WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: Catching Up in the Presidential Race

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

This week we discuss the current state of the presidential race including the current President, the nominees, and their running mates. Or at least as much as we can squeeze into a 22 minute episode. Tune in to get a reminder of the internet's best (or worst) political jokes and stories from the summer, Trump's real reason for running, and an update on Jillian and Garrett's personal lives, because the show would be no good without those. 

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, where we examine the truth disparity between what's on social media and what's actually true. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Goulsby. And we're back in the studio. Yay. Not only for the first time this school year, but for the first time this year. Crazy. Because we were not in the studio last semester.

Last semester, we did a remote hybrid stitch because I was in D.C. But now we're back, Adam. It was weird. It's not so lonely in the studio now. So, so sad you were here by yourself? That's looking horrible, actually. I'm sorry I did that to you. It's okay.

So we're doing a kind of an update on the presidential debate. Nope. The election. And the debate, which is a part of everything that's been going on. My brain is so much. Since we've been gone for three months, a lot has happened. Too much even. The world is crazy.

So crazy. There's war and crazy people in political office. And it's something. And America's got its grimy little fingers and so much of it, which is tricky. So we have three candidates to talk about, really, if you think about it. And then two little vice presidents that are causing some commotion on social media, which I'm going to tell you all about. So tell me what social media is saying about these characters.

So I'm going to start with, I feel like I should start with Biden because that was a big deal. Yes. And because from what I know, he announced stepping down on X. He used Twitter. I'm not, should we call it Twitter or X from now on? Oh, I feel like we have to call it X. I think you're right, just to be correct. So, he, from what I know, he announced that he was stepping down on X and then said nothing

on terms of like official platforming. I don't know if that's fully true. You can fact check me on that. But the only reason I think that is because there were so many tweets about people thinking he was dead. Like people thinking that he had died because he was like rushed to the hospital or something before he stepped down. And then he endorsed Kamala pretty quickly.

I think he endorsed Kamala an hour after he announced that he had been stepping down on social media. And everybody kind of like was in this frenzy of like, oh my gosh, okay, so is Joe Biden about to die? Because we just really hadn't heard too much information. And you couldn't really trust the White House because the White House press secretary does this crazy thing where she's constantly talking about how healthy he is

and how capable he is and how cognitively aware he is when pretty much everybody's in a business. agreement. I would say almost all sides of the aisle are in agreement that he was in, like, some serious mental decline. And social media is pretty clear about that. So there was some drama with that, and he pretty immediately endorsed Kamala. There was this video that circulated on Twitter, like three or four days before he stepped down that was like inside sources have told us that Joe Biden's going to step down, and he's not going to endorse Kamala. That was the whole thing there was that it wasn't going to happen. And then he did, and no one ever

followed up on like asking those guys like why they thought he wouldn't i will say the grander i don't know if you can call this a conspiracy theory but the grander like conservative theory on x is that he was was biden was pressured by obama and schumer and pelosi namely to step down and that he didn't want to but they basically made him and this is where my question for you that i texted you i was like what's the 25th amendment was that they were that Obama was going to use the 25th amendment to do that. I have no idea what that means. So you can come in and explain when you do. So that's what I know about Biden and then he endorsed Kamala and then Kamala has been, I don't know, the source of a lot of buzz. One thing that is really silly to me is that social media has taken to really liking

Kamala, but not for any policy or anything of substance politically. She as a meme has been really widely enjoyed. So she had that stupid thing where she was like, you think, so dumb, you think you fell out of a coconut tree, you exist in the context of all in which you live and all that came before you. And people ate that up. Like, you think you fell out of a coconut tree was big on social media this summer. Like, that was one of the key jokes that people were making. And then when Charlie X, EX's album, Brat dropped, it's like this accosting green with like, kind of an nondescript font that just says brat on it and that became like branding for cool basically those things became synonymous that like Kamala was brat and that all the things that are

kind of embodied in that ideal of like wild and crazy and free also is this nominee it's Kamala she's also brat so there's not a lot of like well thought out like words behind this and obviously there is policy discussion happening but the greater narrative around Kamala Biden, all of it, is that they are cool, that she's... Interesting. She has, like, rappers that come to her rallies. She's very hip. She's brat.

