there are enough to switch because they don't trust them,

That's concerning. And the Democratic Party still has this problem of being defined by that more of a globalist TPP NAFTA mindset on trade policy. Trump isn't the answer, but he can exploit that for electoral gain. And that's one thing I'm really concerned about. I think that we should probably, with time-wise, we're going to go on to one more clip. I know we've talked a lot about Tim Walls, but there's one area that I think, like he's had a lot of attacks against Donald Trump.

I think this area might be, I guess, the most fertile for attacks. So let's roll just a little bit more of Walls at that rally. He doesn't know business and he damn sure doesn't know the middle class. So look. And for all of you, I'm gonna be. I'm going to be generous. We are all products of our past. When you grow up a middle class kid in Oakland or in Butte, Nebraska, you care about Social Security. You care about these things. When you're sitting down in Mara Lago and you tell your rich friends, you're rich as hell, I'm going to give you a tax cut. It doesn't matter to them. And you know what? When my mom looks for that Social Security deposit to be made in her bank account, that's how she's going to feed herself. That's how she's going to get things done. He doesn't give a damn if his Social Security check comes or not. So let's be very clear. If any of our relatives or anyone gives us this. If they tell us, will Donald Trump understand us, that's what he does not understand. I love all the substance there. I also love how much

energy Tim Walz is bringing on a day in which Donald Trump is now facing all these questions about whether he has the physical stamina to even make it to election day, let alone to govern as president for four years. He's canceling all these events left and right. Tim Walz is going like a mile a minute. That was like if Ben Shapiro had any of the right policies, then it might look like that. But I think it's a great point. Donald Trump, it is amazing to me that he has been able to win over virtually any working class people. You talked about some of the ways that he weaponizes things the Democrats have done. And I think it makes sense that you would do that. But I mean, this is a guy who despises workers, despises paying them. And he doesn't

even hide it like other Republicans do. He will talk to a group of people. Many of the people, of the working class would be like, oh man, don't you hate overtime, paying these peasants overtime, they just hate it. And he goes to rich billionaires as we'll talk about. And he's like, I'm gonna give you benefit, you give me a billion dollars, I'll cut all the regulations on you. And he talks to rich people, as Tim Wall said, and said, I'm gonna give you rich people a tax credit.

Like he barely hides it at all and they don't seem to have a problem with it. And look, to some extent, he does try to win over people who aren't already wealthy. So he'll throw out something like this with almost no thought, he'll say, you know, that Taxes on tips should be taken away. We'll have more to say about that. Or seniors should not pay tax on Social Security. And you know how much thinking he did about that exactly as long as it took to bleat that out. That's all. He hasn't really thought about it. And there's a lot of issues with it. Now, John Larson in my home state of Connecticut, he says one of the fatal mistakes is that it wouldn't make up for the revenue that would be lost. He comes out and says he's going to have a tax cut, but doesn't say how he's going to pay for it. In essence, his proposal would end up cutting the Social Security Trust Fund. And my issue with that isn't that it's inaccurate. My issue is that Representative Larson, why are you pretending like this is a thing that he actually means to do?

He's just saying it, man, he's not gonna do it. He's not gonna cut the taxes on that or on tips. I mean, even if he didn't, like again, the scam here, particularly with the tips is, the only people who would really benefit from those tax changes are people who make way more than the working class people who believe he's talking to them. They are not going to benefit that. Wealthy hedge fund managers are going to pay off their bonuses and things. But anyway, I want to jump to just one more graphic, perhaps the best example of what Walls was saying there about how he doesn't understand working class people. He said in 2019, and I'll never get

tired of reminding people of this, you know, if you want to go out and buy groceries, you need identification. If you want to do almost anything, you need identification. The only The only thing that you don't need identification for is to vote, the most important single thing you're doing to vote. You do provide identification when you vote. You don't have like a national voter ID card, but you do, you can't just walk up and be like, I'm Jim, Jim who, Jim, just write me down as a gym, I don't get, that's not how it works, that's not how it works at all, and what grocery store are you going to?

