The Chris Cuomo Project - What The JD Vance Town Hall Reveals About a Potential Harris Victory

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Chris Cuomo reflects on his recent NewsNation town hall with JD Vance, unpacking what the conversation revealed about the potential for a Kamala Harris victory in 2024. Exploring voter frustrations, key issues that resonate across party lines, and the role of cultural and economic grievances, Cuomo dives into the insights from the town hall and examines how Harris could tap into these dynamics to shape her path to victory. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Support our sponsors: RadioActive Media  TEXT CHRIS TO 511511 OR ON THE WEB AT RADIOACTIVEMEDIA.COM. TEXT RATES MAY APPLY. Get Maine Lobster  Visit GetMaineLobster.com, and use promo code CUOMO at checkout for 15% off all orders store wide. Ground News  Go to http://groundnews.com/chris to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan.  Everyday Dose   Head over to everyday dose.com/chris for 25% off plus 5 free gifts with your first order. AG1 Try AG1 today and get their special offer of TEN, yes ten, free travel packs, AND a bottle of Vitamin D3K2 with your first purchase at drinkAG1.com/CCP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to The Chris Cuomo Project. I'm Chris Cuomo, of course, the News Nation Town Hall. We saw things in the Town Hall that revealed how Harris can win, and how Trump can win, and I wanted to process it with you together. Why so many were talking about it, why they were angry,

what it means for both of these campaigns and these precious final days. Greg Ott, my producer, watched, came up with his own questions, zoned things for me to process. So what do you say? Let's get after it. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Oracle. Oracle is looking ahead. AI is going to be the future. Sure, we don't know how. We don't know how much, but we know it's coming. Storming every industry. Billions are being put into preparing for what the unknown may hold. So buckle up. Problem is, what does AI require?

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Get main lobster.com. That will bring you closer together. The big takeaway from the town hall is that we haven't seen a race like this in at least 20 years, at least since the Kerry race in 2004. Interestingly, John Kerry, Senator of Massachusetts, Secretary of State later on in the Obama administration, would be one of only two people to win independent voters and lose the presidential election. And why? Well, Kerry's election was a national security election against George W. Bush after 9-11. Now, some of you who didn't live it would say,

well, okay, well, 9-11, I mean, everybody was all rah-rah. Of course Bush won. By that time, we knew we were in the wrong country and had gone there for the wrong reasons. There was no yellow cake. There were no weapons of mass destruction. They hadn't just been carted away. And yet Bush won. And it was a very interesting read on a very, very tight election, just as tight as this one. Now, this one may be tighter, and of course, it involves a different movement. Okay?

The movement at that time in the country was fear, okay, of terror, of terrorism. We are in another grievance-based election that is about fear of manufactured bogeymen. Kamala Harris isn't just running against Donald Trump. She's running against a movement. It's really tough for her. And it's always tough to beat a movement. And I think it cancels out the advantage of the incumbency. I have said, and I still believe this election is Donald Trump's to lose.

Why do I put it that way instead of saying that Trump's going to win? Well, one, I'm not a particular fan of Mr. Trump, and I don't know that the former president is qualified to lead this country. I think he has disqualified himself by his behavior and the way he carries himself. But, but, but that's not my choice to make.

It's your choice to make, right? As society, I get a vote also, but, and I believe in transparency with you guys. So I tell you where my head is. I think the movement behind him of grievance, of economic dissatisfaction, of cultural disruption is enough to beat Harris, really to beat any Democrat, except for it being led by Trump. If Nikki Haley were there, I think she would be cleaning Harris' clock. I don't even know that they would have switched out by it because I think they would have been getting beat so bad.

But we are where we are. And he is now trying to be delicate because they can lose this election. It's theirs to lose, but it can be lost by recklessness. And you can't double Trump. You can't do migrants are eating the dogs and eating the cats, childless cat ladies. That's why Vance backed away from those things. That's why he qualified them.

That's why he was nice Vance. Like he was at the debate. Why? Because the crazy of Trump is enough to blow it. And you don't want to magnify the crazy crazy even if the MAGA people wanted that out of you when they got you picked by Trump who picked you because of your fealty which is why you couldn't stop talking about how brilliant he is when he gave you a silly question about how brilliant he is. What else did I learn? We are so divided by fear-based toxic politics driven by parties.

