5. ⁠What makes swing states swing?
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Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Politics US. I'm Katty Kay. And it's me, Anthony Scaramucci. Good morning, Katty. Yeah, good morning from St. Louis. I've come out to the heartland. Merica, as you call it, Anthony. It's Merica. I can teach you to say it, okay? Where not very many tourists from around the world come to, but there we go. A little trip to St. Louis to interview the- You teach me to greet the king at some point, okay? And I'll curtsy or whatever I'm supposed to do. I'll teach you how to say Merica. How's that?

Okay. I think it's going to be a good trip. I'm interviewing a whole load of Olympians. I'm here to interview a wonderful athlete, Jackie Joyner-Kersee. So I'm looking forward to that this morning. And it has brought me to the heartland of America.

Today on the program, we are going to look past November's election at what a second Trump presidency would actually look like, particularly in terms of the economy and what he would do for businesses, because there's some very interesting numbers out which we can get into. And in the second half, we're going to explore swing states. I'm conscious, Anthony, that we've been talking a lot about swing states recently.

But we haven't actually really explained what the swing states are, why they are swing states and how swing states change in American politics. There have been these extraordinary shifts. For example, it wasn't that long ago that California was a swing state. So we're going to talk about why these swing states are what they are and how they could swing November's election.

Before we get into any of that, I want to talk about the news that came out of the UK yesterday, which is the announcement that there is going to be a UK general election on July the 4th. For our American listeners, they will be amazed that you can run an election campaign in six weeks. American election seems to go on for six years. I mean, it's more about July the 4th though. Americans are like, what are you talking about? I'll be eating hot dogs and flipping burgers at a barbecue and

looking at my relatives that have tattoos in places that they shouldn't have tattoos. You guys will be having an election. I've already heard the quip that Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, wants his own Independence Day. And that'll be his freedom from Downing Street Day. So I...

It's always interesting when America and British relationship is always interesting, this so-called special relationship, which the Brits get terribly hung up about. And do Americans pay enough attention to them? At one point, I remember Barack Obama tried to redefine it as the essential relationship. And that caused a huge flurry of anxiety in British circles. So they had to go back to calling it the special relationship. I can't help but think there is an interesting world in which Keir Starmer, who was way ahead,

The Labour leader is way ahead in the polls in the UK, gets elected Prime Minister of Britain from the centre left of British politics, and Joe Biden gets booted out of the White House and is replaced by Donald Trump. Now, we don't know which way either election is going to go, of course, we have to leave that to the voters in both countries. But...

In particular, a Starmer-Trump relationship would not be easy for the United Kingdom. These are two very different characters. Keir Starmer came out of the world of human rights law. I don't know if Donald Trump knows what human rights law is. He's a kind of anti-politician. He's low-key. He doesn't make big promises. He's not at all a Boris Johnson type figure who actually Donald Trump got on pretty well with because he liked the kind of showman in Boris. And of

You've got the kind of center left, center right, although those political forces are being thrown up, as we might talk about later. But it would be interesting to see how that affects UK-US relations. Maybe you think from your time in the White House, brief though it was, that actually whoever is in power in Downing Street doesn't matter and Britain is there to do America's bidding. No, listen, I mean, one of the things that I did in the transition team was

is I met with the Bank of England chair on behalf of the transition team. And second thing I did was I had lunch with Boris Johnson. It was on a Saturday in December. And I also met with your ambassador, the UN ambassador at his residence here in New York. And you had the Washington ambassador fly up for this. And

In the briefing book that we were given, and this is the interesting thing that people should know about Republicans, it's probably possible Democrats as well. There's a standardized Republican briefing book. So we had Donald Trump winning, total accident that he won. None of us thought he was winning, including Trump. And we were scrambling on the transition. But in that briefing book were the words special relationship. In that briefing book were the words, this is what we...

Underlined in red. Yeah. And this is the things that we need to do and say, and this is the reinforcement that we have to prevail upon our British friends about the relationship and the uniqueness. And it's interesting because you're parsing what Keir Starmer is like, and I'm telling you, Donald Trump is not parsing what Keir Starmer is like. He is an Anglophile. He talks about his mother liking the queen and liking the royal family and the monarchy. And he had a very good trip, right? To visit the

He liked that. I think he stepped in front of her by accident. And to be fair to him...