It wants to check your ID. I love, it's been five years since then, not a single right winger has been physically capable of admitting how deeply worrying that statement is. But Francesca, final thoughts on this topic. Yeah, I mean, I think Jordan brought up an interesting point about kind of the lane that's been opened by, you know, Democrats and Republicans, you know, consensus around neoliberal economics, which again, we shouldn't confuse with like liberalism, like neoliberal economics or something that Republicans and Democrats have participated in. And they have also led to, yes, the collapse of national industry and shipping jobs abroad. And sadly, Donald Trump

answers that through anti-immigration rhetoric. And if we really were to go with him on this and say, just imagine that, yeah, immigrants are taking our jobs because we were all farm workers and then the immigrants came in and we were all displaced. That is obviously not happening. Donald Trump proves how little he knows about farm work this week in the Univision town home. But the real answer is, well, why would certain workers undercut the jobs of others? Like, wouldn't the labor protections of that industry? And wouldn't the labor protections of those workers ensure their job stability? Isn't the answer not to vilify and demonize one another, but actually to make job protections more robust?

Oh, but you want to do away with OSHA? So just like no occupational safety standards whatsoever, no hazard standards. You can breathe in all the asbestos you want and you can't sue your employer for it. Amazing. So this is the reality of it is the answer to it. And Kamala Harris gets us maybe halfway there, right? And I think to the extent she just tweeted just now that, you know, Donald Trump's a threat to the working class and to unions, we need to stand by unions. And I think that was the one part of Biden's legacy that is incredible and important to stand on is his support of unions.

It's like that's the answer to Trumpism. That's the answer to the we need to bring national industry back and stuff. all these tariffs, it's no, it's to have a like a worker led, a union movement that actually, yes, make sure there's industry and manufacturing in this country, but doesn't simultaneously start a trade war with China and slap a bunch of tariffs on consumers or that ultimately fall down on consumers. Yeah, I think part of this is a messaging issue. And John, you point out that quote from John Larson, who's trying to get into the details on a policy that Trump would never pursue. And I think that's misguided. You're just wasting bandwidth. Like you say,

it should just be, this isn't going to happen. And we know that. We can see that through his actions. Why didn't you do this the first time? Something like that. On the no tax on tips thing, that's clearly geared toward, I don't know about clearly because I just made that connection recently, clearly geared toward winning over people in the service industry in Nevada. It's not nationwide. It's not really going to have, he's not going to pursue it, of course, But it's also, if enacted, it would be structured in a way that would allow wealthy people to restructure their compensation to exploit that loophole. Harris, if you remember, also proposed something like that that would be more pro-worker

and that upset Trump. He said, hey, whoa, she stole my policy. But where has that been? Why aren't they making that a big part of their message? I haven't heard them mention that since. If you're sincere and you really care about that, hammer that point and continue pointing out that one of his signature talking points of this cycle is insincere and you have a better alternative. I haven't heard that since he got upset about it. Where is that? Yeah, I don't

I once or twice ever, I don't remember where, which means it's not nearly enough. And to your point earlier, yeah, that's the sort of Trojan horse of that. It's going to be millionaires that are actually benefiting off of this. Harris has, she wants to do the same thing. And look, I don't even, again, I don't even know why this is a thing that all of a sudden everybody needs to focus on as a person who worked for tips for many years and also because of low income would not have benefited from this because that's how taxes work. Her plan caps it at $75,000. Like if you make more than $75,000, you can't use this loophole anymore. And so like Trump obviously would never do that and that kind of reveals the whole point of this. In any event, we do need

to take the first break of the hour. But when we come back, we're going to have a little bit of fun. We had the Al Smith charity dinner. Some of the politicians are going to roast each other. Jip Gaffigan's going to appear. It should be a lot of fun. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back, one and all to the power panel, Jordan, Eul, Francisco Furentini, and myself, John Aderella, here. We've got a lot more to get to, and it should be fun. Let's jump into it. You know, during the first and only debate, President Trump talked about migrants taking cats and eating them. You know, if you're keeping track at home, this is the second time grabbing a kitty that's been part of a campaign issue. that out.

I was gonna leave that out. I'm glad he left it in. Anyway, that was Jim Gaffigan, who I'm a big fan of. At the Al Smith dinner, this is an annual Catholic charity event that when there's a presidential election coming up is like a big stopping point. It's one of the last big events like it before the election. And generally both of the candidates are there. In this case, that was not the case, only Donald Trump was there.