And I believe that the Democrats are making a mistake going all in on the yeah but. Okay, grocery prices are not where you want them to be. Yeah, but Trump's a psycho asshole, fascist, potential Hitler, which is ironically what Vance once referred to him as before he needed him to win a primary in Ohio and become senator. Yeah, the Middle East wasn't happening, Ukraine wasn't happening.

Yeah, but Trump is a crazy fascist. That's why they're now pushing back on that. So the Democrats, the Republicans are pushing back and people are pushing back on Trump as Hitler. The truth is enough. The guy doesn't have to be a potential fascist or Hitler to be reckless, divisive, and really pose dangers to the cohesion of society. But that's what Democrats have chosen to do. And I think they're playing right into Trump's hands.

The town hall showed us that also. How? Reaction to it. Me doing the town hall was seen as some kind of act of treason. We're at a point now where you cannot be open to the other side. It is as if Trump were Hitler.

Hitler doesn't deserve fair hearing, no shit. No bigot does. Yeah, but Trump's a bigot. That's not what he says. In my experience, bigots tell you, oh, don't be naive, Chris. No, I'm telling you, I'm not being naive. Bigots tell you that they're bigots because they're deriving power from the prejudice. So, the Cuomo has changed. Cuomo has not changed.

The times have changed. Our needs have changed. Me getting into a fight and winning with JD Vance, which is very doable, does not move the needle towards reasonableness and disagreement with decency and us getting as addicted to fixing as we are to blaming for what's broken. That's what has changed. I have never stopped being a critic of Mr. Trump. I'm one of his most outspoken critics. But what we see is, and another thing that came out of the town hall is that all of the energy is towards just tearing down what you oppose and who you oppose. I am being accused of being racist by some unserious people, because I said Kamala Harris went from being someone you people don't like and never talked about to being black female

Jesus. All right, where am I coming from on that? Okay, here's where I'm coming from on it. One, you people isn't black people. I would never do that. I am an ally of the black cause in America. Okay, just as I am an ally of the Jewish cause in America. All right. I believe there is systemic inequality. I believe it is wrong to ignore it. I believe it is wrong not to address it. I think how we speak about people and each other matters. So the idea that I was saying, you people about blacks, it's not true. And by the way, blacks aren't the people

who motivated Kamala Harris's candidacy, party officials are, who believe that they couldn't pass over a black female and hue to their diversity by identity mandate. So my point was when Biden said he was gonna run again, which no one really thought he should, why didn't they say, no, you got Harris? Because they didn't have confidence in Harris.

And when it was Biden's on the down, Biden's on the down, how come people weren't talking about Harris? Because Harris wasn't popular with them. That's why. But now that she has to be their pick in their estimation and they completely, you know, didn't allow any kind of process within the party for that, which I think hurt Harris. Now they

can't say anything bad about her. And if you say anything critical of her, you're some kind of traitor and you're empowering Hitler. And that's what I'm getting hit with. But that's not true. Kamala Harris is not a godsend. Of course Trump isn't a godsend. But Kamala Harris isn't a godsend. She is not beyond criticism. What are you talking about? That is not how you win, okay, by trying to punish or censor or degrade anyone who questions what you're about. Democrats can win this election. It is not as easy as it is for Trump, in my opinion. I know Alan Lichtman, who's way better at this than I am. You know, I introduced to a lot of you guys, because I'm wrong. I think

he has his keys eight to five for Harris of the 13 keys, and you need seven going against you to lose. So he believes Harris is going to win, and he believes the incumbency helps. I don't So he believes Harris is going to win and he believes the incumbency helps. I don't in this particular election. But again, I'm open to being wrong. But I don't believe that I'm wrong, not about the outcome of the election. And frankly, that doesn't matter as much to me as the rest of you value it. Why? Because I don't think Kamala Harris is a radical lefty commie who is going to try to erase gender and force my daughter to consider changing her genitals. And I don't believe Donald Trump is a desperate and waiting who has a copy of Mein Kampf under his pillow and wants to get rid of the Constitution and create Trump land.

