You Can't Fact Check JD Vance (VP Debate Recap) ft. Vibes Only's Glennis & Brian
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This is like a delirious morning, aren't we? Post-VP debate, vans, walls. The listeners need to know that this is about to be so stupid. We're going to have so much fun because our besties are in the house and we were all up too late last night.

but I'm so excited for today's chat. Me too. Don't expect a lot, but we'll give you everything we got. Let's let everyone know who's here. We are here with the host of the Vibes Only podcast, Brian Derrick, also the founder of Oath Vote, and Glynis Mahar. We are so excited to be here. You've heard Brian and Glynis before, and we just have to get into everything we witnessed last night.

Let's do hot takes just straight off straight off the top of the morning to you. Glenis, what's your like one sentence hot take from last night? It was a dud. Yeah, I'm glad someone said it. Someone had to say it. Brian, what's your hot take?

My hot take is that Tim Walls actually created the most viral moment of the night. Which moment? The January 6th moment. That's a damning non-answer. So good. Did he lose the 2020 election? Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation? That is a damning non-answer.

I agree that that was the biggest and I think most impactful moment of the night, the fly of 2024, if you will. V, what was your hot take? So I was like kind of aggravated, honestly. Like J.D. Vance does something to my body chemistry that makes me so – it made it so difficult to pay attention because I have such a visceral push-away reaction to him.

And so I really had to try and focus. And at one point I was watching with like a bunch of friends on a, on a zoom, I moved the chat box over his face and it really helped me because I, and I'm not even trying to be like a jerk here. There is, it is a genuine, I'm just trying to be honest about something about him repulses me in a way that I can't even look at him or hear his voice, which is difficult because of course we, we have to use the vice presidential candidate on that side. And with the Tim wall side, um,

I was chatting with my sister after and she was like, he was a little too aw shucks, gee willikers for me. And I think that that is who he is. But it did sound to me a lot like he was campaigning to be the governor of Minnesota again, more than he was campaigning to be the vice president of the nation. It was a lot of in Minnesota we, in Minnesota we.

I definitely felt a disconnect between how I experienced the debate and what all of the flash polls and the dials show maybe independent voters or people who are more undecided or in the middle, how they experienced the debate. Because I love...

an Obama type figure. I love to hear an argument for democracy and reproductive rights and for the social safety net and like healthcare as a right, all of these things laid out in such eloquent precision. And that's not Tim Walz's strong suit. It's more like talking to your neighbor. But if you look at the data on how other people consume the debate who are not necessarily like us in the news and in the weeds all the time,

They kind of like hearing from their neighbor and seeing their neighbor represented up there. J.D. Vance does not sound like your neighbor. He sounds like he went to an Ivy League school. He sounds like he could talk his way out of anything. And people are distrustful of that. I completely agree with everything you're saying is that I was trying to really watch it on a few levels. I'm trying to watch it as me. I'm trying to watch it as –

sort of a low information voter, just kind of based on general impressions. How would I pick up on this? But the other dimension that I thought was interesting about this was that I imagine there was even a third layer of people who are watching this and seeing an actual potential future for the movement that is technically known as MAGA, but is really a series of, uh,

corporate and Christian nationalist interests propping this up. And my feeling is that they probably were like, okay, this guy can talk his way through this and make it look nice enough that we can sell our lie, we can sell our intentions without turning the whole thing into a circus and blowing up our spot as Donald Trump does.

This is what they were essentially doing before Donald Trump, just like a slow burn of making the country more conservative, taking away rights over a longer period of time.

And it was taking them longer, but the difference is that like they're able to slight people into feeling like nothing's changing. And Donald Trump is not subtle enough for their agenda to happen. So I wonder if almost this will cause a rift between the ticket because Donald Trump doesn't like when anyone takes anything from him. So I'm wondering how this will like play out on the,

you know, donor level, so to speak. Yeah. I had a friend who is not, he just moved here a couple years ago and not American and he was watching and didn't really know the candidates that well and texted me and said, I feel like JD Vance is lying. And I was like, bingo. It doesn't even matter when he texted you that it was correct. He was right. Negative aura. It's just his aura. His aura is like,

Snake oil salesman. The other thing I noticed about him is J.D. Vance is an empty shell of a person in the way that he doesn't have a foundational personality or set of beliefs truly. He simply fills himself with whoever he thinks the strong man in the room is. And he uses that same tactic to almost steal likability from the other people in the room too. And I think that this is a really...