She's... She's the source of a lot of solid TikTok jokes. I've never heard this term before. I mean, other than its actual usage, like, you're a brat. No, brat is like... I'm not saying you are. Charlie X-EX does kind of, like, club music, sort of dubstep. I'm going to get reamed for calling it dubstep, but that's what it sounds like to me.

kind of like, I'll play it for you later. It's like very club music that you play and a DJ would eat up. She does a lot of those tracks and her album came out this summer and Brat, the album was so well received that the name of the album Brat became something that people really associate with like being cool and being great. On the other hand of that, you have J.D. Vance

and Trump kind of and their branding on social media is weird. Have you heard about this? I have not. Okay, so J.D. Vance's big characterization this summer was that he's a weird guy. Nothing about like, it really wasn't policy attack so much as like people thought he was awkward. There's this one video of him going into a donut shop that was pretty viral. It's an awkward video. Like they're right where he walks and he's like with all these cameras and he's like, I'm the, I'm the vice president nominee for the Republican Party. I don't think he actually says Republican Party. He just says like, I'm the one of the vice

president nominees. And the people behind the counter are like, okay. Like they do not care at all. And He's like trying to make conversation with them. Like how long has you have you been working here? How long has the shop been around? And you can tell that they're just like not comfortable, don't want to talk to him. It's a very awkward interaction. There's a couple other awkward things. There was this one just lie, blatant lie that was shared on social media that

JD Vance had sex with a couch, which just didn't happen. People said that it was written in his book, Hillbilly Elledgy. And it was, I think it was a way to just kind of discredit that book because it had been, Hillbilly Elegie was like widely respected and widely liked. as a book that was very well done. And so I think to kind of combat that, that theory kind of surfaced and people ran with it.

And that was one of the main reasons they were calling him weird. Obviously, they would pull up other, like, policy things he had him and like, see, he's weird in this regard as well. But the impetus of it really was, like these weird stories about him. He also has a really,

it seems to be a fixation on cat ladies, childless cat ladies. He called Kamala, Childless Cat Lady. And then Taylor Swift, endorsed Kamala and signed her endorsement, Childless Cat Lady, Taylor Swift. So there's just like kind of, the branding is very much like Kamala and even like Biden

in some respects, although he's in mental decline. They're like more cool. And then J.D. Vance is weird. Trump kind of gets roped into that. But with the assassination attempt, obviously, people weren't really interested in the weird stuff so much. I mean, he's just Trump. Like people know what to expect from him.

I don't think people are super shocked by what he's bringing forward. So calling him weird doesn't really fit the narrative as well. And then you have Tim Walts. And when he was announced as the vice president nominee, he was very widely celebrated very quickly. People were really excited about him. He's apparently ultra-progressive, but I don't know what on.

I mean, obviously tampon Tim was a big thing on social media. And I think, I don't know if that was started by Republicans or Democrats. I have no clue. I just know he tried to put tampons in the men's bathroom. at the school he worked at or something. And it was meant to be a progressive thing, if that wasn't clear. But no matter what,

like he doesn't really get a ton of backlash and the backlash that comes his way from Republicans calling him weird, it doesn't translate well because it just looks like they're trying to play the same game and it's all kind of juvenile and cringe. That's what I know from a social media perspective about our current candidates in their deal.

Obviously, the debate happened, and I don't know if you're sure. shocked by this, but everyone is in pretty much unanimous agreement that Kamala did a great job and she was very poised and Trump was terrible and hard to watch. That wasn't really necessarily my experience watching the debate, but if I'd only been on social media, I'd be like, wow, this guy is a real buffoon. And he had his moments, but can you, I don't know, I think you've got of expected at this point. I think so, you know, Trump's going to be Trump, no matter what. And it seemed to me in the debate that more than anything, what happened is he kind of got distracted.

You know, they didn't really talk about a lot of issues, you know, but I think he also did a fair, and you know, some people might disagree with me on this, but a fairly good job not just attacking her and slandering her all over the place. No, and they actually, the New York, this is something social media put out, and the New York Times did data on the debate and found that Kamala spent about five minutes more, maybe something in there, attacking Trump than he did attack. her. I think he was in like the 12 minute range and she was in like the 17 minute range. Yeah. So that's like backed by data and the New York Times put it out. But for those of you who are

just tuning in, this is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.1.1.7 FM. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Goulsby. And we're doing, we're giving you a really quick total rundown on the presidential candidates right now and kind of what we missed over the summer. And Garrett's about to take over and I don't know, help us out. Give me information I missed and maybe tell me I was wrong about some things. most part what you gave is, uh, is pretty good. I'm really interested in this perspective that Kamala and Biden are cool and Trump and J.D. Vance are weird. I'm not really disagreeing. It's just kind of strange to like I'm not neither agree nor disagree. Like very interesting to say that Kamala

Harris and Joe Biden are cool. Yeah. That's that's the vibe. Um, so I'm just going to give you kind of my, my run through who's running and maybe a little bit of why. I found a very interesting article that provided like motives for running for each candidate and I'm just going to read you Trump's because it was hilarious. It's probably true too.