I don't believe either of these bogeymen that the parties are pushing on you. And I am equally cynical, but in a different way, which is I don't think who's the president matters all that much. Even if you have both houses of Congress and the White House, I just don't know how much you get done in the current atmosphere of opposition. And I don't know that the Republicans are going to have all three. So I don't know that there's the need for that kind of requisite check and balance that we have,

where as a country, we seem to prefer one party not having all three things going, or let's just say two, Congress and the presidency, or all three, the House, the Senate, and the presidency, and the Supreme Court, by the way. So I understand why people don't want that, and I understand why that would create an exigency to have Kamala Harris be president. And that could also be motivation,

especially with what I saw as another takeaway from the town hall, which is JD Vance not understanding the issue of reproductive rights in this election. He does not get it. It is not just about abortion, good, bad. That is a single medical procedure. It is about us in our lifetime seeing the first class of American citizens to have a right taken away from them. And that happens to be the biggest part of the American population, women. And you can say, no, it didn't take the right, they gave it to the states. Yeah,

to give it to the states, you had to take it away from it being the federal standard. That is a taking. And whether you like my description or not, it is clearly how the American public sees it, especially women. And he didn't see that. Abortion, we got to make it easier to have different alternatives. Women have to know that they have choices. Well, first of all, Republicans are in no hurry to pay for contraception and to allow it to people because it's an extension of the evangelical extreme Christian ethos and belief system.

So I think he's got trouble with his own people on that one. But he's also missing the issue. It's a rights issue. It is a rights issue. And that came out of the town hall also. So what I saw was to give you a quick summary on it. Nice Vance is a nod to the idea that they can screw this up and that the grievance movement is very strong, that's powering Trump, but he can lose it by coming off as extreme.

And that's why you got Nice Vance. That there is a path to victory here for Trump that is based on grievance and that enragement being misplayed by Democrats that are just keeping it to Trump is terrible because people care more about the conditions than they do his character. People care more about themselves than they do about him. And Democrats are misreading that, but there is also an opportunity in that. Democrats can win this race because people want things done about what's going on. And what Trump really is is a disruptor.

What Trump really is is a middle finger. That's why he can have concepts of a plan, and Harris has to have detailed plans. I know it's a higher bar. I know it's a different standard of scrutiny. I think it's unfair that Harris gets accused of word salad and people just shrug their shoulders about how Trump lies all the time. But that's how it is.

Why is it that way? Because of a grievance movement. I think in part because she's a black female. And I think in part because Democrats are more scrutinizing of their own, although that's a qualified judgment because they're being very heavy handed in dismissing and censoring ideas that they don't like and that don't hew to their own outcome. I was also very surprised at how sticky the town hall was on social media.

There were almost two million people watching live, and those are big numbers for News Nation. I think the debate that we did in that town hall really put News Nation on the map for a lot of people. And I think that's a good thing. Regardless of whether you want to see me live or die, we need a really aggressively independent seeking reasonable beyond left right media outlet. And News Nation really is that. So those are my basic takeaways.

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Chris, this is Greg, the producer, jumping in. I wanted to run a quick couple questions by you. I watched the whole thing and I took some notes. I want to run a quick couple of questions by you. I watched the whole thing and I took some notes. I want to jump on what you just said a moment ago about abortion and Vance's policy stuff and holding Harris to a different standard when it comes to rolling out policies and explaining them in a format like this. When he says over and over again is in the abortion question you asked him, choose life, choose life, choose life. He sounded like he was a member of Wham and he just kept going back to that same phrase over and over again is in the abortion question you asked him, choose life, choose life, choose life.

He sounded like he was a member of WAM, and he just kept going back to that same phrase over and over again, and talking about how, families, young families can't really afford, or an issue that we're having right now, a lot of younger people is they can't afford to have a family. And this is something that affects me directly

for the first time in any election, because as you know, as some of your audience knows, I have a very nice little five-month-old daughter. And that question on like, oh, we want to take care of people if they have a child, we want to make it easier to have a child, goes back to the question he had about five minutes into this thing where he talked about his childcare plan.

