9/17/24: P Diddy Arrested, Trump Assassin Details, Kamala Fumbles Interview, Rogan Says Kamala Won Debate, Florida Weed War, Putin Threats Over Ukraine Strikes, Houthis Threaten Tel Aviv, Election Predictor Reveals Pick
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This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

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Indeed, we do. Many interesting things developing this morning. We've got new details in that second Trump assassination attempt and new questions for the Secret Service. Kamala Harris actually did another solo sit-down interview, so we want to dig into those less-than-satisfying answers that she gave. Joe Rogan with some interesting commentary on the debate. Bill Maher with some interesting commentary on the election. Dave Portnoy with some interesting commentary on weed. Of course, we couldn't miss that one, given Sagar's interest in the subject.

Some very serious things developing with regard to foreign policy, both in Ukraine and Israel, both of which point in the direction of further terrifying escalation. So we did not want to miss that. And we've got a new guest on the show today. He runs an election model, taking a look at, you know, all the polls and feeding them in and seeing what he thinks is going to happen this November. So we're excited to talk to him as well.

Yes, we are. And before we get to any of that, thank you to all of our premium subscribers. We're going to be doing our Ask Me Anything later today. We do it live from our studio here, and we broadcast it exclusively on Locals. So if you want to go ahead and subscribe and be a part of that, breakingpoints.com.

Before we get to all the stories that Crystal just laid out, we actually had a major break-me story that just happened this morning. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. We wanted to make sure we gave people some of the details because it's a story I know many are interested in. Sean P. Diddy Combs has been arrested in Manhattan after a grand jury indictment. So it was literally just happened late last night. Sean P. Diddy Combs was taken into custody by the U.S. Southern District of New York and by the

by the US Marshals Service at about 8:30 PM at the hotel where he was staying, the Park Hyatt on 57th Street. The indictment and the charges against him remain sealed by the federal government, but we do know that this was an investigation that was led by the Homeland Security Department, specifically HSI, which often investigates sex trafficking cases. Quote, "The March raids that we all brought everybody live coverage of,

at the time demonstrated that they were converging on his mansion in Los Angeles. He was then later, there was a lot of speculation as to exactly where he was and whether he was fleeing. They could be seen carrying out electronics. And all of this is in the context of a lot of the lawsuits and videos that have come out about Combs since I guess the last couple of years, past relationships, violence, and many of the other stories that have been alleged against him. But obviously, I mean, this is Titanic

development, not only in the case against him, but kind of looking at the entire music industry, something that's been trailing him for almost 30 years and very, very interested to see what is in that unsealed or in that currently sealed indictment against him. Southern District of New York, again, a very, um,

I guess, you know, probably one of the most important jurisdictions in all of law enforcement in the United States. No doubt. It's one of the most high profile federal courts, probably, excuse me, between that and the Alexandria Federal District Court, which handles a lot of terrorism cases. Those are probably the two most significant, powerful jurisdictions in the country. Just to remind people of some of the horrifying details here, this whole

saga and learning about some of the horrible things that had been alleged and in fact were caught and revealed on video started when R&B singer Cassie came forward with a series of horrifying allegations, including things that would be tantamount to sex trafficking. In addition, you know, her being drugged and forced into horrible things, her being beaten. Video was eventually revealed from a hotel security camera that

fit perfectly to a T, some of the horrors that she described. Now, he immediately settled, but that really opened the floodgates. And so this individual who, you know, as a millennial, he was sort of the pinnacle of pop and hip-hop culture,

You know, what we have learned about him and the criminal behavior that is now alleged to have occurred across multiple women, across multiple states over years and years and years has been shocking and horrifying. So, you know, everybody deserves their day in court, but what's already in the public sphere is pretty damning. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The videos alone, not to mention the testimony. Some of the things he's only already either not admitted to or settled in cases have been outrageous.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And then these always raise the questions too of, okay, well, he had a lot of handlers around him. He had a lot of, you know, other stars who were around him and allegedly, you know, at some of these parties where these rapes and sexual assaults and druggings, et cetera, occurred. So, yeah.

Who knew what, when, how big was the circle? You know, was this one of those apparently open secrets in Hollywood and pop culture that everyone just turned a blind eye to or perhaps participated in or perhaps enabled, etc.?

Those are some of the questions that go beyond Sean Diddy Combs, not that this wouldn't be a gigantic and horrifying story just on its own with him being the only perpetrator involved. Yep, great point. And what it does mean is that it will face a lot of inquiries into his businesses in the past going all the way back to the early 1990s, including some of the allegations of

that are against him. The HSI involvement is what really put a lot of flags on the case because it demonstrated that this is specifically a sex trafficking investigation. And of course, you know, the charges and the years that those human

hold could be really stunning when we eventually see what the end result of this. Like we said, Crystal, Sean Combs maintains his innocence. He say, quote, he's an imperfect man, but that does not mean that he is a criminal. And they say that he remains innocent of the charges. We don't yet know what those charges are. And when we get full details, we'll bring it to everybody. Wanted to make sure they got that arrest in the show.

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Sign up at WorkMoney. Get money-saving tips. Skip the rent. Get more rich. Sign up at WorkMoney.org slash MoreRichContest for your chance to win $50,000. This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not

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It became a theme in my life, the underdog syndrome of being questioned, of the, would they say this to a man? No, they would not. Like, why? That was one of those moments where you're just like, oh, wow. It was a bit shocking, but it didn't take any steam away or anything like that. If anything, it was more of the, okay, I'll show you. No worries. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's go ahead and move on then to Donald Trump and to some of the new revelations that we have about this attempted assassination of Donald Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida. We now have body camera footage that has been released

showing Ryan Routh's arrest by the authorities. Remember, Ryan Routh was on the golf course. He was spotted by Secret Service agents. Secret Service agents actually took a shot at him. He was able to drop his rifle, flee, get into his vehicle, which was parked nearby, drive away to a different county. It was only because a bystander nearby took a picture of his license plate and the make of the car that they were able to apprehend him so quickly. They eventually corner him

on a road and here's how that all went down. Let's go ahead and take a listen. We're gonna play some of this. So what we can see here is Ryan Routh, he's here, he's got a shirt up over his head, likely so that they could make sure that he didn't have anything that was on his person and then he's getting arrested there. You can see that they basically cornered him on a road and

made sure that they were able to arrest him without incident. So he did appear in court yesterday and some of the details that are now alleged in the criminal complaint are absolutely crazy. This really does tell the story of the Secret Service failure. So in the criminal complaint that was filed by federal prosecutors, the affidavit says from T-Mobile phone records,

indicate that Ryan Rount's mobile phone was, quote, located in the vicinity of the area along the tree line from 1:59 a.m. until approximately 1:31 p.m. So he was in and around the Trump golf course for a stunning 12 hours. Quote, the

The affidavit also says local law enforcement told them Routh was driving a Nissan with a license plate belonging to a Ford truck that had been reported stolen. So there are so many sketchy things that are going on right now.

With respect to Mr. Ralph Crystal, because not only in the criminal complaint, I was just reading some more details this morning. He was under investigation multiple times by the FBI as a convicted felon known in possession of a firearm. In fact, federal authorities were flagged to him about him multiple years.

years ago, including from a nurse who was returning from Ukraine. And she told customs officers returning to the United States, she said, you need to watch out for this guy. He is crazy. He's violent. He's a problem. So this was not just on the radar, but known to federal authorities at multiple different levels, from his Ukraine work to his gun possession. We know a little bit from the gun charges, the serial number on the rifle that was found that

he allegedly was trying to use that was filed off, perhaps showing that it is an illegal weapon that was purchased. But there's a lot of sketchy questions that remain around Routh. How was he funding his lifestyle? He was funding his multiple trips back and forth from Ukraine. So lots of weird stuff that's currently happening.

Yeah, and that's so noteworthy that there were multiple people who interacted with this guy. And some of this was in the public domain. We were talking about it yesterday where they were warning. They're saying, this guy does not represent Ukraine. He is not recruiting foreign fighters. Like, he's basically a fraud and a con. Don't take him seriously. And then the new information that we learned is that going beyond that, it wasn't just, hey, this guy is, you know, a huckster. It was,

this man is dangerous. The things he's saying are crazy and you need to be, like federal authorities, you need to be watching out for him. So the more we learn about that, the more interesting that tale is going to be. You know, with regard to the Secret Service response here, I feel a little differently about the Secret Service

service response in this instance versus Butler. It's very clear Secret Service just fell down on the job in Butler and came within an inch, you know, within half an inch of former President Trump being murdered in front of a giant rally crowd on national television. It was just by luck, fortune, fate or whatever that he happened

to turn his head at that moment. In this instance, you had a, you know, a very sharp-eyed Secret Service agent who was scouting ahead and was able to spot him. And, you know, they were able to fire off shots. And then ultimately, you know, down the road, they got kind of lucky with their ability to apprehend him before he could get any shots off whatsoever. I'm open to two explanations for how they came within, you know, another such close

close call on the president's former president's life this time. One is that there was another Secret Service failure, you know, when he's in the woods for 12 hours, that there wasn't a sufficient job done scouting the golf course ahead of Trump going out and playing. That's one possible explanation. Another possible explanation kind of falls on Congress or perhaps on the agency heads.

that there have been insufficient resources allocated to the Secret Service such that they're doing the best job they can and did the best job they could in the circumstances, but simply didn't have the tools and the resources to be able to avoid such a close call. But I'll tell you, you know, it's very noteworthy to me. I'm not an expert. I'd love to hear people who are an expert kind of weigh in on this, but-

They really got lucky in that bystander taking a picture of his license plate and their ability to then, you know, work with local law enforcement to apprehend this guy down the road. Because imagine a situation where there's an ongoing manhunt for this individual or where, you know, potentially, theoretically, he's never found. I think we were very close.

to that scenario unfolding, if not for the quick thinking of a nearby, you know, passerby. - You're right. I mean, look, would they have eventually found him? Most likely. Fingerprints on the weapon, you know, some of the personal details and other things, maybe his phone records they could have used.

But it might have taken a long time. And who knows? He's an unstable individual. He literally wanted to kill the president and got close to him. So possibly had, I mean, they didn't charge him with guns inside of the car. But again, you know, when you have an unstable person like that who is literally on the run, they could do anything. So we certainly did get lucky. I agree with you on the institutional level, you know, not faulting the individual agents who were there on the ground, but

it is clear resources wise, it's just different. So again, I can give my own personal experience having had to cover some of these golf things when Trump was president. I know for a fact that the golf course was entirely shut down and patrolled when they were president. In fact, from what I understand, if he had had the same level of presidential detail that was normal, then the golf course would have been secured in a

a different way and nobody would have been allowed to camp out there for some 12 hours. And the only reason again, that they even were able to see him was because they were scouting one hole ahead whenever he was there as opposed to shutting the entire thing down.

