Why Does The 2024 Election Feel So Fake? - Krystal Ball

do you think that stories have any real impact on voter opinion anymore or are we just meming our way through a pantomine campaign now I mean of course of course they do um but I think we have a sort of meta story that has set in where the central divide in politics in this meta story is how you feel about the person of Donald Trump it's part of what I think is one of the worst things about the Trump era frankly is that all of the you know interesting policy an important policy discussion sort of get subsumed into how do you feel about this one individual and if you don't like him which I don't like him then you end up on the side of like Liz Cheney who I find basically abhorent in all ways in terms of her political views and if you do like him then you know you end up on the other side of that equation and um that has made it so that it's very difficult to do anything but discuss this person every campaign is run on you know what he's going to do and who he is and how you feel about him and I think it's been very difficult for any other story outside of that to breakr and certainly we've seen I mean Jesus how much has happened in just a short period of time where you have Biden drop on of the ray now that did move the needle right the polls for Kam are certainly significantly better than they were for Joe Biden the fact that he was like manifestly declining before our eyes and there was no way this man was going to be able to survive four more years that did have an impact um but after that you know we've had a debate we've had multiple assassination attempts on Trump we had a vice presidential debate we've had all kinds of wide wild comments out on the campaign Trail and basically the polls don't really move they may in in One Direction or the other direction by one point that's still within the margin of error of these polls anyway so you don't even really know if that's actual movement um and I think until we break out of this sort of meta story that we're all Rec over and over again then yeah I think these other stories are going to be less impactful that was the point that I was getting at this like structurally swapping out Joe Biden for Kamala Harris was something something actually happened I'm aware that something actually happened when you get shot in the ear as well but it doesn't nothing happened with regards to politics it's just more stories and that's why it just increasingly feels like a pantomim I was thinking about this the other day you may actually even know these numbers but if you think about about around about 50% of Americans are registered to vote I think is that right or around about 50% do do vote is um and then okay so chop it in half and then from that 150 how many of those are actually going to go and vote from whatever's left how many of those are undecided and from those how many of those live in the counties in the states that actually matter to do this thing when you break it down I need Nate silver to do this for me when you do that you there is it would surprise me if that number's bigger than 5 million like that would be like a massive amount of people when you think it's only maybe three or four states or whatever that really matter and then within that there's the counties and all the rest of it so you're talking about this entire thing all of this the dominating the news all of the the podcast this conversation we're having right now being maybe maybe on the low end it could be for like one and a half million people or maybe less maybe it could be hundreds of thousands of people less than a million people I think it is less than a million people because you think about [ __ ] insane well and that is the idiocy of the American political system because why should it be that a voter in Bucks County Pennsylvania matters more than a voter in New York City right that's stupid that is nonsensical and yet it's just what we're you know it's what we're used to with the electoral college system but that's effective what what we're looking at you're looking at a few hundred thousand maybe voters in a couple key States who are largely not particularly politically tuned in and what their whims are going to be over the next couple of weeks and we're talking about billions of dollars being spent on this I would love to know someone there's someone really smart and good at Stats that's listening um what that breaks down to from a campaign expenditure perspective from both parties both both parties are trying to get them right so you need to look at what they're both spending and yeah it's like and you could probably retire every voter plus their entire family plus the next three generations of them at like an upper class level wage or whatever for this amount of money yeah no that's exactly right and I also just think that there's something you know rotten at the core of a democracy where voters in one state matter and voters in another don't and you know uh for the past several Cycles Republicans have an have had an edge in the Electoral College um meaning that Democrats have to win the popular vote by a few points in order to also win the electoral college vote Hillary Clinton famously wins the popular vote loses electoral college does not become president of the United States well there's a lot of evidence that suggests that um Trump is making up a lot of ground in a state like Florida that at this point is no longer a swing state so you know those voters that are added to his column don't really matter he's also closing the Gap with Democrats in the state of New York again those voters don't really matter and so that popular vote Electoral College vote diff differential between Democrats and Republicans may actually be closing but it just seems crazy to me when you think about like well why doesn't it matter that a Florida a voter is switching uh who they're going to vote for why is this not consequential in terms of our our overall politics and you know overwhelmingly Americans feel the same way they're like this electoral college thing is really stupid why don't we just do the popular vote because then you would have to actually appeal to voters across the entire country but you know it also points to something else Chris which is that I have a lot more I think humility this year coming into whatever the hell is going to happen on election day because first of all I've been burned several times at this point by thinking that the polls understate this candidate or overstate this candidate or everybody says in 2022 it's going to be a red wave and the polls show it and people hate the economy and then like that doesn't materialize of course Trump wildly underestimated in 2020 2016 I know I am not reflective of that voter that isn't that politically engaged who was going to decide the election in basically two weeks time like I know that and so I just have to be comfortable with the fact that I really have no idea what's going to happen I can look at these polls they tell me it's really close that's the best data that I have and other than that could just tell you what I think about the issues and that's that because anyone who's out there saying like oh I'm certain KLA is gonna win I'm certain Trump's gonna win whatever no you're not there's no way you can know that because the polls have been off in all kinds of directions and would only take a tiny Miss in either direction for it to be a landslide for KLA or a landslide for Trump that's where are yeah the not only have the polls been off but this time almost all of them are saying that it's 50/50 Nate was on the show too I'm aware everything moves and blah blah Nate was on the show like two two and a half weeks ago he's like it's it's an actual Co TOS which he said for him is the most acceptable outcome going into it um because it means that he's got equal chances he's like it was 5050 I said it was 5050 so whoever wins no one can be like you told us ex all the poers have got to get out of jail free card I was thinking about this earlier on how different do you think the political landscape would be if Row versus Wade hadn't been repealed you know I have to say that um you know I'm personally pro-choice it's an important issue for me I think you know for for me and many other millions of Americans women especially but men too I think they were pretty stunned by the idea that this right that they and their moms and grandmas had taken for granted had been rolled back but I really under underestimated how much it would matter in the American political context and um we have my entire life as a country been split 50-50 on the question of abortion like almost exactly and whichever party at that time feels like they're taking the more extreme position they were the ones that would you know be on the losing side of the abortion issue it's not a 50-50 issue anymore there's a very clear pro-choice majority in the country you can tell Republicans very wary of this you know Donald Trump changing his position and just making mess of what his stance is on the issue and um I certainly think it was determinative in 2022 in terms of they're not being that Red Wave election you know Democrats um win the Senate they come very close actually to winning the house um and it remains to be seen whether it still has that level of force in 2024 but I also think it wasn't just abortion alone it was also tied in with this sense from voters that like this party's got some pretty wild ideas like a lot of the candidates that were nominated by the Republican party last time around and this time around by