And in the Republican policy document, you did a whole video laying out like the priorities months ago. Please check it out on YouTube channel of you going over Trump's list of priorities for the J-D-O-D. It is one of, I did a, the only thing he mentions, the word child in his thing only comes up about

not indoctrinating children on trans issues and things like that. Child care does not come up at all once. What Vance said in talking about childcare is you want to have more options beyond like what the state provides right now, as in we wanna make it easier for your grandparents to help out or for a church to help out.

And I, again, this is just from my personal point of view, I know I'm going long here, but like I live in New York, my family lives in Michigan. They would love to babysit the kid all the time, I get it. I also don't go to church, so this policy that he's setting up that is also not a policy even laid out in the GOP thing, I don't even know how that would affect a guy like me, because from what he was explaining, there is no,

they're not offering literally anything that would help somebody directly who has a need for child care right now, who's paying up the ass for it. So I'm bringing this up to you because he throws a lot of stuff out there and yet there's almost nothing to latch onto. Well what do you do when you're against expanding government services but you want to appease a need? You pay at lip service.

It's hard to raise a kid. It's expensive. It's a freaky society. It's hard in a lot of ways that go beyond even the financial aspect of it. But he doesn't want to increase government spending, at least theoretically. In a perverse way, in a weird way, MAGA is the only populist movement I've ever examined that caters to the interests of the elite. It is the only populist movement that doesn't want to do stuff for the population, right?

And then he said something that I thought was ambitious and interesting, which is, yeah, we should force companies to give more paid leave. Right. Now, I don't know how you force corporations to do anything, although I believe that that's a little idealistic because in truth, they force government to do all kinds of things for them. So I don't know why there can't be a different quid pro quo. And I think that a lot of corporations fall down. I think the Greggs of the society

should be able to stay home for a period with a newborn. Yes, I know, I raised three kids or I watched my wife do it. And yes, early on, as big as my pecs are, my kid wasn't attached to them. I get it. But the more parents, the better. The more hands, the better. It's something a lot of other societies do and we don't. We don't take care of the mothers and their ability. We don't take care of the fathers and their ability. I was interested in what he had to say about it, but it doesn't make a lot of sense given from

the disposition of what Trump's about, which is less regulation, which is leading corporations alone, which is rewarding them for doing what they can for the top end of their management. It is a double standard because they are just about being pissed off. Harris is the incumbent,

so she is to blame for what they're pissed off about, and she has the heavy lift of proving to people she can do something about it. Whereas Trump just has to let them know that he wants to destroy the same shit that they do. He's pissed about the same things that they are, even if they don't affect them the same way. I believe there is more pressure on her to have to

put out plans as a result of that. You can say that's not fair, but that's the state of play. She's very much in this race. So obviously, there is an appetite for it. People do want it, and they are willing to entertain Kamala Harris as a president for three reasons. One is the needs are great in society.

The needs are great and people are upset and want government to do something about it. Two, Trump is seen as an asshole by a lot of people. By the way, that's being mild about it. It's not just that they see him as an asshole. It's that they think that he wants to do bad things. And the third reason is that there is a desire, just as there is a movement of grievance, there's a desire to be done with the movement of grievance.

There is a counter energy in this society to maga. Well, you know, I've answered. Who's your dog, by the way? We just saw your dog in print. Eliza. Eliza, hello, Eliza. It is nearing their time to eat. So she doesn't really want to come up here.

She wants to be fed. So and now that she did that because she's the leader. So now here's the big guy. Got the black guy, got the yellow guy, and I got Eliza. This is the oldest one is Alabama. You'll see his tail. Once she lets them know it's okay to complain, they start circling.

They're all about the food, just like their daddy. Well, speaking, it's really quick, speaking of dogs eating, you did mention this to JD Vance at the end of the town hall, you got back to the comments he made about, you know, immigrants allegedly and falsely eating animals. And he made a really interesting pivot, I thought, because he repeated that same line he said over and over

and he was like, I just keep hearing this from my constituents, I mean, people keep telling me, which is a very Trump thing. It's like, people keep saying, it's like, being a critical thinker, he was repeating it because he likes it. And he didn't investigate the claim because he liked the claim, okay? Being a critical thinker is not...