I mean, I'm not a psychologist. I don't know if that's a sociopathic tendency or, you know, somebody else knows what it is. But to me, when he stands next to Donald Trump, he becomes Trumpian. When he stood next to Tim Walz, he was being more agreeable. When he stands next to his wife, he's not as racist. When he's next to racists, he's more racist. He just fills himself with whatever he...

he has identified in the room he can mimic. And this brings me back to his mentor and his tech bro, Theo bro leader, Carl Yarvin, who invented this theory of mimeic existence, which essentially says that nobody has any sense of self. They just mimic the most powerful in the room. And I think JD Vance took that a little too seriously. I think he took that a little too seriously because he does it like that. I think

I think that Walls tried to point that out. He called him fickle a couple of times. I don't know that he really landed the punch. I wanted him to pull out the receipts. Like we have text messages from J.D. Vance at the end of Donald Trump's term saying that his administration was a failure.

And now here he is saying the exact opposite on stage with a big smile. And that should make anyone so, so wary of him being a heartbeat away from the presidency. What a nightmare. He lied his way out of that one and many other things pretty deftly.

What you just said about having no sense of self, I completely felt that as I was watching. I was like, this man would have been a liberal if a different person got to him. If he had been accepted in a different circle, he would not be espousing these views. I don't even believe that he believes them. I think that he doesn't even seem like he has any conviction in what he's saying. He's a good boy. He goes and does the good boy thing. He's also a very talented debater.

Like this was always going to be his format. And so we just saw the most normal 90 minutes that we may ever see from him. Not the way I'm going to clip them. Not the way I'm going to clip them. This man's going to look fucking nuts because he is. Like when he said, okay, let's get into some of the things that he specifically said, right? Because we know that he grosses us out. But what?

He was pretty open about the fact that he believes that the national parks and federally protected lands are worthless if not developed. We could put houses on them. Who the fuck wants to live on a national park? There's no business nearby. There's no infrastructure. There's no jobs nearby. You can't just like pop up houses. They're going to remind me. This reminds me of their freedom villages that they want to build for like MAGA loyalists or whatever. But he was pretty open. The what? Totally. We'll send you the episode. Oh,

We have a whole Christian nationalist rabbit hole we go down on here and more to come, people. The thing that was clear about him saying, well, we should just put houses on national parks, was that some of those lands are, like Tim Wells said, they're for everybody. We need spaces for recreation, for fresh air, for just...

casual enjoyment, just places to go that aren't busy. That's part of the beauty of this land. But he also completely seems ignorant to the idea that many of these federally protected lands are deeply ceremonial and sacred to the indigenous population. And that's why they're protected. So they're not even ours. How many times are we going to recolonize

the indigenous community here that has treaties and different laws in place to keep those lands protected and for their, for their ceremonies and for them. Like he, he seemed to have no idea that that was a thing. This is a crazy line of conversation that even happened on the debate stage, because if you want to solve the housing crisis, there are plenty of non-national parks, lots of land that you could develop. Have you ever driven through Iowa or Nebraska? It's just crazy.

there for the development. He wants to own all of it. Okay, so like go own it and then put some more people in there and then we'll change the Electoral College makeup. I don't like the rabbit holes that he leads you down are so dumb and he even did try one. I think it was

It was the most apparent what his technique is within the context of the January 6th question where he was like, well, Kamala Harris censored Facebook when people were talking about COVID. It's like she had in the office –

Yeah. And again, like I do think that because they dish gallop you with just bullshit constantly, it's impossible unless you are hyper aware of everything to go after all of it. What do you think, Lennis? Well,

Well, no, it's just a lily padding from different topics and trying to weave them together. Typically, when it's Donald Trump, it truly makes no sense and people can see it for what it is. But because, Sammy, to your point, J.D. being an excellent debater and having that Yale law degree derogatory, it worked, right? Like he could take people on a path of delusion and mis and disinformation and it landed probably with many people. Because he has an authoritative background.

and way of speaking. And Donald Trump has a crazy way of speaking. Yeah, unhinged. I do think that

