What A Day - How To Survive Poll Whiplash (with Jon Lovett)

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Let’s talk about polling! A bunch of new polls have us feeling a whole lot of feelings right now. 'Pod Save America' co-host Jon Lovett joins us for a vibe check on the state of the presidential race, and shares what he thinks we should all take away from the latest polls. Later in the show, New York magazine reporter Kevin Dugan explains former President Donald Trump's latest foray into the world of cryptocurrency.And in headlines: Israeli airstrikes hit 1,300 targets in Lebanon, Nebraska Republicans failed in their scheme to change how the state awards its presidential electoral votes, and the Republican Governors’ Association announced no more ad buys in North Carolina amid the scandal involving Lt. Gov. and gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson.Show Notes:Subscribe to Crooked's community – https://crooked.com/friends-of-the-pod-subscription/Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whatada

It's Tuesday, September 24th. I'm Jane Koston. And I'm John Lovett. This is What A Day, the show that's definitely not freaking out about the polls right now. Couldn't be us. Nope. I don't know what you're talking about. Everything's totally fine. Didn't someone say we're just vibrating in place? Nope. Well, they're lying. They were totally lying. I don't know what you're talking about. Everything's cool.

Everything's fine. Totally good. Everything's cool. Everything's fine. Totally good. Everything's good. On today's show, more Mark Robinson fallout in North Carolina, plus a real two worlds colliding moment that we can't stop thinking about. But first, let's talk about those polls. Because while we're definitely not freaking out. And we're not.

Totally fine. But we want to make sure you, dear listeners, are also not freaking out, and we're not, totally fine. But we want to make sure you, dear listeners, are also not freaking out. And that's why John is joining me on the show today. That's right. So to recap, first on Sunday, we got two polls that showed Vice President Kamala Harris with a decent lead. An NBC News poll had her five points ahead of former President Donald Trump. And a CBS YouGov poll showed Harris with a four point lead. Pretty good. Yes, yes, good. And everything was totally fine. And that feeling lasted about 24 hours for poll dorks. Because on Monday, the New York Times

and Siena College put out their latest poll, and it showed Trump with leads in three major battleground states, Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona. Now, I know what you're thinking, or at least what I'm thinking. Polls are weird, and if you get obsessed with them, you will lose your mind completely, and we do not need that energy right now. Thankfully, Michelle Obama gave us the perfect advice for the situation at this year's DNC. If we see a bad poll, and we will, we gotta put down that phone and do something. If we start feeling tired, if we start feeling that dread creeping back in, we gotta pick ourselves up, throw water on our face, and what? Do something! And I always listen to Michelle Obama. But sometimes it's helpful to talk things out. So John is here for a little bit of a

vibe check on the state of the race, with a little over a month to go until election day. So let's get into it. I think a lot of Democrats, especially Democrats who follow polls closely because they're big dorks and anxious, like me, woke up to this New York Times-Siena College poll and their stomachs felt bad. But what was your reaction to the polls that came out over the weekend? So maybe it's just because, I don't know, the receptors in my brain that deal with polling have been kind of washed out by years of paying attention to the news. I don't feel anything anymore when I see these polls. I really don't. I don't have a lot of high highs or low lows around polls anymore. I think anybody that felt relaxed after seeing the last batch of polls, I think was in the

wrong headspace. And anybody who is freaking out because of this batch of polls is also in the wrong headspace. Polls will move up and polls will move down. The race, let's just look at one of them, right? Arizona. The last poll that the Times did in Arizona a month ago showed Kamala Harris up by five. This poll shows Kamala Harris down by five. Did the polling in Arizona, in a country where the president being shot at and blowing a debate has a one point swing in either direction, do we really think this race changed 10 points? No. There's some noise in the polls. There is not going to be a poll that comes out between now and

November that should either reassure you to the point of complacency or terrorize you to the point at which you no longer believe being involved will help. That simply won't happen. These polls can give you a little information. They're directional. They can help you have a better sense of the electorate, especially when you kind of blur your eyes. That's the best you're going to get out of it. And I think what I see when I look at all these different polls is to our great and everlasting relief, Kamala Harris stepping into this race has helped the Democrats do the work of reassembling the coalition that helped us win in 2020, specifically among black voters, among highly educated voters, among highly educated voters,

among young voters. She's doing really well among women. And even though there's a yawning gender gap, Democrats are performing better among women than Republicans are performing better among men. Our better is better. Right. And there's still one big challenge in reassembling that coalition, which is a challenge that Joe Biden hadn't resolved, which is what has happened to Hispanic voters. And you're just seeing less polarization racially than we'd seen in the past. And these polls just reaffirm that reality, which is why you would expect to see slightly better polls in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin than you would expect to see in the Sunbelt states like Arizona and Nevada, with North Carolina and Georgia kind of in between. Yeah. And a Democrat hasn't