This gets to resources. Right now, the Secret Service is telling us Trump now has the highest level of possible protection. That includes, he had a phone call, I believe, with President Biden yesterday, where Biden basically talked to him about the same thing. But now the Secret Service, you know, seeing two attempted assassinations in the span of just 60 days is a terrible look for them. And it is, you know, very scary too, whenever we have an active campaign

candidate for president of the United States. Also though, now we're getting back into the rhetoric wars. Let's put this up there on the screen. Trump returning to Twitter, at least for this one. He says, the rhetoric lies as exemplified by the false statements made by Comrade Kamala during the rigged and highly partisan ABC debate and ridiculous lawsuits designed to

I can't even read this. There's so many comments, but I'll just get to this. It is because of the communist left rhetoric, the bullets are flying and it will only get worse, allowing millions of pieces from places unknown to invade and take over our countries and unparalleled, blah, blah, blah. We must love our nation, come in legally. He turns it into a migrant thing. But,

I said this after last time, and I continue to maintain it. I'm just going to stay in defense of, I think, reasonable position that just because people have, quote unquote, heated rhetoric does not mean that they are responsible. I think that

for what a deranged person like Ryan Routh does. I don't think that applies in the case of people being like, we need to end and stop Donald Trump or even calling him a dictator or a fascist. It's a free country. We have free speech. I don't think that that's necessarily inciting violence. And I don't think it's the same whenever those same charges are leveled against right-wing politicians. So this always annoys me, this whole like, we need to tone down the rhetoric while they're literally ramping up the rhetoric.

on their own side. And I just think it's very foolish because guys, like we have a general social contract. Most normal people understand whenever you say, quote unquote, we need to stop him. It doesn't entail a literal assassination.

That applies to, quote unquote, Comrade Kamala, Communist Kamala. The Democrats are having an invasion of our country. That's the same thing. So anyways, this has always annoyed me. I said it after the last attempt at assassination, and I will continue to say it here.

Yeah, and yeah, I don't think Republicans really want this election to be contested on who has the more heated or reasonable rhetoric, right? I mean, last time around, there was at least like five minutes where Trump was like, oh, I'm going to be the unity candidate and it's going to be a totally different Trump. And maybe about 20 minutes into his RNC convention speech, that was out the window and it was back to the same old, same old. Like, you know,

Donald Trump did come up with a fake elector scheme. He did give that speech and tell people to come to D.C. and that it was going to be wild. He did watch as those rioters breached the Capitol and, you know, assaulted police officers and all of those things. And he just watched and wouldn't say anything for hours and hours.

So it's entirely reasonable, appropriate, et cetera, to say based on his past behavior, he is a threat to democracy. And so to then, you know, turn around, you can't say that about him because it's inciting. It's like, well, we're just, you know, it's a very reasonable, even if you disagree, it's a very reasonable conclusion and charge to levy at Donald Trump. And of course, I mean, his rhetoric, even within this one tweet where he's,

saying that it's, you know, the Democratic rhetoric is too hot, he's then going on and painting an existential threat. So yeah, it's, you know, it's sort of ridiculous. And especially when you dig into the specifics of these cases,

The first assassination attempt in particular, which, you know, we know more about at this point than we do the second assassination attempt and what the potential motivations are. Although, you know, I think it's fairly reasonable to assume it had something to do with Ukraine since this guy was like obsessively into Ukraine. But the first one,

this guy didn't seem, he was looking at, you know, where various political figures of both parties were going to be. He seemed like he just wanted his moment of notoriety, that it was all about just getting his name into the history books and really had nothing to do with political ideology as best as we can tell. I mean, still, even after the reports that they've done and the information that they've learned, they still haven't really, they haven't asserted any motive

outside of what we could all glean from, you know, just the fact that he's searching all kinds of different high-level political and cultural figures that he could go out and potentially take a shot at. So in any case, yeah, this discourse, obviously, I find it as ridiculous and sort of silly as you do, Sagar. Right. Because, like, look, on the Thomas Crookes thing, we don't know a lot.

But yeah, I mean, current evidence points in that direction. And there's an important point there. It's about the individual. It's not about, quote unquote, the rhetoric of Democrats or Republicans. You know, there is individual responsibility here. These people have agency, even if they may be deranged. It doesn't necessarily fall on what, you know, somebody said earlier. Now, should we have better rhetoric? Maybe. Although, you know, I'm

I'm not really gonna, I hate tone policing just in general, especially whenever we try and gate it around an election. No, elections are actually very high stakes. We should argue sometimes they are existential in the eye of the beholder. I think it's totally fine to say so, no matter where you fall. Let's go to the next part here, continuing with Ryan Ralph. Ryan, interesting guy appearing here in court on these federal gun charges.

Let's put this up there on the screen. He claims he is indigent and he is now currently being represented by a public defender, meaning he has no funds. I, again, just find a lot of the funding behind him very, uh, just mystifying because he is a current resident of Hawaii. He clearly has enough money to like jet set across, uh,

the ocean back and forth from Ukraine to come here to Washington. He was previously in North Carolina, allegedly was running a business with his son. And, you know, I don't have any experience buying illegal weapons, but from what I understand from reading, they generally cost like five times retail costs. So several thousand dollars invested in the rifle that he purchased. Where is all this stuff coming from? Like,

Maybe it was a credit card. I don't know, but I'd be very interested to see that. Right now,

those gun charges are the only ones that have been filed against Ralph. From what I understand, it would be quite difficult to charge him with attempted murder or attempted assassination, but it is possible that the federal prosecutors will move to do so. Staying with who Ryan was, as you just said, he was a fanatic. He genuinely was a Ukraine, just a

pro-nuclear war in favor of Ukraine, like wanting to make sure that America did everything possible, sending Patriot missile defense systems. There's multiple photos of him at protests and others begging F-16s, no-fly zone, all of these things over the last couple of years. In fact, somebody recently flagged this. He appears to have been in an Azov battalion propaganda

propaganda video from 2022. We can play some of this so that people can see. Let's just roll a little bit. This Azov battalion, of course, is the far right literal neo-Nazis who are attached to the Ukrainian military. There he is. There he was. That's a picture of him. Who among us has put in an Azov battalion propaganda video?

I mean, there's probably a lot to say there in terms of what it means for Ukraine. But like I said, and I'll cut the Ukrainian slack in this. The International Legion has completely denounced him. All these foreign fighters who were there, they're like, we have nothing connected to this guy. In fact, there are multiple instances of us calling him a grifter and a liar. And

We saw this morning, like I said, there were people who were in Ukraine coming back to the United States telling federal authorities, you got to watch out for this guy. He is crazy. And flagging and trying to get U.S. authorities to do something about it. It does appear that while he was in Kiev, he did have some contacts.

and was able to funnel some foreign fighters into the Ukrainian military. At least one person has said that. So his ties to the Ukrainian state, to the International Legion foreign fighters, it's not as cut and dry as some people may want to say. I think the obvious explanation is he's just crazy. But that doesn't mean that he also didn't have some contact with them. But he certainly was not part and parcel a foreign fighter or something like that in Ukraine.

As best we can tell, and his social media posts before his Twitter account was taken down, there were a bunch of them that were like, I will fight and die for Ukraine. I want to go to Ukraine to fight and die. And the best indications are that he tried to do that and they rejected him. They were like, no.

We don't want you. And then you had a bunch of people who interacted with him throwing up these warning signals. So, yeah, he was whatever vibes he was given off, whatever things he was saying in the context of the Ukrainian conflict. There were plenty of people involved who are extraordinarily pro-Ukraine who were like, absolutely not. And by the way, let me alert the federal authorities because this dude is an absolute maniac.

I'm not sure if you mentioned this or not, but I just wanted to make sure to get in the detail with regards to the gun charges and the legal angle of this is interesting because I was thinking about that.

He didn't get any shots off. It was the Secret Service firing at him. So that's probably what makes it more difficult to charge him with attempted assassination. Now we can all read the tea leaves of when you're hiding in the woods at the former president's golf course for 12 hours with a sniper rifle and scope and a GoPro camera to record it all.

We can probably all guess what intentions you ultimately had, but I would assume that that's the reason why it would be difficult to prove those more egregious charges versus the gun charges. And part of what we learned yesterday as well is that the serial number on his rifle was at least partially scratched out.

So that is why we don't have details. You know, usually we get pretty quickly the details of like, oh, this is where the gun came from. He bought it legally. He bought it illegally. It was somebody else's. It was stolen, as in the case of the Georgia school shooting. His dad bought it for him for Christmas or whatever.

We don't have those details yet because of the serial number being scratched out and making it much more difficult to track the origin of this particular weapon. - Yeah, that's right. Like I said, though, he was a convicted felon by any reasonable standard, should not have had a firearm. I'm talking about legally.

And FBI literally investigated it. That's part of what I find mystifying. And it just always comes back. It's like known to FBI. It's almost a meme at this point. Known to federal authorities. 2019, Tipster calls the FBI, says, hey, this guy's a convicted felon. Remember, in his past, 2002, barricaded himself inside of an office with a fully automatic weapon. So that's it. You're done. FBI is called by Tipster. Honolulu FBI office investigates and drops the case, closes it.

I mean, that's pretty egregious in my opinion. On top of all of the investigations that were, all of the flags done specifically by people returning from Ukraine, begging the FBI and federal authorities, like you need to keep an eye on this guy. There is something wrong with

him. Let's go ahead and put the last one up there. And that's just what we referenced earlier, Secret Service under scrutiny here after this potential second attempt on Donald Trump's life. Congress and others are now calling for investigations. But Congress, by all accounts, is also getting very fed up

I just saw a statement from a senator yesterday that said that, I think it was Richard Blumenthal, so Democrat from Connecticut, saying that the Homeland Security Department has been derelict in its duty in sharing information with Congress. And I mean, all

of the current indications, not only in terms of these attempted assassinations from resources, but also at the institutional level, point to an absolute cluster inside of this organization right now. We had those leaked text messages and others that we had flagged earlier. But there's clearly, there is something deeply rotten inside of the Secret Service. And that is existentially dangerous to our country because it's

It's not just Donald Trump. It could be Kamala Harris. It could be Joe Biden. It could be any of these figures or the members of the family, people in the executive branch, people like Jake Sullivan or others. There are all kinds of sketchy and weird people, as we learn from Ryan Ralph and Mr. Crooks, who tried to assassinate Donald Trump earlier. These people are swarming Washington and just orbiting Washington.

the political system waiting for an opportunity. So they need to be vigilant at all times. And it genuinely is dangerous to see stuff like this. I mean, it's a horrible landscape to acknowledge, but we've got a country that is kind of a tinderbox where the politics do, you know, tend towards the sense of existential stakes where there's just by the numbers, a massive amount of guns.

