29. The Only State Trump Needs to Win
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Hello and welcome to this edition of The Rest is Politics U.S. with me, Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. How are you, Katty? So I'm obviously going to tell everybody where you are. Why don't you tell everybody where you are? Why do I tell you anything? I mean, like anything?

There's like a nice cone of discrete silence. It's not possible with an Italian. I know. It's not possible. I mean, come on. So tell everybody where you are, then we can get into politics. Go ahead. Some very nice friends a long time ago invited me to join them on a holiday in Ithaca, Greece. I was not going to go, but then every time I tried to take holiday in July...

crazy shit would happen like, you know, the former president would get shot or the current president would drop out of the race. And then, of course, I come on holiday and what happens? There's another attempt against Donald Trump. So I clearly shouldn't try and take a break. But anyway, I'm taking a little break apart from doing this. And it's very nice sitting off the coast of Ithaca. And you're on a beautiful yacht is what you say. You could have just said, look, you could just say, listen, you know, I got a bougie Wall Street guy that I do this podcast with. Yeah.

And I'm now on a bougie yacht, even though I'm a Brit. It is rubbing off on me. You would have been great on Wall Street, Katty K. Anyway, so where are you? I'm in Singapore. I'm in Singapore slogging. Okay. You can see like the beautiful art behind me in this hotel room. But-

What are we going to talk about? You know, you run the show. So today we are going to talk about what's been happening in Springfield, Ohio, all the political turmoil that's been caused by Donald Trump and particularly J.D. Vance's claims that immigrants are eating cats. We mentioned this last week on the podcast, but I do think it's worth touching on this issue of immigration and whether Donald Trump has kind of lost a week and this has become a parody and may not be working for him the way he thought it was going to when he raised it

in the debate. There's a couple of new polls out suggesting that Kamala Harris is pulling ahead on issues like the economy, which I think is interesting, particularly in the light of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates this week. And we can talk about whether we think that is going to have an impact come November. Then after the break, we are going to look at the one state that will likely decide the entire result of this election, and that is Pennsylvania, which is

in a hair's breadth between them. How are Kamala Harris and Donald Trump throwing everything they have into what is known as the Keystone State? So we're going to talk about that after the break. But look, what's your take, Anthony, on what's happening in Springfield? Because I think clearly J.D. Vance this week repeatedly has doubled down on these claims that

Haitian immigrants in the town have been eating cats and dogs. The mayor of the town says it's not true. The manager of the town says it's not true. There seems to be journalists have flooded Springfield, Ohio.

and have found absolutely no evidence this is true. But it's interesting that J.D. Vance has continued to kind of double down on this. Donald Trump as well doubling down on this. And yet I wonder whether the degree to which actually polling suggests that even a majority of Republicans don't think this is true might have lost them a week. I mean, this has become kind of a parody. I see what the play is. It's to gen up the base, talk about immigration. They don't have what they had in 2018, which is a

caravan of immigrants heading towards the southern border. They no longer have pictures of people flooding across the southern border. So this seems to be an attempt to create, as J.D. Vance said on the Sunday shows, they are creating this story. It seems to be an attempt to kind of create an immigration event that they can point to. I just wonder whether it's working out the way that they think it is for them. What's your take? I want to digress a second because I want to give out the Trump decoder ring because

So they don't have to buy the cereal box. You can just take out the ring and just let me explain to you. Does he sell those, by the way, along with his kind of digital cards? If we suggest that he may end up selling it alongside Trump water and Trump steak and so forth. But I just want to explain what's going on with J.D. Vance right now. And so J.D. Vance has been seduced by the power and the notion that he could be the 39-year-old vice president. And this is, of course –

Richard Nixon was 39 when Dwight Eisenhower took him. And so this is a young man to be vice president. And he's learning about Donald Trump. And so if he had gotten the decoder ring before he joined Donald Trump, things would have been a little bit easier for him, but still very problematic. And so let's go over a couple of things that are in the decoder ring. Number one, never speak for Donald Trump ever, ever, never. Only Donald Trump speaks for himself.

It is a team of one. You are not on his team. You're just an appendage. So you think Trump doesn't like Vance being so out there? I think he likes him out there as long as it's 95% on Donald Trump. You know, like after you threatened to smash my Lamborghini, when I'm out there, all I do is praise you, Gattagay. I say how wonderful you are. So you're an incredible journalist. See, because I have, I'm living in fear. Yeah.

Something terrible could happen to my favorite toy, you know. The Lambo meets the tree. Yeah, exactly. See, and you say it with such a light, which is why it really bothers me. But the Trumpster is all about himself. So if you're going to go on TV, talk about him. Do not talk about yourself. Number two, don't put any words in his mouth. He rebuked.