He had a very good trip. He left the United Kingdom. And I think Woody Johnson, our ambassador, is a friend of mine. He owns the New York Jets. I think he did a very good job of setting the table and preparing Donald Trump. And I think the queen, by the way, whatever she thought of Donald Trump, liked him or disliked him, she did an amazing job on behalf of the country in terms of the way she represented the country. So Donald Trump has a love affair with the United Kingdom. So I would say to the UK listeners listening in,

any anxiety about that relationship, no matter who the prime minister is. I personally wouldn't worry about it. So you don't think it makes any difference whether Keir Starmer is prime minister or Rishi Sunak? I don't. Unless you get into a situation where Keir Starmer gets to a microphone like this and starts blasting Donald Trump, or like the mayor of London did while Trump was president, I guess he got into a row with Donald Trump and then that caused...

Trump firing back at him. So to me, I'm not worried about any of those things. There was a prime minister, Theresa May. I think you'll enjoy this story if you don't mind me telling you briefly.

So I'm in the Oval Office. This happened on a Monday, Katty, because I was only there for two Mondays. And so this happened on the first Monday. So I know I could tell you TikTok what happened to me. And I was sitting at the Resolute desk to Donald Trump's right, my left. I was sitting at that first chair and

we were talking about something and he said to me, look up. And I said, look up. So I looked up and there's beautiful seal of the president, the presidential seal, sort of the president's logo, if you will, on the ceiling of the Oval Office. It's in plaster of Paris. It's in like a relief. And he says, you're in the blankety blank Oval Office. And I laughed. I said, yeah, I'm, I'm,

I've been to your office with you, which is even more funny. Then he laughed. And then he said to me, are you nervous? Does this office make you nervous? And I said, yes, this office does make me nervous. And he said, you know something? I got to be honest. It made me nervous when I sat down behind this desk.

I said, my God, I'm the president of the United States. He said, but let me tell you something, Anthony. There's a lot of work here. You won't be nervous in a couple of days. Things get going. He goes, the weirdest thing happened to me the first time I sat down at this desk. I said, well, what is that? He said, the phone rang. And I said, I answered the phone. Mr. President, yes, this is White House protocol, the Office of Protocol. You are going to meet Prime Minister Theresa May at the North Portico. My first reaction was, where the F is the North Portico? Because he didn't know, okay?

He says, oh, okay, great. Oh, okay. And he hung up the phone and he says, so Mooch, I get up and I'm like, okay, I got to figure out where the North Portico is. And then he said, you know what, I'm the president of the United States. I got to go do this type of thing. And he met with Theresa May. And I know he didn't get on with her. I know there was a way he held her hand. It was all this sort of body language stuff that didn't go well.

But he loves the United Kingdom and he loves the concepts and he loves the principles that the United Kingdom represents. So I just think it's something I wouldn't personally worry about. So whatever happens on July the 4th, our dear British listeners will still be special. It's like Vegas. Whatever happens on July the 4th should stay on July the 4th, at least here in the United States. Bad stuff happens here on July the 4th. OK, you know that.

It slightly makes me cringe how desperate it is to have this relationship be described as special relationship, but there we go. It'll still be special, everybody, don't worry. Let's move on to take a look at what's gonna happen

in a second term Trump presidency in terms of the economy. And I wanted to do this this week because a couple of things have happened. We had Donald Trump meeting with oil executives in Houston on Wednesday for a big fundraiser. And there's a new poll out, Antonia Harris poll, showing a huge misperception amongst Americans about how the economy is doing. 56% of Americans think

The country is in recession. It's not. 49% believe the S&P 500 stock index is down for the year, even though it went up about 24% in 2023 and is up again this year. And 49% believe that unemployment's at a 50-year high. It's actually at a 50-year low.

So, there is this kind of misperception in America about the state of the US economy under Joe Biden. I don't know what people are seeing on TikTok. I don't know where they're getting their news. I don't know if other forces are meddling with the news they're getting to increase this misperception. And I realize inflation is high, but it leads to what

I hear around the country, and I don't know if you hear this too, of people saying to me, particularly from the business community, I don't really like Donald Trump. I don't like what he says. I don't like his style. I don't like his values, but I like his policies and his policies are good for business. So I think it's worth digging into a little bit about what, from your position as an investor and from my kind of reporting on this, what a Trump second term would look like for the American economy. And I'm

I'm not as convinced as the business leaders I hear from that actually he has a very pro-business policy, particularly pro-Wall Street policy. I mean, you're sitting up there in New York on Wall Street. What you think of what a Trump second term would look like? Because he's got this very kind of interesting populistic economic agenda going.