So, you know, whatever they're doing in terms of Secret Service protection for all of their protectees, they need to up the ante. And I said this yesterday, I fear that this is kind of a terrifying new normal. Because once one person demonstrates what's possible, then a lot of other lunatics start to get ideas in their head as well. And with regard to the specifics of

of this instance and the fact that, you know, still even after the first assassination attempt, former President Trump was not getting the level of protection that the current president gets. It almost seems to me like a bureaucratic box checking issue where it's like, well, here's our standard for, you know, if you're this person, you get that level of protection. If you're that person, you get this level. Here's our protocols. Here's what we do.

rather than flexibly thinking about, wow, the risk landscape has just dramatically increased for this particular individual and perhaps for all protectees overall. So we need to go beyond that.

what would be what we've typically done in the past for a former president or for a current candidate, we actually need to do as much as we possibly can. Now, again, Secret Service doesn't have unlimited funds.

One of the issues that Ken Klippenstein, who has done fantastic reporting on this, talks about a lot is that they've been stretched in so many different directions and pulled in so many different directions into areas that you would never think that the Secret Service was involved with whatsoever. And so and that's not all their fault. That also could be, you know, the agency had certainly, but also could be things that Congress has mandated.

There needs to be an executive branch and a legislative branch effort to refocus this agency on the most critical core part of their mission and to acknowledge that the risk is dramatically elevated, certainly for former President Trump, but I would say probably for all of the protectees that, you know, are under their care.

This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our recent episode with Grammy award-winning rapper Eve on her new memoir and the moments that made her.

It became a theme in my life, the underdog syndrome of being questioned, of the, would they say this to a man? No, they would not. Like, why? That was one of those moments where you're just like, oh, wow. It was a bit shocking, but it didn't take any steam away or anything like that. If anything, it was more of the, okay, I'll show you. No worries. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Mike and Ian. We're the hosts of How to Do Everything from NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Each week, we take your questions and find someone much smarter than us to answer them. Questions like, how do you survive the Bermuda Triangle? How do you find a date inside the Bermuda Triangle? We can't help you, but we will find someone who can. Listen to the How to Do Everything podcast on iHeartRadio.

So we wanted to make sure to get to this. Kamala Harris did sit for another solo interview with results that I would say are indicative of perhaps why she doesn't sit for that many of these interviews. So let me just give you a little bit of what went down here. So this video is going to start off with her response to an answer about how specifically she would go about lowering prices. Let's take a listen. I grew up a middle class kid.

My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard. She was able to finally save up enough money to buy our first house when I was a teenager. I grew up in a community of hardworking people, you know, construction workers and nurses and teachers. And I try to explain to some people who may not have had the same experience, you know, but a lot of people will relate to this. You know, I grew up in a neighborhood of folks who were very proud of their lawn, you know.

And I was raised to believe and to know that all people deserve dignity and that we as Americans have a beautiful character to build, and my goal is 3 million new homes by the end of my first term. In addition, to help people who just want to get their foot in the door literally,

And so giving first-time homebuyers a $25,000 down payment assistance. The new approach is to expand the child tax credit to $6,000 for young families for the first year of their child's life. And people want a leader who has common sense and tries to find common ground. I'm supported by over 200 Republicans who worked for both Presidents Bush

John McCain met Romney. So she gets around to talking about some of her policy plans, but Sauter...

I don't know why this is hard. Like, so she gets asked, okay, what are you going to do? Right? And it's, I come from a middle-class background and people loved their lawns and don't we have great values? It's like, you have good policy proposals that you've put out that are really, really popular. I don't know why there isn't in her playbook, in her list of talking points,

right out of the gate. I'm going to crack down on price gouging. I'm going to crack down on, you know, the prescription drug prices. I'm going to bring them down. And then, you know, the housing stuff is really good. The child tax credit, it's really good. I don't know why there isn't just like a dud, dud, dud. And then if you want to

if you want to zoom out and do your, let me tell you about my values and where I come from and why these are the things that I believe in and committed to, that's fine. But, you know, I'm not trying to nitpick here, but I do think this is the one piece that is really missing for a lot of voters. Even a lot of voters who watched the debate and were like, she did way better than Trump and I cannot stand Trump and she made him look like a fool and he made himself look like a fool. But I really still want to get that core of like,

Who are you and what specifically are you committed to doing on day one? For some reason, this is the most difficult question for her. Yeah, it is. Well, I mean, I think there's a when you say why I think the answer is that she doesn't believe it. These are things where she doesn't believe anything. And that's actually the number one knock against her. She's so used to having to lean into her identity and others that it appears to be the default answer. Keep in mind, this is only a 10 minute interview.

you. And we gave you literally, I guess, the highlights. But the point that you're making is that if you calibrate to what, and this is where I always say with Americans, like, look, you could say a lot about our country, but people genuinely intuit and cut to the truth very quickly in a way that a lot of pundits are not able to. They are like, listen, I think you are better than Trump character wise. Um,

I probably trust you a little bit more on a few different things. But what are you actually going to do? That was the number one question amongst all of those swing voters. I do not know what she stands for. And this is a Hillary-esque mistake. Hillary made her campaign all about her and also being about not Donald Trump, where here with Kamala, she's personalizing her story. Again, fine if you're maybe giving a campaign speech or something, but this is a direct question about prices. I do think, again, that the major problem is legislation.

likely she doesn't believe things or she has a, you know, the copy and paste from her campaign website from the Joe Biden campaign promises. It does tell you something. She's got the Biden people on her staff. Maybe she does believe it if you were to, uh,

say generally, but the deep specifics of the preparation, this is exactly why she doesn't do a lot of these. So I mean, I don't find it mystifying in that this is kind of how she's always been. It also is concerning just from a general candidate level where we know that you can deliver a decent performance if you want, like at the debate.

So do you just not think or prepare for these things? And if you do, is this really the best that you can come up with? This was very old school behavior from her, I thought.

For her, it really is all about preparation. When she really takes something serious and locks in, she can be fantastic. I mean, she was fantastic in that debate. I have watched it now two times, and it is amazing. She does exactly what she wants to do in that debate in every single answer. It was masterful in a way. But when she doesn't lock in and prepare as much, then you get, you know, a very sort of middling response.

and stumbling performance like this. And, you know, to go back to this piece, because I've been thinking about this, because you look at Trump, like his answer on healthcare in the debate was, I have concepts of a plan. His answer when he got asked about childcare was utterly incomprehensible and somehow involved like Ivanka and Marco Rubio and tariffs. And it was like, what are you talking about? But people have a sense of,

of what makes Trump tick, like the things that he actually has a consistent passion for, like immigration is one of them. Like you may not know the specifics of what he actually will do on immigration. You know, is he actually going to do the mass deportation? He didn't last time around, but he did some other stuff that I found pretty terrible. But you know, that is core to him.

without even getting the white paper and really knowing all the details of how it's going to work. And I think tariffs, yeah, you could also put into that bucket as well. You know, you look at like a Bernie Sanders, like, you know what that man is all about. You know what he's thinking about when he gets up. You know what he's thinking about when he goes to bed. So,

Even to go back to your Hillary Clinton comparison, like Hillary had all kinds of white papers and she wouldn't have flubbed that answer. Like, okay, what are you going to do to bring down costs? She would have rattled off or like, here's my plan and here's my white paper, blah, blah, blah. But again, on that, like, you know, examination of the soul, people would be like, yeah, but I don't know what really drives her outside of her own ambition.

And so Kamala Harris has a similar issue, not just because she's changed her position. Okay, Trump's changed his positions a lot. You're allowed to change your position, by the way, if you've got new information, et cetera. But when you add that together with this sense of like, I don't know what the thing is for you. Like, I don't know what is driving you in the political realm outside of your own desire to be in this office, right?

I think that's where it continues to be the biggest question mark for her, honestly, at this point. And, you know, I don't know that it's really fixable. The only advice I could give to them is just like pick something, whether it's childcare, housing, like just pick something and just relentlessly talk about it. Just fake it like that's your passion, you know? And no one's buying this small business is my passion, by the way. It's not small business. It's clearly not your passion, but-

pick something, lean into it, talk about it a lot, feign some passion. That's probably the best she could do because that's the piece that's really missing. And then it becomes blatantly obvious in a question like this or the one she got from Dana Bash, what's your day one agenda, that she similarly kind of fumbled around with before eventually, yes, landing on her policy proposals. But

didn't have that burning like, this is the number one goal of the next administration, at least not that came across in that interview. I think that's a very astute answer. People in general are pretty good at intuiting what makes people tick. I guarantee people who watch the show knows what the two of us makes us tick and what there's a lot of passion in. But that's important. People can intuit something in the way that you can with anybody, your boss or anybody who you're looking at or you're watching.

So, what we see here with Kamala is that tick answer when you're not immediately burning to do something, then it does tell us that it's almost kicks in like, oh, I should probably now mention my 3 million new homes. But she didn't actually answer that question about prices. She didn't really say the word inflation. She didn't acknowledge necessarily pain that people are in or try to paint a bigger picture. It started with herself. You got basically you're trying to dance around the issue, but you're not actually

zeroing in and voters understand that. So if she loses, a big part of this will be why. Because people felt at the end of the day, I didn't truly understand what she was going to do for me. Trump also really does benefit from the fact that he was president and people have a lot of rose-colored glasses about what those four years were like. I mean, rose-colored almost implies that they're incorrect.

They remember fondly what prices, gas, and all that stuff looked like under the Trump administration. And they feel there's been a lot of chaos and price inflation since then. That is just empirical. It's reality. Kamala needs to actually do a good job to try and actually diminish those colored glasses and say, no, remember the chaos? And he's actually bringing that. He only cares about himself. Often the best hit that she had on him during the debate. So in general,

This is why she won't do the interviews. But, well, actually, no, I apologize. She will do one more interview. Whether it's an actual interview, we'll see.

Yeah, so this is kind of funny. So she's doing this live event with Oprah Winfrey. We can put this up on the screen. I mean, it's a campaign function. It's not an interview. But she's doing what's described as a live stream rally with Oprah Winfrey, who, of course, endorsed Kamala and spoke at the DNC. Her speech, in my opinion, it was very cliched, but because she's Oprah, she made it work. She just has so much charisma that you're like,

I want to hear what you are saying, even when it's just a bunch of Pablo and political cliches. But anyway, you know, I think the strategy basically makes sense. And she's done enough now to lower the temperature on the like, when are you going to sit for an interview? When are you going to sit for an interview? When are you going to sit for an interview? She's done a couple like local news, like the one we just showed you that was a Philadelphia local news interview.