J.D. Vance at the debate last Tuesday or 10 or so days ago. He said, he doesn't speak for me. Vance had to basically publicly apologize. That was part of his Sunday interview tour. Second thing that's happening is I'm going to disgrace you, J.D. Vance. Okay. So I'm going to have Laura Loomer on the plane with me. It's a conservative influencer that he's been traveling with. Yeah. She's like an alt-right conservative influencer. And she's going to

Right around with me, I'm going to say praiseworthy things about her, and she's going to say very racist things about Indian Americans. She's going to suggest...

that the White House is going to smell like curry because the vice president is half Indian. He's going to have a failed call center. All of these racist tropes are going to come out of her mouth. And this is also humiliating to you because you have an Indian American wife and you have Indian American children. And so this is disgraceful and you're not going to be able to defend their honor. So I'm going to disrespect you and I'm going to emasculate you. Okay. Third thing I'm going to do is I am a big time liar.

And you are going to big time lie for me. OK. And so so Sean Spicer was Trump's first press secretary. Every Spice girl has a nickname, Caddy. And so my nickname for him was Liar Spice of the Spice Girls. All he did was lie. And you, J.D. Vance, are going to also lie. Oh, and by the way, you represent this state. You represent the state of Ohio.

And this town is in your state. And I am going to disrespect and dishonor this town in your state. And even though you represent this town and you should be out there advocating and defending its honor, you're not allowed to do that because I am going to emasculate you, JD. You got that? I'm going to floor you to the point someday you're going to get to a microphone like Mike Pence and say, hey, I'm really sorry. I cannot endorse this person anymore.

So you're in the spin cycle now. Cycle one, I hate Donald Trump. We know everything J.D. Vance said about him. Called him a Hitler, blah, blah, blah. Cycle two, he's going to give me power. I'm going to love Donald Trump, but he's going to emasculate me and disrespect me to the point where I start hating him again. So we're mid-cycle for J.D., and he is out there doing reprehensible things.

that someday he's going to look back on and say, wow, why did I do that? He told a mutual friend of ours, Donna Bash, that he made up the story. So he's on national television saying lies. Now, before this show started, you said to me that he's on TV seven to one versus the vice president and versus the governor, Governor Walz.

And my response back is, is it a positive? And I would like to ask you that question. Is it a positive that he's on or is he creating net negatives for himself by emasculating himself in this way? One thing is that here I am in the home of Odysseus and what you've described sounds terribly Greek tragedy and very Oedipal. But anyway, that aside, it's certainly not positive for the people of Springfield, Ohio, who have had 33 bomb threats against them. Schools are shut.

city offices are shut because of what Vance and Trump have been saying. And the governor has asked them please to stop spreading these lies because it doesn't help. And actually there are these Haitian immigrants who have come in and have helped an economic regrowth. And we can talk more about immigration in a second.

So it's not positive for the people of Springfield, Ohio. It's not positive for American voters because actually a lot of those bomb threats, according to city officials, are coming from overseas. So this is presumably America's adversaries who are deciding that this is, wow, this is all too easy, right? Here are these presidential candidate and his running mate who are stoking fears of immigrants'

In this town, and hey, we can use this super well to cause chaos and undermine people's confidence in the democratic process, which is exactly what they're doing by having these bomb threats in schools. They're making people stressed. They're exacerbating the divisions in American society. They found a wedge issue and they very neatly pushed themselves into it.

and pushed it even wider open. So it doesn't help America, and I don't think it helps American society. It doesn't help people's confidence in democracy. And then the question is, does it help Trump and Vance win the election? Well, does it win them over any wavering voters? I would suspect most people who buy the theory, and the polls suggest not that many do, or even like the way that they're talking about this, were already convinced

going to vote for Donald Trump. I mean, the degree to which this is an online parody can't be overstated. The memes are wild about cats and dogs and the ridiculousness of all of this. And I think people see it for what it is. And whilst J.D. Vance is trying to say, look, I've now actually finally got you talking about immigration, actually, they've really only got people talking about how absurd this is and how there's no truth behind these stories. I think it's lost them a week. I mean, they don't

have much time between now and election day. And maybe they've given up on trying to reach people in the middle. Maybe they've given up on trying to reach undecided voters. But this doesn't seem to me the best way to reach undecided voters. I mean, this is not what Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles run, right? I mean, maybe this is a Corey Lewandowski play and a J.D. Vance play and

You go for the base and you go as low as you possibly can to get what they think worked for them in 2016. But I don't know. What's your sense? Does it help them electorally? I think they think it does. I think they think it does. I'm just not sure it really does. Yeah. So, you know, I don't think it does. And I think it's evidenced by the polling. They're slipping in the polls. The polls look tied after the debate.

But I think this afterglow of the memes of the cats and dogs and the afterglow of the absurdity and then what happens with human beings, at least my belief is this guy nuts, yes or no. And a lot of people look at him and say he's nuts. Now, there is a few people that say, well, he's nuts, but he's my nut.