the way you know they denied the last election results of course Donald Trump and JD van continue to deny the last election results and there was just the sense between that and the Fringe views on abortion that this is a party that they're a little bit wild they're a little bit out there and I think that was a big part of it too of course this time around you see like the mark Robinson you know situation down in North Carolina I have you followed that at all no what's up okay so only in America um so this is the lieutenant governor in North Carolina he's running now to be the governor of North Carolina he's the Republican nominee when he was nominated already there were a lot of really we'll just say controversial statements of his on the record including things that I think can accurately be characteriz as Holocaust denial Etc well now it's come out that in a uh porn chat room that he was a regular visitor of he described himself as a black Nazi said that he would actually like to own slaves himself if it was possible um and said you know use like absolute slurs against Martin Luther King Jr and so that's an extreme example but um that is the type of character who you know when it starts to take hold that that's like the image of the party that's a big problem for them and abortion like I said ties into that sort of like sense of extremism that I think is a problem for Republicans especially um especially down ballot Trump can get away with things that I think other Republicans can't and that's part of why you know he's outperforming every single other Republican Senate candidate in the country save for Larry Hogan who's running in in the state of Maryland he can get away with a lot of things that others can't but I think maybe even Trump if he out and out came you know if he came out and and actually said I'm a Nazi that might littleit a political problem for him too well look you don't know you don't know who the other respondents in a pawn chat room are that might be right on the right in the middle of the Zeitgeist of whatever they're talking about um yeah there's definitely well I mean this was what we saw when uh the hot swap summer happened was everything with Vibes we don't really care about your sort of political proposals we don't need to see a budget it's just you know brat summer and everyone's cool and it's chill and look at the merch yeah exactly and I think um definitely the Republicans at the moment are the fun party and like they just don't seem to be as they're not as viby and if you do get pulled up on Vibes like that which is a it's a sentiment it's a sense it's kind of a tone and a tenor of what most people are saying that isn't to do with the hard issues it's just it's just the way that they present themselves and if you've got like Marjorie Taylor green on one side and you've got this guy in a pawn chat room talking about this other stuff like it's just a sense it's a sense of how things are and rather than people being able to point to any one particular thing that occurred it gives them this it's what brand is right it's all of the intangibles about how do you think about this party at large like what's the blood that runs through its veins as opposed to the sort of skeletal structure that that suspends it so I think I would have agreed with your assessment that the Democrats were feeling more like the fun party um certainly you know early after KLA gets in and there's all this enthusi you know Democrats were like on a march to November when it was Joe Biden because they weren't stupid they were looking like oh this is going to be bad and it was going to be bad if that man even made it to election I mean he anyway we'll just we'll just put that to the side but you know there's all this enthusiasm they're excited they're out on the trail like they're you know making jokes about JD Vance on a couch and like meming on Tik Tock and all this stuff and and coupling with that she put out some really substantive policy proposals that are extremely popular um you know taking steps especially with regard to prices which Americans say and understandably so is their their number one issue like we we can't afford groceries we can't afford housing we can't afford all kinds of things and she came up with a very concrete plan on housing that was solid on price gouging that was uh solid and you know I was like okay this this is good because you need to show people that you're not just not Joe Biden but you you know you have a plan you got a vision for the country and you're going to enact it Etc and you add that on top of the like Good Vibes and that can really be something post uh DNC in particular and in the past couple of weeks they've just really leaned into this like actually we're you know we aren't going to really talk about policy we're just going to talk about how Liz Cheney endorsed us and Dick Cheney endorsed us and we're going to have bipartisan commissions and um at the same time you've got the Trump campaign Trump is going on all kinds of um you know podcasts like I wouldn't be surprised if he offered himself up to you know your podcast viewership um and kind of hanging out and vibing with a bunch of podcast Bros and I'm not sure that they've been able to hold on to that sense that they're the ones with like the vibe and the momentum and and the quote unquote fun what was your postmortem on Cole Hadad I mean okay so I want to be fair I don't know Alex scer I've never watched the show okay I want to be fair to her I want to be fair to Andrew Schultz I want to be fair to all the podcasters who are saying yes to these interviews because on the one hand you're not a journalist right you're not a scholar on the Middle East you're not a whatever right however I do think that given the fact that these candidates are increasingly turning to podcasters to get their message out I think if you're going to accept that interview you are accepting a level of respon responsibility to be more than an infomercial and you know whether it's the nek boys or Andrew Schultz or um call D Alex Cooper or whoever mostly what I've seen is just like propaganda infomercials and um you know maybe it's not fair to those podcasters that that onus has been put on them but because you have candidates who no longer feel like they have to submit themselves to adversarial interviews from journalists you know that does kind of put the onus on you that like okay well is all we're going to get from these candidates they're not doing another debate you know they're not sitting for that many traditional media interviews and by the way you know yeah you're a comedian yeah you're a cultural figure yeah you're whoever it's not that hard to come up with a few tough questions or a few important questions that you know reflect things that are on regular people's minds in fact if you're someone with you know with that the talent to build that large audience um you likely have your finger on more of the pulse than some of the mainstream a very particular there's a very particular skill set for grabbing and holding a politician feet to the fire even if you come in with the best of intentions and all of the prep in the world you know you're looking at one of the two most powerful people in the world in a month's time and going no no no no but Madam president what do you really mean when you talk about price gouging don't you know that there's been an awful lot of criticism for how this is going to raise real blah blah blah blah blah and you're like like if we're laying that at the feet of Alex Cooper so I I I'm fascinated I'm fascinated by this you know Douglas muray had that famous double debate uh last year about mainstream media versus Independent Media and is one thing better than the other and it was him versus Malcolm Gladwell and a couple of other people I think and um yeah when I think about that there is this is the podcast election you know it's so much has been laid at the feet but and this is that kind of relates back to what I was talking about earlier on I really don't know how much theovon is changing the minds of the registered undecided Pennsylvania do you know what I mean when you break it down through all different bits and pieces no that's fair and I think that's a very fair rebuttal to saying like they have this responsibili basically like these people are spending a billion dollars on advertising and you really think like the podcast appearance with theovon is going to be the game changer so I guess the the sort of like you know the rebuttal and the somewhat nihilistic and probably pretty accurate view is like well none of this really matters anyway so you know go fun your that's what we're here for I have to be honest with you Chris I'm curious your your thoughts on this because I I don't know what your thoughts are on this but I'm someone who like this is my space Independent Media um you know what Sager and I do um also my show with my husband Kyle and you know we've been very careful about how we cultivate our business model especially because we are analysts and journalists and you know we we want people not just to not have a conflict of interest but we want people to understand and perceive that there is no conflict of interest there so we've been very careful about the decisions we've made with regard to our business we don't take any we don't talk to any advertisers whatsoever you know we don't read any ads all that stuff but I have to tell you I'm pretty blackpilled on a lot of Independent Media and you know I I think I've been the first to call out many failings of the mainstream press where they've gotten