Donald saw his future and it was a dead end during the debate because in the middle of it, he tweets that the great Pete Rose just died. Meanwhile, a baseball player, Pete Rose died the day before. It's like, are you watching this? It was literally at 10 p.m. It was right in the middle. He didn't watch it. He was jealous. No, he didn't watch it. He was jealous. He saw that this was J.D. Vance's best public appearance of his life.

in front of the most people, highest ratings JD Vance has ever seen. And he was like, oh, fuck. They're going to like my vice president more than me. Well, maybe this is how he debates Kamala at the end of the month. We'll see. Brian, what do you think? That's a good point. Or he comes out in his next rally with eyeliner on. Could be. He's just trying to be more like JD. You could do white eyeliner. Yeah. I'm expecting like fallout boy level makeup. I hope so.

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I think that Vance's bar is so low. He comes into this debate as the most disliked political figure in recent memory. And so anything he did was going to lift his rating. Truly, like I can't imagine unless he vomited and stabbed Tim Walz, I can't imagine him dropping his favorability from where it was. But in addition to just being...

eloquent, I guess, he was lying at a clip that, as you were saying, V, is like hard to even combat. We were on our podcast, Vibes Only, we were trying to run down all the lies. And it was genuinely hard to keep track of them. I think that for me, the top three were

where he said he didn't support a national abortion ban, which he has said on the record publicly that he supports, that he thinks that abortion should be illegal nationally. He said that Trump saved the Affordable Care Act.

When he spent his entire term trying to completely uproot it from the courts to Congress to executive orders, et cetera. And he continually lied about the number of immigrants in the country that have come into the country during the Biden-Harris administration. And without even blinking, will just make up numbers to support whatever argument he thinks he needs to make to back Donald Trump, but has actually no...

I think, moral compass that he's even checking in with when he does it. But what was really disconcerting was when he...

kind of was like, I think we're having a really good conversation here. What Tim Walls, like, I hate that he was, I hate it, but personally, but I almost think that it was good, not from JD Vance, from Tim Walls, that he was kind of embracing that because he's here to be the, like the neutralizer on the Harris ticket. He's here to reach out to that. Why can't we all just get along American who doesn't really get why we can't all just get along. Yeah.

Because of these structural issues. And I wonder if that almost, like, I'm concerned that that helped Tim Walz in the short run and the Harris ticket in the short run, but sanitized J.D. Vance as a person in the long run. And that people will think, oh, this was like a reasonable guy who, oh, we just have to talk through a few policy points and then we'll figure it out. Not that he was lying his face off the entire time.

Well, that's what Joy Reid said. She said last night in her commentary that, you know, why is Tim Walz agreeing so much with Senator Vance? Why should we vote for you then? Why was he constantly saying things like, I think Senator Vance wants to get this done, but Donald Trump doesn't. I know he was trying to drive a wedge saying that they're not on the same page. Trump has said he doesn't even talk to Vance, but it did kind of make it look a little bit like it did soften the edges of J.D. Vance in a way that maybe was unintentional. Maybe it worked in debate prep, but on the stage, I don't think it hit.

Okay, but let me come to Tim's rescue a little bit and just say that I think that coming into this debate, his brief was do no harm. That like Tim Walz did not need to come in and crush that debate. He has a 25 point advantage over Vance. And so it was, I think, a higher risk strategy, especially for someone who's not a confident debater to come in and try to like be throwing punches because he's punching down. And that is a huge risk. Whereas Vance,

I think he did what he needed to do. That's how Glennis has put it. I think that he did what he needed to do and nothing more. And we all come away like, next thing, and then we're going to see Trump do something crazy tomorrow. As someone who had to watch for my professional career, it really didn't get good until like 45 minutes in when we switched to repro and more of the social issues. So I wonder how many people actually stayed in

locked in and watch this thing. I'm going to tell you, I think a lot of people dipped out after the first question that walls kind of stumbled through about Israel because it is such a divisive, hot, hurtful thing right now that if you tuned in on a Tuesday night, there's already a lot going on, you know, and we're worried about the port strikes and there's so much news right now. And you tuned in and that was the first question. I'm going to bet a lot of people were like,

I can't do this tonight. I can't do this tonight. And I think that was a choice from the moderators that I wouldn't have made to start with such a hot question. Well, I thought that that was what they should have. Margaret, I'm going to get to your question, but let me tell you some lies first. I actually thought that that was the right topic to start with, but I think that the question was just like such a –

stupid question, no offense, because it's like, well, what are the circumstances of this preemptive strike? Like, is this happening right now? Is this like, it was just like such a particular question that I found it to be hard to, to actually know what he was supposed to, to answer. Like given that also like, this is a diplomatic issue and these are delicate issues.