I think she did a radio interview. Like, she's done a few things enough for them to be able to point to to be like, see, she's accessible. And it's not her wheelhouse. She does much better in a rally situation with the prompter ready to go. Trump is giving her a tremendous gift if he sticks by his I don't want to debate again. Mm-hmm.

Although, you know, given how well she performed in the first one, I don't think she should necessarily be afraid of a second debate either. Although I would think it would be difficult for her to match her performance there and for Trump to match the low of his performance there as well. But, you know, I think they basically are correct that this is probably the right strategy given the candidate that they have.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's correct. I think at the end of the day, we now know who she is. And Americans at this point, are they going to have to make their peace with it or not? And that's risky. That's really what it is. It's just poll after poll tells us that this is a risky strategy, that this is difficult. A lot of the ball is actually in Trump's court to see how he is going to do this. Is he going to seize the narrative? And is he going to try and put it in more advantageous directions for him in that

contrast and the way that he takes press questions or even in terms of the issues that are highlighted here or not, the less that it is about him personally and the more that it's gonna be about issues, then that contrast on Kamala will be difficult because it will remind people that she doesn't necessarily stand for anything.

But it really comes back to how Kamala too is going to, is she just gonna continue this Oprah Winfrey kind of vibes strategy? Look, some of the polls are in her favor. There's been a lot of decent ones that have come out for her in the last couple of days. Pennsylvania actually showing her up by a couple of points. So it is highly possible that this is exactly what is, that this is exactly the way that she does win the election. And that also demonstrates both her strengths and weaknesses as a candidate.

And very, very much so, what I think it previews more than anything is she is going to struggle in the presidency. You can not get away with this when you are president. Just at a baseline, even if you try to keep the press away. Look at Biden. They did their best. You will be revealed. The job

genuinely requires it. Even if you try not to do a press conference, one day you're going to be sitting with five European leaders and you're going to have a dementia incident and wander off to go look at a parachute. And America's going to be like, what the hell is going on over here? So buckle up because that is not going to be good for you if you win the job.

This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our recent episode with Grammy award-winning rapper Eve on her new memoir and the moments that made her.

It became a theme in my life, the underdog syndrome of being questioned, of the, would they say this to a man? No, they would not. Like, why? That was one of those moments where you're just like, oh, wow. It was a bit shocking, but it didn't take any steam away or anything like that. If anything, it was more of the, okay, I'll show you. No worries. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪

So Trump obviously did himself. He missed a big opportunity in the debate to

to make this race a, you know, a contract or even a referendum on Kamala Harris and Joe Biden versus a referendum on the most negative parts of himself. Kamala Harris wanted to use the debate to shift the focus to him and to the parts of his personality that people find to be the most odious. And she succeeded in that.

overwhelmingly. You know, at this point, it's undeniable when you look at the polling ship post-debate, when you look at the number of people who said they thought she won the debate, including a significant chunk of Republicans, when you look at her favorability ratings going up and Trump's going down post-debate, when you look at, you know, how people felt they answered questions on the various issues. So it's, you know, the verdict is fairly clear in terms of how that debate went for Donald Trump. And one of the people who noted this

was Joe Rogan, who made some interesting comments about how he thought this debate went. Let's take a listen. Did you watch the debate? Yeah. I forgot. Let me tell you, before I say anything, I just want to say, whoever's helping her, whoever's coaching her, whoever's the puppet master running the strings,

Yeah. You did a fucking amazing job. She did a great job. They did an amazing job from the moment Biden drops out, forcing Biden to drop out. Whatever they're doing, whoever's writing those speeches, getting her to deliver them, coaching her, she's nailing it. She nailed that one speech. She's like, say it to my family.

face. She nailed it, dude. And then last night, to me, when I was like, oh my god, this is jujitsu, where she was like, if you go to his rallies, his crowds are boring, they're tired, they all leave early. My crowds are the best crowds. I have the number one crowd. He couldn't help himself. And she got him. I mean, it's

It's so obvious what happened. And they really, like even more than the content preparation, it was, and somebody else said this that I'm borrowing from, but it was like a psychological preparation for exactly what was going to get him where he couldn't resist. And it truly is an amazing moment when she gets asked this difficult question about immigration. She does a little, you know, blah, blah, blah. I prosecuted transnational gangs, et cetera, et cetera.

but let's talk about his rallies.

the moderator, David Muir, comes back to him and actually asks him a follow-up question on immigration. And he says, I'll get to that, but I got to talk about the rallies. And from there on out, she had him dancing to whatever beat she wanted him to dance to. And I've never seen anything like it, to be honest with you, where it was so clear what her strategy was and it was executed well, but where he just could not dance.

taking the bait and doing exactly what she wanted him to do in every instance. It was unbelievable to watch it unfold. The Rogan check-in is an important one because, you know, look, Joe is no lover of Kamala. He also is generally, like, more apolitical and is just an observer. Tom Segura as well, who is...

These people are comedians. So, you know, in a sense, I like to hear the same thing where you and I are political nerds. Like you said, you watched it twice. I mean, we're looking at every detail and trying to parse or trying to find something. But it is validating in the sense that the casual observer is like, man, she really got him on that. And the rally size, I mean, we shouldn't forget that became a meme in this country.

If we remember the whole Sean Spicer thing, Melissa McCarthy, it was the first time SNL was relevant in like 20 years. People were actually sharing the skit, the podium stuff. I mean, it was a national story. And people were laughing. I remember too, traveling around in November 2017 and everyone was joking about the rally stuff and with-

Sean Spicer, who's a household name. And I started to think about that and I was like, wow, you know, you forget too that these mimetic incidents become imprinted in a way that the normal person can laugh because what does it illustrate? It illustrates Trump's weakest link, which is his own narcissism in the center of self. And worse is it amplifies the consistent democratic message of he doesn't care about you. He only cares about

about himself. So he really is at his best when he's fired up about immigration or tariffs, because at least there, it's about something that has to do with US policy or about opposition to US elites. With rally size, there's no pretending. It's literally just about you. I mean, that's the problem.

Well, he's both at his best and his worst, apparently, when it comes to immigration, because the pets thing. Listen, we won't get back into the big debate we had yesterday. But I mean, I think you more or less agree that it didn't work out. It's not going to work out for them politically. And I saw more polling yesterday that even a like overwhelming majority of Republicans said that the pets, dogs, cats thing comments were, quote unquote, weird, which, again, is what Democrats want to hear.

the public to be thinking about Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. So even when he was on his topic of choice, he didn't use the time to talk about it in a way that is appealing to the people that might be won over. He used it, you know, in a way that fed into a Democratic narrative about the ticket and sparked an entire, you know, we won't go back over it, but I think I made my views on this pretty clear yesterday. The debate has been there. In terms of the polling, my...

My thing is, I think you're probably right. I just have no idea. I just, because of Qazir Khan, because of Access Hollywood, because of living through these moments where they're like, this is going to get him. Charlottesville, this is never going to happen. All of this, I'm just, you know, I just don't know. Charlottesville was bad for him, though. I mean, I do think Charlottesville was a big part of why he ends up losing in 2020. I mean, his approval rating took a giant hit.

And I think Charlottesville, January 6th, like those moments where he was truly unhinged, I think it's pretty clear at this point are part of why not only he lost in 2020 as a sitting incumbent president, which yet he overperformed his polls, but he still lost and why they dramatically underperformed in 2022. The more that it was his candidates who embraced some of these more, you know, fringe, extreme, outrageous moments,

the worse they performed. So, you know, I do think that some of the moments, it's not like nothing mattered. Some things did matter because he did end up losing. Absolutely. Things matter. He barely lost. I just, I've been burned too many times to take any of these...

conventional wisdom and I genuinely am just at we'll see. Why don't we get to Bill Maher? Because he had a different take, obviously. - Yeah, well this is, yeah, exactly. So this segues well to Bill Maher, who made a pretty bold prediction in his show last week. Let's take a listen. - I'm gonna make this a very momentous night with a prediction because I, and I think I have the credibility for this prediction because I have been called a Trump alarmist for a very long time. They were wrong, I was right. He wasn't gonna leave power, okay.

But ever since then, and since the Hollywood Access tape where he said, I'm going to grab him by the pussy, and he survived that. Every time he's been done crazy shit and gotten himself in trouble, I said, no, no, it's not over. I've said that. I've argued with people. Brett Stevens, my good friend, he's on the show next week. He said at one point a few years ago, the Trump thing. I said, no, no, no. Tonight I'm saying, I think it's over. I just want to bring up an analogy to one person.

Even before we were around, there was a guy named Joe McCarthy in the early 50s, and he had a hold on America. And it blew out in about two years, right? Two, three years, he was the biggest thing, and then it was just, and I feel like eating the dogs, we're at this point. I feel like we're at the Captain Quig with the strawberries. We're at Denzel at the end of training day. I'm King Kong up here. I just think he's going to lose. What do you think, Sagar, about that?

I don't know. Listen, Bill's history is a little off in terms of McCarthy. McCarthy lasted a lot longer than – I mean it's not wrong. The peak was definitely there for two or three years. What Bill is alluding to is this idea of like a have you no decency, sir movement, which has been cast as the general end of –

But the idea that he's trying to get at is that this is the official breaking point, get it, for the American electorate with Trump. And I just don't see evidence of that. Also, that coincided with a genuine like down spiral for McCarthy, not in the way that like, oh, Trump is spiraling. He's still like, you know, with it.

McCarthy was a literal alcoholic and came to death. Maybe I'm taking it a little bit too literally, but it is important to just think about like, what he's trying to say is this, there was this phenomenon. It took over the whole country. It was massively popular. It had its hold on American politics. And then this was the breaking moment. People at the time intuited actually that that probably was the end. And I don't intuit that yet just because

I can't, when the man still has a toss-up 50/50 chance of being elected President of the United States, again. And if we look at the polling and how much closer he is today, the possibility of his victory looms larger than it did in 2020 and in 2016. So I just don't think it's really as accurate. But look, maybe Bill is right.

If Trump loses by five, by five points, like nationally, which I don't think will happen, but it's possible, then yeah, absolutely. But I'm not really sure we're there yet. Here's what I find compelling. I don't, you know, I don't look to Bill Maher to like have his finger on the pulse of the country at this point in his trajectory. I don't think anyone should. You know what actually stuck with me from our debate night coverage, Sagar, was the point that you made about how,

Now we know how he's going to spiral, right? He's going to double down on the Laura Loomers and Corey Lewandowski. The people, the Chris LaCivita and the Susie Wilds are going to be on the outs, whether they get actually fired or he just doesn't listen to them anymore. It doesn't really matter in terms of the outcome. And he's losing time.

to reset this race. And I think he does need to reset this race. There's another poll out this morning, Morning Consult, that has Kamo with a six-point national lead. That's a doubling in her national lead with that particular pollster post-debate. And with the exception of one poll, that's been a pretty consistent post-debate trend. Now you could say, okay, well, that might be a temporary bump, sure.