And I know that because while that clip was playing, many of you were probably watching Jim Gaffigan. I was watching Donald Trump and Melania Trump for their reaction to that. And I will give Donald Trump a little bit of credit. He smiled. He didn't do what he did at the White House Corresponds dinner with Obama where he's like all frowny and mad. He was smiling a lot. Melania wasn't at all, I noticed, but Donald Trump was playing ball. And we're going to have a little bit more of that, actually.

Now, to be fair, Jim Gaffigan also did do some roasting of Democrats. He said President Biden couldn't be here tonight. The DNC made sure of that, which is a good line. And also, like, they should have been more clear, much more early about Joe Biden. But we want to balance the scales here. And so let's get to Donald Trump, where he actually engaged in a bit of rare self-deprecating humor. These days, it's really a pleasure anywhere in New York without a subpoena for my appearance. Anytime I don't get a subpoena, I'm very happy.

They've gone after me, Mr. Mayor. Your peanuts compared to what they've done to me. But I know this isn't my normal crowd tonight because it just isn't. It's not my normal crowd. Believe me, my normal crowd is younger, has a lot more energy, but you have certain advantages too, like cash, lots of cash. Fine, I guess. Not a joke.

The New York one was kind of funny. I mean, like, you know, it immediately made me remember that we were denied justice on virtually all of those cases because of corrupt judges. So there was, you know, the joke was funny. The aftermath was a little bit sad, but Donald Trump almost never does any self-deprecating humor, so I guess that's good, you know, and so consider that as you consider the likelihood that he would take America down a really dark path if the dark day came where he became president once again. But Francesca, you are a stand-up comedian. What do you think so far?

Yeah, the first, the subpoena joke was good, got a laugh. The rest of it weren't jokes. I'm pretty sure that's not scripted. Like there's peanuts what they did to you, Eric Adams. Anyway, let's go to Instable together. Like, that's not really a joke. And then the last one where he was just like, what did he say? I'm blanking because I don't care. But the point is, no, they weren't actually jokes. He's just calling it like it is. You guys have more money. I mean, again, if it were, this is a Catholic crowd. If it were a Jewish crowd, which he has done, He's like, you guys have a lot of money. You're good with money, aren't you?

Wink, wink, wink. He's just being honest. He's like, I don't really like my audience because I've been trying to milk them for every piece of merch I can hawk. And a lot of them are tapped out. So they sunk too much into truth social. But, yeah, I guess it's progress, John. He hasn't appeared at the White House Press Correspondent Center when he was president. So we'll see.

And yet, supposedly, he's always joking. Mass deportations? He's just joking. Totally. Really fast, by the way, that would have been a good joke if he had then like pulled out like full gold rosaries and been like, and by the way, for $100,000. Yes. See, that would have been good. What do you think? So I'm with Francesco. It wasn't that great. I think some of the other stuff we'll get into. Maybe I have a different stance. But he's doing kind of just observational comedy, but without the comedy for the second part. It's like just talking about what he sees in front of him. You're old. You're rich. He liked that. I mean, there was no punchline on that. I think the subpoena line was good. It was surprising to see him joke about it.

But I think the point of all of this is it's a roast. And I think Gaffigan's joke was great. And I was also with you, John, watching Trump and Melania. And what you'll see in some of the other clips, if you go and watch some of the other Gaffigan burns on Trump, he's sitting in there grinning. And Melania looks kind of dower. But I don't think Trump is enjoying the jokes so much as he just likes hearing somebody talk about. about him every time like if you watch the clips as Gaffigan is setting it up oh it's coming back to Trump and he mentions Trump he like lights up he like shifts in his posture go go watch

with those clips you'll see it he just likes that Gaffigan is talking about him yeah well yeah and and John you're right about the biggest joke is on the American people because yes none of the cases have been resolved none of them not even falsifying business records none of it the Juan Murchon all that none of it's been resolved everyone wants to wait because they don't want to put their thumb on the scale. Should he become president? Somehow we're here, people. Somehow we're here. 100%. Well, he is going to speak some more. We'll have some more of him. Harris was not there, but she did send in a video. Here is a bit of that. The Al Smith dinner provides a rare opportunity to set aside partisanship.

