What Some Gaza Protest Voters See in Trump
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With less than a month until the election and one full year since the terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7th, the Middle East is in crisis. More than 40,000 Palestinian men, women, and children have been killed. Israel has launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon. It was Iran who struck tonight in the ever-spiraling cycle of violence in the Middle East. And the handling of this crisis has created a divide within the Democratic Party.

In Michigan, which has the largest Arab-American population in the country, thousands of uncommitted Democratic voters say that they will not vote for Harris because of her support of Israel. Which begs the question: In a race this close, could protest voters genuinely swing the election?

New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins us today to discuss the uncommitted movement and how the conflict in the Middle East might shape what plays out in November. You're listening to The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker. Hey, Andrew. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Of course. Thank you for dragging me back into the horse race polling world, which is the only thing I like to think about.

So you recently finished writing a 9000 word magazine piece on the uncommitted movement. You began following it when Biden was still in the race. And I'm wondering how the movement has evolved since, given that we now have a new candidate, Kamala Harris, and we've gone from a war in Gaza to Israel also invading Lebanon and expanding the conflict to Iran.

Yeah, I mean, those changes were kind of happening as the piece was kind of being finalized. And so a lot of the conversations I was having with people toward the end of the reporting were, you know, how much does this change what we talked about before? So, you know, some people I would talk to back in February or March, and then we would talk again, you know, after the summer, either with the new candidate at the top of the ticket or with, you know, the war kind of spiraling into a regional war.

And a lot of the people I spoke to in Michigan are very attentive. They're very kind of high information voters. They're activists. And so there would be specific, you know, responses that they would have to specific policy developments. But one thing that I was sort of, I guess, surprised isn't the right word. But one thing that I sort of was interested to hear again and again was.

yeah, there's a change, but it's not enough. Yes, there's a new person at the top of the ticket, but she's not saying that she will fundamentally change policies. Yes, she's adopting a new tone, but she's not drawing a line in the sand. And so there were people for whom

You know, there was a time when they said, OK, I'm now committed to voting for the Democrat because Trump would be worse. But those people were way fewer and farther between than I expected. There were there was a lot of what I heard over the course of this, which was the Biden-Harris administration is responsible for supporting Israel during this war. And so I can't support them. And by and large, with most people, that didn't change.

Yeah, I want to talk more about the difference between Harris and Biden on this issue to the extent that there is a difference. Clearly, she wants to maintain some distance from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. You know, when he came to address Congress in July, you write about this in your piece. She skipped his speech and then later gave a statement where she was talking about how concerned she was about the scale of human suffering in Gaza. But it's not like this has actually manifested itself.

in any sort of policy change. And since then, she's kind of sort of stuck to the party line. And in an interview with 60 Minutes that aired on Monday night, she maintained that it was the U.S.'s job to protect Israel. So I guess I'm wondering what you think her strategy is here, because she's not doing something that's too different from what Biden was doing, but she's also not, you know, embracing Israel.

Yeah, these are very sort of fine tonal distinctions, right? I mean, you know, even in that 60 Minutes interview, the reporter asked, basically, "Do you think you're getting rolled by Netanyahu? You know, do you think he's sort of playing you guys for a fool?" And she paused. She didn't really say no. Do we have a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu?

I think, with all due respect, the better question is, do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer...

to that question is yes. She said, you know, we're going to continue to make efforts and blah, blah. I mean, she didn't say yes, but so if you're looking for very kind of fine tea leaf reading distinctions, there are people, including people who are very, very sort of, you know, progressive anti-war, you know, anti-Zionist people who have found those distinctions. There are people who have argued that kind of within the bounds of what can be expected on the stage of

mainstream democratic politics, she is trying to make a tonal distinction from Biden. You know, Biden was famous for kind of bear-hugging Bibi in public and then kind of pushing behind the scenes in private, saying, "I'm a Zionist in my bones," all that stuff.

Harris is not taking that tone. And so some people are noticing that distinction. Other people and frankly, people whose family is dying or at risk of dying in Gaza or in Lebanon, that's not holding water with them. They're just saying she has to make some sort of promise either to stop sending bombs or to, you know, say, I will always subject armed shipments to bombings.

levels of scrutiny about human rights violations that they're not currently subjected to, or they want a much higher policy benchmark, which you're right, she's not doing. Now, I again found this surprising because the same people who say that will often in the next breath say, well, obviously Trump would be so much worse. And so I kind of thought that the result of that logic would be, okay,

She is doing something that I find frustrating. He would be so much worse. Therefore, I will vote for her. And some people obviously do have that logic. And, you know, Andy Levin and a bunch of other people in the piece, Abbas Alawiya, you know, did come to that conclusion. But many others, they kind of take a more moral, personal approach to their vote. And they say, OK.

know, basically what many people told me was this is a genocide and anybody who has blood on their hands, you know, I can't be associated with. And so that kind of outweighs on some grander moral scale. You know, this is what the mayor of Dearborn told me, who is a Democratic Party politician and is very loyal to the party on infrastructure and on climate and student debt and all these things. And

who told me flat out Trump would be way worse. Trump would kill more people. But he said, you know, the scales of justice will not allow me to overlook a genocide. And so I don't know for each person who says that, to be quite honest, I don't know what that translates to

when they get into the privacy of the voting booth. I just don't know. But that's sort of the public position they're taking. Basically, yes, we understand the risks. Yes, we understand the distinctions. But it's not so easy for us to just

pick, I guess, what they see as the lesser of two evils. I think you make a good point, which is that we actually don't know how this is going to, you know, really affect the election. But based on what we have seen in terms of the uncommitted votes that were cast in the primary, what are the numbers that we're talking about? Like, how big of a difference could this make?

Yeah, a lot of this was originally formulated as a plan to gain leverage during the primary, which at that point obviously was against Biden. So the plan, so Michigan is one of a few states that has this

line on the ballot. This is in every election. There is a ballot line for each candidate who's running, and then there's a line that just says uncommitted. So they didn't have an anti-war candidate or, you know, there was Marianne Williamson was running and Jill Stein was running. And but they didn't want people to sort of, you know, split the vote among protest candidates who didn't have a chance of winning. They wanted people to vote uncommitted. And at that point, it was a sign of,

You know, here's the leverage we have to push Biden toward the policy outcomes we want. And at that point, they got about 100000 votes, 10000, 101000 votes in Michigan, which was about 13 percent, which was not enough to make Biden afraid that he would lose the nomination. He ended up losing the nomination in another way. But that's enough to swing an election or to swing Michigan.

Yes. So 2016, the margin in Michigan was about 10,000 votes. That was the margin that Hillary Clinton lost by. In 2020, the margin was about 150,000 votes the other way that Biden won by. So, you know, Michigan, like Arizona, like Pennsylvania, you know, these are states that

can and often do go, you know, to a fraction of a percentage point. And so their argument was, okay, if we have 100,000 people, that's a block that you need to pay attention to. And then you start getting into this kind of electoral math, which can be a little unseemly when you're talking about, you know, bombs and children dying and stuff. But the electoral math, if you sort of take the cold bloodless calculus of it is, you

okay, there's this 100,000 people, how many of them can be won over by some sort of promise of some kind of potential change that might fall short of what the maximalists in that camp might want? And how far, if you're at the Harris campaign or at that time, the Biden campaign, how far can I go toward that block of voters without alienating some other block of voters? There are

actually a lot more Jewish voters in Pennsylvania than there are Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan. And so, you know, then you get into all these fine-grained distinctions of

If I, you know, if I were to put a Palestinian speaker on stage or if I were to say something about arms shipments, you know, would I then lose either Jewish voters or, you know, non-Jewish voters who are more pro-Israel? And frankly, just no one knows. I mean, you can't you can't really know these things. People say certain things to journalists or they say certain things on polls to pollsters. But we don't really know. I mean, one argument is.

is about how sort of loyal and partisan different communities tend to be. And there's an argument that says that Jewish voters tend to show up in these in these statistics as more loyal, partisan Democrats, whereas Arab and Muslim voters tend

As recently as 2000, we're voting overwhelmingly for George W. Bush. And in fact, of all the factors that may have swung the entire election towards George W. Bush, which, you know, we always talk about butterfly ballots in Palm Beach or, you know, Ralph Nader or any of these other things.

Muslim voters in Florida voted for Bush overwhelmingly, and that was enough to swing the margin then. So there's an argument there that, you know, maybe these voters don't have these kind of deep partisan ties that you might have to work harder to win those votes if you're a Democrat. At the end of the day, you know,

There's also just a diplomatic question about how much Harris can do as the sitting vice president, which actually really echoes the 1968 question of how much Hubert Humphrey could do to distance himself from LBJ's war policy about Vietnam. But at the end of the day, you know, again, to just take the cold electoral math of it,

everyone's kind of shooting in the dark. And it seems like what the Harris campaign has chosen, many people think, you know, sort of to their detriment, has been to say, okay, Middle East is really complicated. We've, you know, we only have a few months to run a presidential campaign. Let's try not to make waves. Let's try not to rock the boat. Let's try to just stick to the party line and hope that we don't lose more votes than we gain.

or lose more donors than we gain, but let's not try to rewrite decades of U.S. foreign policy here. And obviously in that process, they've lost the allegiance of some voters.

I want to go back to something that you just mentioned, which is Muslim voters in Florida voting overwhelmingly for George W. Bush. I mean, this was in 2000. And so this was pre-9-11, pre the Republican Party being associated with Islamophobia. And so I guess I'm wondering if you think that we're kind of past the point where we will see, you know, Muslim voters flock to a Republican candidate, especially if that Republican candidate is

Is Trump or if that actually suggests something about the appeal of, you know, socially conservative candidates to Muslim voters? And I mean, does it, you know, raise questions for you about, you know, just like the likelihood of this group actually moving toward Trump?

It seems like an insane thing to say, but yeah. I mean, there was there was just a poll a day or two ago that suggested that Trump is now ahead among Arab voters, according to this survey. So seems kind of wild. But, you know, wilder things have happened. I mean, one very top line takeaway from reporting this piece, which seems so obvious that it doesn't have to be stated. And yet I think we can't overstate it.

is voters are just way too complex and multifaceted and weird to model in any of our polling or any of our modeling. We keep trying and, you know, I don't blame us for trying, but

It's just not the case that voters are a kind of, you know, Bayesian set of logical inputs that, you know, you say, well, this person is a six point five of what I want in this issue and a nine point three on this issue. And so the outcome is this. People are weird. People are emotional. People are volatile. I mean, this is not good or bad. It just is. And so.

Yes, a lot of the Muslim voters I spoke to are social conservatives and they want to vote for a social conservative candidate. Also, a lot of them think the war is a genocide and they don't want anything to do with Democrats for that reason. Also, a lot of people are pro-choice and they want to vote for a pro-choice candidate. Also, some people really just want to vote for whoever will get GMOs out of their food.

I think, you know, we know that, but we don't really internalize it. And sometimes we just sort of think like, well, they'll eventually come around or, you know,

Like the Bush example you gave is a good one. It is absolutely true that the Muslim vote swung back against Bush after 9/11 and after the Patriot Act and after, you know, the warrantless wiretaps and all this stuff that he paid a political price for that. And people do pay a political price for things sometimes. It's also true that Donald Trump has run since literally the first minutes of his first presidential campaign on saying horrible things about Mexicans and other immigrants.

And his numbers with Mexicans and other immigrants have not really gone down ever. I mean, they've dipped and waned, but, you know, there just there is no such thing as, you know, political gravity. There are no laws of nature. There are trends. There are things we can infer, but there are very few things we can deduce. And so you.

We'll have more of the political scene after the break.

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So, Andrew, I want to go back to Michigan. You know, when we talk about what the Trump campaign is doing there, I feel like we often focus on the attempts by the Republicans to court, you know, auto workers, the unions, that sort of thing. But when we talk about the Trump campaign, I feel like we often focus on the attempts by the Republicans to court, you know, auto workers, the unions, that sort of thing.

But what is the Trump campaign doing, if anything, to court Arab voters? I mean, is this something that Trump is actively doing? And is that something that could help explain, you know, the polling that you were just talking about with Trump pulling over Harris with Arab American voters by 46 to 42 percent? Or is this just kind of the result of people moving away from Harris? Well.

I mean, it depends on how you define actively. I mean, it's Trump is doing things and often he's doing things the way he often does, which is kind of making little gestures and seeing how they land. Right. So and speaking out of both sides of his mouth and lying a lot. So, like, for example, in the debate against Biden, he referred to Biden as a Palestinian. That's a direct quote. And he meant it as just a slur, like a bad word.

Now, you would think that that would just be beyond the pale. And if you are Palestinian or, you know, care about Palestinian people, somebody who uses that as a slur, you would be like, I'm not voting for that person. But then I heard from some people in and around sort of Dearborn and Detroit, well, actually, you know,

he's reaching out to us, he's talking about us. And usually when they said that, they were referring to something he said in the second debate, where he was the only person to mention the Arab community. He said something

About, you know, Harris. She hates Israel at the same time in her own way. She hates the Arab population because the whole place is going to get blown up. Arabs, Jewish people, Israel, Israel will be gone. Very vague.

kind of meaningless, but he mentioned, you know, and this is what we've seen him. He said the words and that matters. He said the words, he reached out. Yes. And he said, I care about you. I mean, it's very similar to, he's done this with Black voters for a long time. He's very good at trying to have things both ways. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But, you know, he's been trying to do this on abortion for this whole campaign where he'll sort of say one thing, he'll say something contradictory,

And he kind of leaves it up to people to decide which one he means and which one he's just sort of, you know, saying because he has to. So with Gaza, for example, he has said things that I think are pretty dark and scary. You know, like we should let the Israelis finish the job. That sounds terrifying to me. That sounds like let's turn Gaza into a parking lot. I think that's what he means. But he's not, you know, he's always been like this. He's not the most articulate speaker, I think,

on purpose because then he can turn around and have plausible deniability. So he can then say, if you're motivated to hear it this way, oh, no, I mean, finish the job, like, you know, end the war because, like, I'm actually the anti-war guy. And that's why, you know, Arab voters love me, you know, and then sometimes it works. I mean, he went to I think it was the mayor of Hamtramck or one of these towns and said, you know,

I'm your guy. You should trust me. I want to end the war. And then he got that guy's endorsement. And that's a big community leader within the Arab population of Michigan. So again, I don't think it really makes sense. And I think a lot of the people I spoke to for this piece don't think it makes sense either. I think at bottom, what they're objecting to is what they feel

is a kind of complacency or kind of cold shoulder from kind of Democratic DC kind of pundits and bigwigs who kind of try to tune all that out and just say, in the end, left-wing voters come back to us and the only people we really need to work hard to reach are the kind of Nikki Haley voters. And I think from various angles, what I kept hearing from people, whether it's people in the Arab community, people in the kind of deep left progressive community,

is basically like you can't take us for granted anymore. So even while, you know, you just mentioned that Trump basically used the word Palestinian as a slur during his debate with Joe Biden. But while you have stuff like that, you also have these people

Extreme like right wing influencers like Jackson Hinkle and Nick Fuentes and even Andrew Tate, who have become very vocal in online Arab spaces. You know, they espouse pro-Palestinian rhetoric that teeters from anti-Israel to just downright anti-Semitic.

And I'm wondering if you think that these influencers have successfully muddied the waters a little bit and have made it seem as though the Republican Party is actually more pro-Palestine than the Democrats. Like, I know that the protest voters who you were speaking with in Michigan are, like, extremely well-informed, and so they're not likely to kind of fall for this. But, you know, thinking about low-information voters who are getting a lot of their news about the election from podcasts or YouTube shows, I'm wondering if you think that this has actually had –

a real effect? I think so. I think that and some of it is that intentional vagueness thing that Trump does. You know, I saw Biden when he was running be interviewed. I think it was for Complex for like a sort of youth vote thing. And this youth vote correspondent guy asked him, are you a Zionist? Oh, yes. Yeah.

And I think if it were Trump, he would have found a really sort of slippery, smooth way to just not answer the question because he would have just sensed danger and, you know, found a way to slip out of it. But Biden said,

yep, I'm a Zionist. And let me tell you what that means. And then he kind of went into like lecture mode and said, let me tell you, you know, let me explain that term to you. And I could kind of feel like a TikTok being made of that and sent to someone. Oh, yeah, I did see it via TikTok where it's Biden saying, you know, I know that this is this is a controversial thing to say. This is a bad word nowadays, but I am one. And it's like, I don't know, on one hand, I guess you have to commend him being like Frank. On the other hand, it didn't seem like a politically smart move.

Yeah. And look, I don't want I don't want my politicians to lie to me. And, you know, he has said that word about himself many times and he has a reason for saying it and he has a rationale for it. I mean,

Again, you would like to think that in some world you would be rewarded for being consistent, saying what you think. And then in the next breath, he says, but that doesn't mean that I don't, you know, want to look out for everyone in the region and find a way to come to peace. And, you know, he says that stuff in the answer. But in the sort of TikTok version of the answer that I was kind of editing in my brain as I was watching it, you just know it's not really going to land. Right.

Even though Zionism is totally mainstream and it would have been wilder for him to call himself an anti-Zionist. I mean, I think that's part of what's interesting here is just the way that we, you know, if we were having this conversation five years ago, even, you know, the more subtle things that Harris has done, like we were mentioning earlier to kind of distance herself from Netanyahu would have been seen as just like these egregious.

you know, like insults just kind of like beyond the pale. And now it's like, yeah, totally. I think it's actually it's been lost in a lot of this that actually I think that Harris's DNC acceptance speech was the first acceptance speech ever of a major candidate to refer to Palestinian self-determination and statehood in the speech. That's

a big thing, but actually in the context of what was being demanded, which was a Palestinian speaker at the DNC, it seemed like small potatoes and it kind of got mumbled through. Now, sometimes this is just how things happen, that, you know, there's a lot of change all at once and it's hard to see as it's happening. I think the good news and the bad news of that is that in moments of high change and volatility,

Sometimes it all works out in the end. And, you know, if you're a political candidate, you can still win and unify your coalition, even though there's a lot of push and pull and a lot of noise. Other times, the noise within your coalition overtakes you. Right. And I mean, all you have to do is that this analogy is in the piece, the analogy to 1964 and the analogy to 1968.

In 1964, you had a lot of people pushing Johnson on civil rights. He wasn't moving fast enough. He wasn't doing enough. He still won. And then he ended up being the great civil rights president of his era. But he had to fight through a lot of opposition and he wasn't doing enough. I mean, he was he was catering to the white segregationist base of his party more than he was catering to the activists. And.

he was able to hold it together, but in '68 it all fell apart. So not only does history not repeat, but the historical pattern isn't even clear on this. It's like sometimes it works out and sometimes it all falls apart. And sometimes you can draw a clear lesson from that and often you can't. I mean, there are sometimes just non-zero-sum antagonistic demands being made from within your coalition.

And this is one of those times. There are people who want Harris to move in one direction on the Middle East, and there are people who demand that she move in the other direction, and they both exist within her party coalition. This is not the issue that anyone would have chosen.

as an aligning issue if you're a Democrat or anyone really. I mean, the Democrats actually historically are very unified in terms of most policy issues, climate change, guns, abortion. I mean, you go down the list, they're kind of more all in line than they have been arguably ever. And yet the one that has

very high salience since exactly a year ago is one that they didn't have on their bingo card. It's a horrible...

tragic thing that remains incredibly salient in the minds of many voters. It's not going away. And there's just no easy way out for Harris. The good news is that it is not the only issue or the main issue for most people. So it's not like smooth sailing for her on the economy or inflation or anything else. But

I don't think that we should end this by thinking that, you know, if she loses by 100,000 votes in Michigan, you know, the war was the only thing that mattered. I mean, there are many, many people I spoke to in Michigan, in Detroit, who are voting on other issues, too. So I think, yeah, there are many irresolvable binds in politics, and you sometimes just have to win over some people by losing other people. But because voters are so complicated and weird,

It's not like they're just automatons that vote on one thing. Sometimes they get swept up in the momentum. Sometimes they thought they would never vote for a Democrat. And then they decide, you know, Kamala is really brat and I'm going to vote for her anyway. You know, like the weirdness can be scary and volatile, but it can also be earnest as a kind of form of energy. And I think I think that's what the Harris campaign is banking on.

I'd love to talk more about what this all means in November, but first we're going to take a quick break. Hi, I'm Nicholas Bleckman, the New Yorker's creative director. We've designed a collection of stylish and fun products for all seasons and ages, from beach towels and umbrellas to t-shirts and baby onesies. These and other items, including limited edition tote bags, are available only in the New Yorker store, carefully crafted and featuring work by the magazine's celebrated artists.

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Would you say that is it kind of fair to say that every time that Netanyahu escalates things in the Middle East, that he's essentially helping Trump by destabilizing the region? Like every time that there are more deaths in Gaza or in Lebanon, is that – I mean, I hate to put it this way, but can we assume that that is better for Trump than it is for Harris?

Yeah. Unfortunately, it's sort of deeply tragic to think of it this way. But, you know, it's kind of this happens in domestic politics, too, right, where anything bad that happens gets blamed on, you know, the party that's in the White House or even hurricanes.

hurricanes, inflation, the perception of inflation. This is why Trump tanked the border bill because he wanted the border problem to get worse under Biden and Harris. And wars are like that too. I think that Trump and Netanyahu are making the calculation that any increase in salience

is a boon to Trump because Trump, even though he is an incumbent of a kind, he can always run as a kind of change candidate, the kind of wildcard candidate, a kind of, well, what's the worst that could happen? At least I'll be different. You know, at least I'll be a bull in a China shop. That's always been his strategy. You know, I think with something as scary and complicated as a burgeoning regional war in the Middle East,

people are scared and they want, I mean, many, many people said to me, I don't know what I want, but I want something other than this. And this in their minds is associated with the party that's sitting in the White House. And so it's just like deeply tragic and sad to think about human lives in that way. But

I do think that Netanyahu and maybe Trump have that calculus in the back of their mind. And look, Netanyahu has been pretty clear that he prefers Trump. I mean, he hasn't really made a secret of that. Netanyahu also seems to think it'll be easier for him to stay in office if the war continues. So, yeah, not a great geopolitical chessboard on the table right now.

There's an exchange in your piece that is just so fascinating. It involves Marianne Williamson, and it's a group of people speaking. And at one point, you know, they bring up this idea that Trump was an anti-war candidate. And I'm wondering if you could just explain that a little bit and the way in which he could possibly be seen as the peace candidate. I mean, is it because he wanted to get out of Afghanistan? Yeah, it's a lot of things like that. He wanted to get out of Afghanistan voluntarily.

Biden then did get out of Afghanistan and, of course, was criticized for it and for the way it happened many, many times. And before the war in Gaza, you would hear people saying Trump is the peace candidate. I mean, he ran as an anti-Iraq candidate in 2016. And Hillary Clinton was the candidate of the kind of global order, global establishment. Biden did not help with this, frankly, the way he was running this time, because he just would bring up NATO kind of no matter what anybody asked him and, you know, would like

pivot from being pro-choice to NATO. And Trump would basically run against that and say, oh, NATO, they've been ripping us off. You know, the Ukraine invasion wouldn't have happened on my watch. You know, I want to get us out of all these conflicts. And for a lot of people, that has been enough historically. You know, we know all these things. He wasn't actually against the Iraq war when it happened, but he just said he was. And he repeated it a lot of times. And that was enough for some people. And, you know, in

In fairness, there isn't a very clear partisan alignment on a lot of foreign policy issues the way there is on other issues. If you're pro-choice or pro-life, it's not that hard to figure out which party represents your interest on that issue. If you're anti-war across the board, but let's say even in a specific war,

It can actually be really hard to figure out who represents your interests, if anyone. And so that's the kind of information vacuum, the kind of ambiguity that Trump thrives in.

Yeah, no, it reminds me of when I was in preparation for the VP debate. I was watching an old J.D. Vance, Tim Ryan debate from the Ohio senator race in 2022. And Ryan and Vance get into this whole heated exchange over Russia. And it's actually Tim Ryan who was more in favor of retaliating against Russia based on their aggression in Ukraine, whereas J.D. Vance is the one who wants to kind of just stay out of it.

I want to hone in on this because it reflects the failure of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment in our country. The same people who got us into Iraq and the same people who got us into Afghanistan for 20 years. He said that if Vladimir Putin uses nuclear weapons, we should have a strong response.

What exactly does that mean? Does that mean we're in a nuclear shooting war? I have three kids and I'm running to be the United States senator for the state of Ohio. I want to protect those children and I want a foreign policy establishment that puts the interests of our citizens first. I actually do think, I mean, you know, it's hard to ever take Trump at his word, but I actually do think that there is a kind of

nascent, budding attempt at some parts of a realignment around foreign policy and war stuff. I mean, there actually are right wingers who are more anti-war than other right wingers. There actually are Democrats who are more anti-war than other Democrats. This is why Tulsi Gabbard says she switched parties. I mean, again, politicians always have self-interest and are often not telling the full truth about their motivations. But

It's not insane for a voter to look at the political constellation and say, I just heard a bunch of conservatives say a bunch of stuff that sound really anti-war to me, especially on something like the war in Ukraine.

I'm anti-war. Why should I not explore that side of the aisle? Now, it's very complicated and there are many rebuttals to that, but it's totally understandable to me why a voter would think that. And I actually do think there are sincere anti-war politicians on both sides of the aisle. It's not a clear aligned, you know, it's not as clear as some other issues.

Yeah, I think that's true. Like isolationism is something especially that I would associate maybe more with the conservatives at this point. There's always been a strain of that on the right. And these things got very complicated post-Cold War and post-NATO. And there has been a kind of rejection of that. I mean, a lot of I've reported on the right for a long time and a lot of very, very, very far right people have said that their kind of radicalizing issue was war, was being anti-war. And I

I don't always sort of understand or admire where that impulse took them, but the impulse to be anti-war is a very understandable one. It does not cut easily within our political spectrum. And if you wake up every day out of some religious impulse or just basic human empathic impulse and think the US government is supplying bombs to kill people somewhere in the world, and I find that intolerable,

you don't really have a very clear political home. And so if you find that deeply galling and morally intolerable and you don't have any clear way to express that through the normal channels of domestic politics, you're probably going to like have some kind of crisis. And that has happened to a lot of people on the left and the right. Thanks so much, Andrew. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Andrew Morantz is a staff writer at The New Yorker. You can read his latest piece, Among the Gaza Protest Voters, on newyorker.com. This has been The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett. This episode was produced by Sam Egan and edited by Gianna Palmer with mixing by Mike Kutchman. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's head of global audio. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton-Brown. Enjoy your week, and we'll see you next Wednesday.

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