But you have to see some sort of evidence that your opponent is going to be able to adjust and shift. And all we've seen is the contrary, is him, you know, going in on his worst instincts, surrounding himself with the worst possible people he could surround himself with. And again, like,

Some people in some states are literally voting now. It is September 17th. You know, it is very short period of time before election day. Trump himself has closed the door. And again, this shows the foolishness of his tactics to another debate. He's out, you know, tweeting how much he hates Taylor Swift, et cetera, et cetera. So it's more, it's hard for me to see how he adjusts and is able to make a more compelling case

then, you know, that this one moment or this one incident is going to be the thing. And then I also just look like, you know, he won in 2016 and it was shocking, right? And the polls were wrong and it was crazy, et cetera, et cetera. And ever since then, like, you know, there's a sense that he's just got some sort of political magic that nobody else understands. But if you just look flat at the record,

They did poorly in 2018. He lost in 2020. They did poorly in 2022. And now here you are in 2024. And it's hard to see what's different. And it's easy to see that he is not the same candidate he was in 2016. He's lost a step in terms of his personal coherence. And he is aging, although not as like noticeably as Biden. And he's lost a step in terms of his sense of the electorate and having his finger on the polls.

So that's why, you know, I don't think Bill Maher is entirely off base to sense this as a pivot point, because it was one of the best opportunities for Trump to really seize the narrative in this race in a way that benefits him. And he utterly failed to do it.

Very possible, Crystal. He also did that to return to 2016. He surrounded himself with loyalists. All the Republicans denounced him. Everybody said he was going to lose. What was it, Kelly Ayotte and others were like, nope, I'm unendorsing him. I'm going to write in Mitt Romney. And he won. So the problem, too, that Trump learned actually from that time, and part of the reason I said that,

is he has learned to actually trust his instincts. He has learned that his base instincts on top of surrounding himself by loyalists can and often does pay off for him. Now, obviously, that did not work in 2020, and that's part of the reason the January 6th insanity was as bad as it was. And I'm not talking about the actual, like, riot at the Capitol. I'm talking about Mike Lindell and the overstocked CEO in the Oval Office with Sidney Powell doing the whole fake elect or something.

That was honestly, that's way worse in my opinion. Just not only in terms of what the overall effect would have been, that's actually, if you look, is what he's being charged with federally. And so this, it's been a downside, it's been an upside, but it's one where, how old is he? 79, maybe 78. He's not going to change. That's why I made that prediction. So, you know,

Either things will go like they did in 2016, but it is very possible that Bill is right. And right mostly in the sense of if he spirals down or if he continues to surround himself, if he continues to keep this strategy going in, it reminds people that he's

He reminds and shows people in the highest flagship moment of politics of his modern career that he made it more about himself, his rallies, and was easily baited as opposed to talking about issues that matter. Most Americans actually are voting on issues or at least how they feel about issues, and that will be the biggest disconnect.

So both of these candidates have big problems. And he's losing ground to her right now on who would handle the economy better. And that should be, you know, he should own that space every day, all day long. There is another important difference that I mentioned yesterday, but I think it's very significant, which is with 2016, which is...

However you feel about Kamala Harris, or however I feel about Kamala Harris, her favorability is pretty good. It's basically even, which, you know, doesn't sound amazing, but in modern politics actually is kind of amazing. And back in 2016, he was running against a deeply unpopular candidate in Hillary Clinton who had negative favorability rating of like minus 16, certainly in the double digits.

And, you know, I think that that matters and is quite significant as well. I also am starting to think, you know, in 2020, and I mean, we said this at the time, so it's not like this is really a change of tune for us, but there's this narrative that's taken hold that like Joe Biden was such an amazing, perfect candidate in 2020.

The guy barely campaigned. Like, he was, you know, he had the excuse of COVID, but we talked all the time about the basement strategy. It was, like, invisible for obvious reasons because his decline, while he was in a much better condition than he is today, it was already market. It was already noticeable. And he did not run on any affirmative economic agenda. The good stuff that they ended up doing, he did not talk about at all in the campaign. It was purely marketing.

on Trump paid communications and I'm going to hide myself. And there was very little enthusiasm in favor of the Democratic ticket. All of the enthusiasm on the Democratic side was an anti-Trump vote. So, you know,

you know, and even that was enough to defeat Donald Trump at that point. So, you know, I just, I've been readjusting some of my priors about how extraordinary or powerful a political figure Donald Trump actually is because outside of winning in 2016, the record has not been a winning one. Certainly possible, Crystal.

This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our recent episode with Grammy award-winning rapper Eve on her new memoir and the moments that made her.

It became a theme in my life, the underdog syndrome of being questioned, of the, would they say this to a man? No, they would not. Like, why? That was one of those moments where you're just like, oh, wow. It was a bit shocking, but it didn't take any steam away or anything like that. If anything, it was more of the, okay, I'll show you. No worries. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Mike and Ian. We're the hosts of How to Do Everything from NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Each week, we take your questions and find someone much smarter than us to answer them. Questions like, how do you survive the Bermuda Triangle? How do you find a date inside the Bermuda Triangle? We can't help you, but we will find someone who can. Listen to the How to Do Everything podcast on iHeartRadio.

Let's move on to marijuana. I had to put this one in the show. Dave Portnoy kicked the hornet's nest, I guess, on Twitter. He recently put out a video endorsing the Florida Amendment 3, which would legalize marijuana in the state. Let's take a listen. Listen, it's Sunday afternoon, football on TV, pizza on the way, in Massachusetts, smoking a little weed,

Just enjoying my day. Florida, you can't do this. In my Miami house, you can't do this. Why? Freedom. It's about freedom. Half the states allow this. Legal marijuana. Florida. I want to be able to watch football, eat pizza, and smoke. We're all adults here. 21 plus. Make your own decisions. It's on the ballot. Vote yes on three. Legalize recreational weed. Come on. Where are we, Florida? Wake up.

Wake up. Don't tell what other people what to do in their own house. We're grown adults. It's safe. It's legal. Over half the states in the country have it. Why don't we in Florida? I'm a Florida resident. I want to be able to smoke in my house, watching football, eating pizza like a human. I can do it in Massachusetts. Make it legal on ballot day. Vote yes on three in Florida. Thank you.

All right. Amen. Amen, brother. Okay. This is bullshit because nobody in the state of Florida is getting arrested for smoking weed in their house. In fact, weed addicts, by the way, I put this out yesterday. If you all just stay home and eat pizza, be my guest. Nobody cares what we do at home. When you smoke outside, whenever you smoke behind the wheel of a car, because it's chill when you smoke around children in public parks. Yeah. I think that's a problem. Uh,

And that's the issue is they think that it's fine to pollute public spaces, to just light up outside. I just landed, by the way, recently at Denver Airport. People next to me are smoking weed while waiting for a rental car. We need to smoke weed while we're waiting for a rental car while we're about to break the law. Everybody just thinks it's totally fine. Get behind the wheel.

and they're totally intoxicated. So frankly, this is a bullshit understanding of what legal weed would mean for the state of Florida, because it's really more about public consumption and being able to buy. - Some of us. - Nobody's getting arrested at home. Nobody, zero. - Myself and Dave Portnoy happen to believe in a little concept called

called freedom. And it's just sad that you don't believe in that, Sagar. No one's violating your freedom at home. It's just sad that you don't believe in freedom. That's what's sad to me. Yeah, this is what I'm talking about. Like, it's just total propaganda by these weed heads. And like, who is coming to Dave Portnoy's Miami house and arresting them for marijuana? They won't even arrest you for blowing up

cocaine. I mean, it's just ridiculous because the point is that that's not actually what is happening. What's happening is it would legalize high potency THC, which would be widely available commercially in the state. It would be a boon for big banks, for venture capitalists. It would be regulated. It would be so regulated like it is in Colorado where teenagers are- Right now, it's unregulated and it's more dangerous.

In the state of Colorado, high-potency THC is poisoning children, ER visits are up, they have massive amounts of traffic debts, and the amount of tax revenue does not even compare to what they initially promised. It is almost certainly being overwhelmed in emergency services and higher police or public safety needs, and the entire city smells like shit. So if that's the trade that you would like in Miami, in Miami Beach, in

in Tampa, in Jacksonville. By the way, I don't live in Florida. You people do whatever you want. I visit probably once a year and I'm like, why did I come to this place exactly? So let's put this up there on the screen in terms of the polls. The polls currently disagree on the fate of Florida marijuana legalization initiative. Among those who have been surveyed, 66% said that they would vote yes. Only 33% say no. I will just put it on the table. I don't generally make predictions. I think it is going to pass.

just because I think marijuana legalization is unfortunately incredibly popular. It's very popular because most Americans agree with me and Dave Portnoy and believe in freedom. Be my guest. You want to rule out the public? Go ahead. Just a technical thing. It has to get 60% to pass, I believe, is the margin. And so there was one poll from Florida Atlantic University that had it at 56%, but you still had some 15% who said that they didn't know how they would vote on the measures. I agree with

I think it's pretty likely to pass. You had Trump come out and endorse it. Trump is in favor. Came out and backed it. So the more interesting thing to me, not that I don't always find your views on the topic very interesting, Sagar, but there's an interesting divide in the GOP coalition between the phenomenon you've talked about, the Barstool conservatives, Dave Portnoy, of course, being chief among them, and the J.D. Vance-style coalition.

conservatives who are, you know, social conservatives who are deeply concerned about like degeneracy and the decline of the culture, et cetera, et cetera. And there was a

And there's still to some extent is, but part of what brought them together was this like backlash against democratic wokeness, right? And the like, you know, the PC police and the policing of language and all that stuff. And it sort of united them because the Portnoy types are like, leave me the fuck alone. Like, I'm going to say what I want to say. And the J.D. Vance types are like, you know, they're, I don't want to use him specifically, but that genre of conservative is,

It's not that they're so much opposed to some censorship or restrictions in their direction, but they didn't like that particular, like, liberal institutional wokeness being codified in corporations and those sorts of things because it's obviously on the other side of the culture war for them. So there was, like, a unifying theme there.