that may not be what these business leaders think it's cracked up to be for them. Yeah. So I thought about this a lot. So I'm going to make three remarks here. The first one is the superficiality of what you just said. Meaning if I'm sitting here with my Bloomberg terminal and I look at the economic dashboard of the United States, it looks quite good. It's set up for an incumbent to win reelection. You mean I'm being superficial?

or superficiality of what people do. No, no, no, I'm sorry. No, no, no, you're not. Just clarifying for the top of the podcast. No, no, no, you're never superficial. How could you be superficial with that accent, right? I mean, our American listeners think you are like 20 times smarter than me. You get like 25 IQ points with that accent in this country. Yeah, I'm keeping them, I tell you. I'll take them anyway. I know you know you're teasing me because you know I don't think you're superficial. You're far too polite.

Anyway, go on. But I'm talking about the superficiality of the voters. And I'm talking about the voters don't pay attention to this thing until the end.

You and I pay attention to it. Thank God we have podcast listeners that pay attention to it. They don't pay attention to it. So there's a superficiality going on as it relates to Trump good for economy, Biden bad for economy, sort of a caveman-er at the end of each statement. That's number one. Number two, you have to remember, I'm from a blue collar family and I live two miles from where I grew up. I'm literally talking to you right now, two miles from my mom's house.

And all my cousins still live in the area. And for the Italians listening in, you know, we get named after our grandfather. And my grandfather's name was Anthony. So I've got like every one of my cousins is named Anthony. So we have Anthony Plummer. We have Anthony Deli Cutter in a deli. We have Anthony Auto Glass Installer. And of course, when I show up at Christmas, I'm Anthony Hedge Fund. They could care less about how much money I made or whatever. They don't give a you know what.

And when I sit with them, they tell me the inflation is hurting and they don't understand what we talked about last week about situational versus personalized. And so they are personalizing the inflation on Joe Biden. And I'm here to tell you, if Donald Trump won reelection, it would be Trump's inflation that was inducted by monetary policy.

decisions, lower interest rates. It was deducted by massive spending by the federal government here in this country. And that's why you've got the inflation. So here's a prediction I'm going to make. So my last point is that this is going to calm down as we get towards the conventions. And I think the Democrats are going to get a better narrative out there

Joe Biden, he's having a hard time selling his agenda because he has a great agenda to sell. He's done more for these people, my cousins as an example, than Donald Trump did. He has reshored manufacturing, put 250,000

billion into that legislation, the early part of his term to get manufacturers back. The CHIPS Act, which you and I have followed very closely, he's creating microprocessor foundries in the United States. There's one going in upstate New York here.

which I'm actually going to visit in mid-July because there's clients up there and also there's jobs up there. And I just want to actually see it. And so I'm going to make a prediction that this is going to get tighter. Last thing, and that poll was interesting, but there's another poll and it was on marketwatch.com yesterday that it's a market sensitive poll. And they interviewed market participants and then they balanced it against what's going on in the stock market.

And that indicated that 58.8% believe that Joe Biden is going to win the election, that this will be because of the economic data. Okay, whatever Trump's rhetoric is right now, however upset Anderson Cooper is, who's a very polite, nice anchor at CNN, but he was on Oxygen last night when I went on his show because he thinks Trump is winning. You can see him like hyperventilating. I don't see Trump winning this election.

Yeah, I mean, there is a sort of freak out on the left. I know I actually interviewed the co-chair of the Biden campaign a couple of days ago and spoke to him earlier.

And he said they expect the poll numbers for them to start turning around kind of August, September, that you'll start to see those poll numbers tighten. But what else Trump would do for the economy? It's interesting. You talked about inflation. One of the things that I've heard from the Trump campaign that they're keen to do, they're going to deregulate the fossil fuel industry, lift off the kinds of things, the green energy policies that Joe Biden has put in place.

The drill baby drill mantra will be back again, even though America is producing oil at kind of record levels. And they believe that would help bring down inflation. They think they can talk to the Saudis to get the Saudis to boost production, which they also think would help bring down inflation. So they're very conscious of inflation. But on the flip side of that,

Donald Trump has said that he wants to put a 10% tariff on all imports, which would be inflationary for American consumers. Of course. They want to stop American firms investing in China at all. There are going to be very harsh penalties for employees who hire illegal migrants. And there's no suggestion really at the highest levels of...

a huge urge to cut taxes. I mean, one of the reasons, of course, that American businesses loved Trump and the stock market surged at the beginning of the Trump presidency in 2016 was that he did that massive tax cut. Well, there's not much room for a huge big... Is there for another big tax cut? I mean, what would businesses actually get out of Donald Trump is what I'm trying to understand is what would they...