things wrong etc etc but you know it just feels like there's there's no check on Independent meting whatsoever and the thing that clicks the most is the most like outrageous or conspiratorial and that can lead you that creates a very ugly uh set of incentives for a lot of creators what's what's some of the scenarios or situations that you've encountered that have blackpilled you the most again this will be a cumulative thing over time it's just this sort of millu that you're swimming in but are there any things that come to mind where you go perverse incentive really I'll tell you one thing specifically is I was a Critic of the liberal derangement around Russia gate right the stated like the P tape and whatever that was alleged to be coming on every any moment about Donald like that was not true right so I was a Critic of that however the doj did just in indict this uh you know a couple or a Russian uh person who worked for RT who was actively paying these conservative influencers oh this is the tenant tenants media thing yes and and not only that and I'm not saying that the these influencers should be you know prosecuted or whatever but they were taking a lot of like an outrageous amount of money per video from someone that they just thought was like a shady businessman I believ them that they didn't know it was like a Russian plan or whatever and it was document they were taking according to the government allegedly that they were taking Direction on what videos to push and what angles to talk about and like oh put up let's talk about that Tucker Carlson Russian Supermarket video as one example and um you know that just shows you that in corporate media there's all these incentives with regard to where the money comes from and where the ratings come from and Catering to power and all of that I don't see this really any different in Independent Media there's a different set perhaps of people that you're catering towards audience capture is more of an issue because you have more of a direct connect um you know a lot of times there's less of a wall between you and any sponsors or advertisers because you may be talking them directly you're reading their ads directly and um apparently some people at least are willing to just take a bunch of money from random Shady businessmen that they've never heard of before to make the content that they want them to make and not disclose it so um you know I I brought up a I brought up a story that um happened earlier this year it was a a good while earlier this year we got a an email from some random contact form on the website saying uh we want to propose a guest to come on the show uh it's six figure sum in order to bring them on and the topics that we want to talk about are below and it was all oil prices in the Middle East energy I'm like this is so [ __ ] deep State um so yeah I got lots of thoughts on this that at no point this is you know Public Service Announcement there has been no period during the six and a half years 800 and whatever episodes that I've done this show where someone has stepped in and given me media training on how to deal with pressure with criticism with incentives with all of the rest of this stuff so something tells me that most other people haven't either whether it's [ __ ] Kyle kolinsky or Tim P or whoever like people haven't they I don't think they've been given that necessarily I do kind of get the sense that if you're watching Shapiro's show or your guys' show maybe not actually your guys' show yours would be one of the very few that that this isn't the case if you're balls deep in political content how undecided are you m you know what I mean like you're giving it yeah sure you're giving the money to the people that talk about politics because they're the ones who it seems on brand for and they're the ones that potentially you can influence to talk about different things but really what you want to do is give it to like another know the Travis Kelsey podcast like the one that where you've got an even split of people either way or when you can access people who are under genuinely undecided but the people who are undecided probably aren't spending all of their time listening to political shows because the reason that you do I think is probably to get your views and opinions and perspective confirmed by somebody that you like and they feel comfortable and you know what they're going to talk about and it's an update or whatever I would say I would say that your guys' show is one of the few that sits outside of that but yeah I I know exactly what you mean it's uh the incentives are incentiv um for me mercifully I kind of come from this I guess like bro culture background which means that you know unless you've got a problem with fitness trackers and and and and whatever um there's limited perverse incentives no one's coming no one's coming into trying give me like big have you ever had a product or a company come to you and say like oh we want to advertise and you'd be like I don't know all the time yeah all the time and this is one the see that's the other thing that's difficult is like let's say that I did go down the path of oh you know this this Pro and again I'm not holding the standard on for you I'm just talking about for us because of our particular space in the media but you know I don't want to be on the hook for like vouching for somebody came to us with like an air filtration system it's like oh this is innocuous but it's like okay but is it really because if you're making claims about it's going to improve your asthma or whatever I don't want to be on the hook or responsible for some claim that's being made on the show that we're ourselves vouching for so um I think that I think it's difficult um I think it's a difficult space one of the things that you never really get credit for are the decisions that you didn't take yeah to and in some ways rightly so because people don't know what you were offered they only know what you chose to do uh and but there is a sense on the internet of a lot of criticism around the acts of commission that people make but not the virtues of omission that they didn't make so I I often think about that where I'm like [ __ ] like the for instance it was six nine months ago when we got that email about the oil Baron whatever the [ __ ] it was we needed to speak to and I didn't bother to bring it up because it felt like this weird sort of humble brag of being like look at what I'm like my my virtue and all of that stuff but um it just makes me feel licky and at least for me the show that I'm trying to create is something that's a body of work that I feel proud of like the most important thing is is it interesting do I have fun and am I proud of it once I was once I was done with it like at no point in that is revenue like a big consideration that would I'd be lying if I said that I don't want the show to continue growing so I can have do cool bigger things and have a nice quality of life and all that sorts of stuff but it doesn't factor in the first like five reasons that I did the show ever before um so anyway yeah I it's a it's a bit of a mixed bag on that I had um you mentioned JD Vance earlier on uh one of the things that I kind of slipped under the radar at least a little bit on Twitter as far as I could see was was it the New York Times lady that he did the interview with recently yes and she like held his feet to the fire and didn't so that's an example of what you were talking about earlier on of a woman who is prepared to sit for 3 minutes in just wallowing in discomfort as she says Senator Vance I have asked you give me a yes or no answer she's basically saying would you have certified the 2020 election and she just she doesn't move move she's just like five times yeah and there's the really great answers from him like sort of obfuscatory and evasive and all of this like all of the tricks and she's just like nope nope no like the most mean mother ever um but even that like the van saying that he wouldn't have certified the election in 2020 do you think that has made any impact does anyone even really care about that anymore so there's there's two levels okay so doesn't matter that we have that piece of information about him and frankly I I think that's the single most important piece of information as to why Donald Trump put JD Vance on the ticket because he wants to make sure that if it comes down to not that scenario maybe exactly but something similarly you know Frank outrageous and unconstitutional will this guy be loyal up to even to that point where Mike Pence said that's it I'm out right and Mike Pence now you know the right hates him this was the most loyal s Soldier for Donald Trump right up until that moment so I think it's important to to have that on the record and for people to understand where JD Vance stands on that issue do I think it's electorally consequential probably not um maybe a little on the margins because again look I I I want to be humble about my own predictions because I was wrong in 2022 I thought Red Wave I thought Democrats are just running on like democracy and people want to know about their pocketbooks and whatever they're not offering any kind of an economic program but hey it worked for them it was enough and it's very possible it's enough again I do know people hate that Donald Trump won't admit he lost they hate that he lies about the election they hate the you know the candidates who were election deniers in 2022 performed extremely poorly and they will perform poorly again I mean Carrie lake is running for Senate in Arizona she is a foremost election denier