Cool. Sorry, sorry. Hey, what's going on? Who is that? I'm sorry, Mary Catholic Gellier. Mary Catholic Gellon. It's so nice to meet you. Very nice to meet you, Mary Catherine. Right now I'm trying to record my speech for tonight's dinner. Oh, yeah, I know. I just want to say that I'm Catholic,

and tonight is one of the biggest dinners next to the Last Supper. It is a very important dinner, and it's an important tradition that I'm so proud to be a part of. Sometimes when I get nervous, I stick my fingers under my arms, and I sim on like that. That's gross. So tell me something. I'm giving a speech.

Do you have some thoughts about what I might say tonight? My feelings about what you should say tonight would be best expressed in a monologue from one of my favorite made for TV series. Okay, let's hear it. Don't you see, man? We need a woman to represent us. A woman brings more heart, more compassion, and think how smart she must be to become a top contender in a field dominated by men. It's time for a woman, bro. So obviously there's a pre-recorded skit that they sent in.

I thought Harris's acting was perfectly fine. I like Molly Shannon. I'm not a big fan of that particular character. Overall, look, there is more to it. I think it was maybe a missed opportunity. Like I know you have to send it something if you're not going to be there. She was off campaigning and as we're going to get into in just one sec, Trump was making as big of a deal out of that as he possibly could.

But for me, it just wasn't quite as good as lines delivered in the hall. But that said, before we comment, let's get to Donald Trump pointing out how utterly disrespectful it is that she's not there. My opponent feels like she does not have to be here, which is deeply disrespectful to the event and in particular to our great Catholic community, very disrespectful. I understand the real reason that she's not here is she's hunting with her running mate, spending a lot of time hunting. In any event, it's a weird, weird, weird.

weird weird you know the word weird they call me weird they called jd weird we're very solid people this guy is calling us weird but this was weird that the democrat candidate is not here and with us tonight catholics you got to vote for me just remember you better remember i'm here and she's not i could have done that too but you do something that's incredible that catholic church you're helping the poor educating children and supporting the vulnerable but if you really wanted Vice President Harris to accept your invitation I guess you should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and riders in Minneapolis and she would have been here guaranteed she would have been here but I don't think Kamala has given up yet she hasn't

instead of attending tonight she's in Michigan receiving communion from Gretchen Whitmer That's not a pretty sight. Yeah, so that was something, I guess. It got a little bit weird in the middle. I think he should probably just read the lines that people gave him. Not all of them necessarily, one of them I think was just written by Stephen Miller. But anyway, he, look, he wants to get some sort of advantage out of the fact that he's there and she's not. And so he's pointing out that it's weird that she's not there.

Bear in mind, he's canceled virtually every interview he's had over the last few days. few days. But anyway, it's just that he can't do it in a subtle way or in a funny way. He is being utterly explicit to them. I'm here, so you'll vote for me. She's not, don't vote for, oh God, can I get out of here? Someone play Ave Maria. Like, he's just being so obvious about the whole thing. So anyway, Jordan, thoughts. I mean, I don't have as negative of a view of this as you do, apparently, just by watching your reaction to these clips. I thought it was fine and I think it was a misstep for her not to go. Like people are going to see, like people aren't going to buy all amount campaigning. Well, yes, Trump is backing out of everything, but

you're running for president, you've got all the resources at your disposal. You could make it if you wanted to. I think it's probably because they're worried to come off clunky or be a weird dynamic, but it is, it's fun. It's one of those things, I'm not saying it's inherently important, but it's one of those things just that you do, like going to the Iowa steak fry or going to like different, you know, festivals or fairs around the country during the primaries. You go eat your meat on a stick. It's just something that you do. It's weird.

It's one of those weird traditions in American politics and in presidential elections. Go. The video, I'm with you. Don't, not a huge fan of the character, although I do like Molly Shannon. Wasn't that good? It wasn't that good. It was just like. And then she, but no, she told no jokes.

She told no jokes. It's a roast. She did zero roast. and then she went with the, I'm going to rise above it. We need to heal the country. It's a roast. There's more to the video, but there wasn't anything in there. Yeah, I agree.