Okay, that's a group of people that say that. But the question is, are the majority of the American people going to say that? Okay, now Trump does think that. Trump believes that he's got a three-legged stool of racism, misogyny, and anti-immigration. He thinks if he can run on that platform, he can bring enough of his base out

who will equivocate on his behalf. And I watch it. As you know, I'm in the crypto industry. I'm here in Singapore speaking at a Bitcoin and a blockchain event. And Mr. Trump is bringing out his own meme coin. Him and his sons have decided to bring out this thing called the World Liberty Coin, which is a complete sham. And it's actually embarrassing. And the notion that an American president that wants to lead the United States in the free world

six weeks before an election, six and a half weeks before the election is going to put out this sort of pump and dump meme coin scam is revolting to somebody like me. But there are people here in Singapore, Americans that I've talked to that will give him a pass on that. They will equivocate for him. They'll say, okay, yeah, that's fine.

but he's pro-crypto. And so that's okay with me, even though what he's doing is representable and is going to tarnish us. And so what happens, there is a reason why 40 people that served in his cabinet or were part of his administration have said, no, I'm sorry, I can't get there for Donald Trump, despite my former status as a Republican, cannot get there because everything he touches is

gets tarnished by him. And so now Springfield, Ohio is tarnished by him. There's no evidence of this. Haitian Americans are tarnished by him. There's a feeling now that he does this, Kat. He has said this. He could walk onto the campaign plane. You could look at him and say, why did you say that? That was a lie.

And he would look you right in the face and say, well, if I say it enough, there's enough people that will believe it. It becomes real. That is his MO. And that's what he's trying to do here. Last night, I think it was, I texted you. I don't know what time it was in Singapore, but I texted you that poll. It's a new Scripps poll.

Ipsos poll, 54% of respondents in this poll said they strongly or somewhat support the policy of mass deporting undocumented immigrants. So there are clearly, there are people in the country for whom this aggressive policy towards immigrants has some resonance. And there are certainly people who feel strongly that immigrants should be deported, not more should be allowed in.

And I wonder whether he's just banking on 54%. Mass deportations is a pretty harsh policy towards people who are in the country in an undocumented way. And it gets to this kind of constant tension that there is.

between kind of economists and politicians, particularly politicians on the right with economists saying, listen, you know, we have aging populations. The only way we can support that aging population in the long run is by growing our tax base. And that either means taxing people, getting more tax revenue from the existing taxpayers or building

bringing more people into the tax base, which means allowing more immigrants into the country. And that's the kind of economist line, right? That immigrants, whether they are in America legally or illegally, the data shows increased growth in the areas that they live in, which is exactly what's happened in Springfield, Ohio, right? So they have increased growth, but potentially they've increased growth at the expense of white working class men who

are classic Trump supporters. And so how do politicians wrestle with these two things? How do they marry what economists say we have to do? We have to have more immigration in order to support our aging populations and grow our economies and increase our tax revenue. And people who feel they are getting squeezed by those immigrants was exactly what seems to have happened in Springfield, Ohio.

And then politicians who take that fear of being squeezed, which is legitimate, and twist it, as we're seeing right now with J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, for their own political ends. I mean, I think they are onto something here. They're onto something. And I think that's the kind of challenge. I mean, not just in America. Ask President Macron of France, right? He has exactly the same problem. Ask most European political leaders. They have exactly the same problem, too.

So these are Trump's instincts. Everything that you just described, if you're inside the orange maze inside of his brain, that's exactly where he's going for the cheese. He's looking at what you just said. He knows instinctively that people fear foreigners. He knows that America has always classically been a xenophobic country, which is great irony because it's

It's also been an immigration country, but there's a large part of the people that are xenophobic. And we know that there's isolationism, always been an element of isolationism in the country. But I'm wondering out loud, though, if the polling questions were the right questions. Because if you say to somebody, are you for the mass deportation? And that means, okay, that means there's more jobs for me and my family, more opportunity, less quote unquote foreigners, and I'm a tribal person. Yes, I'm for the mass deportations.

But if you said to the people that, look, this is what the mass deportations involve, are you down for that? Are you down for the handmaid's tale? Are you down for the SWAT teams? How this would actually work. I was down in Miami and I had the opportunity to present at an event with Mayor Francis Suarez. And what...

We were talking about the Elian Gonzalez story, which I think you will remember. This was a Cuban emigre. He was seven years old. There was a custody battle. There was a decision made by President Clinton that he had to be deported. He was pulled out of the house.

He was sent into a deportation center and flown to Cuba. He's now in his early 30s and obviously was programmed by the Cuban government. But the point being, do you want to see that 11 million times? That polled very poorly for President Clinton. It looked horrific. It looked like a whole family tragedy. And so to me, I'm wondering if we're asking the question properly, but I get the answer. I understand the answer perfectly.