there and her pulling is abysmal she's trailing Trump dramatically she's almost certainly going to lose which should be a very winnable Senate race for her so you know people do really hate this stuff so maybe marginally to the extent that it reminds them of an aspect of the the Trump era and the you know Trump himself that they really find distasteful that that may be on the margins but you know on the other hand it's like well who doesn't know at this point what happened on January 6 and how they feel about it so that's where I feel like it's probably unlikely to be electorally consequential as I think having the historic record to be able to look back on and increased understanding is important one of my friends tweeted earlier on the ease with which dramatic Behavior gets attention online has convinced many political activists that a better world doesn't require years of patient work only a sufficient quantity of drama it just feels like that's what sort of Twitter feels like to me at the moment how speaking of that how influential do you think Elon Musk is very uh I actual swaying of votes changing the the opin here's the thing how much do I think Twitter matters I don't know um you know you could actually and my my colleague Ryan Grim makes the case and I think it's it's compelling although hard to say that uh Elon Musk Twitter is actually in some ways bad for Republicans because it's created this just like right-wing Echo chamber where they think all of their worst opinions are super popular and creates a bit of a disconnected bubble where for example you can think it's a smart idea to lie about immigrants eating pets and think that this is going to sell Nationwide and it doesn't um so you know there's there's a debate about whether Twitter his stewardship of Twitter is effective for republicans and for Trump uh specifically but Elon Musk according to Trump is putting half a billion dollars into the Trump campaign could that not be could that not be hyperbole from Trump to just make it sound possible and that's the other thing about the American election Trump Trump trump lies all the time except for this thing which is I don't want to believe but we we know it's tens of millions we know it's an incredibly substantial sum and uh we know that he's effectively moved to Pennsylvania and is running key parts of the Trump campaign so again I'll separate you know electorally will it make a difference hard to say certainly having that money helps Trump more than not having that money and Trump's little ca cash dropped this um election cycle what matters more to me about elon's influence is um he's already already been promised uh Plum government position with wide- ranging authorities as best we can tell and Elon Musk how are you feel about him this is not a disinterested actor last year alone just Tesla and SpaceX received 15 billion dollars in federal government contracts US taxpayer dollars to the tune of $1 15 billion dollars in a single year he is one of the largest contractors to the Pentagon is that because he creates the best technology that's the most advanced we've got Boeing stranding making I'm not I'm not saying that he shouldn't be but I am saying that if you are that you should not be in charge of a large swath of the government because you have a massive conflict of interest I don't care go up with with people that have been in big farmer and then they end up working for the FDA you've got this you know the leads are replete with these kinds of issues absolutely and you see it you know to to make the the parallel on the Democratic side because this is not a meant to be a partisan point it's meant to be a principled point about the corrupting influence of money in politics and the rising influence specifically of billionaires in politics I do think Elon is a uniquely extreme example pushing the boundaries of this in a way that there is no comparable other example and I can I can make that case in a moment but you know to give you an example on Democratic side Reed Hoffman leaked in billionaire uh Mark Cuban who um we all know who Mark Cuban is they both are big comma donors um they haven't given as much to her anywhere close as far as we know again campaign Finance being opaque anywhere close to as much um but you know they're going out there and clearly trying to shape what she does next time around they don't like the SEC enforcement on um crypto in particular so uh Mark cubin is said hey I want to be SEC chair and there's been pressure around that and then in addition um Lena Khan who's been the head of the FTC the Federal Trade Commission and been very aggressive in terms of antitrust enforcement which I think is incredibly important for competition um Wall Street absolutely hates her because she's you know putting uh sort of icing a lot of mergers and Acquisitions that are how a lot of wall streeters make you know fat bonuses and make a lot of money and so both Reed Hoffman and Mark Cuban and a few other billionaires on the comml Harris side have really been trying to use their influence and power to shape what that regime will look like next time around as well so I'm not saying that there's like you know one party that is immune to this and the other is not but because of the size of the dollar figures that we can tell and the level of involvement and the um large government contracts the fact that he does run a social media Giant in addition you know I think it's um I think everybody should be deeply troubled by the idea of this one individual regardless of how you feel about him or who he is or how brilliant you think he is or whatever any one individual who is not being voted for having that kind of control in the federal government what do you think is the downstream implication of having more siloed off social media platforms you know I I would say that Twitter up until Elon took it over did seem to uh have not quite a mainstream media but a bit of a left leaning sort of partisan sensorial attitude but now I I don't know how it works you may know uh the ecosystem everyone on the left for whom Elon and Trump are too toxic a off to threads and then there's truth social which is like Twitter's Twitter and then there's Twitter which kind of does feel a little bit right of center now but maybe that's just you know like putting your hand in cold water after it's been in hot water and it's because of comparatively to how it was before like what do you make of the increasing uh siloing a compartmentalization of groups to a platform which only really reinforces what they believe yeah I mean I think it just makes everyone in increasingly deranged you know if you're just like cir jerking all day on your own little siloed platform and not to like you know this is this is very self-serving but I'll give I'll give you an example in you know my own professional life I work with Sager we co-host the show and you know sometimes he'll bring stories to the table and I'm like you know did you see that there's a thing like that's not really what and and I will also because of the ecosystem I live in bring some to the table he like you know did you see on the other hand there's this point and and so um you know as best we can we kind of have to check each other right and so if you just have people feeding one another what they want to hear yeah I think it ends up increasingly deranged and I think we've I think we've seen that you I mentioned the Haitian pets thing that is very prominent example there's all kinds of stuff going on with like you know people floating that hurricane Helen was generated by democrats specifically to Target Republic areas like that's insane that what are some of the ones going in the opposite direction that You' found I mean listen if you go back to Russia gate there was a lot of derangement there you know there's um very prominent liberal conspiracies right now about Donald Trump [ __ ] his pants in public I thought that was a Biden thing was that not Biden oh it's this is this is like no one cares about Biden anymore he's old news right I need to we need to talk we need to talk about that like the guy that's running the country at the moment was I think he was at the beach when the hurricane was happening recently is he just like nobody's paying real attention to him and I think that this fits into a broader a broader question that I've got about whether Cala is a change candidate or whether she has incumbent legitimacy because it seems like the Democrats are trying to bate off where they want her to have this this degree of legitimacy but also that we have got problems and I know and I'm going to fix it and you know the best point the only really good point that Trump made in in their debate was the very final one which was you've had three years to do this and what what have you been doing all of this time you can't talk about the problems that you're encountering whilst not pointing the finger at yourself so how how do you think that's sort of circle is getting squared and what's the sort of modern role of Joe Biden for the rest this I I want to let me come back to that because there's there's one other point that I want to make substantive point on the The Conspiracy question which is that I I think genuinely the conspiracy issue is worse on the right right now and the reason is because the right is more estranged from establishment institutions and if you look at the the pulling of trust in the media trust in government trust in you know the FBI like every mainstream institution you can IMA imagine Republicans don't trust them and so it opens up a lot of opportunity for