Love Molly Shannon. I never really liked the character. I don't see why it needed to be rolled out here, but you want to defend, you're the comedian, you're the expert, what do you think? Yeah, no, that is Molly Shannon's best character. I love Mary Catherine Gallagher. You just don't get her because she's weird. The only problem with that is that she's like 20 years too late, you know, she's quite an older

character, but it is funny and especially it's a little bit of clowning on the church because Mary Catherine Gallagher, this like, you know, clearly, you know, like out-of-pocket Asperger's-y, like grown woman with like way too short of a skirt does not make the Catholic church look good. Like it's a little bit of a roast of the Catholic church too. And I just want to push back. I don't agree with Jordan. I think that it would look incredibly bizarre to be joshing around with Donald Trump and, you know, taking shots at him and, ha, in this sort of like in under the auspices of we're all just elitist raising money here in New York, a state that I'm definitely going to win.

I mean, likely. Like it just, it doesn't make sense. It's not a smart move. It'll make it look to like just two elites just paling around. However, it would have gotten under his skin had she actually thrown some real jokes in there. Just like I'm assuming he bleated about her, she was able to roast him on the campaign trail. When she was heckled by some Trump voters and was like, oh, you're at the wrong rally. You want the smaller one down the street.

He didn't even have to be there. I think the whole thing was funny. I like the angle of Mary Catherine. Yeah, maybe if they could have sent like Obama. You know, nobody's better at roasting Donald Trump than Obama. I think that could have been good. But yeah, I want to move on to just, I just want to briefly mention maybe we feel differently about Trump's delivery.

Like, I just think the weird thing about the, they call me weird. they call J.D. Van, no, we're solid. No, you guys are freaking weird, especially J.D. Vance. Like, you're super, super weird. But anyway, he had some other jokes. He said, we have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child. It's a person that has nothing going on, no intelligence whatsoever, but enough about Kamala Harris. Oh, good reversal. You get it? Because like you think he's talking about Joe Biden, who's a much older man, but no, he's asserting that the very intelligent woman of color is low IQ.

You know how he calls all black women low IQ? Ha ha ha ha ha. It's funny. John, that's called a misdirection. I just don't think you understand the joke structure. But the misdirection is to make logical sense. Because the only reason he told this joke here is because he keeps, look, he wanted to run against Joe Biden.

He wanted to run against somebody he'd say is losing their mind, is low energy. and he doesn't have that. She's going, she's doing more events than him. She's far more intelligent than him. But he just conjures up a world that he prefers in which, yeah, I know everybody agrees she's stupid. No, it's just, it doesn't make any sense. But anyway, the cats out of the bag this week, just really quickly, the cats out of the bag

this week on who, like, who has like bigger cojones or ovaries, if you will? Kamala Harris was on Fox News and she did a great job. You know what I mean? like she went right into the lion's den he can't even do a 60 minutes interview because he's afraid of reality like like 60 minutes all of a big old left wing 60 minutes no man he's like he wants to do bro podcast so i mean she's already she's proven herself this week above and beyond 100% like and she did well enough that he ran to rupert murdock to tell him to not let her on anymore but anyway there's one other joke so trump uh said uh he's referring to an extramarital affair

that Harris's husband had had during his first marriage, said the only piece of advice I would have for her in the event that she wins is not to let her husband dug anywhere near the nannies. After many of the room groan, he added, that's a nasty one. I told these idiots that gave me this stuff, that's too tough. I love he just constantly insults the people who work for him, like constantly, teleprompter operators, lighting, whatever. Look, that's, I guess, kind of funny. Again, he's been accused of assaulting so many people that have come in tomorrow Alago, he's had many affairs, he's lost court cases to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of his affairs and assaults.

So I'm not saying that it's not on some level funny, I guess, but you're kind of the worst possible person to make this joke. Any final thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I'm not as upset about some of them. I'm not upset, I'm just critiquing. I just don't. They're not funny. I mean, I think some of them are.

I think if you wanna- The subpoenas one, I will give you that. The subpoena of them was solid, that's it. I think there were many more that weren't included that were decent. Obviously, he didn't write them and he was reading jokes prepared for him. And if you want to go in there with like an open mind, it's a roast. I mean, Gaffigan didn't really pull any punches. I think his whole bit was great. Like his whole segment was great.