It's like, you can't just be like necessarily answering the details of military strategy. That's not the job of the vice president to even make these decisions or necessarily deeply understand or get those briefings. And if you watch the whole year in the day, general Ryder had said, I can't give you information about the movements right now. So, I mean like Margaret and Nora need to go read Jennifer Griffin's Pentagon updates, right? Because you can't ask a question like what's the military strategy on Iran. And I,

in Israel right now when we are literally in it? Like that's OPSEC issues. Like it was a dumb question to me and it's not something the vice president would ever deal with directly. That felt like it was missing throughout was like, what is the role of the vice president? Genuinely felt like a missing part of the conversation because-

Vance was literally just saying the Harris administration when referring to Biden being president, which is like crazy. When if you understand how our republic works like that's that's wild. And I wish that they would have pressed them further on like, how do you actually make a difference as vice president? You can't introduce legislation. You can't sign legislation. You can't issue executive orders.

What are you going to actually do? Did you see the clip, Brian? It went viral. MSNBC, the guy. Let's just play it. I was going to say, I was actually going to say, I saw this really funny clip. Let's play this answer. Constant criticism about the vice president not being able, about the vice president being in office for these last, he's already upset about it. The vice president being in office for all these years and not being able to make the change was the allegation from J.D. Vance. You said to me, I've been to high school civics class. Why did you say that?

Because if anybody took high school civics class, they'd know what the vice president can do and what the vice president can do. I want to make a quick point. Neither candidate on that stage talked about what executive action they're going to take on day one to do what they want, nor were they asked because they know that they can't. That's not how the vice presidency works. You don't get to do what you want. You do what the president delegates you to do.

And I think that they're afraid to say it because they think it downplays what Vice President Harris does right now or how she's prepared for the role. But when you've been the Attorney General of California, a district attorney, a U.S. senator, there's no question about whether or not she's qualified. And so I'm like, yeah, you should own it and say it's not her decision in many of those cases. I don't know why they're not more clear about that. Also, it's like on-the-job training. So it's a good thing.

But like, it's not like she actively was the one to decide these things. She was just part of those processes because of the nature of her role, because you can't just have one president and then no backup. You got to have someone who knows what's going on. But yeah, to your point, that is really true. But I also think it's sort of,

indicates, suggests even the way J.D. Vance views this entire enterprise, which I noted was kind of the undercurrent of everything he was saying. He was not playing the vice presidential candidate to Donald Trump. He was pitching himself and he was pitching

What he believes the MAGA agenda is, because let's be real, the actual MAGA agenda is Project 2025, which he is wholeheartedly behind. Donald Trump is the one who actually doesn't have any policies and is just going to do whatever people say and then plus a few personal favors. That's what will really be happening in a Trump administration. So J.D. Vance is like, if you actually want to know what will happen, I think in a weird way, he's giving you a much more honest picture of what's going on.

what a Trump administration would look like despite all the lies. And potentially, uh, JD Vance presidency. I, I'm naive, I guess. But when he said that he was 40 years old, I audibly gasp. I thought he was like 55 when he was like, I'm 40 years old. And I was like, yeah,

Like the other day. It's not right. I was deeply like, I had the same visceral reaction whenever he would speak. When he got on camera, I was on stage. I was like, I hate you? Question mark, question mark. And when he was like, I'm 40, I'm like, oh, this is a bigger problem than I thought it was. He's a millennial. He's a young, good boy.

And he will run the shadow government of a future Trump administration, God forbid, if we have one, because that's the way the game is set up to be played. And he is the perfect mark because he is willing to fill himself with whatever Peter Thiel wants to put in. Will Trump make it to 2029? No. Like, we all had that question for Biden. We were like, is Biden going to make it through another four years? Is Trump? Have you seen him lately? Trump's father lived to like 90. No.

I don't think that's the point, though. I don't – cockroaches live forever. Yeah, I don't mean is he going to be alive. But I think – Right. I don't think – everything that we know shows that he does not have the support to even do advance for this campaign. They can't get a reservation at Primanti Brothers because nobody wants to work for the advance campaign to call the store and say, hey, we'd like to film there. What's your policy for this?

There's no way. You know what they're talking about? I have friends on the Republican side that were in the Trump administration in the first round because they thought that they needed to be there to sort of like protect whatever they could from the inside. And I have respect for that, even though it might not be what I would have done. But they're saying that the boys are going to run his transition.

And you have folks like David McIntosh from the Center for Growth, Jeffrey Yass' number one boy, being like, am I going to run transition just so the country doesn't collapse? They don't have a plan. Even the most audacious of them, even the most insane and powerful and rich of them don't have a plan for how to actually govern, how to move through the processes of moving into the White House. He had a team that was willing to do that the first time. Those people are not willing to do that this time. So what do we have? Don Jr.?

running transition. We have nobody running advanced, can't even get in Primanti Brothers. These are things that I wonder if the American public knew. He says, I'm going to cut all these jobs and I'm going to fire 50,000 federal employees and we have too many federal employees. And people are like, yeah, fuck the man. And it's like, no, no, no, we need those people.

Isn't this to Sammy's point though, of like the, the ticket potentially in fighting, right? Because like project 2025 is like JD Vance's baby. Right. And that, that is their, uh,

transition that is their plan for 2025 and beyond but trump's like not my problem not my problem not my plan because he saw how poorly it was polling and testing for the right but yeah it's getting messy the girls are fighting donald trump doesn't care about not about project 2025 being enacted he just cares about people thinking that he is associated with something they don't like

So I think if he is able to get into office, I don't think he will be elected. I think he is counting on stealing this election, sending it to the court or to Congress. He has a few ideas in mind. And I think that he doesn't actually care what happens once he's in power. Someone else will take care of it.

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Max Bankman, I'm the new doctor. Welcome aboard the Odyssey. ABC Thursdays. This ship is heaven. We're tending to our past bitter streams. I'm in. From 911 executive producer Ryan Murphy comes a splashy new drama on a luxury cruise ship with Joshua Jackson and Don Johnson. It's your job to keep everyone alive. She's in V-fit. One, two, three. Clear. Clear.

I have a pulse. You're going to be okay. Dr. Odyssey, Thursdays, 9, 8 central on ABC and stream on Hulu. What did you make of the fact-checking comment that he said, they weren't, you weren't going to fact-check me. And then they cut his, they cut their mics. Yeah. That was probably the second most viral clip that I saw go out was J.D. Vance just saying, we agreed you weren't going to fact-check me.

Because obviously that makes a viewer consume his remarks completely differently if you have the context behind them. I thought overall, the moderators did a decent job. I wasn't blown away. And I think that not fact checking as a rule is like a sticky situation to begin with. I don't know. What were your thoughts, Vee?

I thought it was insane. I thought they built up the moderators to be like the first two women to moderate this panel. And, you know, and like, that's all great and whatnot. But we don't always need to draw attention to the fact that something is all women. I think that actually hurts us sometimes. It should be like a little bit more normalized, we should expect.

Especially when it comes to J.D. Vance or anything with the Republicans, it makes it look like a DEI thing and not like they genuinely are some incredible journalists and reporters and have well-earned this, not because they were women, but because that's how CBS News is structured.

I definitely think that they should back check. I think Lindsay and David Muir did the best job when it comes to moderating. And I think that is journalism. But right now we're in a conversation about what is journalism, right? I mean, friend of the pod, Taylor Lorenz, just quit the Washington Post to go start an independent channel because she, who is at the top of her game and very valuable to the Washington Post, is like, I'm better on my own.

To the point of the moderators, I thought one of the weakest questions they had asked specifically about facts was about Tim Walz and his record talking about when he visited China and equating that to J.D. Vance making up this story about the migrants in Springfield and all of the consequences that came from that where children had to be escorted to school by law enforcement. That to me was like,

Such an, again, a sanitizing question for J.D. Vance because it makes Tim Walz's kind of stumble over what month he was in China in 1989, I believe.

into something equivalent to something that J.D. Vance is doing now that is deeply dangerous. Yeah. I mean, it felt like more of a piece of trivia than like a gotcha, or maybe it was a little bit gotcha-y. Walls definitely needed to be more prepared for how to address it. But like we already said, Vance could literally talk his way out of

a murder charge while he stands over the body with bloody hands on the weapon. Like, like he, he really can. It's, it's a scary gift to have, but his entire obsession with blaming everything on immigration, to your point around Springfield really, I think shows the, how intellectually bankrupt their entire organization,

politics has become, that they have no ideas left. All they can do is point blame. And you'll notice that even though he talked about immigration, the entire night, he never put forth any workable solutions for the problem. All he did was talk about fear-mongering who immigrants are and the problems that he alleges that they cause. He never

said that they wanted more border agents, that they wanted more immigration judges, that they wanted new technology to fight fentanyl trafficking. He had no solutions, only problems, only scare tactics. And I think that that just like delegitimizes his perspective on the whole issue. I mean, we're talking a lot about the election as if that's going to be the end of it. And we know that that's not going to be the end of it. Glenys, we were having a conversation the other day with a

somebody was talking about, there's actually five things that she needs to win. And I thought this was really smart. And so will you share with us the five keys to a Kamala Harris presidency, if you will? Yeah. So number one, we need to win the vote, period. Then we need to win the count. We're seeing, of course, all of the news happening in Georgia about how they're trying to change how we're counting and then perhaps going to a hand count. So win the vote, win the count, win the electoral college, 270 to win. We all know that

process. Then that needs to be certified. We have to win the certification. And that has already been something that's been challenged in the past, right? I mean, that was what January 6th was about. It was, well, allegedly it was about the certification. But if those Senate aides hadn't stolen that box, we might not have certified, right? So it is a tradition. It is a difficult thing. The certification is a big, big, scary fail point. She's got to win that. What else?

Yeah. And then we have to win the acceptance. So we don't have this opposition like we saw on January 6th, where there was a literal mob at the Capitol trying to stop the certification of the election. So that's the kind of collective consciousness of the American people just tapping back into the reality of this is how democracy works.

So we were talking about this, about how like what to expect on election night. Are we going to have results in that night?

Probably not. But I don't think it's going to be like it was in 2020, which was what, like the Saturday after the election. So all of us were like, butt clenched wondering what was going to happen. So at least we can take, you know, a sigh of relief knowing that we won't be tense for days and days, God willing. Brian, we talked about this. How long do we think it'll take this time around?

Yeah, it will definitely depend on what the final electoral college vote count looks like. If she wins over 300 electoral votes, I think we could know the next day. If it's going to come down to like

barely eking it out over 270. If she wins the Nebraska electoral vote plus Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and nothing else, it will take a couple of days because we know that Wisconsin and Pennsylvania count really slow and Republicans have refused to pass any of the legislation, bipartisan legislation that

the state legislatures have worked on in order to speed that process up. They refuse to address the problem. They're creating a potential crisis by delaying the vote counting so much. And then they plan to take advantage of that window. I guarantee you Donald Trump's going to declare victory on election night, regardless of what the actual counts look like. You think he just says it to like, then say that it was stolen? Frankly, we did win this election. I'll never forget it. Yeah.

Yeah. So where are you? Where do you where are you both? I guess? Where are you holding in terms of how you're feeling about the race, how you're feeling about the polling you're seeing? And how do you think if at all last night will impact what what's to come?

I don't think that last night will impact it. Debates famously do not with the Biden debate example as an exception to the rule. Vice presidential debates even less so. So I don't think that we moved the needle last night. We know that it's close as close can be. And so it very well all might come down to Pennsylvania. And because Harris has been so strong recently,

gotten people so much more excited about the election. There are other paths. We don't have to win just the blue wall in order to get there, but it's still the most likely path. And so Glenys and I were just in Pennsylvania knocking on doors. And I think that

I don't know, Glennis, what was your takeaway from that experience? I was a little shook. I was a little shook about how many people were undecided top of ticket. We were there as volunteers for the Susan Wild campaign. And there was the majority of folks in the doors that we knocked in the Allentown area were going to vote for Susan Wild. And we asked about top of the ticket. They were like,

Don't know. Do you think they were saying don't know because they're really going to vote for Trump and you're here for a Democrat? Yeah. I mean, that's my... Because, you know, when you knock a door of a Dem, typically they're enthusiastic and they want to talk to you about why they're excited about the ticket. Or they're just like, I'm a Democrat. I'm voting up and down the ballot for Dems. Have a great day. Bye. Door in the face. Which, that's my favorite. I'm like, Roger that. I can go to the next door. Yeah. It felt like...

Not that there was like shame involved with the vote, but there was like, I'm not going to tell you because I don't want you to know. Because they're voting for Trump.

Or they're voting for Trump. Here's the thing. When Biden was still in and we knew that that was like a tough one and we were all doing the down ballot guerrilla game and trying to remind people there's more to this than just the president and like, you know, go in, vote for your down ballot with your whole heart and throw a tick up there for old Joe. Just fill in the bubble for old Joe. I almost feel like I have to bring that back and be like, look, I know so many of you are excited about Josh Stein. So many are excited about Crystal Quaid in Missouri. When you get in there,

Even if you're unsure, even if she hasn't totally won you a thousand percent, even if you never thought you would see yourself vote for a woman.

just throw the tick up there for old Kamala, right? Give the girl a high five. Let's see how she does. Because it feels like I have to almost take the pressure off this unprecedented thing that we have made it, that it's a first woman, first black woman, first South Asian woman, and be like, who cares, right? Vote for the people you love with your whole heart and give old Kamala a high five. Let's

Give her a try. No big deal. It's not a big deal. Just go ahead and give her the try because I have to take like the heat off of them participating in something risky, vulnerable, and unprecedented. Do you worry though that there are people – that people who are split-ticket voters who are thinking in this way see themselves as reasonable or in some way checking their other choices by –

being a split ticket voter. So like, I think they're not going to fill out the bubble. I think they're not going to fill out the bubble for president. I don't know that people are going to vote Democrat in the down ballot and vote for Trump. I think if anything is, even if you look at the yard signs, right. And I live in a very Republican area. I see a lot of down ballot red yard signs, but I don't see Trump. If I see 10 down ballot reds, I see one Trump for every 10 or 15 down ballot red signs. And so I think they're just planning to not fill in the bubble. That's why I'm like, go ahead.

Who cares? Just give it a little tick. I will say anecdotally, I live in Suffolk County, pretty red area. I see way fewer signs in general than there were in 2022 for the midterms. And the houses, and I know which houses are like the most extreme houses.

The houses that were like most pro-Trump signs, even in the midterms for some reason, they only have the down ballot Republicans or they don't have anything. It's just like much less fervent this time.

I don't know. I think people's – I think we're going to see – we're going to have surprises with how the map turns out. You know, the Steve Kornacki commercial on MSNBC refers to election night as a family photo that you take every four years. And I really love that analogy because it's not like the polling where it's like kind of indecisive.

This is like, okay, this is the status of the makeup of America. And I am like eager to see how that plays out and how people have realigned themselves. I think it's a very interesting part of election night.

The election result is not a lottery ticket that we're like scratching off to reveal the result. We can still change the result. We can make it a landslide. We need people to actually get engaged exactly as you're saying V in these down ballot races and at the top of the ticket, because we can still, there's weeks left for us to change people's minds and to turn people out to vote who are not planning on voting right now. And so I'm like less of a,

Fingers crossed, look into the crystal ball, girly. And I'm more of like, get on the phone, get on a bus, go to where it matters and start knocking on doors because we can win it. We just have to work for it. Well, if you're taking a photo, you can change how you pose. You know, you could do it, could do a silly face, do a serious face. It's up to us to pull people into the photo or, you know, maybe not.

Kick that cousin out. Kick that cousin out. Even though Kamala Harris is a newer nominee, this is the time when you close the deal. Very rarely do you convince someone to vote for something or someone in one conversation. I don't think that's really how persuasion or these types of decisions work. But

But if you have been in contact with people or have been having ongoing conversations or, you know, those people, even without you have been having ongoing conversations, this is our chance to be the next touch point or an additional touch point or the final touch point in how people are making their decisions. And that can happen online. That can happen on a podcast. That can happen in your daily life. Probably most effective if it is in your daily life with people who you already trust and who trust you.

Yeah. Don't assume anyone has a voting plan. Don't assume people know when voter reg ends or when they can request an early ballot. Everyone, I think, everyone listening to this podcast should make a goal of talking to three people, three people in their universe or close network or friends or family or whoever you feel comfortable talking to about the election to make sure that they have what they need to go to the polls. How are you guys voting? Simple as that.