people to come in and say Well they're not telling you this but this is the truth this is the real story of what's really going on and so you know this is not about like Republicans being stupid or whatever but because there is this deep mistrust I think it's opened up more of a space for increasingly wild conspiracies like Democrats are controlling the weather and then you know I think Twitter under Elon has helped to fuel that ecosystem and the siloing you're talking about I think that helps to fuel that ecosystem as well and so that's why I think genu there's right now there's some story going around that was like just completely invented by this guy that previously fabricated other stories and got caught about Tim Walls that a lot of people are taking very seriously so um I do think right now it's it's more of an issue on the right but to go back to your question now I've got now I've got stuff on that one sorry uh goad what on your conspiratorial point well just that uh I was fascinated by this as well that we're talking about the election coming down to a nailbiter um but pretty much anybody I mean you you can even look at um the uh campaign donations from uh big media organization employees they SK massively left to the point where there's like it's very very uh sort of biased in One Direction how how different do you think the outcome of the election would be if you had more equal representation in uh Legacy Media mainstream media from a talking stamp part I mean we've seen Scientific American come out in support of Cala Harris we saw who was it that came out the other week Washington Post or who was that I'm not sure I mean I'm sure they will if they haven't yet but yeah everybody has come out to endorse no it wasn't it was uh not The Spectator what's the equivalent of The Spectator but on the other side the Atlantic the Atlantic came out in support of C Harris having only three weeks ago published an article titled Scientific American didn't need to endorse anybody um so like this I don't know somebody applied the right amount of pressure to the right place my point being big left leaning influence when it comes to Legacy Media mainstream media how big of a difference would that make if were on a nailbiter if the scales had been evened a little bit in that regard do you think that that could change the outcome um potentially um but I think that ignored that uh you know there is a large establishment at this point conservative media media ecosystem as well I mean Fox News continues to be the largest cable news Outlet um daily wire is massive and very influential there's you know in Independent Media it's dominated by right-leaning um podcasts and influencers somebody I wonder whether someone would say look at You' had to you've had to kind of create your own ecosystem in order to be able to make this happen when we talk about the more established more Main which presumably have a degree of legitimacy maybe they reach more people maybe they reach people that you can't get through Independent Media that do they have a degree more legitimacy unfortunately not anymore yeah you're probably yeah I mean my so I I think it's absolutely fair to say that the uh Legacy Outlets certainly have a like Liberal pro-democratic Party bias you know I'm not a liberal I'm a leftist and I see I actually feel like my perspective doesn't really exist in any of these places and at least CNN will bring on like a perfunctory you know Scott Jennings or whoever to rep the Republican point of view it is very rare that people with my political views are represented there at all so I feel very erased in the entirety of the media ecosystem but to be honest with you the the um bias that concerns me more in all of these spaces whether sort of elite conservative Media or Elite liberal Legacy Media is more of a class and Regional bias because you have a lot of people who you know all went to Elite oftentimes ivy league institutions who grew up with very similar backgrounds many of them from either New York Boston or California and nothing wrong with having that background but it does mean that you're getting a very particular view of the world and think that probably has been more of an issue for them than anything in terms of getting some just key fundamental things wrong about their understanding of the country and about the way they frame coverage the stories they choose to cover and and all of those things to me that's that's a bigger issue and um unfortunately as especially as Regional papers disappear and it's there's more and more Media consolidation into it's like it's just the New York Times and it's just the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and you know these cable news outlets and that's kind of it the more you have that uh that consolidation and that nationalization of the media environment the the more of that um narrow biased like you know one one sort of class identity view that you're going to get of the world well being British you know we're obsessed with class even when we think that we're not obsessed with class we still are and coming over here it's it's really interesting to see people nobody ever uses the word posh in the US in the UK uh everybody get you know he comes from a quite a posh family you know his they tend to go on holiday to like Santorini in the summer whatever right um so yeah as a uh very scum of the earth working class person from the north of England um maybe that's something maybe that's a degree of Hope for Independent Media that it is able to cut through class divides because you don't have the same kinds of Gatekeepers in that sort of a way I don't know what like Shapiro or Tim P or like [ __ ] David Pacman's upbringing was but you do have the opportunity in a relatively egalitarian Market to have anybody rise to the top it's based pretty much exclusively based on Talent it's essentially Costless to start and till it becomes very costly to run um so anyway uh camela Harris change candidate or incumbent legitimacy what is she and how do you spare that Circle well I I think that she should position herself as the change candidate but I think she's utterly failed to do that and I mean one of her biggest mistakes on the campaign Trail is going on The View and they ask her this incredibly softball honestly a question that's an opportunity for her to say you know I'm not exactly like Joe Biden who was unpopular as we know and she says I can't think of a thing that I do differently than him and um so uh I think it's difficult you know her obviously she looks different she her identity is different um her her age is very different that's important that does matter and I think people were really open in fact I think their default assumption was that she'd be a little bit different from Joe Biden but she's been so terrified of um The Campaign has been so cautious and she's been so terrified of this idea that people are going to perceive her as too liberal that she's been afraid to articulate any specific differences really on anything and um you know I I think that has led her to you know a very tenuous position in the polls now because people want to change candidate they aren't satisfied with the direction the country's headed in and you need to be able to lay on a few specific things where you're going to push things forward in a way that Joe Biden didn't you know I mean one to me because this is important to me and a lot of other people besides very obvious example is you know you have a a vast majority of the country that wants to see a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that wants us to withhold weapons from going to you know isra to commit more atrocities and even there there's zero willingness even though the politics have it pretty clear at this point for her on that side um zero willingness to create any separation there whatsoever you know it's a political failure but more importantly to me it's a moral failure it is kind of funny to think about the opportunities that the politicians have to say stuff out front and then everybody talks about it as if it was uh a a rational decision the reason that for instance Kamala decided to say or not say a thing on The View what I'm mostly fascinated by which we're never going to find out is what is the interpersonal political Dynamics inside of the party like why did Joe Biden drop out like what was that conversation what was the final thing that pushed him over the line to do that what is it dirt is it some House of Cards [ __ ] like you know is that what went on or is it just that you can convince somebody through um you like normal motivation this is going to be better for your legacy and we'll give you a Koshi position in the blah blah and whatever it is uh but the same thing goes for every single conversation why JD Vance was picked why you don't go for why you don't go for Josh Shapiro etc etc like all of that to me is just so fascinating I want to know what's going I want to know that's why I'm so Keen to bring Bernie Sanders on as basically the the person who tried to flip the table over as much as you could on the left over the last few years to be like you're like competing then you're out of the tent then you kind of half back in the tent but also there's this sort of lingering that guy isn't on our side type thing the skepticism I just want because to me that seems that's the most interesting thing and it's a bit of politics that we never ever get to see which is the interpersonal Dynamics going on behind the scenes and the same thing goes for uh the current Harris campaign like are you really able to throw your boss like the guy that's kind of still like the actual president of the United States under the bus while he's still in power like can you do that well I mean you can but like what's the what what are the that and what are you trying to mediate from what's Happening internally and externally so yeah fascinating stuff that we never get to see yeah I mean as best I can tell from the with the the Biden Dropout pressure it really just got to be where you know Obama was against him Schumer was against him Pelosi was against him and the money that was another key part the money dried up and you know yeah he's he's old and he's scile but he's also got some muscle memory in terms of being in politics for what about 40 freaking 50 years and so he knows the money dries up that's it's kind of game over so I think once he realized that they're not going to just forget it and fall back in line you know they're going to continue to pressure continue to put the screws to me until I'm out I think that's when he finally you know very reluctantly decided to to hang it up as best I can tell talking about the uh opportunity or the difficulty that some of the candidates have had with being frank when it comes to stating their positions uh it does feel a lot to me like there is nothing that you can do to further your cause you can just mess up sufficiently badly that the other side uses it in a campaign promo like you know the the Trump uh Schultz interview within I think it was 18 or 19 hours from publish the Harris campaign had used yeah they cut an ad cut an ad from it I'm like so what you're doing is it literally is a game of playing defense which again causes each candidate to withdraw more not necessarily from appearances or whatever but they're more Cy with the things that they say they use more obfuscatory language they're caveat etc etc etc um so yeah that again just that incentive so funny so different yeah it's it's very troubling um there's a lot of [ __ ] up in SS in politics because uh for example like project 2025 you know this big conservative blueprint that's put together that Trump's very anxious to run away from at this point and fair enough his campaign didn't put it together on the other hand now this is the sort of thing that conservative thing tanks put together all the time and some of that will be implemented because it's the blueprint that's laying around but he recognized immediately that actually having specific policy proposals out there it's not a good thing because then people can dig in and they can criticize and they can pull out things that they don't like you know for example in that project 2025 they're like we're gonna ban porn and I don't think that's probably all that popular so putting specific things down gives people an opportunity to attack those specific things doing interviews that even a relatively friendly setting still opens up a possibility that you're going to screw up in some critical way that your opponent can clip into a ad and and you know used to their benefit and that's why kamla Harris for a long time was deciding like I'm just not really going to do interviews because I don't have to the media is not pressuring me to the public isn't actually really pressuring me too and I know that I'm the type of person who might like well screw this up in a way that's kind of bad and you know what to be honest with you she was kind of right it's bad for democracy but she impressively unimpressive on a long form interview you know she in that view interview again friendly space gave them so much am ammunition you talk about you know the Harris campaign clipping an ad of of trump with Andrew Schultz they clipped an ad of commo saying I'm just like Joe Biden um and are reportedly putting money behind it playing at their rallies Etc so you know I mean you can't blame them for doing that like they're trying to win a campaign but especially this is the downside of like the Norms being broken I'm not a big like lover defender of the Norms as a leftist as someone who you know is sort of adversarial to both of these parties but there are certain things that were better so for one one example we had this this Norm of a certain number of debates that wasn't a legal requirement but you just expected both candidates they're going to subject themselves to three debates so we at least have that much time to evaluate what their answers are and compare them etc etc that Norm is now gone you know we used to have a norm that was like you would sit for the 60 Minutes interview and The Time interview and New York Times editorial board and you would subject yourself to this sort of like rigorous adversarial press process and that's no longer the case now it's like you know I can go hang out with Alex Cooper onc call or Daddy I can go hang out with the ne boys and you know do that thing and hey that's a lot easier it's a lot lower Stakes I'm reaching a large audience I'm reaching demographic groups that are important to me so why would I um so I mean that's that's the downside of the like disruption of these quote unquote Norms I personal I I don't know if this is a radical view or not but I personally think that candidates for office should be required to debate a certain number of times I do think it should be um a legal requirement because it's the very least that voters deserve in terms of making some sort of a decision and in fact going back to the point about Joe Biden you know Joe Biden did have primary opponents they were completely iced down from the media one of them Dean Phillips who I disagree with on a lot of things he been on the show oh has he that's I'm sure that was a great conversation he's he's a nice guy um you know he was sounding the alarm he's like this guy is too old like we're going to lose this guy's too old and by and large he was iced out from the media the Democrats said we're not having primaries in some states they literally just canceled the primary did not have any debates and think about Not only was that a detriment to the American people and the Democratic party because they didn't have an opportunity to have a process by which they might vet a candidate and choose who they want to succeed Joe Biden but It ultimately really hurt um you know Democratic party Elites who want to presumably win this election because if he had had to be subjected to a debate in a primary process we would have seen much earlier like oh holy [ __ ] there is no way this is going to work out and then you've got time to not just go with ah who who can we grab and like throw into this place there's actually time to go through a process to generate excitement to see which candidate is going to perform the best and I firmly believe that they would be in a much much better position to win if they had gone through that price process and had an actual Democratic process to choose Joe Biden successor do you think there would be a different successor 5050 you I think KLA came in with a lot of advantages just because of her position um she also has a lot of advantages in terms of like her fundraising base you know she has from being AG of California she's got a lot of like Silicon Valley um and Hollywood Connections and Money Matters in American politics um a lot of people who also are excited about the idea of you know first black woman president I understand that not denigrating that whatsoever but there's also a reason why she didn't succeed last time around right there's a reason why after voters saw her on the debate stage saw her in interviews we're like maybe we'll go in a different direction so I sort of think it's 50-50 whether you would have ended up with kamla or someone else but even if it was kamla she would have then had to go through that trial by fire she would have it's just like anything else you put in your reps you get better at it she be a more effective and better politician if she had had to go through that adversarial primary process um so I I firmly believe they'd be in a much better place Obama was unhappy with black Brothers for not sufficiently supporting Camala yeah how about that there's a lot to say about that um so there's a good bit of polling at this point that indicates there has been some shift among all all men actually but spefic specifically among workingclass black and Latino men some shift away from Democrats towards Republicans and you know to shout out one of those mainstream outlets New York Times did a deep dive into both the polling and also what's going on here right and um none none of the answers they came up with were Democratic politicians aren't lecturing them enough and scolding them enough about how they're failing that was not one of the answers that they came up with but there was a piece there were there were a number of potential rationals one of them though I thought was really significant really important which is that you know when people voted for Hope and change with Obama and especially when black Americans felt like okay having a black man in the white house means that my interests are going to be represented in a way that they never have been and then they're I'm not GNA say nothing good you know bot care improve things marginally etc etc but nothing really fundamentally changed and so there's a a large percentage of black men and Latino men who say that they don't believe that Democrats keep their promises and I think that's an important part of this the story of how the Democrats have started to see erosion in some of these key groups where you know Democrats are still overwhelmingly going to win black voters including black male voters it's still a question mark whether some of these polling Trends really manifest on election day etc etc but I do think that the failure to you know really offer and fight for a concrete economic agenda that again goes to those class interests over the racial identity interests has been a major failure of the democratic party and has open up space for you know another message from the Republican Party one that I wildly disagree with right I do think that uh Trump in particular just loves to Dem iiz immigrants and blame immigrants for every problem but that's going to be a lot more compelling if you're not offering an answer on the other side so uh I think is it the groups that we serve on the uh Harris Walt's campaign funding website and it's a list of every group in the world except for men and then there's another one which is a bunch of proposals and there's different uh examples and it's like a a black woman in a hard hat on a construction side and it's a blah the that group not even black men there's just no men no men at all on that so it really does feel like I've had a number of conversations Richard reees if you know who that is from the American in we interviewed him as well yeah he's very insightful phenomenal guy but this election very much seems to have at least on left of the aisle forgotten men uh well there was uh the white dudes for Harris organizing call I don't know if you were on that CH I I was I wasn't on I had a few friends that were on um but I would I actually curious for your your view here you have um you know you're you're more of the expert in the the Bros spere of uh correct if there's any expertise I've got is that of of uh what's going on because there's you know obviously there's a large gender gap I think the the gender divide in this election may be the most profound one over you know perhaps any other identifying characteristic I think part of that certainly is abortion being such a central message but you also see the way that the Trump campaign is really playing into that both with their media par choices also with just the vibe at the RN having whole kogan up there and Dana White and whatever like playing into almost like a camp version of masculinity but you know I wonder what you make of um what's going on there under the under the surface I think it's going to be very difficult to get men to feel supportive or welcoming when so much of so much of their sex is sort of demonized in one way or another and even if you can't Point your finger to the precise Harris ad campaign that happened there does seem to be a lot of sort of men bashing that happens on the left whatever that mean like however you want to Define it there often seems to be a sense of male privilege and and sort of the the the diminishment of uh the issues that men have like I haven't heard anybody not one and this is both left and right talk about male suicide and Richard was telling me about the most recent set of stats that they've got out of the institute for boys and men which was if men had taken their own lives at the same rate as women from 1999 until today there would be half a million more men here Jesus which is more people more men than died in World War II so it's like it's just such an obscene number of of people and I don't know there just seems to be you don't feel particularly welcome by the left at best you feel like not demonized and then sometimes sort of outright do especially if you're sort of a white guy at the top of the the privilege hierarchy but then again what were we talking about before that nobody's nobody's discussing class it feels strange to me that you know whatever Appalachian or cumbrian or sort of north east of the UK in person some guy is like yeah yeah please tell me again about my like white male privilege that I've got it just seems this the the Purity spiral doesn't seem to be particularly useful uh anymore and I think that people are kind of they've got fatigue around that kind of puritanical approach to uh victimhood hierarchies I think there's something to that I I will say um I think that kamla has done better than Hillary in not obsessing over you know um like Elizabeth Warren famously had a plan for like rural black disadvantaged farmers and you know really slicing into these very specific like racial or other identifying characteristics group now she did just put out a plan that I find the Black yes we can talk about that yes we get to talk about the crypto one I will say that um you know when she's got been asked for example about her own trailblazing status she's very quickly pivoted to this isn't about me this is about you she's diminished diminished being black and diminished being a woman Hillary really leaned into like this is about me this is about my ambitions like won't be it' be cool if a woman namely me United States was the tagline exactly yeah and so I do think KLA has done a lot better job uh in terms of of of that Dimension but that doesn't mean that there's not still you know quite a lot of of overhang and and this sense that um you know issues that may be specific to men are not the focus of the democratic party or there's just like not a sense of this is a place for us if if I put on um you know if I take take a step back from these two particular candidates parties whatever I and I'll run this by you and you can tell me what you think like I think part of what is happening in society right now is in American society and Western Society in general is um people are much more precarious right it's very difficult to secure those sort of basic trappings of like middle class stability the house the education the family like those things even before the latest inflationary uh spiral we're getting wildly more expensive over decades I mean housing is the main example but college education the price tag on that is insane healthc care the price tag on that is insane Child Care the price tag on that is insane and so culturally like the the classic view of the man is like the provider right the person who's going to be able to secure that lifestyle for themselves and their family and so if over decad both parties effectively collude to make that next to Impossible you're going to have a lot of people who are unhappy and who are are searching and who are manifesting you know the the higher suicide rates and all of those things that are are very real and so I think that if you just completely you know invisibilize that or you know just dismiss any man who explains that you know he's got he's has something that he's unhappy about or's struggling with or whatever then yeah of course they're going to they're not going to come your way they're going to search in a different direction and you've had I think this is maybe more of a symptom than a cause um but uh Hassan [ __ ] talks about this basically all of the sort of male like hobby spaces have become more and more right way so like if you're a gamer right there's a like very like right-wing gamer pipeline there if you work out and you're like a gym buff guy like that space is increasingly like right laning as well all as I mentioned before you know most of the major podcasts um bro podcasts tend to be more right leaning I suspect your audience is probably more right leaning as well um and so whether that's symptom or cause I don't know but that's the other thing is that's like that's just kind of like the natural progression and pipeline for young men in particular um online pursuing whatever their hobbies and interests happen to be yeah it's an interesting question I've thought about it a lot the I'm sure you saw that famous Colin Wright image where he stayed in the same place and the left moved further left and then the the last like two and a half years has just been different polling and analyst companies trying to work out whether we have moved more left or we have moved more right or whatever it might be um there would be I don't know where the data has come to settle on that I don't even know if this is directionally correct but I could see a world in which uh that was what men were all along and the political landscape has moved so it's not that the target has moved it's that the site that you're using to site it with has changed so that could be one potential reason for it another could be that I don't know I just I was largely apolitical until like seven or eight years ago I just had my head firmly inside of my own ass and was running a business and just doing stuff and then with no real sort of predisposition just came out and was like okay who speaks to me and I do I just largely don't feel spoken to ever by the left like if it's the white guys for Harris thing which like in many ways sounds like a struggle session like it like it felt like a [ __ ] public a public humiliation ritual in in lots of regards where you're talking about how we need to do this it's never it's never positive it's never forward thinking it's never inspirational or aspirational and I understand that the right can play into that in ways that are like a bit cringe sometimes um but the most recent campaign ad that got cut for Cala where it was like like a black armoring a hat going like I'm man enough to vote for a woman and I'm man enough to know when I can change a carburetor and I'm man enough to do the rest of the thing it's like that was so disjointed from pretty much everything left of center that I'd seen from a messaging perspective that it just looked like what it was which was kind of like Shameless hopeful pandering to an audience that you think doesn't really care about you in the hopes that they're not going to remember that you've never spoken to them before so yeah I think um contempt is a very like people feel that right contempt is very powerful and I think the Democratic party not just with regard to men but with regard to any number of voting groups in the country there has been an attitude like from democratic Elites a sense of contempt and you know my my own view is that um there are specific examples where it makes sense have you know a policy that's targeted at a particular identity group or another but we know if we go back and look at history at the policies that have made the biggest difference for example for black Americans they've been Universal policies they've been actually increasing the minimum wage um was one of the most successful policies at class based not race based that's right and and like I said Universal right so um you know you mentioned the like blackmail policy from from kamla one of was like more health care for testicular cancer something like that that's great right I certainly support people being able to get treatment for whatever kind of cancer they have but we really got to like slice and dice the body parts to be able to get Universal heal like way let's just have Universal Health Care and then whatever kind of cancer you have or other illness you could get treated and whatever group it is you know especially when you have um groups that are particular marginalized in society which you know certainly you know black men in particular still historic amounts of wealth and equality and these sorts of things those are the groups that benefit the most from Universal Pol uh policies like Universal Health Care um lifting the the minimum wage increasing unionization through things like the proact which just you know increases the level of democracy and Power in the workplace something that I think is really really important I focus a lot on so if you pair those Universal policies perhaps some specific ones that make sense for different demographic groups but with you know an a attitude of uh acceptance and understanding and you know trying to meet people where they are I think you're going to have a lot more success and you know I like I said I do think Democrats have kind of recognized this Obama's scolding notwithstanding you see they're really trying to you know to send them out and and talk in some of these male spaces both KLA and Tim Walls you I think they know that that there's an issue there and like I said before I think K has really toned down a lot of the like super identity uh focused like slicing and dicing type of um policies but you know these aren't these aren't things that get resolved overnight it takes time to rebuild that trust with the community that feels like ah you just you know you're not really for me do you think that the left's got a complicated relationship with God now complicated like what do you mean that by by talking about it you kind of play into what now has become a cliche sort of Republican God country type um position I don't I just haven't heard in the UK for instance we don't have a religious right there's no religious right in okay in in Britain that's that is a huge [ __ ] off voting block simply doesn't exist in the UK so me me coming over here and and seeing you know an increasingly secular World across everywhere but I haven't seen anything really to do with religion uh except maybe like we're accepting of people of all faiths and so like from a multicultural perspective I haven't I haven't seen uh and I imagine that because of the meme that is becoming increasingly prevalent of kind of the Bible bashing right-wing you know alligator swamp gun toad in person that if you try and lean into the god shaped hole in your campaign pain uh messaging maybe it seems in some ways exclusionary to the group of people that you're trying to cultivate that's what I meant by a complicated that it must be I haven't seen much of it and I have to assume that that's because it's difficult to thread the needle of talking to people on the left about God without seeming like you're making some sort of value judgment that's going to get you in trouble I think you have to be it has to be authentic and if it's not then stay away right and um you know they uh more liberals identify certainly as like non-religious than conservatives that means very likely you're going to have fewer genuinely religious Democratic elected politicians and so um you know it's funny um uh my husband Kyle and I were talking about this just the other day Bernie Sanders who is Jewish but not he will say himself not like not particularly religious he was asked about that back maybe 2016 and he was very upfront like listen I'm not that religious a person but here to me is what religion means it's these like sort of core values of you know acceptance and kind whatever he said you know and so I think if you're not coming at I don't think everyone can pull that off like I think you have to be coming at it from a genuine place of like this is my faith and this is important and this is how it informs me and there just probably are fewer Messengers on the Democratic side who can pull that off I'll tell you one person who does speak with that kind of um religious moral Authority is Dr Cornell West you know that is very clearly authentic to him to his tradition to his ideology but um that strain I I think it's fair to say that strain of leftism is somewhat less common than perhaps it it once was um which you know is a reflection of of a shifting Society I'm not myself religious so if I tried to talk about it like people would be like what are you talking about it's ridiculous like you don't care about this stuff you know speaking of a shifting Society did you see anakasparian substack post I did what' you make of what' you make of that um I like Anna you know and I um have always had like a a friendly relationship with her um I you know I I'm I guess I need to know more I don't think that there's a lot of accusations being oh she's a grifter and she's doing the same thing that like you know Dave Ruben did the same grift Jimmy door Dave whatever pick whoever you want or um you know to go back to the religious Point like Russell Brand getting accused very credibly of and then doing this very demonstrative Christianity conversion is like okay um but um I guess I'm a little bit confused about what where exactly she is and it seems to me that as she self-described her political Evolution which you know it's fine for people to evolve their views Etc it actually has put her more in line in some ways with sort of like the core Democrat party so I if I had to characterize Anna's views based on you know what she said publicly and what was in the substack post Etc it seems like she still has some like leftish views on social safety net stuff which you know you're definitely more likely to get on a Democratic party than the Republican party and then she's moved right or is more vocally right on things like uh crime in the border and the Democratic party I mean KLA Harris has been running this very aggressive like border Haw campaign and tried to pass this very aggressive border Hawk bill as well so um it from what I can tell it just makes her more actually in line with where the Democratic party is so I don't know that's I don't I don't impute any like negative motivations I think it's fine for her to shift I'm just like a little bit still trying to figure out where she is exactly I think people have got concerns around uh Kamala and the Border because again like you've been in power for so long and it does seem like a I mean the vice president can't really anything let's let's be real like they don't have any real power but would she not the borders are what does that mean what Authority is that actually confir I I'm pretty sure it was retconed out of a New York Times post or something like that in retrospect yeah I mean listen the the thing is I I don't agree with the way the Democrats have positioned themselves personally I'm in favor of a controlled border and a lot more legal immigration um but like a lot more legal immigration so I think that the Democratic messaging which is just basically embraced the Republican frame of like immigrants are bad period end of story um I think that that's been a political and a moral failure but um you know they genuinely did try to pass this bill that was very hogish and um abandon all of the previous previous Democratic commitment had been we'll do the tight security but we also want to path to citizenship it scuttled all of that added a bunch of new border agents etc etc so they really did try to pass that and Donald Trump really did try to stop it um so you know if that's your if that's your thing if you're looking for the Democrats to move right on the border like congratulations they already have Crystal B ladies and gentlemen Crystal I appreciate you uh it's fun to get to hear a different perspective and I love your guys' show I think it's what you do is really really impressive where should people go they want to keep up to date with the stuff that you've got going on uh that's a good question just go to breakingpoints decom you know YouTube channel whatever um if you want to get angry you can look at my Twitter feed um but um I want to thank you for inviting me on and the you know the the back and forth I really enjoyed it you know I hope your audience doesn't hate me too much but I've had fun here oh they won't I appreciate you thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode there is something else you will absolutely love right here go on give it a tap