won North Carolina since 2008. And Georgia and Arizona were surprise pickups, at least surprise to me in 2020. So Vice President Harris can still win even if Trump takes those states. Yes. And so if we win just in those Northeast states, your Michigans, your Pennsylvanians, your Wisconsin's, and there is no funny business in Nebraska, which as of today, it seems like hopefully, hopefully, maybe there won't be. Then yes, if you win those states, that's a 270 to 268 electoral college results. Will it feel great in our tummies? No, it will simply not. But you

can win with that. But I will say also, Donald Trump won North Carolina. I believe that is his the narrowest victory that Donald Trump had. He only won it by a little over a point, which was worse than people expected. So North Carolina has been a bit softer for Republicans, and especially with everything that's going on now with Mark Robinson, like there's, I think, very valid hope there. So with little over a month left until Election Day, what is the state of the race right now? And what should we all be preparing for as we get closer to November? Because I think it's going to be close. It's going to be way closer than it would have been without Vice President Harris. It's going to be close regardless of what happens. It's going to be close even if we get another debate. It's going

to be close regardless of anything that takes place to me. Look, Joe Biden was behind. Joe Biden stepping aside and Kamala Harris coming in Herbstead gave us more than a shot. I think anybody that's looking at this race and looking at this polling and not assuming what we're looking at as a tie, I think is either doom casting or wish casting. You know, you see an electorate that has pretty well made their mind up about who Donald Trump is. They have some gauzy memories of him being better on the economy. They are starting to view Kamala Harris as a candidate of change. It's a really great achievement on her behalf. But it is a country that is sour on the economy, that is sour on politics, that is cynical about the state of the world, that is looking for change, that sees Kamala Harris as in some ways being more of a change agent and Donald Trump as being more of a disruptor.

And like our job is to persuade a bunch of people why Kamala Harris would be better for them economically, that they should trust their instincts on character and help them understand why their instincts on who Donald Trump is as a person versus who Kamala Harris is a person are instincts that are actually reinforced by the policy difference. And so much of our job is to make that case in the face of a noise machine that is trying to obfuscate that reality and complicate that reality. What advice are you giving to stressed out people, to your stressed out friends who are looking at this and either wish casting or doom casting? Here's what I'd say. It is now almost the end of September. The time for planning to volunteer is over.

The time to actually do it is here. I was just in a district over the weekend in Santa Clarita, California, which is about an hour outside of Los Angeles. That is a seat that a Trumpy anti-choice Republican won in 2020 by 333 votes. That is a place where you could personally knock on the number of doors that would make the difference between a Democratic House and a Republican House. Wherever you are, there's a place where you can help. If you volunteer just a few times between now and election day, your name will go on the good side of the ledger. And you got to get your name on that ledger. Just do a little bit more than they did last time. Go to votesaveamerica.com. The scrolling and the anxiety. This is the way to relieve it in advance of the election and make sure that no matter

what happens, everybody did everything that they could do. That's all. That's it. That's where we're at. It's time. Absolutely. But while we're feeling all of these feelings in our stomachs and learning about electoral districts in Arizona and North Carolina, you know what Donald Trump is up to?

What's he up to? Cryptocurrency. So he recently announced that he's launching World Liberty Financial, which someday could be a bank and a crypto exchange, but right now it seems like it's nothing. Someday it could be a lot of things. Someday I could be a boat.

Keep dreaming. Keep dreaming. Trump absolutely knows what he's talking about. Here he is talking to Fox News at a Bitcoin theme bar called PubKey in New York's Greenwich Village. My personal health. Well, I did. I bought a hamburger with Bitcoin. This was the first purchase ever made, I guess, of a hamburger or something. And now look, I'm a believer in staying at the top. This is a hot thing. And rather than having giving it to

China, like the AI stuff, you know, artificial intelligence. China is going crazy about it. They're also going crazy on Bitcoin and crypto, cryptocurrency. And I do understand it. I think it's going to be a very hot industry. He does not understand it. I would bet actual money, actual money that I understand how it works, that he does not understand anything about this. And he is not. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The juice is gone. The selling juice. I'm not sold at all. Yeah. There was a moment at some crypto event that he spoke at where he said, have fun with your bitcoins and your crypto, whatever else you're playing with, which sounded like the way my grandmother would talk about Nintendo, like have fun. And everything was a Nintendo. If it had a controller, it was a Nintendo. That's how that's how Trump sounds.