I will probably go in person on election day. I have three people on right now. I'm going to go in person. Brian's doing his homework right now. I'm either going to go in person early or in person on election day. Probably in person early because I like going. Yeah. Me too. I love it. I'm not like a – like I want to go like fill my pants.

my pen in and I want to just like be in the room, say hi to the poll workers. It's just lovely. We have a lovely town hall here. Just it's, I'm excited. I'll be voting early and in person because we're doing an election night show. So I will be...

booked and busy and ready to bring you election night joy and excitement uh we just found out that we're going to be doing this so i'll have more details for y'all soon but um don't feel like you have to tune in to the drama and hear what steve kornacki says over and over be scared by uh you know steve king or whoever over and over like you could you could tune into my show and we're gonna have drag queens in a band so brian how are you voting

Early in person. I'm almost always an early in person. I want the sticker. I also want to be in the room with my little, like the shield, the privacy shield that reminds me of being in like grade school. I love it. Yeah. I'm excited. I do. I feel fond of voting.

I hope us women get to keep the vote after this election. We'll see. We'd hate to lose that opportunity. If not, I don't know, Brian. Maybe you'll be my husband so that my vote will count. We'll have to get into these Boston marriages again. It's going to be like a whole thing.

I'll be in a camp. Oh, yeah. I'll be with you. I'll be right beside you. We're going first. They're going to lock up the journalists and the queers first. And that just puts us out. It's been nice knowing you. I'll be in Portugal, hopefully. That's my plan. Oh, yeah. There you go. Or somewhere else. I'm not telling you where I'm going. But honestly, like, I mean, Mitt Romney's sitting around joking about how he's going to have to leave the country. And Michael Cohen said the other day that he is

getting he's looking into getting another passport under another name yeah all these people who hate immigrants are gonna immigrate to one of these countries that they hate I love when people on TikTok are like I think I'm gonna move to Mexico you guys hate Mexico what do you mean you're gonna move to Mexico what makes you think they want to what they want you what skills and economic activity are you bringing so you think people should be able to move freely between borders when they want to

Right. I love that. Now, there's that TikTok. I do try and check people when they're having these conversations. Like, well, what privilege to be able to get on a plane. Of course. And go to another country. I'm well aware of that. Also, privilege to be able to. I mean, I'm not like Sammy. Totally. No, no, totally. I mean, also, what privilege to be able to right now be saying exactly what we think, criticizing the leader. What privilege is it for us to say that we thought Joe Biden should leave the race? That is an incredible.

It's not guaranteed. Yeah. That's a podcast for another day, but I'm with you. Well, I've been listening to the podcast Autocracy in America by The Atlantic. It's a quick short series and I highly recommend it if you – Some light listening. Yeah. That's what I do when I'm getting ready to go out.

I listened to Autocracy on the R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R

the darkest shit and it really does make it easy to listen to Behind the Bastards. And check out the Vibes Only podcast. I mean, we've got a lot of stuff for you to listen to this week. So many podcasts. Check them out. We love Vibes Only. We did just win a People's Choice Award. Not the People's Choice Award, but a People's Choice Award for best

What did we win, Brian? News and politics. Something, something. Oh my gosh. Amazing. Congrats. Listeners, tell us what awards you have. I think we need to celebrate our successes.

Any employee month out there, I want to hang your picture on this wall. Oh my gosh. That is the most triggering episode of The Sopranos ever. How dare you bring that up? Oh my gosh. Well, it's been such a blast chatting with you guys. Thanks for being here in the fever dream that is America right now. Our pleasure. Yeah. Thank you so much for having us on. It has been a dream indeed. Shall we make a date like around the election? You know, maybe election re-crap? Re-crap?

I was going to say regroup and recap. And I came out as a recraft. You're all invited to my election night show. So we'll see you then. We'll be there. I'll be there. We'll be there. I'm there. All right. Well, until next time, I'm Vita Spear. I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream.

American Fever Dream is produced and edited by Samantha Gatzik. Social media by Candice Monega and Bridget Schwartz. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Betches News and follow me, Sammy Sage at Sammy and V at Under the Desk News. And of course, send us your emails to AmericanFeverDream at Betches.com.