What would they get? Because when I look at the Trump policy agenda, it looks like a pro-worker agenda. I mean, it's this kind of neo-populism that looks actually curiously kind of pro-worker more than it does putting their tent up in the Democrats' backyard, perhaps. But I don't know.

I don't know if it's very pro, certainly not pro-Wall Street. No, well, I mean, listen, the Democrats are good at sloganeering, right? They once said that Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. That was the rally cry in 2012. If I were the Democrats right now, I would say tariffs, taxes, deportation. I would say it over and over again in a chant. I'd say tariffs, taxes, deportation. But then they sound like Trump.

No, but hear me out. He's going to push the tariffs too high. Taxes, Trump doesn't know what he's talking about. He's not going to find any tax cuts to further your point. And then the last part is deportation. The guy is running commercials that he wants to deport 15 million people. Okay, so let's just everybody take a chill for a second. That is horrific for the economy.

Okay, how is that going to help McDonald's or Subway? Or how is that going to help you pick the producer or the housing starts in the country if this man is going to set up deportation facilities? And do you know what the Bradley effect is? So just briefly for viewers and listeners that may not know what it is, Mayor Tom Bradley, the first African-American mayor, he won election in Los Angeles. He was running for re-election. The pollsters were calling people around LA. Are you going to vote for Tom Bradley?

They said, yes, he was plus nine two days before the election. He lost by eight points. So it was a 17% swing between what the pollsters heard before the election and what actually happened. And then they went back and did some exit polling and said, yeah, I didn't want to sound racist by telling I wasn't going to vote for the guy. And there's a Bradley effect going on in the Hispanic community right now. The Hispanic community, Trump is macho, macho man.

And, and Hispanic men don't want to look feminine, if you will, by not saying they're going to vote for Trump. But then they look around and they say, this guy's going to deport my cousin or my brother. And when that curtain closes or that mail-in ballot is written, they're not going to vote for him. You can't deport 15 million people, Caddy, in this country. This is a browner and blacker country than 2016. And, and,

2020, this beautiful, colorful mosaic of the United States has gotten more beautiful and more colorful. And so to me, I don't see the winning argument if the Democrats really press. And my last point is they've been spending their money on field offices right now. They're not spending their money on advertising.

and Facebook ads and TikTok ads, et cetera. They are a little, but they're putting people on the ground and resource on the ground because they know this is a get out the vote exercise, this election in those swing states. And I know we want to talk about what swing states are for UK listeners. And just before we get to that, one other question I would have is what if the nature of the kind of Republican base, and I'm not just talking the MAGA base, uh,

has changed. I mean, Trump already changed the nature of the Republican Party by making it protectionist, by ditching the idea that they had to cut social security pension programs and that kind of thing. So he's already kind of changed it. And there's this understanding, I think, in Trump land that there is a big section of the American society which is socially conservative, anti-woke, but actually conservative.

wants the state to work to help it with economic issues and that it is protectionist, that they like the tariffs and that they do like the deportations. I mean, you're right. I think that one of the big questions that's going to decide states like Arizona that we can get into and Nevada in the election is going to be what Hispanic voters do. Are they keen to avoid more deportations or are they protectionist

social conservatives who find something in Donald Trump's kind of new mix of that. It's a new kind of blend of economic populism that he's offering people on steroids that, you know, they like that. Well, this is why I applaud your vantage point. Living here 25 years,

you actually see the paradox that's going on in America right now. Because if you're on Wall Street, you're socially liberal and you're fiscally conservative, right? Or they say I'm socially inclusive and fiscally responsible, right?

I was told by a communications person on Wall Street, never use the word liberal and never use the word conservative. I said, why is that? They said, well, they spent billions of dollars. The Republicans spent billions of dollars torching the word liberal to 50% of the country. And the Democrats spent billions of dollars torching the word conservative. So say you're socially inclusive and fiscally responsible. You see the parsing of the words?

That's Wall Street. You know, they over analysis on Main Street, in the prairie, in the Midlands. We went to an event, a campaign stop in Youngstown, Ohio. And when Trump got back on the plane, I said to him, wow.