But I do think that like game recognizes game and Donald Trump knows a scam when he sees one. Yeah. Scammers love scammers. So, needless to say, I had some questions about what World Liberty Financial is. Is it a scam? Is it real? Is it backed by the FDIC? I'm guessing not. To find out, I spoke with New York Magazine reporter Kevin Dugan. Kevin Dugan, welcome to What A Day. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me, Jane. I want to be clear, I'm a crypto skeptic because it seems to involve either math or crimes. But

what do people who aren't crypto skeptics, people in the world of crypto, what are they thinking about this? One of the problems with the way that World Liberty Financial is structured, at least as the idea, right? It's not clear what this thing actually is. But the way that Rural Liberty Financial is structured, at least as the idea, right? It's not clear what this thing actually is, but the idea that's been out there is that this is a decentralized finance company. And what that means is they get rid of the middlemen that are bankers or advisors to money, people who would take your money through fees and percentages and things like that. The problem with that is, is that decentralized means that it's owned by everyone who's involved in it. And the initial early stages of this seem to show that the Trumps

would own 70% of the company, which would mean it wouldn't be very decentralized. That was reported by Coindesk. That's changed a little bit, but they're still pretty significantly controlled by the Trumps. And the other problem here is that it doesn't really seem to have a very clear kind of focus. They're trying to do everything, a little bit like how Trump Media and Technology Group, his social media company, wants to be both Twitter and Netflix,

as well as Amazon and every other Silicon Valley company. They're trying to basically do everything crypto all under one thing to be, you know, kind of like the Goldman Sachs of crypto and their own version of Tether and everything that you can think of. It seems like they're just trying to kind of grab for everything that's out there. So I remember Trump calling Bitcoin a scam against the dollar back in 2021. What changed about his relationship with cryptocurrency? Well, I think that the need for money became really important. You know, the crypto community, such that it is, is really pro-Trump right now, right? You have like the

Winklevoss twins, for instance. They are, I think, the biggest individual donors through crypto to the Trump campaign. There are a lot of people in the crypto industry who think that he's just going to be better because he's not going to regulate them. So I think that he saw an affinity there and he just decided to go for it. He also saw, and he's talked about this, about how quickly money comes in through crypto. Earlier this year, he was selling these, he calls them digital trading cards or something close to that. These are NFTs, non-fungible tokens that are pictures of him and kind of silly get ups. It's called the America First Collection. 50 all-new stunning digital trading cards.

It's really something. These cards show me dancing and even beholding some Bitcoins. And he was raising a bunch of money alongside those golden sneakers that he was selling, if you remember those. And so he remarked on CNBC about how quickly the money was coming in and how much money he was raising and how amazing it was.

And so I think that he just saw where the money was. And it was around that time when he was convicted of fraud, when he was found liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll. And he owed a lot of money to a lot of people. And it just became very clear that this was a way to get access to that kind of money. What has the Trump family's relationship with cryptocurrency looked like? Well, you have a little bit of a mysterious connection between Barron Trump and Martin Shkreli.

Oh, that's a name that I haven't heard in a long time. Great. Right, right. The pharma douche guy. There were some texts that were leaked that showed that they were involved in some kind of crypto venture. Not clear if this is what that was. But Donald Trump has talked about how his sons have kind of opened his eyes about crypto. And I believe he was talking about Barron in that case. I'm not sure to the extent of what Eric or Donald Trump and then dive right into the crypto industry, especially because this year, you saw Bitcoin and the price of other cryptocurrencies just skyrocket. I mean, they're totally crazy. So when you see all that kind of money going into digital assets like that, sure, it makes sense that they would be interested.

So give me your honest opinion. What does success look like for World Liberty Financial? And do you think it can achieve that success? Success, I think, would be selling lots of digital tokens that would raise millions and millions of dollars. And there are a lot of people who really, truly love Trump and want to support him by buying his stuff. They just want to juice his revenue. He's got bills.

And I think, you know, several million dollars would be pretty successful. It keeps him pretty liquid. And that way that he could pay his lawyers if he chooses to do so. And he can perhaps pay what he owes to the New York Attorney General or anybody who he might to do so. And he can perhaps pay what he owes to the New York Attorney General or anybody who he might owe money to. So that would be my guess on what success would be here. Kevin, thank you for explaining this weird thing

that sounds like a con to me. Sure, I'm happy to, anytime. That was my conversation with New York Magazine reporter Kevin Dugan. We'll get to the news in a moment. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, watch it on YouTube, and share with your friends. We'll be back after some ads. And now the news.