Trump did some good, some bad. I just wish Harris would have just like the campaign would have lightened up. Like every presidential candidate does it. All of them do it. For her not to go and then to put out the video, like, we need to restore, you know, they do this work. We're restoring the soul of the country type stuff. It's like, that's not fun.

This is a moment of levity, and I don't think people would see it. It is like an elitist thing. I don't think that would really sway people's minds either way. There are plenty of other things that portray them as elitists and out of touch that aren't this event. They all do it. Biden did it. Obama did it, Clinton did it.

It's just, it's just, everyone needs to like just, it's one of those things at the correspondence dinner. It just happens. You go. It's a roast. It's fun. It's for some philanthropic effort that's ultimately meaningless. Yeah, I would have preferred that she went. I definitely think that, I mean, I didn't like the video as much as Francesca, so I would have preferred that. But I would say, you know, like of the

norms, like Trump is like pointing out, like everybody goes, why won't she go? Like he all of a sudden respects norms. Release her medical records, you daughter and old idiot. Like, that's a norm. Maybe put your stuff in a blind trust. Maybe do that. Maybe stop committing crimes in plain insight constantly. There are some other norms that maybe we should respect. But anyway, I will say, I thought the Eric Adams thing, it wasn't really a joke, but I did like that he just like basically pointed to Eric Adams that reminded everyone that he's under like serious investigation. That's funny in a meta way. I'll give him credit for that. They didn't have a punchline, but Eric Adams probably wished he wasn't there. Anyway, with that said, we're going

to take our second break of the hour. More to get to after this. Kamala. Okay, everybody, welcome back to what remains at the first hour. If you're just joining us now, please hit that like button as we jump into our final stories. I get a call and they say Tim Cook's on the phone. He calls. They said, could I see you, sir? He's the head of Apple. And I was born in Queens and I said, And I said, oh, the head of Apple wants to see me, let's go, I guess, even though I'm president, you know. Still, I was born in Queens and the head of Apple's calling. And by that time, it was the largest company in the world.

It was about tariffs. He said, you know, you're charging us 25%, because I was going to charge them, because we're out of China. And the problem is we can't compete with Samsung because they didn't have to pay tariffs because they weren't in China. I said, I'm going to give you a waiver. And I gave my waiver. But I'm saying, I'm going to give you a one-year waiver. but I want you to start building your plants in the United States. And he said, all right, and he actually did.

He built one in Texas. Okay, so we're going to divine from that as much as we can, considering all of the slurring and whatever the hell Samsung is. But anyway, that is Donald Trump. He's on the Patrick Bet David podcast, and he's revealing this conversation that he apparently had with Apple CEO Tim Cook, better known as Tim Apple. But anyway, Tim Cook, in the second year of Trump's first term, where he wanted this, He wanted to help with these tariffs, basically.

And so supposedly, Cook got a waiver on the tariffs as a result. Now, we're going to talk more about this. I love the idea that, like, personal phone calls with the president results in massive, lucrative business deals. I'm not sure that's exactly how it's supposed to work. But anyway, there is more to this. Take a look. Two hours ago, three hours ago, he called me.

He said, I'd like to talk to you about something what. he said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion they see that's a lot I know the feeling because I get fine too and fake cases but I don't know if his case is fake yet but it's a lot then on top of that they got fined by the European Union another two billion so he's a 17 to $18 billion fine I even said about Apple can you pay that I mean do you have that guy that's a lot of money. And he said something that was interesting. He said they're using that to run their enterprise, meaning Europe is their enterprise. And I said, that's a lot. He said, but Tim, I got to get elected first. But I'm not going to let them take advantage of our companies. Okay, so on one level,

more backroom dealings between Donald Trump and wealthy interest to get him elected, I guess, so that he can hand over billions of dollars worth of benefits to them. At least Donald Trump is so undisciplined that he just babbles about this on podcast. That's fun. By the way, the fines that he's referencing there, the EU levied a $2 billion fine on April earlier this year over the company's control of the music streaming industry via the app store. Basically, it's a monopoly case.