And then the second thing is, is there a political leader out there that can explain to the American people what you just said? Is there a political leader that can say, hey, even Elon Musk would tell you that we need population growth to support the welfare state, the safety net, the tax revenues? Are you sure you want to go in that direction? And so for me personally,

I think that America is at its best, Cady, when America has a love affair with immigration. We are at our best when we have the Statue of Liberty saying, give us everybody. The poem about the huddled masses, give me your poor, give me people that are despairing, bring them to the shores of America, and we'll sort things out. When I go on a public speech or I go to meet people

or they all want to talk about you, by the way. That's just a whole other thing. I have to work that out with my therapist. But when I am out there, okay. I'll pay for the next session. Yeah, you can pay for the next session. But when I'm out there and I hear somebody say, hey, I came with nothing. My dad came with nothing. My mom started with nothing. And here in America, we did blank. And there's this beautiful aspirational narrative. I'm just wondering if we can switch things.

that idea. And maybe Vice President Harris, a political leader somewhere, can spin that differently than the way the Trump and Vance people are spinning it. I think she's trying to. I mean, last week I mentioned Deborah Mattinson, who was the pollster for Keir Starmer. And very clearly she said that center-left politicians have to be tougher, not less tough on immigration. And they've got to resist the

the more progressive wings of their political parties when it comes to issues like amnesty or open borders. So maybe there is one. I don't know that any European politicians have found a way to do it yet. Maybe if, I guess, Harris is thinking if she gets into office, then some of this poison around the immigration debate, then they can deal with it. There seems to be a lot that the Harris campaign, by the way, is thinking, if we get into office, we will deal with the policy details on all of this later. But one piece of good news that she's had

which I wanted to get your take on, was there have been two polls just in the last week, an FT poll and a Morning Consult poll that have come out showing that Kamala Harris has closed the gap on the economy and that as many voters now trust her on the economy as trust Donald Trump. Now, that would be if it's true and it's only two polls. And I'm I'm a little skeptical about these polls. But anyway, let's see.

That would be huge news for her because poll after poll shows that the economy is the biggest issue for Americans. And maybe, I don't know that the Fed cutting interest rates this week will have any direct impact on people's, obviously it won't impact people's mortgages yet, but it might.

might impact how they feel about the economy between now and the election. Do you think it's possible that she's closing the gap? What's your sense of that, Anthony, and how significant that would be? If she is closing the gap, it's because he's doing a poor job of explaining his economic policies. If you're sitting out there saying that

we're going to do tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, and the other governments around the world are going to pay those taxes and they're going to lower the cost of goods in the country. That's the trifecta of lies economically. The lower and middle-class people will pay more of a percentage of their disposable income for those tariffs than the rich people. So it's a regressive tax.

prices will go up. If you're trying to combat inflation, you're going to send prices up. And you're also going to do something that people need to understand that

the other countries will game the tariff scatty. And so let me just give you an example of how they do it. The Chinese will make something, they'll get it to 49% so that it's manufactured in China, 49%. They'll ship it to Vietnam where the remaining 51% is completed. It's now a product that comes out of Vietnam into the United States, which is not tariffed.

Does that mean the inflationary impact in the US would be less than if fewer goods were actually getting hit with these big tariffs? Of course, of course, because remember, you're paying more at the counter and you therefore have less disposable income. So I don't think Trump is doing a great job of explaining this.

There's another misnomer out there that Republicans are better for the economy. But if you look at the metrics over the last 30 years, the Democrats have actually had better stock market results, better employment results. Now, you know, I've said this to you repeatedly, that could just be cyclical. And we have a tendency to personalize cyclical economic activity more.

on the candidate or the politician that's sitting in the chair while this cyclicality is happening. So, so I'm not, I'm not going to overly say this, but you know, she's also, if I could be critical of her, because I want to be balanced, she's not putting a lot of flesh on the bones of her economic plan. You know, she's offering some tax rebates for families. She's offering a first time home purchase of $25,000. If it reaches a certain metric,

She's got this thing on unrealized gains that nobody really understands. When you talk to her people, they poo-poo it and say that it's an old, outdated Joe Biden idea, never got out of committee in the Senate in the ways it means, never got out of the committee, so don't worry about it. But at some point, she's going to have to present that.

where she stands on the economy. And by the way, I think she's got the chops on this. If I were her, I would say we're on shoring manufacturing. We have that reshoring act. We are making microprocessors and microprocessor foundries in the US now.

Through the Inflation Reduction Act, we have increased your wages. Real wages are up and bridges, roads, and tunnels being repaired are very good for the reduction of costs of goods in transit around the country. And so we've done three or four amazing legislative things that if you stick with us, we're going to stick with that plan and we're going to push those forward. And oh, by the way, the inflation is coming down. And

Since you mentioned the Fed, let me just give you my two cents there. The 50 basis point reduction is fabulous for the economy. People will poo-poo it and say, "Well, it doesn't filter through possibly," but it does. It's a psychological thing.

It increases the risk appetite for capital allocators around the world to enter the U.S. capital markets. More capital flowing into the system, higher asset prices, people feel richer, they have more ideas about their disposable income, and it creates this positive flywheel of economic activity. So even if it's just psychological, it's beneficial. Trust me, Trump is not happy

That they went with a 50 basis point. Yeah. And he's already suggested that. Yeah. He's already crying about it. He's crying foul. But, you know, this is another thing. He wants to create Fed dependence on him. And so he's saying no more independent Fed with an independent board. Well, look at what happened in Turkey, a place you're not too far from, your luxurious boat.

But Erdogan took over the central bank and he destroyed that currency. Right. And so you don't want Trump anywhere near that central banking decision making. I remember having a very interesting conversation with Larry Summers, who was obviously in the Clinton and in the Obama administration.

And he said that there is a real risk that if Trump gets in and tries to create Fed dependency, then America goes the way of Latin American countries. One other thing that I want to talk about was whether you feel I know that you mentioned a poll suggesting and I don't know if you have much more on this.

that people don't trust the democratic process at the moment. And there is some, there's some slightly alarming pollings suggesting that Republicans trust Donald Trump at the moment more than they trust American official election results. We see Donald Trump kind of undermining

in anticipation the US election. And I wonder whether that plays into the polls that you've been seeing on sort of people's trust in democracy more generally. I did a little bit of research and if they'll forgive me, because it's not super scientific, but here's what I would say.

When Trump said that there was an election lie, in the first three or four months after that election, Republicans were at 75% believing Donald Trump and believing that there was an election lie. There were people from Homeland Security. There were other people out there that were trying to rebut this.

But you know the stakes are high in an election. And if your team loses, you want to cry foul. You want to say there was something wrong with the refs like you do in a debate. Or you want to say that there was some type of scandal as it relates to the election results. So that number of 67% sounds very real to me.

based on polls that I've seen and based on the idea that our democracy doesn't feel right to a very large group of people. Now, in addition to that, we know, and the Department of Justice has been very clear about this, the FBI, the NSA, that our adversaries are pumping disinformation into our social media outlets.

They are doing everything they can to undermine how we feel about our elections. Okay, we're in the West. These countries are not doing as well as us. They want to break us. And the way to break us is to have our electoral class of people, our citizens feel that these elections can be tampered with, that they're no longer free and safe.

and that they're, quote unquote, to use Donald Trump, one of his favorite words in his 800 words to do, go rigged. These elections are rigged.

And he's got people believing this. And they also have, this is also a terrible thing to say, they've got people believing that there's some kind of inside job related to these assassination attempts. They literally are pumping that information as well in social media. We should point out that the 2020 elections were free, fair, and

and safe, right? There was no evidence that any of it was tampered with and multiple politicians, multiple judges, the attorney general for Donald Trump have all said exactly the same thing. This was a free, safe and fair election. And the people who benefit really from the conversation we've had during the course of this podcast so far are people like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, the Iranian government, anyone who wants

to undermine America and its democratic process, they're the people who benefit from all this. Before you go to the break, though, have you ever interviewed Chris Krebs? Yes, I have. I know him well. He was a cybersecurity official who worked in the Trump administration, who was brought in, basically had the job of monitoring election safety and said, this is a very secure, safe election, at which point he was fired by the former president.

Was that almost a little pop quiz? I mean, was that a pop quizette? No, because I knew you knew the answer. No, I've got to nail you with something that I know you don't know the answer so I can see your face go bright red. I knew you knew the answer to that. That is the boat holiday, Nithika. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back to talk about the great Keystone State, Pennsylvania. The 2024 F-150 Lightning Truck gets dirty and runs clean.

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Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And me, Anthony Scaramucci. On opposite sides of the world at the moment, but thinking this week about Pennsylvania. Both of us have been thinking about what is known as the Keystone State because if Kamala

Kamala Harris can't carry Pennsylvania. If you look at that amazing Electoral College map of getting to 270 Electoral College votes, her only hope of winning the White House is what's known as the Southern Strategy. She would have to win either Georgia or North Carolina.

And Pennsylvania, there is a New York Times Siena poll out this week, which puts her, I think, four points ahead. It's the only one. It's the best poll she's had in Pennsylvania. It's still within the margin of error. And basically, Pennsylvania is on a knife edge, but it is a completely critical state.

It's a state that James Carville, the great strategist who worked in the Clinton administration, famously described as the city of Pittsburgh in the West, one of my favorite cities in the United States, and Philadelphia in the east of the state and Alabama squished in the middle. It's a state that is less racially diverse than the nation overall.

It has fewer immigrants. It's had not as much demographic change in the way that some of these other states have with growing cities and more immigrants and young people coming in. It's a bit less educated. It's a bit less wealthy. It's a big manufacturing state, of course, that lost a lot of jobs recently.

2000s as manufacturing plants closed down. And it's kind of ripe. I mean, it's an area that has, you know, sort of suburban areas, city areas, and an

awful lot of rural areas that tend to be more Trumpy. And I think it's a state that's going to have millions of dollars spent on political ads in it and that you, Anthony, might be going to visit. Yeah. So I expected I'd been added to the surrogate list. Again, full disclosure, obviously, I worked

with the team on debate prep, and I went down to the spin room, and I've now been asked to go to some of the swing states. And I'll just point out, I think I may have told this to you, my dad, who is now unfortunately deceased, he died last year at the age of 88, thank God, but he

is from the state of Pennsylvania. My dad grew up in the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton area, went to a place called Plains High School. It's a northeastern part of the state, Caddy. It's a poor industrial coal mining part of the state. As my dad pointed out to me, he was raised, he was born and raised about 15 miles from

from where Joe Biden was born and raised. Did that used to be a union area of the state? Yeah, it's still- Anthony, would you say? Yeah, still has remnants of the union. Teamsters are there. There's other remnants of the union. It's a economically depressed area. I used to spend every summer out there in the Pocono Mountains-

I used to go to the raceway out there. There's a Wyoming mall. It's blighted, Kat. I hate to say this to you. Like my dad's

home. On Zillow, where he lived, if you looked it up today, was maybe $35,000 US, which gives you a sense for it's not an expensive place, a very, very poor area. My dad left that area to come out to Long Island. Rather than be a coal miner like his father, he came out to Long Island to effectively mine sand and he rose to become a crane operator, was a member of the union. I tell you this story because I know the state very, very well. And what

Carville said, we used to say it was a pencil Tucky pencil Tuffy, which was like a hybrid of Kentucky and Pennsylvania. But if you take a look at the map, it's a very interesting map. It's a rectangular state. The left side of the state is really the Midwest is closer to Ohio. There are three rivers. You love Pittsburgh is a beautiful city, but there are three rivers that connect into Pittsburgh.

And of course, Andrew Carnegie made that the home of steel manufacturing because those rivers could get you out to the Mississippi and other places. And you were able to move large barges of industrial steel from that area back in the day. You go to the right side of the state, sort of the East Coast. That's that Amtrak corridor. Okay. And so those are lawyers, professionals, people that work in Washington, California.

Philadelphia is sometimes called the sixth borough of New York. It's almost like a suburb of New York. Lots of Philadelphians, excuse me, not pronouncing it right, work in New York. Why am I bringing all this up? It's a very eclectic mix of people and it's a political puzzle that has to be solved if you want to win the presidency. And Donald Trump solved it with volume in 2016.

Joe Biden solved it with being a native in 2020. He knows that state as well as my dad did, and they loved him in that state, and he won that state. And now the question is, can Vice President Harris win that state? And I just sent to your cell phone a new poll, Quinnipiac poll, where she's up six in the Quinnipiac poll. So it's

It's 51-45. Interestingly enough, Jill Stein has 1% of the vote. And so I know that's got to be a source of frustration for the Democrats because those votes would lean towards Harris. But the question is, will they believe her on the fracking? How will she do in the urban areas? And one of the things that I did when I was with her team in the spin room in Philly was

was go on the local radio. And there's a lot of left-leaning talk show radio hosts. I sat on those shows and talked to people. And I plan on going back into that state and doing that for her over the next couple of months. And so she's going to need blue collar turnout. She's going to need African-American turnout. And she's got to win over some of the union people. And she's got to win over some of the energy people.

to pull this off. And she's ahead now. I think she's actually gotten a debate bump. I mean, it's a fascinating state. And I'm wondering, you know, what the strategy is for Kamala Harris. I mean, apart from obviously sending you there to try to persuade people to vote for her. But it seems to me that one of the strategies is to run up the votes as much as possible in the kind of democratic leaning counties around

around Philadelphia and to some extent in the kind of urban area of Pittsburgh. I don't know that they have much chance of increasing their representation in some of the areas that your dad grew up in. Those areas may now be lost to Democrats because people are so disillusioned with what's happened to them economically. And I did have this conversation before the show in preparation for this

with Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, whose district includes Montgomery County. And Congresswoman Dean says that Montgomery County, which is in the suburbs of Philadelphia, is almost like the bellwether county in the bellwether state. She describes it as one of the most important counties. It was a state where

Joe Biden managed to win Pennsylvania in 2020 because he increased his vote over Hillary Clinton in 2016 significantly in the county of Montgomery, in Montgomery County. And Madeline Dean's thought, Congresswoman Dean's thought is that if Kamala Harris can increase the numbers just in her county alone, then

That could make the difference for Kamala Harris. She says the campaign is much better organized. She says she's seeing levels of enthusiasm she hasn't seen since 2008 and that the organization is good, the volunteer effort is good, the get out the vote effort is good. She said a guy came up to her at a campaign event over the weekend who said to her he had never donated, he had never put up a yard sign, and he was asking to get involved in trying to get people out. That was just anecdotal, she said, but...