I've been briefed on the latest developments in Israel and Lebanon. My team is in constant contact with their counterparts and we're working to de-escalate in a way that allows people to return to their homes safely. That's President Joe Biden speaking during an Oval Office meeting with the president of the United Arab Emirates on Monday. Earlier in the day, Israel launched a series of airstrikes that hit 1,300 targets in Lebanon. Lebanese health officials say the bombings killed nearly 500 people, including dozens of children and women. A spokesperson for the Israeli military said

the strikes targeted locations linked to the militant group Hezbollah. Later Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned people in Lebanon. Get out of harm's way. I urge you, take this warning seriously. Don't let Hezbollah endanger your lives and the lives of your loved ones. Don't let Hezbollah endanger Lebanon. Please, get out of harm's way now.

Once our operation is finished, you can come back safely to your homes. Israel's airstrike campaign was the latest in days of escalating attacks that have brought the country and Hezbollah to the brink of all-out war. Hezbollah responded by firing around 200 projectiles into Israel. A Republican-led plan to change the way Nebraska votes in presidential elections came to an abrupt end on Monday. Now, a little background here. Nebraska is one of just two states that is not winner-take-all,

meaning all of its electoral votes don't have to go to one candidate. Republicans wanted to change that to help Donald Trump, obviously. Here's what South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Sunday on Meet the Press. If they change the law in Nebraska, it won't be on the phone in the middle of the night. It will be through a democratic process. The entire federal delegation of Nebraska, House members and two senators, want this change. That one electoral vote could be the difference between Harris being president or not, and she's a disaster for Nebraska and the world.

Except, despite what Senator Graham said, it turns out not all Nebraska Republicans wanted this change. The final holdout, State Senator Mike McDonnell said Monday he would not agree to it, meaning the effort is effectively dead. How did Republicans respond to this, with maturity and grace? No. Which brings me to our last headline of the day, Mark Robinson. A lot of talented people right now are reaching out to us, and we're right in the process right now of forming a team that we know can still lead us to victory. So we have full confidence in our ability to keep going. But the timing of that, them walking away from you right now.

The timing doesn't matter. It's not the timing. It's how you react. And we are ready to react. That was the North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate claiming it's not a problem that almost all of his senior staff resigned Sunday. Those resignations came after a bombshell CNN report detailing old comments he made in a porn website's forum, including calling himself a black Nazi. And things got worse for Robinson on Monday when the Republican Governors Association announced it isn't planning any more ad buys in the state. Here's Robinson again talking to reporters. Have you taken steps then to prove it's not you that we're buying now? We absolutely are. We absolutely are. We're in talks right now, everything up to legal counsel to take CNN to task for what they have done to us. We are going after them, okay? We are going to go after them for what they've done. Now, Robinson claims he has taken

steps to prove the account that posted to the adult website was not him. But local NBC affiliate WRAL News reports Robinson actually rejected offers from supporters to help investigate the matter. Regardless of whether Robinson tries to prove his innocence, Politico found even more user data linking him to the same porn site account. While campaigning in North Carolina Monday, J.D. Vance boldly told the crowd he and Trump were standing with Robinson. A sex scandal in North Carolina is between the lieutenant governor and the people in North Carolina. They're going to make their decision and we support them. J.D. Vance, brave as always.

And that's the news. And now for our parting thought today, I want to jump back in for this because there keep being moments that I see on the internet in which I watch it and then I read the replies to whatever it is. Oh, that's your mistake. That's your mistake right there. I always read the comments. I always read the replies because I'm an emotionally healthy person.

So I wanted to ask you about a moment that's been playing out very differently online, depending on your political leanings. I thought it was so powerful at the convention when you said you have guns. No, at the debate. I'm a gun owner. Tim Wells is a gun owner. I did not know that. If somebody breaks in my house, they're getting shot. Yes, yes, I hear that. I hear that. Probably should not have said that. My staff will deal with that later. That was Harris talking to Oprah last Thursday. But I actually first saw the clip posted on the Trump campaign social media accounts,

which was weird. And many of the replies pointed out it was weird. Because it's one of those things where I think they thought Kamala Harris sounded bad. But actually, I thought it made her sound kind of badass. For me, what made it work wasn't necessarily that she made the point about having a gun or that if you break into her house, she'll shoot you. I think it's the point where she goes, oh, my staff's going to have to clean this up. To her everlasting credit, Kamala Harris has run an incredibly disciplined campaign, a campaign that hit the ground running in a way that I think exceeded even her greatest fans' expectations. She rose to this occasion under unimaginable pressure, the kind of pressure that could obliterate anybody.