I mean, are you socially conservative and fiscally irresponsible? And he looked me straight in the eye and he said, that's what the people are. Do you don't understand that? The base is not Wall Street, socially liberal, fiscally conservative. The base is the opposite. Is there exactly what you just said?

And you know what? I didn't see that, Caddy. That reflects poorly on me. Mitt Romney didn't see that. That reflects poorly on him. John McCain, the late great John McCain, may his soul rest in peace. He didn't see that. But you know who saw it? The SOB Donald J. Trump saw it. And he's playing to that. But here's the problem with what he's doing. He's turning off the incremental voter. He needs that incremental voter. He

He's got those people that we just described, but he's also got to look at the demography and recognize that the Republican registrations have dropped since 2020 even. And so it's independents first, Democrats second, and then Republicans are third in terms of registration. So he's got to make up a lot of ground. I got these people, but I need another 20 plus percent of the electorate.

to make this happen for me. Yeah. It reminds me of, I interviewed a steel worker in 2016 up in, also in Ohio, in a town that was just decimated by the demise of the steel industry. I've been in those towns. Yes. I mean, it's grim. One in 10 shops is open on Main Street every

huge big steel plants that are now standing idle and quiet with 200 employees where they used to employ thousands. And this guy said to me, super thoughtful guy, knew far more about the World Trade Organization than is good for anybody.

and knew a lot about China and offshoring. And he said, I have voted Democrat my whole life. I've been a union member my whole life, and I'm voting for Donald Trump. And what's interesting about, I think, the next iteration of Trump is he's taking that even further. You look at somebody like

Oren Kass, who's the founder of this populist think tank, American Compass, which is the kind of brains behind the new Trump ideology. And it's actually pretty pro-union. It's pretty pro-worker and socially conservative and protectionist. And I think it's going to be interesting to see, you know, this kind of seismic demographic shift that's taking place in the

Republican Party when it comes up against those kinds of incremental voters that you've just been talking about. We should, in the second half, we're going to talk about the swing states because that's going to be where this is all decided. Before we go on though, Katty, does it surprise you

that the Republican base is now socially conservative and they want to spend like Judd Kershaw. I mean, the Tea Party movement, they had these placards up and said, get your government hands off my Medicare. And now it's, please give me more social... You know, you can't talk about cutting social security in the Republican Party now. I mean, they've done a full 180 on it. It's incredible. On social welfare policies. And that was all Trump. I remember being down at the Republican convention in...

in Tampa, Florida. - Yep, 2012. - 2012, where cutting deficits wasn't economic policy, it was a test of your patriotism. It was a moral, emotional, religious

No question. It would have been a different country had Brownie gotten elected. And that Republican Party doesn't raise its head anymore now. It's the party of JD Vance and Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton. Parts of that party thought they were with Nikki Haley, but it turns out Nikki Haley's not with them. So, Cady, before the break, I just want to add two quick things. Cady, I want to suggest to our viewers and listeners before the break that they read Robert Lighthizer's book. He was the trade representative for Donald Trump, a personal friend of mine.

And the book explains the view of the steel worker that you were interviewing and where Trump lives and where things will go from a trade perspective. So Robert Lighthizer, that would be number one. That's the book, Trade is Never Free, right? Yes, that's right. Trade is Never Free. And the second book is coming out next month.

And it's about the clash in Seattle in 1993 when the World Trade Organization was meeting. And this clash was led by people like Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader, hard left liberals. The Wall Streeters thought it was ridiculous. I was 29 years old at the time.

But I've interviewed this gentleman that wrote the book, and he explained that these people knew what was happening. And we lost, as the introduction of China and others into the World Trade Organization and NAFTA, the United States lost 65,000 factories.

since that moment. And so they could see the blight coming, the blight that you and I have experienced in Youngstown and Ohio and other places in the middle of this country. We're going to take a quick break and come back with more on demographics and swing states.

Hey, we're invited to the Johnson Summer Pool Party this Saturday. Oh, Saturday? But that's when the Blinds guys come in to give us a quote. Oh, I already found everything we need at Blinds.com. They're totally online, so we don't have to wait around all day just to get a quote. And they're sending us free samples. Well, Blinds.com sounds like a no-brainer. Shop Blinds.com now for summer savings up to 40% off site-wide. Up to 40% off at Blinds.com. Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics US. I'm Cathy Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. I'm just looking through these notes, if you know what I'm saying. I mean, there is so much to talk about. I know. There is lots more that we can do on this, but we're going to give you a kind of outline of why swing states swing. Take us back to 2016 when Donald Trump won the

Which of the swing states do you think he was most keen to win? Which would he have been saddest to lose? So he had the gun on the bird. And look, he has very good political instincts. He's just self-destructive. And that's really the reason why he lost in 2020, the self-destructiveness. But in 2016, it was Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And he was strafing those places. Now, this is another...

peculiarity of Donald Trump, he does not like sleeping in other people's beds. And so he was hauling from LaGuardia Airport to Michigan and back to sleep at Trump Tower. So in other words, there were no Mitt Romney Marriott's for Donald Trump. Okay. Up to New Hampshire, over to Michigan, down into Pennsylvania, et cetera. And so for UK listeners, the way this works in the US, we have a republic.

And so we do have some representation and some representative elements of a democracy like the House of Representatives, where you vote in your district for somebody to represent your district. But then the way the Romans set it up, we have a Senate. And so you've got the Rhode Island has two senators, the smallest state in California, the largest. They both have two senators. So there's equal representation of the states in the Senate. But the founders in their wisdom said, you know what, we've got to have an electoral college.

And so you win 270 votes in the electoral college and the way the presidency is going to work. If the candidate wins the state, he gets the electors that he's designating to go to the electoral college to vote on his or her behalf. And so if you win a state, it's not a popular vote election. It's based on the states. And this has had a very interesting effect on the country because the coastal states have

haven't been swing states in a long time. Cady, you know this, you were talking about it before we opened up. California was a little bit of that, but now it's decidedly a blue state. And there are several states, the ones that I'm mentioning, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, that there's a mixture, sort of a purplish state, mixing red and blue.

And you have to attack those states to win because that's really where the swing is in the electoral college. And I just want to say this because I think you'll enjoy this. We were in New Hampshire. Trump was speaking at 11 o'clock in New Hampshire. This was 48 hours before the elections.

He wanted to go to Michigan. It was 11 o'clock at night. Okay. Mr. Pepe came onto the plane. He looked at the pilots. He said, how long would it take to get us to Michigan? They were like an hour and 50 minutes. He looked at his ops people. He said, I want to do one more rally at the hangar, at the FBO where we land in Michigan. I'm leaving everything on the field.

I'm running through the tape. And so the logistics people said, okay, we can try to do that. Let's get up in the air and we'll start making phone calls. Okay. He announced it on Twitter. CNN picked it up, of course, because they were picking up every tweet coming off our satellite dish on that plane. He landed in Michigan. We had the bunting, the draping, the flags. There were 7,000 people waiting for him.

Okay. And you know what he said when he came off the plane? I'm here in Michigan, crooked Hillary, she's in bed, she's sleeping. Okay. And it resonated, Caddy. It resonated. One other thing that Secretary Clinton did in that campaign, she didn't go to Wisconsin after the convention. They knew it. She knew it. He went 11 times.

So this swing state thing is a very, very big deal in this country. - We're talking about swing states this time around, and just to run through them again, it's Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, those are the Rust Belt industrial states. Then you've got Arizona, Georgia, Nevada. Those are the kind of six states that Biden insiders talk about, 6% of six states. That's 6% of the population in each of those six states

that have not decided whether they're going to vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump. And those are the people that are being completely bombarded this year with election ads, with attention from both campaigns.

Back in 2020, the Washington Post did research on this and they found that the winner would have changed by flipping just 81,000 votes in four states, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Georgia. So if 81,000 people

in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Georgia had decided that morning to pull the lever for Donald Trump, then we would have had Donald Trump in the White House and not Joe Biden. And I'm saying these numbers just to give you an idea of how incredibly close American politics is and how fraught these elections are. And it wasn't

always this way. Back in 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected, 22 states were swing states. So the number of swing states in American politics has shrunk as the American population has sorted itself into Republican

democratic areas. As people have got more moved to areas where people are like them, the country has got more polarized. The political parties have responded by getting more extreme, which means there are fewer people who are likely to jump ship from...

Democratic to Republican. I mean, it's very hard now to imagine people having voted Republican for a couple of cycles to suddenly vote Democratic for a couple of cycles, whereas they used to. People used to jump from party to party, which meant that states used to jump from blue to red. And now states don't jump anymore. So we're left with these six or the

Trump campaign floats the idea that they could win Virginia and Minnesota this time around. People are looking a little bit at North Carolina, but it's tiny. And I think the reason the swing states to me are fascinating is that they point to this larger picture of an America that has become more tribal as people.

the great commentator Ron Brownstein likes to say, it's two countries sharing the same landmass. And that's what America feels like. And that's, I think, why we have fewer and fewer swing states. It certainly feels that way to me. But I want to ask you a question. We had this state and local income tax cap. So again, for UK listeners, you pay state income taxes,

and then you pay federal income taxes in the United States. And what the federal government used to say to you is, okay, whatever your state income taxes are, you can take that off the top of your gross income. So let's say you make $100,000.