Some people say it's raining outside, other people say it isn't. So you say both. You go look out the window. And he didn't want to look out the window. He didn't want to vet the claim. And he then used grievance, which is one of the things they're pissed at is me, right? The media. So he blamed it on us. We're the ones who proved it wasn't true, which is not easy to do, by the way. It's not easy to disprove something.

So the nonexistence of a fact, as we say. So he was just playing that grievance game. Well, why didn't you say it's him? It's not about me. It's a town hall. I got to tell you, Trump people, they actually booed me in the room, by the way, which is rare at these things.

But they can boo me all they want. The idea that Trump isn't known for being divisive is caca-pupu. As I think they say in Farsi is kaka-pupu, okay? As I think they say in Farsi, kaka-pupu. So they can boo me, that's fine. And the Democrats can think that I'm pro-Trump or ignoring a Nazi by giving an audience to JD Vance. But one thing I thought he was absolutely right about,

it's not his idea, but he is right to share it. You cannot simply censor what you oppose in America. You've got to allow opportunity for the best ideas to win. By the way, you have emboldened the MAGA crowd by saying that they shouldn't be heard. You have hurt yourself by doing that. Let them be heard.

Expose bad ideas and beat them with better ideas. Same point I had. Will you shut up? Same point I had about don't prosecute Trump to death. Beat him at the polls with better ideas. Don't look for ways to keep prosecuting him. Beat him, prosecute the case against him in the court of public opinion and beat him.

If I can jump on that, I'd actually like to get your take on your role in facilitating this kind of stuff because you've put out videos before about, and again, you can find this elsewhere on the YouTube channel or your podcast feed about how you wish that debates didn't have moderators. Just let two people go at it and let the audience decide.

I watched Kamala Harris's town hall the other night with Anderson Cooper. It really is a town hall. It is the questions from the website formerly known as Twitter plus the audience members in Michigan. In my opinion, I saw you as you are the conduit of these people, and then you would redirect a question if you want us more clarity or take a different angle after you answered it.

What do you say to people who might have wanted more, I don't know, back checking or pushback or whatever? I would love it. I would love to do an interview with JD Vance with an audience there and reverse the dynamic. I love town halls. I was very enthusiastic about them when CNN reintroduced them into the political process wholesale. I thought that was a brilliant move by CNN. And even though it is a frustrating format for me, it's not a flex for me. I think they're really helpful to the audience and that's the goal.

But I would also like to have the reverse of that dynamic, which is we have an audience there, we do it live, and it's just me and you, and Mano Amo, and we then go to the audience every once in a while for their take on an exchange, a question, or an answer. I would love to do that also. That would be fun. So I would be fine to do that, but you will not find people wanting to do that the same way as

they want to do town halls. One of the reasons we reintroduced the town halls at CNN is because candidates are much more interested in talking to people and hearing their questions than the media. Now, I also think, look, there are all levels of bias involved in preference, right? You did not see Anderson Cooper get attacked for having Kamala Harris on the stage the way I was for having JD Vance. You did not see Anderson Cooper criticized for what he did in fact check about her the way I was criticized for not fact checking about him. Why? Because there was the preference pool there is pro Harris and they were okay with what Anderson was doing. And then what happens? Reaction formation. So then on social media, the land of the magnified minority, all of a sudden, Harris is

getting killed for having sucked in the town hall. That hasn't happened with Vance yet. Frankly, I think that he was too good in terms of answering the questions and sticking to his knitting in terms of what their positions are, what his positions are, to get a whole lot of criticism. Now, you cannot like his answers. There are a lot of them that I could totally understand

wanting to go the opposite way of. But he answered the questions. Just off of that, there was one, I bolded this in my little note list. It was slippery. Somebody asked him like a second time how he would lead the country if Trump were out of the picture or something.