Here is what I always ask people what they're worried about when they're politicians, because I think it's when you sort of start getting a sense of,

of what the concerns are for the campaign. And she said that people are not aware enough, according to her and from a Democrat's perspective, of the kind of impact that some of the Trump policies that actually we've spoken about during this program of tariffs and mass deportations and tax cuts for wealthy people in America would have on the residents of Montgomery County.

She says people are starting to feel a little bit better about the economy. She says people are not talking about the price of things as much to her as they were, which is interesting. As a representative, she's heard a lot of complaints over the last couple of years about the price of orange juice, milk, eggs, bread.

And people have just started talking about that a little less, which I thought was interesting. But she says they're not really conscious. And she says she has a lot of Trump voters in her district as well, particularly in Berks County, which is a neighboring county, which is much less democratic.

And she says that when she asks them about the kind of impact that Trump's policies would have and whether they would be very inflationary, whether they, she says, would cut growth for all of the reasons we spoke about in the first half of the program. She says people aren't really thinking about that. She says when she goes out and talks to people now, she talks about three things. She talks about Trump's tariffs, about mass deportations, about tax cuts for the wealthy, because she wants to make this a choice.

She wants to make this a choice between Kamala Harris and the Democrats and Donald Trump. And she thinks that that message is not getting out there enough. I just thought it was interesting. I mean, she still recognizes, yes, there's a lot of energy, but they have to work hard. Democrats are going to have to work hard to win Pennsylvania.

And by the way, Pennsylvania, I don't think of it in a way as seven different swing states because in a way these states tend to go together. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin have voted the same way in every presidential election since 1980 with the exception of 1988. So they tend to vote as a bloc.

So if she can win Pennsylvania, she probably gets the other two as well. And that would seal the deal for her, of course, if she wins those three states. So that's then the White House. She becomes the 47th president. But Donald Trump was in my home area this week. He was on Long Island at the Nassau County Coliseum. I lived there. I grew up there.

in my backyard. He's not going to win that state. He's 25 points behind in New York. He tells people the big lies. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to win here, blah, blah, blah. Why is he there? But before you answer that, she is going into the red state areas of Pennsylvania. So traditional stomping grounds for Republicans.

precincts that Donald Trump won in 2016 and 2020, she's going in there to try to chip away at him. So why are these politicians doing this?

which it seems counterintuitive, it seems antithetical to how to win, what are they getting that other people may be missing? Well, I remember that you said when we did our series on how Donald Trump won in 2016, which by the way, programming note to everybody, is a great series that we recorded four parts and you can get it particularly if you join our subscription club, you can get it

all right now. So you mentioned how Clinton didn't go to Wisconsin and there you were sitting on the campaign thinking, why aren't they going to the place she needs to shore up votes? And were they taking Wisconsin for granted? And you kind of think there's very short amounts of time, right? I mean, Donald Trump only has whatever we are 50 days before the election and Kamala Harris likewise. Why are they going to these areas? Donald Trump is not going to win New York, even though he went to your

neighborhood, Long Island, and said he was going to win New York. He's not going to win New York. And she probably isn't going to win those red areas of Pennsylvania. Now, I texted the Trump camp, some advisor, Brian Lanza, to the Trump campaign. He said it's about the congressional races. They think they can score up more congressional races. And I don't know whether Kamala Harris has gone to the red areas of Pennsylvania where she has problems,

Particularly because we've spoken about this before, her policies on fracking have not been clear over the years and Pennsylvania takes in about $300 million a year from fracking. It's a very important issue for people, particularly in those red areas.

there's a very important Senate race in Pennsylvania, for example. Is she going there to help down ballot races? That's why the Trump campaign says he's going to New York because Donald Trump is not known for trying to help other people on the ticket, but maybe that's what they're actually doing. Because the strategy is a bit odd to me when you've got such a short amount of time on both sides. So I can only give you my thinking on it, which could be incorrect, but

I think he's delusional. But then do you think she's delusional going to the red areas of Pennsylvania? Why not go to the suburbs and run up the numbers there? So I think one side is disciplined and I think the other side is delusional and they have a delusional candidate that alters reality in his brain. And I think he's going there because he thinks it's sending fear to the Democrats.