You pay your $10,000 to the state, then we'll tax you on the $90,000 that's left over. We don't do that anymore. There's a $10,000 cap. This has caused a migration in the country since this law went into place. This law went into place seven years ago. Places like New York and California respectively have lost anywhere from 500 to 650,000 people

have migrated out of the state. They're mostly ending up in Florida and Texas. - Political refugees. - Political refugees. But my question to you is they're leaving blue states to go to red states. Are these red state people leaving blue states to go to red states?

Or are they going to turn these states blue as a result of this migration and then change the dynamic in the governments of those states? It's a great question. The reason, of course, that some states join the swing state list, like Georgia was not until recently on the swing state list.

is because of migration that you're talking about, because of demographic changes in those states that you get more Democrats moving in or more Republicans moving in. I remember a year or so ago, I was down in Arizona and I spent some time with Carrie Lake, who's the Trump-endorsed Senate candidate down there. And we went to this retirement community north of Phoenix. And it was a

weird sort of in the middle of the desert. And suddenly you go through these gates and there are 400 houses on idyllic little lanes with picket fences. And a lot of the people in that retirement community were Republicans who had left California to come to Arizona and were going to vote Republican in Arizona.

So you've got these kind of clashes of communities, right? You've got these Republicans moving from California into Arizona, which is a swing state, and they will vote Republican. And you've got to set that against Maricopa County, which is the big county around Phoenix, which is the fastest growing county in America with a population of 4 million people, many of whom are immigrants. And those immigrants up until now, Hispanic immigrants, have voted Republican.

in the majority for the Democrats and those populations are growing too. So this is what makes the swing states so interesting is that you have these kind of competing forces of Democrats moving into an area, Republicans moving into an area, Hispanics coming of age, right? Every month, 20,000 Hispanics turn 18 in America every month. Now, if those 20,000 Hispanics reliably voted Democrat, Arizona's not a swing state anymore.

Arizona is a solid, solid Democratic state. The thing is, they're not solidly voting Democratic, which is what Democrats had predicted they would do. Which if I'm looking, if you're looking around the country at the swing states, which are the ones that are most interesting to you, Anthony? Which are the ones that you're looking at? Well, the three most interesting to me are Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania. The Rust Belt. But the Rust Belt. But let me just focus on Michigan, why I find that so interesting. There is a very large Arab community in Oakland County and the upper north of Detroit. We have 200,000 people that voted undecided.

But the thought in the campaign is that it might be a very large swath of the Arab community that is a protest vote against what's going on in Gaza and U.S. policy related to Israel. And it's caused starts and stops in the Biden campaign. And it's caused Chuck Schumer, who's an American Jew, to start and stop protests.

on the Israeli situation. And there's some rancor related to Prime Minister Netanyahu. But I think those people are voting for Joe Biden. Okay, because Donald Trump's talking about 15 million people being deported. He also had a Muslim ban. If you remember that he signed executive order banning Muslims from entering the country from certain Muslim countries. And I think if you're an Arab American, you're like, whoa,

I don't want to get myself or my family deported by Donald Trump. So I think Biden wins Michigan. The state that he's going to have a tough time in is Pennsylvania because my family, my dad is from Pennsylvania, from Northeastern Pennsylvania. My grandfather was a coal miner. Joe Biden is from Pennsylvania. So Joe Biden, when I met him the first time, I said, Mr. Vice President, I'm just going to say one thing to you, Brutico's.

You look at him, he said, Brutico's. He goes, oh my God, they got the best white pizza in America. How the hell do you know Brutico's? I said, well, my, my pop, you know, he grew up in Plains. I know you're from Scranton. That's like the best Italian restaurant in the area. You know, this sort of Plains, Hazleton, Wilkes-Barre area. You know, and interestingly enough, you know, Hillary Clinton was born there. She grew up really in Chicago, but when you listen to her

She has a Northeastern Pennsylvanian accent. When I hear her on TV, it sounds like my Aunt Eleanor talking. You know, I'm like, oh, my Aunt Eleanor's on TV, but it's Hillary Clinton. So that area is Rust Belt-y. That area is coal miners. And Joe Biden knows that area like the back of his hand. Okay. And, you know, there's some certain things I love about Joe Biden. I used to spend summers in that area. He gets those people.