They're saying that, and this is not the only one that Apple is facing, but in this area with music, $2 billion. dollars. The other 15 billion is in unpaid taxes. And I love that Trump is, first of all, Trump, I guess doesn't even know what the money is about. He just knows it's a lot. It's like they find me. It's a lot. He talks like an idiot. But anyway, they didn't pay their taxes. And so they're being fined to recover that tax revenue. Trump talks about that. That's how they pay for their enterprise, meaning the EU. Well, yeah, taxes are generally how governments are funded. I don't think it's as illicit as you're implying it is.

And bear in mind, Trump has been fined for fraud with his businesses, hundreds of millions of dollars. So there is actually some similarity there, I guess. I just don't know that the relationship that's being described in this podcast is a healthy one or has much to do with helping out Americans that aren't already CEOs of companies. What thoughts? Well, let's look at his language there and what he's talking about. Oh, they're taking advantage of our companies. Apple, like many American multinational corporations, had a headquarters in Ireland to take advantage of a low corporate tax rate through the double Irish system.

That loophole is now closed, thankfully, and they're going back to get all of those unpaid taxes from when that loophole existed, and American companies exploited. Apple's tax rate got so low in 2014, they paid 0.004. 5% on profits. Does that seem fair? Do you think paying a little bit more is reasonable for one of the biggest companies in the world? A company now worth multi-trillion dollars? I think they'll be okay. They can afford 12 or 15 billion dollars. But it shows where Trump's priorities are. Because this guy, to go back to our first story, the guy who's the savior of the working class, the guy who's from an outsider perspective going to fight for the working person, what's his priority

here? Is it that, hey, whoa, maybe everyone should pay? their fair share? No, it's this poor, multi-trillion dollar company isn't going to pay less than 1% in corporate taxes anymore. My heart goes out to them. I feel so bad for them. And tariffs, where's this, where's the prioritization of the American worker? If they want to have their phones manufactured in China, aren't you making them bring all of their manufacturing back here? Why is it okay? If one of the biggest companies in the world makes their products out of the country. Do you care about workers or not? This would be a perfect opportunity for him to say, well, this is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to fight for the American worker.

And of course, people like Patrick Bet David don't really care about that. They only care about wealth and finances. No pushback. Nothing. Okay, well, whatever. We're moving on. I mean, yeah. And thank God that Trump was on the Patrick Bet David show podcast so that he knows, oh, okay. So if I need a favor, I'll just call you. And I guess if you're a businessman or a woman who doesn't have your direct line, you're out of luck, right? Like, it's so transactional and transparent so that if something like tariffs were to become a reality under a second Trump administration, it's the multinational corporations, it's the people with the most money, it's the Tim Apples, it's the people with the most power who can get on the phone and call

him and get the, you know, exemption. But then, you know, smaller businesses, again, who are also probably taxed at a fairer rate. You know what I'm saying? Like it's, it creates more consolidation here. That's what you're looking at to see. And it's the same thing with the broader problems with the tax structure writ large. It's billionaires who aren't paying their fair share. And yet a lot of people are making half a million, a million a year. They somehow think that they're in the same boat as, oh, don't tax us. Like, no, bro. You actually are paying money. more of your fair share, even though you make more money than a lot of us, it's the billionaires that we're talking about. And so the same thing with these tariffs and the same thing with

these businesses. I just want to mention, you know, that apparently Kamal Harris is and the campaign's advisor, economic advisor, Brian Dees, has been talking about actually retaining Lena Khan of the Federal Trade Commission, a woman who Apple hates, obviously Amazon and Google hate, because they've actually been sued by the FTC under her leadership. Apple, not yet, but again, Apple's face more music in the EU around, again, unpaid taxes and then USBC stuff and all of this. So they're terrified. And Kamala Harris literally and Joe Biden are the reason that some of these big tech companies

are actually being reined in for the first time. Yeah, that's definitely a good sign. Definitely a good sign. Okay, we have just a couple more minutes. I want to make sure that we do at least a little bit of this final story because it's an important one. So let's jump to this. The fossil fuel industry has apparently now given more money than ever before in this election cycle. And you'll never guess to who.

Now, you probably could actually. But anyway, two super PACs tied to the leaders of the Republican in the House and Senate have brought in just tons of money specifically from fossil fuel interests, including companies like Conoco Phillips and CEOs like Tim Dunn, the fossil fuel industry gave more than $20 million combined in the third quarter of this year to the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Senate Leadership Fund. This is according to a sludge analysis. This brings their total this cycle to 54.2 million. That outpaces, by the way, the $32 million that they gave around this time in the 2020 cycle. So not quite twice as much as they did in 2020, but quite a bit of money.