And he went on this thing about how we're led by these bureaucrats that have been around for 30 or 40 years and went on this tear about how NASA went to the moon back in the day, 40 years ago, we haven't been to the moon in 40 years. And it's like, what are you talking, we're going to the moon, there are plans. This Artemis program is literally in place right now to send people to the moon in like two years. Like,

it's one of these things where it's like, sounds good on paper, but it's not true. Like this, oh, the imagination's gone. We're never going back to the moon. We are going back to the moon. These people are, they're simulating this out in the desert right now. You are right, but there is a but. We have not been as ambitious with space missions as we were with the moon launch, the moonshot. That's why we have that expression, the moonshot. But there's a reason for that. The federal government, and certainly the Republicans, ran away from NASA and NASA funding. And they started to see it as, you know, too far-fetched, too forward-thinking, too long-range

thinking to finance. So I get the rhetorical point, you know, that's politics. But he's also not encouraging anything ambitious. He didn't even, you know, big ideas. What big idea do they have? Build a wall, the roundup, and what my, on the list of regrets? I would have loved to have talked to him more

about immigration in terms of the solutions. How are they gonna round up 14 million people, 25 million people, whatever his number is, keeps going up. Most estimates I see are 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, somewhere in there. I think he said 25 at one point yesterday, maybe I'm wrong. But how are you going to do it? Where are you going to put them?

I don't get how this becomes anything other than what we're seeing in China with the Uighurs, which oddly all the pro-Palestinian people don't seem to have any problem with. You got a million Uighurs, Muslim ethnic minorities in internment camps in China. Is that what we're gonna do?

Those are like re-education camps with like video monitoring and all that stuff. It's really an ugly situation. I mean, I think that that's really a conversation to have. Again, sounds good. Let's get them all and kick them out. They didn't come in the right way. Okay, fine. That appeals to

everybody's basic reflex about law and order. You're trespassing, you got to go. Maybe you can come back, but you got to go. I think that's a really simplistic view of the situation. I also think it's incredibly impractical. I also think it would be very, very deleterious to our economy and the social fabric of a lot of communities. And you would destroy a lot of families also.

So he's pro family, just not pro those families. Before we wrap this up, I one thing I want to talk about is the actual behind-the-scenes-ish stuff of how you actually got Mr. Trump to call in to this town hall, because that was kind of a surprise that he actually took part in it. Because if you listen, again, if you listen to the top of this podcast,

our YouTube audience, our podcast audience, you've been very clear, you're not going to vote for Mr. Trump, or at least you're not a giant fan of Mr. Trump, the way he conducts himself. The audience seems very split on this. Maybe they just don't listen to the full episodes, but you've been quite clear about this, at least in the videos we've been putting out.

But is this part of you calling him after the assassination attempt to tell him, I'm sorry for what your family is going through. Like, have you repaired your relationship with him, or is he just more interested in getting on News Nation? Because for a long time, he said, you know, they're never gonna come out. Then I saw he did an interview with News Nation,

and I do advance to town hall, and he calls in. I'm just curious as to how your relationship and News Nation's relationship with Trump and Vance has evolved over the past several months. I don't have a relationship. I don't hate anyone. I don't believe in it. It's a concept. I didn't say, did I say you hate anyone?

No, no, but I'm often, people will say you're a Trump hater. Yeah. And even as hyperbole, it is a really ugly thing. And we are way too susceptible to it. So I don't hate Trump. And as I said earlier, I don't believe he is a Hitler wannabe, okay? But that's also a really pathetically low bar

for being a leader of the United States. I have not repaired the relationship. He weaponized me as an enemy of the state. It compromised my kids, it compromised my wife, it made us have to move. He caused me trouble that was unfair and unnecessary. And he knew it was happening. So that's it for me. And on top of it, by the way, in me, in any fair analysis, the guy is beneath the standard of what we should have as leadership in the United States. Well, so is Harris. That's what elections are for then. Okay? That's how you feel. That's what elections are for. Vote for Trump. Okay? I never say, don't vote

for Trump. Okay? That's not my job to tell people who to vote for or not. I do believe it is now part of my job, unlike the LA Times and the Washington Post, both outlets I respect very greatly. I don't think it's the time to not endorse candidates anymore because the suggestion in that is that people will therefore think you're fair. I don't think that's what the net effect of that is. I think that you're just taking

what could be useful perspective out of the process and people are going to still think you're unfair. That would be my feeling about that. He called into the town hall last night because I had the idea. He called into the town hall because I had the idea and I asked him to. Look, people can think I suck or I'm stupid or I'm great and I'm gory, whatever it is, it's all wrong. But I do have pretty significant reach.