And they get him. But then when you go down to Philadelphia, that's liberal city down there. Right. And and that's good for Joe Biden. But when you go to the hard side of the state, the western side of the state, that's like Kentucky. Right.

Okay, this is the mixture in this state like no other in the country. And just again, one quick story. We're in a farm field in Pennsylvania the day before the election, 2016. Hillary Clinton is in the Wells Fargo Center in Philly. She's got Jay-Z, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi. I was there with her. Okay, so there you go. You were there. Watching that.

We were in a farm field freezing. You were smart. Trump got to the microphone. He said, hey, she's got all these celebrities and she's in that elitist city, but I'm out here with you. All you got is me. Okay. And it was brilliant. Again, you can like Trump or dislike Trump, but it was brilliant because he had his hand raised.

on the pulse of a forgotten America. And I know UK listeners know that there are people in the UK that feel forgotten. And many of them voted for the Brexit in June of 2016, prior to the November 2016 election. So these swing states are super important. Trump will be on the move. Joe Biden does have a lot of energy, despite what people say. He's in better shape than people say. That's why he's debating. He's getting ready for that. And he's been moving around a lot. And if he

wins Pennsylvania, it is over, by the way, because I could show you the map and maybe one day we'll take out a little map. He wins Michigan and Pennsylvania, he'll beat Donald Trump. But Pennsylvania is where the big clash is going to be. It's going to be worldwide wrestling federation in Pennsylvania. And the advantage for the Democrats is that they have a newly elected Democratic governor in Pennsylvania.

Josh Shapiro, who is a kind of rising star in the Democratic Party. They've also got a Democratic governor in Wisconsin. And the reason I mentioned that is that when you have a Democratic governor, it helps you organize the infrastructure of the party, the get out the vote infrastructure, which is so important in all of these swing states.

And it could play to Joe Biden's benefit, but you're right. Pennsylvania is the one that everybody is watching this time around of those six swing states. Back in 2000, there was a famous moment on television when the late, great Tim Russett, who was the commentator on NBC News,

on election night, got out a whiteboard and wrote on it in three times, Florida, Florida, Florida. Because it was only Florida that mattered. And I think that's what's fascinating about these swing states as well. I'm old enough to remember elections where it was all about Ohio and Florida. Now, Ohio and Florida are solidly in the Republican column. And this year, I think you're right. I think it's going to be Pennsylvania. And if I was going to throw another one in,

I would throw Nevada because Nevada, a bit like the state of Wisconsin, nearly a third of Nevada's voters are registered independents, which makes that more of a state that could move either way. And it's got a big Hispanic population, a big unionized population. And I'm

You're interested in the Rust Belt. I'm interested in the Sun Belt, as it's called, Arizona and Nevada, because I'm interested in what happens to the Hispanic vote. And are Hispanic voters who are, some of whom are socially conservative, and the Democrats thought they had them in their column, are they actually now drifting to be more conservative?

Republican voters. If you're smart about the US election, don't watch national polls at this stage in the race. Watch state polls at this stage in the race. I mean, that's a brilliant analysis, but I cannot let go that the posh Katty Kay- Brilliant butt. It was brilliant, but the posh Katty Kay was at the Wells Fargo Center with Jay-Z and Beyonce. I was covering the Clinton campaign and we were standing there as reporters saying, she's made the wrong call.

We knew on that night that Trump was playing the smart card and that actually Pennsylvania was going to be won or lost, not in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but right out in the cornfields of the west of the country. I got to say, though, I do have a love affair with these Brits, okay? Because the production people are saying that is a posh slander.

I'm posh slandering you, Katty K. And I enjoy that, by the way, because there's nothing posh about me. And so I do enjoy posh slandering you. I may have a t-shirt made that I'm a posh, I'm a serial posh slanderer. I may do that. One day you'll realize that, you know, I'm as proletarian as you are. Okay. I'm looking forward to that day. Yeah. It may be a little while off. Okay, guys, that's it for this week. Thank you so much for listening. We'll

touch on this, all of this more, what a Trump second term would look like, how these swing states are bouncing around and what the ups and downs are going to be. So stay with us. We'll have more next Friday, but thanks for listening. Come see us again next week.