The others were pretty generic and bleh. But so Joe Biden, of course, he was running until July when he dropped out. There is actually no clear evidence about why he dropped out exactly. There's a theory, essentially that the Obamas

were trying to push him out so that get this Michelle Obama could run for president. Oh. Which would have been a wild plot twist. Of course, I don't know that she wants to run for president. So that was kind of a... Anyway, that was just a theory that was floated out there for a little while.

There was also rumblings that Gavin Newsom wanted to take the job. So anyway, the fact that we wound up with Kamala Harris kind of is the most obvious. Like, duh. You know, she's already there. She's popular in some ways, not in others, but at least very visual, you know, to the American public. So, yeah, she got endorsed right away. Like you said, Taylor Swift endorsed her to the effect of having, I think, like, 340,000 people go on to the polls, like immediately.

No way. Yes. Taylor Swift endorsed her and then... I did see that. I read the endorsement. Hundreds of thousands of people went and filled out poll info. That actually worked? Yeah. That is shocking to me. Which just as a quick aside, presidential polls can be incredibly deceiving because typically

they represent a very engaged subset of the population that like really care about this stuff. Not that other people don't care, but they might not care enough to fill out poll surveys. And there's also a bunch of different polling companies. They all have different rules for how they collect their data. And only certain, like if you looked up who's winning in the polls right now, you would get some percentage numbers. I think what we're seeing right now is basically 49-51 Kamala is winning by a little bit.

But that's essentially just an aggregate from a bunch of organizations that are doing their best, if that makes sense. No, that makes sense. And their best is probably not that great. Yeah, you can look at analyses that will show you the margin for error, and it's essentially enough such that either could win by a lot come November. So give you just a quick rundown on Kamala Harris, a little bit of background. Some things I didn't know is that her parents are from India and Jamaica.

I didn't know that. I did know that only because Trump took to social media and told everybody that she wasn't black. and then everyone was like, no, she is. And then, yeah, he was wrong. But he did say she wasn't black on social media. Yeah, kind of a weird thing to say. It was just a weird, yeah, it was a weird thing to say. As most of you know, she was formerly a senator,

and she's been kind of vague about her policies. True. Like, her whole platform is pretty much built on one premise, and that she is, that she is not Donald Trump. That she's here to be kind of this safe, quote-unquote, safe option. She keeps using the phrase she wants to stop Trump. Like he is bad and we're going to stop him. He's not the president. He's not the president. He's not in charge. Nobody needs to stop him right now other than if he gets elected president again, but then it's too late.

Yeah. And then he can't stop him then. The rhetoric around that has been really strange and really interesting. What I do know about Kamala Harris's policy is she is all for people being allowed to join labor unions, more gun control, abortion access, affordable health care, kind of the run-of-the-mill Democrat stuff, only more so. You know, it used to be said in World War II that the Japanese were like everyone else only more so, which just means they're like intense people. Kamala Harris is like every other Democrat, only more so. And then Bernie is like the cut above that even. He ran for president again and was formidable but just like couldn't close out. And he never will because he's a little bit

too much more so. Yes. It's the truth. Tim Walsh, you pretty much hit the nail on the head with this guy. Former Minnesota governor. He's pretty, like, he's kind of a normal guy. He was a high school football coach. He looks normal. Yeah, he was an Army National Guardsman, served as a congressman in a conservative-leaning rural district of South Minnesota.

So anyway, it's his political ideology. I don't know. It's kind of tough to track. Is he really progressive? Because social media is that he is. He is now. now. You know, whatever his history is hard to say, because he was a little bit obscure. He's definitely progressive now. There's no doubt about that. Donald, we got to talk about Donald.

There has been so much happening with him. He could have died. Yeah, he's 78 years old. He's an old guy and he got shot in the ear. That's crazy. Millimetres away from instant death. We could have done a whole episode on that if it had been in the summer. And you know what was really interesting is that for a time, it looked like in a strange way that was going to be the best thing that could have happened to Donald Trump's campaign. Because he came out of it with like this very sober outlook on life. And a lot of people, I think, saw that there was a little bit of a change in him and kind of felt like, oh, like he's legitimately a symbol of something powerful. You know, two Americans. And people are trying to destroy that. And so there was a time when that significantly boosted his,

his poll ratings and all of that, but it seems like that has gotten lost in the shuffle. That's exactly how I feel. Even in social media, as I'm scrolling through, like, there's vague references and remembrances of the fact that he was almost assassinated. But generally, it's just kind of been brushed aside as something that, like, happened and didn't happen, you know? Yeah, very strange. Just a couple of quick things about what he wants to do for America.

He is all about fewer restrictions on guns, pulling back. the climate agenda, finishing the border wall, increasing American energy production, getting rid of illegal immigrants, all the kind of stuff that we associate Trump with. He's also in so much legal stuff. It's unbelievable. He was convicted in the hush money case. And yeah, so that's pretty not great. I think we talked about that on a different episode, no?

Yes, we did. Yeah. So he, people, especially on the left are, and on the right too, they look at him being in office as essentially a way to escape his legal troubles because in a sense he is a little bit like safe housed if he becomes president from all this time. True, there's a lot of uproar about that

but I don't really understand it at all. Why is there a protection for him if he's president? Yeah, there are just certain kinds of you know you can't if he became president that would essentially safeguard him from legal action until he ceased to be president

but there's also the issue of like, well, would he become president if all these legal actions are being taken again? The answer is no, right? If it's found out that he's a criminal, he's going to be, you know, punished in some way. The court is going to address that. He's just not going to be able to run for president. But it's a really weird situation, a very complicated legal situation. Yes, because he's already become the nominee, right?

So we're all in this pickle where we go, well, who gets to say whether or not he can run or not? You know, do the courts get to say, like, he's committed crimes, he can't run? so do they finish their cases against him, try to cram it in before the election? Well, then it's political. Then the courts become politicized. We can't have that. So really complicated, messy legal situation

that would take probably multiple lawyers in a room many hours to sort through to give you 20 minutes of good podcast information about. So the current deal is that they're just going to wait it out, see if he's president, and then if he is president, drop it for a bit, and then if he's not president, continue to prosecute him? My understanding is that that is the case.

If he became president... That's so weird. Well, here's what would happen if he became president. It wouldn't just drop out of thin air. If he became president, there would be a movement within the house, essentially, just to get him impeached right away. And so the proceedings would continue, but under the grounds of we need to impeach him for X, Y, Z. So they'd have to reach a conclusion, though, in order to do that. They'd have to say he was guilty and then they could impeach him, or they could impeach him in the pursuit of saying...

Well, the House can always impeach him. It's a matter of how much evidence do they have? to do it on, you know, which could be a lot. There's so much going on. I'm not in the room where it happened, as it were. This is only 20 minutes. How are we supposed to get it all in there? I know.

We're going to have to talk fast. J.D. Vance, Ohio. He's a young guy. He didn't like Trump at first. Now he does. I know. There's a movie about him. There's a book about him.

Both are pretty well reputed. He had a hard life. Like, the man's been through some stuff. True. Even if he is kind of a weird, awkward guy, he's also very smart. Yeah, he is. So, yeah, there you go. Totally random, funny thing that I found for why Trump is running.

for president. Yes. Unnamed news source, who I will not disclose. This is what they said his motivation is. Is this a quote or is this their opinion? This is a quote from, or no,

this is a quote from the news source. So this is what they think. Yes. He wants to run for revenge. There's a list of reasons. He wants to run for revenge is number one, because of boredom. It's number two.

And the third one is due to longstanding psychological heckouts. So that's why Trump's running for president. According to who? I can't. I won't do that because I would be, no, it would be bad. It's not the Collegian, right? Really quick.

We talked about the 25th Amendment really quick. Yeah, hit it. You wanted to know what that was. It literally is just the article that says that the vice president will take over for the president in the event of the president's inability to serve. But it also lays down the rules for how that happens. The president has to tell Congress, I can't serve or the vice president plus basically most of the White House staff and kind of the upper level directors and things like that.

and Congress have to say, you can't serve. So it's kind of a, there's procedure for how that has to happen. Okay, well, I guess probably Obama said, I'm going to do that if you don't drop out. Which is weird that he would say because he's not in a position to. He probably still, I think he still exercises power, though, amongst those people. Oh, he absolutely does, but it's not legitimate, if you will. Like, it's just because of who he is. Yeah, which is why people I think are mad.

People are mad for a lot of reasons. Some of them legitimate, some of them not. Probably a lot of not, too. And social media makes that clear. Do we cover everything we need to cover? Yeah, barely. And we're way over time. That was crazy.

I'm sweating from thinking all this much. It's not true. Okay. Hopefully you guys learned something for tuning in to this week's episode of the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 1.1.1.7 FM. I'm Jeline Parks. And I'm Gary Guseby. We'll talk to you next week.