He's going there because, by the way, he's loved out there. That county is typically a Republican county. We had a very unfortunate and unspeakable tragedy in that county where a young police officer who had a family was murdered. And he was murdered, unfortunately, by an immigrant. And Mr. Trump went to the funeral. It was in Massapequa, south shore of Long Island. I remember that.

Kathy Hochul went to the funeral, but she was more or less shamed out of the funeral because of the bail reform laws, all the different leniencies that have been applied to criminals, which the people, I think that's a universal thing. People don't generally like that. And so Trump has very broad support out there.

And it made for a good television appearance, which Fox showed and others. And so it didn't hurt him to be there. And it may have ancillarily helped the congressional people. But you and I both know, since this is an honest podcast, he doesn't give one wink about those congressional people. He's only in it for himself. So if it helped him, great. But he could care less. That's not a team sport for Donald Trump as a team of one.

On her side, though, I think it's disciplined. I think she's looking at Georgia and she's looking at Pennsylvania and she's looking at ratios. She's saying, okay, if Trump won this precinct by 80%,

If I can get 30% and he gets 70, how does that help me with my overall state? If I can get the turnout in Montgomery County, that's great for me. But imagine I can chip away at him in other places in Georgia. There may be more Democrats or there may be people. One thing that's happening to her.

and I get this feedback a lot, is, oh, wow, I met her. Oh, wow, she's way more charming. Oh, wow, she's totally different. There's an arbitrage, and I would really recommend this to their campaign. There's an arbitrage between what people think of Vice President Harris and who they think she is and who she actually is. When she shows up,

She reframes who she is to a very large group of people. And so I think it's very smart for the campaign to get her out there. But Pennsylvania, to your point, Michigan and Wisconsin too, but Pennsylvania, if she can win the people of Pennsylvania over-

She's going to win the presidency. And I'm going to tell you something I like, and I hate admitting this because you know I want her to win, but I think Trump is underestimating her in Pennsylvania. And I think his campaign is underestimating her in Pennsylvania. And I think she could use that to her advantage. Yeah. So here's one number. This is the number I wanted to tell you, and it gives you a sense of how tight these are and how it is. Like you say, it's precinct by precinct, county by county, community by community that you win these elections. Yeah.

Joe Biden won

Pennsylvania by 81,000 votes in 2020. He increased his vote share in Montgomery County alone by 63,000 votes compared to Hillary Clinton in 2016, who of course lost the state of Pennsylvania. So 63,000 votes out of that 81,000 that he won the whole state by came from that one county of Montgomery County. And that's all you've got to do.

What both of these candidates are trying to do is increase by, you get 5,000 extra votes here, 10,000 extra votes there, a few extra thousand votes that don't go to Donald Trump in one county or a thousand votes that you can get in another. And that's how you win these states. In a way, they have to be everywhere. Let me put you on the spot. You're in this luxurious yacht. You're nice and relaxed. So I want you to pull in all

I'm never telling you anything again. Yeah, okay. Come on. Channel Odysseus. I want you to pull in all that instinct. Is she going to win? Yes or no? Is she going to win the state of Pennsylvania? I think it's looking like she will win it. I think the numbers are moving in her direction. And I think if she wins, okay, I've been very cautious and I am very cautious about the economic message because I'm so conscious that this is what this election is going to be about. And it's about affordability still.

and about immigration. And the polls routinely underestimate Donald Trump's appeal. But I'm just seeing, starting to see now these polls that are giving her that slightly more comfortable lead in Pennsylvania. But it's going to be about getting the candidate out there, about refining the economic message. And then it's going to be about

events? Who was it? Harold McMillan that said, the Prime Minister of Britain who said, events, dear boy, events. You don't know. This has been the most wild election I think either of us have ever been involved in. And we don't know what's going to happen between now and November and how those events might impact the race. Would you bring Joe Biden to Pennsylvania? It's the one state I would probably take him to. And I would take him to where your dad grew up. Wouldn't you? I would. I would take him to Pennsylvania. I think it's the

There's nostalgia for Uncle Joe in Pennsylvania. Before we go, I would like to give a plug to our series that we mentioned earlier on how Trump won the White House in 2016. The next episode comes out next Monday, but you don't have to wait till Monday if you become a founding member.

The next episode is all about how President Obama encouraged Hillary Clinton to win over Joe Biden. And what an error perhaps that was. Lots of insights from Antony, lots of my reporting from that wild campaign trail. So go to restispoliticsus.com, become a founding member. Otherwise, wait till next Monday for the next episode. Before we go, though, I just want to thank people. I mean, I think that both Katty and I have been overwhelmed by

by the number of people that have signed up and subscribed and become members. And so thank you for that. And we're going to plan some very cool things to do, including Ask Me Anythings and various other ideas for other series. We're very grateful. We want to say thank you to all of you for participating in this project with us. We'll see you next week. Thank you again.