I'm pretty much two phone calls away from anybody. I may not get the answer that I want, but I've been doing this a long time. I know a lot of people and I can reach out and get in contact. I asked the campaign and they liked the idea. That's how it happened. I just thought it was so funny that the things he chose to say in this time with you and with JD fans and his nation is the same. He called in and goes, how brilliant is Donald J. Trump?

And then how brilliant is Kamala? It's like, I feel like what he said was effectively just like the equivalent of a yard sign. You know what I mean? Like, how great am I? How bad is she? It's like, that's, I mean, in effect, that's essentially his entire message distilled

in some ways, but I thought that was so interesting that he takes this opportunity and that is effectively all that he said. I agree that that's interesting. I also think that that is a good instruction as to why the Democrats should be very careful about playing the same game, because I don't think you win that game. And it's not because Trump has a better case that Harris is a worse person than he is. I don't think that that is a good case that Harris is a worse person than he is. I don't think that that is a good case for Trump at all.

Okay. But I don't think that a campaign that is being primarily motivated by grievance, I think that is the Trump campaign. I think that is his movement. I don't think it's got the same matched energy on Harris's side and who she's trying to create as a coalition of the willing to make things better. I also think you got a really good instruction in Trump's demeanor.

He said to JD Vance in the town hall, how brilliant is Kamala? As he was getting ready to answer, he said, don't say it, don't say it, we're doing so well. That is a very interesting tone from Mr. Trump. And as he was getting ready to answer, he said, don't say it, don't say it. We're doing so well. That is a very interesting tone from Mr. Trump of let's not mess it up. That's not who he was a month ago. That's not who he was in 2016.

Right? He was death by a thousand cuts. That's how he usually is. He is gratuitously negative. He is gratuitously divisive. And's how he usually is. He is gratuitously negative. He is gratuitously divisive. And I thought that was interesting. I know it was a joke, but sometimes, you know,

in levity, you get truth. The polls right now, CNN poll 47, 47, New York Times poll 48, 48. It is as big of a coin flip as it could possibly be. What, what's a quick take on the state of play and how you see the shaking out if, if you can even make a prediction? This is where a two party binary battle to the bottom gets you. Over time, these parties have surrendered to which is worse. And that is fundamentally fear-based toxic division.

And that's why we're split. Now, do I believe the polls? No, I don't. Why? Because I think it's too hard to sample people now to get them to really get a feel. I do believe it is Trump's race to lose because I believe the dominant ethos is grievance. And the Democrats are trying to match that by making a grievance about him as a person. And I don't think people care as much about him as they do about themselves and their lives. And I don't mean that as a criticism of us. I mean, that's just human nature. I care more about me than I do about the person who's running

for office, right? It's about what they can do for me and what I can do for them with my vote. So I think that it is his election to lose. And from now until election day, all that really matters is not what is said, but it is what is done. Who's got the better ground operation that gets people to the polls and gets them to request and fill out and send in absentee ballots and allows them to exercise their franchise where they can by mail and by early voting? Who does that better likely wins this election. If you think if you think it isn't totally going to be tied up like that, do you think

we're on track for like another polling error like we were a few years back? Like, like the pollsters are missing something completely like obviously it's Trump, obviously it's Harris. Do you think we're just like, because nobody wants to answer the phone, nobody wants to respond to these text messages, everybody's shut on door. Do you think we're just on track to be flying completely blind here? I don't know. I think that, look, I would love for that to be true because I would love for it to be completely definitive and over on Tuesday, but it won't be.

We already know that certain states aren't going to give their results that night. So time is your enemy in these things. It's not like haste makes waste. You know what I mean? You know that expression? It's not like, oh yeah, let's give them time so they can count it all. The time fuels the misgivings.

I mean, look at all the lawsuits that the Republicans have filed already. There's like 140 lawsuits or something. They keep getting thrown out also, by the way. But it just lets you see what is to come. Look, I don't think it's a stretch that it's a divided society. It's just such an interesting campaign to cover because again, not in 20 years have I seen one that I

can totally understand going either way. I would have been shocked if Trump had beaten Biden. I would have been shocked. We were so banged up by the pandemic, people were so pissed at him, he was so incompetent. We were so exhausted by his noise. I was not surprised and was one of the people who saw it early on,

that something was happening in this country that Hillary Clinton was seen as the enemy of. Barack Obama was clearly going to clean the clock of both people he was running against because there was a movement in the country to make history, to do something different, to show some manifestation of evolving progress. Now, that also I believe brought us Trump as a function of reaction formation, and white fright as a new boogeyman that we have to deal with in society.