And let's just stop for a second. Look, we're going to focus on this corruption, but just think about the fact that Elon Musk gave 50% more than all of the fossil fuel industry. We are reaching levels of corruption that like if you had proposed them a couple of years ago, people would have said you're being like apocalyptic. But that's what's going on. And it reminds me, by the way, earlier this cycle, Donald Trump went to one of these dinners. filled with millionaires and billionaires, and he pressed oil executives to give him

one, one billion dollars. That's what he wanted. He told a bunch of rich people wrecking our climate to give him a billion dollars, and he told them that giving him a billion dollars would be a deal according to him because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him. And apparently all of that is legal. Sounds like the most obvious, like cartoonish scale bribery that we've ever seen in our life. Now, they did not scrape together the billion dollars, but it's still 50 million, and that is a good bit. Francesca, what do you make of this? Yeah, I mean, that's, it's something that we need to constantly be pointing out. I mean, And what sucks about, you know, it is not just that we have to talk about climate change when it comes to, you know, the supercharged hurricanes that we've seen slamming into the southeast of the country.

But it's also we have to talk about the money. And it's the one thing like, I mean, if the mainstream news is more allergic to something more than talking about climate change, it's talking about money in our politics and how much industry influences our politics. And so to me, I mean, you know, it's really upsetting when Joe Biden touts that no one has been, you know, opening more gas and oil wells than his administration. And it's true that we are producing a record amount of oil because we're going to do the climate change stuff later. We're going to, okay, so we have to, I mean, again, it's like bombing for peace, right? When does it stop? At some point, you have to decide to stop it. You have to keep it in the ground. But of course, yes, disproportionately, it does go to the GOP.

And so you have to name that. I don't understand why we still live in fear. And I think we're going to have to think a lot more structurally and boldly when it comes to climate action. The Inflation Reduction Act was a really important step in the right direction. But these reforms are not happening quick enough to stave off the worst impacts of the climate catastrophe. And so in this sense, I think the right.

right is correct. That they're like, oh, they want socialism. And it's like, yeah, but that would help. That actually would really help. You can't have infinite growth on a finite planet. You can't allow this amount of wealth hoarding of private jets of those kinds of emissions. Wealth hoarding is part of what leads to this amount of carbon in the atmosphere. So it's all connected, bro, whatever. Yeah. I think the term you were looking for, Francesco, was not, it's not bombing for peace anymore. is de-escalation through escalation. You've updated our language.

Namaste. But on this point, it's just like such an obvious bribe. It's like they're not even trying to hide it. They don't need to hide it. What's the repercussions? What law is there? What's Supreme Court decision? What FEC guideline is there that this would violate?

It's just so egregious and they can do whatever they want and it's only getting worse. So of course, they're just eating his call. And for Elon Musk, like you say, he relies so heavily on government subsidies for all of his enterprises. Most of their wealth is speculative or most of their valuation is speculative. And a lot of it relies on continued government subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX and whatever. He doesn't want to be subject to all the unionization requirements for different parts of Biden's policies.

So Trump repealing that opens the floodgates to more subsidies, more tax. breaks for consumers who want to buy those products, that those cars that aren't made by union laborers. So these issues are intersectional. That's why you need to see and why we should support obviously a greener future and policies that would ensure that, but also a strong, robust labor sector because a unionized workforce is going to create a green future. And that's why we have to see these as intersectional issues. 100%. Well said. That's unfortunate all the time we have for the show. Thank you, everyone, for joining us for this panel. Jordan, great to have you here, great to have you here in the building. Francesca, you're always welcome to come, but even

remotely, it's a pleasure. Thank you. Yes, check out the bituation room, y'all. Everybody, you know, listen, we get your podcast and stuff and free Palestine. Boom. And coming up on the other side of this break, Yasmin Ali Khan will be taking over. Sharon Reed and Jared Jackson will be here. I don't know if that panel has ever been together before, but it sounds awesome. I know I'll be watching and you should too. We'll see you after this. Kamala.