The salience of that issue, I think anyone would say has declined. It's not a major battleground in terms of this presidential election. It's not something Trump really ever talked about. Ron DeSantis really leaned into it. We saw how well that worked out for him, et cetera. And so you're getting more instances where this divide is on display. The other one that I can think of is

the abortion argument where Portnoy came out and, you know, was relatively pro-choice in his commentary. And there was, again, a backlash against him from more of the, like, you know, social conservative J.D. Vance wing of the party. And so that's actually what's interesting to me here about some of the backlash to Portnoy's comments is it exposes a fissure

between the social conservatives and the barstool conservatives within the GOP coalition that hadn't been on huge display until recently. - Let me take off my own hat and be descriptive. They're obviously more popular, like 10 times more. And in fact, this is the issue is that- - By they, you mean the barstool conservatives. - The barstool people. I said this, look, I think barstool conservatism will be the future. I think that is exactly what the GOP will eventually look like. There will have to be some sister soldier moment

on abortion or the abortion question will be just resolved by Democrats whenever they nationalize it and the pro-life people can shut up forever. After that period, it's very likely that this is the direction that things will trend just because it's way more popular. People are a lot more secular. They don't like telling people what to do. And if you notice, like for example, let's put the other side of who these people might have

in terms of their political talent, like Ron DeSantis. Yeah, Ron DeSantis is popular in Florida, but he lost massively in the GOP primary. And listen to the way that he talks about the issue. Let's take a listen. This was just yesterday. And what I tell people is, your default on amending the Constitution should be no, right? They should have to prove to you a reason

a really high bar why you would put something in the Constitution which effectively can't be changed. Same thing with this Amendment 3. The Amendment 3, the media will refer to it as marijuana recreational legalization. That's not entirely true. It's a partial legalization.

because this has been put in by basically one big weed company that spent 75, 80 million dollars. And yes, they write in there that you have a right to possess and use up to three ounces of marijuana, which the law enforcement tells me may be 50 to 100 joints. That's more than any other state in the country. So they're putting that in the Constitution. So. So, yes, you do have that right. But only if you buy it from them.

You can't grow it in your backyard. You got to buy it from them. So they're creating in our Constitution a big weed cartel. And not only that, they're giving themselves protection from any civil liability at all at any point in the distribution or cultivation process. That's not in the ballot summary.

I mean, look, empirically he's right, but that's like the most boring way that you could possibly address this. Well, it's also what I took note of is, like, when you just argued against it, you went at it directly. Yeah, exactly. Like, this is bad and here's why.

You can tell he knows he's on losing ground because he makes all these like procedural arguments about like, well, maybe we shouldn't mess with the Constitution, you know, which again, isn't a weed specific argument. It's just like a, you know, appeal to sort of tradition and sense of people's fear of change.

Then he does this kind of jujitsu and like, oh, well, this is really a giveaway to corporations. None of it is a direct argument against the thing that people are actually voting on. And so to me, it's very telling that he knows he's,

looking at these poll numbers, he knows he's on, not on, you know, solid ground here in terms of public opinion, which is why he has to do all of these sort of ancillary arguments rather than making a direct appeal as you did. Yeah, I agree. I mean, this is part of the problem. Let's continue in this vein. Let's put the next one up on the screen. Matt Walsh, uh,

put out a tweet. He says, can you point to any state or city where life has been in anywhere miserably improved after legalizing marijuana? Where are the success stories? Just give me one, please. But Jason Whitlock, you know, kind of also crystallizing what you're talking about here. This is why single people and people without kids shouldn't vote. We tend to think selfishly with no concern to what we're leaving the next generation. Married people with kids should be the only voters. We should prioritize families. We want to fix

our broken culture. Maybe you can agree or you can disagree, but that's not popular. I'll just put it that way. And that's the issue. We have to live in the realm of representative democracy. So look, you're correct. I made a very forthright argument about it. A lot of people don't even want to talk about the issue or get into this whole like, oh, people, kids shouldn't vote. The truth is that Portnoy is like a hedonist individualist. I would hope he does not take exception to that because I would say that's

Descriptive. That's not necessarily a bad thing. That's a very popular thing. It's a very American character, actually. I don't necessarily agree with it whenever it comes to marijuana. But descriptively, it is so obvious to me that things are going in that direction. It also is why, for example, Portnoy went after J.D. Vance about this idea of having higher taxes or whatever for people who are single.

But also why it's very important. Remember that he was pro-Trump in 2015, not for policy positions, for, quote, telling it like it is. And so I always point to that. I think it's a very important precursor of where politics and all of that will trend, how someone can be simultaneously pro-choice and also like...

pro-Trump, anti-woke, left and all that. It seems incoherent if you think about politics in a 1990 sense, but in a 2024 sense, I actually think it's starting to make perfect sense. Portnoy really is sort of the living embodiment of the antithesis of J.D. Vance's politics. Yes, that's right. Putting aside, you know, whatever policy proposals he puts out there, which, you know, I...

For example, on child tax credit, right? They had a child tax credit vote in the Senate and he didn't bother to show up for it. He certainly didn't like lead the charge to reinstate the child tax credit after it expired, you know, from the COVID era provisions, etc.,

And I think, and you can tell me, Sagar, because you know him and his ideology better than I do, that it's because he doesn't actually believe that policy is really central to the goals that he wants to accomplish. It's more about...

Using culture to kind of enforce a certain cultural lifestyle that he thinks is the ideal based on his experiences, childhood, his religion, etc. And so...

So, you know, when J.D. Vance is out there talking about like we need to punish the childless or we need to, you know, or flirting with this idea that Whitlock puts out there that, hey, you know, your vote should count more if you have kids than if you don't. It's exactly because he thinks very negatively about the lifestyle that Dave Portnoy has chosen. And he thinks that that should be

effectively shamed, and I'm not trying to use that like in an overly pejorative way, but effectively shamed out of existence or minimized

And yes, policy is one lever for that, but it's not just about rewarding people with families. It's about actively like trying to disincentivize the lifestyle of Dave Portnoy. And so that's, you know, part of what I was thinking about when you're hearing him talk about this and the way he's approaching, he's smoking the blunt on the camera or whatever. It's like very weird that that person and JD Vance exist in the same party because they are friends.

are diametrically opposed in their view of the world and their approach to politics. I would, the only thing I would really quibble is that it's not about culture to culture. It's actually about policy to culture. Like, so for example, this whole like child tax credit debate, it's not about the child tax credit on its face. It's about increasing, well, first of all, it's actually about winning an intra-party fight as opposed to working with the left.

As in, it needs to be like a victory within the Republican Party to try and get them to vote for it, as opposed to working with the left to get something done. Second is really, I mean, really is about, it's difficult to call it social engineering because also like leftist policy is also a form of social engineering.

Like if you have a child tax, the major disagreement, at least between pro-child tax credit people on the right and left, is whether you should have means tests or single mothers. Like that is – if you do, that's a form of social engineering. If you don't, that's also a form of engineering. The point is, is that it's about using tax policy to like create a society that you have an objective view is the ideal way that you should live. And that –

if anything really describes like the major difference with Portnoy ism or type of people who might be like him and JD is that like Portnoy ism is really, like I said, it's about individuality. It's very libertarian. It is deeply socially and economically libertarian, right? So it's just, it's about small business. It's about individuality. It's about, uh, maximizing the ability of the self to achieve whatever it desires as opposed to, uh, uh,

more of like a Judeo-Christian way that JD would look at it, or there's non-religious ways to look at it too, which is like, no, the family is the unit which should be maximized, not the individual. That's a long time debate in America, actually. It's a big divide, not just between social libertarian and Republican or even conservatives, but Christians and non-Christians or secular Republicans.

There was various secular debates like within this. So that's kind of the way that I've been looking at this. But I have no doubt that Portnoy and his vision, or not even vision, his lifestyle, like what he perpetuates and all that, that is more popular amongst men today. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, but I'm not stupid. I know where things are trending.

Yeah. Yeah. I just, I guess with, with JD and I am interested in your, your thought, if this is accurate, you know, he talks a lot about, you know, the goals of family creation and centering the family and, you know, making it more difficult to get out of marriages and, you know, that that might be important bedrock. I don't know. I know people around him have said it.

He did. About no-fault divorce. Yeah, I mean, he has floated that it perhaps would be better if people had a more difficult time getting out of divorces. But in any case, but he doesn't talk a lot about, he leans into the goals, but he doesn't talk a lot about the specific policies. And perhaps that's because

you know, it would be difficult to sign on to some of those policies in a Republican context because some of them just sound like, you know, lefty progressive policies. But I suspect it's more about he is not afraid of using government to push in the direction that he wants to see, an anti-Portnoy direction, we'll say. But he doesn't

believes more in the power of culture to change the things that he wants to change. And by the way, he's not necessarily wrong about that. We were talking before, you know, if your goal is to increase the birth rate, which is one of his goals, you know, if you have this like pro-natalist approach and you look around the world, there's literally nowhere that any policy has actually worked to achieve that goal.

And so then you have to look at, okay, well, then we need a more religious society where it's like, you know, a religious goal, like part of your whole ethos and culture is centered around kids and family versus a government prescription. And so that's my sense. That's my evolving sense of why he actually isn't all that interested in policies because he thinks that's

impetus and pushing in an anti-Portnoy direction is probably a more effective way to go. That's not my sense. And why he's so interested in the culture war over the sort of economic pieces that he sometimes talks about. That's not my sense just because a lot of his staff are...

Look, Matt Iglesias today said, my sense amongst Democrats is that he has the most serious policy staff amongst Republicans on the Hill. So I don't think that's true. In fact, I think he's very well versed in policy. I think part of the reason you don't necessarily want to take a policy position is because it can be unpopular within your own party and

maybe you learn a thing or two from Donald Trump and Kamala is, hey, you know, the more breathing space you give yourself, the better. I would also say this. He's not the principal. You know what I mean? He's learned the hard way on abortion. Like if he were running his own campaign, I think it would actually be quite different, at least in terms of what you're talking about.

But with Trump, being vague is probably a net benefit. You don't necessarily want to talk specifics. You don't want to give the opposition something they can hit you on in terms of a difference between him and Trump. So I don't think that that's correct on the policy front. I think it has much more to do with the dynamics of being a vice president and also being within the Republican Party where there are huge –

civil wars like going on. Like if they do win, there will be a massive fight on this come Tax Cuts and Jobs Act season on where and how to pay for it. And actually, that'll be a little bit more interesting, honestly, about how it will really manifest when the two sides of them actually have power, Senate Republicans and somebody like Vance in the White House, and then which way Donald Trump is going to go.

Yeah, for sure. Well, anyway, that's my intrigue with regard to Portnoy and Vance is how they are truly like antithesis of each other in terms of politics. And yet today somehow exist in the same coalition. Wow.