She is sort of carry this fully baked, ready to go national presidential candidate. Incredible. It's also meant that she has been really thoughtful and careful in how she uses her words for a variety of reasons. Trump gets this credit for being this rebellious figure, for being anti-establishment, even though what is he fighting to do? He is fighting to protect the interests of the wealthiest, most powerful corporations, fighting for the richest human beings on planet Earth, fighting for traditional notions of the family, fighting to preserve kind of patriarchal institutions to get woke for a second. He's like the most establishment person who's ever existed. Also, he was president. That is the establishment.

And so he gets this anti-establishment rebellious cred just because he is kind of an asshole. And he just says things. And in a weird way that we've like, sometimes that's sane washing, where it's like, when you try to make him sound reasonable, you actually help him. And then some of that is just like, oh, that's just Trump being Trump, which like nobody else is allowed to do. But what struck me about this moment is lots of people own guns for protection. It's kind of a big deal for millions of Americans. And for the Trump campaign to pick out a moment that I think, to her credit, makes her very identifiable across a bunch of different groups. There's been a massive growth in African-Americans owning guns and women owning guns and LGBT folks owning guns and Asian-Americans owning guns for this very same reason. And then like to pick up

that one moment and be like, ha ha ha, that's so weird. I didn't get it. I thought it was cool. My gut reaction was like, that's cool. I like that. Trump campaign spreading it. Stupid of them. Good for us. This is good. I like it. That was my emotional response to it. She looks cool. Saying you're going to shoot an intruder is I'm sorry, seems badass. Like that was my John Wick reaction. Now I talked to Roxane Gay actually about because she wrote a long piece about how she became a gun owner. And there is a kind of contradiction in this, which is there are rising stats of women and people of color buying guns and becoming part of gun culture. And whatever your judgments of that, the reality is the most dangerous thing about a gun is having it anywhere fucking near you,

whether it's yours or someone else's, right? Like if you are a woman and you end up in a relationship with a man that has a gun, you are now more likely to be killed by a gun, right? Like just guns in your home are dangerous. They just are. I respect an intellectual argument that this is in some way a bad thing, but that's the higher processing. Down here where the monkey lives, I like. Yeah. I am not going to give the Trump war room Twitter account any credit for any higher process. No, no, absolutely not. Never. Absolutely not. Never. Not once. But I also just like once in a while, Kamala kind of saying like, you know, my talking points say this, but you know what? Here's what I really think.

Just like that kind of a wink and a nod to the fact that politics is a bit of a game that people don't trust it. I think is really good because she is really careful. I think she has to be careful because of the scrutiny she's under. She has to be careful because she's a woman, because she's a black woman. Like there is pressures that she faces. But that was a perfect moment to me of like letting people under a little being saying like sometimes I just do what I feel like. And I like that yeah absolutely oh also jane join me live in los angeles or via live stream on october 2nd for trek the vote this is a live comedy show and fundraiser that blends politics

games and high octane nerddom all right as we bring beloved star trek cast members jonathan frakes gates mcfadden tawny newsome and more into our world of political nonsense, all funds raised will go to Vote Save America. And you can get your tickets and learn more at VoteSaveAmerica.com slash Trek. And that list of names is only the beginning. We have gotten so many amazing people from Star Trek that will be part of Trek the vote. So you won't believe it. You won't believe it. Dr. Beverly Crusher could speak to me. Absolutely.

With her mouth. You bet. You want to know, I'm going to tell this story to Jonathan Frakes directly, which is before the internet had as much audio and video as it does now, a friend and I disagreed as to how you pronounce the name Jonathan Frakes. And he thought it was pronounced Jonathan Frakes. And I thought it was pronounced Jonathan Frakes.

And then we couldn't resolve it until it turns out he had a nickname as a director because when he was directing episodes of Star Trek, he would get it really quickly. That's why they called him Tutakis Frakes. Wow. Wow. Tutakis Frakes.

I love it. Thanks. VoteSaveAmerica.com slash track. One more thing before we go. If you don't have any plans at 5.30 Eastern, 2.30 Pacific time today, well, now you do. Join me on the Friends of the Pod Discord community for a round of Ask Me Anything. Here's your chance to get to know me a little bit better.

Ask me about my biggest, deepest, darkest secret. Or ask me why I've decided to host a daily news podcast. Head to crooked.com slash friends to sign up now. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, pay for a hamburger with good old-fashioned dollars, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, and not just thinking about how easy it is

to simply not say insane things on forums no one should be posting in anyway, like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston, and don't freak out about polls. What A Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded by Jarek Centeno and mixed by Bill Lance. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michelle Aloy. We had production help today from Ethan Oberman, Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrienne

Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka.