Chapo Trap House - 880 - End of the Line feat. Dave Weigel & Ettingermentum (10/28/24)

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Chapo elections unit Dave Weigel and Josh “Ettingermentum” return for one last check-in on the state of the 2024 US Elections. We review Trump’s fascist clown show rally at Madison Square Garden over the weekend, and discuss its potential impacts on the final week of the race. We look at the closing arguments & strategies of both campaigns, the increasingly strained relationship between the electorate and the media, key senate races to watch, and give final chances for Trump & Harris. LOS ANGELES: Come to our 11/4 Election Eve show with E1 & live house band featuring Dan Boeckner and Nick Diamonds: https://link.dice.fm/b1eb3de54f54 We are releasing another batch of SIGNED COPIES of Matt’s book, ¡No Pasarán!, tomorrow/today TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29th, at Noon ET/9am PT at chapotraphouse.store. Sales open ONLY until this Thursday, October 31st, get your copy! Find Dave’s reporting at Semafor here: https://www.semafor.com/author/david-weigel Find the Ettingermentum newsletter here: https://www.ettingermentum.news/

All I wanna do is hit the drum. Greetings everybody. It's Monday, October 28th and this is Choppa Trap House coming to you in the last week of the last election of the last of our American Republic and the most important election in US history it's the last week and it's the last time I'm gonna remind you to pre-order Matt Christman's Spanish Civil War and To come see us Monday November 4th at the Aritani Theatre in Los Angeles tickets still available choppo e1 This is your last opportunity to buy Matt Christman's book and tickets for our live show.

All right, gang, let's get into it. Like I said, this is last week of the election and we've got our full Chapo election 2024 senior election correspondents. Dave Weigel and Josh Ettinger-Mentum are back to give us both the theory and the on-the-ground reporting of the waning days of our democracy. Josh, Dave, welcome to the show. Hello, hello everybody.

Good to be back. All right. So to kick off this episode, to sort of sum up where this election is at right now, once again I'm faced with the introduction of a new character. A new character has come on the scene and like the gravity of the selection is now swirling around one Tony Hinchcliffe, a man I did not know existed until today. So once again, similar to Asmongold and his rat alarm clock.

I'm turning to you, Felix. Who is Tony Heathcliff? So Tony Hinchcliffe is very surprised because Tony Hitchcliff has had something of a, I guess, I wouldn't quite say a renaissance, but a good year for the past year because he had a star-making turn at Tom Brady's roast and just a lot of people who have to blow into a breathalyzer to start their car were like, who is this hilarious guy and became new Tony fans. But for people who don't know, Tony Hinchcliffe is, if there aren't Enron investigations,

Enron type investigations about the Tony Hinchcliffe bubble in three years, then all institutions are forfeit. Um, he is the host of a show called kill Tony, which is sort of like Drew skis could have been auditions, but not funny. He's one of these guys that like, um, this crew of comedians who like followed Rogan to Austin and ever since Rogan's like more explicitly right wing turned, they've all added political material to their repertoire. Tony's old thing used to be, on Kill Tony, it was a gong show type thing where they would

have someone come up and do two minutes and the panel of hilarious comedians would judge them with hilarious lines. Um, but ever since Rogan started, you know, having Ben Shapiro and everyone on like Tony and David Lucas and all these guys do like they're doing political material, but it's so like wildly uninformed and hackish that it just. Like I heard one thing from David Lucas, who's at Kill Tony Regular. And it was Biden's whole cabin sucks. These are like sub, his cabin. These are like sub literate people attempting to kiss up to Rogan.

But I am very surprised to see him the subject of a national story. It is the worst decision he could have made. And I am very surprised to see him the subject of a national story. It is the worst decision he could have made. The Puerto Rico joke. A, because like no one really thinks about Puerto Rico like that as a floating garbage patch. Two, just for purely cynical reasons. The Dominican Republic thinks that about Puerto Rico, by the way.

Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, But they're not voting. They're not vote like they're Dominican Republic does not get to vote in our elections. I think they should. I think, I think that there should be polling stations inside T-Mobile stores managed by those incredibly strong Dominican guys in very tight shirts. But, um, secondly, it's stupid because, you know, half of Trump's surrogates are like white Puerto Rican congressmen named things like

David Carumba. Well, I mean, I guess like, so yeah, he made a joke that Puerto Rico is a floating garbage and garbage island. It's an island full of garbage floating in the in the ocean. A lot going on. Like, I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it's called Puerto Rico. Okay. All right. Okay. We're getting there. But like for the first time ever, I mean like correct me if I'm wrong Josh and Dave, this seems to be like the first time I can remember that the Trump campaign has distanced themselves from an offensive

comment made by one of their surrogates. Like what is it about this Puerto Rico comment? Like will this have any effect on the election? Or like what accounts for this being gun shy about this one particular joke? Yeah, it's interesting. It's kind of like a return, like just from a person who follows the news instead of somebody who like is reporting it, just like a return to like the Republicans having the reply to every Trump scandal like in 2016 and during his administration where they

have to like so like oh we disagree with this but we support the agenda blah blah blah and it's totally stopped doing that this year like even like when they had the Hitler like the John Kelly saying that Trump was a fascist thing they just refused to even comment on that. And they said the media was playing a game with like trying, I think Vance said that on like CNN, but with this you have like Rick Scott and like every Republican Congress person in Miami

releasing a statement saying, we do not agree with this Puerto Rico is awesome. And like the Florida part of it is like kind of real. There are some semi-competitive races there, but like the larger thing might be that there are a lot of Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania. So that might just be why they care about it. Yeah, that's totally it. The only swing state with a ton. Well, there are small amounts mostly in the cities in Wisconsin and Michigan, but the Puerto Rican population, Latino population

in Pennsylvania is huge. It's like half a million people. A lot of that's Puerto Ricans. A lot of Puerto Ricans who left the island basically in the last 15 years, because this is a huge tangent, but America has always treated it like crap. And after the economic crisis, it just never recovered, so people keep fleeing. And they show up in America, they vote. So it was all about Pennsylvania. So Scott has, this is the second time he's actually claimed to be offended by something Trump did, which is, uh, awkward. He did it with the Haitian thing. And I, I was proud to be, I think the first reporter to ask him about it.

Because he showed up at the debate in Philadelphia and I started, I asked him what he thought of what Trump was saying about, about Haitian migrants. And he said he hadn't heard it. And then, I don't know, an hour later, Trump has the debate where he brings it up. But there aren't that many Haitians and they're not registered to vote. There's this Elon idea that Democrats are moving every migrant of military age across the country

as sleeper cells, and they're all gonna have them vote on election day. And this reveals that they don't actually believe that. They do know that Puerto Ricans are here. They can vote. Trump did a lot to campaign for it. There's one, I forget where in Pennsylvania. Hold on, David. Puerto Ricans are here. They can vote. Trump did a lot to campaign for it. Wait, wait. Hold on David. Puerto Ricans can vote? Okay, I've had enough about Biden. Where are they getting it? They're making new voters now? They're making

Puerto Ricans Americans? When did this happen? I must have, I mean, it must have been smoking something that day. I'm as confused as anybody, but they show up, they get a new address, and all of a sudden they can vote and they also Trump had brought like Puerto Rican rappers to Pennsylvania campaign for him. So he knew this was happening. Wait, didn't he bring Annuel out? Annuel, do you know who they are? Do you know who the hell they are? Come up here just fast fast fellas come on because I don't know if these people know who the hell you are.

But it's good for the Puerto Rican vote. Every Puerto Rican is going to vote for Trump right now. We'll take it. I think that was the guy. I wasn't as familiar. I'm not trying to say, oh, I'm too good for Puerto Rico. I just didn't know it. I said, oh, I assume this guy's really famous.

No, he's a very popular rapper. The thing with this scandal specifically, if Trump loses, this is going to be one of those perfectly crystallized moments like the Javits Center for Clinton or in 2015 when there was that fundraiser dinner with Beyonce and Adam Schiff that was sponsored by Raytheon for some reason. One of those things that just seems like a, a, a bad Photoshop from like a leftist content aggregator account.

This would be the perfect, um, epitome of what this Trump campaign was because the fact that they even had Tony Hinchcliffe speaking there shows what an internet bubble they're in. Right. I mean, people are pointing out from, uh, from a Rogan episode this August that he said that Trump should have Tony Hinchcliffe punch up his material. That's crazy, because there's no way this Tony guy is as funny as Donald Trump is. Yeah, no, Tony could never come up. Tony could never come up with something nearly as funny as the Trump-Greta Thunberg line, where he's like, why doesn't she see an old-fashioned movie with her friend?

He's never said anything that funny. But the only people who are super getting into him now are just very very, very internet addicted conservatives. Um, and it shows that they have, they have totally captured the campaign. Secondary to this is the fact that like they did this in pursuit of what exactly they were doing a rally in Madison square garden where like, yeah, they like doing these things sometimes where they will hold a big event in like, you know, very blue, but very populous state where like just mathematically there are going to be a lot of people there that like Trump, like, you know,

even if Trump will never come close to winning New York, there are a lot of people in New York state, New York city who like Trump. So it look, they can, you know, point to the rally and be like, look, we got 70,000 fucking people in, you know, here it's in play, but it's, you know, sometimes you, you, you gamble on something in a campaign. It's like a negative ad or like a line of attack that's out there and it's in, it's in pursuit of some goal. It's in pursuit of like, you know, attacking your opponent's strengths, putting putting

like one part of one state into play and it does pay off or doesn't pay off. This was just like taking a gun out and shooting yourself in the leg for no reason. None of this had to happen. The idea was to get national attention where it's like, well, politics is very nationalized now. So the difference between doing a rally in fucking Crackerville, Wisconsin, where everybody's already seen you go there 50 times versus doing this big rally with tons of people and this huge media capital of the world with tens of thousands of people.

The idea of that is so you can get a lot of attention. So like this isn't like they're not just like trying to fire up the base. I think that having like Elon go up there or whatever, like the Tony, like the killed Tony guy was doing. The idea is that this is like the closing message they want to put forward. It's like a more sophisticated version of how the like the bases closing message on like Twitter in 2020 was when they got like the pictures of hunters dick from like the Chinese billionaire guy who read that news site that is it's just that

but like on a massive scale now yeah and Kamala is gonna have a rally in DC that's her closing message and obviously everyone who comes in that rally was gonna vote for anyway within like a 10 mile radius. The idea is that the media, this is true, the media is just so exploded in a fracture that nobody listens to the same stuff. You can freeze where the media actually lives and they can just walk over to the rally and say, okay, this is the closing message. The thing you were not paying attention to, this is how we're closing.

But I agree with everything that Felix said that the whole Trump campaign has been just going after young men who listen to podcasts and bait for six months. And they're still obsessed, Trump is still defending, I'm the candidate of free speech, et cetera. This is a line he often uses. Elon often uses this. And whatever you think of the Elon Twitter purchase, it saves quote unquote free speech, right? If you were worried that you were going to get canceled for saying some crazy stuff under a pseudonym online, you can't be anymore. If you're worried that you're not going to have a successful comedy career by talking like Joe Rogan, you can.

You can have a much more successful comedy career. So they really have been talking to each other in this circle for months and months, not knowing what sounds offensive anymore. This is the sequel to JD Vance talking about cat ladies ladies because everyone on the triad Catholic right talks like that. And once it leaves that bubble, they're like, oh, what you noticed that I was saying this? They didn't realize it sounded crazy to people. Yeah, like JD Vance talked about like who the people on D-Day would vote for.

That's just a total Reddit meme, like 4chan guy meme. Yeah, and like the out that I see, like, you know, obviously like the campaign and most Republicans who matter have distanced themselves, you know, in very, um, kind of like what Josh said, it's very reminiscent of a more, um, normal Trump campaign back when Republicans used to do that. But, um, the, the line I've seen from just like, you know, freelance, uh, defenders of the campaign has been. Oh, well, he's a comedian.

And it's like, sure. But you lose, you kind of lose some of that license when you're going to a presidential candidates rally and like, and endorsing them and doing your, doing your whole shitty act under the veil. It's a vote for this guy. That's way different than just doing your your set. There was a there was a story I saw that right before we started recording, I think it was The Guardian that in his material that was approved by the

campaign, he Tony was going to call Kamala Harris a cunt, but they vetoed that. So I mean, I guess there was some quality control there, but like. Or they approved everything else. Yeah. All right. Heck yeah. It's cool. Black guy with a thing on his head. What the hell is that? A lampshade? Look at this guy. I'm just kidding. That's one of my buddies. He had a Halloween party last night. We had fun.

We carved watermelons together. It was awesome. I you talked about Dave, you talked about closing messages. And I guess like that's what that's what I want to ask here is that like, this is the last week of the campaign. And we've and Dave, like being on the show, you've talked about how like the medium of Trump's campaign is like the podcast election, like, you know, young men who are like, you know, feel politically disenfranchised, and like listen to podcasts like, you know, Theo von or Joe Rogan or this Tony guy. But like, what is what is the message? Like what

was the message of the Trump Madison Square Garden rally? And what is like, in the waning weeks of this campaign, what is the Trump campaign's closing message to the American voter? It's a lot of just we can make it 2019 again. That's been his theme He has that there's one phrase. They're supposed to be rolling out this week and he used it once in New York Which was Kamala broke it I can fix it So the premise is remember how everything was amazing not for the last year of me being president But everything for that before that I'm gonna just I'm gonna go back and fix that Everything else feeds into that because he's promised all these tax cuts that and that we're going to pay for them with tariffs. He's got a really good deal,

I think, from the 50% of voters choosing it because none of it hangs together that well. We're going to go back to 2019, but also he's going to have a completely different governing team than he did before. Hey, if you think he's going to be a dictator, he wasn't like that before, but also he's not going to hire guys like John Kelly, he's going to hire Stephen Miller and Mike Davis and these people. But for your average person who's just frustrated about prices, don't worry, Trump's coming back and he's going to lower the prices. Everything's going to be fixed by kicking out the immigrants.

And the other thing they were doing, it's not really the closer, but they're trying to bring it back because Democrats are, because of this Bob Woodward book, because of former Trump staffers saying I worked for him and he was a fascist. They're trying to bring back that you can't criticize Trump like that if you do you're encouraging assassination. So they're really there. I mean, I get it. They're trying to have it every way. Like, we're promising everything. And if you criticize him, like you want him to die. That's their closer.

Like the week before the Madison Square Garden rally, like the sort of discourse about Trump was it was going off these like recycled John Kelly quotes for the Woodward book. Right? Yeah. He loves Hitler's generals. He's a fascist. He's going to be a fascist. And then when this Madison Square Garden rally was like, you know, announced or whatever, people were like, you know, drawing the historical parallel to the fascist Nazi rally that took place at Madison Square Garden, I think it was in the 1930s and the original Madison Square

Garden. Yeah, it is one of those things. I think Rachel Maddow's had like 20 episodes about it. So it's a very, it's a big, it could happen here at Touchstone, that event. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, if you were, if you're inclined to, you know, scoff at that kind of line of thinking, as like I have certainly been want to do on this show, you like, I was given some pause because like, seeing seeing this rally, it was just sort of like, oh, that's exactly what they're doing. They leaned into that, right? Because one of the yeah, I mean, it seems like they were like, they were daring you to say it was fascist.

Yeah, you call it ha, you're gonna call us fascist, and then we're going to mug you, and we're going to get your face and prove that nobody actually cares about your stupid lib takes on this stuff. That's why I bring up the, I'm not trying to overcomplicate it, whenever liberals go after them, they say that they're risking Trump's life. But that is the whole, like the Joker, the first, the Michael Keaton Batman putting on glasses and saying

Of like we are allowed to we're allowed to say anything and we have the right to say anything if you don't want to say Anything you suck, but if you criticize mr. Trump You are putting his life at risk and he has a young son who can see this See it was watching you do this They this is the risk that they can get knocked off. I mean Trump can get knocked off message very easy none who could see this. Barron is watching you do this. This is the risk that they can get knocked off. I mean, Trump can get knocked off message very easy. Even if you, I was looking at his final month rallies from the last couple cycles.

2016 was pretty easy because Hillary had a WikiLeaks drop every day and that was half the speech. 2020, it was a lot of Biden's Hunter laptop was part of it. And with this time, it's it's he just keeps going off because he finds Kamala so irritating that he will bring up stuff he can't see she has no crowds because she has big crowds will try and then he'll bring up stuff like things that were memed on the right, like Patrick, Pat David talked about a lot from Kamala rallies that no one who doesn't listen to Patrick, Pat David has

heard of. And he really is easily distracted from this this main close. And the people around him are just better at sticking on message and saying, yeah, he's going to bring the prices back. He can he can go off into space. So it's it's kind of a problem. It's I don't know if it's been a problem, because they're doing fine. They're in a better position. They were a month ago. But the whole premise is he's going to say some stuff, he's gonna go off script, don't worry,

the economy is going to be back to remember how cheap the value menu was in 2019, it's coming back. He'll go a day and maybe talk about that twice, but his campaign is talking about it. Yeah, I have just a question for Dave here personally, because you cover the Bernie campaign a lot. Do you see any similarities in how the Trump people are talking about like the young vote or like the young male voters their main strategy Like the thing that'll totally shock the pollsters and the pundits and bring them like greater realignment and how the Bernie people talk about

the youth vote in 2020 Because oh, yeah. Yeah, I didn't think it so the Bernie stuff was so tied up in don't worry. We can catch up to Hillary's delegates So the Bernie stuff was so tied up in, don't worry, we can catch up to Hillary's delegates. But it wasn't crazy. They were finding new people for Bernie in the later primaries. With this, it's more, so you had to start with, would Bernie admit in 2020 that he lost 2016 primary? Yes. Trump just doesn't admit he ever lost.

So when he just gets rolling, he'll'll say like, actually, we always had more voters than these people. And now we're going to identify, now we know they are and Kamala Sok, so we're just going to win again. And the secret, the silent majority, they're already, in their view, they're already there and there were just 10 million fake votes. So when these guys are buying up polymarket shares and talking about how it's inevitable and how the whole coalition has changed, the premise is, yeah, it would already like we would have won it already. But there are all these fake votes. There are all these fake votes from people who moved into the country.

Don't fix what's not broken. Yeah, it's different than Bernie. Bernie really did say like we need to find more people. I think the comparison is like not Bernie 2016, but Bernie 2020 with more the theory of like not people who did not maybe vote in the previous two or three elections or ever activating them. And it's, yeah, no, it's, um, different demographics in part, but like a sort of similar theory, but you are right.

And like the, the logistics of that, you know, no matter what your pollsters are doing and no matter how separate they are from Trump himself, the strategy does like lose a little coherence when you're arguing that you already have those people. Yeah. Or it's, I think it's the only way for them to square actually making any meaningful changes or like running any kind of campaign where like they can't like say oh we're actually missing like voters and X or Y demographic because that would imply that they haven't had enough voters so that like they can only really say

like oh we need to get like new demographics that haven't voted before like young men because that allows them to actually run a campaign that like does things other than what they've just done before while also not really stepping on any toes on saying that like you didn't win the previous election. It's like a kind of a perfect middle. And the logic to that just leads them to what we saw yesterday. Yeah, like you've already won. You already know you're going to win. You can just say whatever you want. It's kind of dangerous. The last thing I'll say about the Trump Madison Square Garden rally is Elon Musk. How does he keep trotting this dipshit out there?

He fucked up the USA chant. USA, USA, USA. You guys see this? He was like USA, USA. Ah, like he did like a little soy squeal after the USA. Ah, somebody pointed out to me when he does that jump, he's trying to make an X with his body, which I never understood until I slowed the video down.

Wait, you didn't get that, Dave? That's obvious. No, I really hate that. That doesn't make me happy. I don't like knowing that. Something I was thinking about with this a lot, and I was interested in what you guys would think about like the, the first part of this, which is.

I saw both of you guys talking about how like the 2017 through 2020 resistance was sort of a historical aberration. It was created by a confluence in like trends in media and, uh, just a very unusual political environment. And it resulted in these very, this very unusual level of energy and types of energy. And you know, it resulted in suburban voters, you know, reading bell hooks and all this weird stuff that probably won't be repeated. And how if Trump wins this time, you're not going to see an exact repeat of that, the, the classic resistance and like the same

enthusiasm isn't there. Media is in a far worse position. They've sort of, they squandered the immense gains that they made during the Trump years, some would say. Um, but seeing Elon up there, I, it did make me think that like. Whatever form opposition would take during the second Trump administration, it would be decidedly different in tone from the classic resistance, but it would be more centered around like, I don't, yeah, just how annoying these guys

are, I think. Yeah. I think a big part of it that like, I think people are, I think, when people say like, there's like a big theory of like among like these like dirt bag liberal people who had like this whole line yesterday, like after some, the USA Today put out a headline that was just very neutral about Trump's rally instead of saying Trump was a racist freak. This is like Trump talks about immigration and the economy. So a bunch of these fucking people were like the media loves Trump and wants him to win.

And they just repeated that over and over like abolish ICE or whatever in 2019. And the theory behind that, I've had some people accuse me of doing this back when I said Biden I thought was going to lose. They said, all you media people, which I guess like included me at the time includes me now, you just want Trump to be back in office so you can get like subscriptions from liberals. And, uh, like you are trying to manifest that by saying Biden's tool or whatever. And like, I think like what Dave and I think we're talking about is that that's

a real misunderstanding of why people were so interested in the meat airing the first Trump term, because that was like a very open story. It was not a story that had kind of had a completion. It was a big shock. People had it, the whole thing that all the resistance people said was that they hadn't followed politics closely before that Trump winning was the start of their kind of political involvement. Each week sort of scandal was like a new episode for the story.

There was like a very episode for the story. There was going to be some way that it ended, either he would be shunted off the jail or kicked out of office or that he would win. And we were getting closer and closer to a conclusion, like with each week we got closer to the end of his first term. With Trump winning now, he would be term-limited and it would be just the end of that story. He's got a presidential immunity. All of the court cases that he's in would be term limited and it would be just the end of that story of Trump. He's got a presidential immunity. All of the court cases that he's in would be frozen.

He wouldn't go to jail. Like the whole saga would just end with him winning. There wouldn't be a question of like, like, will he get away with it? Because the answer to that will just have been yes, he did. And like, there'll be stuff that people will be engaged. People probably will still be outraged. They'll dislike what he does while in government. He'll probably be unpopular. He'll probably be high turnout. But people will be like, there'll be more of a sense of

frustration, I think, or depression instead of mobilization. And a lot of it, I think, will be blamed on the media, which we saw during like the Biden Death Watch month news cycle. People were hysterically angry at the media. Just your average liberal thought that they were trying media, which we saw during like the Biden death watch month news cycle, people were hysterically angry at the media. Just your average liberal thought that they were trying to totally like ruin his presidency. And what I think is really interesting is that like there may be an effect of this on how much they trust established news cycles, because there was, I think, like a graph that came out a couple of weeks ago that showed by YouGov that showed

response rates to pollsters, which is usually a heuristic for how much people trust institutional like mainstream political commentators. So historically during the Trump era, Republicans have not responded to pollsters or Democrats have responded a lot. That's been the cause of survey error. It was like probably the main reason why Biden really had polls that were better than the actual results in 2020. And it's caused a lot of heartburn. What YouGov has seen is that roughly since like the beginning of this year, the number of liberals responding to their surveys has gone

down precipitously, especially around July when the whole dropout period started. And who knows what the reason for that could be. But like it may be a sign that liberals are really like disenchanted these mainstream outlets in a way that won't cause a repeat at least of the media environment and maybe not I mean I would guess the political environment would be similar but it's not as simplistic as I think a lot of people are making it out to be the story is just totally different. I mean I think that's I think that's a good segue into the other big, like media and politics story of this past week. And I think it was interesting what you said about like how

in 20 and 2016, when Trump won, then we got like the resistance and a big feature of the resistance was how important journalism and the man the media is. And like, oh, yeah, they were that they were the check on like having an authoritarian president. And then Biden won in 2020 and they were like, oh, they did their job. We'll never have to think about Trump again. Well, surprise, surprise. You would do you do have to think about him again. And it looks like he could win this election. And then we're seeing not just the media having failed to protect America

from like an authoritarian, you know, fascist president or Donald Trump winning reelection again after losing already. But there, you know, inist president or Donald Trump winning re-election again after losing already. But they're, you know, in the eyes of liberals, like capitulating in the saga of the Washington Post and the LA Times refusing to endorse editorially a presidential candidate. Dave, you used to work at the Washington Post. How do you see this Washington Post within their apparently at Bezos's request the newspaper editorial section will not endorse a presidential candidate, which you know, liberals are viewing as a tacit endorsement of Donald Trump.

Yeah, that's that's the killer part. And what made it terrible for the paper was Marty Barron, who was the editor most of the time I was there, legendary editor, Lee Schreiber plays him in Spotlight. Uh, he came out and said it was cowardly, but Woodward and Birdstead said it was cowardly it's because of that's the recapitulation of the whole thing, but because of the timing, if, if they'd said in June, Hey, Hey guys, uh, we're not going to endorse this year. We're going to endorse in lower races.

Uh, a lot of people would have agreed with them. I think I would have agreed with them because my take is that reporters who cover local politics, they can tell you which alderman is good, which one is going to be indicted in six months. That's useful if you're just voting down the ballot. President, we all know what we think, who cares? But doing this and having the papers, reporters who have been very honest about this saying, oh, actually Bezos intervened, he didn't want an endorsement.

That's what made people despair. You can read their takes. All the people who canceled have said, I don't trust them to stand up to Trump anymore because their owner said you shouldn't stand up to Trump. That's pretty hard to refute. The only take in the alternative has been, yeah, it's not the reporters' fault. The reporters are actually, like the reason you know Bezos did this is because the reporters did this.

But this is like some context about me at the Post there. The Bezos ownership thing was an issue if you worked there. You got dinged a lot and people would ask a lot, oh, did Bezos assign the stories? Bezos preventing you from covering this? I covered the Bernie campaign. It came up. Bernie would not deny me access or something because of Bezos, but he'd bring this up. He would bring up all the times that post columnist attacked him and people he could say, and Bezos didn't tell us to. I went and covered the Amazon union drive in Mississippi back in 2021. And that was going to hurt Bezos' bottom line and nobody

said anything. Bezos never complained when me and Liz Brinig were writing about DSA and socialism and we kind of wondered, we would get asked, hey, is Bezos telling you not to do this? Nope, never did. So him intervening, period, that's what made this so terrible for people who work at the paper because you used to be able to say, yeah, we have a rich guy who owns us. Rich guys own lots of things. They're not telling us not to publish something and now he has. That's why it's bad. For that kind of resistance liberal, I met a lot of those people in 2017 because I'd work for the paper and I'd cover Bernie. I had a guy follow me around when I was at one Bernie event just telling people not to talk to me because the post was so unfair to Bernie.

So we all dealt with, you know, like, you can deal with it. You should be able to deal with some criticism in the media. But I'd meet these resistance liberals who would like thank me and thank me for the work I was doing and thank the Washington Post because it was telling the truth and Trump was going to go down. And I would always go like do a collar pull or like, that's not what I'm doing. Or you should thank this other reporter who's the investigator reporter. I'm going to show up and cover what people are saying in an election guy, not the let me comb through the documents. But that mindset, I don't think that would come back. I agree

with the previous take here. Just if Trump came back, it wouldn't just be at the media media stop, didn't stop them. It was that, oh, the media never had the power to like he got impeached twice. He got indicted. Everything that I saw in MSNBC that told me that would take them down, didn't take them down. Therefore, the media doesn't matter. We just got to focus on doing something else. They there'd be a new resistance of some kind, but it would not be just got to get them in the courts get them in the In the in the in get get him get him out of office. Just like we mix and get out of office, right? I feel like people will catch up to Post Watergate you just don't get presidents out of office anymore. Like the the model is not Watergate

The model is Iran Contra the model the model is the Trump stuff It's the media can report this and the administration will say, yeah, it's fake, we're not resigning. And then they don't resign and they stay in power. So I don't think if you're, that's not going to be a thing anymore. People saying I'm going to subscribe to this publication because it's going to take down Trump because it can't, it just won't. Are in their mind they're trying to get Trump back in office. The entire theory of why Biden wasn't popular for a lot of people was that the media was doing it on purpose because the economy is so amazing. The only explanation is that it's the media.

Do you think we could see a net roots renaissance? I hope so. They're going to replace bell hooks with settlers. Are you calling on people as I am to buy shares in this workingchimp.com? Yeah. Where have you gone, Marcos Melitsos? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Oh, Jeff Kedrick would be a hero of three resistance cycles.

Yeah. People don't know Jeff has been doing this since the Bush administration. If only we had taken more seriously the satirical posts of New York Times pitchbot, we wouldn't be in this situation. the satirical posts of New York Times pitchbot. We wouldn't be in this situation. But what are we to make of this massive disillusionment and demoralization that the liberal electorate is having with the liberal media and the chief organs of journalism

in America right now? Yeah, it's interesting. I think that it obviously is really annoying. It feels maladaptive and is frustrating when you're trying to like explain politics to people that like for basic political literacy that they blame Biden doing poorly on like the media. But it's like largely kind of interesting because the analysis of power is like more traditionally liberal and more kind of correct than like what it was under the first Trump administration

because the real like love of media from then was kind of an aberration from like The way liberals traditionally covered like followed politics during the Bush administration was very like anti-corporate like anti-establishment traditional liberal stuff the idea of like Worshipping these like patriotic billionaires or these servants of democracy wasn't as much as what their whole thing was about. There was the basic kind of anti-establishment mindset that they had had for like for decades or like if not centuries basically.

And I could see them totally returning to that trying to but like it'll be centered around the democratic party and not like anything separate from that. So the desire will probably be more towards like a form of regime media around this existing kind of Biden type establishment. So it's like kind of these like grassroots sort of tactics, but around this very like decrepit establishment class, which will create, I think, this very, even stronger

dissonance than they had during the Trump era. Because at least they understood they were really in favor of the establishment liberal powers, but it was cohesive. Now they're hating the liberal writers while loving the liberal politicians, who have both failed in their own ways, but one gets all the blame and one gets all the love. And I'm not really certain how that ends up working out. It's obviously not something that'll make any sense to people outside of their world.

A blue people's daily. Yeah, basically, that's what they want. But if they can get the wise elephant stories, they could do really well. Yeah, that would be so good. Segecious raccoon draws Trump's tax returns. Yeah. Twigs.

150 year old elk delights villagers with stories about rural electrification. And how this was because of like FDR. Well, I mean, honestly, that would be a huge improvement. I would love to see more sugesious elephant stories in the national press. Yeah. But to turn things over from Trump's week, I'd like to ask the same question about the Kamala Harris, Tim Walz campaign. Starting with you, Josh, what is the Harris-Walls campaign's closing argument to voters in the

last weeks of this campaign? Because I think this one is a little harder to discern than Donald Trump's. Yeah. So there is one story in the New York Times that I thought was very, very illustrative here that was about not about their campaign, but about the Future Forward Political Action Committee, which is this gigantic super PAC that has like $100 million budgets. I think they have $600 million, mostly from Silicon Valley, like California billionaires are putting money into that, and they have a

tremendous influence on the campaign. And it's an interesting sort of dynamic because on one hand you have this campaign that's staffed still in Wilmington, Delaware, the Kamala Harris campaign, this person who's lived in like the Bay Area her whole life has her campaign staffed out of like Wilmington, and it's all the same. Wait, wait, wait, wait. The Kamala Harris campaign headquarters is still in Delaware?

Yeah, it is. It's the same location. Oh yeah, it's sweet state. Yeah, the same, like the same offices. Yeah, it has the same leadership, like General Malley Dillon, you have all like the liberals saying, don't worry, Jan O'Malley Dillon is on this. She knows what the fuck she's doing, like she did back in July when he was done by five points.

So you have this team of all former Biden people. They've sort of, but not really been pushing back against him. There's another story about how Biden has been trying trying to leave open days on his schedule, do campaigning, and they keep on like not getting back to him or returning his calls on that. So he started to do solo campaign trips by himself without Kamala or any other Democrats. At the same time, she's appearing with Obama in like every state like in the Southeast. But Future Forward is supposedly like a pack is having a big influence on the messaging that they're doing. And it is decidedly different than but not like in a necessarily like more left wing or ideological way. They are run by according

to the Time Story, a firm called Blue Rose Research, which is headed by David Shore of popularism fame. He is the person who is reportedly vetting and polling all of their stuff and all of their ads for this massive firm. And they have, it's a very interesting, he's a very interesting character. He's the guy who, Shore is the wonder-kund who worked for Obama after he graduated like college at 18 and Came up with the theory of popularism Which was the idea that the elites were at liberal age were alienating voters so much that Republicans were going to have a

filibuster proof majority by 2025 That is obviously not what's on track to happen now. They would like probably best case scenario They got like 54 seats. He was going to say they were going to hit 60. But not exactly the best track record in the world. I think he famously said that he would rather live in a world where like CO2 rose by like well above the Paris limit than one where China was a global hegemon. Well, I mean, if that happens, no one will be living in this world, so good to have you.

Yeah, yeah. Thanks, David. Real quick, Josh, does this polling outfit, do they do polls about how voters feel about Israel starting World War III? Well, one of his things that I remember him saying was quite convenient. Like he said that anti-Israel messaging was the least popular messaging you could do of any issue ever. Wow. Wow. Yeah. What a coincidence. Yeah.

It's really crazy, especially given that another poll conducted by – like earlier this year found that supporting an arms embargo could give a generic Democrat the biggest boost of pretty much any other position. It gave them a six-point boost relative to supporting the government. But I'll just assume that that was just a good faith difference in survey, conducting techniques and not think anything more of that. But he has been in charge of a lot of their messaging and it's interesting because you do have a difference between him and the campaign where the campaign

is kind of very hyper reactive to every Trump scandal. I think they made like an Ad about the Kelly like the John Kelly comments or like some other scandal like within no It was about like Trump insulting Detroit and they made that with like an hour-long Turnaround and they've made stuff about like for online media and like other Twitter accounts but these firms like Largely have focused on economic issues. They have all these surveys that show they're talking about how she's going to support Medicare for Income Care or whatever other sort of small ball left-wing economic policy.

It's really the most effective thing you can do. While talking about Trump's fascism or whatever like the Liz Cheney stuff is very ineffective and this it's interesting to note that the Future Ford people actually did play something of a role as far as I can tell and getting biting kicked out of the campaign Like I had somebody told me they were putting out surveys that showed Biden only up by three in New Jersey And we're testing alternatives showing him doing way better New Jersey and we're testing alternatives, showing him doing way better. So there's a bit of like a war between the Liz Cheney campaign and the Scoop Jacksonian Democrats at Future Forward that is having kind of like different messaging here.

It's very subtle, but there's not much beyond that narrow band of kind of the small, bore, expanding Medicare stuff, or just talking about Bob Woodward books. Their messaging has not gone far beyond that for the final weeks. And Dave, like on the ground, like how do the people like how do how do the average Democratic voter or the voters that they're seeking to engage like how are they interpreting this message or messages from the Kamala Harris campaign? So the advertising I see, I was in Arizona, then I was in Wisconsin. I spent a little bit of time in Philly and I always watch TV there.

If you load up any news website or YouTube, you see the ads and the Kamala ads are very economy focused. There are a lot of her straight to camera saying, here's how I'm going to fight price gougers. I'm going to do a middle class tax cut and you're going to have cheaper health care. And that's kind of, that's kind of it. The ads about Kelly and Trump is dangerous. They try to work those in, but you definitely, if you've ever talked to ad makers, you can

see the gear is working because they want to pack as much as possible into 30 seconds. And so we're going to rebut and we're, and we're going to mention our top policies and this test at 70% that would test 68 get that out of here Get the 70% testing one. They're very careful ads and the Trump ones are just very visceral I think every We met sure he's he's the she's for they them. He's for us. Yeah. Oh, yeah Yeah, they have done a ton of this Yeah, yeah, they have done a ton of this, where you watch TV in Wisconsin, especially, and it's the they them ads and also the Republican candidate for Senate there is going after

Tammy Baldwin, who's gay and has a girlfriend in finance and just every every if you just leave the TV running in bed with Wall Street. That was in bed with Wall Street. Oh yeah, so they're just in my view. They're more they're more cutting and memorable But what Democrats say is like look what happened? Kamala had a 32% favorable rating. She's in the high 40s now There's been two months of negatives and she's still hanging in there She went from absolutely gonna lose to competitive because we had this boring plotting

They won't call it boring. There's like repetitive message about the economy. It's all very safe. Don't worry about it. We've been adding people without subtracting too many people. Please don't talk about Michigan because we absolutely have lost tens of thousands of voters in Michigan. But we're replacing- What, Richie Torres didn't turn it around? That was still, that's still not- That's fucking insane. I get not knowing how to finesse Dearborn and Tramik I don't get sending in the the most pro-israel anti-palestinian

Congressman there there is He's not relevant. He's a fucking backbencher. He's a fucking backbencher. He doesn't even have name recognition I'm the Bronx this true recognition in the Bronx district. Yeah. Like the only reason that he has any name recognition in Michigan is because people are like, Oh, that's the guy who's directly called for my family to be killed. Yeah.

He said, you said my family was faking it when they died. I like, it is one of the most baffling choices I've been, it's's about like to the point that I was wondering if like maybe someone on that campaign is trying to prove a point by like losing Michigan while winning the election. Yeah, I think that's a good win. North Carolina or like we don't fucking need you. But we're going to like get the information economy people and like the Atlanta suburbs. They really think they can replace that. It's hard for me to view Kamala's strategy in this election as one that is not that is not primarily focused on winning the election outright, but winning the election under a very narrow set of circumstances, winning the election with an electorate that they can build on going forward, which was like, I don't know, George W. Bush Republicans and everyone else.

going forward, which was like, I don't know, George W. Bush, Republicans and everyone else. Like, it seems to me like they're trying to make a point of like not just not seeking the votes of people who are against war, but like actively proving that they don't matter. And they very well could be proven right. Yeah, it's interesting because you at the same time, like the Dave said, they're doing like so much better compared to Biden. Just like for a quick point about down ballot racesot races, we are still consistently seeing, and

this could be a point that Trump is maybe more appealing or popular than he was before. It could be a point about how unpopular his administration is. But what you've seen for like the entire past year across the board, and effectively every single state, down-ballot Democrats running for Senate are outrunning her by substantial margins where you have Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are all down to the wire, at least according to polling. At the presidential level, all of the Democrats running for Senate there have been relatively

safe for the past year. I think they're up by four or five points. Out in the Southwest where she's had major issues with Latino voters and maybe suburban Republicans. You have the candidates there outrunning her by 10. If she does lose, it'll be a very distinct environment or very distinct set of results compared to what it was in 2016. Because in 2016, you had Hillary lose, but you also had no other Democrats across the country win in states where she lost.

There was only one Democrat in every race who won in a Trump state that year. It was Roy Cooper in North Carolina, and that was a local race. You didn't have Democrats winning in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. The Senate race is there. So there was, it was like for the party as a whole, it was a more kind of indictment of how they were seen broadly and philosophically because it wasn't just her losing, but it was also like all their recruits. They did very poorly in Congress, too.

This year, even if Kamala does lose, you're going to see Democrats win at least one race in almost every single swing state where there is an election on the ballot. They're going to win the North Carolina's governor's race for sure. They're probably going to win the southwestern swing states, those Senate races. They're probably going to sweep. They might win Ohio on top of all of that. So we're at a point where, and this is not entirely new, I don't know how much they will factor it into the results, but if Trump does win, there won't be that kind of endorsement of the larger Republican philosophy that you even might've arguably had eight years ago,

because there are a lot of people out there who are maybe voting for Trump, maybe voting against Kamala, but are also voting for Democrats down ballot. And that's, I think is a very concerning problem for Republicans long-term. I don't know if you've seen any of these voters, Dave, like Trump Casey, Trump Baldwin voters,

but like it's a significant fraction of the population. I've met voters who they already made their mind up and they're voting, the Wisconsin especially, they were like, oh, I'm definitely voting for Diego, I'm definitely voting for Baldwin, but, and they were still need to be pushed by Harris. When I was out with Canvas to see that stuff, and even in Texas, I was in Texas for only a couple of days, but Cruz is polling worse than Trump in Texas. And he's always run a little bit behind the ticket. But his name is Ted Cruz, his name is Rafael Cruz, and he's doing worse than Trump and Latinos in Texas.

And that does make you think, okay, there are a lot of people who just say, he's president low prices, I got a stimulus check, I had all this good, the Matt Brunig welfare, like the super dole that he talks about, that was in place just for COVID. He gets to take credit for all this stuff as bad as 2020 was that people miss. And no, like David Cormack doesn't get to do that. I remember the Republican just saying, yeah, yeah, what he said. It's like, who are you? You just, you just showed up. You're, you've

got like, there's no video of you looking cool, pumping your fist with pouring blood. You're just some guy. And so the rest of the Republican agenda is not as popular, which is why they're, they're still, I mean, even they're kind of meaning themselves, like in thinking this is going to be a Trump landslide, they're going to sweep Minnesota and they're going to sweep New Jersey. And then if down the ballots, like, well, nothing else really, like we're doing pretty bad on every other race, but people, people do love, uh, president, president low prices.

Yeah. All of his surrogates are former Democrats. Like his top people, like, I think, like, if his surrogates are former Democrats, like his top people. Like I think, like if you look at like those, like the memes, like, oh, it's the dream team, like Elon, Vivek Ramaswamy, Vance, JRFK, Tulsi, none of those people voted for him in 2016. I don't think any of them did.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. He's the opposite of Drake, only new friends. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did, going back to the Kamala campaign a little bit, I was curious about something that I saw

when I watched her most recent town hall, which I never got the temperature in the room from like regular libs on that one, but I thought it was a pretty bad performance. Yeah. Not the worst I've ever seen, but pretty shitty. What accounts for Kamala's habit of like, anytime, anytime it can even be remotely brought up and sometimes when it makes no sense to be brought up, she keeps falling back on not just January 6th, but just in general, like authoritarianism.

Is it just that one poll that said democracy is people's biggest issue? No, that's the basis for the entire Biden administration. That's their entire philosophy. It's how they understand themselves. That their whole, like, this is something, there's a very good article on this in the New Left Review, like even like their industrial policy,

that like a lot of left wing, left-lib people were very excited about. if you listen to how They talk about it like Jake Sullivan Like Biden himself on how they justify these Expansions or the welfare state that they were trying to pass and in some cases did pass It was never about like the classical liberal kind of like goal where Reducing poverty is an end in of itself getting high growth or higher Like a more competitive labor market is an end in and of itself. The idea was like the end that this is all a means to is

fighting China and it's doing this larger kind of crusade of pro-democracy initiatives and this larger kind of battle of democracy versus authoritarianism they see like is the story of the 21st century. And that's how they square the circle. Like, I mean, if you listen to Biden's Oval Office address on like Ukraine and Israel, like when he was trying to get those funds approved in October of last year, he like explicitly connected Israel and Ukraine as countries that are democracies being under attack. The whole like kind of like sense of purpose for liberalism right now isn't really what it traditionally used to be, which is like creating a more just or fairer world, like the Great Society,

or whatever their agendas could be called in the past. It's kind of this neocon conception of what the purpose of the American state is for. It's like this idea of... To remake the Middle East in the values of democracy. Yeah, to remake the world as a democratic, like this is their larger sense of purpose. And like, they're very giddy about this. Like, if there are a lot of their entire books, like published, kind of that are big, like in a fly on the wall inside reviews of the Biden team, and their whole sense of self-conception is like this idea that they're in this battle of democracy versus authoritarianism.

That's how they understand domestic politics. That's how they understand foreign policy. So it's not even that this is like something they think is a political tactics. This is how they feel a sense of purpose while also being like complete ghouls who just get checks from the UAE when they go in and out of a public office. I mean, that's sort of what I mean when I say that like they're trying to win this election under a very narrow set of circumstances and remake the Democratic Party electorate so that like win or lose, win lose draw, it's the project for a new American century baby. And that is the agenda.

Yeah. And there is no there is no alternative as Maggie Thatcher famously said. But yeah like no like it is the PNAC election as far as and that's the Democratic ticket. Yeah, Bill Kristol, like had a tweet where he said we are all neocons now. Jesus Christ. Yeah. He may not be entirely wrong. Josh and Dave, I'm so glad that and Felix too, I'm so glad that you guys are on because here's another thing I need to I need to ask you about. We already brought up Wisconsin. So I got to ask ask is Scott Pressler the resistance the persistence is he going to jail and if so why I'm breaking him out and what can

we do to support it you know free smirk free free Scott Presser free young thug free free all of our walk out free I heard I heard that Scott Pressler, he booked a flight to three different European countries in the vain hope that the feds would get confused and he would sneak sneak away to Switzerland. Yeah. Oh, he said he's he's this he swears that the huge Amish or the huge surge in fake Lancaster registrations is not him. Because they turn their applications as soon as they get them and they all came in at the end

but he did say that they had registered twice as many Amish people as exists so I'm not sure if I totally trust this guy. Well how would we know? How would we know? They don't pick up a phone. How do they do a census for that? Maybe they double their population. Maybe they're hiding kids like maybe they were doing chores or something. They don't fucking know. Stop fucking being mean to him. Dude.

So Scott Scott press are like registered lots of fake Amish people in Pennsylvania and he could be going to prison for this. Yeah, that's a crime apparently. He's our new LBJ. He's going to kill somebody like LBJ to get like with the Bobby Baker investigation to get the heat off him. He said someone was like goading some, you know, and an enemy of freedom and enthusiasm and fun and accomplishment was goading Scott Pressler and being like, you're going to

jail. And he said, I'd be very popular there. I think he's right. I'm talking about deep info now, but Scott Pressler is kind of infamous and for swing state people on Grindr, he will just, whenever he travels to a state for something, he will hit everybody up.

And I showed that to Spencer and he thought, can we break the story? And I said, no, he's openly gay. And I saw the light leave his eyes. I felt so bad for him. Well, Scott Pressler is versed. And I saw the light leave his eyes. I felt so bad for him. Well, Scott Presley is verse. He could phone bank and canvas. Yeah.

I love it. Like he's, uh, Bill Mitchell kind of lost his luster for me, not because he became a DeSantis guy that was kind of charming and seeing him, like he got really mad at Trump for the first time, what he called the Santa's a pedophile. Because he was like, Mr. DeSantis would probably save a child. How dare you? But, um, he sort of lost his luster for me when he just became like an engagement

farmer, like he just does that thing where he just replies to every viral tweet. And it's, it's kind of like, this is the bill. I know. Uh, but Scott Pressler is for me, he's like the most, um, I have the most positive warm feelings towards him out of any Trump guy. He's just like, even if he committed fraud, I think he did it for like good reason. At least he was fucking trying. Nobody else in the right wing media sphere cares about elections at all. None of them talk about fucking elections ever. They talk about like pretending they read like St. Augustine or some shit, or that they converted

to like fucking like Ethiopian copticism. They're doing that bullshit. And the reason why Scott Pressler has won the hearts of every middle-aged like mom in America is because he actually talks about shit they care about. He's a nice boy. They want Republicans to win. They want Republicans to win, and he talks about how he's registering X number of voters. He's single-handedly running right-wing election Twitter, and none of these fucking people who all have their heads in their asses realizes that that is what people want. They want a bunch of accounts. They want the right-wing versions of accounts of like Barbara Mikulski and Joyer and talk about like election results in some county in Kentucky like every

day. They want that but they don't get it because all like the everybody who's right wing and acts like that is 15 and they can't write their literate because of the COVID school shutdowns. Whether it's whether it's whether it's Tony Heathcliff or any of these other Trump surrogates, they they they cuss, they're rude. They're not they're not well-kempt. Whereas Scott Pressley, he's got beautiful long hair. He shows up to knock at your door and register your 800 Amish kids that may or may not exist. He's nice. He's a nice boy. Okay. His

fancy shoes. Yeah, cowboy boots that he wears everywhere. Yeah, he is he he is an outfit. He has he has his rock t shirts. He's also he does the rock t-shirt with a blazer which that that never fails Bobby Axe I'll be asked. Yeah, it's every 50 year old's idea of a cool guy. He's a very like, um 1950s vision of a gay man. Yeah, like he's like just sort of like a Obviously, I think he knocks it out of the park on a grinder. I think Scott Pressler has bodies in the hundreds.

He would scorch me, just a pure body count. But I mean like his public image is that of like, you know, just a sort of like a, a eunuch for, um, frumpy housewives. He's going to, he's going to, you know, make over them and the party. And I just, I love him. I love him. I will put money on his books. We will be doing another tour to fund Scott Pressler's defense.

And I'm not going to school this week. Yeah. All right. Live in Butler, Pennsylvania for Trump's return here with Scott Pressler. Now listen, Scott, the Democrats, they spend a lot of time in the cemetery registering voters.'s return here with Scott Pressler. Now listen, Scott, the Democrats, they spend a lot of time in the cemetery registering voters. You do this with the Amish. How's the registering process going here today in Butler? Well, our team is out. I was just speaking with Trisha, who does register the Amish to

vote. And we have the entire team, not just sitting here at an early vote action voter registration table, but they're walking the entire line. I want to have like one more like sort of bird's eye view before this election. But before we get to like the national election, I just want to ask Josh and Dave about a couple of just like from each you like what is the most interesting Senate race that's on the ballot this election you've got is Sherrod Brown and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. You got Timmy Baldwin in Wisconsin. You got Carrie Lake and Ruben Gallego in Arizona. What is like the most important or like just most like a Senate race of interest

to you covering this election? Dave, start with you. Yeah, so I had a colleague go, not me, but it's the Sherrod Brown race, because he really should have just been rolled up in a carpet three months ago And the fact that they hasn't he is not clearly out of that race That's interesting because one question with with all these guys is always that is it over? Biden couldn't move any that met many of those voters from who were Obama to Trump voters couldn't move any back and anybody Tim Ryan runs and he loses Mahoning County, which is, it was impossible for them to lose that for like a century. So can Brown pull that off? And

if Brown pulls that off somehow against a crypto guy who's got, I think the last count was $40 million from the one crypto pack from Fair Shake, the one whose ads are never about crypto, they're all about saving American jobs. They're the ones that did the Black Keys concert, right? Yeah, that's the crypto vote group. If he can hold that off, because I covered him in 2012 when it was this giant, crazy, the real test, super PACs, how are they going to change America? How are they going to ruin America's democracy?

He was the target, and I think they only spent all super packs total spent like 20 million dollars against him and this time it's more than 100 million dollars half of it from a crypto pack. A hundred million dollars. That's really interesting. Oh yeah. It's relentless. It's one of those, I heard this in Pennsylvania too where you just you cannot buy more TV.

The TV is sold out for the election from the pack. So that race, I point to that one. I feel bad for people in Pennsylvania who just want to see an ad about auto insurance or a prescription drug. They probably don't even know what the new products are when they're watching the Eagles or whatever. Oh my God. I have these ads on fucking YouTube TV in Georgia.

I'm trying to watch football or whatever. It's like every commercial break. But yeah, for that question, it's very interesting because you have several races of this year in the Senate where Bernie cradism could end up being vindicated after all. There's a Sherrod Brown race where he is a very epic social fascist out there. They might put him on the cover of the new copy of Settlers, very anti-China, very protectionist throughout his career, epic union guy that's kind of like weird, like 2019 Twitter account

way. Just like somebody who designed a lab to be best of all worlds, we can win just by doing what we want to do even more with him where he's very pro--union protectionist, working class, like a left-populist person. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, the two-term first openly gay senator, another version of that where she is pro-single payer, opposed the Iraq war in 2003, consistently progressive, does very well in a Trump 2016 state, Another version that's very on the nose, the Dan Osborne who, like some people, really have keyed on will institute Marxist-Leninism in America if he wins. This is the guy in Nebraska, right?

Yeah, the independent guy. Yeah, that guy who people are totally creaming themselves over. He actually had a poll where he was up by registered voters. There's always some races like that in the plains like I'm sure Dave can remember in 2014, they had an independent in Kansas who tried doing another thing like it's like a 90 year old sitting senator who had like lived in Virginia for 20 years. Yeah, Greg Orman.

Yeah, Greg Orman. And he lost by 10 after polling competitively. So people are kind of burnt on this kind of archetype. But he is polling very competitively to the close of the election. He could win. That would be insane if he did just like totally out of the blue like something we never really see but I think the one that is singularly most interesting to me not because it has a very compelling narrative like these other races because it totally lacks one but is even like crazier is in a Nevada race where you have this one term senator there, Jackie Rosen, very, very just like low profile back venture freshman, like not well known. I don't think I've ever heard her give her a speech nationally, even though she's from like one of the most important states in the country.

I have like a friend who's like active in politics in Las Vegas and says she's basically an absentee senator, like doesn't do anything in the state. But she is clocking in probably the largest overperformance of any Democrat in the country right now. Well, Kamala is like tied in Nevada and the early voting doesn't look terribly great for Democrats there. She's been leading her race by 10

against the handpick Republican recruit. And it may be in no small part because the, I know Felix knows what I'm talking about. He has severe burn injuries that may be single-ended. I've talked about this. I've talked about this. They got a scary ghoul to run against him.

I talked about, I first wrote this up on an episode with Kath actually a few months ago that it's a sign of Republican wokeness. Yeah. When they make you look at a guy who got turned into a scary monster in the war. And Dave, we can pretend that your connection cut out while I'm saying this. I don't, you know, it's okay. There's no video component, am I? Yeah, Dave is giving a thumbs down to all of this.

Yeah, he's shaking. Yeah, I'm saluting the whole time in honor of the troops that are being offended by the segment, captain Sam Brown, Sam Brown. He was really good. When you remember when Kamala and her campaign was doing the weird thing that was like breathed sort of second life at the online liberalism and cause sort of a liberal counter counteroff-offensive. Sam Brown did this thing where he's like, oh, you're saying I look weird, huh?

And it's like, yeah, that's what Kamala was talking about. Kamala while running for president was getting up, like doing, doing rallies and speaking to like CNN and being like, this campaign is about how fucking gross the guy running for Senate in Nevada is Yeah, I'm looking at the name him. Let's kill him I'm looking at the numbers here and he was losing by six when he said that and then afterwards He started losing by ten. So people thought that was corny as fuck and they didn't fuck with it They said go home. You're just ingenuous. Why did they do that? He ran last time

against Adam Laxalt, who was just a total nonentity. The bastard king. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And he lost the primary, but he did pretty good. And the Republican strategy this time was just let's figure out the primaries ASAP so we don't have anyone wasting money in their opponent in the summer. So they just, they backed him even though there were probably some better known Nevadans that could have run for this. He also moved to the state pretty recently.

He ran for office. Who's better known than Marshall bill fans of the comedy program in living color will love who they got in Nevada. Yeah, well, it just it was this real sleepy race. They had a normal debate and everything, but they just she was so inoffensive and on the air with so much money so early. It's just, you're hearing about this race now because the early voting in Nevada, Democrats, sorry, Republicans just turned up more than they did four years

ago, which lots of reason for that. And Republicans just decided, okay, this is on the table now. The polls are wrong. He's down by seven, but we can win this with Trump voters turning out for our guy. So they just decided in the last week that this's down by seven, but we can win this with Trump voters turning out for our guy. So they just decided in the last week that this is winnable, but they kind of gave up right before that. Yeah, it's a very 2022 race where it's like pure persuasion for Democrats. Like the Democrat turnout isn't like amazing for them. They've lost a lot of ground in voter registration, but they're just winning. So like they're just doing so well with independents that like the race is kind of out of play.

It's a story with a lot of these races. With Adam Laxall, you know, my favorite bastard in all of politics. What would his last name be before he got legitimized? I think the last name for bastard. Well, that's if he got legitimized. Yeah. Like I mean, like a game of Thrones, a game of Thrones style. Style last name would be slots. No, he's not a real Nevada. It's not a no, it's not.

He's not a real Nevada. And he lived in Virginia in between a campaign. He would be Raytheon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Democrats have a narrow majority in the Senate. Come next week. I think they keep in control of the Senate. Is that what I'm hearing? No, probably not. They're not going to win as many seats as

they could have lost. But they're West Virginia is an automatic loss because the mansion didn't run there. And he would have lost anyways. And Montana they're like, they pulled kind of diesel at the start of the year, it's just totally fallen out of grasp for them. So like I said, they win all these swing states, which is actually like probably they're on track to do so. They win Ohio, which like they could, they're up by like one or two points there. It's like at the very end. This is around wind Vance and like Ryan's numbers totally collapsed. So if we're waiting for a Moreno surge, like we're kind of running out of time

for that, the polls would have already been showing that now. But if they win all those states, they're at 49 seats because they lost the Wisconsin race and they lost Susan Collins in 2020. So that cost them two states and Biden maybe Kamala's states. They'll need to pick up one. So you have Texas where Cruz is under running Trump, but Trump has had decent numbers in Texas. And like I think there was the New York Times poll that had Cruz under running Trump by six, but if he commonly got the same margin Biden got in 2020, that would be enough for Al Redd with a secular swing. There would be enough for him to win by half a point, but the poll also had Trump winning by 10. So like if Trump doesn't win by as much as that one poll

says, like if it's more of the like the mid single digits, Cruz could maybe in trouble, but the polling there has like not like we haven't had consistent leads for Al Red. There's also Florida where like it's technically kind of still polling around the margin of error. Rick Scott is underrunning Trump a little bit. That one maybe on paper could be their best shot, but the early voting in there looks horrific for them. So then that brings you to the Nebraska race where they actually could pick that off. And that, in that case, gave them the 50 seats, but Dan Osborne has not promised who he would

caucus with. So you could get a situation where Republicans have 50 seats, they have 49. Osborne is an independent, like he said on a Reddit AMA, that it'd be like George Norris from 100 years ago and just be a pure independent. And then I don't know who would be the majority. In that case, it's neither side would have a caucus majority in the chamber. Yeah, the Democrats have been investing more in Texas in part because otherwise they have to tell their donors not to win the Senate.

They won't say Montana is gone and they're putting in the money for it, but there is a chance that this is a Bill Mitchell election. There's a chance that Republicans get to like 53, 54 seats. Unlikely, but if that happens, I think that would change. If Trump wins with that Senate, then the question for Democrats is, okay, how do we resist at all? Because he can appoint whoever he wants. He can get anyone in the cabinet, he can get anyone on the bench, and we can't

actually win the Senate back maybe until 2028. So there is a democratic nightmare scenario that they've, they're doing pretty good job right now fending off. If everything, if everything, every poll was right today, yeah, he's, John's right, like they would, they would, they would, they would go down to 49 seats and that would be bad for, for Kamala Harris. She'd be the first Democratic president to take office without the Senate, I think in 140 years. Yeah, Cleveland was the last one. Yeah, yeah, but, but they would take that because then they can, they can make a run in North Carolina and they can make, they could,

they could try to win it back pretty soon. Yeah they could try to win Maine. Yeah. All right well let's get this gets to my my last question this is like one of our last shows before the election and I guess I always put it like this like over the last month on this show I've said look like it's this is a dead heat election but if gunned ahead I'm betting on who's gonna win the election I say I say Donald Trump is winning this election. And I base this not on anything other than just watching the game, feeling the vibes, just sort of trying to interpret the energy and the zeitgeist.

I think Trump is winning this election. So I guess my question is, what reasons do you what reasons is that wrong? Or like, are there reasons to believe that Kamala is is the more likely Victor on come next week? Yeah, well, I mean, I would still like say even with the polling as the way that it is. It's tough to judge because even right now, like despite everything, Kamala actually is still like does have the lead in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. Those are the only states she needs to win. Like she just wins those and then that's 270 and it's over. I think that like the kind of conceptual historical case for why she should win there is pretty strong. I don't think like they remember dies this easily.

Like we've gotten so far and people are so resistant to Trump. I can totally see reasons why he would win. I think that like Kamala has run, like has not addressed some of the main like questions that she needed to address with her campaign. I don't think she's a strong politician and she's, she's made that, she's made that pretty clear over the past couple of months, despite like how well she started, I don't think that she'd like the fact that she's only won two races against Republican in her career is really showing like at this point, she's

just not battle-tested in the way that a lot of other Democrats running this year are, but we like the states that she needs to win are ones that have voted pretty consistently for Democrats. The fundamentals that we've seen and like the way voters have voted so far, which like in a very polarized period, do point towards a modest, but probably decisive democratic advantage, especially among the voters that you would need to win the election. So just all like the signs that we see, like if this is a 50-50 race and it could land on either side, we see more stuff pointing towards one side, like in terms of the raw

numbers and how people have actually voted in special elections and in primary elections than we have before. And I think people are kind of internally pricing in a polling error in favor of Trump. I've written an article about that a couple of days ago. Like pollsters have changed a lot to fix that. We saw in 2022, like they were very, very susceptible to narratives that Republicans were gonna do well.

You saw even nonpartisan pollsters changing their numbers basically at a drop of a hat at the first sign of a pro-Republican narrative. So I'm not terribly confident the pollsters are really showing their whole deck here and being totally honest. I'm not confident that if this is a race where she does have a strong lead in a state, they may necessarily show that because they don't want to go out on a limb and get wrong like they did in 2020. So just all of those kind of fundamentals based signs do lead me in her direction. But like again, I'm not ever going to like say she actually ran a good campaign or would

be like my ideal candidate or that Trump doesn't lack certain strengths that other Republicans do lack. So I don't think that a Trump victory is incongruent with a larger analysis of American politics that says that conservatism is in a very weird and tough spot and hasn't done well in a long time. Yeah, that'd be it. It's just that we were talking about this before with the candidates doing worse than Trump down the ballot.

It would be, and they do have a week, there's this weird tendency in political journalism to just declare things over, I should say, people always wonder who's going to win like six months out. But stuff has moved in the final week. Like Nixon almost lost in 68 because of the final week's momentum. Comey lettered. I'm convinced kneecap Clinton in 16. I mean, she would have made blah mistakes, but I'm convinced that she would have, it would have just been a, oh, she almost blew it and the Democratic coalition has fallen apart story, but she might have went, she might have won. So just been a oh she almost blew it and the Democratic coalition has fallen apart story But she might have went she won by the one so yeah Trump being overconfident and cocky blowing it the final week there are the last gettable voters Democrats think are not the podcast guys

They're just Independents who are not happy with the economy, but when they think of Trump for four years are like on at that She done enough to convince them. So I think it's, yeah, again, I keep saying Bill Mitchell election. If it's just a polling error, like 16 and 20, the reason Democrats are so confident in 16, even though Hillary kept getting in, kept stepping on rates and falling down sewers every day for the final month, was just in 2004 and eight and 12, the polls were always wrong in the direction of Republicans and Obama outperformed every time and that stopped happening.

So that happened this time. Yeah, they're fine. If it's like 2020 they're screwed. And I do think she right now she's closing out the race better than Trump. And that might matter. That honestly might matter. Like it is seriously not. There are people and I met them in Wisconsin who were like, well,

I just need to make events so she can actually save Roe. If that's your issue. And I met one of these voters, then yeah, you're probably going to show up and vote for her. You're not going to vote. That's a pretty good question. She needs to talk about the filibuster and shit and how she's going to deal with that. That reminds me of something I saw during the town hall where Anderson Cooper was desperately trying to throw her a softball about the filibuster and also the Supreme court.

And it, she briefly sounded like she was, you know, uh, going to do something about both of them, but her answers on both those things ended with, and we're going to have a study group about that. Yes. That's what Biden did. He already, he did the commission on the Supreme Court. She learned from the best. Well, you know, I mean, like looking forward to next week, something doesn't seem like there's much to look forward to in the future. Say for this one thing that I'd like to talk about at the end of the show,

Josh and Felix, you have a new Chopper branded mini-series that's in the can and should be arriving shortly. I was wondering, I'm really looking forward to hearing what you guys will come up with. Could you just give us like a brief preview and overview of this new mini-series that you guys have been working on? So, this is something that we've been working on for a very long time. It started out under a kind of narrow purview. It was just going to be sort of a history of conservative media as we know it now, how it developed, the star-making process, how do you end up with the Steven Crowder.

I think it explicitly started because of that clip of Steven Crowder spanking Brian Callan. And we wanted to make a series that was like, how do you get there? But over the course of doing it, and I can't credit Josh and Spencer enough because really 98% of this is them, it became some more about conservative Inc. The sort of the founding and the creation and the sort of devolution of the modern conservative, the modern conservative movements, institutions, uh, media, there is a special focus on media, but it is, it is as much about the live leakification of the conservative movement. For people who obsessively follow this stuff, there's going to be a lot of things that you don't know.

But for people who tangentially follow this stuff, I think you'll be very interested by what's in here. Yeah. I think our elevator pitch, or our conceptual sentence for it was why the 2022 midterms and like Steven Crowder, like, like wife divorcing him come from the same thing. And it like follows a story of how like Republicans went from beating like, like advocates like against apartheid by with like just nothing but pictures of fetuses and $250,000 from the South African government to like losing to having the worst

midterm in 80 years with 8% inflation. And there's a lot of different characters, a lot of amazing characters along this way. A lot of people you do know, like Felix, there's a lot of amazing people that you don't know. And I'm really happy with how it's come out. I think the narrative leads extremely strong. It's like blowback, but for like every person

like who was associated with Roger Ailes and like women have to pretend like they are on a phone call when they were within five feet of them. Yeah, I was, when I was doing passes of the strips, it's, I don't know how long it's gonna be six episodes. Some of the episodes are going to run quite long. So if you have a, uh, cross country flight or you're in a custody hearing, this is a perfect thing to listen to. But you know, when I was doing passes of these for jokes, um, I, I laughed out

loud several times, which I never do. When I read something, I, I, I am very proud of what we have here. Yeah. I think everyone, you know, if you don't learn something, you're a fool. Exactly. That's the official motto of the series. Yeah. That's the name.

We're changing the name to that. It's the name of the mini series. Yeah. Don't learn something. You're a fool. Yeah. We actually don't have, I have, I I have a short list of titles for it. Yeah, I think we're still sticking with the one we came up with, but we can maybe shorten that.

That's the last thing we said we were going to figure out, and I guess we still are. Chris, do we have a release date for this project yet? Early December. But yeah, and do we have Chris we have a release date for this project yet early December we We've been saying December 1st, but we usually do mini-series on Wednesday. I don't know I have to look at the calendar, but it really Will work no matter the election result. That's what I'm saying It's very robust like Trump can win and this thing is still basic is like very solid of course like with Kamala winning It would be like very helpful, but it still works

Yeah, all right. Well, that's something to look forward to Of course, like with Kamala winning, it would be like very helpful, but it still works. Yeah. All right. Well, that's something to look forward to. We'll leave it there for today. I want to thank Josh and Dave for joining us on this, our final election roundup before next week. And we'll see you in LA on Monday. See you guys.

Our live show with episode one, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden. They will all be there. All the Joe Biden's will. On our live show with episode one, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, they will all be there. All the Joe Biden's will be in our live show. Maybe even the governor of Pennsylvania will be there. I've heard rumors, I've heard rumors Josh Imperial is gonna be making an appearance at our election eve live show. So you're not gonna-

He has a very cool new outfit. You're not gonna wanna miss it folks. All right, that does it for today's show. Once're not going to want to miss it, folks. All right. That does it for today's show. Once again, thanks to Josh and Dave for helping us break it all down for you guys. So next time, everybody. Bye bye. Thanks. Bye. Later. Yeah, welcome to the new American Century I wanna be just like my President

I wanna make more money than I can spend I wanna build more bombs than I can sit Somewhere I can even spell the name of Welcome to the new American Century