But I will understand either outcome here. Do I think they're equal propositions for the country? No, there's absolutely a choice here. Do I think that it matters that much? I personally don't. And I'm fine with you disagreeing with me. Just don't hate me because of it. Don't say I should lose my job or I shouldn't be able to say that. Just have better ideas and maybe you'll change my mind because unlike the rest of you, and unlike what we're seeing in our reactions on social media, I don't see change as weakness when it comes to ideas.

My values, my principles are what they are, but I'm also incredibly flawed. I fuck up all the time. I make mistakes. I make intentional mistakes. I'm human, right? I do all of these things. So I would absolutely change my belief and my inclinations on things based on new information and different perspective.

You should be the same way. And a big takeaway from the town hall was that one, you know, there's nations on the map and we are in a very bad place with being open to what we oppose. Well, thank you for, I know this is a long day for you. You finished all the stuff yesterday. You flew in from Detroit, you drove in from the airport. All these travel, I know what a travel day like that is and it can be easy for you.

So thank you on behalf of the audience for sharing all this stuff with us. At the back end of a travel day before you get gear up to shoot your episode tonight. It was good to be back in Detroit. Parts of it have come a very long way. Did you see the David Whitney building? Yeah.

And look, Greetown and some downtown areas are very energetic. Greetown casino. I probably screwed up and I should have paid more attention to having you come Greg. So because you know that's Greg's home state. Yes, I could have shown you the people mover. No, I was so I was so rushed and busy. It wouldn't have been that it would have been that you could have created content from there.

That would have made sense because it's your place. I screwed up that opportunity. I actually I actually was texting my mom to see if she wanted to go to your town hall. But she was too late for her to drive to Detroit. She didn't want to deal with the traffic. Her eyes are bad. They have a ways to go. Democrats, and Greg knows this, but for you at home,

Detroit is a top 30 population city. It's about the size of Boston. It's like 600 something thousand people. You know, in the 50s, it was a top five city in the country. So, you know, it's had a fall, the Motor City, and it is rebounding in ways that go beyond Shinola watches. And watches. And it's interesting to see Democrats win 93, 95, 98% of the vote in Detroit. Why? It is largely socioeconomic minority and people who need support as working class and need government services. And that has been the Democrat domain. It will be interesting to see what percentage of the vote they get this time. I don't know if Biden got 93, 95 percent, but a lot of people there were telling me that their pocketbook was better under Trump.

And that was the end of their analysis, that there is grievance. And you say, yeah, but it was the pandemic. And he started at the pandemic, and he was what helped tank the economy, you know. And we're in recovery mode, and we're doing better than a lot of other countries are. You factor in any of that in?

They're like, nope. What I'm factoring in is, this is how much it takes me to fill the tank. any of that in there like, nope. What I'm factoring in is, is how much it takes me to fill the tank. This is how much the hamburger is. This is how much the rent is. And it's all too much. And that is, that's town hall is part of the cure. Conversation is the cure. Disagreement is fine. How we disagree matters.

More opportunities to have people who want to lead us answer questions so that you can weigh those answers. And not histrionics, not a food fight, not gotchas and hot takes, but thoughtful conversation is the cure to the division. And the town hall revealed a lot about Vance's demeanor, his expectations, what he's selling, and what the response to it is going to be, and what the response to even allowing the conversation is going to be. It was a real window, real Rorschach test really for the American electorate right now.

So I appreciate you checking it out. I appreciate you processing the experience with me here on the Chris Cuomo project. If you have more questions for me about it, hit me up on the Manect app and I can answer them for you and we can do videos like this if you want. And if you love this, but man, it goes a lot quicker without the ads, subscribe to the Substack. You get it ad free, it's only five bucks a month, and we use the money to help people get treated for long COVID. And on the Substack, you get exclusive information about me and my life

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