Dick Cheney and AOC are in the same coalition too, which is part of the fun parts of America. Strange bedfellows, yeah. Let's go to the next one. Ukraine. Definitely wanted to make sure that we highlighted this. Let's go ahead and play some of Vladimir Putin's comments on the news that the US may allow NATO-provided missiles to strike even deeper inside of Russia. So let's play the video and I'm going to read it. Putin says, this is their directive moment, of course, fundamentally changes the essence, the very nature of Russia.

the conflict. He continues, this will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries, are at war with Russia. If this is the case, considering the change in the very nature of this conflict, we will make corresponding decisions based on the threats that will be created for us.

So that was direct quotes here from Vladimir Putin in reaction to some of the news and the debates that are coming out about US policy versus Ukraine. Let's put the next one up there on the screen because this is the most important decision probably that we made in this war so far.

Anthony Blinken, our Secretary of State, hints that the United States will lift arms restrictions on Ukraine using long-range arms inside of Russia. Quote, the decision is understood to have already been made in private as the Secretary of State says in Kiev the U.S. will continue to adapt its policy. Allegedly, they're keeping this on the back burner and there is no official decision, but

Right now, there will be a change in restriction on Ukraine's use of missiles, which have a range of approximately 190 miles to, quote, avoid reckless or unnecessary attacks, which is kind of a ridiculous way of framing it, considering that Ukraine literally invaded Russia and continues to actually hold some of the territory that has not been disputed prior to this war.

The point is just that the slow bubbling things that are happening inside of Ukraine continue to be massively unstable and detrimental to the overall international order and have the risk of spiraling totally out of control in a highly predictable manner.

And if you put it on the backdrop of everything that is happening, if you look at Kursk, for example, Russian advances, Putin and Russian resolve to continue the war, there has been basically zero change to the overall strategic status quo as a result of Ukraine being allowed to use these weapons. And yet the Ukraine lobby and Kamala and all of the advisors in the White House, Biden and others, they just continue to direct –

in this policy three years ago, it was totally off the table, this idea of giving Ukraine long-range missiles to strike inside of Russia. Now we're just keep on upping the ante from tanks to F-16s to now to these missiles. It's just totally ridiculous, you know, the way that we whitewashed past policy and concerns of the past and

arguably give it to them at a time where it's not going to make even that much of a difference. The overall end to the war will not change all that much. So how many more square miles of territory is it worth it? Wall Street Journal has a story up this morning say that the unofficial death toll is somewhere in the nature of one million as a result of this war. Yeah, and those are with the fake CIA numbers about Ukrainian dead. So what's the real number? A million five? You know something like that?

That's a disaster for them, for Russia, for the world. Just absolutely horrible. Yeah, I mean, listen, I guess what people will say in response is, okay, Putin's made a lot of threats before and hasn't necessarily followed through on them. So yeah, he's full of bluster about how this will be a declaration, NATO declaration of war against Russia, et cetera, et cetera. But he's probably just bluffing. And it's like, okay, well, can we at least talk about it to like,

Can we at least really focus the American people's attention on what would be obviously an extraordinary escalation on, you know, these threats from Putin and what we should make of them? And, you know, at least have a fulsome debate about where this is going, because, you know, we've used this term sleepwalking from the beginning of this war. And it just feels more and more accurate of now the initial, you know,

horror and attention is gone. There's very little coverage of what's going on and what each of these individual decisions mean. And yet they're so incredibly consequential. That's what's really disturbing. And the other thing I'm thinking is,

We know how difficult it is for American presidents to bring conflicts to a close because as long as it's ongoing, you can live in the perfect fantasy land where Zelensky regains all control and Putin is vanquished, et cetera, et cetera, even though that's obviously not going to be reality. The moment you have a conclusion, then there is a hard and fast outcome, which we can then use to debate whether, I don't know, we should have spent years

fighting this war rather than engaged in the peace negotiations which were available to us at the beginning of this conflict before a million people were killed. So that's the logic of ongoing conflicts and endless wars. And of course, the other logic of it is that you have many people who profit directly off of it and no one really profiting directly off of peace except for the people who benefit from not having their homeland destroyed and fighting and dying. So

So, you know, Biden right now, he's a lame duck president. His political standing, outside of whatever blowback it has on Kamala Harris, et cetera, et cetera, his political standing really doesn't matter anymore. So, like, take the hit.

Bring this thing to a close, end it, because if it goes into the next administration, whether it's Kamala or Trump, they're both gonna look at the same calculus and say, "Listen, what behooves us is to just kind of keep this thing on a slow burn and maintain the status quo indefinitely and kick the can down the road." - Yes, and let's put this next one up there on the screen. It now appears that if you look at poll, everyone says, "Oh, nothing without Ukraine, or nothing for Ukraine without Ukraine." I mean, look at this, guys.

Look, more Ukrainians today want a negotiated peace to the end of the war than at any time before. It's actually the men who have been drafted and forced into the Ukrainian military who are the only ones who say that we should, quote, fight until it liberates all territory to the 1991 borders. But the highest number...

than ever before say that they should negotiate with Russia to achieve peace, to quote, seek a compromise to end the war through negotiations. Now, it's only 43%. You still got 54%, but that is much higher than previous polls of the war have found. And what they say is that it's clear when you take into consideration the death and

and the population projections, this is, the longer it goes, the more in benefit of Russia. So for example, population projections of Russia and Ukraine up until 2100 are both dismal. But for Russia, they'll still have well over 100 million people. For the Ukrainians, it starts trending down from a height of 50 million around the Soviet Union collapse

to like 5 million. You were talking about a tenfold reduction of the overall population of the country because not only have so many people been killed, so many people have fled. That's a disaster. No civilization can survive that, or at least in the way that they want to because this entire war is...

supposedly all about protecting their identity and their sovereignty, et cetera. So it's clear, like if you want the outcome that you allegedly want, then it's pretty clear what you should do. Biden could easily help you get there. Biden will not do it because for Ukraine, or I mean for Biden, NATO and Ukraine is like a religion. It's like the only thing that still fires his synapses. So we're locked in. We're locked in right now. That and Zionism, which we're about to get to. Yeah, right. Yeah, good point. Yeah, good point. All

All right, let's get to it. This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our recent episode with Grammy award-winning rapper Eve on her new memoir and the moments that made her.

It became a theme in my life, the underdog syndrome of being questioned, of the, would they say this to a man? No, they would not. Like, why? That was one of those moments where you're just like, oh, wow. It was a bit shocking, but it didn't take any steam away or anything like that. If anything, it was more of the, okay, I'll show you. No worries. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Mike and Ian. We're the hosts of How to Do Everything from NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Each week, we take your questions and find someone much smarter than us to answer them. Questions like, how do you survive the Bermuda Triangle? How do you find a date inside the Bermuda Triangle? We can't help you, but we will find someone who can. Listen to the How to Do Everything podcast on iHeartRadio.

So a lot of very significant developments coming out of Israel. Let's go ahead and put this first image up on the screen. This is some video that was released by the Houthis of a hypersonic missile that they are calling Palestine 2.

They are claiming that this is the missile that hit the outskirts of Tel Aviv on Saturday. So you can see it there, an indication, you know, they're trying to flex their muscle and prove to be a significant threat to the population of Israel. Let's go ahead and put the next piece up on the screen. This is from the Washington Post talking about this attack. The headline here, Houthis fire missile from Yemen into central Israel, warn of more strikes.

In the report, they say they claimed responsibility for a surface-to-surface missile attacking central Israel on Sunday morning, marking a continued escalation between the Iranian-backed group and Israel. It caused no direct injuries, though they did respond with emergency services and treated nine people who were injured on their way to shelters after sirens sounded.

sounded. The Houthi military spokesman described it as a hypersonic ballistic missile targeting military operations. The IDF said in a statement the missile was hit by an interceptor as a result of which the target fragmented but was not destroyed. In that same article from the Washington Post, they also had another piece of significant news, which is that the IDF is now actually admitting that it was their airstrikes that killed

three different hostages back in November. You know, this is something that had been long suspected, but now long after the fact, they're finally acknowledging that this is actually the case. But Sagar, with regard to the, you know, the Houthis really trying to up the ante here and demonstrating some more sophisticated weaponry, obviously this raises the stakes

for Israel in terms of their prosecution of this continued war. Yeah, this is scary. I mean, look, I don't know whether it was actually hypersonic or any of that. I don't know the actual technical details, but you should not dismiss this as deeply unstable in the system because what it means is that they have a much

more important capability that may not be as easily defeated by even the United States or all the other countries that intervened last time around. And that if they wanted, they could quite easily use it to inflict a lot more damage than we've seen previously. I tracked a lot of this stuff during North Korea and the development of their own nuclear missiles and their ICBMs capable of hitting the United States and everyone, you know, there's constantly just a want to just be like, oh, it's not that big of a deal. And it's like, you don't understand.

what this really means for the overall strategic picture, part of why accepting and trying to create a peace negotiation with them was so important. And that's what I see as vital here, is that this really does actually change the game, not only in terms of US assets in the region and our own even ability to fight something like this, where we've bombed them several times. We've spent billions of dollars trying to stop this. It hasn't actually worked

all that well. And then for Israel itself, you know, look at a certain, hopefully, eventually they will become responsible entirely for their own security. And if they do, this is exactly what would pose like real existential threats to them.

Yeah, and the Houthis went out of their way to say, hey, we have the technology to be able to evade your Iron Dome interceptors. So this, you know, sense that you're only able to inflict damage in one direction, we are going to put that at jeopardy and attempt to impose a greater cost on you and on your country.

the same time, this has gone, you know, relatively unnoticed in the U.S. press. But this is, there are extraordinary developments in terms of the Israeli war cabinet and their stated clear desire to escalate the war in Lebanon. We can put this up on the screen. So Netanyahu is apparently considering strongly and we're

Reports indicate very likely to fire his defense chief, Yoav Galant, and replace him with a more far-right figure who has been vehemently opposed to any sort of a hostage deal.

So, you know, Yoav Galant is also facing likely international criminal court indictments. You know, he is also obviously a war criminal. He has said some absolutely heinous things about Palestinians, some criminal things about Palestinians, including, you know, he's the one who announced we're going to treat them like animals. We're going to cut off all the food, water, et cetera. But he has been a voice inside the cabinet that has been receptive to the idea of at least having a ceasefire and a hostage deal.

So Yoav Galant reportedly, according to Haaretz, is at least somewhat opposed to a massive widening of the war into Lebanon and a huge escalation there vis-a-vis Hezbollah. And that appears to be the, you know, triggering dissent.

that is leading Netanyahu to consider firing him and just wholly embracing and publicly embracing this further right figure who, again, called a hostage deal, quote, surrender. There is a hostage, pro-hostage group that said that appointing this far right figure would represent a, quote, death sentence for the hostages and a complete abomination

of those in captivity. And let me put this one next piece up on the screen before I get your reaction, Sagar. This is from the New York Times. Well, sorry, this is Haaretz. But the New York Times also had this reporting that, you know, the U.S. is meeting with Gallant, meeting with Netanyahu, and they're saying, hey, we don't want this wider war in Lebanon, guys. Don't do it. We don't want you to do it, et cetera, et cetera. And Netanyahu was just like, no.

we're going to do it, we're going to do whatever it takes. He wants to officially expand the war goals to include this escalation vis-a-vis Lebanon. So once again, similar to the Ukraine situation, we see a conflict we're directly engaged in, that we're funding, that we're arming, et cetera, that is spiraling in escalatory directions that the U.S. president is supposedly opposed to, but utterly unwilling to do anything to forestall this very dangerous direction.

It is a problem, and it is exactly – I mean, this is – we take our eye off the ball, and there's still crazy developments that are happening. We're not that far away from the anniversary of October 7th.

and everything that's happened there and the instability inside the Israeli cabinet have major effects for all of us. Also, none of the political leaders that we have are really all of that, like, concerned about constraining any of this. And so in both cases, you know, we either have one party or the other who is default allowing things like this

that cannot go, you can't put it all back in the box. We're seeing one of our producers just sent us a story this morning. It appears there was some major Israeli operation against a bunch of Hezbollah terrorists inside of Lesbanon, where it appears, I think it looks like their pagers exploded. I mean, it's literally like something out of science fiction. That's what I'm just taking a look at, so I don't have all of the details. The point, though, is that stuff like this inside of Lebanon just,

It continues the spiral. And the only question is, is like, how much of the cost of this are we going to bear? And we generally know the answer to that. Almost 100%. Almost 100% that we will pay for it. Yeah. I mean, we're coming up on almost a year here. And, um...

No one's even really talking about a ceasefire deal anymore. It's just collapsed. It's off the table. And there was maybe a week or so ago, there were these reports about there was some debate within the Biden administration. Like, should we still keep trying with the ceasefire deal? Or should we just basically like give up? Because Bibi very clearly does not want a ceasefire deal. And, um,

The whole thing is so utterly absurd and pathetic. Like, if you are the United States of America, you are the American president. If you want a ceasefire deal, like, all you have to do is stop shipping the bombs that enable this continued direction. So instead of that...

They're just putting it, again, on autopilot where we just continue to ship bombs that are used to slaughter, annihilate, and destroy with ever-broadening horizons. You know, there have been multiple threats that Beirut's going to be turned into Gaza throughout the course of this war. And we're unwilling to change course or do anything to stop this slide in this direction. And, you know, it's horrifying on a moral dimension. It's terrifying on a just national security dimension. Yep, very true.

All right, we've got a good guest standing by. Let's get to it. We're excited to be joined this morning by Logan Phillips. He is the founder of Race to the White House, which is an electoral prediction model. Great to see you, Logan. Good to see you, man. Hey, great to see you guys, too. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, of course. So first time on the show, just give people a little bit of a sense of who you are and how this model is designed and how it functions.

Yeah, so I forecast elections for race to the White House and track polling for every major federal race in the country. And the goal of my site, in addition to ideally getting these predictions right, is to help make sense of the chaos and make it as easy for people to understand which races are the most competitive and in the presidential race, which states are most likely to determine the outcome.

Uh, and so my goal is to make it so anyone who comes to the site for the first time within 30 or seconds or so will have a much better sense of, uh, the, this central, um,

Factors that are going to determine the race. So let's go ahead and put up on the screen the graphic of where things stand right now in terms of the Electoral College. Your prediction is that there is a 56.9% chance that Kamala wins, a 42.8% chance that Trump wins. Those are still pretty good odds for Trump, even with Kamala somewhat favored there. And you've got projected electoral votes, Kamala at 284.4 and Trump at 253.6.

How should we think about those odds and what are some of the factors that are leading your model to give Kamala a bit of an edge here?

Yeah, I would say that basically means it's a toss up. And the problem here is that we have two different factors, right? We have the national polling, which is pretty competitive and would say maybe up until about a few days ago when Kamala got a little bit of a post-debate bounce that Donald Trump would be favored. If we look at what happened in the 2020 electoral map, which was heavily biased to Republicans in terms of the electoral college.

But then the state polls for Kamala Harris have been really, really strong. In some states like Michigan, Wisconsin, she's usually been doing better in the state polls than even the national polls. And so the question here is, which Israel has? Kamala really is doing that much better than Joe Biden to the point that the Electoral College disadvantage is significantly smaller. And if that's the case, then she is outright favored to win. And I think because you have

That disparity is probably part of the reason why some models like Nate Silver's show Donald Trump favored because they're probably assuming a lot more about the 2020 electoral map still being in place and

But this is definitely a really close election. Now, Harris will, at least in my model, start to edge ahead if she has the same type of bounce in the state polls that we're seeing in the national polls. There's just been a real dearth of polling outside of some GOP-aligned pollsters since the debate. So, Logan, give us a sense of—you were talking there about the difference between you and Nate Silver. A lot of people obviously wonder about the individual mechanics. So as close as you can to relatable speak, just give us a sense of—

what the differences and the factors that you look at that can help people assess whenever they're looking at, let's say, your model or a different model. What are the types of things that you weight, how much weight to give them, and give us your overall thought process.

Yeah, so I think across the board from us, all of our models, there's a few different things it does, right? First, you try to assess what the national environment is. And for me, I use polling. I use the economy. Those are by far the two most important. I also look at how special elections have been going lately and which party has been overperforming expectations. And a tiny like 1% of it is fundraising.

After we have a sense of what the national environment is, we try to turn that into state numbers. We look at how states have voted in recent elections relative to the popular vote. If it's been a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right, you'd assume like if it's a state that's two points to the left, Democrats are up by four nationally, they vote for Harris by six points. You combine that with the state polls to give an overall projection for each state.

And then the final component, which I think is honestly one of the most important, is you try to figure out how likely are you to be wrong in every state, right? So that's based off of the information we have and how far away we are from election day. How off on average would the model be? And to do that, you've got to look at electoral history. For me, I look at every election since the 1960s. And that helps us get a sense of the chance of an upset.

And then the final additional part after you project the lead for each state is you then simulate all the states together to figure out what the chance Kamala and Trump have nationwide. And so you have to see like some, you know, if you overperform in Michigan, you're probably going to overperform in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, too. So you try to calculate how correlated each state is as well.

How are you thinking about potential polling myths? So, you know, 2016, Trump support is understated. 2020, Trump support is understated. 2022, Republican support is overstated. You know, the special elections, it seemed like Democratic support was understated. So, you know, just looking at the track record as a layperson, it seems like you got a lot of contradictory indications. How are you thinking about that in terms of your statistical modeling?

Yeah, it's such a great question. And it's very easy to fall into the trap after 2020 and 2016 to just assume it's going to go against Donald Trump. I think that's what RCP did to a degree in 2022. And it really backfired for them because the reality is that past polling misses aren't usually predictive directionally of future polling misses. But I do think it's fair to say after 2020 and 2016, which is

We're both really bad misses for presidential polls, especially 2020, that we can have a little more uncertainty than we would normally. Polling is way harder than it used to be. The response rate for polls that are calling people is drastically lower. And it makes basic sense for all of us, right? Because if you're getting a phone call from a random number, more often than not, it's going to be someone not even trying to sell you something, but trying to scam you into...

It's something. As a result, pollsters have to find new and creative ways to reach voters. Sometimes they're doing online polls. That's a huge part of how polls work now. Sometimes they're text polls. Overall, they're still figuring out how to adjust to the new world. For my models, I increase the uncertainty quite a bit. I think that the odds of a miss are higher right now. I'm not going to say that it's necessarily going to go for against Trump. There's also capitalist incentives here. Pollster's goal

is to get as accurate as possible. They make more money if they do well on that front. The whole industry will be badly off and have a lot less trust in them if they underrate Trump specifically. So on one hand, they couldn't miss him because they've done it before. On the other hand, they could overcorrect too.

Right. So factoring in 2022, like you were just talking about, what was the mistake that pollsters made? Because a lot of people forget, you know, after 2016, there was a lot of discussion about not polling enough white-collar workers, white working-class workers specifically. After 2020, I believe the excuse was that there were too many older Democrats at home. They were responding. It was like a polling response bias. 2022, I haven't heard a particularly good response.

actual analysis of what went wrong. So in your opinion, what is what wrong with the polls for there?

Well, I would just say, you know, in fairness to pollsters, 2022 is a pretty good year for them. There's usually going to be a bias against one party or the other. And that year was against Democrats. But overall, they were pretty good. They lightly underrated youth turnout. And honestly, my gut feeling is that overall, they all had to make corrections after the last two presidential cycles. And they may have overdone it a little bit just because it was in their incentives to not underrate Republicans again. But it was still a pretty good year for them. Okay.

What do you make of, this is something I hear from like the resistance libs, right? Which, you know, sometimes they have a point. So we like to take them seriously if they're making a good argument that there's been an influx of these Republican aligned pollsters who are more interested in their capitalist incentive, we may say, is Republican.

more about setting a pro-Republican narrative than it is about being wholly accurate. And, you know, so for people who want to discount Nate Silver's model looking at, you know, which has Donald Trump still favored, is kind of like the inverse of where your model sits. That's one of the things that they'll point to is that he takes those, that flood of GOP aligned polls sort of too seriously in terms of his modeling.

Yeah, it's a huge concern. In 2022, I had to call a bit of an audible and start increasing the penalty to partisan pollsters once they really started to flood the average. There's a lot more polls for the presidential, so we'll see if it gets to that point. It's certainly been the case lately in the post-debate state polls because they seem to be the only ones releasing polls.

I would say for all these pollsters, as with anyone that has power influence, you got to think about what their incentives are. Just like you said, their goal is to try to change the narrative. That's true for any internal poll. No campaign is going to release a poll just for the heck of it. If they have a poll that is a Democrat-aligned pollster that's showing them way worse than everyone else, maybe the race closer than everyone else, they might be using it for fundraising purposes, and then they just put it out there publicly so they can cite it in ads. There's usually going to be some type of agenda.

Yeah. Well, I really enjoyed talking to you, Logan. Thanks for coming on, man. And we'll continue to check out your website. Yeah, great to meet you, Logan. Our pleasure. All right, guys, we'll see you later. We're about to film our AMA and broadcast it live. So if you want to be able to join things like that, BreakingPoints.com for premium subscribers. Otherwise, we'll see you all later.

This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

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